“Heidelberg, which will be the last suburb dealt with in these articles, is eight miles north-east from Melbourne.
It has been said that, next to Melbourne, this township is the oldest in the colony, older even than Geelong. At any rate, Heidelberg must be the oldest suburb of Melbourne. There are various traditions as to how it got its name. At first it was known as Warringal, and the town ship was so called on the original Government plans.
Some people say that, in 1840, a well-known land speculator of the day gave it its present name, because it reminded some of Heidelberg, in Germany. The Victorian Heidelberg is a remarkably pretty place, with an undulating surface, presenting to the view a series of green hills, whose sides gently slope down into rich flats and valleys.
In the east, 20 miles off, can be seen the Dandenong Ranges, the southern buttress of the great Australian Alps Close at hand is the Yarra, which meanders about there as much as it does anywhere else. Its sinuous course can be traced by the eye for miles in consequence of the belts of willows, wattles, and other trees which line its banks.
If the European Heidelberg presents a landscape possessing similar characteristics, the land speculator of 1840 was not misled when he christened our village. Other people say that the place was called after one “Heidelberg Bob”, an old German resident of the locality, who used to make his living by shooting wild ducks, and who died 30 years ago.
In the early times Heidelberg was a fashionable suburb. Several of the important personages of young Melbourne lived in that direction. One of its earlier residents was Mr. Justice Willis, who, in 1841, nearly caused a civil commotion here through his quarrels with Governor Gipps, of New South Wales. Mr. J H. Brooke, now a resident in Japan, but formerly Minister of Lands here, also owned land and resided at Heidelberg.
Some of the present residents of Heidelberg have lived there over 30 years In 1851, Heidelberg was one of the most thriving places in the colony and most of the district was covered with fine red-gum trees. Melbourne was very lively then, and most of the vegetables and fruit consumed in the city were grown at Heidelberg. The Heidelberg flats were celebrated for potatoes.
Enormous prices were paid for vegetables and fruit. Men have been known to leave there with a load of fruit and take back as much as £60 in cash. Heidelberg was then a sort of pandemonium. Money was easily got and quickly squandered. One of the men who were accustomed to get over £50 for a load of fruit is now working as a day labourers in Melbourne. He and others of that class did not keep their heads above water. The high prices that they suddenly got for their produce seemed to
demoralize them. Some of the producers carted vegetables, &c, to the diggings.
The Government laid out the township in lots of half an acre each and most of them were sold before the discoveries of gold. Some were sold in 1853 at a very high price. Since that year, the price of land there has fallen very much, and has never been as high as it was then, At that time the population of Heidelberg was half as large again as it is now.
There are plenty of vacant houses there now. Orchards are going to ruin. The market gardening industry shifted its quarters to Brighton and Caulfield years ago. Hence the demand for labour at Heidelberg fell. Not more than 10 houses have been put up in the township during the last 10 years. Dairying is at present the chief industry there, and in that pursuit fewer hands are required than in agriculture.
There was once a flour mill on the flat and at one time a good deal of grain was grown there. Now the crops are cut for hay, and the building is used for chaff-cutting.
The floods in the Yarra are not as heavy as they used to be. The flats on the river were at one time covered with scrub, which kept back the water, but most of the scrub has been cleared away. Rains that would once have caused a flood now pass away harmlessly. There are cottages on the flat that were covered by the flood of 1863.
The water of the river is sometimes not as clear now as it was several years ago on account of the increased quantity of land under cultivation higher up. With a little portage boats can get up the river as far as Warrandyte which is about 10 miles from Heidelberg by road. There were plenty of blackfish in the river about there once, but 15 years ago, Murray cod were introduced into its waters and they seem to have eaten the blackfish. About the Yarra flats however, blackfish are said to be numerous.
Heidelberg is a capital place for dairying, but with some of the milk, water is taken into town. An old resident was once riding in a milk cart to town, and a man seated in a cart, with two large cans in it stopped his companion and offered to buy half his milk, and substitute water for the abstracted half. The bargain was not consummated but some of the dairymen, to make sure that no trick will be played with their milk between there and Melbourne deliver it themselves to the wholesale purchasers in the city.
Gold mining operations were once carried on near the new cemetery for a short time, but the residents never took much interest in the operations. One old resident states he never even visited the spot, and never heard how deep the miners sank. They were there about 12 years ago.
It is difficult for anyone now visiting Heidelberg to imagine that it was once pandemonium. Certainly it is a most quiet place now. There is, probably, no quieter place within eight miles of Melbourne. The coming railway will, of course, change all that.
There are some quaint, old-fashioned buildings there. One of the oldest is the Presbyterian Church. St John’s (Church of England) is said to be a year or two younger. The latter was opened in 1851 by the late Archbishop of Melbourne, assisted by The Rev. (now Archbishop) F. Hales, at present of Launceston.
Dean Macartney was the first clergyman of the Church of England who regularly officiated at Heidelberg, and that was his first cure in Australia. In his time a fortnightly service was held by him in the local Presbyterian Church, the other not having been built. His successor was Archdeacon Hales, and then came the Rev. J. (now Canon) Goodman, of Geelong.
The present incumbent is the Rev. A. J. Pickering, who has entered upon the sixth year of his incumbency. About three years ago the church was renovated inside and out, and a stained glass window was placed in the chancel. Both the exterior and interior of the building remind one of many village churches in the old country.
The church is of Gothic design, consisting of nave and chancel, with a vestry and low tower. Some years since the outside was plastered. Inside, the pews are of the antiquated sort with doors, and the cedar of which they are made is dark with age.
One would have thought that some of the persons who have worshipped within this church would have had their names recorded on a tablet or some other monument inside the building, but the walls are utterly bare of anything of the kind. One of the stones in the foundations, however, visible outside, bears the following inscription
-“J. W., 1850”. Who J. W. was is not stated. He was doubtless the builder.
In 1858, a Primitive Methodist chapel was built. It is now a private house The Wesleyan chapel was erected in 1859. Over 30 years ago a school house was built by subscription, and it was subsequently handed over to the National School Board. A new state school now stands on the site.
Another antiquated building in Heidelberg is the Old England Hotel. It is said to be over 40 years old, but its exterior has lately been rejuvenated. When meditating on such a building as that, one can appreciate the comparison of the world to an inn. People put up at an inn, eat, drink, and be merry, and then disappear, and their places are filled by other temporary occupants. There are many grey-headed decrepit old men now living who had a drink at the Old England Hotel when they were in the hey-day of youth.
Where is the first barmaid of the hotel? If she is alive now she may be a great grandmother!
Some of her old admirers might like to have a chat with her now, but it would scarcely occur to them to chuck her under the chin again. Another interesting spot in Heidelberg is the old cemetery. A stranger would probably miss it if his attention was not attracted to it by the emblematic trees that are growing in it.
“Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree’s shade
Where heaves the earth in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet steep”
The fence round the burial ground is very dilapidated, and the place is becoming over run with wild briars. It is said that the land was originally bought for a cemetery by Archdeacon Hales and five other old Church of England residents at a cost of £20 each, and that owing to the refusal of one of them to sanction such a course, the place cannot be made over to the Bishop of Melbourne, who would authorise the local vestry to keep it in repair.
As to the wild briar, or sweet briar, as some call it, which is overspreading the place, one old resident stated that he first saw it in Australia in this cemetery. It is another imported nuisance. It is a great and growing plague. Some land adjoining the cemetery is quite covered with it, and the plant is to be seen pretty well
everywhere. It seems that cattle are fond of the ripe berries, and it is propagated through their instrumentality.
The earliest interments that took place in the cemetery were, so far the inscriptions on the tombstones show, in 1853, but there are many graves over which there is nothing to show whose remains they contain. In some cases the small mound has disappeared. There is, however, in all probability a register somewhere specifying whose bodies have been placed in the enclosure. It is said that, before this cemetery was opened, the Heidelberg dead were buried in the old cemetery on Flagstaff hill.
A modern institution at Heidelberg is the Austin Hospital for Incurables. It is in a splendid position, overlooking the township, and is a credit to the fair sex for a lady gave the money to build it, and it is managed to a great extent by ladies.
There is a nice public park at Heidelberg, and a cricket ground adjoins it. Trips to Heidelberg are so popular amongst cricketers that it is said the local club seldom plays elsewhere. The show yards and headquarters of the Victoria Agricultural Society are at Heidelberg.
Ivanhoe is a small but progressive village between Heidelberg and Alphington. There are several other townships in the vicinity of Heidelberg, and, no doubt, when the railway is made – with regard to which, by-the-by, there is considerable difference of opinion as to the best route – these townships will shoot ahead, for they are inland and the air thereabouts is considered to suit many people better than that of the seaside.
There are, no doubt, many metropolitan residents who are undecided as to where they will spend then approaching holidays. Many of them perhaps are better acquainted with the beauties of distant places than with the charms of some localities which may almost be said to be within the metropolis. There is many a beautiful spot that may almost be called a terra incognita within about a dozen miles north and north east of the General Post office.
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