The Western District comprises western regions of the Australian state of Victoria. It is said to be an ill–defined district, sometimes incorrectly referred to as an economic region,. The district is located within parts of the Barwon South West and the Grampians regions; extending from the south-west corner of the state to Ballarat in the east and as far north as Ararat. The district is bounded by the Wimmera district in the north, by the Goldfields district in the east, by Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean in the south, and by the South Australian border in the west. The district is well known for the production of wool. The most populated city in the Western District is the Ballarat region, with 96,940 inhabitants.
Foster Fyans was an Irish military officer, penal colony administrator and public servant. He was acting commandant of the second convict settlement at Norfolk Island, the commandant of the Moreton Bay penal settlement at Brisbane, the first police magistrate at Geelong, and commissioner of crown lands for the Portland Bay pastoral district in the Port Phillip District of New South Wales. He is the great-great-grandfather of actor Sam Neill.
Derrinallum is a town in Victoria, Australia, located on the Hamilton Highway, in the Corangamite Shire. The town is the centre for the surrounding farming community and lies at the foot of Mount Elephant. Mount Elephant is a 380 m-high conical breached scoria cone formed by an dormant volcano.
Johann Friedrich Krummnow was a German-born settler in Australia. He arrived in South Australia in 1839 and in 1852 he founded a community named Herrnhut located near Penshurst in western Victoria. This was Australia's first intentional community based on the principles of shared property and fervent prayer. Krummnow died at Herrnhut in October 1880.
Mount Napier in Victoria, Australia, is one of the youngest volcanoes in Australia. It erupted about 32,000 years ago. It was named by Major Thomas Mitchell after the three Napier brothers, who he had served alongside during the Peninsular War. Mitchell named it in August 1836, during his third expedition across south-eastern Australia. The local Aboriginal name for the mountain is Tapoc. Mount Napier State Park is located 270 kilometres west of Melbourne and 17 km south of Hamilton.
Mount Elephant is a 380-metre-high (1,250 ft) conical breached scoria cone formed by a dormant volcano, located 1 km from the town of Derrinallum in southwestern Victoria, Australia. It is a prominent landmark that forms the eastern gateway to the Kanawinka Geopark from the Hamilton Highway at Derrinallum.
The Newer Volcanics Province is a geological area which is a volcanic field, formed by the East Australia hotspot across south-eastern Australia. It covers an area of 15,000 square kilometres (5,800 sq mi), with over 400 small shield volcanoes and volcanic vents. The area contains the youngest volcanoes in Australia.
Hawkesdale is a town in the Western District of Victoria, Australia on the Penshurst-Warrnambool Road. It is in the Shire of Moyne local government area and the federal Division of Wannon. At the 2016 census, Hawkesdale and the surrounding area had a population of 322.
The Djab Wurrung, also spelt Djabwurrung, Tjapwurrung, Tjap Wurrung, or Djapwarrung, people are Aboriginal Australians whose country is the volcanic plains of central Victoria from the Mount William Range of Gariwerd in the west to the Pyrenees range in the east encompassing the Wimmera River flowing north and the headwaters of the Hopkins River flowing south. The towns of Ararat, Stawell and Hamilton are within their territory. There were 41 Djab Wurrung clans who formed an alliance with the neighbouring Jardwadjali people through intermarriage, shared culture, trade and moiety system before colonisation. Their lands were conquered but never ceded.
Mount Leura is a 313-metre scoria cone surrounding a dry crater 100 m deep and is the central and most obvious component of a larger volcanic complex southeast of the town of Camperdown located in western Victoria, Australia, 194 kilometres (121 mi) south west of the state capital, Melbourne. The inactive volcano is thought to have last erupted between 5,000 and 20,000 years ago. The name means "big nose" in the local Aboriginal dialect.
Mount Porndon is a 278-metre-high (912 ft) Stratovolcano located 13 kilometres southeast of Camperdown in western Victoria, Australia.
Murdering Gully, formerly known as Puuroyup to the Djargurd Wurrung people, is the site of an 1839 massacre of 35–40 people of the Tarnbeere Gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung in the Camperdown district of Victoria, Australia. It is a gully on Mount Emu Creek, where a small stream adjoins from Merida Station.
Edward Stone Parker (1802–1865) was a Methodist preacher and assistant Protector of Aborigines in the Aboriginal Protectorate established in the Port Phillip District of colonial New South Wales under George Augustus Robinson in 1838. He established and administered the Franklinford Aboriginal Protectorate Station in the territory of the Dja Dja Wurrung people from January 1841 to the end of 1848.
The Girai wurrung, also spelt Kirrae Wuurong and Kirrae Whurrung, are an Aboriginal Australian people who traditionally occupied the territory between Mount Emu Creek and the Hopkins River up to Mount Hamilton, and the Western Otways from the Gellibrand River to the Hopkins River. The historian Ian D. Clark has reclassified much of the material regarding them in Norman Tindale's compendium under the Djargurd Wurrung, a term reflecting the assumed pre-eminence of one of their clans, the Jacoort/Djargurd.
Budj Bim, also known as Mount Eccles, is a dormant volcano near Macarthur in southwestern Victoria, Australia. It lies within the geologically-defined area known as the Newer Volcanics Province, which is the youngest volcanic area in Australia and stretches from western Victoria to south-eastern South Australia.
Mount Franklin is an extinct volcano about 10 km north of Daylesford and 4.6 km south east of Franklinford in Victoria, Australia. A road spirals round the outside slopes covered with pine trees, into a flat 50 acre caldera, and onto the rim which hosts a fire lookout, parking area and picnic ground.
An Aboriginal reserve, also called simply reserve, was a government-sanctioned settlement for Aboriginal Australians, created under various state and federal legislation. Along with missions and other institutions, they were used from the 19th century to the 1960s to keep Aboriginal people separate from the white Australian population. The governments passed laws related to such reserves that gave them much power over all aspects of Aboriginal people’s lives.
Griffiths Island, sometimes incorrectly spelled as Griffith Island or Griffitts Island, lies at the mouth of the Moyne River next to, and within the bounds of, the town of Port Fairy, in the Western District of the state of Victoria in Australia. Griffiths now has no permanent inhabitants, but is connected to the mainland by a causeway and is accessible on foot. It forms part of the Port Fairy and Belfast Coastline Protection Reserve and, as well as being a tourist attraction, is an important site in the context of the history of European settlement of western Victoria. It is managed by the Moyne Shire Council.
The Eumeralla Wars were the violent encounters over the possession of land between British colonists and Gunditjmara Aboriginal people in what is now called the Western District area of south west Victoria.
Charles Wightman Sievwright was a British army officer before being appointed Assistant Protector of Aborigines in part of the Port Phillip District of the colony of New South Wales, now Victoria, Australia.
