The Long and Winding Ride: Episode 12 – Eldorado to Chiltern: Lappin’ it all up

The Long and Winding Ride

 

 

Episode 12 Eldorado to Chiltern: Lappin’ it all up

 

Stage 12 Eldorado to Chiltern via North Wangaratta

 

In episode 12 we pedal to the northernmost point of our long and winding ride, finishing the day at Chiltern. Our cycle route arcs past North Wangaratta, runs parallel to the Hume Freeway, and allows for a quick stop at Springhurst. It will be an outing full of local history, and of course, more sumptuous dining and delightful drinking.

 

While Chiltern is no longer a member of the Ovens and King football fraternity, it had a successful affiliation with the league in the period 1954-2002, taking out 10 premierships. Today we celebrate the achievements of the Lappin families from Chiltern, who have produced two handfuls of O& K footballers (among them two AFL players). The footballing clan consists of at least 12 Lappin’s: Nigel, Matthew, Jason, Robert, Ron (‘Jock’), Des, John (‘Rowdy’), Kevin, Peter and Fin among them. ‘Rowdy’ won three O&KL Baker Medals. Question: How good were they? Answer: There are seven Lappins in Chiltern’s Team of the Century.

 

North Wangaratta

 

Since the construction of the Hume Freeway the village of North Wangaratta has been bypassed. The old highway swept past the North Wangaratta Football Ground and the Vine Hotel, which is literally in the ground’s forward pocket. Travellers on that road will remember the Bowser-North Wangaratta area as the northern gateway to the city of Wangaratta. Prior to 1922 Bowser was called ‘Beechworth Junction’ and had a football team in the early 1890s. Today we stop briefly at North Wang. to learn about one of the less successful, but most resilient, Ovens and King League clubs.

 

North Wangaratta Sports Reserve

(Google maps)

 

North Wangaratta formed a football club in the early 1890s. It is probable that it was one and the same as the Beechworth Junction club. In 1914, on the eve of World War I, the club entered the Ovens and King FA, but struggled to be competitive and viable, experiencing long interruptions to its affiliation with the association. Competition for players from both Eldorado and Wangaratta was a regular threat to North Wangaratta’s existence. The North Wang. club returned to the O&KFA in 1929 after a six year break. and hosted the 1931 O&KFL grand final between Wangaratta and Moyhu, which drew a record crowd. The Great Depression took its toll on a number of clubs, including North Wangaratta who did not reform in 1934.

 

After a brief spell in the Murray Valley North East competition,  North Wangaratta was admitted to the Benalla-Tungamah League in 1951, staying for two years before switching to the Benalla and District League in 1954. North’s first premiership came in 1958 with a big win over Goorambat. Like Glenrowan, the club kept knocking on the door, seeking admission to the O&KFL, which was eventually granted in 1961. The Hawks’ Reserves team won the competition in 1962. Two goals eleven was enough to get the job done that day.

 

The Hawks languished at or near the bottom of the ladder for a decade before prospects started to brighten with former Wangaratta Rovers player Len Greskie in charge. In 1973 they claimed a breakthrough premiership and in doing so spoiled Chiltern’s ambition of winning three in a row. Another flag was flown at North Wangaratta three seasons later after a record victory margin over Beechworth. Thereafter a long drought set in, enduring throughout the 1980s and most of the 90s. In 1982 the club purchased the reserve on which their ground is located from … you guessed it … the hotel next door. 

 

The Hawk’s third premiership came in 1997 and the most recent in 2012. When the Hawks win in September they usually win big!

 

Springhurst 

We pause at Springhurst to learn of one of Chiltern’s old rivals in the defunct Chiltern and District League. Also bypassed by the Hume Freeway, Springhurst is a place I always associate with the silver-coloured grain silos situated beside the railway line. 

 

Springhurst is a junction town. It is on the junction of the Hume Freeway and the road to Wahgunyah. It was also at the junction of the Melbourne-Wodonga rail line and the branch line to Wahgunyah, where access to the Riverina lay just beyond. The railway station was opened in 1873 and in 1890 the name of the settlement and station were changed from Springs to Springhurst. Football special trains ran along the branch line to Wahgunyah and from there fans from Albury and Wodonga could reach Rutherglen and Corowa.

 

The Ovens and Murray FA was in turmoil at the end of the 1900-1910 decade. Albury and Rutherglen were dominant and many of the clubs from smaller towns progressively fell back to the junior version of the association, leaving only three clubs. The junior association, with nine teams (including Springhurst), was more viable. In 1911 the Ovens and Murray FA was replaced with a new entity, the Rutherglen and District Association. without Albury and Rutherglen, who were considered too strong. The R&DFA comprised twelve clubs divided into two divisions. One of the clubs in ‘A’ Division was Springhurst. Springhurst won seven of its 10 matches and finished the season in second position, thus qualifying for a place in the finals. Howlong, from ‘B’ Division defeated Springhurst in the semi-final. It was a one season cameo in the R&DFA for Springhurst. Ironically, the town that provided the name for the new competition – Rutherglen – did not have an affiliated team in the association. 

 

That farcical situation was to change in 1912 when Rutherglen and Albury were readmitted. Meanwhile, six clubs broke away to form the Chiltern and District FA. Springhurst joined the association and claimed its one and only premiership in 1920 with a twelve point victory over Lake Rovers. Chiltern and Springhurst shared an affiliation with the league for many of the next 35 years, with the honours mostly going Chiltern’s way. In a game in 1950 between the two clubs, the Chiltern ‘Swans’ kicked a C&DFL record score of 47.15 (297) against Springhurst. The Springhurst red, white and blues played in the C&DFA until 1956, before disbanding in 1957.

 

The old Hume Highway between Wangaratta and Wodonga had its marker points for motorists in the form of the sequence of creeks one crossed on the journey. They are still there of course, but are not obvious to passengers and drivers hurtling along at 110km per hour on a modern freeway. The succession of quirkily-named creeks goes like this: Daddah Daddah, Diddah Diddah, Black Dog, Fryingpan and Indigo. Diddah Diddah Creek is the waterway that runs past Springhurst.

 

This road, the old, ‘old’ Hume Highway once passed through Chiltern, straight up the main Street, until the 1960s. And it was on that route about three miles from Chiltern that tragedy struck the Wodonga Football Club one night in July 1949.

 

Thirty players and officials were returning to Wodonga by bus from a game at Wangaratta that evening when their bus ran headlong into a broken down truck parked on the side of the Hume Highway. Two men were killed outright in the crash – Harold Phefley, a committee member, and Robert Howlett, the team’s first aid attendant. Six passengers were injured, including one footballer (Ted West) who later died in hospital. Club legend and coach at the time, Jack Eames, reflecting on the accident in a radio interview in 2015, said that seven other players did not play with the club again, such was the impact.

 

Wodonga battled on after the accident and made the 1949 grand final, but were without the services of their star player Jack Eames who was out with an injury that day. Mac Holten’s Wangaratta Magpies were too strong for the Bulldogs, winning by 32 points. The ‘Holten era’ of four successive O&M flags had begun.

 

Chiltern

Black Dog is not only the name of a creek in the north east, but also the original name of the township of Chiltern. As we enter this gold mining era boomtown, National Trust heritage buildings feature prominently on our pedal around town. The first stop is the printing works of the Federal Standard, which was built in 1861-62. The Federal Standard was published continuously between 1859 and 1970 and since 1972 the building has been in the possession of the National Trust. Its appeal to the National Trust is that it remains one of the few largely intact provincial newspaper printeries from the gold mining era. The building, constructed from local red bricks, houses printing machinery from the period between the 1870s and the 1930s. All of the machinery is in working order thanks to the efforts of volunteers. The Federal Standard was known for its long history of having strong-minded editors, not least among them Ben Hicks, who shaped local community attitudes. And it was the workplace where a young Barrie Cassidy got his first taste of journalism, as the paper’s football reporter.

 

The earliest newspapers circulating in the north east were founded contemporaneously with the code of Australian Football. As the game was on the bounce out of Melbourne, soon to land in the goldfields and rural communities of Victoria, the earliest provincial newspapers were rolling off the presses. The Beechworth Ovens and Murray Advertiser actually preceded the arrival of the gold prospectors, commencing in 1855. Over half of the Australian Football era occurred prior to the advent of television, while the earliest days were before radio, thus newspapers have been a constant and irreplaceable source of information for the football-following public.

 

The four page, weekly Federal Standard played its part in that history. Let’s go back to 1914 to read a matter-of-fact report published in the Chiltern paper of a football match between Springhurst and Chiltern.

 

Springhurst v Chiltern

 

A fair number of spectators witnessed the match between the above teams at Springhurst on Saturday, but from an onlookers point of view the game was rather one-sided. Springhurst had a very strong team, while it took Chiltern all their time to muster up eighteen. The game was won by the better team. It was played in a most friendly manner throughout. (Federal Standard, 22 May 1914)

 

On occasions, the football reporting in the Federal Standard could be very colourful. Here are snippets from the match report on the 1915 C&DFA grand final between Howlong and Wodonga played at Chiltern Park.

 

Play was delayed for about five minutes by Spears kicking the ball into the lake. All hands rushed away to assist in getting it out, and eventually a Chiltern ‘sport’ dived in and brought the leather ashore.

The barrackers were in good form and encouraged their fancies for all they were worth. One stylishly dressed lady from Wodonga was very conspicuous among the barrackers. She kept up a mild harangue from start to finish and patrons of the ‘fence’ in the vicinity enjoyed the fun.

The tumbling feats of Bocquet caused many a hearty laugh. He rolled in the water successively on three occasions and emerged there from something like a drowned rat.

The most active man on the ground was, perhaps, Mr Chris Leahy, who was here, there and everywhere supplying the Howlong players with the ‘elixir of life’.

 

(Federal Standard, 13 August 1915)

 

   

The next stop on our cruise around the verandah clad streets of Chiltern is The Star Hotel and Theatre, built in 1866. Walk inside and appreciate what it was like for miners at leisure. In the hotel’s courtyard stands the largest grapevine in Australia, planted in 1867 and still bearing fruit. The adjoining theatre was used for plays and dances and became the central attraction of Chiltern’s social and cultural life. So impressive was the grapevine that the hotel’s name was changed to The Grapevine Hotel in 1952. 

 

Chiltern’s place in the history of the Kelly Gang is significant. It was at Chiltern in 1878 that a warrant was issued for the arrest of Dan Kelly and his cousin on suspicion of their involvement in the stealing of horses. Subsequently, a police constable from Benalla rode to Greta to arrest Dan and was allegedly shot in the wrist by Ned Kelly and attacked with a shovel by Ellen Kelly. Ned’s mother Ellen was imprisoned for three years for attempted murder. Ned and Dan vehemently denied the policeman’s version of the events. They absconded to the King Valley hills where they later joined forces with Joe Byrne and Steve Hart to form the ‘Kelly Gang’.

 

We conclude our potted history tour of Chiltern with a visit to the Chiltern Recreation Park Reserve to sit in a grandstand built in 1879. Although not yet listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, restoration of the grandstand has given it more than a new roof and a fresh coat of paint. The structure sits on the former site of the Alliance Company Gold Mine and is now the oldest surviving grandstand of its kind in Victoria.

 

Lunch stop

We pause for lunch at an eatery and cellar door in Main Street Chiltern. Today is a perfect day for a pizza and a glass of ‘plonk’ from a Bethanga vineyard – Shiraz? or Durif?

 

Football was first played at Chiltern in the 1860s against other mining settlements in the district. Chiltern was a key instigator in the foundation of the Ovens and Murray FA in 1893. Despite its role in the formation of the association it was not particularly successful, but that all changed after the club joined the Chiltern and District FA in 1912. Chilltern claimed their first premiership in 1914 and went on to win a further eleven flags in the association before joining the stronger Ovens and King League in 1954. 

 

(Read about the infamous 1954 O&KFL grand final in episode 10)

 

It was only a short wait before the Swans took out their first flag in that league. Thereafter, another nine premierships came Chiltern’s way. In 2003 the Swans opted for a fresh start and moved to the Tallangatta and District FL where they have had recent success, winning back-to-back premierships in 2022 and 2023.

 

One of the Lappins was inducted into the Ovens and King League Hall of Fame in 2015 – Ron (‘Jock’) Lappin. He is also a life member of the league.

 

 

Chiltern Recreation and Sporting Reserve

(Google maps)

 

From Chiltern to Carrara and the ‘Gabba

A three time AFL premiership player (2001/02/03) and Australian Football Hall of Fame member (2016) started his long and successful football career at Chiltern. Nigel Lappin played in Chiltern’s losing 1992/93 grand final teams alongside his cousin Matthew. He won the O&KFL Baker Medal in 1993 and was soon on his way north after being drafted by the Brisbane Bears. He commenced his 279 game AFL career in 1994. He played 61 games with the Bears before they morphed into the Brisbane Lions in 1997. A member of the Lions’ “Fab Four”, Nigel went on to become club captain in 2007/08. After retiring from playing the game he immediately went into an assistant coaching role with Geelong, where he remains to this day, currently as Head of Development. The footy genes were strong on both sides of his family. His grandfather Gerry O’Neill played eighteen games for Footscray in 1943/44.

 

From Chiltern to Waverley and Princes Park

Nigel’s cousin Matthew headed in the opposite direction after leaving the north east in 1994. He was drafted by St Kilda where he played 55 games between 1994 and 1998. Matthew, known as ‘Skinny’, moved to Carlton in 1999, playing 196 games for the Blues before retiring in 2007. He is currently coach of the Southport Sharks in the QAFLW.

Another Lappin from Chiltern was drafted by an AFL club. Matthew’s brother Jason Lappin was selected by Footscray in the 1996 draft, but did not make a senior appearance. He returned to the Ovens and Murray League in 1998 where he carved out a highly successful career, firstly with Wodonga Raiders and later with Wangaratta. Jason was inducted into the Ovens and Murray League Hall of Fame in 2022.

 

Next episode: Chiltern to Goorambat via the Warby Ranges

 

 

More from Peter Clark can be read Here.

 

 

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