Gannawarra Shire Heritage Study Stage One Volume One Thematic ...

Private irrigators pumped water from the Loddon River from the early 1880s. In 1886 under the
Irrigation Act, the Benjeroop and Murrabit Irrigation Trust was formed. Like other Trusts in Victoria, the
SRWSC took over its management in 1905. In 1909, almost every house in the town was evacuated when the
Loddon River flooded. A hall was built in 1912. In the 1920s with the settlement of returned servicemen and
women from World War One, and the recruitment of British settlers under the Empire Settlement Act, the
district experienced increased population.
The Benjeroop Hall was rebuilt in 1958. A heritage centre on the site today comprises the hall, a
shepherd’s hut, and a restored steam engine which once operated irrigation pumps in the area.
Cohuna
The Cohuna area was taken up by selectors under the 1869 Land Act. Allotments were made available
on Gunbower Island under the 1884 Land Act. A hotel existed in the 1870s, and the village of Cohuna on the
Gunbower Creek was surveyed in 1875. By 1884, the town consisted of several private dwellings, a post
office, three churches, a school, a hotel, a blacksmith’s shop, and a cobbler. Several sawmills operated in the
area. In 1882 the cemetery was established. 124 In 1891 the population measured twenty-four living in five
dwellings, and in 1901 stood at ninety-eight living in twenty-one dwellings. 125
Cohuna’s growth was directly linked to the development of irrigation. Private irrigators, including
John Garden at Cullen Park, drew on water from Gunbower and Barr Creeks to water large orchards in the
1880s. Irrigation increased in the district after the formation of the Cohuna Irrigation Trust in 1886 under the
Water Conservation Act. A fruit growers’ association was subsequently formed in the 1890s. A Catholic
church was opened in 1904. A co-operative butter factory commenced business in 1905. The Cohuna weir
was built in 1908 and quickly became a favourite swimming area. With the establishment of State supported
irrigation schemes under the direction of the SRWSC established in 1907, through compulsory land
acquisition in 1909 Cohuna was established as the first fully closer settled irrigated estate in Victoria. The
town grew rapidly in size with the establishment of closer settlement. The Bendigonian Annual of 1910
recorded the replacement of ‘the outposts of civilisation secluded amid the box timber and red gums of the
Gunbower Creek’ by a
thriving township of nearly three hundred inhabitants stands as a growing monument to the
SUCCESS OF IRRIGATION...Out from the town a fertile tract of land, a veritable Eden, where
growing lucerne waves waist high in the breeze, where fruit orchards and rolling fields of hay add to
the beauty of the one time scrub land, and to the independence of the land owner. 126
A town water supply was established with the erection of a water tower in 1912, the same year unique purpose
built offices were constructed to house the courthouse and SRWSC (see Figure 11). The Market Gardeners
124
Gordon, ed., Unlock the Land: A History of the Cohuna District 1875-1975, 77.
125
Watson, Lost and Almost Forgotten Towns of Colonial Victoria: A Comprehensive Analysis of Census Results for
Victoria 1841-1901, 106.
126
In Gordon, ed., Unlock the Land: A History of the Cohuna District 1875-1975, 62, 66.
Gannawarra Shire Heritage Study Stage One Volume One Thematic Environmental History
Robyn Ballinger (History in the Making) December 2008
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