// Short historical facts about Stawell and Pleasant Creek
// The list SHOULD contain several hundred "factiods" to be useful!
// Try and keep items to less than 250 characters - else the display box gets stupidly big.
// The few sample facts supplied are from "Shepherd's Gold, The Story of Stawell by C.E.Sayers

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quotes[ir++] = "A Miner's Right entitled a person to dig for gold anywhere in Victoria, to vote in parliamentary elections, and to elect members to a mining board."
quotes[ir++] = "After World War I <i>Warranooke</i>, then 20,000 acres, was reduced to 10,000 acres by voluntary sale to the government for soldier settlement at &pound;6 per acre."
quotes[ir++] = "Before 1857 ended, it is estimated that 30,000 people were at the Deep Lead gold workings."
quotes[ir++] = "Chance opened up the Wonga. James Henderson picked up a piece of quartz that had a nice glitter in it. The claim was pegged out and named Wonga after the ship that had brought him to Victoria."
quotes[ir++] = "Charles Alfred Akins was mayor of Stawell for 1889-90"
quotes[ir++] = "During 1858 Wesleyan church services were held in tents and houses at Commercial Street, where soon a tent church was erected."
quotes[ir++] = "Early arrivals at the quartz outcroppings on the Big Hill were the four Scallan brothers, sturdy men of Wexford, Ireland."
quotes[ir++] = "Ebenezer Harvey is said to have been the first man to grow wheat; he planted 30 acres in 1865 for 20 bushels to the acre."
quotes[ir++] = "Fear of fire in the Main Street and the bystreets of the Reefs was a constant worry. The buildings were all of inflammable materials."
quotes[ir++] = "In 1865, there were in the township a church, school, three hotels, two bootmakers, a blacksmith, two or three stores, a butcher, and several bullock teams."
quotes[ir++] = "In May 1853, William McLauchlin, a Scots sheep minder, was the first to find gold in Pleasant Creek (later to become Stawell)."
quotes[ir++] = "In the 1850's and the 1860's south of the Wimmera the country was covered with timber and scrub."
quotes[ir++] = "It has been said that the gold mania of the late 1860's was the immediate spur to the creation of the Stawell Miners' Association, but it also had a social side to it."
quotes[ir++] = "Mark Twain, the American humourist, saw something of the Magdala-cum-Moonlight riches when on a visit to Stawell in October 1890."
quotes[ir++] = "On Saturday 18 February 1866, a fire started in some rubbish at the rear of a shop in Main Street. As there was no water supply or fire brigade, citizens could do little else but watch much of Main Street burn."
quotes[ir++] = "Stawell Borough was declared a Town on 18 September 1957."
quotes[ir++] = "Stawell was declared a road district on 21 January 1861."
quotes[ir++] = "The deep leads of Pleasant Creek were old rivers long since buried by lava then covered with gravels, sand and clay."
quotes[ir++] = "The Dunolly rush of 1856 and the Ararat rush in the summer of 1857 presaged the first population flush at Pleasant Creek."
quotes[ir++] = "The first district sales of Crown lands for farming were made in June 1865."
quotes[ir++] = "The first form of civic government came to Pleasant Creek with the arrival on 4 Sept 1857 of Mining Warden Vincent Murray"
quotes[ir++] = "The first large alienation of Crown lands in the east Wimmera was under the regulations of the Land Act of 1869."
quotes[ir++] = "The first meeting of the Stawell Borough Council was held in the Mechanics Institute on 12 January 1870."
quotes[ir++] = "The first permanent hospital in Stawell was occupied on 21 June 1861."
quotes[ir++] = "The Primitive Methodists were strong and lusty evangelists; they held camp meetings on all the diggings served by aggressive preachers and attended by aggressive congregations."
quotes[ir++] = "The Quartz Reefs brought stability to the Pleasant Creek diggings although the alluvial rushes brought the first excitement to the field."
quotes[ir++] = "The Stawell Agricultural Society was formed on 13 March 1963, reviving the annual show. It is held at Laidlaw Park."
quotes[ir++] = "The Stawell market was established in Skene Street in 1878-9."
quotes[ir++] = "There were two Baptist chapels at Pleasant Creek from 1859 until 1869."
quotes[ir++] = "Two churchmen - Father Thomas Barrett and Rev. Philip Homan - first brought schooling to the Pleasant Creek gold diggings."
quotes[ir++] = "Warden Fenwick first used the name Stawell, for the township, in a report dated 9 October 1858."

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