by John Wells
It is not surprising that Whiskey Creek, sometimes without the E, and Brandy Creek are common names. You could not keep beer drinkable for long back in the day, and spirits took up less room in your gear. For pretty much that reason every state seems to have at least one of each.
In our area we have one of each. Brandy Creek is more or less Buln Buln today, though the name is still kept for an area west of Buln Buln.
There is a Brandy Creek up near Mount Hotham, and so on, but today we're talking about Whiskey Creek, with the E.
Some of us have always thought of Whiskey Creek as having become Drouin West, but you need a slightly elastic map to make that strictly true, I say 'strictly' because place names were surprisingly elastic in themselves.
For example, the Drouin West Primary School was officially Brandy Creek at one stage, though the "Brandy Creek" school was nearer to Gum Scrub Creek – partly because Brandy Creek was very boggy and partly because the hotel at the crossing was seen as attracting a rather rough clientele.
That hotel was, I think, the Northern Junction Hotel, which had a reputation of being a clean place with good stabling.
Perhaps the group asking for the Brandy Creek school was not clear on whether they meant what is now Drouin West or what is now Buln Buln. Nor am I. Owners of the hotel included William Smith at first and then James Stansfield and a J. Turner.
I have always thought that Whiskey Creek was the area on the Tarago where Fisher Road crosses it, a short way north of the Robin Hood, a fair way west of the Drouin West we know now, where the school sits at the junction of the Neerim road and the Old Sale Road, and where the coaches ran through in the days before the railway moved most things to the south of that old road.
It still links Whiskey Creek and Brandy Creek to the remnants of the small towns that once saw the coaches struggle by and the herds of cattle being driven down to Melbourne from further east in Gippsland.
Mapcarta agrees with me, for what that is worth, but now I'm not sure that I was entirely right. It seems to rise in Drouin, flows through the lake in McNeilly Park, goes around Drouin and slips under the freeway, heads northwest, then north just east of the Robin Hood and so down the slope into the Tarago.
Obviously it is not a major stream, and equally obviously, it does not go very close to Drouin West, or Brandy Creek, for that matter.
In Graeme Butler's "Buln Buln", an incredibly detailed and thorough work, there is still little clear indication of the exact location and limits of Whiskey Creek.
He quotes David Brown "In June 1872 there were several families living at Brandy Creek. Leaving Bunyip, you come to Harry Dickens small brewery at Whiskey Creek, then you came to Gum Scrub Creek…"
Gum Scrub Creek is the little creek that runs under the road about one and a half kilometres west of the Drouin West junction. Whiskey Creek was also referred to as Sandfly Creek for a time.
Butler gives us a map, though, with the name Whiskey Creek stretching from a little east of the "Pico Hill" to the cemetery on the Old Sale Road – and the name is printed south of the old Princes Highway, while Fishers Road and the Tarago are on the north side.
Henry Dicken is deservedly one of the best-known of the Whiskey Creek people. Before he built the Robin Hood Hotel there was a rough hotel east of the site, run by one Jackson, referred to as being on the east side of Sandfly Creek, the early name of Whiskey C reek.
This little inn was bought by J Mitchell in 1871, but Henry bought up the land around the three acres Mitchell held, apparently amicably, and that was where he was to build the Robin Hood Hotel, opened in 1877. Henry Dicken ran this place, quite marvellous for its time and still a handsome building if seen from the right places, until the Bunyip baker, William Snell bought it in 1895.
The Snells were probably the most famous people ever to live at Whiskey Creek but that is another story altogether.
Dicken was quite the pioneer and quite the entrepreneur. He had the hotel and he had a small brewery to provide the beer for the Robin Hood. He seems to have also had a cordial factory, in partnership with Henry S. Wetherman. Said to be German, this man was also a partner with Dicken in the small brewery there. There was also a fair bit of sly-grogging competition in the area. He condensed eucalyptus oil to provide fuel for the hotel lighting, and that lighting was far better than anything else around.
Still, this story started out to remark of the number of Whiskey Creeks, without or without the optional E, in Victoria and, indeed, around the English-speaking world.
There is one in British Columbia in Canada and one in Washington State in the US, for instance – but overseas ones hardly matter to us, do they? We'll ignore the Whiskey reeks in Maryland, Florida, California, and Minnesota as well.
I mentioned the Brandy Creek up near Mount Hotham, but there is also a Whisky Creek flowing into the Royston River and then the Rubicon, and that creek is home to the Whiskey Creek Hut.
There is a Whiskey Creek in the Lerderderg Gorge. There is a Whiskey Creek in WA, rising up near the Gibb River Road. There is a Whiskey Creek in NSW, northwest of Mullumbimby and southeast of Tyalgum. Happily there is also nearby the Nightcap National Park. There are as many which do not use the E.
Finally, do we take our whiskey with the E or without? Mostly here in Australia it comes without, which is the usual Scottish spelling. The Irish made a similar product and kept the E just to be different from the Scots. Canada followed the Irish. The rest of the world did not, but the division is slowly breaking down.
Our Whiskey Creek might therefore be suspected of having been named by someone Irish.

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