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| The White
Horse opposite the Town Hall
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Box Hill (and Dandenong Ranges National
Park)
Famous rural setting for one of Australia's
most famous art communities
Located only 11 km east of the city of
Melbourne, Box Hill was once surrounded by open
country. It was this rural context which
attracted several of Australiaıs most famous
artists to the area from 1885 to 1888. Today Box
Hill is an accessible suburb connected to the
city centre by a tramline and excellent public
transport.
Tom Roberts, one of Australia's greatest
landscape painters, came to Box Hill shortly
after returning from a trip to France and Spain,
where he had fallen under the spell of the
impressionist movement. He returned to Australia
determined to capture the play of light and
shade in the Australian countryside.
Roberts and his friend and fellow painter,
Frederick McCubbin, dissatisfied with the
conservative approach to landscape painting
which existed in most of Australia's art
schools, chose Houston's Farm at Box Hill. It
was an ideal location because it allowed them to
pursue their experiments on weekends while
retaining their jobs in Melbourne. They were
soon joined by a number of other artists
including Arthur Streeton, Louis Abrahams,
Charles Conder, Jane Sutherland, Tom Humphrey
and John Mather.
Sightseers began to disrupt the ease and
atmosphere of the experience and, having
established their intimate, naturalistic
approach to the bush and its inhabitants, the
group moved on to nearby Heidelberg, thereby
earning them the epithet, the 'Heidelberg
School'. The fine grass, tea-trees, and blue gum
leaves of the red box eucalypts, featured in
such works as Roberts' 'The Artists' Camp',
McCubbin's 'A Bush Burial' and Streeton's
'Settler's Camp', help modern viewers to
determine which paintings were done in the Box
Hill area. A memorial cairn has been erected in
a small park at the eastern end of Prince
Street, as this is thought to be near the site
of the original Artists' Camp.
Box Hill's first landholder was Arundel
Wrighte who, in 1838, took up a pastoral lease
on the land he had previously explored in the
Bushy Creek area. The first permanent settlers,
Thomas Toogood and his wife, purchased 5 000
acres in 1841, and Wrighte built a house on his
property in 1844. The Pioneers' Memorial, which
can be found in front of the town hall, is made
from a chimney stone taken from Wrighte's
original house.
The area which now constitutes the centre of
Box Hill was first settled in 1854 and the
township became a market centre for the fruit
and vegetables grown in the district. Two years
later, Joseph Aspinall, whose house was the site
of the first Methodist service in the area,
oversaw the construction of the Woodhouse Grove
Methodist Church. It was named after Aspinallıs
property which had been named after a college
for Methodist ministers in Yorkshire, England.
Remodelled at the 1956 centenary to allow for
an expanded congregation, it still stands today
and is classified by the National Trust. The
first Wesleyan church in central Box Hill, now
the Methodist Oxford Hall, was established on
Station and Oxford Streets in 1886.
The town's name was chosen by lot at a
meeting of locals in 1860. The successful entry
was made by Silas Padgham, storekeeper and first
postmaster of the area, at whose house the
assembly convened. Padgham was apparently born
at Box Hill in Surrey, England, although it has
been argued that the box eucalypts of the region
exerted some influence on the decision.
A land boom generated prosperity when the
railway arrived in 1882, enabling men like
Roberts and McCubbin to commute freely to and
from Melbourne. However, the speculative
recklessness which accompanied the boom
contributed to a significant bust in 1893.
The first electric tram in the southern
hemisphere commenced its run from Box Hill to
Doncaster in 1889, in order to transport
passengers to and from the train station. It met
with resistance from some locals who sabotaged
the line during construction and again in 1891.
A casualty of the depression, the service
terminated in 1896.
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| The White
Horse is an emblem of Box Hill
|
Appropriately situated in the centre of
Whitehorse Road stands a statue of a white horse
on a pedestal which has become the emblem of Box
Hill. It appears on the cityıs coat of arms. The
statue's history is bound up with a temperance
campaign which was conducted by members of the
area's influential Methodist and Presbyterian
churches. A local Rechabite society was founded
in 1870, but it was not until the passage of a
1906 Act, which considerably reduced the number
of available licenses in the state, that the
temperance-abstinence movement became
politically powerful.
In 1920, the year prohibition officially came
into force in the United States, local option
polls were undertaken and the Nunawading
district, which includes Box Hill, was one of
only two in Victoria which voted to completely
ban liquor licensing. As a result, the White
Horse Hotel, opened in 1853, was forced to cease
trading. It became a boarding house until 1933,
when it was demolished. At that time the owners
donated the old hotel's symbol, the White Horse
statue, to the city, which erected it at its
present site.
Prohibition campaigners have fiercely
resisted a return to regular licensing
conditions. This has forced hopeful liquor
merchants to resort to interesting tactics in
order to obtain their ends. In 1956, the Box
Hill RSL sought to take advantage of a
liberalisation of regulatory legislation, which
made it easier for grocers and clubs to obtain
licenses. While the RSL was vainly fighting the
'dry' opposition, the local golf club managed to
erect its Notice of Intention in such a way that
it went unnoticed and met the requirement that
the intention be advertised in a Victorian
newspaper by choosing the Sunraysia Daily in
faraway Mildura.
The RSL tried again in 1965. Although only
48% of the neighbourhood supported the Club, the
relevant act was worded in such a way that 50%
had to vote 'no' for the application to fail.
The Club's advisers noticed that 3% of those
polled did not vote: therefore only 49% had
opposed the application. This view was upheld by
the courts and the RSL received its license in
1966. Box Hill was officially declared a city in
1927.
Things to see:
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| Box Hill Town
Hall |
Dandenong Ranges National Park
Dandenong Ranges National Park (3215 ha) is a
very attractive and popular attraction which
beckons Melburnians who can gaze upon its
western slopes on a clear day. It was declared
in 1987, although this declaration represented
the amalgamation of diverse sections which were
already reserved with some additions.
It offers opportunities for walking,
sightseeing, picnicking, nature observation and
car touring. More than 350 plant species have
been recorded in the Park, including the rare
cinnamon wattle and smooth tea-tree. There are
also 130 bird species, 31 species of mammals
(most are nocturnal), 21 reptile species and
nine amphibian species.
The first European known to set foot in the
Dandenongs was botanist Daniel Bunce who was
drawn from Melbourne by the image of the looming
western slopes in 1839. Guided by a party of
Aboriginal people he climbed Mt Corhanwarrabul
(628 m) and Mt Dandenong (633 m) - the two
highest peaks in the ranges.
The first European settlers were the Holden
family who camped on the slopes from 1855 and
felled mountain ash until the turn of the
century. Official settlement began in the 1870s
and fruit-growing accompanied timbergetting.
Guest houses and tea rooms were established to
encourage tourists when fruit prices fell.
From Box Hill follow Canterbury Rd east for
about 7 km then turn right onto Boronia Rd.
After about 10 km it becomes Forest Rd which,
within another 3 km, reaches a T-intersection
with the Mountain Highway. Cross over the latter
and proceed east along The Basin-Olinda Rd for
about 700 metres then turn left onto Sheffield
Rd. After about 500 m, turn right into Doongalla
Rd. Another 500 m will bring you to an
intersection. Keep to the left and this road
will take you through to the Doongalla Picnic
Ground which is the main attraction in this part
of the park.
A homestead was built on this picnic ground
in 1908 as 'Invermay' and later renamed 'Doongalla'.
It was destroyed by a 1932 bushfire although the
servant's quarters and stables remain. Later
owners continued to log the forest until the
government bought back the estate in 1950 and it
was declared a reserve.
Rhododendrons bloom at the picnic area in
spring. There are a number of short and
well-signposted walking tracks or the more
ambitious can start at the Doongalla Stables
carpark, take the Stables track downhill through
eucalypt forest, turn left at Bills Track, left
at Edgars Track then, after 150 m, take another
left into Golf Course Track. Pass by Invermay
Track to get onto the Doongalla Forest Access
Road which will return you to the picnic ground
which can be booked for events or functions, tel:
131 963.
The gullies along Dandenong Creek, near the
homestead site, support mountain ash communities
(the largest flowering plants in the world, they
grow to 100 metres in height and can live for
500 years) while the drier, more exposed,
western slopes are characterised by long-leaved
box and red stringybark communities. Birdlife in
this section of the park includes pardalote,
mistle-toe birds, ravens, yellow-tailed black
cockatoos, thornbills, eastern yellow robins,
New Holland honeyeaters, whipbirds, golden
whistlers, boobook owls and powerful owls.
Goannas, grass skinks and echidnas can be seen
in the daytime although most of the park's
mammals are nocturnal.
If you wish to explore the park further you
can continue along The Basin-Olinda Rd or
approach it via the Mt Dandenong Tourist Rd
which runs off the Burwood Highway. See the
entries on Ferntree Gully, Olinda, Kalorama,
Sherbrooke, Lilydale and Kallista for further
details.
For general information and literature
contact Parks Victoria on 131 963 or, if you
require more detailed information contact the
office at Upper Ferntree Gully on (03) 9758
1342. You can also visit the Parks Victoria
