What makes your Nillumbik home town/area unique? Who are the characters who have made it so? What sites have significance and why?
During 2005 Nillumbik Shire Council and the Literary Reference Group invited members of the community to respond to these questions, to show us the history and flavour of your place – then and now – in a 500 word anecdote. The following article was written by Sheila Dixon who passed away in April 2008. Her daughter has kindly given permission to share her story.
How many people are there living in Kangaroo Ground? I don’t really know, I suppose I would have to pose that question to the Nillumbik Council. I do know that in the 75 years I have been up here, it is a much larger community now. Not too large mind you, still quite a few people like me who are runaways from the city and still a smattering of graziers with contented cattle scattered over the quiet hills and valleys of the area. Then there are the newcomers. The vineyards and olive plantations. We are on the edge of the Yarra Valley and just a few paddocks away from the really important vineyards: Tarrawarra Glen, Yering,……..and from here to Healesville these vineyards march gracefully up and down the hills in ordered rows. But for now it’s the precious grapes providing the fine wines for Australians and the export market. We have come a long way from the wine saloons of my childhood, those curtained quiet places in the small shopping centres which mainly sold sherry and port to the customers while the men listened to the constant murmuring of a radio giving the latest winners to the races at Caulfield or Flemington. Pinot and Chardonnay wouldn’t have been seen dead there. But I don’t want to write about the past this time, so many small country towns have had their histories lovingly laid out for us to read and marvel at the changes and I can safely leave that to our Museum. I would prefer to tell you about the flavour of this beautiful hamlet only kilometres out of Melbourne, a small rural place where people would prefer bush to suburbia. Around here the lines are blurred for the City and the Bush intertwine with each other and after all it is only hour from Melbourne.
Image: View of Kangaroo Ground from the Memorial Park, 2008. Photographer: Liz Pidgeon
