A notable feature of early Warrandyte was the influence the Bendigo miners had on the field; even the earliest writings of 1855 mention such names as Specimens and Sailors Gullies, both well known at Bendigo; and the Whipstick Gully which took its name from the famous Whipsticks near Raywood; while the Bendigo Line, a very rich claim, that stood near the foot of Mullins Road, was opened by a party of diggers from Bendigo in 1864.
The development at this period is difficult to assess, as the population was largely a floating one. Statistics show that about 1,490 miners were working the hills and gullies from Warrandyte to Queenstown and, like the majority of the diggers at that time, they seldom stayed in one locality very long. Several permanent institutions were being established; these included the Common School and the Post Office.
Writing in the Argus for October, 1855, Henry Frencham said that no minister of religion had ever visited Anderson's Creek, and there were many children living in the area who were devoid of any chances of obtaining an education. The following month an inspector of the National Schools Board visited the town and was successful in obtaining the names of 50 children who were willing to attend the school. The local residents applied to the Government for a grant of £100 towards the cost of the building, but only £21 was forthcoming and they were prevented from erecting a permanent school house, but a school was opened with Thomas Downward as first head master on December 3rd, 1856. The location is believed to be just below the Gospel Hall and it was established by the Church of England who were seeking to spread their education system through the goldfields at that time and, but a short time previously, opened a school at Eltham.
It has been suggested that the school was housed in a tent; this seems unlikely though the building could not have been a very substantial one, as it took less than a fortnight to erect. School fees for the first year amounted to £49.18. 5, and as this carried a two to one Government subsidy, the school was in all probability self-supporting. Downward formerly taught at the Prahran Church of England School, and remained at Yarrandyte for about a year when he transferred to Queenstown. Inspectors report that he was of a quiet and sincere disposition, but rather a weak teacher, and had little control over the children; however little reliance can be placed on these early inspectors as it is well known that they were almost impossible to satisfy. Downward died in November, 1876, aged 42 years. His successor is not known, and it does not appear that the school remained in use for long as Miss Elizabeth Caroline Blair opened a private school in the old Cow House (adjacent to the present police station) on November 1st, 1859. She taught in this building until the end of 1863, when a National School was established.
A goldfields court was granted to the town in November, 1856, with A. Brackenbury as first Chairman. Of the 23 miners who stood for places on the court the following 9 were successful: Halfpenny, Crooke, Richie, Lawsen, Morton, Barrett, Campbell, Honan and Beckett. The system of conducting local Government by means of mining courts did not prove a success owing to the fact that the miners being such itinerant people and the different sets of regulations proved a continuous source of worry to them. The courts were replaced in 1858 by the district mining boards; Anderson's Creek becoming part of St. Andrews Mining Division, in the District of Castlemaine.
On January 23rd, 1857, Warrandyte's first land sale was conducted at Tennant & Company's Auction Rooms in 60 Collins Street East, when 25 of the 28 allotments offered on the south side of Yarra Street between Whipstick Gully and the bridge were sold at prices ranging from £5 to £50 each. On the 20th February Mr. Ewen Hugh Cameron, proprietor of the Diamond Accommodation Store, was appointed first Post Master at a salary of £20 per year. Cameron later had a long and distinguished career in Parliament. The following August Mr. Fleming Howitt's contract of £196 was accepted for the conveyance of the mail on a twice weekly basis from Melbourne. In 1858 Howitt purchased the Union Hotel and also the postmastership from Cameron and for some years the post office was conducted at the hotel.
In 1858 an unfortunate sequence of events resulted in the dismissal of Warrandyte's ever popular mining warden. Brackenbury, like many other immigrants who came to the colony after the discovery of gold, was a member of a distinguished English county family — the Brackenburys of Thorpe Hall (Lincolnshire). He arrived in Melbourne in 1852, at the age of 30 and was made Junior Assistant Gold Commissioner at Silver, which carried a salary of £400 a year. He was promoted to Senior Assist. Commissioner and ultimately to Mining Warden and Police Magistrate on a salary of £750.
Brackenbury had an unhappy career in the Public Service; he was suspended on the 30th June, 1855, after a difference of opinion with a Police Inspector, but was reinstated after he was awarded £800 damages by a Supreme Court Jury for slander. He was appointed Goldfields Warden and Magistrate to the Anderson's Creek and Caledonia Goldfields on January 7th, 1856. He did a good job in assisting to open up the then almost inaccessible regions of the Yarra and Diamond Valleys. His travels often took him over rough and dangerous mountain tracks to wayside mining camps and he was always well received by the diggers.
Things, however, moved swiftly to a climax in 1858. The Supreme Court award was never paid and the Inspector appears to have had friends in the Chief Secretary's Department, one of whom complained to the Premier John O'Shaunessy that Brackenbury's returns were always late, and that a payment of £25 for mining licences was overdue. Brackenbury requested a public inquiry, but this was refused by the Premier and he was removed from office on June 7th, 1858, without a fair chance to vindicate his character. He later moved to Sydney and thence to Auckland where he died in 1890.
Brackenbury was succeeded by Charles Warburton Carr, formerly Secretary to the Gold Complaints Committee of 1855. He served Anderson's Creek well until a recess in gold mining brought about a temporary closing of the Anderson's Creek Court of Petty Sessions in 1865. He then transferred to Avoca where he rendered many years of public service. He died on the 20th July, 1888, aged 61. The town of Warburton was named in his honour in March, 1868. Brackenbury and Carr were the only resident wardens at Anderson's Creek as the court was later carried on by visiting justices from Heidelberg.
About the end of 1859 the Warrandyte miners were more intent on penetrating the forests and exploring the little known regions of the Upper Yarra and Dandenong Ranges than working the local field. In December
Patrick Geraghty organised a party which stayed in the ranges for several months and did a remarkable job of exploration besides discovering the Emerald, Nicholson and Britannia Goldfields, for which they were later granted a Government reward of £500. The original party is known to have consisted of eight miners, but 3 gave up after a few weeks. The five who stuck it out and ultimately shared the reward were: P. Geraghty, James McEvoy, M. O'Shaunessy, J. Walsh and J. Moran. Geraghty was typical of our early pioneering stock; he arrived from Ireland in 1842 and worked at various trades before becoming proprietor of the Royal Hotel in Richmond in 1854. He retired from mining at Warrandyte in the sixties and became licensee of the Rowena Hotel also at Richmond.
The want of good quartz crushing machinery was still being felt by the miners; in the first published report of the District Mining Surveyors issued in May, 1859, James Murphy states that abandoned reefs and uncrushed quartz was strewn all over the Anderson's Creek Goldfield. The two principal companies working the field at this time were the "Yarra Yarra Mining Co." and the "Yarra Yarra Steam Puddling Co." The former company put through a cutting at Thompson Road and succeeded in diverting the river through it. Records show that they employed as many as 86 men on this project and for a time they recovered the weight of gold a day from their dredging operations though continued floods and bad weather proved their undoing in the end.
The Yarra Yarra Steam Puddling Company was owned by Dr. Owens, a versatile gentleman who was a well known figure in early Victorian politics, besides being a medical practitioner and mining promoter. He erected a patent puddling machine and with the aid of a 7,700 gallon an hour steam pump, he hoped to puddle large quantities of clay from the bed of Whipstick Gully. The principle was a unique one. The washing material being thrown from the carts into a large tank, from whence it was passed through various sluice boxes containing veritable torrents of water before passing into the puddling machine for the usual extraction of the gold. The company conducted operations for about a year and the lack of drainage facilities was believed to be a contributing factor in it being forced out of business.
Many mining authorities have expressed the opinion that the main reef at Warrandyte has never been discovered, and it is quite possible that Mr. P. Geraghty had this in mind when, in association with Mr. William Gay Reeve, he registered a mammoth claim measuring 600 by 200 yards in June, 1859. During the rush of 1856, the 4th Hill yields were truly phenomenal and it was thought that by putting through a tunnel from the back or eastern side the main lead would be located.
Writing of the 4th Hill Tunnel project shortly after its commencement, Mr. Murphy said: "It is to be hoped that this work will proceed rapidly and soon yield a well merited return for both enterprise and outlay. It is the first properly projected quartz mining enterprise that has been undertaken in this (St. Andrews) Division."
The tunnel was constructed to a distance of 400 feet between June 1859 and February, 1860. It was equipped with a light tramway for the expeditious handling of quartz and the expenditure must have been considerable but there is no record of Mr. Geraghty ever receiving any returns from his venture, although it was worked with fair success by Messrs. Gleam and Party and Messrs. Chatty and Smith about 20 years later.
The failure of the 4th Hill Tunnel project was followed soon after by the failure of the Yarra Yarra Mining Company, who abandoned operations in May, 1861. Both the Dransfield Company and the McArthur Company had long since returned to Melbourne, but a Mr. Adolphus Fraser, proprietor of the Growlers Reef, ran a public crusher on Hearn's Hill but his rates were still too dear, although they had fallen to 30/- a ton. A crushing machine worked by a horse was being run by Messrs. Cameron and McDonald in Specimens Gully and a small water wheel owned by Whitehead was located on the river bank near Anderson's Creek.
In the summer of 1860 — 1861, Mr. Richard Copper returned to Warrandyte and announced that he would build a machine that would crush all the quartz the miners could give him for only £1 ton. He was hailed with delight but again it was the same old story; the crusher would hardly work at the quartz and caused such a high wastage of precious metal that the miners were unable to use it. Strange to say that, besides being a mining speculator, Copper was also one of Victoria's best known early actors and playwrights. He several times appeared for G. S. Coppin at the Theatre Royal.
In matters other than mining things were not so doleful. Traffic across the river had increased to a great extent and the Government decided on erecting a permanent structure across the Yarra. In September, 1860, a contract was let to William Elliott of Victoria Parade for £1,383; this was to cover the cost of building the bridge and metalling the road from Deep Creek to Warrandyte; it was built on the same site occupied by the punt, and was open for traffic in February, 1861 at a cost of £680.
This appears to have been cutting the price too much for the bridge was never a success. The year after its completion the Government had to spend nearly £500 on it, and the following year still another £100 was spent.
In December, 1863, the Yarra suffered the worst floods in its history. Torrential rains fell continuously from Sunday December 13th until the Wednesday morning of the 18th. The flood waters were greatly aggravated by a strong gale which blew from the south-west and caused the water in the bay to rise enormously. It is said that people were rowing boats in the main street of Warrandyte and when the waters finally subsided, the residents found that half their new bridge had been washed away.
Disastrous as the flood was for the many small farmers along the Yarra, it nevertheless proved a source of some good to the community. The Yarra at this time was little better than a creek at its approaches to Melbourne; it wound its way deviously through the Botanical Gardens and it would certainly be no great effort to throw a stone across it at Princes Bridge. The recommendations of the Flood Committee which sat soon after were that it should be widened to 300 feet and that it should be straightened to its present course, and these were put into effect soon after.
Two weeks after the flood a more cheerful spectacle was seen, when the diggers from the Caledonia Fields at Queenstown came over to play the miners at Anderson's Creek at cricket. This was on New Year's Day, 1864, and the local lads scored a well merited win by an innings and 52 runs. On the same day as this match was being played, George Parr's All-England Eleven were trying conclusions with the East Victorian 22 at the M.C.C. Cricket in the Colonies at this time was not very strong and the visiting English teams always played at least twice their number.
Efforts were being made by a local mining company to place the recreation ground under a mining lease, and the residents believed that it was high time something was done towards getting a permanent tenure for it. A petition was drawn up by Messrs. T. Porteous and W. Pretty containing 58 signatures and was presented by C. Warburton Carr to the President of the Board of Land and Works. The historic petition read as follows :-
"We the undersigned residents of Anderson's Creek, being desirous of obtaining a portion of land to be set aside for public amusements etc., beg you respectfully as a commissioner of land and works, to have a certain portion of Crown Lands set apart for cricket and recreation purposes, and we further beg to state that a suitable site, which would be requisite is situated on the west side of Anderson's Creek." (Here the petition becomes undecipherable) Signed :-William Hastings, William Self, Norman Ely, John Story, George Perry, Richard Wortefs, Thomas Falconer, George Furmiston, William Locke, William Logan, John Chatty, Benjamin Logan, J. B. Courtland, David Porteous, John Masterton, E. D. Frencham, Henry Squires, Henry Frencham, William Frencham, Owen McAuley, William Cargill, William Tunn, William Masterton, Simon Ross, Thomas Leper, William Leper, G. H. Merreman, George Laurie, Alfred Bayley, John Raft, Robert Watson, Henry Hunter, H. Reynolds, J. Anderson, Ewan Cameron, Charles Newman, T. Porteous, George Squires, Arthur Liddlelow, Joh Elm, Janet Raft, Daniel Doyle, Thomas Coleman, James Sloan, Alex McDonald, James McArthur, J. Lewis Self, James Harnett, David Cargill, Henry Stiggant, James Russell.
On the 29th August the Board approved the application and granted permissive occupancy, but as the residents were desirous of a more permanent tenancy the Member for Evelyn, William Watkins M.L.A. wrote again on their behalf, enclosing a further petition of 40 signatures, this having the required effect, and the recreation ground was officially gazetted on 1856.
In 1864 Warrandyte residents raised the sum of £200 towards the erection of a permanent school building - this carried a £40 Government subsidy - and a shingle roof building was erected at the corner of Forbes and Yarra Street on the site of Mr. J. J. Moore's residence. It was taken over by the National Schools Board and opened in March, 1864, with Mrs. Miss Rose Pretty as first head teacher. The first school committee comprised of Dr. John B. Elms, John Hutchinson, William Masterton, James McCutheon and John Wilson. School committees at that time had considerably more responsibilities than they do today, as they were, to a large extent, responsible for raising the teacher's salary besides conducting the school
Source: We believe from handwritten notes in records that the following text is an unpublished manuscript in 2 volumes (Ch1-11 and Ch12-21) written by Louis Radnor Cranfield (1927- 14 Oct 1992) F.R.HIST.S. (Fellow of the Royal Historical Society). Find a Grave Record. National Library of Australia Record.
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