Yea ( ) 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
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
north-east of the state capital
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
at the junction of the
Goulburn Valley Highway
Goulburn Valley Highway is a highway located in Victoria, Australia. The section north of the Hume Freeway is part of the Melbourne to Brisbane National Highway (together with Hume Freeway) and is the main link between these two cities as well a ...
and the
Melba Highway
Melba Highway connects the outer eastern suburb of Coldstream, near Lilydale, and the town of Yea, in Victoria's Upper Goulburn on the Goulburn Valley Highway. The road is named after Dame Nellie Melba, a famed Australian opera singer of the ...
, in the
Shire of Murrindindi
The Shire of Murrindindi is a local government area in the Hume region of Victoria, Australia, located in the north-east part of the state. It covers an area of and, in June 2018, had a population of 14,478. It includes the towns of Alexandra, ...
local government area. In an area originally inhabited by the
Taungurung people
The Taungurung people, also spelt ''Daung Wurrung'', are an Aboriginal people who are one of the Kulin nations in present-day Victoria, Australia. They consist of nine clans whose traditional language is the Taungurung language.
Their Country ...
, it was first visited by Europeans of the
Hume and Hovell expedition
The Hume and Hovell expedition was a journey of exploration undertaken in eastern Australia. In 1824 the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane, commissioned Hamilton Hume and former Royal Navy Captain William Hovell to lead an expe ...
in 1824, and within 15 years most of the land in the area had been taken up by graziers. Surveyed in 1855, the township grew as a service centre for grazing, gold-mining and timber-getting in the area.
The town has had a fairly stable population (around 1,100) since 1900, though it now has a relatively old population. The town economy is based around servicing the farming sector, and tourism, with good road links but little public transport. The town has education supplied by three schools (state primary and high schools, and a Catholic primary). It has three churches, and active sporting clubs.
Heritage sites around the town include the railway station buildings, Purcell's General Store (run by the same family for approximately 100 years), and the nearby
Yea Flora Fossil Site
The Yea Flora Fossil Site is a roadside cutting on Limestone Road, Yea, Victoria, Australia. It contains fossils of genus Baragwanathia, some of the world's earliest vascular plants dating back to the begin of the Devonian period, 415 million y ...
, where the most ancient leafy foliage so far found on earth was discovered.
History
![Yea township vertical panorama](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Yea_township_vertical_panorama._Jan_2020.jpg)
The area was historically inhabited by the
Taungurung people
The Taungurung people, also spelt ''Daung Wurrung'', are an Aboriginal people who are one of the Kulin nations in present-day Victoria, Australia. They consist of nine clans whose traditional language is the Taungurung language.
Their Country ...
. They knew the Yea River as ''Caluther'',
and the Goulburn River as ''Warring''.
Shortly after the time of white settlement their numbers in the area were estimated at 500-600, but before this their numbers had already declined severely due to disease, and the destruction of their traditional hunting grounds by introduced stock and other European encroachment saw their numbers rapidly decrease.
The first Europeans in the area were a party of explorers led by
William Hovell
William Hilton Hovell (26 April 1786 – 9 November 1875) was an English explorer of Australia. With Hamilton Hume, he made an 1824 overland expedition from Sydney to Port Phillip (near the site of present-day Melbourne), and later explored the ...
and
Hamilton Hume
Hamilton Hume (19 June 1797 – 19 April 1873) was an early explorer of the present-day Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. In 1824, along with William Hovell, Hume participated in an expedition that first took an overland rout ...
, who crossed the
Goulburn River
The Goulburn River, a major inland perennial river of the Goulburn Broken catchment, part of the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the alpine, Northern Country/North Central, and Southern Riverina regions of the Australian state of Victoria. ...
at a point near
Molesworth in December 1824, and crossed the stream they named ''Muddy Creek'' the following day.
(The Muddy Creek was renamed the
Yea River
The Yea River, an inland perennial river of the Goulburn Broken catchment, part of the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the lower South Eastern Highlands bioregion and Northern Country/North Central regions of the Australian state of Victor ...
in 1879.
) They reported the area as very suitable for grazing, though in the hills good soil was only to be found in the hollows,
but they found the forest almost impenetrable as they left the area south-west towards King Parrot Creek.
European settlement
The first European settlers in the district were
overlanders from
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
, who arrived in 1837, and by 1839 "most of the suitable country in the area had been taken up".
The crossing of the Muddy Creek became quite busy as part of the route from Melbourne to the goldfields at Beechworth and the eastern highlands, and also from them to Ballarat. After a blacksmith set up a forge and dwelling at the crossing, and a complaint from the local landholder, a town was surveyed and laid out in 1855 by T.W.Pinniger.
Apparently under instruction from the State Surveyor-General Andrew Clarke, it was named after Colonel
Lacy Walter Giles Yea – a British Army colonel killed in June of that year at the
Battle of the Great Redan
The Battle of the Great Redan (russian: Оборона Третьего бастиона) was a major battle during the Crimean War, fought between British forces against Russia on 18 June and 8 September 1855 as a part of the Siege of Sevas ...
in the
Crimean War
The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia.
Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...
, and who had been Clarke's commanding officer in England in 1830s.
Town lots went on sale at
Kilmore the following year.
There was at least one store open by 1856,
and the Post Office opened in 1858.
Development
Yea expanded under the influx of hopeful prospectors, both as a natural overnight stopping place on the route from Melbourne to other goldfields,
but especially when gold was discovered in the local area in the late 1850s.
The gold-mining localities near Yea included the 'Providence' diggings just across the Yea River from the town, in the Ghin Ghin area, the Ti Tree Creek, and the 'Higinbotham' area on the Murrindindi Creek. None except the Providence and Ti Tree Creek yielded profitable gold on any commercial scale for more than about 5 years, the Providence was effectively closed by 1889 and the Welcome mine on Ti Tree Creek by the mid 1890s.
After the gold mining ended the town survived on servicing farming and timber getting (chiefly from the Murrindindi forests). The sawmilling industry saw a high production period from 1907 to 1915, at the end of which the
Great War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
saw many men enlist, and then another boom from 1923 to 1930, after which the onset of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
saw production greatly reduce as demand fell. In these times of highest production, there was in excess of of timber sent out each year over the tramlines to
Cheviot.
The Yea Dairy Company was formed in 1891. Creameries around the district substantially increased the income of local farmers, and considerable amounts of butter were shipped to Melbourne.
A major threat to the township was the Trawool Water Scheme (announced for implementation in 1908), which would have almost certainly meant the drowning of the town. Property values became depressed, and two deputations to the state minister did not appear to change his mind. Survey work commenced, but the scheme was abandoned before it was completed, in favour of the site at
Eildon
Eildon is the largest committee area of the Scottish Borders Council, with a population of 34,892 at the census in 2001. It also contains the three Eildon Hills, tallest in the Scottish Borders.
Places in Eildon
References
See also
*Subdivi ...
.
Fires and floods
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 ...
and
flood
A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...
s have influenced the Yea area quite frequently, fire having been recorded by the Hume and Hovell expedition, and floods affecting the roadways on a regular basis.
In 1884 the area was affected by both flood and fire,
on 1 January 1900 the Commonwealth Day celebrations were abandoned in order to fight a fire that surrounded the town,
and in 1969 it had to be 'defended on all sides' from fire.
Later years
The Yea Magistrates' Court closed in October 1989.
Geography
Yea is located on the inside (west and south) of a bend in the
Yea River
The Yea River, an inland perennial river of the Goulburn Broken catchment, part of the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the lower South Eastern Highlands bioregion and Northern Country/North Central regions of the Australian state of Victor ...
about south-east of where it meets the
Goulburn River
The Goulburn River, a major inland perennial river of the Goulburn Broken catchment, part of the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the alpine, Northern Country/North Central, and Southern Riverina regions of the Australian state of Victoria. ...
. It is north-east of Melbourne at above sea-level, on the northern slopes of the
Great Dividing Range
The Great Dividing Range, also known as the East Australian Cordillera or the Eastern Highlands, is a cordillera system in eastern Australia consisting of an expansive collection of mountain ranges, plateaus and rolling hills, that runs rough ...
. The centre of the town is on the flood plain of the Yea River, but the residential area to the south extends onto the slopes of the nearby hills. The
Goulburn Valley Highway
Goulburn Valley Highway is a highway located in Victoria, Australia. The section north of the Hume Freeway is part of the Melbourne to Brisbane National Highway (together with Hume Freeway) and is the main link between these two cities as well a ...
(B340) passes through the town, and the
Melba Highway
Melba Highway connects the outer eastern suburb of Coldstream, near Lilydale, and the town of Yea, in Victoria's Upper Goulburn on the Goulburn Valley Highway. The road is named after Dame Nellie Melba, a famed Australian opera singer of the ...
(B300) from Melbourne's eastern suburbs ends there. The other direct route to Melbourne is via the Yea-
Whittlesea road (C725).
Yea's
built environment
The term built environment refers to human-made conditions and is often used in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, sociology, and anthropology, among others. These curated spaces provide the setting for human ac ...
consists of commercial, retail and public buildings along the Goulburn and Melba Highways as they run through the town, with residential areas largely to the south of the commercial centre, though newer residential estates have been developed to the west. The residential areas consist almost entirely of low-density, single-storey detached houses on their own blocks.
The surrounding area consists largely of pastoral properties running beef cattle and sheep.
Flora and fauna
No intact examples of native vegetation survive in the area immediately around Yea. That vegetation consisted of grassy woodlands dominated by river red gum (''
Eucalyptus camaldulensis
''Eucalyptus camaldulensis'', commonly known as the river red gum, is a tree that is endemic to Australia. It has smooth white or cream-coloured bark, lance-shaped or curved adult leaves, flower buds in groups of seven or nine, white flowers an ...
'') on the creeklines and nearby plains, grading to grassy forest dominated by ''
Acacia
''Acacia'', commonly known as the wattles or acacias, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa and Australasia. The genus na ...
'' and box ''
Eucalyptus
''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as euca ...
'' species in the nearby valleys and hills.
![Yea wetlands 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Yea_wetlands_1.JPG)
The Yea Wetlands, an area of immediately to the east of the town, and situated between two branches of the
Yea River
The Yea River, an inland perennial river of the Goulburn Broken catchment, part of the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the lower South Eastern Highlands bioregion and Northern Country/North Central regions of the Australian state of Victor ...
, has had extensive work done to restore its native vegetation.
This site is one of only six known locations of the ancient greenling damselfly (''
Hemiphlebia mirabilis''), although no specimens have been recorded there since 2001.
Governance
The first local governance in the area was the ''Yea District Road Board'', formed in 1869, which became the ''Shire of Yea'' in 1873.
Although subject to (sometimes severe) financial constraints at various times, and the substantial costs involved in maintaining the local road infrastructure in the face of fires and floods, the shire managed to develop some substantial public facilities, and to successfully lobby for improved transport and communication links to the area.
As part of the general re-arrangement of local government in Victoria, the Shire of Yea was incorporated into the
Shire of Murrindindi
The Shire of Murrindindi is a local government area in the Hume region of Victoria, Australia, located in the north-east part of the state. It covers an area of and, in June 2018, had a population of 14,478. It includes the towns of Alexandra, ...
in 1994.
The town of Yea is in the Cheviot Ward of the shire.
Demography
At the , Yea had a population of 1,170. Census records show the population of Yea has remained relatively stable since the beginning of the 20th century, except for a dip in the post second-world-war period. The number of dwellings has doubled over the same period.
The higher than average proportion of older people in the town was recognised at least as early as 1991.
Only half of the population over 15 years old is in the labour force.
Economy
Yea has been a town servicing the agricultural and resources industries of the surrounding area since its inception. These included pastoral agriculture for the entire period, gold mining before 1900, and timber cutting and dairying from then until the late 20th century. The Yea Dairy Factory opened in 1891, and closed in 1993, but other industrial or manufacturing activities have never reached significant scale.
The Yea Saleyards has become a significant livestock selling centre for Central Victoria, with sales occurring at least every month.
The retail area of Yea still services the farming activities of the area, but over half of the shops now involve food service.
Transport
The ''Yea District Road Board'' and its successor the ''Shire of Yea'' achieved substantial improvements in transport infrastructure in the area, including the bridges at Molesworth (1874)
and King Parrot Creek (1872),
and the successful lobbying for the
rail line
Rail terminology is a form of technical terminology. The difference between the American term ''railroad'' and the international term ''railway'' (used by the International Union of Railways and English-speaking countries outside the United Sta ...
from
Tallarook
Tallarook is a town the Shire of Mitchell local government area in central Victoria, Australia. The town is in on the Hume Highway, north of the state capital, Melbourne. At the , Tallarook had a population of 789.
Tallarook Post Office opene ...
(opened 1883).
The railway was extended to
Molesworth in 1889, chiefly for timber transport to
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
.
The last passenger service ran on 28 May 1977, with the line closed on 18 November 1978.
The
railway line
Rail terminology is a form of technical terminology. The difference between the American term ''railroad'' and the international term ''railway'' (used by the International Union of Railways and English-speaking countries outside the United Sta ...
from Tallarook to
Mansfield
Mansfield is a market town and the administrative centre of Mansfield District in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the largest town in the wider Mansfield Urban Area (followed by Sutton-in-Ashfield). It gained the Royal Charter of a market tow ...
has now been converted to the
Great Victorian Rail Trail
The Great Victorian Rail Trail (formerly Goulburn River High Country Rail Trail) is the second longest rail trail in Australia (after the 161km Brisbane Valley Rail Trail in Queensland), following the route of the former railway line from Tallaro ...
.
With the withdrawal of the train service, public transport services to Yea are now limited to a
V/Line
V/Line is a statutory authority that operates regional passenger train and coach services in Victoria, Australia. It provides passenger train services on five commuter lines and eight long-distance routes from its major hub at Southern Cross ...
coach service to Melbourne or Mansfield twice a day,
and a coach service from Alexandra to Seymour via Yea once a day (on weekdays).
. The Seymour train line 30 mins away by car is easily accessed for commuting to and from Melbourne with a frequent time table of train services.
Religion
Although private religious worship occurred beforehand, the first public services were probably held in the 1850s.
In 1857 the Muddy Creek Mission was formed, and it arranged for the services of an Anglican lay preacher, though the building they provided "should be used for the propagation of Evangelical Christianity without respect to the minor differences existing among the Protestant Evangelical Churches."
A church (intended by its builder to be a Baptist church) was taken over by the Presbyterian Church in the mid 1860s,
with the present Presbyterian church opened in 1923.
St Luke's Anglican church was opened in 1868, and the Catholic Sacred Heart Church in 1902.
Education
The town's
high school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
is Yea High School. Managed also from the school is the
Access Yea Community Education Program (AYCE), a statewide educational program that is designed to help school leavers and other students who do not fit into the regular school system.
The Yea Primary School and the catholic Sacred Heart Parish Primary School provide education for primary-level students.
Sport
![Yea Swimming Pool from the air](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Yea_Swimming_Pool_from_the_air._Jan_2020.jpg)
The earliest available record of a cricket match in Yea is for January 1869, against a Murrundindi side, though formal creation of a club seems not to have occurred until 1872.
An early record of a lawn tennis match between teams from Yea and Alexandra - one which 'created a large amount of interest in consequence of its being the first occasion that the local club has pitted its members against those belonging to a distant club' - occurred on the Queen's Birthday holiday in June 1891, though a petition (submitted in the same year) to formally reserve land for tennis stated that it 'has been used for years by the Tennis Club'.
Although signs at the entrances to the town state that Yea is the birthplace of olympic equestrian
Bill Roycroft
James William George Roycroft, OBE (17 March 1915 – 29 May 2011) was an Australian Olympic equestrian champion. He grew up on a dairy farm and learnt to ride horses there. After serving in the army in World War II, he moved with his family t ...
, he was actually born in Melbourne and grew up in
Flowerdale.
The
Yea Football Netball Club administers the two sports in the town, seniors playing in the
Yarra Valley Mountain District Football and Netball League
The AFL Yarra Ranges was an Australian rules football and netball organisation based in the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges within Victoria (Australia), Victoria. The organisation operated the Yarra Ranges Senior Football league and the Yarra ...
, and juniors in the Seymour District Junior Football Netball League. The senior netball teams have met with recent success. Due to the relative isolation of the town, the Tigers have competed in a number of different leagues, including the
Kyabram & District Football League
The Kyabram District Football League (KDL) is an Australian rules football league in Victoria. It is made up of 15 teams; the most recent additions include Dookie United in 2018 and Shepparton East in 2019. The KDL is made up of smaller country ...
and the now defunct Central Goulburn Football League.
The Yea Racing Club schedules three race meetings a year,
and Yea St Patrick's Racing Club also hold a
picnic race meeting each year at the Yea racecourse.
Golfers play at the course of the Yea Golf Club on Racecourse Road.
Landmarks and heritage sites
![YeaShireHall](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/YeaShireHall.JPG)
Yea has a number of buildings on the
Victorian Heritage Register
The Victorian Heritage Register (VHR) lists places deemed to be of cultural heritage significance to the State of Victoria, Australia. It has statutory weight under the Heritage Act 2017. The Minister for Planning is the responsible Minister. H ...
.
The former
Yea railway station "is the most intact example of a small group of standard Gothic-styled Railway Station buildings."
Built in 1889, it is now managed by a Committee of Management and used for community events, including the monthly Yea Country Market.
The former Purcells General Store "is one of the oldest buildings still intact in Yea and was owned and operated by several generations of the Purcell family until 1986."
The family operated a store in the town from the 1860s until 1986.
Other buildings on the register include the former Yea & Mansfield Dairy Co Ltd building (1891) in Rattray St, the Yea Shire Hall (1877), the RSL Hall, and the Yea Memorial Hospital (1945).
The
Yea Flora Fossil Site
The Yea Flora Fossil Site is a roadside cutting on Limestone Road, Yea, Victoria, Australia. It contains fossils of genus Baragwanathia, some of the world's earliest vascular plants dating back to the begin of the Devonian period, 415 million y ...
in Limestone Road is on the
Australian National Heritage List
The Australian National Heritage List or National Heritage List (NHL) is a heritage register, a list of national heritage places deemed to be of outstanding heritage significance to Australia, established in 2003. The list includes natural and ...
due to the discovery of the most ancient leafy foliage so far found on earth.
References
External links
{{authority control
Towns in Victoria (Australia)
Towns in Lower Hume
Shire of Murrindindi