Villa Parma, Daylesford, 1864
Indigenous Australians were the first to settle in Hepburn Springs and Daylesford (pop c3600) area of Victoria, particularly the Dja Dja Wurrung tribes. Pastoralists didn’t occupied the area, 110km from central Melbourne, until white settlement arrived in 1838. The biggest change came when alluvial gold was discovered in Dec 1851 and prospectors arrived. The alluvial gold had run out by the late 1850s so a new camp, with many Chinese diggers, was established at Breakneck Gorge.
Hepburn Springs was named after Captain John Hepburn who travelled from Sydney to Port Phillip in 1836-37. He was so impressed with the countryside that he took up land in Smeaton, in 1838. Although the towns are 3 ks apart, I will deal with the two together.
Daylesford & District Historical Society’s Museum
in the old School of Mines building, 1890
With gold, Daylesford and Hepburn Springs were quickly established. Fortune seekers from around the world converged upon the golden triangle of Victoria, including many Italian-speaking Swiss from the Ticino region. As a result, today many of the region’s historic buildings were influenced by Swiss-Italian architecture and garden design.
In the goldrushes, men found rich supplies of effervescent mineral water, 80% of all Victoria's springs. The area thus became a fashionable spa resort during the post-gold era. In 1859 Daylesford became a municipality.
The courthouse was built in the 1860s. The post office was built in c1860 with an Italianate design and majestic clock tower. The Convent was built in the 1860s for a private residence, then purchased by the Catholic Church and more recently has been transformed into the Convent Gallery. The primary school was built in 1874.
Lake Daylesford
paddle boats outside Lakehouse Cafe
In 1880 a railway line and station arrived. The railway meant that visitor-accommodation had to grow rapidly: guest houses, luxury hotels with orchestras and formal dinners, ballrooms and pavilions went up. Both towns had fine old guest houses which were of late Victorian architectural quality. Their heyday lasted until the early 1960s, the era when my grandparents stayed every winter (at Peppers Mineral Springs Hotel).
The Daylesford Town Hall was built in 1882 by George Johnson, an architect who emigrated to Australia in the mid 1860s. His designs were classical and majestic, and many are still standing today including the Town Halls at Kilmore and Maryborough.
The search for gold largely ended by the 1870s, just as people started loving the therapeutic properties of natural mineral springs. It was the start of the region’s reputation as a centre for rest and health care. City people caught the steam train to town, staying in the guesthouses dotted amongst the hills.
Hepburn Bathhouse was first built in 1895, although it has been improved since, including a $13 million upgrade in 2008. There is also a boutique Mineral Spa at Peppers Mineral Springs Hotel, and six other massage-and-spa services in the town. Outside the Hepburn Bathhouse there is a sculpture called Memory of Place by Petrus Spronk, 2005.
Mineral water was groundwater which naturally contained carbon dioxide and other soluble matters in sufficient concentration to cause effervescence. When the water-table was pushed to the surface due to the natural faults of the aquifer, naturally bubbly springs appeared. The water was on a quality par with that found in Europe’s most venerated mineral spas.
The Hepburn Mineral Springs Reserve was established in 1865. It is a delightful 30 ha reserve which included the Soda, Locarno, Sulphur and other hand pumps. Continuous-flow pipes allowed visitors to bottle or drink the water freely. Each pump had a detailed sign with information about the specific spring. After the closure of the North Frenchman's Reef Mines, spring water appeared at a new lower eye in the creek.
The Bathhouse & Spa was located in the Hepburn Mineral Springs Reserve. Built in 1895 it offered the traditional shared experience of a communal bath house. And it had a mineral Relaxation Pool and Spa Pool which provided waters that rehydrated the body, and other therapies.
The Convent Gallery, Daylesford, built originally in the 1860s
then became a boarding school
renovated in 1989 as an art gallery
Daylesford & Hepburn Mineral Springs Co. crafted a range of drinks with pure flavours & ingredients: top waters, organics, naturals and mixers. In the late C19th, the mineral water in the region was the main source of refreshment. Many small towns created their own cordial factories with bottling plants at the spring site. All of the early glass bottles were blown by hand, and then became more sophisticated with the addition of cork or marble stoppers.
The Old Macaroni Factory in Main St was a large hand-made brick structure, erected in 1859 by Italian immigrants Pietro and Giacomo Lucini. It too reflected the architectural traditions of Northern Italy. The facade was plastered and undecorated, although the ceilings of the wings featured hand-painted decorations added by the Lucinis. The factory is now a cafe-restaurant run by the Lucinis’ descendants.
Fabrizzio Crippa emigrated in 1855 from Lombardy. He moved to Hepburn Springs, worked as a butcher and a wine producer, and became part of the district's Swiss Italian population. In 1864 he built the Villa Parma, a two-storey brick and bluestone building with a distinctive dark stone trim, on the Castlemaine coach road. The gardens comprised vines, fruit trees and tobacco plants. It was from his vine-yard of 15,000 vines and the cellar with a deep well at Parma House that Fabrizzo Crippa produced his award-winning wine, Parma House Red.
Hepburn Mineral Springs Reserve
Bellinzona Hepburn
destroyed by fire and rebuilt
In 1906 a bushfire did enormous damage to Hepburn and destroyed many buildings. Greatest damage was done to Bellinzona Grange Country Retreat, originally built in the 1860s over a sprawling colonial design, which was burned to the ground. It had to be re-built at the height of the mineral springs boom, this time more Edwardian.
The first cinema was built in 1914 in Alpha Hall Galleria, now Clayfire Gallery. Hepburn Springs’ heritage-listed Palais Venue was built in 1926. It didn’t help. People stopped coming during and after the Great Depression and in WW2.
In the 1970s a new push for a more healthy, alternative lifestyle again created interest in the region. The School of Mines building, built in 1890, became the Daylesford & District Historical Society’s Museum in 1971. It houses local memorabilia, artefacts and extensive archival resources.
16 comments:
Boa noite minha querida amiga Hels, parabéns pelas fotos e excelente matéria. Bom mês de maio.
It is a very nice part of our state but gosh it can get busy. My paternal grandmother's family came from Tichino where they had lived a subsistent lifestyle. It would have been in the time of the gold rush. I hadn't taken much notice of buildings in the area, so thank you for the information about a few of them.
Imagine living thereafter the goldrush. It must have attracted numerous people to its spas. Lots of interesting buildings to see today. A very informative post as usual.
Hel
Do you remember Roller's, just near Daylesford. My parents loved the kosher dining room, the walking and their social life.
Luiz
even when the gold rush ended, the buildings and gardens continued to be beautifully built. And because the area is only 113 ks away from Melbourne, it was/is easy for families to pop in on a Friday after work.
Andrew
I am very pleased to hear your grandmother's family came from Ticino.. architecturally speaking, that makes her origins very tasteful, if not necessarily aristocratic :) The gold rush made a huge and very visible difference in cities like Ballarat and Bendigo, but we don't often think of the smaller, slightly distant towns where moneyed families could buy land.
Fun60
The trick to discovering and enjoying post-gold rush towns is that
1. the original, elegant buildings have been protected;
2. there are plenty of guest houses, restaurants and pubs that don't need to be exotic;
3. the rural elements are easily enjoyed eg lakes, forests, public gardens; and
4. there is some unique element to attract tourists eg mineral spas.
Deb
I remember hearing about Roller's all the time at school, yes.
Now have a look at My Sack Full of Memories, written by Zwi Lewin, a young lad who arrived in Australia in 1949 and moved with his mum to Rollers :) She was the kosher chef who made Rollers very special.
Hi Hels - it's fascinating reading about how towns developed ... the title 'My Sackful of Memories' sounds full of amazing information. Interesting how things developed in the last 250 years or so ... all the best - Hilary
Hilary
The first expedition into Victoria was in 1830, arousing interest in settlement there. And the first permanent settlers soon arrived in 1834. And as we found in the post, Captain John Hepburn travelled from Sydney into Victoria in 1836-37 and bought land in 1838. Settlement in the southern state was clearly very rapid - I am assuming because the climate and soil were better, and because convicts were banned from Victoria!
Hello Hels, While I would appreciate the history, old architecture and art galleries of such places, if I were in an old gold-mining region, that is what I would be most interested in. I would want to find some gold direct from nature, even if only a little bit.
--Jim
Parnassus
Absolutely you can still find gold in Central Victoria.. individual people still search today.
You must obtain a miner's permit, but otherwise the requirements are not onerous.
https://www.goldfieldsguide.com.au/blog/22/gold-prospecting-in-the-victorian-goldfields
Who knows what you might find? :)
Lovely post. About 20 years ago we fell in love with Daylesford, stopping on our long drives between Sydney & Adelaide, and got all misty-eyed about buying a place. Common sense prevailed as it is way too cold for us coastal softies! It was, though, hard to resist being the owner of something within the adorably named Parish of Wombat!
Pipistrello
it is easy to fall in love with Daylesford and surrounds, and the older we become, the more relaxed and attractive life there looks. But I too am a big city girl, so the compromise was always going to be to rent a summer holiday home. Ahhh the massages, lakeside coffee and wine!!
Thanks for the wombat reference which I didn't know about. The National Library says "Victoria has Mt Wombat between Euroa and Strathbogie, and the Wombat Spur in the Great Dividing Range. Wombat Hill is in the Parish of Wombat, not far from the Wombat State Forest near Daylesford, which before 1854 was itself called Wombat. No fewer than nine Wombat Creeks flow in Victoria"
Do you think there might be a few wombats in them thar hills? :)
Pipistrello
There are certainly native animals wandering around. My spouse was playing on the Hepburn Springs Golfcourse when a group of kangaroos strolled onto one of the greens. The men weren't allowed to ruin the kangaroos' social life by shooing them away :)
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