Nerrina - White Swan
Nerrina is an outer-urban area, 6 km north-east of Ballarat. The name is believed to be derived from an Aboriginal expression and is an alternative for the original name of the Little Bendigo gold diggings (1851).
In 1858 an Anglican school was opened in Little Bendigo, a small postal hamlet with several quartz crushing machines for the surrounding gold diggings. A Methodist church followed in 1865. In 1878 a government school, of Swiss-Gothic design, replaced the earlier building. Two hotels were recorded in the 1890s in the Victorian municipal directory, which estimated the population to be about 400 people. Nerrina was described in 1903 in the Australian handbook:
In 1890 the population of Little Bendigo reached a peak of about 3000.
As mining declined, the population dwindled. The school had 7 pupils in 1968, but after that, Ballarat’s outer-urban growth began to repopulate the district. In 2014 the Little Bendigo school had 86 pupils, and its original building is on the Victorian Heritage Register. The community has had to band together three times to fight the school's imminent closure, 1916, 1948 and 1992
The handsome Anglican church (1864) has been sold as a residence, but the Methodist church building moulders in open bushland.
Ken’s wife Mary, was the principal of Little Bendigo School in 2004
(Date unknown)
Ballarat Star 25th June 1864
The English Church of St James, which has just been erected at Little Bendigo, will shortly be opened for
divine service, when the Very Rev. Dean McCartney will preach, and a soiree will be held. This church
which is in the English Gothic style, is from a design by Mr Caselli, and is built of brick on bluestone
basement, with cemented label mouldings, buttress cape, and so forth, the roof being covered with slate
and having open work inside. Its dimensions are forty by twenty-eight feet, with accommodation for
one hundred and eighty persons. A brick tower, with wooden belfry, rising fifty-one feet high, gives
prominence to the building, whose site is also commanding. The builder was Mr J. Fraser, at a cost of £645,
exclusive of fittings. The church is at present within the parish of St Paul's, and the Rev Mr Allenby is the minister.
MEMORIES OF LITTLE BENDIGO
By THE REV. W. J. PALAMOUNTAIN
The Melbourne Argus Sat 20th May 1933
Scattered throughout Victoria are many old mining centres whose wealth in gold has been exhausted and whose populations have vanished. Among these is Little Bendigo, near Ballarat. About 70 years ago this was a thriving township; there were three stores, three hotels, Redpath's boot shop, Jones's blacksmith's shop, Trevaskis and Turner's butchers' shops, 'Granny" Smith's drapery store, and James George's dairy. There were Anglican and Wesleyan churches, and a common school, kept at first by Mr. Reed, and afterwards by Mr. Bedford, who was more than strict. But it was the mining industry that made the place famous. At first there was alluvial digging and afterwards the quartz mining developed. The alluvial was very rich in the gullies which were worked at first by the windlass and puddling tub and cradle, and later by puddling machines and sluicing, which were chiefly carried on by large parties of Chinese.
Among the first diggers was David Ham. Then came the quartz mines, the richest of which was the Temperance. Then there were the One and All, the Band of Hope,
the Red, White, and Blue, the Dimmocks, the Monte Christo, and others, all of which yielded good results.
The diggers were fine men. They represented all nationalities, but the Cornishman predominated. They were men of independent character. There were no Government subsidies, and they did their own prospecting. If a hole was bottomed upon the bare reef it was declared to be a "duffer," and a beginning was made some-where else. They took the good and the bad together and averaged things up. There were tragedies that are incidental to the mining industry. It is a hazardous occupation, and injuries were often received some of which proved fatal. The miner's funeral was a solemn event.
Among the diggers there were some who might be called "characters." There was 'Smokey Jimmie," whose real name was McCarthey. He received his sobriquet from an incident in the Eureka Stockade riot. When the soldiers took the Stockade, Jimmie was among those who escaped by flight. He took refuge in the chimney of his hut until the danger was past.
This became known, to the great amusement of the diggers, who nicknamed him "Smoky Jimmie. " He was a bachelor, and he lived in a little two roomed house at the rear of the Anglican Church. The house had been built by the contractor for the church, who had lived in it while the work was in progress. It was afterward bought by Skoglund, the storekeeper, for Jimmie, who paid for it by instalments.
White Swan Reservoir
Evening Echo (Ballarat, Vic.: 1914 - 1918), Friday 31 December 1915, page 4
FAMOUS OLD HOUSE CLOSED.
ON EVE OF DIAMOND JUBILEE: THE WHITE SWAN HOTEL.
If it was allowed to. live a year and a day longer the White Swan Hotel, situated
in the Daylesford Road, on the verge of the Creswick State Forest, would have celebrated its diamond jubilee. This picturesque old inn was opened on New Year's Day, 59 years ago to-morrow, and during that long period the names of only two licensees have appeared over the door, the late Mr. Ritchie who opened it and who died 18 years ago, and his daughter, Miss Lottie Ritchie, the present licensee, who succeeded him. Father and daughter became inseparably associated with the old house, and they imparted to it much of their own personality, and a very kindly, lovable personality it was. The White Swan seemed to radiate hospitality, not the hospitality that is associated with roystering, reckless spending, but the sort of hospitality that Charles Dickens loved to portray in connection with the Blue Dragon, the May Pole, " Markis o Granby," and other hotels that that he has immortalised. The White, Swan was just such a place, as caused Shenstone to exclaim: " Who'er has travell'd life's dull round. Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to found think he still has the warmest welcome at an inn." The founder of the White Swan picked on a beautiful site for his hotel. It is surrounded by some of the loveliest forest country in the district. Only the road separates the forest from the front door, and one steps almost from the back door into another stretch of beautifully timbered country. It was so when the house was built, and it is so to-day. The old place strangely harmonises with its surroundings, which after all is not to be wondered at, for in truth it is part and parcel of the forest. It was built of timber cut in a sawmill close by, and after a lapse of 60 years the timber is still sound and strong There is a moral here as to the value of Australian timber. The old house saw many ups and downs. The whole district hummed with prosperity once. That was in the alluvial mining days. Gradually peace and quietness fell on the scene, and then instead of the hustling miners there grew up round the old White Swan a colony of aged fossickers and pensioners. These in the sunset of their life found a warm and constant friend in the licensee of the White Swan. Now the White Swan is no more, that is, as a licensed house. Its diminishing trade gives the Licenses Reduction Board the excuse to put it on the list of doomed. It has fallen victim to the law of the survival of the fittest. Still, many a bigger and more pretentious hotel would leave a much smaller void.
Note: It is believed that the White Swan Reservoir was named after the White Swan Hotel which was in the vicinity of the Reservoir.
White Swan Reservoir. 14,000 ML
Opened on August 1st, 1952 by Premier McDonald at a cost of 1.5 million pounds. When announced in 1946 the original budget was 567,000 pounds. Nothing much has changed!
Second largest reservoir in the Ballarat system. Lal Lal is the largest.
Researched and compiled by Andrew Parker 2021
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