Lighthouses…

April 14, 2026 | historicalragbag

I’ve always liked lighthouses. I think it’s something to do with their solidness, as sentinels on the edge of the world. I like the stone, the history and the beacon in the darkness. It also helps that they are usually on stunning pieces of coastline.

I have two pictures of lighthouses as part of my personal art collection, and hanging them together got me thinking about all the lighthouses I’ve visited over the years. So I went back through my photos and found 31 individual lighthouses. I’m sure I’ve been to more, but these are the ones with identifiable photos. So, I thought I’d introduce you to them. Some you’ll have met before, because I’ve written about them here, but others are all new. This post isn’t intended to be an exhaustive history of each lighthouse, it is more an overview of each, even a possible preview for a longer post in the future. If nothing else, it’s lots of pretty photos of lighthouses. Most are Australian, but there’s some guest appearances from the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Iceland.

For clarity’s sake – they are in alphabetical order. Enjoy

Barrenjoey

So we’re kicking off with a lighthouse I have written about before and you can see that post here.

But nevertheless, Barrenjoey stands at 29 m and is 113 m above sea level. The Barrenjoey Peninsula is at Palm Beach, an hour’s drive north of Sydney. The lighthouse is at the entrance to Pittwater, Broken Bay and the Hawkesbury river. The current structure was built between 1879-1881, the first light station was only oil lamps on two wooden towers and stood between 1865 and 1881. The lamp is a Fresnel Stationary lens with a 100 W 24 volt quartz-iodine tungsten lamp. I will write a post about Fresnel lenses one day as they revolutionised lighthouses. As well as still being an active navigational aid, it commands a truly stunning piece of coastline. And yes, if it look familiar, it is because it’s the lighthouse you can see in Home and Away.

Cape Borda

Jumping over and south now, to the first of our ‘Cape’ lighthouses – capes really are a great place for a lighthouse. Cape Borda is also the first of three Kangaroo Island lighthouses, you’ll meet the others a little later. Kangaroo Island is off the southern coast of South Australia. Cape Borda lighthouse stands at 155 metres above sea level and is one of only three square stone lighthouses in Australia. The structure itself isn’t tall because the cliffs it stands on are so high. It was first lit in 1858 and is the last traditionally operated lighthouse in South Australia, meaning it still operates on its rotating platform with a lens, though it is automated. Its four rotating beams appear as four flashes.

Cape Bruny

We’re jumping even further down south for our third lighthouse. Cape Bruny is a very different location to Barrenjoey for example. Well it was on the day I was there anyway.

Bruny Island is off the coast of Tasmania, just south of Hobart, and the lighthouse does really feel like it’s clinging to the edge of the world. The lighthouse dates to 1836-1837, and when it was first lit in 1838 it was only Tasmania’s third lighthouse. It stands 114 metres above sea level on Bruny’s wild cliffs. It is no longer lit, with its duties being moved to a nearby solar light in 1996.

Cape Du Couedic

Cape Du Couedic is our second Kangaroo Island lighthouse. Built between 1906–1909 Cape Du Couedic is made of over 2000 pieces of local stone. The tower itself is 25 metres high and has an elevation of 103 metres above sea level. Like Cape Bardon, Cape Du Couedic is still active and automated, but it operates with a modern light and no rotation. The light shows two flashes every ten seconds. It still has the Fresnel lens, made by Chance Brothers.

Cape Jaffa

We’re staying in South Australia, but we’re moving back to the mainland. Cape Jaffa is visually unusual amongst all other lighthouses because of the amount of metal as part of its structure. This is because it was originally located on the Margaret Brock Reef 15 km off the coast south west of Cape Jaffa, which is in south eastern South Australia. It was moved back to the main land in 1976. It was built in 1872 and stood at 41 metres high. The structure is a Wells Screw Pile, which was suited to its condition on a reef. The Chance Bros. Fresnel lamp could be seen 40 km out to sea. The 8 room accommodation housed two lighthouse keepers and their families. When the lighthouse was decommissioned in 1973 it was donated to the National Trust of South Australia, who undertook to have it rebuilt on Marine Parade in Kingston, South Australia. It is now a museum.

You can see it on its reef in c.1902 below

Cape Leeuwin

So we’re moving west now. Cape Leeuwin stands at the meeting point of the Indian and Southern Oceans at the very bottom of Western Australia, it’s the most south-westerly tip of all of Australia. Built in 1895, at 32 metres it’s the tallest lighthouse on mainland Australia. Its Chance Bros. Fresnel lamp rotates on a bath of mercury and was powered by kerosene (which had to be hauled up and down the stairs) and was rotated using a drop weight, which had to be hand wound, until 1982. It is now, thankfully, automated. It was personned until the early 90s. The light reaches 26 nautical miles out to sea.

Fresnel lamp turning

Cape Naturaliste

Sometimes alphabetical allows other connections, this is my other WA lighthouse and in fact it’s driving distance from Cape Leeuwin and is part of the same maritime protection system. Cape Naturaliste was built in 1903 on a cape named for Baudin’s ship. The cape was also used as a signalling point by the Wardandi, the local First Nations people. The lighthouse is 20m high and built of limestone, quarried from the nearby Bunker Bay. The lens is a Fresnel lens and like Cape Leeuwin, it rotates on a mercury bath. It was the last personned lighthouse in Australia, with the last keeper leaving in 1996.

the Fresnel lamp turning

Cape Northumberland

We’re back to South Australia again, and this one was very much a flying visit. I was staying in Mount Gambier and I climbed up the dormant volcano Mount Schank (a name that will crop up in another lighthouse shortly) and saw how close I was to the coast, so I headed out, had fish and chips on the beach and found Cape Northumberland lighthouse by accident. But I still thought it was worth including here. This is the second light to serve this bit of coast. The first opened in 1859 but only lasted twenty three years, due to the conditions and the erosion of the cliffs it stood on. This light was built in 1882 and 400 metres to the east on a hill. It was also a Chance Bros. lamp. The light was personned until 1990.

Cape Reinga

We’ve reached out first international lighthouse. Cape Reinga stands on the most northerly point of New Zealand’s North Island. This light is actually one of the newest on the list. It was built in 1941 to replace the 1879 light on Motuopao Island, which is just south-west of the Cape. It cost 30 000 pounds to build, was the last personned lighthouse in New Zealand to be built, is 10 meters high and stands 165 metres above sea level. It’s still very much part of New Zealand’s maritime network, the light flashes every 12 seconds and can be seen for 35 nautical miles. It’s often the first light that ships see when arriving from the Tasman Sea or the Pacific Ocean. Like Cape Leeuwin, it’s at the confluence of waters. In this case it’s where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet.

The meeting of the sea and the ocean. You can really feel the remoteness of Cape Reinga

Cape Schanck

Cape Schanck is another lighthouse I have written about before. You can read that post here. It stands on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. It’s also the return of the name Schanck, which I mentioned with Mount Schank from which I saw Cape Northumberland. Both, despite the different spellings, were named after Admiral John Schank by James Grant when he sailed past on the Lady Nelson. The extra c was added locally later, as a misspelling.

Cape Schanck was constructed between 1857 and 1859, along with the other buildings of its lightstation, by the Victorian Public Works Department. It stands at 21 metres on 80 metre cliffs. The lamp is a Chance Bros. design and is automated and can be seen 25 nautical miles into Bass Strait. It’s part of a sea road of lighthouses that patrolled Bass Strait. The others are Cape Whickham and Cape Otway, which I sadly don’t have photos of, but I might return to at another time. Cape Schanck is also my local lighthouse, I’m from the Peninsula originally. So I have a real soft spot for. Along with Port Fairy’s lighthouse, which I’ll be discussing shortly, it’s one of only three lighthouses in Victoria that have inbuilt stone staircases. I don’t have photos of it, but you’ll Port Fairy’s staircase soon.

Cape Tourville

We’re heading back south with Cape Tourville, which sits in the Freycinet National Park in Tasmania. It’s one of the newest lighthouses on this blog as it was built in 1971. It replaced the Cape Foriester lighthouse, which was demolished at the same time. It stands at 11 metres, but is 126 metres above sea level. It’s still very much part of the maritime network in Tasmania and its beam can be seen 28 nautical miles out into the ocean. You can see the coast it commands below

Cape Willoughby

Cape Willoughby is the third of my Kangaroo Island lighthouses. First lit in 1852, it was South Australia’s first lighthouse. The tower was built from limestone and granite that was quarried from a cleft in the cliff at the base of the tower. The tower itself is 26 metres and stands 75 metres above sea level. The original lamp was a Wilkins & Co lantern which was powered by clockwork, but it was replaced by a Chance Bros. in 1923, which was itself removed in 1974 in a major, and partly aesthetic, overhaul of the lighthouse, which also saw the removal of the internal wooden stair. The lighthouse was personned until 1992, making it one of Australia’s last personned lighthouses.

Dyrhólaey

Dyrhólaey, as you might have guessed from the name, is the first of my Icelandic lighthouses – there are two more. It’s become a tourist attraction in its own right due to its position on the cliffs above the black sand beaches, and features in a lot of very pretty photos. But, like all the other lighthouses on this list, it serves an important maritime purpose. Dyrhólaey began life as the first lighthouse in Iceland in a basic iron framed structure in 1910, before the lighthouse you see now was built in concrete in 1927. The highest point is 123 metres above sea level and the light can be seen 43 km out to sea. It used to have a radio beacon that planes used to position themselves, but it was removed after WWII. Dyrhólaey was personned until 2015, despite the fact it was electrified in 1964. Dyrhólaey marks the southern most point of Iceland.

Fort Denison

Fort Denison is another lighthouse I’ve written about before, well about the Fort as a whole anyway. You can read that here

Fort Denison lighthouse, standing pride of place on an island in Sydney Harbour, has the distinction of being on the last Martello Tower built in the British Empire and the only one built in Australia. Martello towers were a series of coastal defences used across the British Empire, that were inspired by a Genoese fort built on Corsica in the 16th century. There were 140 of these towers across the Empire, and they were intended to hold off enemy warships armed with cannons. There would have been a cannon on the top and there are still three cannons inside the tower. By the time Fort Denison was built in 1857 – the whole island then known as Pinchgut had to be levelled by convict labor first- Martello towers were becoming obsolete. By the 1870s armour plating on ships, and the range of guns on said ships, rendered the tower completely obsolete as a defensive structure. This did not negate its role as a lighthouse however. The island was basically in the way of shipping, so in 1913 the light replaced the top cannon. Fort Denison is also the site of Sydney’s tide gauge and fog warning bell.

Gantheaume Point

Gantheaume Point is a very different sort of lighthouse, standing on the coast of far north Western Australia, just out of Broome. This is my only photo of it too, taken in 2007. This metal tower might not have the grandeur of the other towers in this list, but it still served a vital purpose all the same. The first iteration of this light was a fixed light, that did not flash, which was installed in 1905 after lobbying by traders and pearlers. The fixed light though proved to be problematic as it couldn’t be differentiated from a stationary ship, so other iterations were built. These iterations culminated in the current structure, the fourth iteration, which was built in 1983, which makes it the newest lighthouse on this list. It stands at 27 metres high and flashes every ten seconds.

Hook

By far the oldest lighthouse on this blog, this iteration was built in the 1200s, is one of two Irish lighthouses on this list, and it’s also one I’ve written about in detail before, which you can see here. It’s probably my favourite because it is a confluence of two of my favourite things – lighthouses and medieval history. It also helps that it was built for William Marshal who I wrote my honours thesis on. I’ve written about Marshal extensively on this blog. But to return to Hook lighthouse. It is one of the oldest working lighthouses in the world. It stands as a testament to the both the danger of the seas around the Hook Head Peninsula and the importance of the travel route that passes its tip.

The lighthouse itself was probably originally begun in the early 1200s on the orders of William Marshal. Marshal came to visit the lands in Ireland that came to him by right of his wife Isabel de Clare in 1200-1201. They were caught in a terrible storm crossing the Irish Sea and Marshal vowed to God that if they survived he would found an abbey. The ship didn’t sink and Marshal kept his word. As thanks to God for their survival he founded Tintern Abbey, which also stands on Hook Head Peninsula. The light would have been coal fired and quite simple.The particular black and white striping is unique to the Hook lighthouse so it can be clearly identified by ships.

Following repeated complaints, the coal fired light was replaced by an oil burning lamp in 1791. In the 1860s the lighthouse keepers moved out of the tower and into separate dwellings. In 1871 new gas lights were installed, powered by gas which was manufactured in the gas yard. Paraffin oil subsequently became the source of power. In 1911 a clockwork mechanism was installed so the light became a flashing one rather than a fixed beam. It had to be wound every 25 minutes. The light became electric in 1972. In 1996 the lighthouse was automated ending 800 years of lighthouse keepers.

Kálfshamarsvík

The second of my Icelandic lighthouses, Kálfshamarsvík stands out because of its distinctly Art Deco style. It’s located on a remote – even by Icelandic standards – peninsula on the north west coast of Iceland. It was built in 1940, though an earlier version stood on the site from 1913. It didn’t come into use until 1942 because of WWII delays. It looks remote now, but Kálfshamarsvík was actually a town. There was a busy fishing village here in the 1900s, which slowly fell victim to time and the Great Depression. The last residents left in 1960s. You can see the remains of their houses around the lighthouse and there’s still sheep roaming. The landscape around Kálfshamarsvík is extraordinary basalt columns. Kálfshamarsvík was designed by Axel Sveinsson, the vertical black stripes might have been inspired by the basalt landscape. Kálfshamarsvík stands at 21 metres high and was electrified in 1973.

Longships

My only United Kingdom lighthouse on this blog. Longships stands on Longships rocks off the coast of Lands End in Cornwall, in the far south of England. The tower you see today is the second version. The rocks had been a danger to shipping for centuries and in the late 1700s work began on putting a lighthouse on the highest of the Longships rocks. The first tower was lit in 1795, with keepers working in one month stretches. Issues were rapidly found, because the waves got high enough that they obscured the light of the 1795 tower. In 1875 it was replaced by the granite tower you can see today. It stands at 35 metres and was automated in 1988.

North Head

In a change of pace, and weather, we’re back in Australia. This time in northern Queensland and the Whitsundays, for North Head lighthouse. It’s a bit tricky to see in the above photo, but it’s on the lump of rock on the first island. North Head was built in 1866. It’s built of Maryborough hardwood and iron sheathed. It’s not 100% known if there were keepers on the island or not. There was a domestic structure at own point, but it was removed to the nearby town of Bowen at a date no-one seems able to agree on. The light is no longer lit, the windows and the lamp were both stripped out completely in the 1980s. The lamp, which you can see below, is housed in Bowen historical society.

Point Lonsdale

Back to Victoria for our next lighthouse. Point Lonsdale stands on one of the ‘Heads’ of Port Phillip Bay. Guarding the narrow and very dangerous entrance known as The Rip. The current light commenced operation in 1902, replacing an earlier timber structure dating to the 1860s, that was little west of the current light. Point Lonsdale is built of concrete and has 2 metre thick walls, it is 37 metres above sea level and points into Port Phillip Bay. The octagonal base was built in the 1950s to create a spot where morse code and radio could be sent to passing ships. Previously it had been done by flags. At this point additional red and green lights were added below the main light as indicators of the tides in the Bay. It was electrified in 1934. In the photos below you can also see some of the remains of the WWII fixed position defences of Point Lonsdale.

Port Fairy

Still in Victoria, but moving down the coast. The lighthouse on Griffith Island, at Port Fairy in Victoria’s Western District, is one I’ve written about before. Which you can read here. You’ll notice a lot of photos in the gallery below. I’ve been going to Port Fairy since I was born, and the lighthouse is always a must visit friend. You’ll see it in plenty of weathers and times in the pictures. The lighthouse was built by the Victorian Public Works Department in 1859, it was originally painted red. It’s 11 metres tall and is built of bluestone with a basalt base. With Cape Schanck it’s one of only three Victorian lighthouses to have an internal stone spiral staircase, which you can also see in the video below. The lamp was another Chance Bros. Fresnel lamp and is now automated. The last lighthouse keeper lived there from 1929-1954. Griffiths Island is now connected to the mainland by a causeway but in the 1800s the island was only accessible by boat and it was often dangerously rough so was cut off completely from the mainland. It was extremely isolated. The island was originally 3 islands, Rabbit (on which the light house stands), Goat and Griffiths. They have joined together as one island, partly from coastal erosion and partly from the construction that surround the islands. They serve to protect the entrance to Port Fairy.

Going up the spiral staircase

Portland

About an hour along the coast from Port Fairy, you’ll find the Whaler’s Bluff lighthouse in Portland. The lighthouse first stood on Battery Point, just a little further round the coast. It was first lit in 1859. In 1889 the battery emplacement guns began to be installed at Battery Point and the lighthouse was moved stone by stone to Whaler’s Bluff, where you find it now. The current light stands 40.5 metres above sea level and can be seen for 24 km out to sea. It flashes white and red every 30 seconds.

Rottnest Island

We’re travelling back to Western Australia. This time to talk about two different lighthouses – both on Rottnest Island. The first is Rottnest lighthouse – on the left- and Bathurst Point lighthouse – on the right.

Rottnest Island is about an hour off the coast of Perth Western Australia, and as you can see boasts two lighthouses.

We’ll start with Rottnest Island Lighthouse. This is the second lighthouse on this site- the first was built using First Nations prisoners as unpaid forced labour. The second by paid contractors. This one opened in 1896 and is 30 m tall. It’s built of local limestone with a Chance Bros Fresnel lamp, that is still operational, though it is now automated. It was electrified in the 1930s and personned until 1990.

Bathurst Point is the subsidiary lighthouse on the island. It was built in 1900, again from the local limestone. It was built so ships could use both lights and navigate the reefs using triangulation. It was electrified in 1986. What I found fascinating about Bathurst Point is that it’s easily accessible by foot at night, so I actually got to see it in operation which you can see in a videos below. The photo above is also one of the pictures on my lighthouse wall I mentioned at the beginning. The other is Port Fairy, but it’s a painting by a local artist so I can’t show it here.

Slow flashes

Quick flashes

Skardsviti Lighthouse

We return to Iceland, for the final Icelandic lighthouse for this blog. Skardsviti was built in 1950, again making it one of our more recent lighthouses, and it was first lit in 1951. It was built to improve navigability for ships crossing the Arctic Sea. Like Kálfshamarsvík it was designed by Axel Sveinsson. It stands at 14 metres tall and is 53 metres above sea level. It was electrified in 1980 and automated by 1992. It flashes white, red and green every thirty seconds.

Skellig Michael

I’ve written about Skellig Michael – the extraordinary 6th century monastic settlement on a rock 13km off the coast of Ireland into the Atlantic – before. You can read that here. But, while Skeillig Michael is deservedly known for the monastic settlement, it also has a lighthouse. Most of my photos of it are at funny angles because they were taken from a smallish boat on a slightly bumpy sea. There were actually two lighthouses on Skellig, both built in the 1800s, and one of which is still in operation today. It is automated. In the 1800s there was a vast increase in trans Atlantic trade and the seas around Kerry were notoriously dangerous. The Corporation for Preserving and Improving the Port of Dublin, known as the Ballast Board, decided to solve the issue by building a permanent light on Skellig. Work began in 1821 and was finished in 1826. The two lights were built, the upper light and the lower light, to make it easier to distinguish Skellig from other lighthouses on the Irish coast. Both towers were roughly 14 metres tall. The upper light was 121.3 metres above sea level and lower light was, predictably, lower at 53.3 metres above sea level. The upper light was intended as the primary light and its beacon was visible for 40 km. However, because it was higher it was frequently shrouded in heavy mist and it was discontinued in 1870. The lower light however continues to be used to this day. It was fully automated and unpersonned in 1987 and it remains one of the first lights ships see when approaching the Irish coast from the west.

Split Point

As we draw towards the end of our exploration of lighthouses, we return to Australia. If you ask most Australians what Split Point Lighthouse means to them, well if you show them a photo anyway, they’ll either start singing ‘have you ever, every felt like this, when strange things happens then you’re going Round the Twist’ or say it’s the Round the Twist lighthouse. Round the Twist was a fantastically weird ABC children’s show that aired in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. And it was set at Split Point lighthouse – though the interiors were filmed in a studio. Of all the lighthouses on this list I’d say Split Point is the most embedded in Australian culture. But it also has an interesting history in its own right.

Split Point is still very much a working lighthouse- it’s a fixed light (because it’s not on an island) and the Fresnel lamp projects the small electric light 30m out into the sea. It’s automated and its signature is 4 flashes every 20 seconds. The lighthouse was built in 1891, and was first automated with acetylene gas in 1919. It stands at 34 metres and is made of concrete. It was built as a beacon for ships having passed Cape Otway and remains so today. The stair case inside is also particularly lovely.

St Kilda

The inclusion of the St Kilda Marina’s pilot beacon could be seen at slightly controversial, as it technically actually isn’t a lighthouse. It was, however, built very deliberately in the shape of a lighthouse and as an urban light structure is still worth having a look at. St Kilda, an inner Melbourne suburb, started building the marina in 1960s, opening the first pens in 1968. As part of the construction a pilot light was needed, and the decision was made to build an 18 m fibreglass structure that resembled the traditional lighthouse form. And that’s what the St Kilda Marina’s pilot beacon became, an unofficial lighthouse. While it’s arguable if it is a lighthouse, it’s also possible that if it looks like a lighthouse and kind of acts like a lighthouse, then maybe it could be seen as a lighthouse even if it wasn’t entirely built to be one?

Table Cape

For our second last lighthouse we’re back down in Tasmania. Table Cape is on the north west coast of Tasmania, sticking out into Bass Strait. In the near by Port of Wynyard the first light in the mid 1800s was actually a local man called Mr. Fenton leaving a light on in his window to guide ships in. The Marine Board soon built two iron beacons at the mouth of the Inglis River in 1870, but when they proved insufficient Table Cape was built in 1888. The lighthouse stands at 25 metres and is 180 metres above sea level, it also has a Chance Bros. lantern that was electrified in 1979 and it was unpersonned in the 20s. Table Cape itself is a flat topped cape that juts out into the Strait, I don’t have any pictures of the piece of coast the lighthouse commands though because it was so foggy we couldn’t even see the water. Saw some lovely pademelons though.

Wollongong

And so we have reached the end of our lighthouse journey, and fittingly we are finishing with not one, but two lighthouses. Wollonogong in New South Wales is an industrial city south of Sydney, and it boasts two lighthouses.

The first we’ll be looking at is the one on the left. It’s Flagstaff Point Lighthouse and was first lit in 1937. It was designed to be automatic and not require a lighthouse keeper, making it unique on this list. The lens dates to 1862, as it was originally supplied to Gabo Island lighthouse in Victoria (a lighthouse I really want to go and visit this year). Flagstaff Hill is built of concrete and stands at 25 m tall.

Our second, and final, lighthouse is the Wollongong Breakwater lighthouse that was built in the 1870s of wrought iron and a ferro concrete base. The light no longer shines at all and it was extinguished in 1974. Though a decorative light is still sometimes shone. The structure has proved difficult from a preservation perspective, because the wrought iron plates and the railings deteriorated significantly and it was almost demolished in the 1970s. The local community rallied behind it though and it was restored, keeping most of the original configuration including internal wooden ladders, in the late 1970s with further restoration in the early 2000s

And that brings us to the end of our, somewhat eclectic, lighthouse tour. I hope you’ve found it interesting. In pulling all of this together, what I started noticing are the many commonalities about lighthouses, across countries and governments. Very similar designs have been used going right back to Hook lighthouse in the 1200s, to have a light on a tower to protect ships traversing coastlines all over the world. The colour schemes are also similar and their stories of automation and unpersonning follow the same patterns. No matter how you look at it, lighthouses remain a vital part of our marine safety infrastructure and they are still beautiful structures on stunning pieces of coast. So if nothing else I hope you have enjoyed the pictures. This has been an interesting one to write, because it’s crossed a fair amount of time for me, as you’ll see from the photos of me cropping up a bit. The earliest pictures are one Port Fairy photo and all the Kangaroo Island images. They’re all from 2006 when I was 17, which just goes to show just how long I’ve been fascinated with lighthouses….

References :

Site visits over a variety of years.

All the contemporary photos are mine

Barrenjoey

https://historicalragbag.com/2017/11/19/barrenjoey-lighthouse/

Cape Bruny

https://www.capebrunylighthouse.com/

https://parks.tas.gov.au/explore-our-parks/south-bruny-national-park/cape-bruny-lighthouse

Cape Borda

https://www.environment.sa.gov.au/goodliving/posts/2020/10/kangaroo-island-lighthouses

Cape Du Couedic

https://lighthouses.org.au/sa/cape-du-couedic-lighthouse/

https://www.environment.sa.gov.au/goodliving/posts/2020/10/kangaroo-island-lighthouses

Cape Jaffa

Image : https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/B+11009

https://www.capejaffalighthouse.org.au/cape-jaffa-lighthouse-history

Cape Leeuwin

https://lighthouses.org.au/wa/cape-leeuwin-lighthouse/

Also notes from lighthouse tour in 2023.

Cape Naturaliste

https://www.capesfoundation.org.au/visit-experiences/cape-naturaliste-lighthouse/#collapse-experience-about-1

Also notes from lighthouse tour in 2023.

Cape Northumberland

https://lighthouses.org.au/sa/cape-northumberland-lighthouse/

Cape Reinga

Signs at site visit in 2024

Cape Schanck

https://historicalragbag.com/2017/07/18/a-tale-of-two-lighthouses/

Cape Tourville

Signs at site visit in 2019

Cape Willoughby

https://lighthouses.org.au/sa/cape-willoughby-lighthouse/

https://www.environment.sa.gov.au/goodliving/posts/2020/10/kangaroo-island-lighthouses

Dyrhólaey Lighthouse

https://ust.is/english/visiting-iceland/protected-areas/south/dyrholaey/culture-and-history/

Fort Denison

https://historicalragbag.com/2019/07/28/fort-denison/

https://lighthouses.org.au/nsw/fort-denison-lighthouse/

Gantheaume Point

https://lighthouses.org.au/wa/gantheaume-point-lighthouse/

Hook Lighthouse

https://historicalragbag.com/2015/08/16/hook-lighthouse/

Kálfshamarsvík lighthouse

https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/regina/kalfastrandavogur-extraordinary-basalt-columns-in-skagi

https://chanceht.org/lighthouse/kalfshamarsvik-lighthouse/

Longships lighthouse

https://www.trinityhouse.co.uk/lighthouses-and-lightvessels/bishop-rock-lighthouse

North Head

Bowen Historical Society display

https://lighthouses.org.au/qld/north-head-lighthouse/

Point Lonsdale

Signs at site visit 2023

https://lighthouses.org.au/vic/point-lonsdale-lighthouse/

Port Fairy

https://historicalragbag.com/2017/07/18/a-tale-of-two-lighthouses/

Portland

Sign on site visit in 2006

https://lighthouses.org.au/vic/whalers-bluff-lighthouse/

Rottnest

Signs and tour on site visit in 2023

https://lighthouses.org.au/wa/bathurst-point-lighthouse/

Skardsviti Lighthouse

https://meanderingwild.com/skardsviti-lighthouse-iceland/

Skellig Michael

https://historicalragbag.com/2015/06/14/skellig-michael/

https://skelligislands.com/lighthouses-on-skellig-michael/

Split Point

signs and tour site visit 2025

St Kilda

https://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/media/vgiofq3k/built-heritage-st-kilda-marina-heritage-report.pdf

Table Cape

https://lighthouses.org.au/tas/table-cape-lighthouse/

Wollongong

Signs on site visit in 2018

https://lighthouses.org.au/nsw/wollongong-harbour-lighthouse/

Guest Post : How Victorian ideals shaped Australia

February 9, 2026 | historicalragbag

Welcome to this guest post by Sam Mee, the founder of the Antique Ring Boutique.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Queen_Victoria_outside_the_Queen_Victoria_Building_in_Sydney_2011.jpg

Walk through Australian cities today and you can’t miss their 19th-century Victorian inheritance. St Paul’s Cathedral towers above Melbourne’s commercial skyline while Flinders Street Station still dictates the city’s transport logic, much as the original terminus did 150 years ago. Sydney’s sandstone buildings, like the General Post Office, continue to project institutional power even among more modern buildings.

*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Melbourne_Cityscape_1959_with_Fountain_and_St_Paul_Cathedral.jpg*

The permanence isn’t just a historical quirk. These buildings were designed not just to endure but to control and instruct – to assert order, authority and moral certainty in a society that Britain worried might otherwise unravel. Victorian Britain did not aim just to colonise Australia. It wanted to transplant moral and cultural discipline.

Of course, this project did not unfold on empty land. Victorian ideals were imposed on landscapes that already been shaped by Indigenous law, culture and knowledge system. And the way they were enforced was inseparable from dispossession and violence. Churches, railways, schools and civic institutions became instruments of exclusion as well as of order.

Exporting Victorianism

Victorian ideals arrived in Australia as more than vague notions of Britishness. They formed a coherent ideology grounded in Protestant morality, faith in progress, social hierarchy and the conviction that civilisation could be built. Victorian administrators thought firm guidance was needed to keep stable a distant colony populated by convicts and Indigenous peoples.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Henry_Parkes_and_Eleanor_Dixon_Parkes_%28cropped%29.jpg?20181227204743

Henry Parkes, often called the “Father of Federation”, shows how Victorian ideals hardened into Australian institutions. He rose from poverty through self-education, exemplifying the Victorian belief in self-help. As Premier of New South Wales, he promoted social improvement through free, compulsory education, through public works and through welfare reforms. These reflected the conviction that a civilised society could be built through institutions. He combined liberal reform with strong imperial loyalty. He championed representative government and also tried to end convict transportation while remaining devoted to Britain, famously describing a “crimson thread of kinship” linking the colonies and the Crown. His 1889 Tenterfield Oration (https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/tenterfield-oration) framed Australian federation as both a moral and national destiny.

Moral regulation in a new land

British Victorian society had strict moral codes and Australian colonial authorities quickly tried to impose these same standards of sexual propriety, sobriety and religious observance.

Licensing laws such as Victoria’s Licensing Act of 1852 and New South Wales’s Sale of Liquors Licensing Act of 1862 (NSW) regulated pubs in gold-rush towns, restricted opening hours and gave the police broad powers of inspection. Police courts in centres like Ballarat routinely prosecuted public drunkenness, treating excessive drinking as a moral/civic offence. Temperance organisations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union gained influence in the late 19th century, alongside Sunday trading restrictions and Sabbath laws that enforced Protestant ideals of work and rest. Marriage and family life were seen as defences against disorder with women cast as moral guardians of the home. These views persisted – in Victoria, for instance, public drunkenness was only formally decriminalised in 2021. And retail hours are still restricted on Sundays in several states. You can listen to the history of Australia’s licensing laws here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/history-alcohol-law-australia/101969150.

Some colonies copied British Contagious Diseases Acts (CDAs) between the 1860s and 1880s, mirroring (and in some cases outlasting) UK laws designed to combat sexually transmitted disease. The laws allowed police to forcibly examine and detain women suspected of prostitution in “lock hospitals” for treatment, leading to severe restrictions on their liberties. These measures directly replicated British practice, where working-class women in towns and ports were subjected to compulsory medical examination. Obviously the view was that female sexuality, not male behaviour, posed the greatest social risk. Overall, the idea of respectability divided “deserving” settlers from unruly miners, the urban poor and racially marginalised groups. In practice, this meant that poor and working-class women could be detained without trial on the basis of suspicion alone, while male clients faced no equivalent scrutiny.

Gothic architecture and the moral landscape

Few legacies of Victorian influence are as obvious as Gothic Revival architecture (see examples here: https://www.thearcagency.com.au/resources/echoes-of-gothic-the-lasting-influence-of-church-architecture-on-modern-design

St Stephen’s church in Elizabeth Street in Brisbane, 1862 Https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/StateLibQld_1_118860_St_Stephen%27s_church_in_the_centre_of_a_panoramic_view_taken_in_1862.jpg

This look came to dominate Australian cities – and still does in its historic centres – because it offered a powerful visual language for imperial identity. It was closely associated with Britain and Christian tradition and favoured by both Anglican and Catholic institutions, particularly under the influence of Augustus Welby Pugin. His designs allowed medieval forms to be convincingly reproduced using local materials such as Sydney sandstone and Melbourne basalt. Stained glass and ornate stonework were used not only on churches but also on public buildings and railway stations to give a deliberately European feel. Funded by gold-rush wealth, Gothic Revivalism gave new Australian cities a sense of cultural depth. Indeed, Pugin’s writings argued that Gothic architecture was inherently moral and superior to classical styles associated with paganism or republicanism. Gothic forms also appeared in secular institutions such as the University of Melbourne, where medieval architectural language lent new colonial education the authority and gravitas of ancient European learning.

Controlling gold rush towns

The mid-19th century gold rushes posed the biggest challenge to Victorian ways of thinking in Australia. From the early 1850s finds in New South Wales and Victoria, gold discoveries drew in hundreds of thousands of migrants from Britain, Europe, China and North America. Rapidly expanding settlements of tents and diggings emerged near goldfields almost overnight, forming makeshift towns outside of existing established law and infrastructure. These boomtown societies were dominated by single men of many races who gambled and drank alcohol – all things that Victorians associated with moral disorder. (Watch a live sketch history of the gold rush here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU9iV56F86s

At first, the colonial authorities tried to impose control using a mining licence system, which required diggers to pay fees and submit to police inspections. Resentment at this system led to the 1854 Eureka Stockade, an armed uprising by miners at Ballarat against what arbitrary taxation and heavy-handed policing (https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/eureka-stockade).

*Eureka Stockade Riot, Ballarat, 1854, by John Black Henderson : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Eureka_stockade_battle.jpg*

Although this rebellion was quickly put down, it did force the colonial governments to reconsider how to control the goldfields. And so after Eureka, reforms in 1855 replaced the punitive licence system with the Miner’s Right, regulating who could mine while linking access to political rights. Colonial police forces were expanded to enforce order and were complemented by town planning schemes that rapidly replaced tents with surveyed streets and permanent buildings.

What’s crucial, though, is that these measures were not simply about managing gold extraction but were designed to transform rough and ready mining camps into disciplined communities. Colonial governors such as Sir Charles Hotham, who governed Victoria from 1854 to 1855, saw the goldfields as moral battlegrounds. His policies reflected a broader Victorian belief that order and institutions could convert chaotic frontier settlements into respectable towns aligned with imperial ideals of civilisation.

Infrastructure as moral progress

Victorian faith in progress was enthusiastically expressed in infrastructure. Railways, roads, bridges, telegraph lines and sanitation systems were celebrated not only as practical achievements but as a sign that civilisation was taking root. Projects such as the expansion of the Victorian rail network from Melbourne into the goldfields and the introduction of sewerage systems in cities were framed as evidence of discipline. These projects were celebrated as civilising achievements, ignoring their effect on land already structured by Indigenous knowledge systems.

Railways in particular embodied Victorian ideology – both in Australia and back in the UK. Contemporary figures such as Alfred Deakin, writing in the 1880s and 90s, described railways and water schemes as the way that Australia could be “made” into a modern nation rather than a scattered frontier.

Timetabled rail services also standardised time across the colonies and tied distant towns into a coherent administrative and economic system. Rail tracks shot out from colonial capitals to ports and mining centres. They promised equality of access but enabled state surveillance and government control over movement.

Less acknowledged was the cost: colonial infrastructure routinely cut across Indigenous landscapes and songlines with rail corridors, and property boundaries that reflected British priorities rather than local ones. Victorian progress was never neutral. It imposed a single vision of order at the expense of others, a legacy that remains embedded in Australia’s built environment and public debate: “Aboriginal people’s entanglements with the New South Wales railways have involved dispossession, removal, employment, mobility, and travel, including the forced removal of children known as the Stolen Generations.” (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-5871.12675)

Long-term effects

Modern Australia likes to imagine itself as egalitarian and forward-looking but much of its social and physical landscape was shaped by the Victorian worldview. And a similar gap between ideal and reality existed in the 1800s. Alcohol consumption remained high. Violence persisted. The promise of moral uplift frequently clashed with economic exploitation and racial hierarchy.

These contradictions remain visible today. Australia continues to wrestle with the legacy of Victorian moral frameworks imposed on Indigenous communities, particularly through education, land use, legal systems and violence (https://www.workingwithindigenousaustralians.info/content/History_3_Colonisation.html).

Victorianism didn’t just build colonial Australia; it sought to discipline it. And the structures through which that discipline operated still shape Australian life today.

About the author

Sam Mee is the founder of the Antique Ring Boutique (https://www.antiqueringboutique.com/en-au), and sells rings from the Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and Art Deco eras. You can read more about Victorian jewellery here: https://www.antiqueringboutique.com/en-au/pages/victorian

A note from Ellen

I just wanted to thank Sam for the post, and to acknowledge in the tradition of Historical Ragbag that many of the advantages for the colonisers that Sam discusses in the post are structures that I have directly benefitted from with both sides of my family arriving in the 1850s as these structures were being actively imposed.

Annis and George Bills Horse Troughs

November 17, 2025 | historicalragbag

So, this is technically not a new post. It’s an update to an old one. In 2015 I went on a trip the Wimmera in Victoria and came across two horse troughs in two different towns with the same inscription. The inscription read that they had been donated by Annis and George Bills. You can see them in the photos below

When I got home I did some digging and found that these two troughs were part of an extraordinary bequest, and that they can be found all over Victoria and some of New South Wales. You can read the original post here, but I’ll provide the overall idea here too.

George Bills made his money out of mattresses, first in making them and then in creating and patenting machinery to weave them. His father, who was a naturalist, came to Australia in the 1800s and, as the Horsham Times described it in 1935, “his heart ached to see the sufferings of dumb animals.” This was a concern that he passed on to his son George who also associated himself with the society for the protection of animals in England, New Zealand and Australia. George’s wife died before him and they had no children so he decided to make provision in his will for the future welfare of animals. The residue of his estate, after several personal bequests, was set aside to provide free memorial horse troughs the length and breadth of the British Empire. Towns applied for them to the trust and many such as Horsham actually have more than one. George died in 1927 and approximately 86 000 pounds was left for the provision of horse troughs. Each was made to the same design and carried the inscription ‘Donated by Annis and George Bills Australia.” By 1937, according the the Adelaide Advertiser, the trust had set up more than 400 horse troughs in Victoria and were expanding to New South Wales.

Sometimes they were for more than horses though and issues could arise, as Dubbo found in 1946. In this particular case dogs and humans were catered for as well as horses. Unfortunately the position of the human’s drinking fountain was problematic. As the Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate said.

“Unfortunately, lack of foresight was shown in the placing of the adjunct for the public. It is immediately over the small concrete basin for dogs, and at the end of the horse-trough. After drinking, horses have been seen slobbering over the faucet, and dogs licking it.”

The drinking faucet was thankfully moved.

The Dubbo paper also adds the interesting detail that the activities of the trust lapsed during the war period, but began again afterwards, which was when Dubbo applied for its second horse trough with the subsequent problems.

So since writing this original post I’ve been keeping an eye out for them and I’ve found another seventeen that I have photos of. So I thought I’d do this update so I can add in my new photos. And it gives me a spot to upload new ones as I find them. It’s such a fascinating piece of Australian history, and every time I spot one it makes me happy and it’s always interesting to see what use, if any, the town is putting them to now. Anyway, here are the rest of the photos

Bunyip

Churchill Island- possibly a more modern replica

Two different horse troughs, Pioneer Settlement Swan Hill

Warrnambool – Flagstaff Maritime Village

References:

The photos are all mine

Horsham Times: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/72616702?searchTerm=annis%20and%20george%20bills&searchLimits=

Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/132963328?searchTerm=annis%20and%20george%20bills&searchLimits=

The Adelaide Advertiser: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/74356258?searchTerm=annis%20and%20george%20bills&searchLimits=

https://billswatertroughs.wordpress.com/

the buried village

November 4, 2025December 19, 2025 | historicalragbag

It’s been a while, life, work and other writing are basically the reasons. But I’m hoping to get back into a slightly more regular blog schedule, as there’s a backlog of, I hope, interesting things I want to write about. But back to the buried village. The village in question is Te Wairoa, just out of Rotorua on Aotearoa New Zealand’s North Island. The remains of the village sit in a really beautiful dip in a complex volcanic landscape. The map below gives you an idea of both the location of the village and the volatility of the landscape

As you might have gathered from the name, the fate of the village is not a happy one, but although one night of 1886 saw the end of the village, it did have a beginning. So we’re going to start there.

Maori people had been living in the area for generations, but Europeans moved into the area in the early 1800s. The foundations of the town itself are actually, interestingly, rooted in tourism. In the 1850s the local Tarawera iwi began guiding tourists to the magnificent Pink and White Terraces. A tradition that continues with the thermal landscape around Rotorua today. The guides were mainly women, including Guide Sophia who was described as an intelligent and pleasant woman and who bore 15 children. And Guide Kate, who was described as Amazonian. The Pink and White Terraces were extraordinary geological formations of hot and cold sinter baths, described as the 8th wonder of the world. You can see contemporary images of them below.

Victorians (the era not the state) came over long distances to visit these terraces. They were formed over 600 years ago when silica rich residue called sinter, originating from geysers, cascaded down and left thick silica deposits which, when they cooled, built these giant staircases as well as large pools of clear water. The White Terraces were about 280 metre wide and 30 m high, the Pink Terraces were a bit smaller and their colour came from the feric rich waters. You can get an idea of the colour in the painting below.

Objects became petrified by these silica rich waters. You can see a petrified hat below, that maybe a tourist left behind.

Some of the items were intentionally petrified for the tourists, including this toy cot and dog made out of newspaper.

By the 1880s Te Wairoa itself had become the hub of this tourist trade, boasting two hotels: McRae’s Rotomahana Hotel and the unliscenced Terrace Hotel. The village was home to Maori and Europeans and included a school, a church, a meeting house, blacksmith’s, a store, flour mill and houses and whares (Maori dwelling – usually steep roofed). You can see it in the image below.

As you’ll see in the caption above, this was Te Wairoa before the eruption. Which brings us to the night of the June 9th 1886. There were warnings : on May 31st the creek was suddenly dry and then water surged filling the creek towards the lake, but then quickly drained away again. This was noted by Guide Sophia as she led tourists out to the lake. Then when they were crossing the lake in a boat towards the terraces, European and Maori people on the boat saw a Maori waka (war canoe) bigger than any known on the lake, and the men rowing the waka didn’t respond to any calls, so they were thought to be spirits. When the boat arrived at the Pink Terraces they found that a geyser had ejected mud much further than usual. These all together provoked unease across the valley, but there wasn’t really anything that could be done.

All remained calm until the 9th of June.

Shortly before midnight the earthquakes began. By 2:30 am craters were starting to open and erupting with larva along an 8 km rift north east towards the lake. A vast column of ash 9.5 km high rose from the direction of Lake Tarawera, there was a freezing wind, roaring and an eerie red glow. By about 3:20 the destruction had spread. Violent steam eruptions (when molten rock encountered water) sent ash and mud into the sky that blanketed the surrounding area. Debris continued to fall until about 6:00 am and when the dust has settled, the villages of Te Ariki, Moura, Tokiniho, Totarariki, Rotomahana and Waitngongongo were either buried completely or had been on the site of active craters, there were no survivors. In Te Wairoa much of the town was buried and 17 people killed, though amazingly most of the people managed to escape. The landscape was was irrevocably changed. Not only were the Pink and White Terraces obliterated, there was a 16 kilometre rift across the mountain from Tarawera that had opened into the Waimangu valley. You can see the valley below, all the vegetation, apart from a few of the larger trees, has grown since the 1886 eruption.

The eruption was felt all over Aotearoa New Zealand. In nearby Rotorua new hot springs opened up, jets of steam issued from the rocks and geysers spurted along the shore edge of Lake Rotorua. Many people thought the world was ending. You can see a near contemporary painting of the eruption below.

It really gives a sense of the extreme violence. More than 150 people were killed in the eruption, as well as kilometres of land devestated. For the local Tuhorangi, Maori, it also meant the destruction of the remains of their ancestors, many of whom had been entombed on the mountain itself. Most of the victims of the eruption were also Maori.

As the eruption settled rescue groups went out from Rotorua and Ohinemutu to try to find survivors, they met with limited success, especially in the towns closest to the eruption. The higher survival rate in Te Wairoa, though most of the town itself was buried, was partly because it was a little further from the eruption so it wasn’t immediately subsumed. About fifty people made it through the flaming debris to Guide Sophia’s whare, the sloped roof meant that the debris slid off rather than collecting like they did on the European houses and hotels. This meant that the whare stayed standing where as the European buildings collapsed under the weight. This was also true of the Hinemihi meeting house. Of the 17 people who died in the town some died outside, either struck by debris or suffocated from the ash, or they died inside collapsed or burnt buildings.

We have some incredible first hand accounts of the eruption, for example Mr McCrae from the Roromahana Hotel described it as. “We saw a sight that no man who saw it can ever forget. Apparently the mount had three craters, and flames of fire were shooting up fully a thousand feet high. There seemed to be a continuous shower of balls of fire for miles around.” McRae and his guest, staff and several other locals made their way to Guide Sophia’s whare, and all, apart from the one tourist Edwin Bainbridge, survived. Bainbridge died when the hotel’s balcony fell on him when they were trying to escape.

After the eruption no one recieved any government compensation for their destroyed buildings, and insurance companies refused to pay out because people were not covered for volcanic eruption. Ultimately Te Wairoa was abandoned and left buried. It has been the site of a number of archaeological digs over the years, with many 19th century artefacts recovered that paint a picture of life in the lost village.

The last image above is testament to the power of the eruption. It’s a chain found on the site that might have been used to secure the blacksmith’s, it is completely encrusted with volcanic mud which has bound it all up into one solid clump

As part of the digs over the years, sections of the village have been unearthed and can also be explored now. What’s most striking about them for me is just how layered and solid the mud is. It’s hard to imagine that it wasn’t always there.

The last two photos are the remains of stone pataka (store house), it would have been lined with ferns and rushes and used to store potatoes and other crops. It was actually one of the first pieces of the village excavated, a woman called Vi Smith was picnicking beside the stream in the early 1930s and she noticed a stone in the bank and scraped back to the mud to reveal one of the carved stones.

The remains of the buried buildings are not the only artefacts that you can see at the Te Wairoa site. There’s other, in some ways, more unsual items. Including the below carronade. It was found in the stream in the 1930s at the bottom of the waterfall (I’ll come back to the waterfalls in a moment). It’s thought it was brought to Te Wairoa from the coast by the Maori as possible defence against another tribe in the 1860s.

Another interesting artefact is the bow section of the waka tuau, which would have been 30 feet originally. It was used originally in the invasion of the Lake District in early 1800s but, after the invasion, it was used for conveying tourists on Lake Tarawera. Its remains were uncovered below the waterfalls in 1927

The final really interesting artefact was the remains of some wooden posts. This might seem like an odd one, but this row of poplar fence posts survived the eruption with just their tops poking out of the mud. The posts then sprouted and, over the next 126 years, 30 to 40 of them grew to roughly 40 metres. The trees sadly began to fall down from 2010 onwards, and were eventually felled in the late 2010s. You can still see the area where they grew though

The Tarawera eruption was utterly devastating to the landscape, but what feels almost counter intuitive when you’re visiting is how quiet and lush and peaceful the landscape is now. The native bush has magnificently colonised the ‘new’ landscape created by the eruption. And nowhere is this more evident that around the beautiful waterfalls, you can see on the river walk right next to the remains of Te Wairoa.

The story of Te Wairoa and the Mount Tarawera eruption is not complete. Mount Tarawera is still an active volcano that is part of a very active volcanic landscape. Tarawera has erupted at least five times in the last 20,000 years, and the 1886 eruption was actually small compared to earlier eruptions. There is in fact a high likelihood that there will be another larger eruption, the only question really is when, and it may not be for thousands of years. Scientists monitor the volcano and the area for precursors like earthquakes, ground deformation and new or increasing hot spring flow, but ultimately, as with all volcanoes, if another eruption does happen we are as at the mercy of the volcano now as we were in 1886. It’s a landscape that really makes you think.

References:

Site visit 2024 – a lot of the information has come from the excellent signs in the buried village itself

https://www.buriedvillage.co.nz/

https://www.waimangu.co.nz/history/mount-tarawera/

https://www.newzealand.com/au/feature/mount-tarawera/

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/eruption-mt-tarawera

https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-night-tarawera-awoke/

Images:

The photos and video are all mine.

Pink Terraces : State Library of NSW : https://search.sl.nsw.gov.au/permalink/f/1cvjue2/ADLIB110317253

White Terraces: State Library of Victoria

https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/156d4cp/alma9939648455207636

White Terraces with the Pink Terraces in the background: State Library of NSW

https://search.sl.nsw.gov.au/permalink/f/1cvjue2/ADLIB110317254

Pink Terraces demonstrating the colour: National Library of Australia

https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-134305524/view

Te Wairoa before the eruption : Te Papa

https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/1267698

Mount Tarawera eruption: State Library of Victoria

https://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/258258

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Dylan of the wave

August 3, 2024 | historicalragbag

This is a slight departure for Historical Ragbag, as I’ll be looking at a mythical figure. But it still involves research and a good story so I decided it still fit.

In researching for my novel, it’s contemporary and with merpeople but based on Welsh history and mythology, I came across a figure who gets one tantalising mention in the Mabinogion. Dylan of the Wave. The Mabinogion is a series of Welsh stories that are the foundation of much Welsh mythology. I won’t go into great detail about them here, because that is a post in and of itself, but they’re well worth a read if you get the chance. In many ways they’re even more off the wall than Greek mythology, and you can see how much some of them have seeped through into Western concepts of folklore and fairytales. You can read a free version at Project Gutenberg here but I read was the Oxford edition. You can see it in the references at the end.

Anyway, who is Dylan and why did he catch my attention?

To answer that we need to look at the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion.

The Fourth Branch is broadly the story of Math son of Mathonwy. Math is the Lord of all Gwynedd (Northern Wales today). I’ll provide a brief summary of the story as a background. There will be bits that seem like leaps in logic and that’s because they are. You have to remember that this is a medieval text and the medieval mindset can seem impenetrable to us. This isn’t an overhang of a lost pre-christian mythology, the Mabinogion is very much a Christian text and of its time.

The story kicks off with Math’s nephew Gilfaethwy in love with Math’s foot-maiden Goewin who Math won’t part with. Gilfaethwy is concerned because Math can hear everything that’s said. Math’s other nephew Gwydion (who is a magician) suggests starting a war with Powys and Deheubarth (both kingdoms in Southern Wales) so Gilfaethwy can have Goewin. There’s magical pigs involved, but a war is started and while Math is away Gilfaethwy rapes Goewin in Math’s bed.

When Math returns he discovers the rape because he can only place his feet in the lap of a virgin and Goewin is no longer one. She tells Math of Gilfaethwy’s actions. Math changes Gilfaethwy and Gwydion into a hind and a stag and binds them to mate with each other and take on the nature of the two animals for a year. At the end of the year the hind and stag return with a fawn, Math changes them into a boar and a sow and sends them out again (though he fosters the boy who had been a fawn). At the end of another year the sow and the boar are back with a young one. Math then changes them into a wolf and a she-wolf and sends them out again. Again he fosters the boy who had been the piglet. At the end of that year the wolf and she-wolf return with a cub. Math considers his nephews punished enough and restores them to men, telling them of their fine sons.

Math then asks his nephews about finding another virgin to be his foot-maiden and they suggest their sister Arianrhod. Math uses his magic to test Arianrhod’s virginity and as she steps over Math’s magic wand a large sturdy yellow haired boy drops from her, Arianrhod gives a cry and runs away but as she does something small falls from her and Gwydion gathers it in brocade and hides it in a small chest at the foot of his bed. Math take the yellow haired boy and says “I will have this one baptised. I will call him Dylan.” And he is baptised.

The Mabinogion goes on to say

As soon as he was baptised he made for the sea. And there and then, as soon as he came to the sea, he took on the sea’s nature and swam as well as the best fish in the sea. Because of this he was known as Dylan Eil Ton- no wave ever broke beneath him. The blow which killed him was struck by Gofannon, his uncle and it was one of the Three Unfortunate Blows.

This is the introduction of Dylan of the Wave.

The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion continues with the scrap in the chest – who turns out to be a child who came to be called (after some trickery) Lleu Llaw Gyffes and Gwydion who helps him overcome various obstacles including making a wife for him out of flowers- Blodeuwedd (who gets a very unfair hand and who I’ll write something about later). But this is the only mention of Dylan in the whole of the Fourth Branch.

So why did this get me interested? Firstly because the book I’m working on is about mer people and the sea, so having a Welsh mythological figure tied to the sea so explicitly was very useful from a narrative perspective. Secondly, because in a panoply of the extraordinary Dylan sort of pops up and vanishes again, and some quick Googling doesn’t turn up masses. So I did some more digging. I started with the Three Unfortunate Blows.

This is a triad. Triad’s are a key to mythology. I’m still getting my head around them, but essentially they are circumstances or thematic instances that come in threes. They can be found throughout Welsh folklore and belief systems, as well as legal codes. They are also often reflected in bardic works and poetry, including the metre of some poetry. They are found in several surviving Welsh manuscripts and referenced in most Welsh mythology, often the same ones, they are cross referential. A good example are the three arrogant men of the island of Britain: Sawyl High Head, Pasgen son of Urien and Rhun son of Einiawn. So in the case of Dylan what were the Three Unfortunate Blows? I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the listing for them, but then worked out that unfortunately they are one of the lost triads. This means that all that has survived is mentions of them, rather than the triads themselves. One of these mentions is from the Book of Taliesin which refers to Dylan’s end, and tells us a bit more about Dylan himself as well as Gofannon who struck the blow. It’s called the Elegy of Dylan, Son of the Sea:

“One highest God, wisest of sages, greatest in might –

Who was it held the metal, who forged its hot blows?

And before him, who held still the force of the tongs?

The horsemaster stares – he has done lethal hurt, a deed of

outrage,

Striking down Dylan on the fatal strand, violence on the

shore’s waters,

The wave from Ireland, the wave from Manaw, the wave from the North,

And fourth, the wave of Britain of the shining armies.

I plead with God, God and Father of the Kingdom that knows no refusal,

The maker of Heaven, who will welcome us in his mercy.

The details about Gofannnon that the Elegy is alluding to are that Gofannon was a smith endowed with supernatural powers. Again another character embedded in a the broader mythological landscape.

This isn’t Dylan’s only mention in the The Book of Taliesin. He’s also referenced in the legendary dramatic poem The Battle of the Trees. Which is worth reading in its own right as it (at face value) tells the story of Gwydion animating the trees of a forest to fight for him. It also covers Taliesin’s creation, and this is where the line about Dylan appears. The line is a short one “I was in the citadel with Dylan, Son of the Sea.”

The Book of Taliesin is itself an astounding survival. It’s a manuscript dating from the first half of the fourteenth century and is a collection of poems and similar works supposedly by or about the great bard Taliesin. It’s arguable if Taliesin was a real person or not but he is the greatest of the Welsh bards, and could be a conflation of a real person from the 6th century with a mythological figure.

But, to not sidetrack myself (or not too much anyway). The Elegy presents Dylan as someone worth having an elegy written about. It and the line in The Battle of the Trees also situates him as an important being in Welsh mythology and belief, someone who appears in more than one text and someone who was well enough known to be understood from just one line.

Dylan also appears briefly in the Black Book of Camarthan too (another amazing medieval survival) where his grave is mentioned as “Where the wave makes a noise, the grave of Dylan is at Llanfeuno.” This is probably a peninsula in South Wales.

These are not the only mentions of Dylan in Welsh texts, but they give the context.

What all this means, is that there were more stories about Dylan and his exploits but they haven’t survived. Some of this is because the written sources that have survived have largely been by chance, and partly because some were certainly oral traditions and might not have been written down. Dylan does survive in odd places though, aside from all these mentions. His name is incorporated into a couple of place names, though tangentially, and rough seas and the roar of the tide at the mouth of the river Conwy is said to be the death groan of Dylan.

You can see the Conwy estuary below

There is also a school of thought that Dylan is the remnant of a lost sea divinity, and or that he was an early iteration of a merperson. While both are certainly a possibility (and something that we’ll never know), what it means for me is that I have a fairly blank slate to work from. So Dylan has become part of my world a ‘real’ building block to layer a new story on, and I kind of like that.

References:

Books:

Book of Taliesin: Translated by Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams: 9780241381137

The Mabinogion: A new translation by Sioned Davies 9780199218783

Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The triads fo the Island of Britain edited by Rachel Bromwich

9781783163052

The Celtic Myths That Shape The Way We Think by Mark Williams 9780500252369

Dictionary of Celtic Mythology by James MacKillop

https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofcelt0000mack/mode/2up

Websites:

Mabinogion Summary https://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/sites/themes/society/myths_mabinogion_04.shtml#:~:text=The%20final%20and%20most%20complex,Math’s%20beautiful%20foot%2Dmaiden%20Goewin.

Mabinogion Project Gutenberg:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5160/5160-h/5160-h.htm

Welsh Classical Dictionary:

https://www.library.wales/fileadmin/docs_gwefan/new_structure/discover/digital_exhibitions/printed_material/welsh_classical_dictionary/05_D-E-F.pdf

Book of Taliesin:

https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/the-middle-ages/book-of-taliesin

The photo is mine

The Russians were coming- to melbourne?…

July 1, 2024July 1, 2024 | historicalragbag

The story behind this post comes from a couple of pages of Dr Clare Wright’s excellent book The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. It’s a fascinating read with lots of really interesting information, but there was one aside apart from the broader narrative that, when I read it a few years ago, made me go, ‘wait, what?’ It describes a night in September in 1854 when Melbournians flocked to the port with makeshift weapons at the ready, convinced that the Russians were invading.

This might seem utterly ludicrous and, spoiler alert, it turned out to be a hoax, but In 1854 the Crimean War was raging and as an outpost of the British Empire Melbourne considered itself at risk. I was officially interested enough to do some more digging. I actually wrote a short story about it a couple of years ago, but I thought a factual look at the situation was worthwhile too. Hence this blog.

So to start at the beginning. What was Melbourne like in 1854? The city was in the midst a massive boom, with the gold rush in full swing. This meant an incredible influx of people from all over the world. In 1851 the population was 77 000, by 1854 it was 237 000 and 411 000 by 1857. This was a city growing and changing rapidly, and expanding, trying to find places for all the new people to live and resources to support them.

I also want to pause the discourse to acknowledge that this mass immigration was not to an unoccupied country. The land Melbourne stands on was known as Naarm and was, and is, home to the Bunerong people and the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. The colonisers moving in were actively stealing the land from the First Nations people. They, and the government, also worked to systematically kill, oppress and stamp out both First Nations people and their culture. So while Melbourne was a fantastic melting pot of a town that was growing seemingly exponentially, it was also a city of death and oppression. Importing the history of wars half way around the world, along with disease and death, for First Nations people.

So Melbourne was growing and lot of European ‘civilisation’ was imported with all the people. This included Britain’s enemies, and this is what gave rise to panic about the possibility of Russian invasion. The furore was enough that battalions were formed. In Geelong a rifle corps was organised, and a regular half holiday was declared (it didn’t last long) for men to train to fight if needed. There was genuine concern, with newspapers publishing lists of the Russian ships that had been in the Pacific.

The situation was perfectly encapsulated by Celeste de Chabrillan who was the wife of the French Consul in Melbourne and a fascinating lady in her own right as she was a former circus performer, dancer and courtesan. She described the time as “Since the Crimean War, which is always on their minds, and because there is not a single warship in the Melbourne harbour, they are always imagining that the Russians are going to attempt an invasion to pillage the gold of the whole of Australia.”

This fear was also recorded in the papers of the time. In May 1854 The Adelaide Observer, observed that “It may be that there are no real grounds for the serious apprehensions entertained at Sydney and Melbourne of a sudden attack on these places by a Russian Force, and it may be, also, that there are good and sufficient reasons for anticipating a sudden onslaught on the gold colonies by an enemy’s force of superior power, and tempted, perhaps, by the feeling that no sufficient preparations to repel an attack have been made.”

So this was the atmosphere that reached a boiling point on the 8th of September 1854. It was a hot night, and the inhabitants of Melbourne were restless. In this already on edge city, cannon-fire was heard from the bay, and rockets were seen in the sky. The Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer set the scene: “all sorts of conjectures were flying around as to the cause of these demonstrations, some said it was the Russians come at last and nothing short of a fight or bombardment was expected to take place.” Soon “thousands of people were hurrying from all directions down the road to Sandridge [Port Melbourne], determined to see what was up and by no means inclined to turn tail upon the Russians even if they were there. Should it ever happen that an enemy were to enter our Port the people, if armed, would fight like tigers.“

Celeste de Chabrillan’s husband Lionel was one of the men who followed Governor Hotham, who had arrived from Toorak, to the port. “They follow him, they run towards the habour. Lionel does likewise. The sky is red and all the ships in port seem to be on fire.”

But Lionel is soon back. “Drenched in perspiration. He falls into a chair and laughs so much he can’t say a word to me. It was all a practical joke.”

So what had actually happened? The ship The Great Britain had been released from quarantine that night and, either to celebrate being released from quarantine or to get back at Melbourne for being put in quarantine in the first place, the captain decided to fire his cannons and fire rockets into the air. Whether it was celebration, or a practical joke depends on which version you read. Celeste went on to say that the captain of The Great Britain “simulated naval combat” to “get his own back for having been put in quarantine.” Some of the papers reported that “the firing of rockets and guns was but a demonstration of joy and self-congratulation indulged in by the Commander of the liberated ship to gratify his passengers.”

Interestingly there was a letter to the paper about ten days after the incident saying that if the passengers had been vaccinated for smallpox in the first place they wouldn’t have had to quarantined so the ‘battle’ would never have happened. Which feels incredibly contemporary- it’s always fascinating to see how little things change sometimes.

Whatever the reason the captain decided to fire his cannons and rockets, the furore died down quickly, though Governor Hotham was not impressed. In the immediate aftermath there was a lot of commentary in the press and in Punch, and amazingly a play called “the Battle of Melbourne” written about the incident.

The play came together incredibly quickly. It was in “active preparation” by the 14th of September according to the Argus, which described the ‘battle’ as “the great public farce of Thursday last.” When it actually opened in October 1854 the Argus described the theatre as “crowded to the point of suffocation.” I haven’t been able to find a copy of the play unfortunately.

While the memory of the night Melbourne thought it was being invaded by Russia has largely faded, there is a surprisingly tangible legacy of the fear that led to it all over Victoria. Have you ever seen cannons in a public park or foreshore in Victoria? Maybe climbed on them as a child? Ever wondered why they’re there? There’s a pretty good chance they were installed out of fear of Russian invasion in the 19th century. An excellent example are the cannons currently at Hopetoun Gardens in Elsternwick. You can see them below.

Both of these cannons are from the 1860s. The Russians had lost the Crimean War by then but there was still the fear they were looking for new territories. So the Victorian Government negotiated with the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich to purchase cannons to protect Melbourne if they were needed. These are 80 pound guns, meaning they were made to fire projectiles of 80 pounds. Each weighed more the 4000 kgs and thus were mounted on moveable carriages. These two cannons were originally installed at Fort Gellibrand in Williamstown, but military machinery was moving so quickly they were soon superseded. But how did these two end up in a garden in inner suburban Melbourne? Well, in 1908, when the gardens were being built, the local council decided that obsolete military machinery would not only be a point of difference, but would inspire a sense of ‘naval spirit’ in the local boys so they would ‘learn the necessity for being prepared for the defence of the country.’

Even though the threat of Russian invasion, well land invasion anyway, now seems faintly ludicrous, it was for a time believed to be a genuine threat and for one farcical night, Melbournians massed at the port, ready to fight for their new city. And today we have the cannon to remember it by.

References:

The French Consul’s Wife: Memoirs of Celeste de Chabrillan in gold rush Australia by Patricia Clancy

https://library.pmi.net.au/fullRecord.jsp?recno=18535

The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright

https://library.pmi.net.au/fullRecord.jsp?recno=1671

Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer (Vic. : 1851 – 1856) Sat 9 Sep 1854 Page 4 :

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/91860529

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957) Thu 14 Sep 1854

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/4797645

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957) Tue 3 Oct 1854 Page 5

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/4798453

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957) Wed 4 Oct 1854 Page 5

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/4798502

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957) Wed 13 Sep 1854

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/4797582

Adelaide Times (SA : 1848 – 1858) Fri 26 May 1854 Page 3

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/207015659

Adelaide Observer (SA : 1843 – 1904) Sat 13 Oct 1855

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/158106017

Site visit to Hopetoun Gardens 2024.

The photos are mine.

Bear’s Castle

October 9, 2023 | historicalragbag

Bear’s Castle is an enigma. There is little agreement over why it was built, or its purpose, but it truly captures the imagination.

Bear’s Castle stands on the edge of the Yan Yean Reservoir, just out of Whittlesea. It’s one of those places I’d only seen photos of, so to say I was pleased to have a chance to visit earlier this year is an understatement.

Bear’s Castle is on lands run by Melbourne Water, due to the proximity of Yan Yean Reservoir, and it has gone through many uses in its life since it was built probably in the 1840s. So let’s start at the beginning, this is going to be a post with a lot of ‘possibles’ because so much is not known.

The best place to begin is with the man who gave his name to castle, John Bear. So who was John Bear?

John Bear came from a landed family in Devon. He emigrated to Australia with his entire family, servants, livestock and a few friends (they chartered a whole ship) in 1841. They arrived in Williamstown on the 20th of October 1841. Once arrived he set up as a stock and land merchant and then purchased land from the crown, an extensive 935 acres at Yan Yean (the reservoir was not built then). He built a homestead, and planted vines (one of the earliest vineyards in Victoria) and raised cattle. However, as a stock and land agent he worked mostly in the city so, somewhat unbelievably, he commuted back to Yan Yean on the weekends, leaving his younger son to run the farm.

I’d like to pause here to acknowledge that John Bear didn’t purchase uninhabited land. The lands around Yan Yean have been the home of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people for thousands of years before colonisers like Bear arrived and claimed them. As far as I can find Bear was not involved in specific massacres, but by moving into the land and turning its use over to cattle and crops, he was dispossessing the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people. This is true of any Europeans, including my own family, who arrived in Victoria in the 19th century and began to acquire vast tracts of land.

We know Bear had a house built by 1842 because the family was held up by bushrangers that year. John Bear was away, but his wife and daughter were at the house and forced to cook the bushrangers dinner. They also apparently stole Bear’s best port. This incident leads to the first suggested reason for the construction of Bear Castle, as a refuge from bushrangers or even First Nations people (who it was feared may attack the new house and not without reason). There are a few reasons against this theory, the key of which is the distance between the house site and Bear’s Castle. It would have been a long dash through often hostile bush to reach the castle, not ideal as a quick refuge.

The most bandied about theory is that the castle was built due to an offhand remark by John Bear. The story is that two of his stockmen, possibly John Edwards and Thomas Hannaford- both from Devon, asked him what they should do while he was away for some months, and he flippantly replied, ‘build me a castle’. And thus they did just that. This is a story has been handed down, and is frequently accepted as the most likely reason for the construction of Bear’s Castle. It is definitely possible, as the castle is built out of cob, a traditional mud and straw building method from Devon, and it resembles follies that might have been a familiar site in Devon. You can see what it looked even more castlely in the c.1870 photo below. The people standing on the battlements are thought to be John Bear’s descendants.

Against this theory is how much time and effort the construction of Bear’s Castle would have likely taken. It seems extravagent to build on a whim. Additionally his family would have remained at the farm, it seems unlikely they would have been alright with their workmen building a castle when they could be undertaking more useful work. It could absolutely be a contributing factor though.

The castle was definitely finished by 1851 because the farm was renamed Castle Hill after devastating bushfires ravaged the area. These fires indicate another possible reason for the construction of the Castle, as a look out tower. This is probably the most plausible, the castle is clearly not built to be lived in long term (though the Duffy Family did occupy the castle for a short time in 1865 while a house was being built for them). But the top would have given commanding views across the landscape to watch for threats. Originally the battlements would have been reached by a ladder probably from the first floor. This first floor was probably no more than a mezzanine level that was used to access the battlements (which are no longer there) rather than a floor that was actually used as another storey. There isn’t really anything left of the floor, but there is a couple of piece of sugar gum which were most likely installed by Melbourne Water in the 1970s. They never finished installing anything more permanent.

The mezzanine was reached by stairs built into the castle wall.

So regardless of whether the castle was built as a refuge, a watch tower, a folly, or a combination there of, it was built and the history of the building itself is somewhat circumstantial but still interesting. It was probably built in the 1840s, most likely the late 1840s. It’s gone through many iterations. The walls are mainly cob, though what you see now as the exterior walls was done as a render with mud and chicken wire in the 1970s in an attempt to protect the building. You can see some of the exposed wire below.

The pitched roof that you can see now, appeared in a thatched form in the 1920s, but it was soon in extensive disrepair.

The roof was re-clad in timber shingles in the 1940s

Although the above photos are black and white, before its 1970s render the castle would have been grey from the clay it was built out of. Hidden beneath the 1970s render, as well as the original building material, are small details such as that the lancet windows were formed from inverted forks of gum trees. You mostly can no longer see the gums, but the inverted shape is distinctive.

You can see original materials peaking out from the 1970s render as well.

There is also a fireplace in Bear’s Castle

The chimney tower was built in the 1870s you can see how different it is from the other towers below

It’s the only extensive use of the bricks in the building.

Bear’s Castle’s survival is at least partly because it sits next to Yan Yean Reservoir which was constructed in the 1857 and is Victoria’s oldest water supply. When the reservoir was built it was the largest artificial reservoir in the world.

It was designed by James Blackburn, who was a civil engineer from England transported for embezzlement. It took four years to build, cost 750 000 pounds and has a capacity of 30 000 megalitres. Its status as a major source of water supply means that public access to Bear’s Castle has been restricted to protect the purity of the water. This probably contributed to both its survival, no chance to loot materials, and it’s obscurity; as even today you have to go on an organised, weather dependant tour to visit it.

Bear’s Castle is a unique survival, it’s the only cob building left in Victoria and is one of the state’s oldest. It stands for what were probably many cob buildings in the Yan Yean and Whittlesea area which have not survived. Whatever its purpose, it tells a story of an early pastoralist family bringing their history and traditions with them. Its very castle like nature tells of the hundreds of years of Eurpoean history imposed on the land. And if nothing else it is a mesmerising building.

References:

Site Visit 2023

Bear’s castle Conservation Plan June 1997

https://www.whittleseainfocentre.net.au/BearsCastle

https://www.parks.vic.gov.au/places-to-see/parks/yan-yean-reservoir-park

Images:

All modern photos are mine.

c.1872 image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bear%27s_Lookout_Castle_Hill_Yan_Yean_c1870.jpg

Early 1900s image:

https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/1sev8ar/alma9920982713607636

1940s image:

https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/1sev8ar/alma9917309423607636

John Bear image:

https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/1sev8ar/alma9918066113607636

Tae Rak: Budj Bim World heritage landscape

April 22, 2023April 23, 2023 | historicalragbag

Tae Rak, a wetlands environment which is part of the World Heritage Listed Budj Bim Landscape, is a remarkable place. Not only is it a place of evident beauty, but it a landscape that has been actively cultivated for thousands of years by the Gunditjmara people. The presence not only of eel traps, but the remains of dwellings, makes Tae Rak (and the surrounding Budj Bim landscape) one of the oldest examples of aquaculture in the world. This post is going to look at Tae Rak, the life cycle of the kooyang, or short-finned eel, and the Gunditjmara use of the land. There will as always be photos.

I want to stop here to discuss the privileges I am bringing to writing this post. As with other posts about Australia’s First Nations’ history and the landscapes that reflect it, it is important to understand two things. Firstly that I am not a First Nations Australian. I write these posts with no claim to special knowledge, I am reiterating the information from the guides on the day as well as some external research (see the references listed at the end). Secondly, that I am in the position of having benefited from the invasion and colonisation of Victoria’s First Nations people, both from my heritage and my job. The first of this is especially true when looking at Tae Rak, as it’s less than an hour’s drive from Port Fairy, a town that my ancestors founded on land that was stolen from the Gunditjmara. My ancestors were not specifically involved in massacres in the area, but that was largely a result of timing, they arrived too late, but they were definitely active recipients of the immediate dispossession of land. I am fifth generation Australian on both sides of my family, most of my ancestors arrived in the 1850s, and thus my ability to sit here comfortably on my laptop and write this post is a privilege inherited from 200 years of dispossession. I also work for a library, which are inherently colonial organisations, that privilege a western system of knowledge keeping and knowledge management. While we are doing what we can to rebalance those scales, it is a not a simple process.

So having said all that, why am I writing this post at all? The answer is because the history is fascinating and deserves to be more widely known, and if I can contribute to that even a little then that is worth it. Also the landscape is so lovely, and the stories so interesting that I wanted to have a chance to tell them.

The final disclaimer is that there is a lot that is not known. This is common across First Nations groups across Australia, due to colonisation, invasion and quite intentional destruction of knowledge. In Victoria is is especially true as First Nations people were forced off country into missions in the 1860s, and language and culture were actively banned.

So what is Tae Rak? It is the wetlands system known as Lake Condah to the Europeans. It is part of the broader Budj Bim Landscape in Western Victoria, which includes the (probably) extinct volcano Budj Bim. The landscape was cultivated and shaped by First Nations peoples for thousands of years before the invasion by Europeans. In recognition of this, it was World Heritage listed in 2019.

I wanted to begin by giving an idea of what the landscape looks like. It is volcanic, which is a key point. This whole area of Victoria was shaped from the eruptions that gave rise to Budj Bim about 27 000 years ago. Though Tae Rak was created by larva flow from an eruption about 8000 years ago. This all gave rise to the basalt landscape that you can see in the photos below.

Bud Bim is actually one of Victoria’s newest volcanoes. First Nation belief systems record the eruption, with Budj Bim being the head of the ancestral being who left behind part of themselves at the end of their dreaming journey, and the larva flow being the teeth. The same belief system tells of journeys of creator beings to near by landmarks, including to the south where Deen Maar (Lady Julia Percy Island) guards the final resting place of the Gunditjmara people when they die. You can see Deen Maar on the horizon below.

Essentially the Gunditjmara belief systems speak of a landscape, described by Eileen Alberts from the Gunditjmara, as left to them by the ancestral beings, with the resources to live a settled lifestyle. They had the dammed waterways, the stones and the rocks to build aquaculture systems and wetlands where reeds grew to make baskets, and the food enriched landscape to survive.

This was a land that was shaped and cultivated, lived on for thousands of years.

Geologically, what the eruption of Budj Bim 8000 years ago did was to dam the Darlot Creek, which through time and, what is now called Condah swamp working its way through the larva flow, created Tae Rak.

What you see today is only a fraction of the size of the original wetlands that the Gunditjmara used for everything. But, conversely, it is much bigger than what you would have seen even fifteen years ago. This is because the decision was taken to drain Tae Rak following severe flooding in 1946, work was completed in the 1950s, and Tae Rak became largely farming land. In 2010 a new weir was built to again create a facsimile of the dam created by larva flow thousands of years ago, and water was returned to the wetlands, though nothing to the capcity it would have once held. You can see the weir below.

First, though, to return to the purpose of the aquaculture systems that were constructed. And to understand this, I need to properly introduce an extraordinary creature- the kooyang, or short-finned eel. You can see some in the tank in the video below.

Now, saying eels are fascinating is not something I thought I’d ever be saying, but their lifecycle is truly extraordinary. The kooyang you see in the tank above are somewhere in the middle ish of this cycle. They can grow up to 1.1 meters long and live for 14 years for males and 18 years for females. They’ll eat most things, including any carrion that ends up in the water. When they are headed towards the end of their life cycle, they close over their anus to ensure they keep all their nutrition in, then they fin their way out of the wetlands, through river systems, and mud sometimes, out into the ocean. From here they fin their way up the east coast of Australia to the coral sea, a journey of thousands of kilometres, when there they, probably, dive down to the depths, explode, all the eggs and the sperm mix in the warm water and new eels are spawned. These tiny glass eels begin to make their way back down the coast of Australia where they follow the smell of freshwater back to Tae Rak, often climbing weirs, dams and waterfalls to make it, growing as they do so, to become a yellow eel and then ultimately a silver eel, before starting the whole process again when they’re ready to spawn.

These incredible creatures also make incredible nutritious food, and are the reason for the Tae Rak eel traps, though other things were caught in them too. Essentially the larva flows from Budj Bim created pockets in the ground which became pools and the Gunditjmara created channels between them to take advantage of seasonal changes in water height. They created these connecting channels between the pockets to move eels around to where they wanted them. These channels were created through solid basalt, probably through a combination of digging it out and setting it on fire and rapidly cooling it to make it crack and easy to remove. Some channels are more than 50 m long. They also made weirs to control the velocity of the flow of the water. There are deliberate narrowing points in channels, where traps made from reeds were placed to force an eel through a V which they couldn’t swim out of, and from where they could be easily harvested. These aquaculture systems were also used to ferry eels into larder pools where they would be kept for later harvesting. You can see one of the latter systems below.

The final image is the channel between the pools.

So, with this incredible food source, and aquaculture system, you needed somewhere to live. There are remains of permanent dwellings at Tae Rak. They were often built on the ridges, for the advantage of the vantage point. You can see the foundations of one below.

This particular house would probably not have been lived in all year round, but would have been occupied by the Gunditjmara when they were using the resources at Tae Rak, though this isn’t true of all First Nations dwellings in the area. They would not have been built entirely of stone. These domed dwellings would have been a stone wall topped with wattle and daub, and reeds. You can see some modern interpretations below (admittedly in a slightly decrepit state).

The image above is from the near by Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected area, which is about half an hour from Tae Rak and would have been a meeting and gathering place for the Gunditjmara. You can see one of the gathering place below with the foundations of dwellings, which unlike image from Tae Rak would have been communal and interconnected.

At Tyrendarra you can also see a further extension of the wetlands and the remains of the formerly vast reed beds.

I am aware I have been using the word ‘remains’ a lot, that is because quite often that is all we have left. The basic question of ‘what happened to all the stone dwellings’ is answered by the photos below.

Most of the stone was appropriated for use by the invaders, including through stone walls to mark out the boundaries of this land they were now claiming to be theirs. The wall you can see above is about 10 m from the first house. Now taking stone from old dwellings and repurposing it is something done the world over, there’s plenty of buildings constructed from Hadrian’s wall for example. The key difference here is that these dwellings didn’t just fall into disuse, the people who had been using them were killed or forced off their land, and no one ever tried to deny that Hadrian’s wall existed in the first place. Even today with mounting archaeological evidence, accounts from early pastoralists and surveyors describing large groups of Gunditjmara living in permanent structures, and the Gunditjmara’s own belief system and oral tradition, which is just as valid as any western version of history, the existence of these dwellings is denied, sometimes actively.

This sadly brings me back to where I began, the dispossession of the Gunditjmara. This isn’t intended to be a history of dispossession, invasion and colonisation of the Gunditjmara, as that would be a whole post on its own and I can not do it justice here. But have a look at my reference list at the end for more information. I will however give an overview. The key fact is that the Gunditjmara didn’t magically vanish, they fought for their land, their lifestyle and their people as did all First Nations people in Australia.

Invasion happened quickly. Major Thomas Mitchell (who I have written about before here) surveyed the Western District in 1836, and whalers and sealers had been moving up and down the coast. As more colonisers moved in, there was more conflict with First Nations people and more were killed, and more women were attacked. ‘Protector’, and not very nice man but avid diary keeper, George Augustus Robinson noted that some shepherds ‘appeared to devote more time to the native women than to their sheep’. The best known of these massacres in the area was a bit south and west of Tae Rak, where 20 Gunditjmara people were killed in 1834, known as the Convincing Ground Massacre. But this was not an isolated incident and violence did not remain the realm of whalers, sealers and surveyors. Pastoralists moved in and, by 1841, there were more than 88 stations between Geelong and Portland, many covering vast areas of land. And with the pastoralists came sheep and cattle who destroyed the natural ecosystems and the soil in their wake. The land that had been cared for by First Nations people for thousands of years was irrevocably damaged, as well as being stolen. This wasn’t a passive resistance to this invasion either, the Eumerella Wars fought in the 1840s were a sustained campaign by the Gunditjmara against invasion. The rocky Budj Bim landscape was an ideal place to wage war from. It was the use of native police, brought in from other parts of the country, that ultimately turned the tide against the Gunditjmara.

Physical violence was not the limit of the influence of the colonisers. The place names changed too, and the colonisers laid their own belief and world views and history across the landscape, shaping it culturally to match. The western name for Budj Bim is especially galling, as it began a Mount Eeles after a British aristocrat, but was bastardised to Mount Eccles which means absolutely nothing. By the 1860s First Nations people were being herded into missions, often not on their own country, and language and culture was being banned. It’s the equivalent in the Western world of burning the library and the museum to the ground.

For the Gunditjmara this mission was the Lake Condah mission, and while ultimately in some ways it became a place of community, it was in essence a place of control and many times punishment.

So this is a brief overview of the tangled web we are only just starting to beginning to untangle today. This brutal history must be understood and recognised as part of our own foundation myth. And First Nations histories and stories and perspectives must always be at the heart of it.

Today Tae Rak stands as a symbol of this. It is owned now by Gunditjmara, though they are still trying to buy back more of the surrounding land. This came about through a series of land mark native title cases, which sadly I don’t have the space to discuss here- again that might be another post. The Tae Rak Aquaculture Centre, again run by the Gunditjmara, is a starting point for cultural tours of this unique landscape, so the story of Tae Rak can continue to be told.

References:

Site Visit 2023

The People of Budj Bim: Engineers of aquaculture, builders of stone house settlements and warriors defending country / Gunditjmara People with Gib Wettenhall

https://www.budjbim.com.au/

https://www.gunditjmirring.com/lake-condah-restoration-project#:~:text=Lake%20Condah%20and%20the%20Condah,to%20and%20through%20Lake%20Condah.

https://www.vewh.vic.gov.au/news-and-publications/stories/creature-feature-short-finned-eels#:~:text=Male%20short%2Dfinned%20eels%20generally,habitat%20and%20fuel%20its%20diet.

https://www.budjbim.com.au/visit/cultural-sites/tyrendarra-ipa/

https://www.visitvictoria.com/regions/great-ocean-road/see-and-do/nature-and-wildlife/national-parks-and-reserves/tae-rak-aquaculture-centre

https://historicalragbag.com/2016/02/13/major-mitchell-and-his-trail/

https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php

https://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2021/04/23/1382962/the-frontier-wars-undoing-the-myth-of-the-peaceful-settlement-of-australia

https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/how-the-fighting-gunditjmara-used-country-to-wage-a-15-year-war-of-resistance/1ghh36cu1

All the photos are mine

Ragbag On Road: The Silo Art Trail

December 18, 2022December 19, 2022 | historicalragbag

Welcome to another iteration of Ragbag On Road. In this edition, you find me on the incredible Silo Art Trail in Western Victoria. Introduction below.

So, in this post I’m going to take you on a tour of the Silo Art Trail, its history and some of the history of the towns and the silos themselves. This post is part of a longer series, which also explores the integration of art and history. You can see more at the links below:

Art and history

Flinders Street Ballroom

I won’t be including every piece of silo art in Victoria- as it has spread well beyond the original trail. But I have covered the original trail, with its newest additions.

Before I go anything further- I would like to acknowledge the First Nations people on whose lands these silos were built and art work created. A lot of the history of these towns I’ll be discussing is rooted in pioneers and Europeans discovery. For First Nations people, this is a history of dispossession and colonisation. These lands were not unoccupied with western people moved into them.

But what is the Silo Art Trail?

The Trail started with the painting of one silo in Brim in 2016. The premise was a local art project, with the collaboration of both the local community and an artist, to paint the silo to reflect the community. The project was so popular that the Silo Art Trail was conceived and now stretches over 600 km, linking small towns across the Wimmera and Mallee regions of Victoria and creating the largest outdoor gallery in Australia. I’d heard of the Silo Art Trail, but when I was in the Wimmera in August I was unexpectedly impressed by both the sheer grandeur and size of these art works (some are as much as 30 m high) but also how reflective of the local communities they really are. Each artist (and every silo is done by a different artist) worked with, and in many cases lived with, the local community to create something that helps to tell their story. Following the Trail is also a great opportunity to explore these fascinating little towns. So as well as the silos themselves, I’ll be including something about the local history of each town.

But to begin at the beginning…

Below you can see the map of the Silo Art Trail

And to give you an idea of the landscape of the Malle and the Wimmera- you can see some photos below.

As you can see- it’s a land of big skies, agriculture and desert. There was a lot (and I mean a lot) of water when I was exploring, due to an unusually heavy rainfall. Though the large body of water you can see is Lake Tyrell (more on that later).

So the silos are- mostly- working agricultural sites. I’ll be leading you through them, much as I visited them because following the trail itself is half the fun.

So…

St Arnaud

The St Arnaud silos were painted in 2020 by Kyle Torney. Torney is a St Arnaud’s local and spent 200 hours on the work which is entitled ‘Hope’. It depicts a miner hoping to find gold, as his wife hopes to find the food to feed them all and the hope of the future of their child. The silos themselves are still commercially run and owned by Ridley Agricultural Products.

St Arnaud actually began life as a gold mining town. In 1855 a group of prospectors travelled to the area in search of a ‘new Bendigo’. And on a knoll in what became St Arnaud they found gold. The town grew rapidly with the registration of the claim, with people coming in from all over the world. Which can be seen in the Chinese garden which is part of the town, built in memory of the Chinese miners who came seeking their fortunes in St Arnaud. You can see it below

Over 20 000 people came to the goldfield that was (at the time) only 40 acres, much of it without any alluvial gold. Most were disappointed, but as the gold field was expanded, some were successful and these prospective miners needed supplies and thus the town began to grow.

Rupanyup

The Rupanyup silo was painted by Julia Volchkova in 2017. It’s reflective of the young people of the Rupanyup area, and their commitment to community through sport. The images are of locals Ebony Baker and Jordan Weidemann. Volchkova wanted to celebrate the community and the hope, strength and camaraderie of their young people. The silos belong to Australian Grain Export and are still in active use.

Another piece of fascinating Wimmera history is nearby Rupunyup too. The Murtoa Stick Shed (which you can see in the photo below) is an amazing survival of World War II grain surplus storage. I have written an earlier post about it too- which you can see here: https://historicalragbag.com/2022/08/15/ragbag-on-road-murtoa-stick-shed

The town of Rupanyup itself has its roots in agriculture. Settlers began to move into the area in the 1870s, taking advantage of the rich soil and flat plains to plant crops and run livestock. They also worked hard to fence what they saw as virgin territory as they laid claim to these new lands. It is worth pointing out again, that the lands were not in any way unoccupied. The settlers lived a remote existence, troubled by the lack of reliable water sources as well as the tyranny of distance. But eventually a town grew up, and Rupanyup remains very much an agricultural community today.

Sheep Hills

So we reach the silos featured in the video. Sheep Hills are GrainCorp Silos, which were built in 1938 and were painted in 2016 by Matt Adnate. Adnate wanted to illustrate the local First Nations young people and their connection to elders, community and country. He worked closely with the Wergaia and Wotobaluk communities and painted on the silo are Wergaia elder Uncle Ron Marks and Wotobaluk elder Aunty Regina Hood. The two children are Savannah Marks and Curtly McDonald.

The night sky represents elements of local dreaming and, overall, the silos tell the story of the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next.

Sheep Hills itself is a farming community. By 1900 there was a thriving town, with a contemporary map showing: a school, four churches, sale yards, cemetery, dressmaker and boot maker, banks, blacksmith, green grocers, hotels, timber yard, butchers and the creamery. It’s also adjacent to Sheep Hills Station which was bought by the McMillan brothers in 1855 and in 1860 George McMillan built a homestead which he called Kingungwell (a name he apparently derived from the ‘king’ of the local first nations people- Aungwill). The homestead was a lavish affair, so much so that many local people called McMillan mad for doing things like: building entirely from Oregen timber and installing cedar cupboards, and constructing a tower and a croquet lawn. The homestead was demolished after WWII. Today Sheep Hills is a much quieter affair- but you can see the mechanics’ institute below.

Brim

The silos that started it all. Guido Van Helten’s multigenerational depiction was completed in 2016. Van Helten wanted to highlight the generations, both male and female, who have farmed this land and will farm it into the future. By rendering the figures as not entirely substantial Van Helten wanted to explore the shifting ideas of community identity and the difficulties faced by rural communities, especially in the face of climate change. The final message really hit home for me, as I was travelling through the area in a time of unprecedented, unseasonable rain levels. The interest that this silo sparked, was the flame that lit the Silo Art Trail, drawing people from all over the world to the Wimmera and Mallee regions.

Van Helten specialises in the painting of everyday figures in forgotten places and won the Sir John Sulman prize from the Art Gallery of NSW in 2016 for his work in Brim.

Brim itself is a rural community- with deep roots in community organisation. With active local sport clubs and community groups. One of the interesting historical markers just up the road is the netting fence which was erected in 1885 to stop rabbits and dingoes overrunning agricultural land to the south. The fence stretched to the South Australian border and the marker can be seen below.

Rosebery

The Rosebery Silos were painted by artist Kaff-eine in 2017. The silos themselves are GrainCorp and date back to 1939. Before she started painting, Kaff-eine spent time with Rone at the Lascelles silos (coming up soon) and touring the local towns and getting to know the communities. Depicted in the art work is firstly- the sheer grit and determination of the young female farmers of the region as they face fire, flood and drought, symbolising the future and, secondly, the close friendship between a farmer and his horse- symbolising the connection between the humans and the animals of these regional communities.

Rosebery itself is named after Archibald Philip Primrose the 5th Earl of Rosebery who became Prime Minster of the UK in 1894. Settlers arrived in the area from the mid 1800s and by 1895 Rosebery had a school, butcher, churches, greengrocer, undertake, saddler, foundry, billiard room and a wine saloon. Today Rosebery is a much quieter town, but it is still the heart of a strong farming community.

Watchem

Watchem is one of the newest additions to the Silo Art Trail completed by Adnate and Jack Rowland in March 2022. The artwork depicts two renowned harness racers- Ian “Maca” McCallum and Graeme Lang. McCallum drove 16 winners in one program in Mildura in 1985, making him a local legend, and Lang was sport’s best from the late 1960s onwards and trained the legendary horse Scotch Notch. The silo is currently in the middle of the disused basketball court- but will be moved to the main street.

Watchem itself has a slightly ghostly presence. It’s quite clear that it was originally a much larger town. Along with the abandoned basketball court, there is an abandoned oval, school and train station, as well as a very impressive church (not abandoned).

Watchem has been the victim of the need for more land to make farming profitable which has reduced the number of people in these off the highway settlements. Also as the population has continued to age, the amount of people living in Watchem has continued to shrink. The situation is was not helped by the drought years, which saw Watchem Lake (which attracted campers) dry up. Watchem began as a community serving settlers setting up farms and livestock runs. No one really knows exactly where the name came from, it was thought that it might have been a First Nations word, but no link had been found.The first official mention was in 1864 when the Land Board instructed the Surveyor to “lay off a direct line to Watchem.” Today there is still a community at Watchem, one that is proud of its heritage and hopefully the Silo Art Trail can help being people back to the town.

Nullawil

Nullawil silo was painted in 2019 by the artist Smug. Smug painted the work over two weeks in difficult wet and windy conditions. Made especially hard by the fact he was working on a cherry picker (as did most of the artists). You can get a feel for what the conditions might have been like when you look at the carpark during my visit.

Smug’s work depicts a farmer and his faithful kelpie. The work doesn’t depict a specific person, rather an amalgam- standing in for farmers across the region and their connection to their animals and the land.

The silos themselves were built in early 1940s and remain operational today along with the railway line which runs up to them.

Nullawill itself began as pastoral leases in 1849, the town now stands on what was the junction of the Knighton and Lansdowne runs. It was later divided into lots of 500-600 acres and they were leased for 2 pounds a year in 1891. The town grew out of the settlers moving to the areas to take up these leases. It was proclaimed a township in 1898 and you can see its immaculately kept central part below.

Sea Lake

Sea Lake’s silos were painted by Travis Vinson and Joel Fergie in 2019. The artwork is entitled ‘The Space In Between’ and tells the story of a young girl swinging from a eucalyptus over Lake Tyrell. They also link to the First Nations knowledge of astronomy, that has been recorded in detail in this area. Lake Tyrell is a special spot for astronomy and stargazing due to the lack of light pollution from nearby towns and the completely clear access to the sky (when there aren’t any clouds-which there were the night I was there). The art work also pays homage in colour to the vibrant sunrises and sunsets the region is known for.

The town of Sea Lake takes its name from its proximity to Lake Tyrell. Lake Tyrell’s name comes from the First Nations word ‘direl’ meaning sky. And sky is what you get. Lake Tyrell is the largest inland salt lake in Victoria- covering an insane 20, 800 hectares. It has been used for commercial salt production since the 1800s and is still today (though much more sustainably). The lake itself is thought to be the remains of when the seas rose many thousands of years ago and flooded what is now the Murray-Darling basin. When they retreated, Lake Tyrell was left behind. The lake is known for its reflective surface, mirroring the sky back up. When I visited it was very full of water and windy, so while I was able to appreciate the vastness and its beauty, especially with how much of the sky you can see unobstructed by land, I didn’t see the mirror affect.

Sea Lake was formed both from use of Lake Tyrell, but also from Tyrell Station which ‘taken up’ in 1847 by W.E Standbridge. It remains an agricultural community, with close ties to the lake.

Woomelang

I’m going to depart a little from my format so far for this section, because Woomelang does not have one large silo painted. They elected to have eight grain bins painted by different artists instead, creating their own little silo art trail, within the Silo Art Trail. So i’m going to go through each grain bin individually. They all reflect some of the local wildlife and were painted in 2020.

This bin was painted by Bryan Itch and depicts the pygmy possum. Pygmy possums are tree dwelling marsupials, who are nocturnal and so small they are very hard to spot. The main threat, even above introduced predators, is land clearance for agriculture. Itch says he chose the pygmy possum because he loves painting the hidden beauty of small things.

This bin was painted by Andrew J Bourke and depicts Rosenberg’s heath monitor, a terrestrial predator who lay their eggs in termite mounds and eat carrion, small birds, eggs, small reptiles and insects. Like the pygmy possum their main threat is land clearance. Bourke chose the heath monitor because they are inquisitive, confident and extremely intelligent.

This bin depicts the western whipbird and was painted by Chuck Mayfield. The whipbird, has a distinctive call like a squeaking gate- they have sadly been almost wiped out from the Mallee. Mayfield painted the whipbird to give it a bigger stage as so few people will have seen one in real life.

This bin depicts the spotted-tailed quoll and was painted by Kaff-eine who also did the Rosebery Silo. The spotted-tailed quoll is a mostly nocturnal predator who mainly hunts medium marsupials. Like the other animals so far, they are at great risk from habitat fragmentation. Kaff-eine chose the spotted-tailed quoll because she wanted to paint it with humans to illustrate the both the playful nature of the quolls but also the important human role in protecting the quolls.

This bin depicts the malleefowl. A uniquely Mallee bird, which is a ground-dwelling, shy, and seldom seen bird which mates for life. Artist, Mike Makatron, wanted to depict the life cycles of the malleefowl.

This bin depicts the lined earless dragon, a small mottled lizard who communicates with head nods and pushups. The dragon was painted by artist Goodie, who chose it because she has always loved reptiles, especially painting their scaled texture and she thought the dragon would sit well on the bin.

This bin depicts the Mallee emu wren, a diminutive bird native to the Mallee. It was painted by Jimmy Dvate.

This bin depicts both the Major Mitchell’s cockatoo and the south-eastern long eared bat. The cockatoo was painted by Bryan Itch and the bat by Chuck Mayfield. Major Mitchell’s cockatoo is an iconic Australian bird, now in decline (again largely due to habitat destruction). Itch jumped at the chance to paint it, to capture its feathers emblematic of the dusky Australian sunset. The bat is a micro-bat active at night, hunting with echo-location and roosting during the day in crevices and under tree bark. Mayfield wanted to paint the bat on such a large scale as they are so elusive to find.

So that’s Woomelang’s silos- the town itself? The earliest map dates to 1899 and by this time the town had a railway line, a hotel, a store, churches, and a school was being built. Today it remains a mid sized rural town.

Lascelles

Lascelles was painted in 2017 by Rone- who I have written about briefly in my look at his transformation of the Flinders Street Ballroom in 2022. You can read that here:

https://historicalragbag.com/2022/11/28/flinders-street-ballroom-part-2/

The GrainCorp silos at Lascelles were built in 1939. Rone worked specifically with the colours of the silos themselves to make it look like the figures are emerging from the concrete. Depicted are Geoff and Merrilyn Horman who are part of a farming family who have farmed the land for four generations.

Lascelles was originally called Minapre but the name was changed to honour of EH Lascelles of Messers Dennys, Lascelles, Austin and Co. from Geelong, who were seen as a mainstay of the local community. In 1911 an article called “the Progress of Lascelles” highlighted the town’s rifle club, theatre club, hotels, station, school, churches, banks, races, stores, sale yards, livery stables and coffee palace. Like most of the other Mallee towns discussed it rose to support the local farms and community.

Patchewollock

Painted in 2016 by Brisbane artist Fintan Magee- the 1939 GrainCorp silos show local man, and grain farmer, Nick “Noodle” Hulland. Magee lived at the local pub while painting and chose Hullund because he typified the no-nonsense hard working farmers and spirit of the region. He also had the tall and lanky build to fit well on the 35m high silos. As he squints into the distance, he is looking at the challenges of the life of a Mallee-Wimmera farmer.

Patchewollock itself was one of the, comparatively, later subdivisions of the Mallee lands. In 1910 the first areas of the Patchewollock district were made available for selection. A total of 55 blocks were on offer and the cost of water supply and clearing roads was added to the cost of the blocks. There were 240 applicants for the 55 blocks who had to go before a land board and explain why they thought they were eligible to be selected.

The name comes from two First Nations words putje meaning plenty and wallah meaning porcupine grass. So that gives you an idea of the landscape the first selectors were seeing.

Albacutya

Albacutya is one of the newest additions to the Silo Art Trail. It was painted by Kitt Bennett in 2021. He wanted to tell a story of growing up in the country. The boy depicted is the son of the owner of the silos and the woman is yabbying, a common pastime in Bennett’s own country childhood. The vibrant colour is partly in homage to the nearby town of Rainbow. Albacutya silos themselves are very remote, you can see the view opposite in the image below.

But the community of Rainbow is about twelve km away and it was this community that Bennett took his inspiration from. Rainbow itself is vibrant agricultural hub. The name comes from the hill that was covered in colourful wildflowers in springtime. It was originally called Rainbow Rise, but when the town was surveyed in 1900 it was shortened to Rainbow. You can see it in the photos below.

The name Albacutya comes from the nearby Lake Albacutya- which is one of Victoria’s largest ephemera lakes.

Arkona

Arkona is very newly finished- hence the awkward photo because it is on the edge of the highway on the edge of Dimboola with no signs or parking. It has been painted by Smug and is a photo-realistic portrait of local legend Roy Klinge who died in 1991. You can see Dimboola Court House- home of the Dimboola Historical Society in the photo below.

Goroke

Finished in 2020 the Goroke GrainCorp silos were painted by Geoffrey Carran. The word goroke means magpie in local First Nations language- so it was a natural choice for the artwork. He worked closely with the local community to decide what else to include and settled on the the kookaburra and galah- in front of a typcial West Wimmera landscape.

Goroke is the gateway to the Little Desert National Park. The first official selector arrived in the area in November 1874 with the lease of Allotment 1 of the Parish of Goroke for 192 acres. The town sprang from this. The rail line extension in the 1890s greatly helping its foundation. Today you can see the remains of Goroke’s 19th and 20th century heritage throughout the town.

Kaniva

We have reached the end of the trail. Kaniva is only a short distance from the South Australian border. The GrainCorp Silos were painted by David Lee Pereira in 2020. The Australian hobby bird (a type of falcon) and the plains sun orchid and the pink sun orchid (which generally only open on humid days) shine as examples of the desert flora and fauna surrounding Kaniva.

Kaniva itself is a border town, and that is the key origin of its foundation. Today as well as the silos it is home to an amazing sheep art trail, which encompasses sheep painted by the local community organisations. You can see them below.

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And that brings me to the end of the Silo Art Trail. I hope you have enjoyed the journey along they way. And stayed tuned for future additions of Ragbag on Road.

I write this blog for free- but it isn’t free to run. If you are able to, I’d really appreciate it if you can make a small donation below to its upkeep.