Some weeks ago, we decided to return to Cobram where we spent a pleasant few days about a year ago, Again, we are staying at the RACV Resort, just a little out of town. Rather than get here by driving straight up the highway via Semour and Shepparton , we decied to take a more scenic route along some back roads through Euroa, Violet Town and Dookie. You never know what you might find when you go exploring.
Heavy rain is forecast for the next few days and in hindsight it would have been better for us to have been here during this last week when the weather was dry, sunny and warm. Nevertheless, we weren’t to know and we will see how it goes day by day.
The first memorable town that we came across was Euroa. It is situated on Seven Creeks, a tributary of the Goulburn River. The area was known to the ‘overlanders’ having been explored by the New South Wales Surveyor-General, Major Thomas Mitchell, in his Australia Felix expedition of 1836.
Not far from the town to the south are a very scenic group of hills with rugged granite outcrops.
The town’s local fame was enhanced by three of its local citizens being awarded the Victoria Cross – two from Gallipoli and one from the Boer War. This number of VC recipients is understood to be a record for a provincial town.
Euroa was one of the last towns to be bypassed by the Hume Freeway. At the time, this was a cause of some concern to local retailers who knew that their shopping centre did not match those in the larger towns of Benalla and Shepparton. However, tourist promotions emphasised the many picnic spots along Seven Creeks and the numerous examples of colonial architecture in the town. I can heartily recommend Burkes Bakery in the Main Street.
The Seven Creeks Hotel built in 1901 is an impressive example of an Australian colonial pub..
The next town on our route was Violet Town. As a kid, my father used to threaten to leave me in this town if I played up while we were on a trip.
Until 1980, the Sydney Road/Hume Highway ran through Violet Town, and much early history is centred on this road, now called High Street. Major Thomas Mitchell and his party stopped on the banks of Violet Creek, now called Honeysuckle Creek on his way back to Sydney. In his exploration of 1836, he noted that the swamps and marshes in the area had a profusion of wild violets and named the district Violet Ponds. The explorers Hume and Hovell also camped near this spot in 1824.
Violet Town was the scene of one of Australia’s worst railway disasters when. in 1969, the Southern Aurora overnight train from Sydney collided with a freight train. The crash resulted in nine deaths and 117 injuries.
The Southern Aurora was an overnight express service between Melbourne and Sydney. It began in 1962 with the opening of the standard gauge line in Victoria, which enabled direct rail traffic between the two capitals for the first time. It was so revolutionary that a song was written about the train. You can hear it here: Southern Aurora
As the Southern Aurora passed through Benalla it was travelling at its top speed of 70 mph (110 km/h). Between Benalla and Violet Town it appears that the driver had a heat attack and died in the driver’s seat of the locomotive.The fireman (co-driver) had gone to boil an electric kettle to make a cup of tea and missed the fact that the train had passed two warning signals. The Coroner’s report found him, as well as the guard who was asleep and should have applied the emergency brakes, to be negligent.
Shortly before 7 a.m., the train collided head-on with an oncoming freight train. Six of the passenger carriages were derailed, and one was completely crushed by other wreckage. The two leading carriages telescoped into the rear of the locomotive, and two others rode over the top of the wreckage, suspending them some 30 ft (9 m) in the air.
There is an extensive memorial commemorating this incidemnt right next to the Violet Town station.
Travelling further north, we came to the little town of Dookie. I have often seen roadsigns pointing to this town but have never previously visited it. Its most outstanding feature is the Melbourne University Dookie campus (formerly known as Dookie Agricultural College). It is the oldest agricultural college in Victoria – founded in 1886. Situated on 2,440 hectares, the campus includes a small community that houses students and teaching staff, merino sheep, an orchard, a robotic dairy, a winery and a natural bush reserve.
The actual town (a few kilometres away) has a Main Street that resembles other towns in the area that have had their heyday decades ago. At the 2021 census, Dookie had a population of 333.
Apparently when the district was surveyed in 1859 it took in much of the early Emu Plains Pastoral Run. Local lore has it that Mrs Turnbull, wife of the pastoral station’s proprietor, was so unhappy at the prospect of the survey and possible farm subdivision that the surveyor suggested a place name derived from the Singhalese word ‘duka’, meaning sorrow. Mrs Turnbull had lived in Ceylon. Duka was re-spelt Dookie.
Opposite the eclectic retail curiosity, second hand and curio store is a dead tree with around 150 red aluminum flowers. I first took them to be poppies and perhaps a new version of a war memorial. I think they are really just a means of artistic expression compatible with the painted silos and murals that exist around the area.
The region around our dstination at Cobram is irrigated from the Murray River and is criss-crossed by a network of irrigation channels.
