History of Dereel

THROUGHOUT the year 1837 the stream of settlers continued to pour into the thriving countryside from Melbourne to Geelong, the land being over-run with sheep from Tasmania. New mobs of sheep arriving had to push inland to the south and west. In August, the vanguard of land hungry squatters was forced by the increase of these mobs to keep out in front, always seeking new pastures. By this time, the mobs had reached a place with water called Muddy Water Holes (Lethbridge), a group of men now decided to rest the sheep and view the country from the top of a mount away on the horizon. W B Withers, Ballarat historian, 1870, says their compass bearings were not well kept. They went astray in the bush. A strange and baffling story. These men, Dr Thompson of Kardinia Sheep Station, Geelong; Henry Anderson from the Barwon River; David Fisher of the Derwent Company; Captain Hutton, East India Company; Thomas Learmonth, and Captain D'Arcy, a government surveyor, from the top of Mount Buninyong eagerly looked with gaze swinging quickly from one quarter to the other, picking out Lakes Burrumbeet and Learmonth (to be) in the distance with tall timber along the line of the Leigh River.

From the high elevation almost under their feet as they looked west, from the mount to Lake Burrumbeet, the lay of the land is slightly undulating. These men would not make a trip like this without a telescope or two, and could pin-point features quite easily. Coming down from the mount a strange thing happened, some of the party were bushed; turned around, and made for home. (A great sense of direction for bushed men!) It is claimed they fasted all the way home, but they would surely be carrying guns into the unknown, a means of, at least, feeding themselves as game was plentiful. The rest of the party pushed west another day with the cart and the tucker, to Lake Burrumbeet. When these men arrived back at Muddy Water Holes, did they conceal from the others what they had seen out west - all good sheep country, some of the best in the colony? This story takes a strange slant again. Five months later, Thomas Learmonth and brother Somerville; Henry Anderson; William Cross Yuille and John Aitken (probably Thomas Learmonth and Henry Anderson were in the split party who made it to Burrumbeet the first time), left with John Aitken from his station, a couple of miles north-west of Sunbury, and headed for Mount Alexander (on Major Mitchell's Line), through wild rough harsh country, then circled back to Lake Burrumbeet and on home to the Muddy Holes again.

They certainly had no use for a compass after the Great Dividing Range had been crossed. Mount Buninyong dominated the eastern skyline like a lighthouse, and in later years beckoned on travellers returning down the Pyrenees road to the sanctuary of Buninyong Village, and on to the seaboard at Geelong. A month later, two of the original party, Learmonth and Anderson headed west once more to country they had proved the first time. The Learmonth brothers were a mite slower off the mark this time. Henry Anderson having teamed up with William Cross Yuille, and his cousin Archie arrived on the site of Sebastopol at the Wool Shed Creek a few days before the Learmonths, who settled on the Dog Trap Creek south-west of Buninyong. It also proved how thousands of sheen colic A" move quickly through country where men had been bushed a year earlier. It was early in the year 1838 when these squatters moved in. This is not a censure of these intrepid men, but it would appear a fair bit of hedging went on somewhere. Anderson and Yuille cooled off; Yuille moved to a fresh water swamp, now famous as Lake Wendouree while Anderson settled five miles south of Ballarat at Cambrian Hill on a creek with brackish water, calling his sheep run "Waverly Park". Stranger than fiction is the fact that where each of these men settled, golden treasure lay under their feet, unknown to them, but to be reaped by another breed of gold hungry men in the years that lay ahead.

On June 28, 1850, John Winter took over "Waverly Park" calling the run "Bonshaw". When the Yuille's moved on, Winter took over the whole of Sebastopol and Ballarat. While the Yuille's lived there, cousin Archie built sandstone foundations for a home on the brow of the plateau in about 1840, but Withers states the house was never finished. The plate where the sandstone was hewn from virgin rock is a far greater excavation, than if only the foundation stones came out of it. Their wool shed was on the east bank of the Yarrowee River - a water hote or spring ruined by pollution many years ago - and located at the east end of what is now Bala Street Sebastopol. 

Albert Street, Sebastopol is a part of an historic road, probably the oldest road in Western Victoria. Anderson and the Yuille's blazed this track early in 1838, hugging the eastern margin of the plateau overlooking the Yarrowee River, running parallel with the White Horse Range, then halting at the Woolshed Creek. Grazing their flocks over hill and range for a brief sojourn, Anderson and the Yuille's like Abraham and Lot, soon parted. The wheelmarks of their drays in the virgin ground became a way-mark at the latter part of 1838 for Pettett on his way to Dowling Forest, closely followed by Waldie, who settled about three miles north of Lake Wendouree near the present line of Gillies Street. (There is a map of 1854 in the archives of the Ballarat Historical Society showing the homestead site).

On the outskirts of Wendouree the track forked, the left hand branch running north by west to Burnbank and the Pyrenees Range (a William Miller, one of the earliest settlers of the district founded the Pyrenees Store and Burnbank Inn), right through Miners Rest to Camerons Run on the site of Clunes. The Rev Thomas Hastie who came to Buninyong in 1847 would follow this now well worn track on his visits to Waldie and his hut keeper. He travelled through Sebastopol, then along Skipton Street, Ballarat. On about the line of Armstrong Street the track swung north west up the rising ground of the Creswick Road, skirting the old Cemetery into Burnbank Street where the teamster's had a camp on the shores of Lake Wendouree. All of these portions of road were so busily engaged and running obliquely, that when the Town of Ballarat was surveyed into rectangle blocks, sections of the road were found impossible to interfere with, and now stand out as waymarks in their own right. Many notable people probably used this road: Cameron of Clunes and Coghill of the creek would have hauled wool and supplies to and from the seaboard at Geelong; James Esmond who first discovered gold in Victoria at Clunes, on his way from Clunes to Geelong with his precious sample of gold leisurely pursued his way along this road to Buninyong and Mother Jamieson's Hotel, a haven for weary travellers. Alfred Clarke of the Geelong Advertiser would certainly have used it in 1851 on his rambles to the Golden Point diggings - a road which had already had twelve years of wear and tear before he travelled it. Further more the road overlooked the Golden Point diggings, only a rifle shot distant from the line of Grant Street.

And Governor LaTrobe would settle for this easy going road at this time through a landscape with a park like appearance. There were hosts of others, not forgetting the stream of goidseekers on their way to the fields to the north and west. There was no other road. 

An interesting tract of country on our southern border seems to have been neglected by local historians. Two old roads, one blazed by Captain Ross in 1839, the other by Holmes and party of Colac in 1851 (which was to become the Colac coach road to Ballarat) were to be found. 1851 was to be an eventful year, with Esmond's exciting find of gold at Clunes in June, being released to newspapers in Geelong, almost at the same time as Hiscock's find at Buninyong on August 8 hit the headlines. As Holmes of Colac would know of this early village, fifty miles to the north, exciting events quickly took place. During the latter part of August, gold was found at Golden Point, Ballarat. Holmes and his mates would get the news of this event at Mother Jamieson's Hotel. Later, the first week of September, they were found at Golden Point diggings and on good gold.

At this time the only road serving Colac was one from Geelong, so Holmes blazed a new track north from Colac across the plains, the high country of the Misery Ranges quickly showed on the horizon above Dereel, (these hills are a part of the ancient shore line). Six miles from here they would come across one of Learmonth's old Sawyers Camps. During the gold era this camp probably became the Log Hut Village. W B Withers said after the battle at Eureka Stockade, on Sunday December 3,1854, Black and Kennedy, to avoid being captu red by the troopers, made their way to Geelong by way of the Misery Ranges but, becoming bushed, stumbled onto a camp, which was, without a doubt the Old Sawyers Camp. Three miles from here they reached a locality called Dog Trap Creek, now known as Napoleons, where the Learmonth's first settled on the junction of the above creek with the Ross and Yarrowee Rivers. Why the name Dog Trap ? After 130 years of close settlement, we hear no more of the dog called a dingo. In the early days they were roaming at will and the Learmonth's evidently had a trap line along this creek, hence the name. On the rising ground south of this creek still stands Valley farm, a bluestone cottage built by James Davies in the early 1850's. His son attended Rev Hastie's school at Buninyong, crossing the dog trap they came on to the track of Captain Ross. Turning east, then across the Yarrowee, turning north, another mile or so found them entering the Portland Bay -Pyrenees Road near the Buninyong Cemetery at Hiscock's Diggings.

This old road, blazed by Holmes and his mates, is west of the present road running through Napoleons and Enfield and east of the river from the Dog Trap to the Cemetery. The road was still in use up to 1864, when the Shire put in a more direct route to Sebastopol from the Dog Trap, but it was not the fault of the Shire this road took so long to be built. They were blocked by the Bonshaw Gold Mining Company holding freehold ground through which the road should have gone. Eventually a narrow strip of freehold ground was purchased for a road which is still with us, a few feet wider than the original with barely room for two drays to pass each other. As for Captain Ross, the only important name-sake left behind is his name given to the creek which is in the Crown Portion,113 Parish of Yarrowee. He moved on in 1845 when he purchased a station over the range west of his place called "Moppianum", which he held till 1849, selling the pre-emptive right to John Browne who then called the station "Brownvale". He in turn sold to the Scarsdale Gold Mining Co. and the "Galatea in 1856, for �10,000. Browns Diggings was narned after Browne. When the Captain moved out a family named Kennedy moved in and cleared the first land at Ross Creek. Descendants of this family are still at the Creek. W B Withers said that Mr Gaynor who had put Peter Lalor behind a pile of slabs for safety after he had been wounded in the Eureka Stockade, "is now a respectable farmer at Ross Creek - a rather quaint way of putting it!

Many people feel the question as to who was the first settler in Sebastopol and where did he settle is all very simple. But after reading the many versions of the arrival of the Yuille Brothers, Anderson and the Learmonth Brothers and evaluating them all I have arrived at the following conclusion: When 18 year old William Cross Yuille, his brother Archie and Henry Anderson (who also was a young man) pushed their flocks through from Lethbridge, they kept on the move so as to keep ahead of Thomas Learmonth. They never really stopped until they reached an area i n Sebastopol to the east end of Bala Street. There they remained for some time, and while here a meeting was arranged with T Learmonth, who by th is time had settled to the south west of Mount Buninyong. My conclusion is this meeting was held at the camp in Sebastopol and at that meeting the four men decided to take land separately, remaining three miles from one another. William Cross Yuille settled on the south side of The Swamp (Lake Wendouree). Archie Yuille remained on the original site - the junction of the Woolshed and Yarrowee Creeks, three miles south east of his brother. Henry Anderson went south three miles to the junction of the Saltwater and Yarrowee Creeks. Thomas Learmonth settled another three miles south east of Anderson on the Dog Trap Creek.

Following this these settlers, who no doubt had shepherds and hired helpers, started to go back and forth to Geelong, and with other settlers following in their tracks, a small settlement sprang up at the foot of Mount Buninyong. Thus it was that Buninyong became the main stop over place for travellers in this early part of settlement in the Ballarat area. Not one of these first settlers stopped for any great time, all shifted on to new areas. The remarkable thing about it is that at the original site in Sebastopol, which would have been a very beautiful place, and still is, there has never been built a house, even to the present day. The house that Archie Yuille started to build was never finished, and the foundation stones were used to build the Cairn which was erected near by during the centenary of the Sebastopol Borough in 1964.