STRANGE LOCALITY NAMES NEAR FLINDERS, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA IN THE EARLY DAYS.
WOODLANDS, FLINDERS.
Paul Rogers' mention of William Barger being on the late Charles Graves' farm made me wonder if William was the person who introduced evergreen lucerne as a fodder crop on "Woodlands."
I didn't find the article*, read years ago, which I believe named the person, but it would seem that it was not William, who had a clearing sale in 1925 as he was selling the property, and evergreen lucerne advertisements started appearing in 1929.
*Postscript. I eventually found the 1930 article.
Evergreen Lucerne
Westernport evergreen lucerne is reported to have given excellent results on the property of Mr G. L. Andrew, of "Woodlands." Shoreham. who introduced this variety to Victoria. (etc.)
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/223998245
The crazy thing about locality names near Flinders is that both William Barger and Woodlands were described almost equally as being at Shoreham and being at Flinders. To provide even more confusion the township of Shoreham was on the east side of the mouth of Stony Creek in the parish of Balnarring and the township of Balnarring on the west was in the parish of Flinders. Where both Shoreham and Flinders were used to describe the same location, they probably were describing Henry Tuck's former Manton's Creek Run, the east part of the Parish Of Flinders. The west part of the parish had been the Barker family's run.
That common interchanging of names for the same locality was just one of three discoveries related to Woodlands.
BLACKHEAD?
GRAVES.βOn the 9th of March, at Woodland, near Flinders, Blackhead, of scarlet fever, Henry, third son of Charles and Jane Graves, aged four years ; also, on the 11th of March, William John, youngest son of the above, aged eighteen months, of scarlet fever. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord."
(P.47, Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers,27-3-1873.)
CHARLES GRAVES' APPLICATION FOR A PUBLICAN'S LICENCE AT WOODLANDS.
TO the Licensing Magistrates at Dromana.β I, CHARLES GRAVES, of Flinders, storekeeper, do hereby give notice that I desire to obtain, and will at the next licensing meeting APPLY for a PUBLICAN'S LICENCE for a house situated at Woodlands, Flinders, containing three rooms, exclusive of those required for the use of the family. The seventeenth day of September, A. D. 1875.
(P.1, The Age, 10-9-1875.)
It is hard to believe that he was successful. No mention of the application has been found, even in Leonard Wilding's HISTORY OF THE MORNINGTON PENINSULA (Mornington Standard, 1905.)
MORE ABOUT BLACKHEAD.
The death notice (identical in two papers) was the only mention of BLACKHEAD in reference to Flinders, Westernport (or Shoreham, which I tried too) when used in inverted commas as a search term (i.e. "Blackhead, Westernport".)
"Blackhead" (as a locality) produced no results in Victoria in the 1840's or 1850's. However BLACKHEAD may not have been a locality name coined by Charles Graves (as in the case of Henry Tuck who obviously told his children that his MANTON'S CREEK RUN near Flinders was known as Merimendiewokewoke-the original name of Manton's Creek- with their young minds partly absorbing such a long word and recalling it decades later as being, as stated on the Flinders Wikpedia page, "Flinders was once believed to have previously been known as Mendi-Moke, but this has subsequently been denied.[3] BY ME!)
"BLACKHEAD"
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/154971030 (P.2, The Age, 3-12-1862.)
EXTRACTS.
The Gazette of last night contains a proclamation by the Governor in Council, under the Act of the sixteenth year of her present Majesty to consolidate and amend the law relating to Ports, Harbors, and Shipping, in the colony of Victoria, repealing the proclamation of 30th May, 1853,which defined the limits and boundaries of ports, and made regulations for the same. His Excellency now defines the boundaries as follows : β
Western Port, within a line from Blackhead to Point Grant*, and from Cape Woolamai to Point Griffiths.
*Point Grant is near the Nobbies, Phillip Island's greatest tourist attraction because of the "formally-dressed" birds.
BLACKHEAD AND WEST HEAD.
CAPE SCHANK was referred to by Liadet in 1848 as meaning the same as west head. Considering that Cape Schanck was the graveyard of so many vessels it could be assumed that it was not the entrance to a harbour and that West Head was the western entrance to Westernport.
MAP OF WESTERNPORT.
https://www.google.com/search...
The map shows that the line from Blackhead to Point Grant would have been from West Head to Summerlands and that the Eastern entrance to Westernport would have been where the bridge now connects San Remo* and Phillip Island.
https://beachsafe.org.au/.../bass.../san-remo/griffith-point
Now how many results would you expect to find in a trove search for "West Head, Westernport". There were only two; the first in 1864, regarding country crown lands at West Head being withdrawn from sale and the second in 1909 about the Golf Club founded by David Maxwell was flourishing. See:
https://www.familytreecircles.com/review-of-a-history-of...
The obvious conclusion is that West Head was named about a year after the new regulation in late 1862 had called it Blackhead but Charles Graves preferred to stick to the old name (as many early settlers at Rye and Mornington did as evidenced by THE BATTLE OF TOOTGAROOK-Sorrento v Rye, and the Mornington team being cheered on with"Go the Pointers!"
Why would West Head have been originally called Blackhead?
on 2022-09-23 01:34:04
Itellya is researching local history on the Mornington Peninsula and is willing to help family historians with information about the area between Somerville and Blairgowrie. He has extensive information about Henry Gomm of Somerville, Joseph Porta (Victoria's first bellows manufacturer) and Captain Adams of Rosebud.