ASSESSMENT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE SIGNIFICANCE & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR RECOMMENDATION TO THE HERITAGE COUNCIL
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Name: Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct
Hermes number: 194925
12
Name: Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct
Hermes number: 194925
NAME: KILMORE OUTDOOR RECREATION PUBLIC HERITAGE PRECINCT
LOCATION: Precinct is bounded to the south and east by Monument Road (the southern section known in some maps as Anderson Road); by Hunts Road, Kilmore East Road, East Street and Foote Street to the north; and by White Street and Rutledge Street to the west.
FILE: 13/002867
HERMES NUMBER: 194925
EXTENT OF NOMINATION
All of the land shown on plan titles ‘Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct – Nomination to the Victorian Heritage Register’ (below), being all of Crown Allotments 60K, 60L, 60M, 60N, 60P and 56D Parish of Bylands, and Crown Allotments 13M1, 13M2, 13M3, 13M4, Parish of Glenburnie, and Crown Allotments 8, 9 and 10, Section 30, Township of Kilmore, Parish of Bylands.
The precinct is bounded to the south and east by Monument Road (known in some maps as Anderson Road in the south), by Hunts Road, Kilmore East Road, East Street and Foote Street to the north, and by White Street and Rutledge Street to the west
[Note: The nominated area includes all of the land referred to as the ‘Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Precinct’ in the ‘Mitchell Shire Stage Two Heritage Study’, January 2006, comprising the Kilmore Public Park and Garden Reserve (including all parklands and golf course and bushland area), Kilmore Cricket Reserve and Kilmore Reservoir, but in addition includes the Kilmore Racecourse Reserve and Kilmore Creek.]
The extent of nomination is shown in green on the following diagram.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION
RECOMMENDATION REASON
REASON FOR NOT RECOMMENDING INCLUSION IN THE VICTORIAN HERITAGE REGISTER
SUMMARY OF HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION
Kilmore is said to be the oldest inland town in Victoria. It was first mentioned in 1843 when William Rutledge planned a township in the south-east corner of his Special Survey, an area of 5120 acres he had purchased in 1841. It was not until 1849-50 that the Government Village of Kilmore was surveyed, to the south of Rutledge’s land, and its first Crown land sales were held in 1853. The Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct is part of the land to the east of the town which was proclaimed in 1853 as a series of reservations for public purposes: as commonage or common land, land for a Police Paddock and space for future expansion of the town. In 1862 a reservoir was constructed in the Police Paddock as the town’s first permanent water supply, which was in use until 1893. From then until 1964 it was used as Kilmore’s swimming pool. The reserve has a long association with sport in the town. Cricket has been played in Kilmore since 1850, and the Kilmore Cricket Club was formed in 1857. The club has played on the reserve since that time. Work began in 1856 clearing common land to the north of the Police Paddock for a racecourse, which is still in use. On Monument Hill to the east of the site is a monument commemorating the centenary of the journey of the explorers Hume and Hovell through this area.
The Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct comprises about 157 hectares of public land. It includes the reservoir, the golf links, the Kilmore Creek parklands, Monument Hill bush land and conservation area, the cricket reserve and the racecourse. The flat land of the precinct is dominated by open space, with minimal hard surfaces, buildings or other above ground structures. The main visible nineteenth century element is the reservoir, now part of the golf course. There are substantial numbers of exotic trees, including stands of Pinus radiata planted in c1895 and c1924, as well as remnant indigenous vegetation, including old candlebarks (Eucalyptus rubida), which dominate views to and from Monument Hill. The Hume and Hovell monument is a bluestone lookout tower, relocated from the old Kilmore Gaol, which once provided views over the town and the country traversed by Hume and Hovell, but these views are now obscured by tree growth.
RECOMMENDATION REASON
The Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct is of local historical, aesthetic and social significance but does not satisfy the criteria for significance at a state level.
The Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct was identified in Lorraine Huddle’s 2006 ‘Mitchell Shire Stage Two Heritage Study’ as being of local significance. (The racecourse was not included in the precinct in this study.) A review of Huddle’s assessment by Context Pty Ltd in 2012 as part of the planning scheme amendment process supported significance at a local level. Huddle noted that the integrity of the Precinct is diminished because it is now difficult to visualise the boundaries of the original reserves, or their relationship with the town. No early structures survive on the site apart from the reservoir.
The Kilmore recreation reserves are not unique, or particularly notable, in Victoria. Between 1853 and 1858 61 Crown reserves were set aside throughout the colony, 42 of which were for recreation (as racecourses, recreation reserves, cricket grounds, parks and gardens or botanic gardens). Although Kilmore was established in 1843, and is therefore considered to be one of Victoria’s oldest towns, the recreation reserves were not set aside until 1853. The nomination associates the precinct with the establishment of Kilmore as Victoria’s first inland town, but the various reserves were not in existence when Kilmore was established, but date from a later time period when there were at least 90 townships in existence in regional Victoria. No information was supplied with the nomination to justify significance of the Kilmore reserves at a state level, or evidence that they are more significant than many other reserves in the State.
There are several Crown reserves (or parts of reserves) included in the Victorian Heritage Register, but in all cases the registration is not for the reserve per se but for events, buildings or plantings of state significance which are associated with the reserve. For example the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park (VHR H2047) is an outstanding example of an intact 1850s goldfield and is considered to be of historical, scientific, archaeological and aesthetic significance at a state level. The Eureka Historic Precinct (VHR H1874) is the site of the Eureka Rebellion, an event of national historical significance. Rosalind Park at Bendigo (VHR H1866) includes several individual buildings of state significance, has important plantings and is historically significant as the site of the Government Camp established in 1852 to serve the local goldfields. The Kilmore Precinct has no buildings or plantings or associations of more than local significance.
In 1824 Hume and Hovell were the first Europeans to travel overland from New South Wales to the Port Phillip District. To mark the centenary of their journey, 37 monuments were erected across Victoria, which together trace their route. A comparative analysis of Hume and Hovell monuments was undertaken by Dr David Rowe during his assessment of the Hume and Hovell Monument at Lara, near Geelong, which led to its inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Register (VHR H1547). The Lara monument was included as a representative sample of the 37 Hume & Hovell memorials, as the most southerly (marking the end point reached by the expedition) and the only one to record the names of the six convicts on the expedition. Rowe noted that the Kilmore Hume and Hovell monument ‘is the most unusual and possibly the most substantial erected’. But this does not make it of state significance. The 2006 ‘Mitchell Shire Stage Two Heritage Study’ states that the Kilmore Hume and Hovell Monument has potential state significance, because it was ‘a vantage point used by Hume and Hovell to navigate through the mountains via the Kilmore Gap to Port Phillip’. The nomination does not mention that the association of the hill with the Hume and Hovell expedition is contested within the local community. The Kilmore Historical Society has suggested that Monument Hill was never visited by Hume and Hovell and therefore has little historical significance. The Lara Hume and Hovell monument has already been registered as a representative example of the 37 throughout Victoria, and it has not been demonstrated that the Kilmore monument is more important than the other 35 examples in the state.
The Executive Director considers that the Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct is of local significance but is not worthy of inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Register.
RELEVANT INFORMATION
Local Government Authority: Mitchell Shire
HERITAGE LISTING INFORMATION:
Heritage Overlay: Yes (Part only: HO104 Lake Precinct)
HISTORY
Contextual History
[Information from: R. Wright, The Bureaucrats’ Domain: Space and Public Interest in Victoria, 1836-84, Oxford University Press, 1989; the website http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kilmore/history.htm; and Lorraine Huddle, ‘Mitchell Shire Stage Two Heritage Study’, Vol 4, 2006.]
The colony of Victoria (then part of New South Wales) was first settled in 1835, but no land could be sold until it was surveyed. The survey of what was to become Victoria was begun in 1837 by Robert Hoddle in the area around Melbourne. Land was divided into parishes of 25 square miles within which section lines, allotments, roads and village site were located. Hoddle gradually extended the grid of surveyed land north and west from Melbourne.
Between 1836 and 1884 successive governments set aside and withheld from sale about two million acres of Crown land reserves for ‘the public interest’. These were intended for such future uses as towns, roads, government offices, police paddocks, powder magazines, schools, cemeteries, military establishments, parks and gardens and sporting and recreation reserves, as well as reserves to protect water and access to water, and mineral and timber resources.
Hoddle was Surveyor General from 1836 until 1853, but during this time he failed to assign space for public purposes in his town surveys, so no land was set aside for recreation and other public purposes during that time. In 1853, Latrobe used his power to formalise ‘township reserves' of such lands ‘as may be required for the site of churches, schools, or parsonages, or for the construction of high roads or railways or railway stations, or other internal communications, whether by land or water, or for the use or benefit of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, or for public buildings, or as places for the recreation and amusement of the inhabitants of any town or village or for any other purpose of public defence, safety, utility, convenience, or enjoyment, or for otherwise facilitating the improvement and settlement of the Colony’.
Establishment of Kilmore
Like most inland townships, the establishment of Kilmore was a result of private entrepreneurial activity rather than government initiative. The area was settled in 1837 by squatters, and when a mail run from Sydney to Melbourne was established late in the same year the future site of Kilmore became an important camping and watering place on the route. In 1841 the Irishman William Rutledge purchased a Special Survey of 5120 acres and in 1843 drew up a township, which he named Kilmore after his home town in Ireland, in the south-east corner of his land. Township allotments of about one acre, and suburban lots of 20 acres were mapped out and a number of blocks were sold. The northern part of the present town of Kilmore is on Rutledge’s original land. Kilmore is often described as Victoria’s first inland town.
In 1849-50 in response to the growing popularity of Kilmore as a place of residence and trade, the Government Village of Kilmore was surveyed, immediately south of the town that was growing within Rutledge’s Special Survey area. The first Crown land sales in the area were held in May 1853.
Crown reserves in Victoria
The Victoria Government Gazette in 1853 published an inventory of 250 existing township reserves, including Kilmore, in the colony. These were established with the aim of facilitating the improvement and settlement of the Colony. It was essentially a pre-gold-rush image of site value and the environmental worth of Victoria, and evidence of the need to preserve environmental resources for the future public interest.
Between 1853 and 1858 61 Crown Reserves were set aside throughout the colony, 42 of which were for recreation (as racecourses, recreation reserves, cricket grounds, parks and gardens or botanic gardens). These were considered to add ‘imagined gloss’ to otherwise shabby towns and also built respectability and helped define the growing settlements. Between 1857 and 1874 more than 1770 sites were set aside for the public interest in Victoria, the largest acreage being for the protection of physical resources, especially timber and water, but there were also 69 cricket reserves and 207 recreation reserves set aside. Many of these reserves are still prominent features of the Victorian landscape.
Place history
The Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct comprises a section of the land that was proclaimed in 1853 in association with the township reserve. Part of the reservation was for community purposes and comprised a Reserve for Commonage (or common land), a Reserve for Extension (for future growth of the town) and a Police Paddock. The original L-shaped reserve fits around and abuts the south-east corner of Rutledge’s Special Survey. Part of these reserves now form the Kilmore Outdoor Recreation Public Heritage Precinct, which includes the Kilmore parklands, the golf course and reservoir, Monument Hill and the Kilmore Cricket Reserve as well as the Kilmore Racecourse Reserve.
Cricket club
The game of cricket is recorded as being played in Kilmore from 1850. The Kilmore Cricket Club was formed in 1857 and in 1858 a ten acre ‘Cricket and Recreation Reserve’ was set aside within the Reserve for Commonage (excised from the Police Paddock). The Kilmore Cricket Club has operated from that site, with minor recesses, until the present day. A weatherboard club house was built in the 1930s, which was replaced by new brick veneer clubrooms in 1976.
1862 Reservoir
The police paddock was fenced by the Government in 1850. By then it included a police barracks, stables and a police residence. In 1862 the Government constructed a reservoir in the Police Paddock as the town’s first permanent water supply. The 1862 reservoir ceased to be the town’s water supply in 1893 when a reticulated water system provided water from Mt. Disappointment. The Kilmore Swimming Club was established at the ‘Old Res’ in 1895, and served as the town’s swimming pool until 1964. Around the reservoir are native trees, including Candlebarks (Eucalyptus rubuda), some over two hundred years old, and Pinus radiata, planted during lake beautification works in 1895-96 and 1924-25.