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The
Pastoralists
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First to
arrive was James MacFarlane in late 1834, and in 1835 he returned with two other
Highland Scots, George McKillop and Livingstone. Settling on the Omeo Plains
(which stretch from east of Benambra westwards to Omeo) MacFarlane then returned to the
Monaro and brought cattle back to the Benambra area in 1836 (which at the time
they called Strathdownie). This formed Gippsland’s first squatting run.
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The
Scots were soon followed by four
Irish
cattlemen from the Monaro. John Pendergast was at Lake Omeo (in Benambra) by
1836, John Hyland took up a run at Hinnomunjie (a locality between Benambra and
Omeo), Edmund Buckley moved to Tongio Munjie and
Ensay, south of Omeo, in 1836, and his step-son, Patrick Buckley, was at
Benambra by 1839. Many of these surnames are still common in the area.
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Benambra was one of the first regions of Victoria to be
settled by Europeans; this was during the period of 1834-1836
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In 1835 George McKillop journeyed south from Monaro in New South Wales in
search of new pastures
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A member of the party, James McFarlane, returned and founded what was
probably the first cattle station in Victoria - Omeo B at what is now Benambra
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John Pendergast arrived with his two brothers in 1836 or 1837 and
established the Mount Leinster station
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Another early settler, John Hyland, settled west of Morass Creek later to
be named Hinnomunjie Station
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Angus McMillan rested in the Omeo vicinity in 1839 while following an
Aboriginal track south to establish Numblamunjie station on behalf of Lachlan
Macalister. The name was changed to Ensay in 1844 by Archibald Macleod, after
an island off the coast of Scotland.
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McMillan used the station as a base for
his extensive and ground-breaking explorations of Gippsland to the south.
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The Explorers
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Noted explorer of Gippsland, Angus McMillan, first passed through the area
of what is now Bruthen on 14th April, 1840 on his early explorations from the
Omeo region.
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By the time of 1839 and 1840 wealthy
landholders in New South Wales had become interested in the Gippsland region and
funded further exploration of the region. The key explorations around this time
were those of
Angus McMillan, and a
Polish
scientist-explorer,
Count Paul Strzelecki. Both of these expedition parties passed through the
then established lands around Benambra and Omeo heading south towards the coast,
and both were assisted by the McFarlane family.
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McMillan completed several
expeditions, and while he was not necessarily the first to visit many locations,
his explorations were the most important in terms of European settlement of
Gippsland proper. On his final expedition he located a suitable port for the
region, at present day
Port Albert. The route established then by McMillan remains essentially the
same major north-south route through Gippsland to this day. This route follows
the
Great Alpine Road south through the Tambo Valley to
Bruthen, then east to
Bairnsdale and
Sale along the
Princes Highway, then south from Sale to Port Albert.
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The Gold Fields
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In 1851 pioneering
geologist, Reverend W. B. Clarke, discovered gold at Livingstone Creek
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His expedition followed up the Mitchell river and its tributaries,
and gold was discovered on the Crooked, Dargo, and Wentworth rivers.
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However, the stock of alluvial
gold began to disappear and with it went many of the miners. Chinese people
moved into the area to work the tailings and established market gardens.
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A new boom began when reef gold was located at Sunnyside, Dry Gully, Glen
Wills and Cassilis.
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Tracks & Trails
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The Great Alpine Road from Omeo to Bruthen follows the route aborigines used
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The Gippsland region was first
explored and settled by Europeans who came overland from the Monaro region of
New South Wales and headed down to the coastal regions. The first to arrive via this
route were not explorers, but ordinary
stockmen
pushing out to expand their range. The route they initially found put them in
the Omeo region, with access largely through present day Benambra.
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For several decades Gippsland
operated essentially on this north-south axis, following this route from
Benambra and Omeo to Port Albert, but in the 1860s a road was opened from
Melbourne to the east, and this was followed a couple of decades later by a rail
line. These developments, along with development of significant east-west
shipping on the
Gippsland Lakes at the time, reoriented travel and transport to the simpler
east-west axis, and demoted the Benambra and Omeo regions to a side branch of
this main route.
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The route established then by McMillan remains essentially
the same major north-south route through Gippsland to this day. This route
follows the Great Alpine Road south through the Tambo Valley to Bruthen, then
east to Bairnsdale and Sale along the Princes Highway, then south from Sale to
Port Albert. In the 1840s, the first pastoralists used the
Tambo Valley as a route from the Monaro to the Gippsland plains.
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The Settlements
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During the 1840s squatters moving south into Gippsland used the area as a
transit camp.
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The current name was taken from the name of the property owned by pioneer
settler Archibald Macleod, who took up the run on the west bank of the
Mitchell River in 1844.
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Matthew and Thomas Macalister took up the area as
(Bruthen) Kilmorie run in 1845.
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Movement
increased when a track was cut between Port Albert and Bairnsdale.
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The goldrush reached its peak in the 1860s.
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Land settlement began in 1870
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Omeo was declared a municipality in 1872.
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A Wesleyan Church was opened in
1870,
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Roman Catholic Church following in 1874
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the Church of England in 1892
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the Presbyterian Church in 1894.
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'Black
Friday' bushfires of 1939.
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