Myrtleford - Culture and History

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This was published 15 years ago

Myrtleford - Culture and History


Prior to European settlement the area was occupied by the Dhudoroa Aborigines. The first white people in the Ovens Valley were the pastoralists who arrived in 1837-38. John Hillas built huts and stockyards on the banks of Myrtle Creek in 1837, near the present Myrtleford Hotel.

Prospectors appeared when gold was discovered in the early 1850s and the settlement of Myrtleford began to emerge as a camping place around a ford at Myrtle Creek which was used by the Beechworth miners. The creek was named after the myrtle trees growing there but has since been renamed Barwidgee Creek.

The first localised mining rush occurred along Happy Valley Creek in 1856 with reef mining soon commencing at Gapstead. The town was surveyed and named in 1859.

Myrtleford survived the decline of goldmining due to the early establishment of hop and tobacco production. Chinese settlers, the Pan Look family, were, for many years, the largest growers. The 1930s and 1940s were hard times for the town but, after World War II, new methods and strains of tobacco were introduced and a Tobacco Research Station was established. Southern European migrants also settled in the area in the postwar years, involving themselves in the tobacco, hops and walnut industries.

The Tobacco, Timber and Hops Festival is held on the Labor Day long weekend in March and, in October, the Myrtleford Show is held annually and the International Festival biennially. The Golden Spur Rodeo is a major local event that has been held on Boxing Day since 1954 and a major market day sees the streets blocked off on the first Friday in January.


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