GRANT TOWNSHIP AND CEMETERY

WONGUNGARRA, WELLINGTON SHIRE

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Victorian Heritage Inventory

Statement of Significance

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  • History

    GRANT TOWNSHIP AND CEMETERY - History

    Heritage Inventory History of Site: Grant was the main township established during the Crooked River reefing rush of 1864, and the only one situated away from the river itself. In July 1864, the Union Reef was discovered near Isaac's Shanty, a grog shop on Mt Pleasant. Within a month, the hilltop was taking on the appearance of a town, with a butchery and boarding house, and other buildings (including a pub) under construction. Many more reefs were shortly struck and the locality became the centre of activity on the Crooked River field. The township was called Skye or Mt Pleasant; but in April 1865, it was surveyed and given the name Grant. At that time, the digging population of Crooked River was estimated at about 1,250, and it continued to increase throughout 1865. A Cobb and Co. coach service operated from Sale, bringing new arrivals.Town allotments were sold in August that year. According to the Illustrated Australian News, Grant was 'composed of buildings which for material comfort and appearance are comparable with goldfield townships of much longer standing'. Another visitor in 1865 saw 'a large and flourishing township composed of substantial weatherboard and log buildings'. Not all structures could be called substantial, though: the courthouse comprised just 'a few slabs and half a dozen sheets of bark'. A directory of the period listed eighteen hotels, four banks, fourteen general stores, two cordial manufacturers, nine stores, three wine and spirit dealers, two chemists, several barristers and solicitors, a post office, a great number of restaurants (including Australia's first beer garden—Muller's Cafe—where Italian diggers gathered to sing opera), a school, church, mining exchange, newspaper office, and government camp. Most of the buildings were on Gertrude, Dawson and Darling streets, although the surveyor had calculated that Winchester Street would develop as the town centre.Before the end of the 1860s, the Crooked River reefs were largely abandoned. At the beginning of 1867, only one of the four banks still operated at Grant, and many other businesses had closed. The cost of bringing food and other supplies in from Sale or Bairnsdale was crippling, and self-sufficiency was out of the question as the rugged land around Grant was scarcely suitable for growing crops. In 1875 only 18 diggers remained at Grant, and 30 on the river. A visitor wrote:Grant is now a deserted village. A great number of houses are empty. The windows of most of them are boarded, and where not boarded they are broken; the once busy streets are now silent and the pathways are thickly covered with broken bottles, rusted sardine tins, iron hoops, staves of casks and fragments of bush furniture. (A.W. Howitt in GSV Progress Report III, p. 13, 1876, quoted by Flett)In fact, the town was not quite deserted. The school remained until 1890, when it closed, leaving Henry Harrison's store and two hotels. A policeman based at Dargo estimated the average takings of the Grant hotels to be five shillings per week, as there were only about six families living in the town and very few visitors. 'I may say,' he remarked, 'that Grant people are always quarrelling amongst themselves, in fact there are hardly two of them that are on speaking terms.' Just a couple of prospectors and a two old age pensioners remained in 1916, one of them Mick Murphy who been at Grant since 1864. Apart from a couple of houses, the only buildings were the 'recently abandoned Pioneer Hotel, a couple of dilapidated shops and a fine old church now crumbling to decay'. In 1931 a visitor wrote that the only thing left at Grant was the cemetery. A bushfire had recently been through, but one huge pine tree overlooked the few standing headstones. A visitor the following year found 'the streets red tracks in grassy sward and some inverted bottles and a gooseberry bush where once was a flower bed, and some hardy fruit trees.' Grant had a government battery then, but it was used infrequently and was soon moved on.

    Heritage Inventory Description

    GRANT TOWNSHIP AND CEMETERY - Heritage Inventory Description

    Grant township - The main remaining features are exotic trees (pears and elderberries), traces of street formations and tracks, benched house sites, remains of fireplaces, the site of the Church of England (outline of building stumps), and scatters of domestic artefacts. Grant cemetery - Two standing headstones are visible: (1) Alfred Reford, December 1870, and Lewis Reford, November 1912; and (2) Henry Harrison, March 1902, and Sarah Fox, 1890. Also visible are at least 25 distinct grave mounds and a grave surrounded by the remains of a low post & rail fence. Henry Harrison (headstone 2) was mining registrar for the Crooked River Division from 1884 until the 1890s. He was also a storekeeper and mine owner, having purchased the Good Hope mine in 1879 (Christie & Gray, p. 84) - see 'good hope mine', above. His was the sole remaining store at Grant in 1890.

    Heritage Inventory Significance: National EstateHistorical significanceùGrant was the 'capital' of the Crooked River goldfield during the 1860s.Archaeological potentialùyesNetwork valuesùGrant township and cemetery are a focal point of the site network comprising the Grant Historic Reserve, which also includes mining settlements, cemeteries, quartz mines and alluvial mining landscapes, all overgrown, but linked by a navigable network of carting tracks.

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  • GRANT TOWNSHIP AND CEMETERY

    

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  Grant Cemetery

  Jim McNabb • 08/06/17

  Hi I made a youtube video up on Grant cemetery and you are welcome to use any part of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6R-rItwjRA