Strangways, Victoria
Betraying a common attitude in 1868 the Mount Alexander Mail Strangways 'correspondent,' in discussing snakes in the district, by then under cultivation, reported; ...blackfellows, are rapidly and happily passing to the extinction that awaits inferior and noxious races, when exposed to the influence of superior natures...[3]A change in attitude to First Peoples was apparent in moves in 2021 by Mount Alexander Shire Council in conjunction with Hepburn Shire Council,[4] North Central Catchment Management Authority and DJAARA (formerly the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation) to rename Jim Crow Creek, first applied to the area of Lalgambook/Mt Franklin by Captain John Hepburn in the 1830’s.
[5] The creek runs 26 km through from Breakneck Gorge in Hepburn Regional Park, joining the Loddon River below the Guildford Plateau at Strangways.
Both Hepburn Shire Council and Mount Alexander Shire Councils voted unanimously in April 2022 to call it Larni Barramal Yaluk (Home of the Emu Creek) in Dja Dja Wurrung language because the term ‘Jim Crow’ is derogatory and stems from international racial segregation and anti-black racism prevalent also in colonial Australia.
[14] However the Surveyor General's Office, Melbourne had already issued a plan of an allotment abutting Muckleford Creek in the area it listed in 1856 as the Parish of Strangways.
Strangways was probably named after a British artillery commander Brigadier General Sir Thomas Fox-Strangways, KCB killed at the Battle of Inkerman in the Crimea in 1854.
[9] The township and district were administered by the Shire of Newstead from 7 March 1865 until an amalgamation into the municipality of Mount Alexander was instituted by the Kennett government on 20 January 1995.
The teachers in the country make no complaint, and in this respect their conduct is in favourable contrast to that of their metropolitan confreres, whose selfish procedure must seriously embarrass the Minister of Public Instruction in his novel and difficult, but all important undertaking.
Many from Strangways caught the train to Castlemaine, with 800 boarding a trip from Maryborough to celebrate the opening of the line in 1874,[26] and after 1947 a school bus service was commenced.
The Castlemaine and Maryborough railway, known as the Moolort line, was started in September 1872 raising local concerns over the effect trains would have on horses.
3in., so that although the cost of construction will be greatly reduced even in comparison with the North Eastern line, the railway will not be built upon what is known as the narrow gauge or cheap principle.
The redgum required for the sleepers and piles will be procured from the Murray district, and the posts and rails for fencing from the Bullarook forest near Daylesford.
In early 1914 Strangways station received part of the £12,000 from the Railway Loan Application Bill for extending and raising the passenger platform and for installing barriers to facilitate the checking of tickets.
[29] At the direction of the Postmaster General, Melbourne, a telegraph line was constructed from Yandoit and along the railway to the Strangways rail crossing gates in 1887.
[33] Thriving until before WW1, and with a school, station, church, hotels and hall, Strangways is now a sparsely populated mixed farming community with traces only of a town centre.
