General News
8 January, 2023
Parrot and the pipe
THE Sandy Creek was described in 1860 as being three feet above the bridge thus cutting off all communication with the washing place for the ore that was usually carted down from Inglewood to the river for crushing and washing. There were incidents...
THE Sandy Creek was described in 1860 as being three feet above the bridge thus cutting off all communication with the washing place for the ore that was usually carted down from Inglewood to the river for crushing and washing.
There were incidents and characters living along many local creeks that more than a century later still capture imagination and interest.
During February 1875 a six foot black snake entered a farm house and put its head into a cage holding a parrot and swallowed it whole. The offending culprit was despatched.
The Inglewood Advertiser reported the following month that a man named Shea, living upon the Bul a Bul Creek, paid very dearly for a pipeful of tobacco. He was smoking about his farm, when a spark blew out of his pipe, and in a very short time consumed the whole of the last harvest from five or six acres of ground, along with a winnowing machine valued at nearly £20.
And in June, it was reported that a singular combat took place between a kangaroo and a dog.
“The long tailed one was observed in a paddock belonging to a Mr James Sloan, on the banks of Bul a Bul Creek; and on a dog being after him the kangaroo turned, and seizing the latter in his fore-paws hopped off into the creek, and there tried to drown him ; but not relishing this kind of treatment, the dog freed himself from the kind embrace of his tormentor, and getting on to the back of the latter, held his head under water in such a persistent manner as to quieten him. The dog then swam ashore, and the dead body of the kangaroo floated down the stream.”
That was the same month the Bul a Bul creek was flooded to a depth of around almost a metre at the shire bridge between Bridgewater and Inglewood.
On December 27, 1876 ,the Sandhurst to Inglewood train was approaching the Bul a Bul bridge when a horse began galloping along in front of the engine.
The engine driver blew his whistle whilst also letting off jets of steam to try and frightened the animal but it went on its merry way crossing the bridge and galloping along until it reached the gatehouse towards Inglewood.
It was here the animal was let out onto Inglewood road. The horse was not yet done and it continued to keep up with the train for some distance.
The creek next flooded in May 1877 and later the Shire of Korong employed a Mr Parker to cut a storm channel from Inglewod down to the Bul a Bul Creek.
There were later to be four small stone weirs on this channel which runs along the south side of the Calder Highway
In 1878, a downpour lasted for 34 hours, without ceasing a moment, on March 15 and 16. It finally stopped raining about 3am, about an hour after the wind had risen.
At the Bul a Bul creek the approaches to the shire road bridge the flood waters had torn the road to pieces, some parts looking as if the holes had been blasted out with powder. The fences on each side of the approaches had been thrown down bodily by the heavy pressure of water, and altogether the scene around is one of devastation. The Sandhurst to Inglewood railway bridge approaches were injured to such an extent that the morning train could not proceed, the passengers having to alight and cross the bridge on foot, the bridge being described as being like a raft.
A train was sent out from Sandhurst, which came as far as the damaged approaches, so that repairs could be made in time for the five o’clock train to pass over.
During the height of the flood Mr Whites Railway Hotel was flooded out, the water almost up to the window sills, Mrs White having to be carried out through the water. At this spot the creek was almost a quarter of mile wide.
Owing to the flood waters on the Salisbury Plains the coach to Boort was stranded in the middle of a sheet of water, Edward’s Salisbury West hotel being surrounded by water, at that time the water was described as being up the jaw of his buggy horse, the Loddon River having risen 30 feet in just 90 minutes.
Incidentally when the creek flooded in 1878 the waters between Mickeys and Wilson lanes flooded the fine orchard of the Gulley family on the east side. Although the house was gone when I was a kid I can remember the fruit trees, they did produce lovely fruit. They have now been bulldozed.
On the other side of the creek stood Castle Eaton, the home of John Frederick Newman, a well to do butcher in Commercial Road, Tarnagulla. He had, what was described as a magnificent crop of pumpkins until the water washed them up against the fence, they looking like beggared wretches.
The heavy rain of October 1903 caused the Bul a Bul creek to over flow, swamping many fine crops and in August 1909, the houses along it described as standing feet deep in water whilst in some cases only the roofs of houses were visible whilst local farmer Barr spent the night perched up a tree. Water was lapping over the Bendigo to Inglewood railway bridge whilst considerable damage was done to approaches so much so that the passengers on the train had to be transported over the bridge on trollies. The road from Inglewood down to the creek was lined with many spectators as they had never seen such an unusual sight.
Flooding of the Bul a Bul creek has occurred to some extent in August 1950, February 1951, July 1952 and August 1955, October 1960, October 1964, May and November 1975, September and December 2010 it is the flood of January 2011, recorded as the second worst ever in the area, the railway line having been washed away, not yet repaired.