The natural beauty of original landscapes in Australia is not always well appreciated. In the nineteenth century, there was an understandable desire to recreate landscapes in the image of the old world. In the Southwest conceptions of the natural world were embedded in the minds of Europeans when they first came to Tower Hill. There was a general view among Europeans that what was considered to be a good landscape in the homeland should also be the ideal landscape for the new world.
The Western District was transformed by the actions of Europeans. Today we see a landscape based on European models of extensive agricultural production and it is fair to say that the Southwest is at the center of one of the world’s most extensive and productive tracts of temperate farmland.
The Irish and other immigrants groups at Tower Hill naturally wished to recreate agricultural landscapes modelled on recollections of their homelands. Original vegetation was cleared almost entirely and replaced with plant species introduced from Europe. By the end of the nineteenth century many outside observers commentated on just how bare the landscape had become, and there is much photographic evidence to support these observations.
Exotic animals such as rabbits and foxes were introduced by free settlers to provide sport and familiar hunting opportunities, with disastrous consequences, including to the squatters own livelihoods. Productive wetlands, nurtured under First Nations stewardship, were drained to provide fodder for stock and arable land for European crops and pasture. This was seen as progress by virtually all sections of the community. Drainage schemes change the course of streams and swamps were converted to summer pasture. This increased the market value of the land when it came time to sell up. Great efforts were made to reengineer landscapes, to increase productivity and commercial value and to satisfy aesthetic preconceptions.
Wildlife was eliminated just to be rid of it as part of an incessant drive to increase yields and stocking rates. Throughout the Western District a cultural practice of hunting kangaroos for sport was widespread. The colonial kangaroo hunt was a means of demonstrating supremacy over the environment and of making creation conform to the settlers’ will, as sanctioned in scripture. The squatter class was particularly fond of kangaroo hunts as a form of sport and for social networking. Organised hunts were designed to reinforce class and gender norms based on ideas of social hierarchy. The sight of scores of elite gentlemen and a few ladies on horseback riding across open country in pursuit of wild quarry was dear to the hearts of many. Hunting on horseback demonstrated superiority over nature and also over lesser men.
Kangaroo hunts were a regular feature of station life in the 1850s and 1860s and the practice persisted for decades after that. Hunts became great social events. Both squatters and workers from nearby stations travelled to the homestead where the hunt of the season was happening in a district. Post hunt partying was part of the fun, segregated along class lines.
The Belfast Gazette of 22 August, under the heading “Great Kangaroo Hunt”, describes a typical hunt of the period. The event described occurred at the Harton Hills property of William Carmichael, Esquire. In terms of the number of animals killed, the correspondent proudly notes that “the aggregate may be put down at around 8,000 kangaroos” and goes onto comment that “the kangaroos were lively and showed fight to the last. The well-known hospitality of the Harton Hills Station was appreciated by all present”.
The kangaroo hunts were very common to the north of Koroit and Belfast. In 1868 the Warrnambool Examiner estimated that 25,000 kangaroos were killed during the previous year within fifteen miles of Woolsthorpe. This number seems extreme but it is undoubtedly the case that mass slaughter of kangaroos, emus and other animals was occurring.
One hundred years later, in the early 1960s, there was still a view that kangaroos could be shot almost as a matter of course. At that time, gun clubs and the killing of animals for sport were still popular pastimes and were seen as important avenues for male bonding and for performative masculinity. Some of this display was tied to conceptions of the frontier. Ideas of race warfare against a designated “other” lurked beneath the surface.
Around the Koroit district, the most obvious example of environmental domination and destruction is that provided by Tower Hill itself. Tower Hill Lake is the most visible feature of the landscape and it is relatively easy to trace its journey from 1835 until today. Towards the end of the twentieth century a phase of rehabilitation began.
Apart from Tower Hill Lake, there were other swamps and marshes in the district that suffered severe degradation in the nineteenth century. This was largely a result of the massive drainage works of that century. Some wetlands, such as the Tower Hill Marshes, have virtually disappeared, to the point where it is almost impossible to imagine how remediation could occur, although some small-scale projects could be implemented on the Moyne flats between Koroit and Port Fairy. The network of drains could be modified to encourage some staged re-vegetation and re-wilding. In the location of Kelly’s Swamp, some environmental rehabilitation has already started. Community groups such as the Warrnambool Coastcare Landcare Network and Eastern Maar Traditional Owner organisations have worked on replanting parts of Kelly’s Swamp.
When George Augustus Robinson visited Tower Hill in 1841, the Aboriginal people of Koroit lived around the volcanic complex. They were known as the “Koroit Gundig.” It seems evident from European records that the Koroit Gundig word for at least parts of Tower Hill was “Koroit.” An old colonial era map specifically refers to “Koroit” as the name Peek Whurrong people used for the interior of the caldera. The names Tower Hill and Koroit have been used somewhat interchangeably through history, which can lead to some confusion and both these words have a wider and a narrower meaning.
Tower Hill has long been a significant tourist attraction in Victoria. Scanning north from the top of the rim above Koroit township an observer can look out over the plains of the Western District all the way to the Grampians. Mount Abrupt, Mount Napier, Mount Rouse and Mount Elephant are all visible on fine days. To the south are sea views of the ocean at Killarney, the lighthouse at Port Fairy and the factory at Dennington.
Patricia considered the Australian bush to be “untidy.” She thought it was appropriate to improve the land by planting introduced crops and pine trees to replace the native scrub. It was proper to substitute the original bush with something that was intrinsically better and more productive in her eyes. She wondered why outsiders in the 1960s would want to bring back the bush when her forebears had worked so hard to get rid of it. It seemed to her disrespectful to undermine the efforts of previous generations by undoing the hard work of our forebears.
Uncle Tony and Aunt Biddy thought along the same lines. Tony thought it a very good thing that the Heytesbury Settlement Scheme was in the process of clearing great swathes of the Otway foothills and developing dairy farms there instead. He could not understand why environmentalists thought this land improvement should be opposed. The land clearances of the late 1950s and early 1960s bulldozed more than four hundred square-kilometers of the Heytesbury Forest, leaving just 5.6% intact. The scheme destroyed the native flora and fauna of vast tracts of “virgin country,” with minimal attempts at preservation despite some scattered protests.
The area cleared by the Heytesbury Scheme is now a highly productive center of the dairy industry in Victoria, and many people in the Southwest consider the scheme a great success. Tony considered the development of such productive small farms to be a great social benefit to working people. The concept of rural development was something deeply embedded in his sense of nationalism, and he would have scoffed at the suggestion that the straggly bush that had previously existed was more attractive than the European style farmland that was created.
Lionel was quite sympathetic to preserving native flora and fauna and he observed nature closely. He was supportive of protecting some of the remaining bush, so long as this did no harm to people’s livelihoods. He thought the bush had value in itself and could enhance people’s wellbeing. Most of what he knew about the natural world was picked up through direct observation or was handed down by elders in his community, some of whom had a well-honed knowledge of the bush.
Lionel was generally very supportive of efforts to rehabilitate Tower Hill. He could see that great damage had been done to the lake over the years since settlement. Even though Lionel was a keen hunter of ducks, eels and rabbits for food, he was generally against the shooting of wildlife such as kangaroos for no clear reason. He stressed that guns should be treated with great caution and was against the common practice of shooting the district’s road signs simply for mindless recreation.
What was not expressed by either Lionel or Patricia was that in a profoundly ceremonial way Aboriginal people had sustainably nurtured country to which they were intimately connected. Lionel clearly understood that First Nations people had a prior claim to the country. Perhaps this was why the narratives surrounding the European takeover were so important to him and to people of his background. It was self-evident to him that our country could be taken by force of arms, given that this had already happened.
For Lionel, what had happened here was part of a very old human story. It was in the Bible, after all. It had happened in America, a country he greatly admired. Lionel was not a well-educated or very religious man but he did know the Old Testament and he did feel the relevance of the popular stories of the old West. History is full of tales of how one tribe came to feel itself special and entitled to take control over a Promised Land. Per chance one wanted to, not much could be done to wind the clock back after the years of genocidal violence had led to the displacement and erasure of the original population and its replacement with a new regime.
Lionel was aware that scientists such as Charles Darwin had written about the survival of the fittest. In farming, selection for the fittest was a matter of commonsense. The best bulls were selected for breeding with the best cows so as to improve the herd. White people had wrested the land from the Aborigines because the Europeans were “fitter” than the blacks were. The learned gentlemen of the district thought along these lines so why should he think any differently. Civic pronouncements and the public discourse of the educated classes were full of eugenics based homily.
Lionel was just following the views of others and while he was a canny man he did not express original ideas. He was a consequentialist in that for him the moral worth of an action is determined by what it brings about, not by the intention behind it or the act itself. Accordingly, the demise of the Aborigines and the victory of the whites was worthwhile purely as a consequence of the better society such an outcome brought about, in his view.
For those with a more committed appreciation of Catholicism, genocide or extreme ethnic cleansing is morally wrong whatever the consequences and whatever you might think of the worth of the erased people. Biddy was a committed Catholic, but she did not wish to confront the meaning of genocide as laid down in her faith, and so avoided the underlying issue largely because she was so committed to her family and her community.
In truth, there is something that cannot be reconciled in our history, regardless of all the argument. Forgetting is feasibly the best solution but this cannot happen while disputation continues generation after generation, periodically re-exposing the wounds beneath the scabs. Setting aside what might be seen as a version of Original Sin is perhaps an ironic position to suggest given the overall tenor of this document.
The first mention of the term “Tower Hill” in the European archive is found in George Augustus Robinson’s journal. In April 1841, Robinson, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Port Phillip, visited the Port Fairy district. His journal records that the “large eminence” surrounding the edge of the lake was called “Tower Hill” by “Campbell’s men.” This is a reference to Captain Alexander Campbell, who in partnership with John Griffiths, was in command of the European shepherds and whalers living and working on the coast near Killarney.
When George Augustus Robinson saw Tower Hill in 1841 he learned that a “native village” was located at the point where the lake emptied into the swamp on the western side of the lake. The extensive wetland west of the outlet became known as the “Tower Hill Marshes”. The Marshes virtually disappeared by the 1870s, drained by absentee landowners using subaltern labor. The drained flats of this area are still largely unpopulated.
It is worthwhile noting exactly what George Augustus Robinson recorded in his 1841 journal. He wrote that “There is a large swamp on the east of the Port Fairy river where the natives get their chief support, roots, &c., and near to a small eminence on the edge of this swamp, called by Campbell’s men ‘Tower Hill’, is a native village: an assemblage of huts &c. Along the coast near to the shepherds huts are reefs of rock abounding with the haliotus mutton fish, muscle [sic], moreover crawfish and which must have afforded them a good supply as the camping place of the natives in the beautiful forest of dwarf banksia abound with cinirated shells”.
Robinson’s journal indicates that the Koroit Gunditj and the European workers lived in proximity at that time. The two groups had interacted closely for several years. Captain Campbell’s men were running sheep and cattle along the coast from 1838 and by 1840 had established an enclosure for livestock on the Merri River. Whalers and shepherds had been camping on the shore between Killarney and Port Fairy year round since 1837.
The “native village” at Tower Hill as described by Robinson was close to the bays and reefs of Killarney. European men had their huts along the coast, and there was a corroboree ground near where the Tower Hill oval is situated today. Robinson mentions the natural beauty and bounty of this coastline with its exposed black stone reefs and sheltered coves. The natural environment around Tower Hill provided bounty for all its inhabitants in the first years of European presence. Contemplating the interactions between whalers and Peek Whurrong clansmen in these years conjures up bizarre juxtapositions of human cultures.
From 1843 onwards, the Koroit Gundidj clan as a distinct entity largely disappears from the European archive. The exact circumstances surrounding the fate of the Koroit Gundidj clan is unclear. Europeans continued to refer to a “Port Fairy Tribe” throughout the 1840s, but this was a general term for members of several clans of the coastal area. Collectively they were known as the speakers of the Peek Whurrong language.
In addition to the several clans of the Peek Whurrong nation on the coast, there was a further clan that lived north of Tower Hill, towards Woolsthorpe and along the Spring Creek. This clan is known as the Mopor people, some of whose members are known to have been murdered by squatters. Yet another clan lived northwest of Koroit around Tarrone, called the Kuurn Kopan Noot. It was members of this clan that were poisoned on the Tarrone run of Doctor Kilgour. Once news of what happened on Tarrone became known to the British administration, Kilgour’s licence to depasture stock was not renewed, which was one of the few times this happened. After Kilgour lost his licence, Lieutenant Robert Camberlain took over Tarrone from 1844.
The Tower Hill Marsh was drained in the nineteenth century by landlords who were frequently absent from the district. Foremost among these gentlemen were Melbourne based John Alison and Andrew-Halley Knight, who were prominent mid-nineteenth century merchants, traders, and landowners in colonial Victoria. Knight also owned the Korongah Estate that covered much of the low-lying ground north of Killarney between Koroit and Port Fairy. The firm Alison & Knight was central to the grain and flour trade in the district and was closely associated with the Rosebrook flour mill. Knight’s partner and agent at Port Fairy was George Lydiard, the son of Admiral George Lydiard of the Royal Navy. Once Andrew-Halley Knight returned to England, Lydiard leased the Korongah Estate for some years.
By 1855, the outer slopes of Tower Hill had been taken over for agriculture. However, the lakes and islands on the inside parts of Tower Hill had not suffered serious damage. When Eugene Von Guerard completed his famous “Outlook at Tower Hill” in 1855 he depicts what looks like a largely pristine landscape, even though it was not untouched.
Metropolitan visitors such as James Bonwick who came to Tower Hill left several written accounts that describe the lake in the mid-1850s. Bonwick makes the point that the beautiful nature of the original native landscape of the islands inside the rim was substantially intact at that time. Tower Hill obviously made a wonderful impression on him. He describes in detail his visit to the farm of Marcus Macartney, located at the outlet of Tower Hill, and makes note of where the water had until recently flowed unhindered into the marshes. At the time of his visit in 1857, Bonwick wrote approvingly of how this placing of a low dam wall at the outlet had improved the scene and improved the utility of Macartney’s farm. Macartney was a gentleman closely related to James Atkinson and was a person to whom Bonwick displayed the usual obsequiousness he affected whenever in the company of the squatter class.
The picture of a largely intact natural environment at Tower Hill could not be sustained much beyond 1857. In a chapter of “A Historical Geography of Tourism in Victoria,” published in 2014, Professor Ian D. Clark and his academic colleague, Lisa Justin, have outlined the European history of Tower Hill. In particular, the authors highlight the activism of James Dawson, the prominent Western District squatter and landowner who in 1855 commissioned Eugene Von Guerard to paint his now famous landscape, “Outlook at Tower Hill”.
James Dawson and his daughter Isabella were widely known as friends and sympathetic observers of Aboriginal people. The Dawsons styled themselves as guardians of the Aborigines and they published accounts of local Aboriginal languages and customs. They held a liberal and enlightenment point of view, strongly influenced by nineteenth century Romanticism. In holding such views, they were at odds with most people of the Southwest, of whatever class. In the late nineteenth century Dawson campaigned against the destruction of the natural environment at Tower Hill.
Dawson’s Kangatong Station was to the north of Port Fairy but he was not the first to hold the lease on this country. That honor goes to John Cox, who held the large station to the north called Werangourt. The section of the run Dawson took over in 1844 had formerly been known as “Cox’s Heifer Station”. It was located to the west of the present day hamlet of Hawkesdale.
Dawson, his wife Joan, and young Isabella took up residence on Kangatong in 1844. Like other successful pastoralists of Romantic disposition, Dawson wanted his painting to reflect the sylvan idyll of the best natural features in the landscape. “Outlook at Tower Hill,” now on public view at the Warrnambool Art Gallery, is a wonderful naturalistic depiction of an idyllic landscape. In keeping with the tradition of Romanticism in European art, the painting was designed to serve as a record of pristine natural beauty before its fall into degradation due to human sin and folly. The story is redolent of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis, of Creation before the Fall. James Dawson was still living at Kangatong Station when he commissioned Eugene von Guerard to paint “Outlook at Tower Hill,”, a painting which Von Guerard completed in 1855.
Dawson seems to have expected that Tower Hill would soon become greatly degraded. However, his reaction in the early 1890s to the state of the lake seems to indicate that he was surprised and angered at the extent of the damage done over the years between 1855 and 1891. Dawson had moved to a pastoral property near Camperdown in 1868 and had not visited Tower Hill for many years. Dawson had leased a property on the south side of Lake Bullen Merri, which he named “Wuurong”.
The destruction Dawson saw on his return to Tower Hill in 1891 greatly shocked him and he immediately spoke out against the damage to the ecology of the lake. He highlighted the harm done to Tower Hill by writing letters to the press and by lobbying various authorities to take action against the Koroit Council. He held the Council and the Koroit community generally to be largely responsible for the deterioration of the lake.
What Dawson saw on his return was the result of a long period of poor management and of conflicting cultural and economic interests. The interior of Tower Hill was being used by Koroit Irish farmers to cultivate potatoes and to run livestock. To the Irish farmers of the 1890s, the lake was more or less considered common land available for the Koroit people to use.
The colonial government was interested in regulating Tower Hill and attempted to do so. In 1866, the islands and the lake bed and some of the caldera’s upper banks were declared the “Tower Hill Acclimatisation Reserve” by the Government of Victoria. The Tower Hill Acclimatisation Society was formed to administer the public reserve that was created. From 1866, moderate fees for pasturing stock in the interior of the lake were being collected from farmers.
The designation of the lake as a recreation and conservation reserve was not a measure to conserve the original flora and fauna of Tower Hill. It was intended that non-native plants and animals would be introduced there for public enjoyment. The elite of the time thought that the “acclimatisation of non-native species” to be good public policy. The outcome of the plan was predictably disastrous and was an example of the dire consequences of an action not being properly thought through. The islands and the interior slopes were subjected to frequent destructive burning, ostensibly to control bracken and scrub, but it only ensured that rabbits increasingly flourished in the weedy regrowth.
From the early 1860s, a number of families lived on the interior banks of the lake in rudimentary shanties close to the edge of the water. These families cultivated vegetables, ran a few cows and goats, and from 1866 paid rent to the Acclimatisation Society. A survey of 1870 listed eleven huts on reserved land within the lake banks. Such leasehold arrangements continued after the formation of the Koroit Borough in 1871.
When the Koroit Borough was formed in 1871, the lake was included within the Borough’s boundaries. Much of the Koroit community continued to believe that the lake was common land for them to use, rather than a public conservation and recreation reserve to be enjoyed by visiting tourists. Different cultural interpretations were at play. Local people thought one thing and visiting tourists thought another thing. In the 1880s, the Koroit Council was formally endorsed by the Victorian government as the lake’s official Committee of Management. This arrangement did not go well in terms of conservation.
Cultivation inside the lake by local residents was permitted under the regime, as was the running of livestock on condition that the clearing of scrub and bracken should be undertaken in conjunction with these activities. There were still at least six families living within the banks of the lake in 1883. These families grew potatoes and oats and maintained vegetable gardens and also grazed their livestock. For them, this utilization of lake land was important to their livelihood and survival.
Hugh Reilly built a fence across the lake bed sometime around the turn of the century in order to control cattle grazing. It is possible that Hugh cultivated crops and ran cattle within the lake at this time. The lake became increasingly dry in the 1880s, and the lake bed dried out almost completely in the early 1890s, which was likely the period when Hugh built his fence. The western edge of Dairytown abuts the eastern rim of Tower Hill at a low point near the exit of the current tourist road. It was from here that access to the interior of the lake was easiest.
Photos of Irish farmers growing crops on the inside banks of the lake indicate that they were farming on the banks closest to Dairytown. Local farmers used the lake because they did not have to pay much for the privilege. What they produced was theirs. There are several natural springs in the vicinity of the old track which runs around the bottom edge of the lake. The farmers likely used the springs for their water supply as well as several shallow wells. The ground water at the level of the lake bed here is close to the surface.
Intensive quarrying around Tower Hill began in 1878. By 1894 there were seven quarries around the lake, including three within the Reserve. Over the next eighty years hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of tuff and scoria were removed. Quarrying on the islands finally ceased in 1941 but continued around the rim. Quarrying completely stopped by 1966 as a result of changes to government policy in the early years of that decade.
In the late nineteenth century it became apparent that Koroit’s sewage and drainage problems needed be addressed in some way. Diseases such as dysentery, typhoid, diphtheria and tuberculosis were real problems in the community. There were periodic epidemics. Fouled water and sewage was allowed to mix with drinking water in some cases, with predictable results, and many people were not sufficiently aware of the link between water quality and disease.
In 1884, the Koroit Council approved a scheme to build a drain into Tower Hill Lake, and although there was some opposition to this scheme, the majority of local people were in favor. They wanted the causes of the health issues in the community to be addressed. People were persuaded that draining the community’s liquid waste into the lake would improve the town’s public health and so a waste pipe was constructed. While this solved some of Koroit’s pressing health issues, it was at the expense of the ecology of the lake.
When James Dawson revisited Tower Hill in 1891, he was clearly disgusted with what he saw. It was the public drain into Tower Hill Lake and the fouling of the water that incensed him the most. He described a landscape spoiled by decades of clearing, grazing, and timber felling. The islands within the lake were overrun by exotic plants and animals. Dawson wrote of how deplored he was that Tower Hill in 1891 no longer resembled the landscape painted by Eugene von Guerard in 1855.
James Dawson protested by writing letters to the local papers. Tower Hill, he maintained, was “intended by Nature to be a public park, and a place of pleasure for the people of the district”. He objected to its use as a community cesspool. He wrote three letters to the Camperdown Chronicle in 1891 complaining about the environmental damage and the role played by the Koroit Council. He was critical of the Koroit community for allowing this dire situation to continue and he referred to the von Guerard painting as providing a record of what had existed in the mid-1850s.
As James Dawson expected, his letters made their way to Koroit, where people responded defensively. The Koroit Sentinel newspaper accused Dawson of making “not one true statement.” The Sentinel maintained that the trees on the islands had been destroyed by bushfire rather than by deliberate felling. The paper claimed that there “was not the slightest miasma from the lake.” The drain simply carried storm water and the local council exercised the “greatest care” to ensure “no offensive matter” ran into it. Dawson was eighty-four years of age and in poor health when he was writing his letters of protest.
Dawson took his complaints directly to the Victorian Government. On a visit to Melbourne, he arranged interviews with the Secretary of Lands and the Secretary of the Board of Health, and he persuaded them to investigate the situation at Tower Hill. This activism came to nothing. Local health officers replied that conditions at the lake were due to a “natural drying-up process”. They argued that the drain carried only storm water after heavy rain, and no one living on the lake bank had suffered a serious illness in seven years.
The statements of health officials were at odds with the evidence. The lake was clearly being polluted and the natural environment had been greatly damaged over the years. The drying of the lake coincided with the commencement of pumping spring water from the lake for the town’s water supply. A few of the better off farmers had also installed their own private pumps to access ground water for irrigation.
It is likely that all this pumping of water was lowering the water table. Drought conditions may also have been a factor. In dry years the lake dried up for extended periods. Water virtually disappeared from the bed of the lake during the drought of 1914. The lake refilled after the floods of 1946 but it virtually dried out again in the dry years of 1966 and 1967.
Sir Bryan O’Loghlen, the local member for Port Fairy, introduced a bill to the Victorian parliament in 1892 to designate Tower Hill as a National Park. O’Loghlen called his legislation the “Tower Hill National Park Bill.” O’Loghlen hoped that his bill would “restore the spot to its pristine beauty.” However, in this legislation the role exercised by the Koroit Council remained the same.
Leaving the management of Tower Hill Lake in the hands of the Koroit Council did not lead to its protection, let alone its restoration, because the Koroit community was too accustomed to exploiting the reserve in line with long established practice. Although formally a National Park and public recreation reserve, Tower Hill still functioned as the town’s common land.
The claim that Tower Hill was the first National Park in Victoria is thus misleading. Tower Hill was never managed as a National Park and local people continued to run stock and quarry within the lake well into the twentieth century. The number of quarries kept growing and the quarries left great gouges in the lake’s banks, even though the Act of 1892 stipulated that Tower Hill was to be used for public recreation and for “no other purpose whatsoever”.
Public recreation was interpreted very loosely by the Koroit Council and the community thought it was perfectly acceptable for motorbike racing and car rallies to be allowed on the islands. These motor sports just degraded the landscape even further from the 1930s to the early 1960s. It was good fun to race up and down the steep hills within the lake.
When the Victorian Government’s new National Parks Act was introduced in 1956, Tower Hill was omitted because of its degraded condition. It had been stripped bare. Hardly any wildlife or vegetation remained. In 1959, the Warrnambool Field Naturalists Club was granted its request that a small patch be planted with native trees. This was the first step in restoring Tower Hill to something like its former glory.
In 1960, the Victorian government approved the transfer of Tower Hill to the Fisheries and Wildlife Division of the Ministry of Conservation. Tower Hill was declared a State Game Reserve. The Koroit community lost management of Tower Hill after almost one hundred years of control. Some local residents supported the Victorian State Government’s move to declare the lake a State Game Reserve as they thought the strengthened regulations might enhance duck shooting opportunities.
Lionel hunted ducks on the lake together with some of his local acquaintances. Following the transfer of the lake to state government control he was prepared to follow the duck season opening and closing dates. He also supported the regulations on bag limits on threatened species and other restrictions. Other shooters were not happy to be regulated in this way and some men continued to shoot whatever they saw fit whenever they could get away with it.
From 1961 the government progressively closed the quarries around the rim of the lake. By 1966 only one quarry was still operating. Grazing within the reserve was stopped from 1961. The government ramped up programs to poison foxes, control rabbits, and eradicate invasive weeds.
The Fisheries and Wildlife Department used Eugene von Guerard’s painting as a guide to restoration. “Outlook at Tower Hill” had been lost to public view for many years and was almost forgotten. It was only rediscovered in 1960 when an official researcher went to Melbourne to interview an elderly lady called Mrs. Winter. She was the daughter of Isabella Dawson and thus the granddaughter of James Dawson. As it happened, the painting was still in her procession, unknown to all but a few of her elderly acquaintances. The researcher learnt that James Dawson had commissioned Eugene von Guerard to depict Tower Hill “as the Aborigines knew it and just before the Europeans ruin it.” The painting was so detailed that naturalists were able to identify specific plant species.
For six years, “Outlook at Tower Hill” was displayed at the Natural History Centre at Tower Hill. It was then decided that the Centre was too insecure to house such a valuable and important painting. By the 1970s the painting had jumped in value as Eugene von Guerard came to be regarded as one of Australia’s finest colonial landscape artists. As a result, it was decided to loan the painting to the Regional Gallery in Warrnambool, where it remains.
In the mid-1960s, local school children were sent to plant trees at Tower Hill. This was seen as an opportunity to instill conservation values in young people. The author can recall his brother going off to plant trees at the lake. Not all people in the local community were supportive of efforts to rehabilitate Tower Hill, with some regarding it as waste of time and money. Some thought of it as undermining what had been achieved by the community, as a form of remote government interference designed to undermine traditional values and local freedoms.
Lionel actively supported the construction of the Tower Hill Natural History Centre and he helped cart stone for the project. The Natural History Centre on the main island in the lake was designed by Robin Boyd, the famous architect and writer. Lionel thought the benefits from increased tourism might offset the losses to the local quarrying industry. He also saw the potential to restore the lake’s beauty for its own sake. In its first decades the Centre displayed information on the geology of the caldera’s formation and the history of local land use. Some in the community were not happy when the Centre was converted into a dumbed down international tourist trap displaying cheap trinkets with indigenous themes, as they saw it.
Patricia was perhaps more skeptical than Lionel about the restoration program of the 1960s and 1970s. She was concerned at the loss of local agency and the increasing metropolitan disregard shown to her family’s heritage and the lack of respect for her forebears and the hardships they had endured. She knew her community had lived and worked around the lake for decades, facing many adversities with real courage and quiet determination. She was also unsure of what an influx of unfamiliar visitors and tourists might bring to the district. Nevertheless, over the years, Patricia came to love the restored Tower Hill.
