Memories of the big fill 70 years on

BY LYNN ELDER & PAM ZIERK-MAHONEY This 18 October marks the official 70th anniversary of the opening of Lake Eildon in 1956, but Bonnie Doon residents and surrounding farming families were already experiencing the impact and disruption to their lives well before that event. Landholders were given around five to seven years’ warning of having their properties, or parts of them, compulsorily acquired for the Eildon Weir project. According to Anne Stewart, it was a “socially dislocating” period for her parents Bernie and Betty Cummins and for many others forced to relocate. The family farm ‘Keranna’ in Hutchinsons Road was selected by her great-grandparents James and Mary Cummins, who had to clear the land before they could take possession of it – no easy task. “In a family photo my parents, newly married in 1945, happily relax on the front porch of their new home,” Anne said. “They would have been blissfully unaware that only four or five years later an official letter was to arrive from the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission.” Sadly, the house and the fertile ‘lambing flats’ along the creek area were to be compulsorily acquired. Anne, the oldest sibling of three, enjoyed her early childhood on the farm, although there was a vague sense of something bigger going on in the background. Her youngest brother Bernard was born just after the weir came up. “I was six to eight years old when the new Eildon wall was being constructed,” she said. The irony is not lost on her as she describes playing in the sandpit with her brother Adrian. “Our toy ‘towner rockers’ and tip trucks moved sand around and piled rocks into a wall,” Anne said. “The usual bleating of lambs from the flats below was randomly interrupted by loud bangs from just a few miles north. “The Bonnie Doon bridge was being constructed and a new cutting blasted for the rerouted road to Mansfield,” she said. In 1954 Lake Eildon started filling. Between June 1955 and July 1956, more than two years of average rainfall fell, causing the lake to fill much faster than expected, recalls Tony Tehan, who grew up at Wappan Station. According to Tony, many residents were caught unaware, especially around Bonnie Doon. The State Rivers and Water Supply Commission had estimated that the lake would take six years to fill. Anne also remembers an abrupt ending to normal life for her family in 1955. “It rained and rained, the creek became swollen and water started to dribble over its banks. “Arriving home from church one Sunday morning, the water had breached the rise on which the house sat and was lapping at the back steps,” she said. Anne has vivid memories of ‘all creatures great and small’, such as snakes, rats, mice and spiders, on the move to drier ground. The landscape changed dramatically and several homes were moved on the back of a truck. Other houses became a source of building materials and only their stumps remain to indicate their presence, Anne said. “The shearing shed from Old Wappan was moved on a low loader to new Wappan in five sections to the site it occupies today and is still in use,” Tony said. “The old Wappan Homestead was on the banks of the Brankeet Creek, which rises in the Strathbogie Ranges and flowed around the perimeter of the Bonnie Doon township along the valley and finally into the original Eildon Weir. “The Brankeet Creek flowed through the bottom of Wappan garden,” he said, adding it carried many fish including trout, redfin and bream. The site of the old homestead is now 36 metres under the lake at full supply level. “My father Jim Tehan said we would never see the site again. “He was right for 46 years until it re-emerged in 2001 at the start of the Millennium Drought. “It was exposed a few more times until 2009 when it was only five per cent full,” Tony said. The next two years were extremely wet and the lake filled to 96 per cent. “Three and a half thousand acres of the most fertile land on Wappan was flooded with the enlargement of the original weir, leaving the property, mainly steep hills, out of balance with minimal flat country. “The rich river flats were fertile and well grassed. “My father purchased more land in anticipation of moving the homestead, but it was similar to the hill country. “One third of Wappan was now separated from the main property, making management more challenging and costly,” Tony explained. A new 10km road from Maindample had to be constructed along the Old Royal Town Road track formerly used by gold miners during the gold rush. “At new Wappan it took 10 years to complete construction of new yards, tracks around steep hills, fences, dairy, haysheds, new shearers’ quarters, staff houses, dams and other amenities,” Tony remembers. For another local, Graeme Stoney, the filling of the lake had a tremendous impact on his family. “When they decided to enlarge the lake, it was very traumatic for us because my great-grandfather Ralph Tod had selected land in Darlingford along Rich River, Golden River Flats in 1864,” he said. Ralph married a Gilmore, with the property later passing through the Gilmore family and then to the Stoneys. “They were running the farm, and suddenly we had to relocate at very short notice because Minto Park came up for sale. “So, we approached the State Rivers, rather than them approaching us, which was bad for us financially because there was no relocation fee and we paid 60 pounds an acre,” Graeme said. “Later after a court case, with other landowners, they were paying 120 pounds an acre for tea tree scrub. “So, it badly affected us, our capital at the time, but we ended up with Minto Park, which was a beautiful property, and we went on from there. “Just decided to suck it up and move on and expand, which we did,” Graeme said. Reflecting 70 years later on the Eildon Dam project, Graeme said: “Well, it is giving farmers more water, it was always understood to be for irrigation, but the federal government seems to be taking the water more and more for the environment.” He ponders “whether all that sacrifice that we did years ago, all down the Delatite and all the landowners down it” was worth it. “Some beautiful land was taken for it. “I think suddenly the federal government are taking water, and it’s not going to where it was designed, which is to grow food,” Graeme said. “It’s been taken for other purposes now. “So, in a way, I’m a bit despondent about the way it’s gone. “They just announced that they were going to do it, and my father, Eadley, who was always very proactive, saw Minto Park coming up for sale, and approached them. “He was the first person to approach the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, and I think they took advantage of him,” Graeme said. “So, it was another example of how the government duds people. “My parents were upset about it, but especially when they started to pay double the rate for secondary country,” said Graeme, who was a 10-year-old when this happened. “I’ve actually remembered it all my life and have always been very cynical of bureaucrats and how it all works,” said Graeme, who went on to serve as a member of the Victorian Parliament from 1992 to 2006. “We survived and grew, so we’re pretty happy. “Anyway, we don’t bear any malice now. “The whole idea was to grow more food and now the water’s being taken for other purposes,” Graeme said. Anne acknowledges the original purpose of Lake Eildon was to provide a more consistent supply for irrigation districts in the Goulburn Valley but said “it came at a social and economic cost for the residents” in the areas flooded around Bonnie Doon. The original township was relocated. Another long-time Bonnie Doon local, Nola Evans, remembers the old township as being “picturesque and well laid out”. Some residents were forced to move away, while others relocated locally or built new houses, staying engaged in their community.