After departing the somewhat dubious delights of the Golden Fleece, local knowledge suggests that those earliest, hopeful diggers made their way back across the Coolebarghurk Creek, following the track along the bank for a short distance before taking a westerly line through the site of today's Meredith Primary School.
Heading north along the track beside Coolebarghurk Creek |
As usual I had a bit of a dig around and talked to a few locals with an interest in the history of Meredith and came up with some snippets which may give a few pointers. About the section from the school to Lal Lal Road, I could find nothing. The one available surveyed line running up Wallace St and into the Ballan-Meredith Rd did not show a track crossing it at any point, however this line was taken in July, 1858 by which time the new road had been established for several years. Perhaps the original track had already faded in what was fast becoming quite a populous area.
My next approach was to spend many hours pawing over the surveyors' field books covering the northern portion of the parish of Meredith. Whilst the areas covered seem to be a little hit-and-miss, I was very fortunate that the book for this section was both available and clearly written by surveyor Maurice Weston who criss-crossed the area in 1857.
After finally managing to establish the baseline position he worked from, I was then able to follow the lines he surveyed, marking them - and any notable features - on Google Earth. Fortunately, the surveyors were diligent about marking tracks when they crossed them, occasionally even providing some indication as to where the track lead. The end result was a series of points which when plotted, yielded a number of lines radiating northwards from town.
The above image shows the approximate line of the tracks leaving Meredith marked on Google Earth. Click to enlarge |
There was however, one further track which emerged. This was more westerly than all the others and may either have branched off from the track to Lal Lal just north of the town boundary or may even have left town at today's Creamery Rd, near the site of what was the Free Presbyterian Church as a track was also marked at this point. This path to the west looks to have followed a similar line to the Midland Highway but at a distance of a few hundred metres to the east of that road and roughly following the eastern bank of Coolebarghurk Creek. Tantalisingly, one of the points along the track was marked "Old Main Road".
Before jumping straight to conclusions however, it is perhaps worth noting that the - admittedly vague - map produced by surveyor A.J. Skene in 1845, shows the line of track passing through the future site of Meredith and exiting via a path remarkably similar to the first 2 km of the track following the Lal Lal Rd. On the face of it, this would seem to support the above statement that the track continued up the "old Lal Lal Road to Mt Doran". I always thought however, that this seemed a somewhat odd path to follow for travellers intent on reaching Mt Buninyong as it would extend the journey by several kilometres. I did find a possible explanation for this, but that belongs in a future post.
A search of the newspapers of the day gave surprisingly little information. The earliest reference I could find - by implication - to a blacksmith in Meredith was an 1856 advertisement for a forge at the Victoria Hotel, Lethbridge which claimed to be the only forge between Batesford and Meredith.
The first blacksmith in Meredith it was said by an early resident, was Michael Ward and it wasn't hard to find reference to him. Ward was amongst the first to own land in the district and in 1853 when the earliest land sales occurred in the parish of Meredith, he purchased a half acre block in town which ran between Lawler and Russell Streets. In addition to this and other purchases in town, Michael and his son Joseph, went on to amass a significant estate immediately to the north of Griffith's Rd - directly opposite the purported site of the forge.
Looking east across the banks of Coolebarghurk Creek at "Chestervale" to the left of Griffith's Rd. The site believed to be the blacksmith's is on the opposite side of the road, to the right |
Maybe. I do know that, by the late 1880s the Wards had purchased about 2,500 acres of land which stretched from the newly made Geelong-Ballarat Rd all the way to the Moorabool River. They named their property "Chestervale".
In today's terms, the section of road in question is Griffith's Rd between the Lal Lal and the Ballan-Meredith Roads. Chestervale was of course less than a mile to the west on Griffith's Rd. It is here then one imagines, that Michael Ward operated his blacksmith's shop, although whether on his own purchased land north of the road or perhaps on the triangle of crown land on the south west corner of Griffith's and Gargan's Roads remains a mystery.
In addition to these activities, the Wards also ran various other businesses over the years, including a hotel (known simply as Ward's Hotel) during the 1860s, a store (originally Gosling's Hotel) which burnt down in 1875 and sale yards in the township. In 1890, father and son went into business as stock, station and general commission agents, operating initially they said from their offices in Meredith where they had been since 1853.
The venture was short-lived however, as they were forced into voluntary insolvency only two years later, at which time Chestervale was broken up and auctioned off. Undeterred by this setback, by the mid 1890s Joseph was running a coach service for Cobb & Co. between Meredith and Steiglitz and also dabbled in speculative mining ventures. His father Michael, if indeed he ever ceased, returned to his work as a blacksmith. Upon his sudden death in 1905 at the age of 90, it was reported that he collapsed at his home in Staughton St, where he had just finished shoeing a horse.
Establishment believed to be Ward's. Image courtesy of the Meredith History Interest Group's collection |
On a final note, by the time of his death in 1905, Michael was operating his shop from Staughton St in town. It would, I think, be safe to assume that whatever blacksmith's shop he did operate from or near Chestervale, was sold in 1892 along with the rest of the estate. By that time, the new road through Meredith had been established for more than 35 years and the land through which the old bullock track passed, had long ago been snapped up by settlers eager to own a piece of what during the 1850s, was shaping up to become one of Victoria's most important towns.
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