Nillumbik Now and Then

The following article outlines the book "Nillumbik Now and Then" by Marguerite Marshall, Pictures Alan King with Marguerite Marshall (Research, Vic. MP Print Publications, 2008)

Nillumbik Shire’s history in many ways mirrors that of Australia. Apart from the first people here, the Wurundjeri, this area’s characters and places have included a former convict, Thomas Sweeney, farmers, a bushranger called Burke, gold diggers, sportspeople and an environmental award-winning house.

However unlike many areas, Nillumbik’s history includes gold. Every area has its artists, but this one has attracted so many that in the 20th century it was compared to the Left Bank in Paris and Greenwich Village in New York, and there continues to be a very high number of artists in Nillumbik.

Unfortunately another unusual characteristic of this area is that it is bushfire prone as we have recently witnessed. For instance two important community buildings in beautiful Strathewen, its hall and primary school, were destroyed in the Black Saturday fires on February 7. 2009. St Andrews and the Kinglake National Park are two other parts of the Shire which suffered destruction on that day.

Nillumbik has its share of famous characters. Like us all they would have been influenced by this district and impacted on it as well. Some of these are jazz and blues singer Judy Jacques, media personality and film maker Philip Adams, cyclist Cadel Evans, jazz musician, Graeme Bell, television weather presenter and environmentalist Rob Gell, unionist Bill Kelty and inventor of the Bionic Ear, Professor Graeme Clark.

[edit] Aboriginal Heritage

The Gawa (echidna) Wurundjeri Aboriginal Resource Trail at Watson’s Creek gives us a small insight into how these people used the land for their food, medicines, implements, shelters and clothes. A clan of about 50 people seasonally hunted and gathered food between Yarra Glen and the Darebin Creek. Traces of their habitation can still be found in different parts of the Shire. For instance 57 sites have been identified in the Plenty Gorge Park, including scarred trees, burial areas and stone artefacts. Nillumbik is the Wurundjeri-willam Aboriginal name for the area, meaning shallow earth. It is likely that they used this word to compare the district’s soil with more fertile areas, such as Kangaroo Ground, which has rich volcanic soil.

European settlers settled here from the late 1830s, soon after Melbourne began in 1835, and they adopted the name Nillumbik. The first white man said to see most of Nillumbik was Joseph Gellibrand. In 1836 he named the Plenty River, discovered Diamond Creek and continued to today’s Hurstbridge, Diamond Creek, Eltham and Greensborough.

Europeans claimed land on pastoral leases, but few spent much time living in the area. The first industry from the late 1830s was logging the Stringybark forests. Joseph Stevenson established vineyards in 1850 in Kangaroo Ground.

This area developed slowly until gold was discovered in the 1850s. It led to communities springing up in Panton Hill, Research, Queenstown (now St Andrews) and Diamond Creek. Eltham did not have gold but developed as it supplied the goldmining areas with transport, food, and other services. But the gold rush was short-lived and by the late 1850s most early alluvial fields were in decline. However some gold mining continued and a story in the book tells of a mine still operating at One Tree Hill, Smiths Gully.

One of the most important social changes in this area occurred with the building of the Eltham Railway trestle bridge. The only one of its kind still regularly used in Melbourne’s metropolitan railway network. It was built as part of the railway’s extension to Eltham in 1902, then extended to Hurstbridge in 1912. This bridge greatly lessened Eltham’s isolation and the railway brought tourists, artists and suburban commuters, particularly after World War Two.

The building of Montsalvat in the 1930s, made a huge difference to the district’s ethos, drawing more artists and intellectuals to the area and making it widely known.

In the late 20th century, suburbia grew quickly in the Nillumbik district, but only in certain areas as most of the Shire is in a green wedge. Although wedges were officially zoned only a few years ago under the Bracks government, they were started under the Hamer Government in 1971.