Kyneton

Kyneton is a town in the Macedon Ranges region of Victoria, Australia.

Kyneton is a town in the Macedon Ranges region of Victoria, Australia.The Calder Freeway bypasses Kyneton to the north and east. Kyneton is on Dja Dja Wurrung, Taungurung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung country.

The town has three main streets: Mollison Street, Piper Street and High Street. Piper Street has the oldest streetscape of these, and still has many of its original buildings.The railway station, about 91 kilometres (57 mi) from Melbourne on the Bendigo railway line, is a terminus for two weekday peak-hour trains.The town is the council seat of the Shire of Macedon Ranges.At the 2016 census, Kyneton recorded a population of 6,951.

Major Thomas Mitchell, New South Wales Surveyor General crossed and named the Campaspe River near present-day Kyneton on his 1836 expedition. Charles Ebden was the first European occupier of the region that included the Kyneton townsite. He set up a head station for his sheep run at Carlsruhe, Victoria 6 km South of Kyneton on the 26th May 1837.In 1837 Thomas Walker, a Sydney businessman, walked from Sydney to Melbourne, following much of the route taken by Thomas Mitchell the year before, and recorded the trip in a journal “A month in the Bush of Australia” which is now in the British Library. Walker met Ebden in May 1837 on the journey south.

In June 1838 the Waterloo Plains massacre of 8 - 23 Djadjawurrung people occurred on the newly established Barford sheep run north of Kyneton.

Unlike a majority of towns in the area, Kyneton predates the Separation of the Port Phillip District from the Colony of New South Wales and the Victorian gold rushes, having been established in 1850, whereas the gold rushes started the year after.Construction of Kyneton’s oldest surviving stone building, the Church of England Rectory, located at 61 Ebden Street, commenced in 1850 and is a rare surviving example of a pre-gold rush and pre-separation dwelling.

At this time, Kyneton was a growing rural centre, and served as a major stop for those heading to the gold rushes at Mount Alexander and Bendigo. The post office opened on 1 July 1843 as Mount Macedon and was renamed Kyneton on 1 January 1854.Joseph Furphy attended Kyneton primary school in the mid-1850s.In November 1857, the humanitarian Caroline Chisholm moved her family to Kyneton, where her husband Archibald sat on the magistrates' bench and their two elder sons ran a store.

Kyneton Mounted Rifle Corps was formed in 1859, as one of the volunteer brigades set up when Britain was involved in wars in Afghanistan, Crimea and India. The Kyneton Mounted Rifle Corps was among the earliest in the colony of Victoria. The corps was later amalgamated in the 1880s to form the Victorian Mounted Rifles. Although the individual volunteer units had been disbanded by Federation (1901), many members became part of the 4th and 12th regiments of Light Horse at the Battle of Beersheba (1917) against Turkish troops of the Ottoman Empire.Henry Gregory (1860-1940), Western Australian State and Federal politician, was born and educated in Kyneton.

Sir Stanley Argyle, Premier of Victoria 1932–35, was born in Kyneton in 1867 and the family lived at Rock House, a double fronted double story bluestone house that still stands to the west of the town on the banks of the Campaspe River.

Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Hurry (1868-1951), Commander of the 38th Battalion AIF in France in 1918, was born and died in Kyneton. He was the Member for Bendigo in the Commonwealth Parliament from 1922 until 1929.The Kyneton Courthouse tried Ned Kelly in 1870 for robbery under arms. This courthouse has since continued to function, although only as a magistrates' court on Mondays.