Originally published in the Dandenong Journal from 10 March to 22nd September, 1932.
This copy is taken from the original published then, not the book version now used by others.
Some few years before the times of which I write there was a mail service to Gippsland and later to the Bass, horsemen conveying the bags a certain distance, where other riders relieved them, and so relaying through from Melbourne to Sale. Travelling by means of wheeled vehicles, other than bullock drays, was tedious, and also dangerous, the track being very rough, and through virgin bush, necessitating great care and free use of the axe.
In 1858 the Government undertook the formation of a road from Melbourne to Sale, and made an allocation of £30,000 for the section from Melbourne to Bunyip. This road started from the old Star Hotel, Windsor, which was then a celebrated hostelry, and gradually it crept through the bush on its way to far-off Gippsland.
Messrs. Cox and Bennett were the contractors, and a first class job they made of it. I remember well the piece from the (now) intersection of the Cranbourne and Berwick roads towards Hallam. It was an atrocious quagmire in winter, and an appaling gridiron in summer. The countless droves of bullocks from Gippsland had made ridges across the track, and these in time had become so deep that the cattle had to step high negotiating them. Vehicular traffic, represented by bullock drays, could not travel over it, but had to make other tracks through the adjacent bush. The difficulties that the contractors had to face and overcome were stupenduous, But surmount them they did, and the road-bed as it shows up in places to this day testifies to the thoroughness of the work of these pioneer road-makers. But this is getting on too fast.
When the squatting runs which embraced Dandenong and district were cut up and thrown open to selectors, the question of a main road through to Gippsland was one of much talk and of great importance. Even so early in the history of the colony as this (1854) there was that procedure which was then inelegantly termed “duck-shoving,” meaning that underground influence was brought to bear on the question of running the line of road along the course most favored by and of most benefit to the persons who had the power to so direct it. That applied to the road through the township.
There were three routes surveyed from Melbourne as far as Dandenong.
One went through Brighton, and is that now known yet as the “Brighton road,” the existing line being almost identical with that of the original survey. In those days Brighton was regarded as a sort of semi-terminus to the road from Melbourne, in the direction of Gippsland.
The second track took the “route of the hills,” by way of Prahran and Caulfield, and then diverged through the flats between the latter place and Dandenong. But this was soon abandoned on account of the heavy sticky country through which it led, it being literally a series of glue pots.
The third was a continuation of the hill route, diverging from the "glue pots” at Caulfield, and so on through Oakleigh and Springvale, and is the main Gippsland road of to-day.
The intention at that time of the surveyors, and the wish of those who had no axes to apply to the grindstone, was that the main road should go on to Gippsland straight along McCrae street; and, anyone coming into the town from Melbourne, will see at once the fitness of that decision; but the wire-pullers got to work, and, instead of a straight and good road over suitable and firm country, the track was swerved around the corner opposite the market, past the hotels, through a swamp from Walker street to the creek, and so on to the intersection of the Berwick and Cranbourne roads. The swampy ground was filled in at enormous cost, and which fact possibly in no small measure contributed to the crushing burden which our beautiful little town has carried since its infancy, and is still carrying.
And it is marvellous that Dandenong, though so handicapped with the burden of debt, still struggles on under her “weight-for-age” impost in a remarkable manner. It reminds one of old Carbine thundering along with his thumping imposts in the good old days. It would be interesting to know how much money really has been sunk in the swampy spots of this township. The late John Carson once told me that he carted hundreds of loads of filling to Langhorne street, when the brick drain was carried through from Clow street to the Park. And what similar work in the main street, from, say, the Town Hall to the creek cost, is another mystery of the dark ages, for, it must be remembered, that in flood time the creek spread over Pultney street up to Dunbar’s Hotel corner, into Langhorne street, and was a sheet of water from one end of the park to the other, ducks, swan, etc., swimming well into the town for a drink most likely at one of the “pubs,” but, instead they got leaden pills from those lying in wait, and I have seen many a duck shot from where now is the Royal Hotel’s bar door.
ANOTHER spot where unnumbered loads of soil were buried, and scores of pounds expended, was in the Main street, on the east side, where a “young creek” roared down from the Melbourne road in winter time. That would be, say, from McCrae street corner to Langhorne street, where the stream divided the water rushing down both Langhorne and the main street to the creek. There is plenty of buried (municipal) treasure in Dandenong.