VICFarming
Kilmore
Rich volcanic soils made an early inland town.
1841Town surveyed · farming and coaching centre
WHAT STARTED IT
Pastoralists and Irish tenant farmers were drawn to productive volcanic country on the Sydney road. William Rutledge surveyed the settlement in 1841, when its first inn also opened.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
Goldfields traffic in the 1850s enlarged Kilmore as a coaching and supply centre. It became a municipality in 1856 and accumulated courts, churches, breweries, mills and a hospital, serving farms well beyond the town.
TURNING POINTS
1838Overlanders cross the Goulburn in March and take up sheep runs along the Sydney road around Kilmore.
1841Rutledge surveys the settlement.
1854Daily coach service to Melbourne begins.
1856Kilmore becomes a municipality.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A regional service and commuter town north of Melbourne, with a conspicuous nineteenth-century civic and church precinct.