Mountain Tales: Issue 03

MOUNTAIN TALES 024 Old News from the Dandenong Ranges March 2025 No.3 The Mount Dandenong & District Historical Society aims to collect, preserve and share the rich history of the district. The society is especially interested in the communities of Mount Dandenong, Kalorama, Olinda, Sassafras, Ferny Creek and Tremont. These are the ridgetop villages on the mountain range clearly visible from metropolitan Melbourne. The society welcomes new members with an interest in local history and meets each month. It maintains a small collection of significant local history material. We have some limited volunteer capacity to assist with private research. Many of the stories here have previously appeared on the society’s Facebook page. If you would like to learn more, please contact the society’s Secretary via email at mtddhs@gmail.com PictTurheeC1a8p9t1iolna:nTdsolipmatkMe yoouunrtdDoacnudmeennotnlgoo(Ikmage: profSeLssVio)nally produced, Word provides header, footer, cover page, and text box designs that complement each otheFro. r a more detailed account of the landslip isrk in Yarra Ranges Shire, see: Lex Ritchie and Glenn Hunt (2000), `Landslips – a moving story (a Municipalty’s perspective’, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Vol 15, No.4, pp.28-32. The spectacle of the “mystic lake” will be familiar to residents of the upper reaches of the Dandenongs. This meteorological phenomenon of an inversion of fog and clouds in the lowlands leads the peaks to pop up as if islands in a lake. It seemed to fascinate visitors in the early part of the 20th century. A postcard sent from The Hospice, Olinda, 1907. Emergencies The Great Landslip of 1891 When the face of Mount Dandenong slid off towards Montrose Landslips are not a new thing in the Dandenongs, although events on the main road at Tremont (January 2024, which destroyed a derelict house) and Sassafras (July 2024, which continues to impact the main arterial road) have been cause for both concern and a source of significant disruption. A council survey in 1998-99 found that some 11 per cent of rateable properties in the Yarra Ranges Shire (6000 in number) were in areas considered at high risk of landslip. The great landslip of 1891 saw 30,000 tonnes of rock and soil slide off the face of Mount Dandenong and head down towards Montrose. To put this into some perspective, Australia’s deadliest landslip at Thredbo in 1997 killed 18 people and destroyed two ski lodges, having displaced just 2000 tonnes of liquified soil. The 1891 Mt Dandenong event, which occurred in the middle of the day on Sunday, 12 July 1891, destroyed one house and some outbuildings and killed two horses. The land slid away to the west from opposite where the Kalorama-Mt Dandenong CFA station now stands. Two people caught in the debris were rescued, one of whom (Mrs Herschell) was “buried up to her head” and suffered a broken leg. The landslip left a scar in the side of the mountain that was visible for many years. Writing in 1919, the well-known public servant and writer Robert H. Croll observed that the scar, once visible from Melbourne, had been reduced to a just few patches of red on the slope. “Nature has almost healed the wound,” he reported in the Herald. The event occurred after three days of heavy rainfall beginning on 10 July. The trail of destruction went for almost 1.5 kilometres and the debris flow was said to have reached speeds of up to 40 kilometres per hour. The area of the slip was estimated by contemporary observers at about 20 hectares. Considering its size, the damage caused was relatively minor. There were few properties in the path of the flow in 1891, but there has of course been extensive development in the Montrose foothills since then. Why not Mount Olinda? In an earlier Mountain Tales, the possibility floated in 1917 of “Mount Ferny” being substituted for Ferny Creek was mentioned. This was voted down by the Fern Tree Gully Shire Council. In 1915 it was proposed by the local Progress Association that the township of Olinda should be renamed “Mount Olinda”. Olinda originally took its name from the headwaters of the nearby creek, been named for the daughter of an early Surveyor-General. The argument for change, which gained some traction in the city press, was that there was confusion between Olinda and Olinda Vale (the old name used for the station of Evelyn, later Mt Evelyn, on the Warburton rail line). None of the protagonists seemed phased that there was already a locality known as Mount Olinda or Mount Olinda Estate on the edge of nearby Lilydale. Interestingly, the crown of the slope about halfway along Range Road was known and mapped as “Mount Olinda” (1950ft) well into the last century, although it seems to have long passed from common usage. Page 1 MOUNTAIN TALES March 2025 No.3 Politics Of radicals and raspberries in the hills… … or how Ferny Creek became a socialist hot spot in 1908 Was Ferny Creek really a hotbed of socialism in 1908? Well, yes, and no … It did at least attract the attention of one of the most famous leftists of his day. Tom Mann (1856-1941) was an English trade unionist and pioneering figure in the British labour movement. In 1902, he emigrated to Australia and settled for a time in Melbourne, where he became an organiser for the Australian Labor Party. Eventually disillusioned by what he saw as a lack of commitment to social change, he resigned from the ALP and founded the Victorian Socialist Party (VSP). It was as a VSP advocate that Mann came to the hills in early March 1908, addressing meetings at Ferny Creek and Sassafras on social problems and exploitation in the berry growing industry. (A third meeting was held in Monbulk on 19 March to address the topic of `Socialism and the Fruit-growing Industry’. Promising an expose “of the tricks and meannesses of the combines … Ladies specially invited”, the promotional material read.) Mann was known as a charismatic speaker and his talks in the hills were reportedly well-attended. “There was little to suggest in Mr Mann’s lectures the so-called doctrines of revolution and levelling down. The key note of the lectures was co-operation …”, the Box Hill Reporter noted. Following Mann’s address at the Ferny Creek Mechanics Institute, a local branch of the Victorian Socialist Party was formed, also serving Sassafras. The party’s weekly journal, The Socialist, commented that “many of the small farmers readily accept the Socialist doctrines, and well they may by the experiences they have passed through as settlers on ten-acre blocks”. The paper reported that in the 14 years since settlement, and only after a “great amount of labour and living largely from hand to mouth, there are now many fine orchards and fruit gardens”. And yet, with the jam factories paying just one-and-a-half to two pennies a pound for fruit, the expense of picking and cartage in the absence of a local cooperative left less than 1/2 d per pound for the grower. “It is high time such successful capitalistic settlements were socialised and we are glad to claim this district as one for Socialism,” the paper concluded. Tom Mann returned to Britain in 1910, disillusioned by the parochialism of Australian labour politics. The VSP, which he had grown to 1500 members, continued for another 20 years although many of its members were also members of the ALP including such prominent figures at three-time Premier of Victoria John Cain snr, war-time Prime Minister John Curtin, along with Labor MPs Frank Anstey and Maurice Blackburn. Sources: Box Hill Reporter 6.3.1908; 7.3.1908, 13.3.1908, 27.3.1908, 3.4.1908. Art Doug Miller – artist of the hills The Dandenongs have long been a popular retreat for artists. Over the years several of the nation’s most famous have come to live among the tall timber, not in the least Sir Arthur Steeton (Olinda) and Tom Roberts (Kallista), Sir William Dargie (Olinda/Sassafras) Fred Williams (Upwey) and more recently Lin Onus (Upwey). Yet there have been many accomplished but lesser-known artists who have lived and worked here over the years. Among them was Doug Miller, who settled and raised a family in Ferny Creek after World War 2 where he remained for the rest of his life. Douglas Ackman Miller (1909-94) was born in Geraldton, Western Australia but moved to Melbourne where he worked as a commercial artist in the 1920s and 1930s (for a time with process engravers LyellOwen Pty Ltd) and published occasional cartoons in the daily press. After serving in the RAN during the war, he settled into a career teaching art at RMIT from 1947, retiring as head of the graphic arts department in 1969. Among his more memorable students were Alex Stitt (1937-2016), best known for his work on the `Life. Be in it.’ campaign, and The Age cartoonist Ron Tandberg (1943-2018). Doug Miller was also a noted landscape watercolourist, active from the 1920s when he painted around Williamstown, Fishermens Bend and Heidelberg with his artist friend Nick Suhr (1902-97), but more able to focus on the form in later years. While he was drawn to other landscapes, such as that around Burra in South Australia and across rural Victoria, he also painted many scenes in the Dandenongs. A member of the Twenty Melbourne Painters group, Doug exhibited with them annually at the Victorian Artists Society. He also held solo and joint exhibitions at the Athenaeum and locally at Five Ways Gallery in Kalorama. Doug Miller’s paintings can still be found in many homes in the hills. He is also represented in the Australian National Gallery. Page 2 View from Olinda, n.d. by Douglas Miller, private collection. Additional information: Jean Campbell, Australian Watercolour Painters, 1780-1980, Rigby, Melbourrne, 1983. MOUNTAIN TALES March 2025 No.3 L-R: Sassafras c.1920 (SLV image); the Sassafras Gully post office stamp … the original name is retained to this day; Southern Sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum) (www.fortysouth.com.au) Sassafras Gully and the plant that gave its name In an interesting recent exchange with the good folk of the Australian National Placenames Survey, the suggestion came up that Sassafras Gully (as it was originally called) might have been named for the deciduous North American sassafras tree (a genus of three species of the Lauraceae or laurel family). Indeed, if you Google “sassafras” an AI-generated response will tell you: “Sassafras can refer to a tree, a hallucinogenic drug, or a destination in Victoria”. Well, leaving aside a slang name for marijuana, it seems that there are sassafras trees and then there are sassafras trees. Sassafras albidum, the so-called “true” sassafras tree of eastern North America, is perhaps the best known and has been used in tea, making root beer, and cooking. But the accepted wisdom in these parts and more widely has always been that Sassafras, Victoria and its nearby creek were more obviously named for a local plant. The most prolific indigenous plant of this name is Atherosperma moschatum, variously known as southern sassafras or the blackhearted sassafras (a reference to the colour of its heartwood) or just plain “sassafras”. It is endemic to the Dandenongs and widespread in Tasmania, where another town named Sassafras (about 20 km south east of Devonport) is also named for it. The tree is found patchily on the mainland as far north as Barrington Tops in NSW. (There’s also another tiny community of Sassafras in NSW between Nowra and Braidwood). As a final confusion, there’s a Sassafras Gap and another Sassafras Creek, site of an old gold mining settlement, to be found in the Victorian high country to the north of Benambra in the state’s far east. Atherosperma moschatum was first formally described in 1806 by French naturalist Jacques Labillardière (1755-1834) in his Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen. Labillardière visited Tasmania in 1791 as a member of Bruni D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition. It was also described by the English-colonial botanist Alan Cunningham (1791-1839). Growing 15-30 metres in height, it is a mid-storey species found in damp forest. Southern sassafras has small fragrant white flowers and was used in saddlery and the manufacture of clothes pegs, but more recently its wood has become much prized for furniture making. The plant is related to another Australian plant, the yellow sassafras (Doryphora sassafras), a tropical rainforest species. The Sassafras Gully Post Office and store was established by Arthur Goode in 1894. The town has been known as Sassafras since around the time of World War 1, although to this day the post office (and the postmark) remains “Sassafras Gully”. VICNAMES, the official register of placenames notes that Sassafras was named “in recognition of the plentiful growth of Southern Sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum)”. It cites Les Blake’s Place Names of Victoria (1977) as authority. The earlier Place Names in Victoria and Tasmania (1944) by A.E. Martin suggests as its origin the “name of tree which was plentiful there. Tea has been brewed from its bark and its oil used in asthma and other complaints”. The Cambridge Dictionary of Australian Places (1992) provides the clearest exposition: “It was so named in 1894 because of trees growing there, which were probably not true sassafras trees but southern sassafras, Atherosperma moschatum.” Helen Coulson’s version of events in Story of the Dandenongs (1959) is as follows: “The discovery of sassafras trees in this part of the Dandenongs is attributed to Ambrose Eyles, a former chemist who immigrated from England and became lessee of Monbolk cattle run, at existing Lysterfield, about 1850. During his explorations of the district Eyles was amazed to discover what he believed were sassafras trees, and the young Englishman gathered specimens which he later took to the curator of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, who assured him that the trees were, in fact, sassafras. Eyles promised to take some plants to the curator on his next trip to Melbourne but on the homeward journey he was caught in a downpour and developed pleurisy from which he died shortly afterwards.” Ambrose Eyles (182350) had only arrived in Victoria in 1849 and died at the young age of 27, leaving a wife and child (born on the ship outward bound). As early as 1853, the Argus was waxing lyrical over the “magnificent sassafras tree (Atherosperma moschatum), which at or for some time kindly vegetates with the fern-trees, but in the course of time overwhelms or destroys it.” (An accurate description of the colonising behaviour of the plant.) A decade later, the medicinal properties of the plant were being discussed in the Farmers Journal and Gardeners Chronical. Of the American sassafras? Well, aside from the suggestion that the Australian varieties are named because the leaves and bark share a strong scent of nutmeg with that tree, especially when crushed, nothing further is heard. It is rarely grown in Australia, although sometimes available from specialist nurseries. The two trees are not related but as contemporary Tasmanian writer Bert Spinks has noted: “The northern hemisphere exiles, invaders and migrants of the late 1700s and 1800s were so desperate to make sense of this antipodean foreignness that the first English names they received were those of trees from elsewhere, of which they were very roughly an equivalent”. This was borne out as early as 1801 on an expedition to Western Port led by Lieutenant James Grant (1772-1833), who had earlier mapped Bass Strait in the Lady Nelson. Returning from an inland exploration of “a forest of stately timber trees”, he noted: “I bought Governor King specimens of light woods and a species of sassafras discovered by my second mate.” Later, the explorer William Hovell (1786-1875) described forest around Mount Disappointment, 60 km north of Melbourne, as containing “the fern tree and Sarsafress”. Sources: Les Blake, Place Names of Victoria, Rigby Ltd, Melbourne, 1977, p.236; Helen Coulson, Story of the Dandenongs, Cheshire, Melbourne 1959, pp.351-52; A.E. Martin’s Place Names in Victoria and Tasmania (NSW Bookstall Pty Ltd, Sydney 1944, p. 73; Glenn Turnbull, Old Ferntree Gully Shire History, Facebook 4.12.2020; Argus 1.1.1853, Farmers Journal and Gardeners Chronical 22.4.1864; Ron Hateley, The Victorian Bush: its original; and natural condition, Polybractea Press, South Melbourne, 2010, pp.8, 23. https://www.fortysouth.com.au/field-guide-to-fallingin-love-in-tasmania/sassafras-flowers; Luke Steenhuis, Ghost Towns of the High Country (2nd ed.), the author, Launching Place, 2019, pp.163-165, Richard and Barbara Appleton, The Cambridge Dictionary of Australian Places, p.267. Page 3 MOUNTAIN TALES March 2025 No.3 Commerce The rise and fall of the General Store Once centres of community life, now faded in all but memory The local store was pivotal to life in the hills well into the latter part of last century. These businesses were seldom spaced more than a mile or so apart and often offered other services such as a post office, banking and newsstand. Especially in villages with few other commercial outlets, the local (or general) store was the hub of the community. Their location was originally determined by the fact that most people travelled on horseback or on foot. But even when motor cars became more common, most families only had one vehicle and it often left the hills during the day, leaving (almost invariably) wives and mothers stranded with just the local store from which to fetch supplies. Mostly these stores sold staples in the early days: flour, sugar, tea, jam, bread, butter, biscuits, tobacco, onions, potatoes … later more exotic tinned foodstuffs, confectionary and bottled drinks would appear. If we think about the ridge top of the hills, the first general store you would encounter from the southern end was at Tremont (c.1910), the next along the main road near the Mast Gully Rd intersection was Robertson’s, first opened in 1898 and later rebuilt as the Corroboree Store. Then came the Ferny Creek General Store and Post Office (1900) and the Holly Hill Store (1920) first operated on Anzac Avenue by Fred Hughson, a returned WW1 soldier. Branching off to the east was the Sherbrooke Store and Post Office (1894). Sassafras and Olinda were better served, sometimes with a separate butcher shop, bakery, greengrocer and later a pharmacy as well. Arthur Goode opened the Sassafras Gully Post Office and Store around 1894. By the 1920s, Fred Buzaglo was prominent as proprietor of the Corner Store in Sassafras. The first store in Olinda operated from 1893, with the Dodd brothers later expanding the business to supply groceries, meat, bread, newspapers and mail and doing deliveries around the district. The Central Store (1914), run by A.T. Closs, was a well-known emporium selling all manner of goods. The Mt Dandenong Post Office and Store (1912) was originally built and operated by the Dower family near the corner of Old Coach Road and Farndons Road. The store moved to the corner of Helen Street when the new main road was built in 1926. Another post office and store operated at Five Ways in Kalorama from 1909. From early on, many of these stores served not just locals but the increasing number of visitors to the hills as well. Indeed, the Five Ways Store began life as the Beulah Tea Rooms. But the idea of a “general store” was almost an anachronism before it began. Here’s a description of such a business in the Dandenongs in the 1920s from John Morrison’s novel The Creeping City (1949): “What a sad and ghostly place is a bush store which has been overtaken by bad times! It was dark to me coming in out of the sunlight but Moss [the storekeeper] … Above: The Mt Dandenong General store c.1930. Left: Ferny Creek General Store, 2025 came creeping along behind the counter as if he’d emerged from a deeper darkness still … he was caught with everything on his hands – pots and pans, cosmetics and cough mixtures, toys, crockery, boots, tools, work-clothes. Everything piled and stacked and hung in the higgledy-piggledy way that so charmed me when I first went into the shop a quarter of a century ago. But nothing shines now. The steely lights of new axe-heads, harness, saucepans, and hurricane lamps have all gone out under a grey blanket of dust; you know the minute you go in that nothing is ever moved now except some of the groceries on the shelves behind the wide counter.” The demise of the general stores was sealed by the opening of supermarkets and centres in the foothills with which they could not compete due to easier accessibility as roads and motor vehicles improved. One by one these little stores disappeared from the 1980s onwards. The Ferny Creek General Store (the building is currently on the market) lingered on until 2018, propped up only by the post office and a liquor licence. The Silvandale Store and LPO (and tearooms) in Kalorama alone offers just a shadow of the past. Others have been converted into cafes or residences, absorbed into other businesses or simply abandoned. A docket from Fred Hughson’s Holly Hill Store in Ferny Creek, 1931. Find us on Facebook About the MtDDHS Who are we? Our members are people interested in the collection, preservation and sharing of local history. Where are we? We maintain a small office in and meet at Farndon’s Hall, Falls Rd, Kalorama. When do we meet? On the first Saturday of each month (except January) from 10am until noon. What does it cost? An annual membership subscription of $20 is payable. Contact the Secretary: mtddhs@gmail.com Page 4