Walkerville

Walkerville Victoria, Australia, is a tiny village on Waratah Bay in southwest Gippsland, about 190 km southeast of Melbourne.

WalkervilleVictoria, Australia, is a tiny village on Waratah Bay in southwest Gippsland, about 190 km southeast of Melbourne. The small town, originally known as Waratah, is separated into Walkerville North and Walkerville South. The Walkerville Promontory View Estate is situated inland 2.3 km north of Walkerville North. At the 2006 census, Walkerville had a population of 262.

Walkerville is situated on the spectacular tribal lands of the Brataualung people, a clan of a wider regional grouping known as the Gunai/Kurnai nation.The Post Office opened on 10 August 1885 and was known as Waratah Bay until 1892. It closed in 1972.Its heyday was the early quarter of the 20th century, where commercial quantities of lime were bagged and exported to the booming capital city. Lime obtained from the site is said to have been used in the building of Melbourne's iconic Flinders Street station.

Raw material was mined from the surrounding limestone cliffs, loaded into horse-drawn trams and hauled along above the high-tide line to be burned in one of six kilns. Much of the surrounding countryside was depleted from a combination of mining and timber-harvesting to fuel the kilns. Burned lime was bagged, then stacked in sheds. Lime was transported to Melbourne aboard a series of ships that stopped at the 300-metre jetty nearby. Operations continued until 1926, when shipping expenses made the product unprofitable.

At its peak, the township was home to eighty people, mostly workers at the six lime kilns.

The Walkerville Promontory View Estate was created in 1969.

In 2005, all that remained of the lime burning operations was the stonework from ruined buildings, ruins of several lime kilns and one wooden pile from the once imposing jetty at Walkerville South. There are several wooden piles remaining of the jetty at Digger Island to the south.