I recently put together some notes on the Errinundra and Coopracambra national parks but I did not have room for the third large national park in the far east of Gippsland.
I did not have room to include the Croajingolong National Park which has seen more history than the first two.
The Croajingolong National Park is named for one of the spellings of the Krauatungalung tribe, one of five main sub-tribes of the Gunai/Kurnai. The Krauatungalung were the easternmost of the Gunai/Kurnai tribes, and that name, in turn, came from "Galung" meaning "belonging to" and "kraua" meaning east.
As I wrote a little time ago, there is another tribe said to have existed in this area. That is the Biduelli – a name spelled about a dozen ways – who might have been a coherent social grouping or might well have been a mixed group of renegades and outlaws from other tribes. I do not claim to know the truth of this.
Croajingolong runs from the Black and Allen line, where it abuts the NSW Nudgee Nature Reserve, goes around Mallacoota itself and touches the Princes Hwy at Genoa Falls. It continues westward to include Point Hicks. It then takes in Tamboon Inlet and goes on to Cape Conran, running down almost to Marlo. It takes in Wingan Inlet, the Thurra River and the Mueller River.
Between Cape Conran and Marlo, it is about a kilometre wide all the way, but it preserves and protects the coastline.
The Marlo-Cape Conran Rd threads it all the way to the Cape. There is then a space between the park and the coastline from a point north of Gabo Island to the "point" of Gippsland where it meets NSW.
Those inlets are all valuable recreational areas, except for the huge population of black snakes. The Thurra, particularly, is something you should see.
Point Hicks has enormous historical value as the first part of the east coast seen by James Cook in April 1770.
The Point has an interesting history in itself.
Cook named it for Lieut. Zacchary Hicks, the first officer to see it. Cook then recorded the location wrongly, some suspect to hide it while he addressed the issue of there being a strait, as was later proven by George Bass.
In 1843, John Lort Stokes explored the coastline very thoroughly aboard HMS Beagle; the ship made famous by Charles Darwin. Stokes named the point Cape Everard, but does not show it on his charts.
In 1853, surveyor Smythe showed it in his map of the coast and some say he named it for the Commissioner of Crown Lands in South Australia.
I don't think anyone is really sure.
On April 20, 1970, Victorian Premier Henry Bolte recognised the name Point Hicks officially as part of the celebrations of the bicentenary celebration of Cook's first voyage to the Pacific. So, Point Hicks it is.
The park covers an area with a long, long history. The protected little rivers, creeks and inlets were a prime and ongoing source of food for the original inhabitants.
After the coastal explorers came the squatters, with the Bemm, Mallacoota, Genoa, Wallagaraugh and Wangrabell runs the first to be taken up.
Andrew Ewing took up "Lake Bemm" in 1848.
Mallacoota (or Mallagoota) was started by William Baird in 1854, and Genoa by W. Campbell in 1845.
Wangrabell was taken up by John Stevenson in 1843 and Wallagaraugh's foundation date escapes me for the moment. Wangrabell and Lake Bemm would have been licenced as part of the Monaro District at first. I think it was 1851 - when the Port Phillip District became Victoria - that the various pastoral districts were created.
Gippsland was one of those districts but for some reason, perhaps the common use of small ships, the area along the coast and inland for 50 miles was defined as the "Settled District".
The Croajingolong National Park was "declared" on April 26, 1979.
Wikipedia will tell you it was established on February 24, 1871 but that is out by 100 years. One digit in a date can make a big difference.
It covers 88,355 hectares and, as Doc Russell taught us all at Drouin High School, you just need to flick the decimal point a bit to the left to get 883 square kilometres. Not so easily, it is also 218,330 acres.
One of the great things about the three big parks - Coopracambra, Errinundra and Croajingolong - is they cover a total of 159,000 hectares. Another is that they adjoin similar parks in NSW and that they protect a number of smaller parks here in Gippsland.
The Sand Patch Wilderness Area is enclosed within it, and the Cape Howe Wilderness Area adjoins it which connects the Cape Howe Marine Park. It also joins up with the Nadgee Nature Reserve.
From about 1880, small settlements began to appear.
In the Croajingolong National Park area, Mallacoota and Genoa were the first.
There were small gold finds, which always boosts a population quite quickly, and one successful mine was on the eastern shore of the Mallacoota Inlet. This was the Spotted Dog Mine.
The Spotted Dog was set up by Robert Stewart, a "local", George Alfred of Bairnsdale, George Evans of Yarragon and Thomas Ridgeway from Leongatha, on a claim of 90 acres in January 1895. The claim was number 2036. Prospectors had worked the area for a time, and then some shafts were sunk down as far as 100 feet, and the existence of a short reef was established.
It seems they might have been mining while waiting for the claim to be approved, because in 1854 a load or ore was taken to the Bairnsdale School of Mines and yielded nearly three ounces of gold to each ton of ore.
The mine worked only until the late 1890s, perhaps 1897, and produced 900 ounces of gold (well, 899). It was after all, a very short reef.
There is more history within the broad area of this park than of any other.
One story is that of the Schah, a schooner with an extremely colourful history, including as a slaver. It was bound for Sydney from Hobart when it went on the rocks at Shipwreck Creek on December 27, 1822.
She carried 13 passengers and eight crew, but only 13 got ashore and made a terrible march to Twofold Bay. It took the battered survivors five days to make it.
That is one of many shipwreck tales along the Croajingolong coastline.
Another tale is that of Andrew Hutton tick-of-leave ex-convict, who was sent to NSW to work out his 14-year sentence. He came to Sydney in 1822 and got his ticket of leave in 1830.
He was working on the Nungatta Run, just above the Victorian border.
In a drought, he was sent with 500 cattle down to Genoa and then west into Gippsland. It is reported the Aboriginal people attacked his men and slaughtered many of the cattle, so Hutton withdrew.
He came back to Gippsland in happier circumstances when he went to work for Angus McMillan at Bushy Park; a married man since 1850.
Each of these two Croajingolong stories should be told in far more detail, and will be.