Eildon is a town in central

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

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 ...

. It is located near

Lake Eildon The Eildon Dam is a rock and earth-fill embankment dam with a controlled spillway, located on the Goulburn River between the regional towns of and within Lake Eildon National Park, in the Alpine region of Victoria, Australia. The dam's pur ...

, on the

Goulburn Valley Highway Goulburn Valley Highway is a highway located in Victoria, Australia, linking Tocumwal on the Murray River through North Central Victoria to Eildon. The section north of the Hume Freeway (part of which is Goulburn Valley Freeway) is part of the ...

, in the

Shire of Murrindindi The Shire of Murrindindi is a Local government areas of Victoria, local government area in the Hume (region), Hume region of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, located in the north-east part of the state. It covers an area of and, in Au ...

local government area. At the 2021 census, Eildon had a population of 944.

Taungurung The Taungurung people, also spelled ''Daung Wurrung'', are 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 ...

people are the

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 ...

of the land around Eildon (which stretches north-east beyond

Mansfield, Victoria Mansfield is a town in the foothills of the Victorian Alps in the Australian state of Victoria. It is approximately north-east of Melbourne by road. The population of Mansfield was at the 2021 census. Mansfield is the seat of the Mansfi ...

and to the west nearly to

Bendigo Bendigo ( ) is an Australian city in north-central Victoria. The city is located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital. As of 2022, Bendigo has a popula ...

). Taungurung country is part of the

Kulin nation The Kulin nation is an alliance of five Aboriginal nations in the south of Australia - up into the Great Dividing Range and the Loddon and Goulburn River valleys - which shares Culture and Language. History Before British colonisation, the ...

. The name Eildon was given to the township by some of the first white settlers in the area, Mr and Mrs Archibald Thom in 1846, and was so named for its similarities to Mrs Thom's birthplace in the Eildon Hills near Abottsford in Scotland.

History

Eildon as a township came about due to the construction of the Sugarloaf Reservoir. The township of Darlingford (which was located near the junction of Big River and 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 Victor ...

) was established in the 1860s, when gold was discovered nearby, however when the construction of the reservoir commenced in 1915, which would ultimately flood the land behind the dam wall, including the township of Darlingford and Eildon Station (a run of 25,000 hectares owned by the Thoms). The town of Darlingford was moved closer to where the current township is now located. The Sugarloaf Dam was completed in 1929, and the original town of Darlingford is now completely underwater. Workers were brought into the town by the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission to work on the building of the reservoir, and the shanty town called Eildon began to develop. Many lived in tents. The original Sugarloaf Dam could only hold around 10% of the capacity of the current dam, and so construction of the Eildon Dam commenced in 1951 and was completed by 1956 to increase the size and capacity of the lake. The Sugarloaf Reservoir Dam Wall sits about 100 metres behind the current dam wall, and is visible when the water level drops very low. Around 4,000 workers were required to complete the 1950s construction, and these workers were brought in, but required housing. The new township of Eildon relocated to the present position, and comprises a series of 300 semi-permanent houses in 14 different styles. Materials for the houses were pre-cut and fabricated in England and assembled onsite. Temporary houses and hostels were built to accommodate more workers. If you drive around Eildon today, you will see many houses are still the original pre-fabricated houses erected for workers in the 1950s. The original Eildon post office opened on 14 November 1890 and closed in 1893. It was reopened on 23 August 1915 as Eildon Weir, with the word "Weir" being removed from the name in about 1950.

Climate

Lake Eildon is most notable for its extraordinary cloud cover in winter, measuring only 69 sun hours in June; this is especially cloudy for a location at only 37 degrees of latitude. Summers are generally warm and sunny, though with the passage of

cold fronts A cold front is the leading edge of a cooler mass of air at ground level that replaces a warmer mass of air and lies within a pronounced surface trough of low pressure. It often forms behind an extratropical cyclone (to the west in the Northern ...

are normally interspersed with much cooler days and nights. Eildon Fire Tower to the west-northwest is higher in altitude and located on an exposed hilltop. Snowfalls are common here and cloud cover is extremely heavy in the winter months, as evident from the mean afternoon humidity readings in June and July. Cold weather can be present at any time of the year; with a daily maximum of having occurred on 1 December 2019, and on 3 February 2005 the maximum did not exceed .

Recreation

Together with its neighbouring township Thornton, Eildon used to have an

Australian Rules 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 ...

football team (Thornton-Eildon) competing in the

Yarra Valley Mountain District Football 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 ...

. Golfers play at the course of the Eildon Golf Club on Jamieson Road. There are hiking and mountain bike trails.

Fishing

Lake Eildon is a scenic destination for avid fisherpeople, and some of the more common species of fish found in the lake includes Redfin, Murray Cod, Carp and Golden Perch. The lake benefits from the Snobs Creek Fish Hatchery Native Fish Stocking program, which in 2020 restocked the lake with more than 500,000 Murray Cod and more than 200,000 Golden Perch.

References

External links