Penshurst is a town in
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
,
Australia. It is in the
Shire of Southern Grampians
The Shire of Southern Grampians is a local government area (LGA) in the Barwon South West region of Victoria, Australia, located in the south-western part of the state. It covers an area of and in June 2018 had a population of 16,135. It incl ...
local government area and is located at the foot of Mount Rouse, an extinct
volcano
A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.
On Ear ...
. At the , Penshurst had a population of 461.
Basic facilities include a hospital with an aged care residency and
doctor's surgery
A doctor's office in American English, a doctor's surgery in British English, or a doctor's practice, is a medical facility in which one or more medical doctors, usually general practitioners (GP), receive and treat patients.
Description
Doc ...
, a
pub
A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...
, a hall and two schools – one a
State school, the other a
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
school – the State school has 10 students(2020), the Catholic school 26.
History
Kolorer gunditj people
Before British colonisation, the area around Mount Rouse was the country of the Kolorer gunditj clan of
Aboriginal people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
. Their title is derived from their name for Mount Rouse which was Kolor. The permanent spring that is now located within the Penshurst Botanic Gardens was a traditional meeting place for Aborigines in the region.
Arrival of the British
Major Thomas Mitchell travelled through the area in 1836, naming Mount Rouse. In late 1839 John Cox, who was a grandson of
New South Wales Corps
The New South Wales Corps (sometimes called The Rum Corps) was formed in England in 1789 as a permanent regiment of the British Army to relieve the New South Wales Marine Corps, who had accompanied the First Fleet to Australia, in fortifying th ...
officer
William Cox, arrived in the region and established a
sheep station
A sheep station is a large property ( station, the equivalent of a ranch) in Australia or New Zealand, whose main activity is the raising of sheep for their wool and/or meat. In Australia, sheep stations are usually in the south-east or sout ...
which he called Mount Rouse station. Conflict with the Aboriginal population soon followed and in May 1840 a manager at the property named Patrick Codd who had a significant history of violence against Aborigines, was killed. Revenge killings by the colonists resulted in up to twenty Aborigines being shot. A local Indigenous man named Figara Alkapurata (or Roger) was later arrested for Codd's murder and executed in Melbourne.
Mount Rouse Aboriginal Protectorate
In early 1842, the colonial government decided to create a reserve for Aboriginal people at Mount Rouse. John Cox was ordered off the land, moving to the neighbouring Weerangourt property. In February 1842, around 210 Aborigines from various tribal groups in the region arrived at Mount Rouse accompanied by Assistant Protector
Charles Sievwright
Charles Wightman Sievwright (31 March 1800 – 10 September 1855) was a British army officer before being appointed Assistant Protector of Aborigines in part of the Port Phillip District of the colony of New South Wales, now Victoria, Australia. ...
. The main buildings of the Protectorate were located at what is now the corner of Cox and Martin streets in Penshurst.
In his role Sievwright attempted to safeguard the Aborigines assigned to him by reporting the massacres conducted by nearby settlers and by providing rations and shelter. However, these actions infuriated the local colonists who demanded the government replace him, and in September 1842 Dr John Watton was appointed to manage the protectorate.
During this time, the
Native Police
Australian native police units, consisting of Aboriginal troopers under the command (usually) of at least one white officer, existed in various forms in all Australian mainland colonies during the nineteenth and, in some cases, into the twentie ...
were forcibly rounding up Aboriginal people throughout the
Western District and ordering them to go to Mount Rouse or be shot. The reserve however was consistently underfunded and could not provide for the needs of hundreds of people. Therefore, few Aboriginal people remained for any great length of time at Mount Rouse. The reserve was also blamed for providing shelter to Aboriginal people who took livestock and speared shepherds at the surrounding sheep stations. These issues chronically interfered with the operation of the protectorate, and in 1849 Dr Watton resigned from his position. A year later the Aboriginal Protectorate was officially closed down and divided up into two grazing properties with a reserve for a township which became the settlement of Penshurst.
Township of Penshurst
The town of Penshurst was gazetted in the 1850s, the Post Office opening on 1 September 1857.
In 1852 German Lutherans led by
Johann Friedrich Krummnow
Johann Friedrich Krummnow (or Krumnow) (1811 – 3 October 1880) was a German-born settler in Australia. He arrived in South Australia in 1839 and in 1852 he founded a community named Herrnhut located near Penshurst in western Victoria. Thi ...
founded a community named Herrnhut located near Mount Rouse about 8 km from Penshurst – the group adhered to the principles of shared property and fervent prayer. Krummnow died there in 1880 and the community had disbanded by 1890.
The Penshurst Magistrates' Court closed on 1 November 1981, not having been visited by a Magistrate since 1971.
The Penshurst Volcanoes Discovery Centre
[Penshurst Volcanoes Discovery Centr]
website
/ref> is an interpretive centre and tourist information centre located in Martin Street in the old Shire of Mount Rouse
The Shire of Mount Rouse was a Local government in Australia, local government area about west of Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. The shire covered an area of , and existed from 1860 until 1994.
Histo ...
offices. It contains an audio/visual display of volcanoes in general, and the eruptions and lava flows of the district in particular.
Geography
Penshurst is located in an area littered with basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...
stones up 2m long from the Mount Rouse volcano. These are known locally as the stony rises, the technical name being "breached barriers", having been formed from collapsed lava tubes. Features similar to the stony rises may be observed in other areas of south-west Victoria where there is a history of volcanic activity.
Mount Rouse rises 100m above the surrounding plain (367m above sea level) and is composed of both basaltic lava and scoria. It has several craters, the lower of which is a crater lake. The north east side of Mount Rouse is used as a quarry and crushed for road making scoria
Scoria is a pyroclastic, highly vesicular, dark-colored volcanic rock that was ejected from a volcano as a molten blob and cooled in the air to form discrete grains or clasts.Neuendorf, K.K.E., J.P. Mehl, Jr., and J.A. Jackson, eds. (2005) '' ...
.
There were instances in the 1970s where bushfires
A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identif ...
triggered peat fires beneath the stony rises which burnt for a number on months. A fire watch building is located at the top of Mount Rouse.
Penshurst is serviced by a fresh water spring located in the town.
Sport
The town has an Australian Rules football team named the Penshurst Bombers, competing in the Mininera & District Football League.
Penshurst has a horse racing club, the Penshurst & District Racing Club, which schedules one race meeting a year, the Penshurst Cup meeting on Boxing Day (26 December).
The racecourse is located about 1 km north of Bell Street (the Main Street).
Golfers used to play at the course of the Penshurst Golf Club on Racecourse Road. The club disbanded in 2002, just two years short of its centenary. The golf course no longer exists.
References
External links
{{authority control
Towns in Victoria (Australia)
Western District (Victoria)