My wife grew up in Iona, moving from near the twin bridges further down Murray Rd, working at weekends in the local Post Office which was also a milk bar and a store in a minor sort of a way.
When I recently asked her where Iona ended and Vervale started I got lost in a long explanation of roads which were known to her as numbers such as "The Fourteen" and "The Thirteen". On my maps they all had names.
I went to Google instead but the best I can come up with is that Vervale is between Iona and Cora Lynn. I think it might be safer for a simple bloke from Longwarry not to get too involved, because there have been harsh words spoken, I believe, albeit long ago, about the naming of the Iona State School or, rather, the failure to rename it.
The school opened on July 9, 1894 under head teacher Arthur Jamieson and immediately grew. In its second year it had four teachers; the new HT was a Mr Lyons and his wife was one of the teachers. For the first five years the school was No. 3201 Koo wee rup North but at the end of 1899 it became Bunyip South and kept the name until October 1905, when it became Iona State School. It lasted until 1993.
Various people thought it should be Vervale State School and Heather Arnold, an untiring researcher of things historical, wrote "Vervale also had a State School, and although it had three names it was never called Vervale." She also notes the irony in calling the place by a name that means green valley when it is as flat as a tack.
The name was used from about 1917. It had been called Kirwan's after the owner of the first Post Office, which was almost certainly a 'front room' of a settler's house rather than a standalone building. Some people had used Clarke's Post Office as an address – perhaps Clarke was the postmaster after Kirwan but I don't know.
Mapcarta does not show Vervale at all – travelling west from Iona the next location is Cora Lynn. Iona seems to cover the area from about the Bunyip-Modella Rd, down Murray Rd and the Main Drain Rd to the Thirteen Mile Rd. The Fourteen Mile Rd takes one north to Bunyip, the Nine Mile Rd takes one north from Cora Lynn to Tynong and I suppose one could agree that he Thirteen Mile runs north to Garfield from Vervale.
The school was where the Thirteen Mile crossed the Main Drain, so it seems that if we agree that Vervale exists at all we should agree hat the school was in Vervale.
Vervale did have a store and post office which was, ironically, straight across the Bunyip River, "the Drain", from the should-have-been-Vervale school. This was Kirwan's and maybe Clarke's for a short time but it became McMannis' in the eyes of everyone local. James and Edith McMannis took over the store and the PO in 1916. James died in 1959, 90 years old and still working. Edith was 88 when she died in 1967, genuinely the end of an era.
Apparently the store had aged a lot, too, with an uneven floor and so on, but it could supply almost anything the local farmers wanted.
Val remembers Edith McMannis as an old lady with white hair always done up in a bun. She got to school one day and realised her work book was full and she'd forgotten to ask for money for a new one. Rather than get into trouble with Dan Liddy she shot across to the store and asked for a book "on tick". Mrs McMannis gave her one but her dad was angrier than Dan Liddy would have been because you don't buy anything you can't pay for at the time.
That was about it for the public buildings and services in Vervale.
Iona , on the other hand, had a Post Office from 1898, admittedly called Bunyip South in 1905, and it lasted until 1977.
Churches were available if you could travel a bit. The Protestants had choices of a sort, They could go west to the Cora Lynn Hall where Methodists and Presbyterians took it week about to conduct services, like the Union Church in Longwarry, or go east to the Iona Presbyterian Church. There was also a Methodist Church in Garfield, and an Anglican one.
Catholics, and on the north edge of the swamp they were mostly Irish Catholics, attended St Joseph's at Iona and with the Catholic parish school opened there this became a significant complex. St Joseph's was opened by Father Gleeson in 1900 but it became a more grand affair when the brick building was put up in 1940. The school was opened in 1915.
Heather Arnold runs a blog, if that is the right word, titled Koo wee rup Swamp History, and it is a staggering collection of information. I recommend it to you for research or just plain entertainment and interest,,
She makes the claim that Vervale was the origin of the asparagus industry on the Great Swamp. Vervale being a little short of claims to fame I followed that up. If ninety percent of Australian asparagus is grown on the Swamp that makes it very important.
In 1896 The Age reported James Pincott's success in growing asparagus "about three miles from Bunyip" but Thomas Roxburgh was effectively the pioneer of the industry on his farm at Iona (remember that this was before the Vervale name was in use). His farm was Cheriton Park, 350 acres at the corner of Fallon Road and Simpson Rd
He had imported seed from California and started planting in 1909. It takes some time for the asparagus 'crowns' to become fully productive. By 1912 he was selling asparagus of a very high quality. By 1927 he had 100 acres under asparagus and by 1932 120 acres.
(In) "the cutting season 20 to 25 men are employed every day, and from 10cwt. to 15cwt. of asparagus a day are despatched". (The Argus, April 2, 1932)
There is a huge and fascinating story behind Cheriton Park, more often called Roxburgh Park by the locals) and its asparagus and I'll come back to that, including the wartime experiences the industry suffered.
To go back to the school name for a moment, the only reason the school was called Iona was that the Vervale name was not in use until about the end of the Great War. It had been Koo wee rup North, then Bunyip South, then Iona, and I suppose that was enough name-changing to be going on with.