The Long and Winding Ride: Episode 10 – Milawa to Tarrawingee: Not a Gallop

The Long and Winding Ride

 

 

Episode 10 Milawa to Tarrawingee: Not a Gallop

 

Stage 10 Milawa to Tarrawingee

 

When the choice is a short sprint or a slow ride, I’d usually advise taking the latter. especially in this part of North East Victoria. And who would want to bypass one of the epicurean attractions of the Milawa area? Let’s forgo the speedy 30 minute-ride option and make it a more relaxed day of sampling local produce and sitting beside the Ovens River enjoying a gourmet hamper. When we reach our stage destination – Tarrawingee – we will learn of a long established Ovens and King League football club and a famous former son – ‘The Galloping Gasometer’.

 

After leaving ‘The Square’ (Milawa) you will barely get into top gear before finding a cheese outlet – a cafe – a bakery – a cellar door and an art gallery that collectively live on the site of the old Milawa Butter Factory. The butter factory occupied the site, which is wedged between the Milawa-Bobinawarrah Rd and the Oxley Flat Road, for almost a century (1891-1988). It was a mainstay of the local economy, providing employment, produce and income to the town and district. 

 

When the Milawa Butter Factory started up there were 170 butter factories and 300 creameries in the state, and today you don’t have to travel very far in regional Victoria to find a heritage-listed or repurposed one. Whether at Myrtleford, Euroa, Tatura, Warrnambool, Albury-Wodonga, Kiewa, Cohuna or Bendigo, to name a few, butter factories were once ubiquitous. The perishability of dairy produce was the reason why milk and cream processing was a local phenomenon, and with that, butter and cheese production. Refrigeration, refrigerated transport, milking machinery, butter-making technology and business consolidation and concentration eventually changed that picture markedly. Today there are about 60 dairy manufacturing sites in Victoria, with almost half of them located in the broader Melbourne metropolitan area.

 

Lunch stop

 

The Ovens River Streamside Reserve on the Markwood-Tarrawingee Road provides a perfect place to pull up, spread out the picnic rug and unload a pannier-full of  locally-procured gourmet delights. Today we have a ploughman’s lunch featuring cheddar and blue cheeses, sourdough bread and sun-dried tomatoes accompanied by a local wine – a tempranillo from fruit grown at Kneebone’s Gap near Whorouly. 

 

On the road again, we continue across the Ovens floodplain and soon reach the Great Alpine Road, where we take a left turn and pedal into historic Tarrawingee. The village prospered as a waypoint on the gold trails to Eldorado and Beechworth in the  1850s-1860s. Tarrawingee station was on the railway line from Bowser (Wangaratta) to Myrtleford which opened in 1883. After a century of rail traffic the line was closed in 1987.

 

A disastrous bushfire in 1943 in the Tarrawingee area is an event that is remembered to this day, both for the loss of life it caused but also as a catalyst in the formation of the Country Fire Authority (CFA). Just prior to Christmas in 1943 a fire broke out at Bowser and quickly spread to Tarrawingee fanned by hot northerly winds. Volunteers raced to the area, but a perilous wind change sent the conflagration into the path of firefighters. The Bowser-Tarrawingee bushfire claimed the lives of 10 firefighters, among them two 14 year old school boys. The tragedy was only four years after one of Victoria’s worst bushfire events (Black Friday 1939) and together with other fires in 1943/44 and the recommendations of a Royal Commission into the 1939 fires, led to the formation of the CFA in 1944. A memorial was built near the location where the brave volunteer firefighters confronted the fire and perished, or later died from their injuries. It is the site of annual commemoration services conducted by the CFA.

 

The Plough Inn at Tarrawingee

(source: Plough Inn on Facebook)

 

How many hotels built in the 1860s are still in operation? Tarrawingee’s ‘Plough Inn’, built in 1864, is. Its first licensee was an Irish gentleman by the name of Hopton Nolan. Hold onto that surname! Unsurprisingly, Ned Kelly once frequented the two storey hotel on his movements between the King Valley and the Beechworth area. It is suggested he kept a lookout for Police from his upstairs bedroom. The current publican said “It was one of Ned Kelly’s watering holes; it’s rumoured he rode his horse through the pub and had his own special stool; it’s a knotted wooden bench that you can still see today.” (Border Mail 15 April 2021)

 

Our ride from Milawa to Tarrawingee ends at the local football ground – the Tarrawingee Recreation Reserve, home of the Bulldogs. The Tarrawingee Football Club was one of the foundation members of the Ovens and King FA in 1903. The other four clubs were Milawa, Wangaratta, Wangaratta Rainbows and Carboor. Tarra had a 50 year wait for their first O&KFL premiership, won in 1953, when they defeated Greta by 43 points. 

 

Tarrawingee Recreation Reserve

(Google maps)

 

Tarrawingee and Milawa remain the only foundation clubs still in the league, although in Tarrawingee’s case, unlike Milawa, they have not played in every season of the league’s existence. In Jim Milne’s early history of the league, written in 1962, it was noted that most of the grounds in the association were “… handy paddocks and the players changed at the hotel or hall or wherever they best could at the grounds.” At Tarrawingee the hotel and the old football ground were side-by-side at the corner of the Eldorado and Beechworth roads. The current Tarra ground is located adjacent to the golf course.

 

With eight premierships in their trophy cabinet, ‘Tarra’ also hold the record of the highest score in the league’s history. In round 16 2018 the Bulldogs booted 54.24 (360) against Bonnie Doon. Needless to say, they won the flag that season, defeating Milawa in a low scoring grand final. But things were not so bright for the tricolours in the decade and a half preceding their sixth premiership, claimed in 2008, when the club’s ability to be competitive again in the league was under serious question. Earlier, between 1929 and 1945, Tarrawingee had a long period of retirement from the league. 

 

The Tarrawingee ground was the venue for the infamous 1954 Ovens and King League grand final, a match that is still remembered with frustration and annoyance by some Chiltern folk. It is known as the game in which the final quarter lasted for 43 minutes, due to umpiring errors, which robbed the Chiltern ‘Swans’ of a premiership in their first season in the league. Leading Greta by about four goals with what seemed like only seconds to go, Chiltern players and supporters could be forgiven for relaxing. One spectator even left the ground and headed back into Wangaratta, only to arrive at home and hear the radio broadcast of the game still going. Why were there 18 minutes of time on? Throw conspiracy theories out the window. In the last quarter umpire Arvidson unnecessarily signalled “TIME OFF” on many occasions, which added 10 minutes to the duration of the match – just enough time for Greta to kick four goals and pinch the grand final by four points. Bad blood existed between the two clubs for years afterwards.

 

From Tarrawingee to City Oval Wangaratta and Arden Street

 

The Nolan surname is somewhat synonymous with the Tarrawingee Football Club, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s.  In 1967 a young ruckman with a big frame and a big weight won the best and fairest award for Tarrawingee. Ovens and Murray League clubs took notice, and in the following season he was playing at City Oval for Wangaratta Rovers. He played 101 consecutive games for the Rovers including two premierships (1971/1972) and won two best and fairest awards (1971/72). North Melbourne came knocking with an offer for the big ruckman, and despite fears from many that he would not make the graduation to VFL football, the Tarrawingee product proved those pundits wrong.

 

Mick Nolan: Scanlens Football card

 

Mick Nolan, dubbed ‘The Galloping Gasometer’ by Lou Richards, became an excellent tap ruckman for the Kangaroos with high marking and effective long kicking also part of his kit. For the fans at Arden Street he soon became a cult hero. His ruck work against Don Scott in the 1975 grand final was instrumental in giving the likes of Barry Cable and John Burns first use of the Sherrin. 

 

Nolan played 107 games for North Melbourne before moving to the Sunshine State to assist in the development of the code in the north. He coached Mayne in the QAFL between 1981 and 1986 (101 games) winning a flag in 1982 and serving as captain coach of the Queensland state team. Mick was among the first group of players/officials inducted into the Ovens and King League Hall of Fame in 2006. He was also inducted into the Ovens and Murray Football Netball League Hall of Fame in 2024 for his excellent contributions to the Wangaratta Rovers and to the league.

 

Next episode

In stage 11 we cycle back into gold mining country and find our El Dorado.

 

 

More from Peter Clark can be read Here.

 

 

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