Historical society

Cataloguing the history of the Catholic Diocese of Gippsland is the subject of the talk at next Monday’s meeting of the Warragul and District Historical Society.

Guest speaker will be archivist Annie Pawley, whose topic is “Archives of the Diocese of Sale”. With the changing locations of the Catholic population, the centre for storage of these archives is now mostly at Warragul. This will be a powerpoint demonstration of digitised examples of historical interest.

The meeting is on Monday at 7.30pm in the Old Shire Hall, 72 Queen Street, Warragul.

At last month’s meeting, John Hanley showed true dedication to his study of the small post offices and exchanges attached to Trafalgar.

He admitted he still has much more to do on this chosen topic. Many areas were listed but at this stage he had most of his information on Trafalgar, Trafalgar East (Moe Swamp East), Yulungah (Moe Swamp) and Trafalgar West.

Trafalgar West (Sunny Creek) was opened the in 1927 as a Receiving Office with John Roche, a farmer, the first ‘Keeper’ on the east side of the weighbridge. John’s first mail contract was at £26 per annum for three days of the week by vehicle.

In 1941 this contract was transferred to Ethel May Battley, but her daughter Mary mainly ran the receiving office. Mary carried the mail by bike and was a telephonist at Trafalgar on the weekends. With Mary marrying Len Petch senior, the office closed in August 1950.

Yallungah (Moe Swamp) had a receiving office at the Moe Swamp School, which opened on the 1st of March 1904 and was upgraded to Post Office status 18 months later. Mr Keogh had the first mail contract. Around 1908 John Keogh bought the property opposite the school, with the post office relocated to the house.

Between 1917-1920 Edward Miller became the postmaster. On returning from the war, Major Arnott took over the Keogh house, which later was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1936. Major Albert Arnott was killed in a motor-bike accident in 1925 and the post office was transferred into his wife Sarah’s name. Son Alan took over the post office on the 23rd of April 1933 and operated it until the closure on the 29th of June 1957.

John also gave a lot of detail about the post office/mail set-up at Trafalgar East and Trafalgar South.