Mansfield property

The Yowengillum and the first sheep station

The Yowengillum, a clan of the Taungurung people, are the traditional owners of the Mansfield region. The same clan lived around Alexandra and along the Upper Goulburn River too. Their camps stood near Mount Battery, which they knew as Bayerlite, and were noted for large stone ovens. Bitteruc, a Yowengillum elder of that time, described the land around Bayerlite as "good country, my country."

British colonisers entered the region from 1839, when Andrew Ewing, a stockman, scouted the district for a new sheep station. Ewing represented the Scottish livestock company Watson & Hunter. He met Yowengillum people beside a river he called Devils River. He used the phrase "black devils" about them. The best land lay east of that river, beside Mount Battery, and in 1840 Ewing set up the Mount Battery sheep station there. An overseer's hut went up near the spot where Mansfield now stands.

Mount Battery becomes Mansfield

Mansfield was first known as Mount Battery. A township surveyed in 1851 took the name of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, England. Settlement followed gold finds in the area, and a Post Office opened there on 1 January 1858. By 1878 there were half a dozen general stores in Mansfield, with several butchers and blacksmiths. Public buildings included a hospital, three churches, a shire hall, a library and Victoria Hall, where concerts took place.

Dr John Pearson Rowe, a squatter and physician, held the 'Loyola Run', which was also called Mount Battery, near Mansfield. He lived from 1810 to 1878. He was reputed to be the district's first Roman Catholic resident, and he was one of the principal founders of the University of Melbourne. In 1859 he stood for the Murray District seat in the Upper House, and lost. He owned land on the Campaspe River, and it is recorded that Rochester was named after him.

Ned Kelly and the police

In 1869 Rowe fired at a 14-year-old Ned Kelly, who was travelling with the bushranger Harry Power. In October 1878 he supplied police Sergeant Kennedy with information on where Kelly could be found. Kennedy and his officers rode into the Wombat Ranges on that information. Three of them were killed there, and the legend of the Kelly Gang was born.

On 11 November 1863 there was a triple hanging at Melbourne Gaol. Elizabeth Scott, Julian Cross and David Gedge were hanged for the murder of Scott's husband. The murder took place in the Wappan district, near Mansfield. Mansfield forms part of the Ned Kelly Trail, and the town's cemetery holds the graves of police officers killed by Kelly's gang at Stringybark Creek.

Rail, tourism and the mountains

The railway to Mansfield ran from Tallarook. It reached the town in 1891, and passenger services ended on 28 May 1977. The line closed on 18 November 1978. The town once relied heavily on farming and logging, and it is now a tourist centre.

Mansfield is linked to the high-country tradition of alpine grazing, which a film made around the town, near Craigs Hut, celebrates: The Man from Snowy River, which draws on a poem by Banjo Paterson. Geoscience Australia recorded an earthquake of magnitude 5.9, centred at Licola, around 130 kilometres from Mansfield, at a depth of 10 kilometres, at around 9:15am on 22 September 2021.

Living in Mansfield

Mansfield lies among the foothills of the Victorian Alps, approximately 180 kilometres north-east of Melbourne by road. The Mansfield local government area has its seat in the town. Mansfield is the support town for the Mount Buller ski resort. In the town's roundabout stands the memorial to police, and near High Street the former station building now serves tourists as a visitor centre.