Penshurst … Past, Present and Future

This is a big topic for a brief talk about a small township.

Usually you would begin with the beginning of the name ‘Penshurst’ assuming that nothing before that time is worth recording or remembering. Or at least anything in that ancient time, before white settlement with no language or recorded messages to assist us – the hundreds of thousands of years of pre-history. And this would be a mistake here because Penshurst is ‘the township under the Volcano’ and it’s this old geographical formation that gives us our identity and sets us apart from townships that don’t have a volcano.

If you were going to be very technical about it you could look at it in terms of the following disciplines ..

• the land itself … geology
• the emergence of life … biology
• the beginnings of human habitation .. archeology
• the physical remains of the structure of human habitation … anthropology
• an understanding of what happened, when, why and to whom .. history.

In History, we begin to move away from the Physical Sciences into the Social Sciences.

We live in an ancient land, pretty quiet now (apart from Saturday "arvos" when the footy’s on) but which once erupted with fire and brimstone. Volcanoes are dotted sparsely down the East Coast of Australia but, when you get around to the Western District of Victoria, ancient volcanic activity becomes intense and we have half a dozen of them within a Sunday afternoon’s drive of Penshurst. Ours, along with Tower Hill on the coast, is the biggest, with a lava flow that stretched all the way to the sea and out to Lady Julia Percy Island beyond. Despite claims to the contrary, nobody remembers this eruption. It was thought to have occurred around 300,000 years ago.

What we’ve been left with, apart from paddocks full of basalt rocks, is a rich, fertile countryside, well watered by springs. With a solid, reliable rainfall, it is blessed with a mild climate and a capacity to grow almost anything. This is Australia Felix. Nothing to do with our ginger cat of the same name.

Not surprising, it has been inhabited for many thousands of years by animals, some of the largest and slowest marsupials of all and later, around 40,000 years ago, give or take a year or so, by man. Aboriginal tribes are believed to have lived permanently in this district, only departing finally with the failure of a Protectorate which lasted for less than a decade, commencing in 1842 and finally closing in 1849. To start with it encompassed a square, 10x10 miles, around the Mount and was officially thought to have contained 40 aboriginal huts situated just about where the Police Station is today. A visitor only saw three of them. This has led to the suggestion of an early funding rort. which has intrigued Archeologist, Geoff Hewitt from Latrobe University. He is exploring the site and size of the Protectorate.

Major Mitchell is credited with "discovering" Mt. Rouse in l836, although he ‘sighted’ if from the vantage point of Mt. Napier to the West and named it after the Colonial Under Secretary in Sydney, named Rouse.

History, as most of us have been taught it, begins with white settlement, i.e. from the time of written records, though this is really only a tiny scratch on the surface of time. A short second in time, but in terms of impact on the environment, one that has grown to a deep chasm when we explore the effects of this short l50 years of ‘settlement’ on our ancient, volcanic land.

Who really enjoyed History at school? I didn’t. It was taught, when I yawned my way through warm, dozy afternoons, as a list of dates of great events done by great men in great, heroic ways. Teachers were careful to teach selected ‘facts’ (or what passed for facts – there is always room for speculation – and lots of information was carefully omitted).

What was left in, like the remnants of coffee after de-caffeination, was as dull as ditchwater, as bland as porridge and instantly forgettable. Even so, I’m partly to blame for the following reasons.

• I can never remember dates.
• I lost interest in which explorer went where and when
• Apart from Elizabeth Macarthur with her merinos, convict, Mary Reiby, and Elizabeth Fry there were no women deserving of a mention.
• History was taught like religion – you just had to believe in it in its entirety, like Holy Writ, and few things were ever debated.
• We had it on Wednesday afternoons before sport.

Now, decades later, I have re-discovered early Australian History as interesting, exciting, subjective and joyful and I will happily assume that our youngsters feel the same way.

The good bits aren’t necessarily tucked away in text books – they’re in old newspaper cuttings, on post cards, letters, advertisements, snake oil bottles, mothball smelling linen chests, old sheds, calendars, films, computer programs and – at the top of the list and most tenuously – in the heads of our elder citizens.

Today historical records of the district are being carefully held for posterity, facts figures and stories are being held not just in paper files but on computer programs and we are one of the small number of rural communities that can boast our own Historical website at http://vicnet.net.au/~penshist. Mount Rouse & District Historical Society, though it struggles with few members, is fortunate in having members with a deep interest in their township’s history and a strong desire to maintain its records for future generations. It meets on the fourth Sunday of every odd numbered month, at 2 p.m. at the old courthouse. New members and interested visitors are welcome. Chris Kinneally is a good contact for the society. Its President is Brian O’Brien and webmaster, Erik Pihl who is with us today displaying some of the magnificent photos of Penshurst past and present.

Some things have become clear. History is not objective – it’s not just about ‘facts’. Somebody might be able to conclusively state the very time and date the first train rolled into Penshurst but other things are far more elusive.

Today many of the significant questions are speculative, open to debate and discussion. The cobwebs of certainty are being blown away and, in their place, are the tools of research and discovery. Even so, opinions vary and who can say which will prevail. Dr. Ian Smith of Ballarat University is interested in exploring the impact of white settlement on the aboriginal inhabitants of the district. Who knows what his findings will be if the project gets funded and goes ahead?

Historians openly disagree, often with quite a bit of vitriol. Even though they may hold degrees and all sorts of qualifications they will start, more often than not, with a type of value position and will seek ‘proof’ or substantiation of their firmly held views. This sort of deep, philosophical argument can be clearly seen in the more radical works of Historian, Manning Clark and the more conservative, white-apologist Geoffrey Blaimey. All grist for the mill.

If we, as amateur Historians (and we all are to some extent) look closely at the history of Penshurst and its surrounding district, we will most likely do it from a value position. These may well include a background of class, sex, race, occupation or interest. The view from the homestead verandah is not the same as the view from the washtub around the back. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as we acknowledge it and how we are influenced.

The struggles of people to overcome obstacles runs like a snake, twisting and turning, through the pages of our history. If we can leave our great explorers on their great voyages of discovery for a moment, let’s focus on the struggles of ordinary Penshurst folk yesterday, 50 years ago, l50 years ago. And lifetime struggles never end, they just change shape and direction.

What are some of these struggles? What are the battles our ancestors, relatives, forebears, parents or ourselves had to overcome. The list is long and these are but a few.

• The battle to carve a livelihood out of a hostile physical environment

• The battle to overcome and survive life-threatening illnesses that could wipe out entire families. These have included diptheria, whooping cough, tuberculosis. This does not include accidents, which were many.

• The battle with the elements – fire, flood, drought, snakes

• The battle for civilized infrastructure – for roads, bridges, schools, hospital services. The steps towards building a functioning community.

• The battle with powers over and beyond the local – taxes, rates, banks, bankruptcy, depressions (physical and economic), wages, wars.

• The battle for women to gain the right to vote and/or stand for public office, to gain decent wages, to enter Universities and the professions. The battle for women to limit the number of their children.

• The battle of the mind against discrimination, fear, prejudice and hatred. To win through on our historic journey towards connectedness and respect for one another. To be able to put aside our differences of race, ethnicity, religion and work together.

The Red Cross sets a fine example here, starting with its founder Henri Dunant, in its humanitarian work worldwide to relieve suffering and help restore the broken, the war weary, the lost, the refugee.

The history of Penshurst can be seen simply as a series of chronologically placed stepping stones on our ‘paths to the present.’ Or it can be stuck in time, just like the views of old sepia photographs of the main street at the turn of the twentieth century. These show, one way or another, how we lived, what we did, what our township looked like, what people wore. Postcards of Penshurst, l00 years old, portray a busy, bustling, prosperous community with wide, well laid out streets, lots of hotels, drapers, blacksmiths, baker, tinsmith, chaff store, general stores, stables, stonemasons, builders, a doctor, schoolmaster etc.

Not surprisingly this represented the fact that 70% of people worked in industries related to agriculture. The figure, and the population of Penshurst, has shrunk to around 7% of that in its former glory.

The history of Penshurst can also be seen as a series of events that shaped our community. The ‘historical’ (as opposed to the pre-historical) period commences with the brief, unsuccessful Aboriginal Protectorate from l840 to l949, the gradual pilfering of the l0 square miles of land for white settlement. The Gazetting of Penshurst as a township around l850 and its subsequent emergence as one of the State’s earliest municipalities, the Shire of Mt. Rouse in l864. The speedy sale of large parcels of land to a few wealthy squatters, the emergence of the Lutheran community and its interaction with the Scots Presbyterian settlers, the break-away Krummnow settlement, the building of the railways and the horrible disaster that took the lives of 6 young Irishmen in l890, and the mining of scoria at Mt. Rouse.

Then we catch our breath and continue with our community’s involvement in the wars of Empire, the Boer War and the following lst and 2^nd world wars in Europe, the bombing of Darwin and the war in the Pacific. Not to mention the latter-day American wars of dubious origin.

We record the effects of the Great Depression of l928 to l933, the consolidation of the Trade Unions and in particular the Shearers Union, the coming and going of various shades of Government, the breaking up of several of the large land holdings into Soldier Settlements, the Coronation of the English Queen, the closure of the railway line and the end of the Shire of Mt. Rouse as it merged and disappeared into the newly-formed Shire of Southern Grampians.

Finally, we can see the history of Penshurst as a statistical thread – a line of numbers that points without question to a steady decline in population. It rests today on a tottery 500 with about the same number in the surrounding countryside.

THE FUTURE MAY BE ROSY

How can you predict the future without a crystal ball, a life-line through to Athena Starwoman or an appointment with the Oracle of Delphi? Failing this we can make guesses based on hopes as well as trends. We can talk up a great future or we can talk down to a miserable one. I will remain a bit of an optimist.

The future of Penshurst will very much depend on whether or not we can arrest the decline in our numbers and begin the slow process up into a healthy growing community.

If we can, we will go strongly against National demographic trends.

Australia is the most urbanized nation on earth, its people clinging like limpets to the rear end of a snaking coastline. The folklore of the bronzed Aussie in the bush is just that. I doubt we were ever a nation of tough bushmen and women – more likely a nation of accountants and latte drinkers. Burke’s Backyard does not feature too many Lillypilly trees, gums, wattles, peppercorns, outside dunnies, old truck and car bodies rusting in the sun, ramshackle sheds, chooks running free and overgrown vegie patches.

New suburbs on the outskirts of our capital cities proliferate like bacteria on what were once country roads. They’re named Paradise Waters, Millpond Park, Goomerangagong Gardens or Rifkin Rises and people live cheek by jowl in brick veneered prisons with bedrooms the size of the homestead loo. They mortgage themselves for the next 30 years to get their families into these and for one reason only – they live where the jobs are.

No government or program, despite its occasional pricks of conscience and half hearted attempts at decentralization, seems able to extract more than a tiny trickle of disillusioned folk to uproot from Heavenly Ponds and move to Penshurst.

IMAGINE BEING SAVED BY TOURISM?

Here we come full circle. We’re back to our volcano, Mt. Rouse. Like the ancient people who saw magic in these great geographic structures (especially the fiery ones), we are turning again to the wonder, the majesty, the sheer beauty and interest in this source of our ancient, fertile countryside. At last, we’ve discovered, or re-discovered, the potential for volcanic tourism.

Tourism, whether we like it or not, is the only bright star in our skies. To consider the future of Penshurst, we need not only to consider our paths to the present, but to plan to branch out in new and exciting directions. Not just for fun – for survival. This will be one of the biggest battles of all. Our farms and pastoral industries, essential as they are, will not support a bigger population than we have and, with increased mechanization will probably support less in the future. We have to look to other areas of growth.

The accolades of visitors remind us that we often take for granted our beautiful township lined with mature trees, dotted with wonderful old buildings and leading down to a spectacular watergardens and spring. A township well planned by our civil fathers (and possibly one or two civil mothers) and today well placed on the main tourist route from the Great Ocean Road up to the Grampians.

And, to top if off, we are nestled under the imposing volcano, Mt. Rouse over l200 ft. high and thought to have erupted, as I mentioned earlier, around 300,000 years ago – one of the oldest in the volcanic district. It’s merely sleeping, or dormant, with the possibility of a further eruption in the next couple of thousand years. Walking tracks now take the energetic tourist or local person from the township to the peak.

The Shire, with the enthusiastic support of Tourism Manager, Rita Scotcher, and the imaginative design of John Challis, has invested time, money and expertise not only in the future of Penshurst, but in the wider development of a Volcanic Tourist Trail throughout this previously unexplored (not necessarily by our old explorers – but by visitors) part of the State.

Few of us are old enough to recall the earlier struggles I mentioned here. Some of us have lived through the tragedies and loss of the Second World War. Many of us have experienced firsthand the capriciousness of nature in storms and drought, floods and bushfires. Many of us are still living with the harsh lessons learned during the Depression years.

Wherever we come from or whatever our age or background, we are all privileged to live in this truly wonderful, verdant Australia Felix – the best of the Country’s country.

The final battle may well be the one for economic survival in a determinedly urbanized world. Our best shot will be Volcanic Tourism, allied closely to our rural industries and the township of Penshurst that grew up to support them.

The ‘closed’ signs painted on the verandah posts of country shops, businesses, stores and once-thriving enterprises move like a cancer throughout Australia. They are not just personal tragedies or failures, but signal the death of a way of life that goes to the heart of the Australian psyche. Their deaths continue to diminish us all.

In Penshurst, we still have opportunities to get involved and do our bit to see our community survive and thrive. We can volunteer to assist the center being built next door in one of several ways, either directly as a Visitor Assistant or a member of Advance Penshurst. Hopefully in both.

We can also make a difference to the survival of our own community if we choose to do so. This may be the final battle.

Ó Ruth Pihl, 11/5/03

Ed.:  We are inserting the "thumbnail" pictures below, since they are most relevant to the above topic, i.e. without Mt Rouse, no Penshurst.

Our oldest photographs show a virtually treeless Mt Rouse (left). The mountain shows many deep "scars" after "mining" .  A "belt" of wattle trees could until recently be seen below the pines. 

The southern slope of Mount Rouse has no pine trees (below left). 

The removal of the pines, as well as of the wattle trees was completed in August 2002. 

8/8/02: The walking track (above right) is well underway.