Avoca (Victoria)

Avoca is a small town in the center of the Australian state of Victoria. It is located 71 km north-west of Ballarat in the Pyrenees Shire Local Government Area on the Avoca River. At the 2006 census, 951 inhabitants were counted.

• 3.1 Economics
• 3.2 Sport
• 3.3 traffic

Geography

The city is located in the gently undulating basin of the Avoca River, which rises in the west to the Pyrenees Ranges. In the south, the area is limited by the low hills of the Great Dividing Range. In the east the basin ends in a dry, wooded slope and in the north flows the River Avoca, low-flow through the plains of the Wimmera and then seeps south of the Murray River in the swamps. Town and river were named after the village in the east of Ireland and the Avoca River Avoca in County Wicklow.

The boundaries of the city covers about 200 km ². The places Redbank, Natte Yallock, Rathscar, Bung Bong, Lamplough, Amphitheatre, Percydale, Moonambel and Warrenmang belong. A few kilometers north-east are today corrals and pastures, where once stood the gold mining town of Homebush.

History

Early settlement and gold rush

The researcher and surveyor Thomas Mitchell was the first European who traveled proven through the area of the later Avoca. He found that this area offered a more congenial climate and more precipitation than the interior of New South Wales, and encouraged settlers to settle on the land which he described as Australia Felix.

The Blood Hole massacre took place in late 1839 or early 1840 in Middle Creek at Moonambel, north of Avoca, instead. There, an unknown number of Aborigines Dja Dja was murdered Wurrung.

In 1850, there were several large sheep pastures and an agricultural society had become well established.

As Ballarat and many other cities in Victoria was also Avoca in a short time during the gold rush in the 1850s. The first gold was found in 1849 in the Pyrenees Ranges near Avoca. But it took another two years until the shepherd James Esmond a larger amount of gold in Clunes, 40 km from Avoca today, found and thus caused the gold rush in Victoria. 1853 they found gold in Four Mile Flat in Avoca and a few months later they stood in Avoca even the main vein on. In early December 1853 was increased from 100 to 2,200 population, and in June of the following year already lived 16,000 inhabitants in Avoca, making the city one of the more important mining towns of Victoria was.

With a courthouse, a police station, a post office ( opened on 1 September1854 ), gold exchanges, churches and schools. Avoca had become an administrative center, which was very important for the development of the city. As the prospectors abandoned their claims in Avoca and moved on in 1856 after Dunolly, Avoca was able to survive as a business and administrative center. With the gold rush of 1859, the Lamplough prospectors returned to Avoca and the same year also rich gold deposits in Homebush were found, which was established on the site of the Four -Mile Flat - Gold Rush of 1853. This discovery brought new life to the area. The value of the gold mining industry for the economy may show a simple number: From 1859 to 1870 gold to the value of £ 2.5 million of Avoca was sent to Melbourne, where even this huge sum accounted for only one-third of the gold mined since private sales are not are taken into account.

From gold mining to agriculture

Avocas economic base waved quickly from gold mining to agriculture. Many miners who were moved here in the 1850s and early 1860s, settled down and began to cultivate the land. The big sheep stations from the time before the gold rush were divided into smaller parcels. The mining industry was still an important industry, but the miners were working in the last decades of the 19th century no longer individually or in small groups, but in large companies who exploited deeper veins of gold. In Homebush, about 10 km northeast of Avoca, worked almost exclusively large mining companies. The site flourished many decades until these shafts were uneconomical. The Farming Victoria was particularly affected by the economic crisis and the long drought in the 1890s. In 1895 the larger mines were abandoned in the area of Avoca and at the outbreak of the First World War, there were only a few active mining companies.

Throughout Australia, agricultural productivity rose rapidly during this period, partly through the development of agricultural machines, which were manufactured by companies such as Mackay and Shearer. Some rural areas recorded from the 1890s to 1901, a yield increase fivefold.

In the first decade of the 20th century Avocas infrastructure was expanded. Additional and better roads were built, because you met the problem of increased agricultural production through higher traffic volumes on the bad roads with the establishment of a district engineer. 1911, a new dam was built and in the same year, the district was connected to the telephone network of Victoria.

End of the 20th century, the cultivation of wine was operated so that viticulture and tourism today are important industries of the region again. Avoca is the gateway to the wine region of the Pyrenees Ranges.

Today

Economy

Avoca has many small shops, two pubs, cafés, a pharmacy, a corner shop, two butcher shops, a supermarket, his own newspaper (Pyrenees Advocate) and a bank. The association of business people in Avoca has made great efforts in the past to attract new settlers and businessmen, and these efforts slowly take effect.

Sports

The city has an Australian football team that plays in the Maryborough Castlemaine District Football League. The Avoca Bulldogs play since 2005 in this league. From 1944 to 1999 she played in the Lexton Football League and the Western Plains Football League. The club was founded in 1872.

Avoca also has a horse racing club, the Avoca Turf Club, which has just been allowed to host a third race in December each year, in addition zumANZAC - Rennen.am ANZAC Day and the Avoca Cup in October.

Golfers playing in Avoca Golf Club at Davey Street.

Avoca also directed an interesting mountain bike race as a marathon competition in which to start and get the starter in the vineyards of Mount Avoca. This race has been around since 2010 and there are distances of 15 km, 33 km, 45 km, 66 km and 90 km offered ..

Traffic

Avoca is located on the Sunraysia Highway, where the Pyrenees Highway crosses.

Until 1979 there was also a railway station. In 1995 the railway line from Ararat to Maryborough was closed for alterations to standard gauge. Since 2005 their is no more freight.