Jennifer Emmins
WANDONG, Heathcote Junction and Clonbinane are poised to take their rightful places in the history of Victoria’s development with the launch of a new book later this month.
The first book to be published that is solely focussed on the history of the areas, “Ghosts, Gold And A White Elephant” will be launched at the Australiana Restaurant on Sunday, March 27 at 3pm.
Member for McEwen, Rob Mitchell, who provided a foreword for the book will officially launch the book.
“The district is steeped in history but very little has been done to document this in a formal and publicly accessible way, so action was needed before much of the current living memory was lost,” Mr Mitchell said.
Mitchell Shire councillor Sue Marstaeller, who moved to Wandong in 1989, had begun gathering information, interviewing long-time residents and compiling foundation records of local history.
This prompted the Wandong-Heathcote Junction Community Group to take up the task.
It successfully applied for a State Government grant to produce the book, and in October 2007, a committee was formed, consisting of Maurice Scanlon, Kath Christensen, Allan Ryan, Di Vidal, Gwen McIntosh, Heather Flannery, Irene Bartlett, Glenda Curr, Lynne Dore, Allen Hall and Cr Marstaeller.
Author Ron Pickett was born at The Kilmore and District Hospital and is a former resident of Wandong. Although he left at 16, he still has family who have remained in the town all their lives.
His father was the station master at Wandong for 26 years and was fondly remembered last week by long-time resident and book committee member, Gwen McIntosh, as a kind man “who used to let us kids go into the station and warm ourselves by the fire”.
Mr Pickett has spent the past two and half years researching and collating information which meant about “two days a week for most of the two and half years at the State Library.
“When I wasn’t there I was at the Public Records Office,” he told The Review last week.
“There were lots of challenges. Some days I could spend a whole day and not find a single sentence but then the next day it would be just ten minutes and I’d find a gold nugget.”
Mr Pickett used archive material from The Free Press going back to 1846, and the Knowledge Resource Centre which generously allowed him to photograph an original 1898 photo album that had been presented by Robert Affleck Robertson who captured works at the Wandong Timber Company.
Timber was a vital industry, supplying the district and greater Melbourne and at one point, the town hosted one of the biggest timber supply industries in Australia.
But there are other less well known industries such as the terracotta brick industry.
Mr Pickett chronicles the quirkier side of the area’s history, such as the bridge that couldn’t be used as it was too high and too frightening for horses to cross.
He describes the area’s people and their activities as “lively”.
“There were some real wheelers and dealers around here,” he said.
“I discovered from the pages of the Kilmore Advertiser a bit after 1900 that an entrepreneur started the Australian Oilstone Company.
“They were going to explore the quarry at Heathcote Junction – they didn’t even know where it was going to go but people were willing to put their money into it. Shares were sold, it was all going ahead.
“But then I couldn’t find what happened to it.
“That could be a whole book in itself.”
Mr Pickett said in many ways, the book raised more questions than it answered.
“There was a murder in Wandong in 1871 and a man was convicted and sentenced but we don’t know who he was and what happened to him,” he said.
“Was he hanged?”
“We do know that it was a woman who was killed and she was found by Dry Creek over there.”
Residents such as Mrs McIntosh are excited that the book is finally ready to go and are hoping local residents - young and old, new and longer term and those now living elsewhere - will join the launch and take the opportunity to learn about the area’s fascinating past.
“I just can’t wait to have it in my hands,” Mrs McIntosh said.
