Anyone who has walked around the back of Kilmore Racecourse recently will be aware that there has been a lot of development happening, involving the installation of sculptures and the improvement of the actual track.
This work has been carried out by the Trustees of the Kilmore Racecourse and funded by a generous donation from the Bendigo Community bank.
The track will be officially opened on Saturday April 15th with a 10:30am start at the corner of East Street and Union Street.
Kilmore Historical society Inc invites you to see the newly edited version of the films of Father James McHugh.
The showings will take place at the Old Kilmore Post Office on Saturday 29th April, 2023, from 10 am to 3pm. ( The movie will be repeated as necessary)
Father McHugh was a devotee of early movie making and documented scenes of Kilmore from around 1937 until 1939.
With thanks to the Bendigo Bank, Assumption College and individual donations the films have now been enhanced by the addition of a sound track – including the names of some of the people appearing in the films, and a music background.
Everyone is welcome to attend this free event for Heritage Month.
For further information email : kilmorehistoricalsociety@gmail.com
One of Kilmore’s earliest residences is currently on the market. ‘The Towers’ on Victoria Parade is believed to have been constructed around 1850. The Heritage Study lists the original landowner as Thos. Lumsden.
The most noteworthy resident of this building was Thomas Hunt, journalist, politician, and proprietor of the Kilmore Free Press.
The building is remarkably well preserved. The most remarkable feature of the building, which gives it its name, is the pair of rounded castellated towers, one at each corner of the frontage facing the street.
We can only hope that this wonderful structure finds a buyer sympathetic to its heritage and willing to maintain it as it ages towards the end of its second century.
We have had a request for pictures of the site of the old IGA supermarket on Sydney Street, both during its time as an IGA and previously. Ideally there should be images giving a continuous pictorial record of the block from its first buildings onwards.
We were surprised to find that the KHS picture collection gives very little coverage of this block.
If any members or visitors have pictures that we could borrow to copy, we would be very grateful.
We have had a lot of discussion about who might be who in this 1932 Kilmore FC picture. To make it easier to identify which player we are referring to, I have numbered the individuals in the picture.
KHS celebrated the 160th birthday of the Old Post Office on Tuesday. Members, visitors, and old staff all put in an appearance. Here from left to right are five people who worked in the building before the postal functions were transferred to the new building:
Lindsey Musgrave, Kevin Parks, Glenda Pittaway, Tom Stute, Lyn Noonan
The party ended with cake and general reminiscences.
This group of elegantly dressed gentlemen appears to have been photographed around the turn of the last century. The faces are clear and their descendants might well be able to recognise some of them.We have a tentative family identification for the gentleman in the middle of the back row.
Do any of our site visitors have any suggestions ?
Our indefatigable researcher, Grahame Thom, has prepared a timeline summary for the history of Kilmore. This timeline was compiled from a variety of sources and provides a convenient overview of the history of the town.
Our members will be pleased to know that the restoration of Whitburgh Cottage continues to progress rapidly. These works are jointly funded by a Government grant and the Council itself.
Three members of Kilmore Historical society – Brian Clancy, Liz Dillon-Hensby, and Rose King – were invited to visit the site and were impressed by the amount of work that has been achieved.
Brian, Rose and Liz in the kitchen
The unstable buckling West Wall has been dismantled and rebuilt in situ.
The rebuilt West Wall
The whole interior has been stabilised and parts of the interior walls reconstructed.
Example of reconstruction work
The council is still looking at suggestions for the use of the Cottage once the works are complete. An arts centre has been proposed. Another possible use would be as an office for a company that would not require the installation of equipment.
If you have any ideas for the use of the Cottage, feel free to contact the Council.
The Kilmore Free Press of Thursday June 8 1911 reprinted an article from February of 1856 under the heading “Kilmore Fifty-Five Years Ago.” The article itself contrasts the Kilmore of 1853 with the same town three years later, showing what remarkable changes had occurred in a relatively short period of time. This excerpt should be of interest to historians.
“When we at the Examiner set foot in Kilmore three years ago, the place was very difficult of access, there being no roads, bridges, or other like conveniences from here to Melbourne, and even horse-drays frequently required fourteen days to perform the journey. The only public institutions then in the place were three churches of different religious denominations, with scanty congregations, and three denominational schools, with a very few children at each. A cabbage, a potato, an onion or cauliflower could rarely be procured, and then only by the lucky digger, and to many were known only by traditional description.
Water was nearly as difficult of procuration, and when procured held so large a quantity of mud and other ingredients in suspension that it more resembled thick gruel than the limpid life-giving element. In many instances it was necessary to procure a strong horse to pass from one side of the street to the other and as to a pedestrian excursion from Morris’ Inn to the Dunrobin Castle it generally required almost as much preparation and arrangement as an expedition to the Crimea would now require, and then was performed in something like the same style of locomotion as monkeys pass from tree to tree, or as cockatoos climb up the area railings, that is by holding on by teeth and feet.
As, however, after the waters of the deluge had settled and the dry land appeared, so, in Kilmore, as new blood came to be infused, bringing with it those rich elements of which it is composed, a new order of things began to be manifest, and although we can only be yet said to be in a transition state still we are able to exhibit the exact opposite to that which belonged to the past. The town is now, comparatively speaking, easy of access, the road, with the exception of about fourteen miles of intervening space between here and Melbourne, having been completed, and the exception alluded to has some chance of being connected during the ensuing two months. A daily mail, as well as two daily coaches, up and down, regularly pass through here, by which passengers can arrive in Melbourne in five hours. Four numerously attended churches now exist, with three denominational and one national school.
There is a Mechanics’ Institution, with large and airy reading room, in which lectures and readings are weekly delivered. A Total Abstinence Society holds weekly meetings in its own buildings, and there is a Society for the establishment of a Benevolent Asylum and Hospital; who are energetically going to work in the furtherance of their office. Vegetables are now so abundant that they encumber the ground and are going to waste. Artesian wells have been sunk to nearly every house, And beautiful clear and cool water is abundant. The streets have been mcadamised and the footpaths are now in course of alignment, preparatory to kerbing them.”
Kilmore, Victoria, Australia. Victoria's oldest inland town
Kilmore Historical Society 