Avoca (Victoria)
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Avoca is a small town in the center of the Australian state of Victoria . It is located 71 km northwest of Ballarat in the Local Government Area Pyrenees Shire on the Avoca River . The 2016 census counted 972 residents.
geography
The city lies in the gently undulating basin of the Avoca River, which rises to the Pyrenees Ranges in the west . To the south the area is bounded by the low hills of the Great Dividing Range . In the east the basin ends in a dry, wooded rise and in the north the Avoca River flows at a slow rate through the plains of the Wimmera and then seeps into the swamps south of the Murray River . The town and river are named after the village of Avoca and the River Avoca in County Wicklow in eastern Ireland .
The district of the city covers about 200 km². The places Redbank, Natte Yallock, Rathscar, Bung Bong, Lamplough, Amphitheater, Percydale, Moonambel and Warrenmang belong to it. A few kilometers to the northeast there are pens and meadows where the gold rush town of Homebush once stood.
history
Early settlement and gold rush
The researcher and surveyor Thomas Mitchell was the first European to travel through the area of what would later become Avoca. He found this area had a more comfortable climate and more rainfall than the interior of New South Wales , and encouraged settlers to settle on the land he described as Australia Felix .
The Blood Hole massacre took place in late 1839 or early 1840 in Middle Creek near Moonambel , north of Avoca. There was an unknown number of Aborigines of the Dja Dja Wurrung murdered.
Around 1850 there were a number of large sheep pastures there and an agricultural society had established itself.
Like Ballarat and many other cities in Victoria, Avoca was formed in a short time during the gold rush of the 1850s. The first gold was found in 1849 in the Pyrenees Ranges near Avoca. But it took another two years before the shepherd James Esmond found a large amount of gold in Clunes , 40 km from present-day Avoca, and thus caused the gold rush in Victoria. In 1853 gold was found in Four Mile Flat near Avoca, and a few months later the main vein in Avoca itself was pricked. At the beginning of December 1853 the population had risen from 100 to 2,200, and in June of the following year there were already 16,000 inhabitants in Avoca, making the city one of the more important gold rush towns in Victoria.
With a courthouse, a police station, a post office (opened September 1, 1854), gold exchanges, churches and schools. Avoca had become an administrative center, which was very important for the development of the city. When the prospectors gave up their claims in Avoca and moved on to Dunolly in 1856 , Avoca was able to survive as an economic and administrative center. Gold seekers returned to Avoca with the Lamplough Gold Rush in 1859, and in the same year rich gold deposits were also found in Homebush , which was established on the site of the Four Mile Flat Gold Rush of 1853. This discovery brought new life to the area. The value of gold mining to the economy may be shown by a simple number: From 1859 to 1870, £ 2.5m worth of gold was sent from Avoca to Melbourne , even that huge sum was only a third of the gold mined since private sales did not are taken into account.
From gold mining to agriculture
Avoca's economic base quickly shifted from gold mining to agriculture. Many miners who moved here in the 1850s and early 1860s settled down and started farming the land. The large sheep breeding stations from before the gold rush were divided into smaller plots. Mining continued to be an important industry, but in the last decades of the 19th century the miners no longer worked individually or in small groups, but in large companies that exploited deeper gold veins. In Homebush, about 10 km northeast of Avoca, only large mining companies worked. The site flourished for several decades until these shafts also became uneconomical. The agricultural region of Victoria was particularly hard hit by the economic crisis and the long drought in the 1890s. From 1895 the larger mines in the Avoca area were closed and when the First World War broke out there were only a few active mining companies left.
Agricultural productivity rose rapidly throughout Australia during this period, in part due to the development of agricultural machinery manufactured by companies such as Mackay and Shearer . From the 1890s to 1901, some rural areas saw a five-fold increase in yield.
Avoca's infrastructure continued to expand in the first decade of the 20th century. Additional and better roads were built because the problem of increased traffic volume on the poor roads due to higher agricultural production was met with the appointment of a district engineer. In 1911 a new reservoir was built and in the same year the district was connected to the Victoria telephone network.
At the end of the 20th century, wine was grown again, so that viticulture and tourism are important economic sectors in the region today. Avoca is considered the gateway to the wine region of the Pyrenees Ranges .
today
economy
Avoca has many small shops, two pubs, various cafes, a pharmacy, a general store, two butcher shops, a supermarket, its own newspaper ( Pyrenees Advocate ) and a bank. The Avoca Businesspeople Association has tried hard in the past to attract new settlers and businesspeople, and these efforts are beginning to take effect.
Sports
The city has an Australian football team that plays in the Maryborough-Castlemaine District Football League . The Avoca Bulldogs have been in this league since 2005. From 1944 to 1999 they played in the Lexton Football League and the Western Plains Football League . The club was founded in 1872.
Avoca also has a horse racing club , Avoca Turf Club , which has been allowed to host a third race each December in addition to the ANZAC race on ANZAC Day and the Avoca Cup in October.
Golfers play at Avoca Golf Club on Davey Street .
Avoca also hosts an interesting mountain bike race as a marathon competition in which the starters start and arrive in the vineyards of Mount Avoca . This race has been around since 2010 and offers distances of 15 km, 33 km, 45 km, 66 km and 90 km.
traffic
Avoca is on the Sunraysia Highway , where the Pyrenees Highway crosses.
Until 1979 there was also its own train station. In 1995 the railway line from Ararat to Maryborough was closed for conversion to standard gauge. There has been no freight traffic on it since 2005.
Web links
swell
- Blainey, Geoffrey: The Rush That Never Ended (4th Edition) . Melbourne University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-522-84557-6 .
- Linn, Rob: Battling the Land: 200 years of rural Australia . Allen & Unwin, 1999, ISBN 1-86448-829-8 .
- Mitchell, Thomas: Three expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia, with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales . Libraries Board Of South Australia (Facsimile edition: first published by T & W Boone, 1839), 1965, Bib ID 2270085 (National Library of Australia).
- Avoca Football Netball Club
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Australian Bureau of Statistics : Avoca (L) ( English ) In: 2016 Census QuickStats . June 27, 2017. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
- ↑ Aldo Massola: Journey to Aboriginal Victoria , Rigby (1969). P. 88, mentioned in: Ian D. Clark: Scars on the Landscape. A Register of Massacre sites in Western Victoria 1803-1859 , Aboriginal Studies Press (1995). ISBN 0-85575-281-5 . P. 97
- ^ Geoffrey Blainey: A History of Victoria , Cambridge University Press (2006). ISBN 0-521-86977-3 . P. 30
- ^ Premier Postal History: Post Office List . Archived from the original on May 10, 2008. Retrieved April 11, 2008.
- ↑ Avoca Bulldogs (English)
- ^ Avoca Shire Turf Club: Avoca Shire Turf Club . Archived from the original on February 16, 2011. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
- ^ Golf Select: Avoca . Retrieved May 11, 2009.
- ↑ Big Hill Events ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
