Yackandandah - Culture and History

One of the few rock art sites in north-eastern Victoria, 20 km south of Yackandandah, is testimony to at least 3500 years of Aboriginal occupation of this land. The meaning of the town's name is unclear although one theory suggests that it derives from two Aboriginal words meaning 'rock' and 'water-hole' as one large rock supposedly sat atop another in what is now known as Yackandandah Creek. However, it has also been claimed that Yackandandah means 'country of hills'.

Explorers Hamilton Hume and William Hovell passed nearby the present townsite in 1824. The first white settlers arrived in the area in 1837. James Osborne took up the Yackandandah No.1 station, Elizabeth Mitchell established the Yackandandah Lower run, and George Kinchington and his wife came overland from Sydney, crossed the Murray River and camped on Yackandandah Creek, near its junction with the Kiewa River (east of the townsite). They then established the Thirlingananga station. Osbornes Flat, 6 km east of Yackandandah, was named after the Osbornes.

The first gold was allegedly uncovered in 1845 when a water mill was being built on the Yackandandah run. If that is so, nothing came of it. However, gold was discovered at the confluence of Yackandandah Creek and Commissioners Creek in December 1852 and a rush got under way along the creekside in 1853 with the population increasing from 150 in 1853 to 3000 by 1862. A police camp was set up in 1853 overlooking Commissioners Creek. A lock-up, police residence, police station and courthouse were added in the ensuing decade.

Three hotels had been licensed by 1854 and by 1855 an Anglican school was in operation. There was a resident clergyman and the site had become a major staging post on the Melbourne to Sydney wagon track. The town was first surveyed in 1856 or 1857 and the shire proclaimed in 1864.

Many miners came from the goldfields of the Klondike and Sacramento in North America. The first prospectors tended to work individually or in small groups. They carted their own gear and worked by hand. Deep mining got under way in the late 1850s when the 61 Twist Creek and Homeward Bound reefs were discovered in the hills. In the 1860s about 350 kg of gold were extracted. The 1870s saw the introduction of hydraulic sluicing then bucket dredges were utilised from the 1880s until the early 20th century. The old minesites retained enough material to allow some people to eke out a living during the Great Depression.

Wine production got under way in the 1890s although the vineyards were soon destroyed by phylloxera. The railway arrived in 1891. Sand had to be placed on the steep track from Beechworth to prevent slippage during frosty weather. The line closed in 1955.

Australia's first homegrown governor-general, Sir Isaac Isaacs, was born at Yackandandah in 1855. A more notorious early resident of the region was bushranger Dan 'Mad Dog' Morgan who, in 1860, was released from prison on a ticket-of-leave to the Yackandandah and Ovens districts. He had just completed six years of a twelve-year sentence for armed robbery (the first two served in chains). Morgan was meant to report regularly to local police as a condition of his early release but failed to do so and was soon posted as illegally at large, whereupon he moved on to the King and upper Ovens River district, embarking on a series of highway robberies that would end with murder and his own death.