Shepparton - History

History

Prior to the European settlement of Australia, it was thought to be inhabited by the Yorta Yorta Nation people Indigenous Australian tribe.

The Yorta Yorta people are the Indigenous Australians who traditionally lived around the junction of the Goulburn and Murray Rivers in present-day northeast Victoria.

Yorta Yorta Family Groups include the Bangerang, Kailtheban, Wollithiga, Moira, Ulupna, Kwat Kwat, Yalaba Yalaba and Nguaria-iiliam-wurrung clans. The Yorta Yorta Nation is the Nation and the local tribe is Kailtheban for the Shepparton area.

The language is referred to generally as the Yorta Yorta language.

Major Thomas Mitchell was the first European to travel through the area in 1835. Mitchell recommended it as a site for Joseph Hawdon and Charles Bonney to camp at the Goulburn River on route from Albury, New South Wales to Adelaide, South Australia.

The first permanent settlement in the area was by squatter Edward Khull at Tallygaroopna which a man named Sherbourne Sheppard was to take over two years later. Sheppards holding developed into a village adjacent to the Goulburn River known as "Sheppardton". During the 1850s, the nearby village was a popular river crossing point for miners travelling from the Bendigo goldfields to the new finds in the Beechworth area. As there was no bridge to link either sides of the Goulburn River, entrepreneur Patrick Macguire set up a punt service in 1850 and the settlement became known as "Sheppardton or Macguire's Punt". A Post Office opened on 1 February 1854 and closed in July of that year.

In 1855, it was first surveyed on the site just east of the river and carried the official present shortened spelling. At that point it consisted. The post office reopened on 1 May 1858. Shepparton was declared a town in September 1860. It remained a small settlement of rudimentary huts through the 1870s despite adding a police station and in 1873, the first general store, Rowe's, blacksmith, foundry and a public hall which remains the city's oldest building. The first bridge over the Goulburn at Shepparton (since demolished) was completed at the Fryers Street entrance in 1878 and the first church, St Patrick's, opened in 1879.

The railway from Seymour reached the town in 1880. A mechanics institute opened between 1880 and 1888 as a Shepparton rapidly developed into a major manufacturing and service centre.

During the Victorian railway boom, the railways expanded and by the turn of the century Shepparton was central to a large network of regional branch lines including the Toolamba-Echuca, lines to Cobram, Nathalia, Dookie, Picola and Katamatite Rail served industries helped the Shepparton grow into a city. While these lines experienced a brief boom, almost all of them were later closed. The Goulburn River also developed as a secondary transport hub, with paddlesteamers and ferries operating at The Barges.

Shepparton was proclaimed a city in March 1949 and in the post war era the city's population virtually tripled with immigration to the city being a major factor of growth, particularly migrants from Italy. During the post war boom of the 1960s and 1970s successive local councils began a progress campaign to modernise the city and many older buildings were replaced with newer buildings.