The town shares its name with a line of billabongs flowing south towards the nearby Loddon River.

Compared to the rest of the Mt Alexander Shire, Campbells Creek had a smaller proportion of people born overseas and was home to a higher proportion of couple families with a child or children; 9.2 percent were one-parent families, compared with 10.4 percent for the Mount Alexander Shire.

[6] Campbells Creek supports a licensed post office, hotel, general store and cafe, a hardware store and numerous businesses, such as bed-and-breakfast accommodation, a beauty therapist, a bookshop, engineering and earthmoving businesses, mechanics, a transport firm and a swimming school.

One of their local legends talks of seeing a mountain of fire which, according to Castlemaine geologist Dr Julian Hollis, refers to a volcanic eruption north east of Mt Franklin approximately 500 years ago [citation needed].

[7] In order to control the Aboriginal population in Victoria, the colonial government appointed a Chief Protector and four deputies to "watch over the rights and interests of Natives, to protect them from any encroachments on their property."

Their numbers were small and overtaken by new settlers, the pastoral Chinese, ahead of the gold rush of the early 1850s.

Campbell had been employed by the Macarthur family on land near Sydney and then established the Strathloddon run, the boundaries of which encompassed the entire creek valley.

Campbell became a leader and spokesman for squatters across Victoria and, in 1851, was elected to represent the Loddon electorate in the first Victorian Legislative Council.

There were numerous hotels, a brewery, houses of worship belonging to the Primitive Methodists and Presbyterians, and a denominational school.

Gathering together for safety, as hostility to the Chinese was overt and overwhelming, there were numerous local conflicts, some of considerable proportions.

Calico tents were the main domiciles, lining narrow thoroughfares dotted with joss temples, tea-houses, tailors, apothecaries, gambling establishments, opium dens, herbalists and barbers.

The Chinese tended to work not so much as individuals, but in a type of co-operative, using a system of open-cast alluvial mining.

A fire swept away the Chinese camp at Campbells Creek on Australia Day 1875 destroying most of a little Canton but saving the Five Flags Hotel (which remains today).

After the Victorian Gold Rush era, orchards, vineyards, breweries and farms sustained the settlement.

The Campbells Creek Soldiers Memorial records locals in all the Australian Services who died in both World Wars, in theatres such as France (many at Villers-Bretonneux), Libya, Egypt, Thailand and the Pacific.

On the other side of the road, behind a hedged picket fence, is a gracious Federation house that originally belonged to the owner of the Campbells Creek Brewery which had stood behind the impressive home.