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)