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Printed as a community service by

If your family, school year or team have plans to meet together to share old memories start organising and connecting now as the time will fly. Those keen to help or be part of any event please contact: centenary@redcliffs.net

Find us on Facebook too. Read some interesting snips of Red Cliffs 100 years ago.

Some of these are now available through recent digitalization of old newspapers and they may be giving a different aspect to the history we once learnt. Our thanks to Matt

Cook who is researching and creating these posts.

Celebrating Red Cliffs’ 100th Birthday - Cup Weekend 2021

Please Take & Share

We are very proud to have members honoured with community service awards. Last year Ian Cook was awarded the Red Cliffs Citizen of the Year and this year we were pleased to congratulate:

Bob Walton, awarded an OAM for his contribution to Education and Community;

Helen Petschel, named the 2020 Red Cliffs Citizen of the Year.

The opening of our Peacewalk project was awarded the Red Cliffs Event of the Year.

Also at the Barclay Square Australia Day breakfast the Historical Society won the best table featuring local produce! A new award courtesy of the Red Cliffs/Irymple RSL.

Australia Day

March 2020

Red Cliffs Centenary 2021

We can be very proud of the wisdom which went into the planning of Red Cliffs. Recently a visitor commented on our lovely wide streets. When discussing the heritage significance of places in Red Cliffs we were made aware that our town square is a unique treasure in an Australian country town. Barclay Square has a heritage protection overlay in the Mildura Planning Scheme. One hundred years ago the planning for this settlement was just beginning but throughout our history we have had the benefit of wise and community minded planners. Their decisions have made our settlement the liveable and beautiful place we enjoy. No date on this one, but inside see this scene February 2020.

Here is a portion of the town plan showing the square -’reserve for public purposes, park and recreation and convenience of the people’, the street plantations and the allotments for public buildings. The Shire Council buildings were to be built where Big Lizzie sits today.

The Square was named in honour of soldier settler, Nat Barclay MLA and Shire Councillor after his passing in 1962.

Tuesday 24th March 7.30pm

Old Courthouse, Jamieson Ave.

Our guest will be Danielle Wilcock who has recently moved from the UK to call Sunraysia home. With a keen interest in history she enjoyed researching ours when writing of our Centenary plans for the Sunraysia Life newspaper. Danielle will share some of her English heritage and her impressions of living in Sunraysia.

Produced by Red Cliffs & District Historical Society Editors: Chris Cook, Matt Cook, Helen Petschel

PO Box 574 Red Cliffs 3496 history@redcliffs.net redcliffshistory.wordpress.com

Historical Society Meeting

Enjoying gramophone music at our

February

‘Show & Tell’.

on March 4th a Parliamentary Party was taken on a tour of the proposed Red Cliffs site. Alfred Kenyon advised that

the township should be sited on the railway rather than on the cliff top near the pump site.

‘The visit to Red Cliffs comprised a look at the projected pump site at the Woolshed, view from the Cliffs themselves and a run across the area, the nursery site and township site being shown and explained by Mr Kenyon. Just as some of the press party could not see that the town site selected by Mr Kenyon was the best available and thought the site should be at the cliffs, so also did some of the Parliamentarians. A township at the cliffs would be unique, attractive and healthy, with water supply close at hand; the township site at the railway might be handy for those living close to it but would be unattractive and water for it expensive to convey.’ The Cultivator 10 March 1920.

We know the result, and the community might have been quite divided had the town been at the cliffs. We might have had two communities, one at the railway and another along a winding road at Cliffside. The parliamentarians and press didn’t win this one.

We know too that Red Cliffs was favoured by the Chaffeys for their planned irrigation colony. WB Chaffey was touring with the press. Mary Chandler [Against the Odds p 11] says: ‘Mr Chaffey explained to them, that this was the site he had chosen for the township of Mildura thirty-four years previously, but had to abandon the idea because in those days there were no pumps available that could lift the water to such a great height.’

100 YEARS AGO...

William Cattanach was the Chairman of the SR&WSC with responsibility for planning the Red Cliffs settlement. From 1918 the Commission was responsible for the State’s irrigated Soldier Settlements. ‘by 1923 some two thousand soldier settlers were located in irrigated areas, notably Red Cliffs, Woorinen, Merbein, Nyah, Stanhope, Tongala, Shepparton and Rodney. With the assistance of quite a small settlement branch he [Cattanach] had to deal with practically every problem of allocation, many of which were very difficult.’ The Commission man on the ground in Red Cliffs though, was the engineer. At first this was Mr J Blackburn from Merbein, then Mr Neville from Cohuna but in January 1921, Mr Neylon was appointed engineer in charge of the Red Cliffs soldier settlement.

Neylon had worked at the First Mildura Irrigation Trust before taking a position with the State Rivers in 1915. At Red Cliffs he was engineer in charge of all the pump, channel and drainage works as well as the laying out of the settlement and town.

In April 1921 Neylon is recorded in the Argus: ‘2,700 acres have been cleared ...About 13,200 tons of firewood have been carted to the pumps, the assembling of which is well advanced. Sixteen scoop teams are at work on channel excavation, but more horse teams could be absorbed. The working gangs cannot be increased, owing to the slow arrival of tree pulling machines.’ It was a busy time and the engineering success of the settlement we owe to these men of the ‘Commission’.

In later years water engineer, LR East suggested Red Cliffs Ovals be named after prominent people: ‘the three names which should be most remembered were Cattanach, Kenyon and Neylon.’ This proposal never eventuated.

[In 1966, Sir Lewis Ronald East was knighted for his vision in water engineering.]

‘....A visit to Red Cliffs also revived memories of the pioneering days, when the writer was engineer in charge of over 1000 diggers engaged in subdividing and clearing blocks and excavating channels, and of the primitive canvas town where on Sunday evenings the diggers used to assemble by the old woolshed, in the light of a hurricane lamp, and sing hymns to the accompaniment of a portable organ played by Mr. (afterwards the Rev.) G. Christian…’ C. M. Neylon, Healesville Guardian, 5 Feb 1944

INDI AVENUE, RED CLIFFS What’s the same and what’s different?

Will there be enough water in the river system?

How long will the preparations take? When will the land be available?

Will there be enough wood to keep another lot of pumps running?

Will the soldiers be able to manage financially until they have crops?

Will there be a market glut when they come into full production?

Why isn't drainage included in the planning?

How much is it all going to cost?

100 years ago, newspaper reports tell, there were lots of questions...

W. Cattanach

Featuring ‘The Commission Men’ the State Rivers & Water Supply Commission leaders