Donald is a town in
Victoria,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
, located on the
Richardson River, at the junction of
Sunraysia Highway and
Borung Highway, in the
Shire of Buloke. At the , it had a population of 1,472.
History
The town is named after William Donald, a Scottish pastoralist who was the first settler in the area in 1844. At the , Donald had a population of 1,472.
The earliest township was known as Richardson Bridge until surveyed as Donald in 1866. The Donald Post Office opened on 1 August 1870
replacing that of nearby Mount Jeffcott which had operated since 1860.
The town grew steadily boosted by the
closer settlement of the surrounding countryside and the arrival of the railway in 1882.
Sir Albert Dunstan, Premier of Victoria 1935-43, was born in Donald in July 1882.
On 26 September 2006, Donald was the scene of the Borung Highway collision in which seven people died.
Donald is occasionally affected by floods. Major floods have occurred in
August 1909, 1918, 1956, 1975, 1992 and January 2011. The area also suffered a major drought period in
the 1990s and 2000s, significantly impacting the community which primarily relies on crop farming to survive.
Traditional ownership
The formally recognised
traditional owners
Native title is the set of rights, recognised by Australian law, held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups or individuals to land that derive from their maintenance of their traditional laws and customs. These Aboriginal title rig ...
for the area in which Donald sits are the
Wotjobaluk,
Jaadwa,
Jadawadjali,
Wergaia
The Wergaia or Werrigia people are an Aboriginal Australian group in the Mallee (Victoria), Mallee and Wimmera regions of north-Western Victoria (Australia), Victoria, made up of a number of clans. The people were also known as the Maligundidj ( ...
and
Jupagik nations.
These nations are represented by the
Barengi Gadjin Land Council Aboriginal Corporation.
Demographics
As of the 2021
census
A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...
, 1,472 people resided in Donald. The
median
The median of a set of numbers is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a Sample (statistics), data sample, a statistical population, population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as the “ ...
age of persons in Donald was 52 years.
Children aged 0–14 years made up 15.7% of the population.
People over the age of 65 years made up 31.7% of the population
There were slightly more females than males with 50.5% of the population female and 49.5% male.
The average household size is 2.1 persons per household.
The average number of children per family for families with children is 1.9.
82.3% of people were born in Australia.
Of all persons living in Donald, 2.5% (37 persons) were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people.
This is higher than for the state of Victoria (1.0%) but lower than the national average (3.2%).
The most common ancestries in Donald were English 43.1%, Australian 39.8%, Scottish 13.2%, Irish 13.2% and German 3.6%.
87.1% of people spoke only English at home.
The most common responses in the census for religion were No Religion 38.9%, Catholic 18.1%, Uniting Church 14.6%, and Anglican 8.9%.
Sports and activities
Donald has a local newspaper called the ''Buloke Times'' which is published each Tuesday and Friday, focusing on local events in the Buloke area, with an emphasis on sporting achievements.
The town hosts a 3-day
lawn tennis
Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...
championship on
Labour Day
Labour Day is an annual day of celebration of the labour movement and its labor rights, achievements. It has its origins in the trade union, labour union movement, specifically the Eight-hour day movement, eight-hour day movement, which advoca ...
weekend. It has an annual show on the Friday and Saturday of the 2nd week of October, and hosts Off Road Racing Australia's annual event the Donald 500 in April.
Donald has a
field hockey
Field hockey (or simply referred to as hockey in some countries where ice hockey is not popular) is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with 11 players in total, made up of 10 field players and a goalk ...
club, an
Australian Rules Football
Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an Australian rules football playing field, oval field, often a modified ...
club called the Donald Royal Blues and a
netball
Netball is a ball sport played on a rectangular court by two teams of seven players. The primary objective is to shoot a ball through the defender's goal ring while preventing the opposing team from shooting through their own. It is one of a ...
club named the Donald Netball Club, all competing in the
North Central Football League, the region's major sports league. The
horse racing club, the Wimmera Racing Club, schedules around six race meetings a year at Donald including the Donald Cup meeting in November.
Golfers play at the Donald Golf Club on Golf Links Road.
Attractions
The township successfully bid at auction to purchase a metal sculpture of the
Nassau Grouper
The Nassau grouper (''Epinephelus striatus'') is one of the large number of perciform fishes in the family Serranidae commonly referred to as groupers. It is the most important of the groupers for commercial fishery in the West Indies, but h ...
fish, which was used during the 2006 Melbourne
Commonwealth Games
The Commonwealth Games is a quadrennial international multi-sport event among athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations, which consists mostly, but not exclusively, of territories of the former British Empire. The event was first held in 1930 ...
to represent the country of
Belize
Belize is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a maritime boundary with Honduras to the southeast. P ...
.
The Bullock's Head is a tree with a growth on it in the shape of a head of a bullock, signposted from the Sunraysia Highway. Though this was badly damaged in a storm, with the top of the tree falling down, it was re-erected using a metal pole and concrete. When the Richardson River floods, the water level has been known to almost reach the Bullock's mouth.
Waterskiing and camping facilities are available at the nearby
Lake Batyo Catyo.
Transport
The
Mildura railway line
The Mildura railway line is a heavy rail line in northwestern Victoria, Australia. The line runs from Yelta station to Ballarat station via the settlements of Mildura, Ouyen and Maryborough in an approximate south-southeasterly direction ...
passes through Donald, but only freight services run on it.
Donald railway station was closed in 1993, one hundred years after it opened.
Buses run through Donald daily from major centres such as Ballarat and Melbourne.
Climate
Donald has a
semi-arid climate
A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of se ...
(''BSk'') with hot dry summers and cool winters, with most of the rain falling in winter and early spring. The town features 82.6 clear days annually.
References
External links
{{authority control
Towns in Victoria (state)
Wimmera