VICFarming
Werribee
A river crossing on the plains that became Chirnside country.
1850sWyndham village laid out on the Werribee River
WHAT STARTED IT
Werribee grew where the Werribee River crosses the open basalt plain, midway between Melbourne and Geelong, around a village reserve named Wyndham and Elliott Armstrong’s inn. The treeless grassland around it was prime sheep country within easy reach of the Melbourne market.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
The Chirnside brothers assembled more than 37,000 hectares around the township and finished their Werribee Park mansion in 1878. From the 1890s their land went to tenant farmers, and government closer settlement and irrigation turned the plain into dairy farms, orchards and Italian market gardens.
TURNING POINTS
1850sA village reserve named Wyndham is surveyed on the Werribee River, beside Armstrong’s inn.
1857The Geelong and Melbourne Railway opens on 25 June, with a stone station under construction at the Werribee.
1878Thomas and Andrew Chirnside complete the Werribee Park mansion south of the township.
1904The state buys land for closer-settlement farms; irrigation brings market gardens and orchards within a decade.
1960sWerribee’s population more than doubles between 1961 and 1971 as Melbourne’s growth reaches it.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A major suburb in the City of Wyndham, grown from about 33,000 people in 2001 to more than 50,000 in 2021. Werribee Park’s mansion and gardens, held by the state since the 1970s, recall the pastoral estate that once surrounded the town.