Kilmore

History

The traditional owners of Kilmore and the Kilmore Plains are the Taungurung people, a part of the Kulin nation that inhabited a large portion of central Victoria including Port Phillip Bay and its surrounds. The Tommy McRae artwork held by the National Gallery of Australia depicts the "Kilmore Tribe Holding Corroboree", and a child pioneer of Kilmore, James Hamilton, describes in detail just such a corroboree at Kilmore in 1845. In 1866, a Taungurung elder, Lanky, reported to the Kilmore Free Press that the native name of Kilmore was Mulmialinuck. Kilmore was discovered for European use by the famous Overlander and explorer of the Port Phillip District (later Victoria) and South Australia Charles Bonney on about 21 March 1837, at which time he also blazed the track of the Sydney Road to Melbourne. His track formed the main highway between the capital cities for 139 years. Kilmore was settled by Bonney on about 17 June 1837 as a sheep station and he built Bonney's Outstation on the townsite itself. Kilmore would have had its first European building within a couple of days of Bonney's arrival. Bonney's sheep station was unique because the Kilmore Plains on which it was established were permanently watered by three spring-fed creeks and were highly fertile. Thus they were suited for both grazing and high population small acreage farming. After Bonney left, the station was held successively by Dr Richard Julian Hamlyn, then the partners Frederick Armand Powlett and John Green. The most productive part of the property was purchased by William Rutledge on 12 April 1841 in a Special Survey of and was progressively leased or subdivided into small holdings for intensive agriculture whereupon it became the agricultural powerhouse of inland Victoria. Rutledge named Kilmore…