Grampians fires ... again

 'Tis the season again for bushfires, with two fires in the Grampians - one at Mt Staplyton & the other near Bellfield. Begun by lightning strikes on Tuesday morning, they were fanned by strong gusty winds all through the afternoon.

Lynton Brown captured the scene from Taylors Lake, the image showing the smoke from the fire between Mt Difficult (the high range & bluff at the back) and Mt Staplyton ridgeline in front, with the choppy yellow-tinged waters of the lake in the foreground.

Lynton Brown's telephoto view from Taylors Lake 5:15pm

The Western Highway was closed as the fire approached Dadswells before jumping the road and heading towards Glenorchy, and it remains closed today from Horsham to Ballarat, with huge detours via either the Sunraysia or Henty or Wimmera Highways.

Five CFA firefighters sustained minor injuries after their truck was involved in a burnover while fighting the fire & protecting homes at Pomonal.

Lynton captured the scene at 9:30pm on 13th, from St Helens Plains. It is looking South towards North-east part of the Grampians and to the left as far as Glenorchy.

As always thanks & gratitude to the efforts of Lynton Brown out & about recording these events. And thinking of those involved - firefighters & landowners, etc.

How things have changed

Discovered during the re-carpeting works at the Horsham Library, were some old photo prints. Unfortunately the backs of the prints were blank and they had no documentation with them – so no title, description or dates.

Some were reasonable easy to identify. One particularly interesting one was this.

It took a moment to orientate oneself to work out it would have been taken from the old Post Office tower looking east south-east to the old 298 School. Works out it was part of a larger panoramic of Firebrace Street looking south.

It is possibly easier to understand it as a ‘now and then’. The ‘now’ is a composite of two photos taken from in the State Government Offices (in 2016 as part of the Art Is tour, and why there is a bird-net over the images).

Here is another of the same panoramic scene from the Post Office tower, taken at a later date, spot the changes – the brick St Michael & St John, rooms & buildings added to the school, the Methodist Church is also brick and the Jubilee Hall has been built, and the Presbyterian Church has a tower.

Further investigation was needed to calculate a date, or range of dates for the old photograph, and to ascertain the fate of some of the buildings depicted.

The Water Tower

The brick tower in McLachlan Street was built in 1875 when Horsham’s water was pumped from the Wimmera River. The original steam boiler pumping station was at the end of Baillie Street and fed water up wood-staved pipes to the tower till 1911. In May 1933 Horsham’s water came from Lake Wartook via the Mount Zero station. The new gravity-fed supply did not require the tower to provide pressure, so the Council staff dismantled it. The tower was approximately 15m high.

From "The story of Horsham", with captions added

The current concrete water tower at the corner of Mill & Gertrude Streets was erected in 1956 as suburbia extended into the higher ground to the north & west.

In McLachlan Street showing the Water Tower, the State Government Offices & the Post Office

The Power Station

Prior to the SEC (State Electricity Commission) when Horsham generated its own electricity, the power station was next to the water tower. Power arrived in Horsham in 1955, and it was connected to the state grid in 1958. The SEC built their offices (now the CFA offices) on the power station site.

298 School

Horsham School No.298 began as a National School in January 1857, in a two-room dwelling previously used as a private school. Richard Spry built the new one-room school and four-room residence on a site on the west half of the block of land bounded by Wilson, Hamilton, Urquhart & McPherson Streets. In 1862 the Horsham National School became Common School No. 298, but the school buildings were overcrowded and dilapidated beyond repair. In 1874, 2 acres were reserved for a State School. In 1877 a new school was built on land enclosed by Roberts Avenue, Urquhart and McLachlan Streets, however the brick building of 2 large rooms was overcrowded from the outset. In 1878 a verandah was enclosed to make 2 extra classrooms. In 1880 a further 2 rooms were added, and another in 1890. In 1902 a dead-end corridor was enclosed as another room. In 1929 the school was remodelled and a new section constructed of Mt Gambier stone. A brick building (one of the 3 main buildings), which housed 3 grades, library and staffroom was demolished in 1966 and replaced by 4 prefabricated units. The Police acquired part of the 298 site in 1967. In 1970 there were 13 classrooms, library, art-craft room & remedial room. 298 was re-established on a site in Baillie St East at Sunnyside in 1975 when half the children were still taught at Urquhart Street.

298 looking from Urquhart Street, with the Court House in the background

The 298 school buildings were demolished and a new complex - Civic Centre (for both the City of Horsham & the Shire of Wimmera) and the Department of Education’s Regional Office – was erected on the old school site. The new Police Station & Commissioner’s Residence opened in May 1980, 2 months after the Civic Centre.

Wesleyan Methodist Church 

The weatherboard Methodist Church (Turner postcard)

The original 1876 weatherboard building was moved to the corner of Roberts Avenue (then Splatt Street) & Urquhart Street in 1882 by a team of 24 bullocks & 2 horses. A new timber building was erected in 1902. 

The brick & timber buildings (Williams postcard)

A new brick building opened in 1912 and the old weatherboard building was turned to face Roberts Avenue. In 1924 the Church celebrated its Jubilee with the opening of a new Sunday School Hall. In 1936-41 the front of the Church was rebuilt, the chapel enlarged & new porches added. It joined the Uniting Church in 1976, but services were still held there in the 1980s. It became the Wesley Performing Arts Centre who added a new foyer & kitchenette to the facade.

The brick church & Jubilee Hall (Palamountain postcard)

St Andrews Presbyterian Church 

The Presbyterian Church prior to the tower (Rose postcard)

A small brick church was erected in 1860 at the corner of Pynsent & Urquhart Streets. In 1874 the building was condemned & demolished. A new McKenzie Creek stone church & manse were built in 1875. It was enlarged in 1928 with a tower & porch added. 

The church with its tower & the Masonic Temple behind (Valentine postcard)

The stone church building was demolished in 1962 and the current building opened in Nov 1963 utilising the original stone on all exposed walls. 

St Michael and St John's Catholic Church

The first Catholic Church was wooden structure, erected in 1876. It was situated in the middle of the block bordered by McLachlan Street and Splatt Street. It was placed across the block running east to west. In 1913 a new red brick Church facing Roberts Avenue was opened and the old church building became the school. The current church was opened in 1987, and again the old building was used by the school, till it was demolished in 1997. 

S.S. Michael & John's Church with the Presbytery to the left & the Convent on the right (Rose postcard) 

The Court House 

The Court House & Police Station to the left (George Ryan postcard)

The first Court House was in Darlot Street in 1849. It then moved to a timber building in Splatt Street (Roberts Avenue) in 1860-62. The timber building was replaced by the colonial-style two-storey building in 1879. 

The Police Station with a front verandah, the Court House & 298 school (Real Photograhic Postcards)

In turn this was demolished and the current building erected on the site in 1967. 

 Court House from '"Horsham in focus"

So when was the mystery photograph taken? We can narrow it down to between 1902 and 1912.

It all comes down to the Methodist Church. The timber church building is in Splatt Street, and is yet to be moved and replaced by the brick building.

We welcome any further information on the buildings or dates, in the Comments section.

Sources: “The story of Horsham” by Brian Brooke & Alan Finch;  “Horsham in Focus: 1849-1999” by Noelene Jenkinson;  Australian Christian Church Histories (https://www.churchhistories.net.au);   “Greetings from Horsham: Picture Postcards from the Past” (http://greetingsfromhorsham.au);  Trove newspapers.

Home in the Glen

"Former restaurant and residence in Horsham 'Glen Logan' on the market

If you head along Dooen Road in Horsham, there's an imposing two storey red-roofed homestead that will probably catch your eye.

That's Glen Logan, a historic house which has been a major landmark in the city's east for almost one hundred years.

It has connections to several prominent Wimmera families (the Boltons, Langlands and Cranages) and has recently been put on the market.

The agent in charge of the sale, Gerry Smith, told ABC presenter Rebekah Lowe about the history of Glen Logan."

Article and audio from ABC Wimmera Radio.  Audio here

Photos from HRE Horsham Real Estate

Have seen some beautiful wedding photographs taken at Glen Logan back when the front facade of the building was covered in Boston ivy. 

Have been to functions, even presented functions there - Glen Logan is an institution in Horsham, and hopefully it will get a buyer with plans to continue the tradition.

Jeparit World War One German dugout

"The surprising discovery of a German dugout was made in the sandhills north of Jeparit in late May 1916.

The local police received word on Sunday, 29 May, of the existence of a German dugout believed to be occupied by escapees from the military internment camp at Langwarren, south-east of Melbourne, who had been on the run for the last 10 months.

To investigate the site, the police travelled by car 4 miles north of the township on the main Jeparit-Rainbow Road before they had to then walk half a mile across a field of stubble, an area of heavy sand riddled with rabbit warrens, and then had to force their way through thick scrub to locate the site, but the occupants had already fled when they arrived.

The site was well-concealed but commanded a view of the surrounding farmland for miles, including the main road and railway.

This discovery caused a sensation, and with the landowner’s co-operation, onlookers travelling across the district were charged one shilling to inspect the site, with the proceeds being donated to an appropriate patriotic cause.

Although its exact location has now been lost, the structure was described as similar to dugouts constructed by the Germans in the trenches of the Western Front in France and Belgium and was described as clean and comfortable.

The horizontal wooden entry door that opened on a sliding mechanism was well concealed in a clump of mallee scrub, revealing a ladder leading down into a room 7 feet deep, 10 feet long, and 8 feet wide. Four large pine uprights supported a roof constructed of cross timbers, over which cornsacks had been placed and covered with soil. The sand and clay excavated to make the chamber had been spread over a wide area to make it harder to detect, and the space immediately over the roof had been covered with scrub.

The walls were lined with timber from kerosene cases and hessian, and 3 tin funnels were in the roof for ventilation. Two hammocks made of bags were suspended from the central uprights and attached to the walls, and an improvised table and shelves made up the furnishings.

The room contained German newspapers from 1914, playing cards, candles, and empty beer bottles. The walls were decorated with a large amount of German writing, and a signboard inside the door stated, “Home of Deserter and Prisoner of War, 1916”, and "The recruiting officer Kaiser Bill der Grosse”. There was also an intricately carved resemblance of the Kaiser and a drawing of a German officer in uniform.

The room was clean and tidy, although carefully hidden around the site were remnants of rabbits, turkeys, and sheep that had been consumed as food.

The alleged residents, both with German heritage, were Max Langer, who had been arrested in July 1915, in Jeparit for failing to report his movements to the police, and Max Zimmerman, who was arrested for the same reason in Maffra and were interned at a camp at Langwarren from where they escaped together in August 1915.

Once free from the camp, they made their way to Jeparit, where Langer had previously worked and knew the area well. Here they believed that amongst the significant population of German settlers, they would find help to elude pursuit by the police. However, knowing that the appearance of unknown Germans in the town would arouse suspicion, they decided to hide until the coming harvest period by constructing a hiding place in the sand hills between Jeparit and Ellam to a design that they had seen while at Langwarren, which also resembled the dugouts in the German trenches on the Western Front.

While hiding, they survived by trapping wild birds and rabbits and venturing into the fields under cover of darkness to seek food. Evidence was found in the abandoned dugout incriminating several locals who had assisted the fugitives.

Once the usual surge of swagmen and itinerant workers arrived for the harvest, they could break cover without being too conspicuous and seek work on the local farms.

This plan worked well until Langer was re-captured at Katyil in mid-May, and soon after, Zimmerman believed that the police were closing in on him, so decided to travel to Melbourne and gave himself up at Victoria Barracks several weeks later."

From the 'Dimboola Courier' 27 June 2023

Nigh on the end

Another local landmark building sold recently - the Ni Ni Well Lutheran school/church. This one comes with a video and a chance to see what the inside of the building is like.

A Beautiful Historic Canvas

This property is situated on 2 lots being approximately 3.78 acres in total and is set amongst a picturesque rural tall timber setting.
Lot 1 features the stately Ni Ni Well School which is a once in a life time opportunity to purchase a prestigious property which oozes rich history and character commencing from approximately 1893. The standing school which is a substantial concrete building with stunning pioneer features and character from yesteryear was founded on 15th July 1923. Inside the building offers formal entry room including authentic air vent shutters to cool the building on summer days. The main class room is vast in size boasting large blackboard, open fire place, 2nd entry/exit door, alluring timber ceiling and an abundance of windows. There is also a concrete smaller hut located on the property in need of repair.
Lot 2 is the site of the Ni Ni Well Lutheran Church from circa 1883 and all that remains today is a monument and sign. The property was sold in Sep 2022.

(from the RealEstate.Com people)

Looking south-west from in the main room (RealEstate.com)

At the main entry, to the schoolroom, space between the 2 is for the wall vents (RE.C)

A video of the property from WestTech AG

Ni Ni Well the Lutheran congregation was organised in 1873. The Zion Lutheran Church 1883-1973 opened in a buloke & mud building which was dedicated in November 1886, and rebuilt and enlarged in 1889. A weatherboard church was built in 1906 and the Lutheran School moved into the old church building. The concrete building was erected in 1923 and opened as the school in 1924. Church services moved to St Paul's Church at Woorak, till it closed in March 2022.

Ni Ni Well Lutheran Day School No. 805 opened in a room of the teacher’s residence across the road from the church in 1893. When the new church opened in 1906, the school moved into the old buloke & mud church building. A new concrete school building was erected in 1923. The Lutheran school closed at the end of 1929.

The schools plaque

Ni Ni Well State School No. 4500 opened in 1932 in the former Lutheran Private School, as the old Lutheran School building was closed, and leased by the Department on 17.5.1932, the adjacent residence was also leased. Blackboards came from the closed Angip School in April 1948. A shelter shed was built in 1943. Owing to a small enrolment, the teacher was transferred to No. 2541 in May 1952 and it was unstaffed from February 1953, and the school officially closed in April 1955. The furniture was moved to Woorak No. 2246. The lease with the Lutheran Church Trust was terminated in May 1955. 

Court adjorned

The old Lillimur Courthouse building has been up for sale for some time, and now according to Domain has been sold.

The Court of Petty Sessions first met in June 1884 in the Mechanics Institute. The Courthouse was built in 1887 and used as a courthouse till June 1892 when the Attorney-General closed the court permanently due to insufficient transactions and sessions were then held at Kaniva. In 1913 the building was utilised as the Lillimur Post Office when the Post Master General transferred its 'semi-official' post office to the courthouse, rather than construct a new building. The Post Office function closed after 1980.

Lillimur Post Office & Courthouse building (Domain 2022)

Property Description

Situated in the township of Lillimur along the Western Highway, and on the edge of the SA border is this quaint building with rich history in need of major restoration. Located on a spacious block measuring approximately 1037m2 is the Old Lillimur Post Office and Courthouse. Requiring a mammoth amount of repair, this unique building has striking character features making the property instantly recognisable and the dwelling has been restumped. The interior walls have numerous amounts of graffiti and majority of the window glass is broken. The property currently has no kitchen or bathroom facilities and no services connected and is zoned farming.

Inside has been heavily graffitied and majority of it has been blurred in the photos as some may find it offensive. Westech Real Estate accept no liability for individuals who access the property on their own accord with the risk of injury that may occur if care is not taken. There are also signs of termite damage, it is recommended buyers conduct their own due diligence.

Property History

Sold in April 2000 for unknown price. Sold in Sep 2017 again for unknown price. Sold in Jul 2022 for $29,000. Now in Jan 2023 sold for $40,000.

Lillimur Courthouse & Public Hall (SLV)

Domain states:

A dilapidated property has fetched $40,000 from a stoic buyer, after a campaign that urged potential buyers to do their own “due diligence”.

The property at 31 Commercial Road in the rural town of Lillimur in Victoria had an asking price of $49,000 and requires a “mammoth amount of repair”, the listing says.
Pricefinder data shows the home was snatched up just shy of price hopes on January 10.
Listed by Westech Real Estate, the two-bedroom, one-bathroom property was formerly the Old Lillimur Post Office and Courthouse and it is one of Australia’s cheapest houses on the market.
Agents Joanne Perkins and Sophie Pritchard have been very honest in the listing, warning potential buyers that they “accept no liability” for those who view the property on their own volition, as there is a risk of injury “if care is not taken”.
The exterior needs major work with rotting wood, termite damage and broken windows, and the interiors aren’t any better.
Walls feature copious amounts of graffiti with “offensive language” blurred out in the photos by the agents, as well as loose floorboards and lone bricks.
The property is also uninhabitable in its current state with no kitchen or bathroom. There is also no power.

In fact the uninhabitable/dilapidated building has been tidied up from an earlier neglected state.

Side view, Jan 2008

Same view 2022, Domain

With ivy in 2008                                       Ivy removed, Domain

The 3-room building with its central chimney has been restumped & the worst of the weatherboards removed. There is still heaps of work to be done by the new owner regardless of the use they intend to make of it.

Thankfully it has been saved from possible demolition.

A world without Trove

The National Library at Canberra under suitably stormy skies (photo from Pinterest by Jared Adamo on 500px)

Remembering the last funding cuts (see Treasure Trove: why defunding Trove leaves Australia poorer) it seems that once again Trove is in the gun sights.

Without additional funds the National Library of Australia is threatening to pull the plug on Trove or reduce it to a service focused on the National Library’s collections. 

Trove (as detailed in previous posts) is the bestest resource Australia has for finding stuff, and not just for librarians and academics. There are Average Joes and Janes out there who may never visit or consider joining a library, but who access Trove regularly.

Any service (‘service’ as distinct from providing a search engine) that boasts more than 22 million visits per year is on the right track. If not for Trove delivering access & consolidation to over six Billion digital items, these items would be either not be available digitally or scattered around all the organisations that contribute to Trove.

The daunting aspect is already past – it has been created and embellished and improved over the years. Digitising more items – newspapers, photographs, ephemera… is an ongoing process that will continue to add to Trove’s importance (and a Shout Out to all the volunteers who make Trove even better by correcting text and making our search results more accurate). 

How good is Trove? Try an experiment - search Trove’s newspaper collection then, do the same for British newspapers. What, access to the British is not free! The Search results and functionality is not as easy or as clear! Thank goodness for Trove.

Want to raise the issue or help campaign - check out Speak up for Trove.

Grave work

A wonderful article from the ABC in Tasmania.

Phyllis and Peter McLennan

"Visiting ancestors at a cemetery, Peter and Phyllis McLennan were shocked to discover below the seemingly vacant patches of lawn lay dozens of unknown bodies.
Ellesmere Cemetery, in Tasmania's north-east, was full — yet, many had been laid to rest without a headstone to mark them.
Believing all should have their names recorded for posterity, the McLennans acquired a hand-drawn cemetery map — only to find 100 of the unmarked graves belonged to babies.
"That really hit us hard," Mr McLennan said. "I thought, 'surely, we can do better than that'."
The McLennans set to work laying down plaques, until every grave in the cemetery was marked.
They have now expanded into other cemeteries in the region, as well as tending to deteriorating headstones.
Part of their joy comes from tracking down living relatives.
The McClennan's efforts have been a gift to people like Aileen Johnston, whose grandmother's headstone was so worn it was unreadable.
Visiting her at nearby Stronach Cemetery, Ms Johnston was thrilled to discover the fresh lettering on a polished surface. "I was just dumbfounded, this beautiful headstone that stood out, I could read my grandmother's headstone two rows back from her grave," she said. "I thought, 'who's done that'?"
Ms Johnston was one of the few people to know where her grandfather and uncle shared a plot at Ellesmere Cemetery.
She asked the McLennans to mark the mutual grave, only for them to say "that rings a bell, I think we've done that too".
"After 180 years, my grandfather and my uncle have got a name," Ms Johnston said. "It is wonderful that I know now I can take my boys up and say, 'well, that's your great grandfather'."
The McLennans have helped update official council records along the way.
With assistance from the Dorset Tasmania History Society, they have been able to correct names and dates on headstones.
President Nigel Mercer said the council's records had been thorough, but together they had been able to significantly improve them.
He said discovering graves could be like "detective work", digging into various maps and spreadsheets to uncover what became of people.
"You feel good when you think there was a good chance we've identified where that person is buried because the records have lost track," he said.
In less than two years, they have put down more than 200 headstones, and refurbished more than 150 in the north-east.
And they plan to continue for as long as they can.
"Sadly enough, we should have started 10 years ago because we're not far away from our own plot," Mr McLennan said.
"We've probably got about another good five years' work in front of us with the surrounding cemeteries, and when we've done that, we'll put our paintbrush away and enjoy what we've done."
In recognition of their work, the McLennans were awarded the 2023 Dorset Australia Day Citizens of the Year award."
(ABC News: Bec Pridham)

Saving TV

Article copied from ABC Wimmera's Facebook, (if you follow the link to the ABC's website you can also view the 2 short videos and reminisce)-

Treasure trove of historical Mildura footage saved in WIN TV building clear-out

A historian has saved approximately 80 per cent of the historical footage stored at Mildura's original local TV bureau from being thrown out in a clean-out of the building. Archival news footage taken of the town in the 1960s and '70s, documenting important local events such as flooding of the Murray River, has been salvaged from the former WIN TV building.

WIN TV Swan Hill

The other 20 per cent of the historical footage has been donated to other historians.

Local history enthusiast and founder of Frames of History Ian MacWilliams says he received a call from the station's staff manager Steven Menegaldo to rescue the documentation.

The establishment was occupied by Sunraysia Television 9 (STV8) in 1965, then was used by WIN News from 2006 before the station was forced to close in a statewide restructure in 2015.

"The footage goes all the way back to the STV8 days, when of course back at the start that was shot on 16-millimetre film, and eventually became tape all sorts of different type formats," Mr MacWilliams said.

"The original materials are news film, and then later on, there was news film and commercial film, which used to make the ads so all of that material has been stored at WIN TV, since it was on TV.

"That material has over time become available to me. I got hold of the 16 millimetre footage and last year in 2022 I've been able to get access to the remaining footage, which is mostly tape, all sorts of different tape."

Oftentimes, Mr MacWilliams said, videographers at STV8 and WIN News were responsible for capturing the only footage of Mildura events.

"It was then the only source of local news because the stations weren't networked," he said.

"Everything was created for local TV. It was for local consumption so when something happened in history, a news item happened in town, STV8 was sent out and they filmed it.

"Pretty much every event that we've got as a news story would never be seen again if it hadn't been rescued because it's really the only footage if it hadn't been shot by a private person, that was the only coverage of the event."

Part of a bigger picture

The Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI) is working with partner institution Ballarat Television 6 (BTV-6) to save their archive under a similar circumstance.

Head of collections and preservation at ACMI Melbourne Nick Richardson said regional material was a critically important part of the national screen museum's collection.

"Congratulations to [Mr MacWilliams] for going and salvaging the footage," Mr Richardson said.

"We've been instrumental in taking quite a bit of that [Ballarat's] original footage from the past six years and attempting and beginning to preserve that.

"What's really important is that there's so much content out there that no single institution can hope to preserve so having a network of organisations and interested individuals who can share that burden, I think is really important.

"And there's an opportunity for us all to share our information around technology and how best to preserve that."

Mr Richardson said the regions were under represented in ACMI's national collection.

"Our earliest item goes back to the 1890s but certainly the majority of that Australian-based footage tends to focus on the bigger centres," he said.

"So, the regional material is incredibly important. It gives us an insight into the social and economic history of those regions and I think it's a really fascinating way for emerging current and emerging generations to connect with the past and with their area.

"It's often been said that we can understand the personal look towards the future without fully understanding our past so the material is incredibly important to the country."

You learn from the past

Historian Pam Cupper grew up in Mildura and said she was delighted to hear about Mr MacWilliams' rescue project.

"I'd actually heard over the years that the material from the STV8 and WIN studios had been lost, or some of it had been lost anyway, so when I heard I was so delighted that a lot of the material seems to have been kept and hopefully now it's going to be maintained, which is such a great historical record," Ms Cupper said.

Ms Cupper said she was hopeful to see footage of inter-school debates in the 1960s recovered.

"And the [coverage of the] floods on the Murray River are really big at the moment and the marching girls were a phenomena in the late 1960s, early 1970s and I have become more interested in it from a historical point of view," she said.

"I don't have great kind of particular things that I want to want to see but I would like to see my old home as it was 50 years ago.

"It's important if you grew up there or you didn't grow up there. I'm a historian so I have a view that we can learn from the past."

By Tamara Clark ABC Mildura-Swan Hill

Hope the BTV-6 film is also saved, digitised and made available. (One of the old station identifier commercials has great video of the Wimmera's mobile library travelling to Laharum, would love to see that again).