Where in the world?

Have just come across this marvellous online list “Victorian BDM Place Name Abbreviations List”

The list is comprised of place name abbreviations used in the Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages registry indexes. It is useful for all three versions of the indexes.

The list currently contains 3,215 abbreviations, including abbreviation errors, and is a work in progress. Please be aware that every effort has been made to ensure that place names are correct to the abbreviations. Research has been done with various resources to prove a birth or death in the locality that matches each abbreviation.

Abbreviations are generally representative of a settlement, town or suburb, but can be a shire, county, parish, area, creek, river, gully, forest, hill, mountain, road, hospital, asylum, convent or ship. And includes some interesting examples – ‘A Rat Hosp’ is Ararat Hospital, 'Greg' is Gre Gre South, ‘Astrens St’ is not some obscure street in a Melbourne suburb, but the abbreviation used for the McTavish births at Ashens Station in 1859.

Shed at 'Longerenong' probably built by Donald McTavish c1860

In 1856 Donald & Jane McTavish and their family moved from Hedi (Oxley's Plains near Wangaratta) to Ashens to work as a shepherd and carpenter for Dugald McPherson. They lived at an outstation, in a shepherd’s hut at the northern tip of Taylors (Drung Drung) Lake, then part of the Ashens Run, some 5 miles from the homestead.

A week before Christmas in 1856 Jane gave birth to a frail baby boy - Donald – with the help of the station women. Then in February 1859 Jane gave birth to her 9^th child – Margaret. (McTavish information from “Thy portion”). 

The Garden Shed today

Some abbreviations can represent multiple places (but at least you know the possible options) and there are also multiple abbreviations for a single place from different time periods (there are over 15 derivative abbreviations of Williamstown).
Some places no longer exist or are now known under a different name. They are indicated in the comments if known.
All in all a valuable asset if you're trawling through the BDM registers.

Vanishing Ashens

An addendum to the Railways - Melbourne to Adelaide line post, adding in the tiny siding of Hopefield (or Ashens).

The information comes from Vida Roberts, whose grandfather Henry W. Aumann selected 317 acres of Ashens Parish in 1872. He named the land ‘Hopefields’.

Ashens Parish showing the diagonal rail line passing through Allotment 220

When the railway pushed through the 10 mile section from Lubeck to Murtoa in 1878, it passed through Henry’s Allotment 220, and being the nearest landowner to the siding, the siding became Hopefield. By 1920 the siding took on the name of the Parish and had become Ashens.

Rail line from Ararat to Serviceton in 1890

The siding had a platform with a shelter shed of roofing iron with wooden benches, and a gatehouse occupied by a railway fettler and his family, who manned the railway gates at the Jackson Road intersection. The trains ran at least half-hourly in its heyday (except on Sundays), with 2 north-bound and 2 south-bound passenger trains daily. Potential passengers flagged down the train by waving a red flag stored in the Flag Box in the shelter shed. By 1900 the gates were replaced by ‘Railway Crossing’ signs, but the fettler remained.

The line in 1920 (the Riachella/Wal Wal Ballast branch line already closed)

The siding was changed to ‘Ashens’ after protests of mail and goods bound for Hopetoun were off-loaded at Hopefield.
Today the railway still passes by, but traces of the siding have vanished.

Satelite view of the Hopefield area