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Early Towns where our Ancestors lived Beechworth Vic Ginalbie WA Kanowna WA Stanley Vic Tallangatta Vic
Beechworth ....Alcock, McNamara For those interested in history Beechworth is literally a goldmine, it is registered by the National Trust as a Historic Town . White man first settled here in 1839. Gold was first found here in 1852 when Beechworth quickly became one of Australia's richest gold fields, yielding 4,121,918 ounces in the first 10 years. The Chinese played a large part in the growth of the area introducing vegetable and tobacco growing. As the Chinese outnumbered the European by five to one there was always tension leading to the rioting Buckland Valley. A less savoury part of our history the Chinese were bashed, robbed and killed. The Chinese burning towers, and hundreds of graves, are a sad reminder of the hard life and difficult times faced by the early Australians. There are magnificent buildings, some twenty-five of them are listed on the Victorian Historic Buildings Council Register. They truly reflect the fortunes that were made - and spent - during the gold rush days. Beechworth is in the heart of the Kelly Country, both Ned and his mother were caught and spent time in Beechworth Goal. Stand in the dock of the Court House on the spot where Ned Kelly was arraigned before being sent to Melbourne. The fine granite facade is all that remains of the original Oven's District Hospital, dating back to 1856, once the largest between Sydney and Melbourne.
Ginalbie WA
...Hannah Alcock &William Relph Gindalbie is an abandoned goldfields townsite located about 55 km north east of Kalgoorlie. In 1898 when it was proposed to establish a town here the name nominated was "Vosperton" This name was to honour a well-known goldfields identity, newspaperman F.C.B. Vosper, editor of the "Coolgardie Miner", and who was elected the MLA for North-East Coolgardie in May 1897. The boundaries and area for the proposed townsite were amended in 1900, and the name changed to Gindalbie, a local Aboriginal name. The townsite was gazetted in 1903 Kanowna ...John Alcock & Elizabeth Pender and children, Banner, Etheridge
Kanowra, which probably is a corruption of 'gha-na-na' meaning 'place of no sleep' in the local Aboriginal language, was originally called White Feather. Gold was discovered there in 1893 and almost instantly the area was swarming with miners. By 1894 a town site had been selected and by 1895 a battery had opened serving the 4000 people who had poured onto the field. Although it was wild, ramshackled and temporary, the town became a municipality in 1896. Tales of the town's early history are remarkable. Fortunes were made overnight as the miners, like a plague of locusts, swept through the area. One of the early miners, Tom O'Connor, walked away from the field with the extraordinary sum of £15 000. All of his gold had been found in a claim which was adjacent to the local cemetery so, in a decision showing no respect for the dead and a huge respect for gold fever, the cemetery was opened up to mining. In Glint of Gold Malcolm Uren writes that 'the Methodist portion was soft clay soil, easy to dig, but the Roman Catholic area was solid quartz, and holes had to be blasted out with dynamite.' The alluvial gold had all but disappeared by late 1896 and it was replaced by underground mining. Although the town was continuing to progress - 1897 saw the arrival of the railway and electricity - people were starting to drift away from the area. It was probably as a result of his concern about the town's declining population that the local Catholic priest, Father Long, announced from the balcony of the Kanowra Hotel that he had been shown a gold nugget weighing nearly 100 pounds. He gave vague directions as to where the nugget had been found and, with due piety, the nugget was named the 'Sacred Nugget'. It didn't take the miners long to realise that the priest had attempted to hoax them into staying on the field. It is said that the miners were so furious they threatened to burn down the town. In spite of Father Long's efforts the town started a slow and steady decline. Long's hoax had provoked a brief rush in 1898 but, without a new strike, the town was doomed. By 1912 it was no longer a municipality. During the Depression the post office and the railway closed. The school closed down after the war and the last hotel closed its doors in 1952.
Stanley... Alcock Originally known as Snake Gully or Nine Mile, Stanley was a bustling gold mining town during the 1850's and 1860's. In 1857, the township was surveyed and officially named 'Stanley'. By this stage there were over 5000 people residing in the district. In 1856 there were 19 hotels, 5 grocers, and drapers combined, 3 drapers, 3 breweries, 5 sawmills, 2 bootmakers, 1 bank (the Oriental), 3 blacksmiths, 7 butchers, 1 baker, 3 carpenters, 1 hay and corn store,1jeweller and 1 doctor (Mr Davies). Today, Stanley has a general store and the Indigo Inn. While the building has been replaced, the site and licence remain original. Opening as the 'Star Hotel' in the 1850's, it was part of J.A. Wallace's chain of hotels across North-East Victoria, all named the 'Star'.Stanley is ideally located in the beautiful sub-alpine region of North-East Victoria 25 minutes off the Hume Freeway, close to historic Beechworth. It is surrounded by fruit and nut orchards as well as pine and old eucalypt forests. There is a diversity of flora, fauna and fine local produce with berries and cherries in high summer and apples, walnuts and chestnuts throughout autumn.
Old Tallangatta The site, of what is now known as Old Tallangatta, was first settled by the aborigines long before Captain Cook laid claim to Australia in 1770. Two aboriginal groups, the Duduroa and the Jaitmathang lived in this region for at least 5000 years. (Anthropologists believe that earlier occupation was not likely because the alpine region, at that time, would have been significantly colder.) Food was bountiful; fish, fresh water mussels, kangaroos, possums and plants. Each summer tribes from as far as 160kms away passed through the region to collect highly nutritious bogong moths. Because the site is at the junction of the Mitta Mitta and what was formally known as the Tallangatta river, now known as the Tallangatta Creek, it was, and still is a good place to catch fish. Pastoralists were the first European settlers. The first pastoral runs were established in the late 1830's and within a decade this had grown to over 40. Tallangatta's strategic location between Albury and the goldfields of the Mitta Mitta region encouraged the establishment of a store and hotel. The first school opened in 1870 and the teacher also ran the Post Office from the same room. The population rapidly increased after 1869, and when the railway from Wodonga to Tallangatta was completed in 1891, the town became an important centre for cattle sales and shipping. A full range of services was now available; doctors, wheelwrights, bakers, milliners, tailors, banks, chemists, auctioneers, a music teacher and a cycle store. By the early 1950's the town had grown to a population of 950.
Tallangatta - The Town That Moved In 1918 the River Murray Commission selected the confluence of the Mitta Mitta and Murray Rivers, upstream of Albury-Wodonga, as the site for a major reservoir (Lake Hume), to provide reliable water for annual irrigation downstream. While it was known from the start that the reservoir would ultimately inundate Tallangatta, the first stage, completed in 1936, left Tallangatta untouched. The uncertainty over the future of the town impeded growth, and as early as 1927 the progress association urged the Shire to seek a decision about the town's future. Discussions on moving the town recommenced in the late 1940's. Two locations were considered. Toorak (now known as Old Tallangatta), was the choice of locals because it would leave the town more or less in the same position. But the government rejected this proposal in case a future capacity increase of the reservoir flooded Toorak. They also believed that the flats of Tallangatta Creek fronting the town would be unsightly when the shallow water drained away during dry periods. Bolga, a rail siding eight kilometers to the west and well above the level of the waters of the enlarged reservoir, was chosen and the moving of an almost entire town commenced in 1954. While most timber buildings were moved, literally by placing them onto trucks and driven to their new locations, brick houses and other buildings like hotels, halls and churches were demolished. At Bolga a new shopping precinct was constructed fronting two large triangles of parkland. The new Tallangatta was officially opened in June, 1956. The move was not without considerable pain as families were forced to leave their historic ties and a town whose social system had developed over a hundred years.
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