Gippsland railway a vital development

The Gippsland Railway from Melbourne to Orbost was a vital development for many reasons. It was vital to me because I fell into a deep waterhole excavated by the contractors and nearly drowned.

It was also important to me because I was only a child when the line was duplicated in the early 1950s and it was all one big adventure to we children.

The workmen would often run us to school on their trolleys if we were running late. I also got the ‘cuts’ from Hec Moir at Longwarry State School when Joe Prout, the Ganger, reported me for playing in the sub-station yard.

There were a few other reasons for its importance, of course. In the late nineteenth century no country area could really develop without a railway and Gippsland did not have one. In 1868 the nearest railway station to Gippsland was at Windsor.

That wasn’t much use to a Gippsland farmer and, as the goldfields petered out, there were more and more farmers in the province. The farmers wanted transport to the Melbourne markets for their produce.

Their wives wanted to feel that the ‘civilised’ world was not too far away. Agitation for a railway began to grow. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, representing the area in Parliament, joined the fight.

In 1874 the Railway Construction Bill for this line was passed, and so began the strangest story of railway-building this young country had ever seen. Parliament bickered for months over the route the line would take through Melbourne’s suburbs.

There was agreement that the line should come in through Oakleigh, so it was decided to begin from there and sort out the metropolitan end at some later date.

Construction began simultaneously at Oakleigh and at Sale. Work proceeded fairly well. There were few of the problems that faced the builders of the South Gippsland line. The Sale-Morwell section was completed by 1 June 1877. On 10 October of that year the OakleighBunyip section was ready.

What railwaymen called ‘the Gap’, between Bunyip and Morwell, was bridged by coach.

The coach trip became a little shorter in December, when the Moe-Morwell section was opened.

In March of 1878 the gap disappeared altogether when Moe and Bunyip were joined by rail, but it was not until April of 1879 that the line was extended from Oakleigh into South Yarra and the suburban network.

In South Yarra the railway joined the old line to princes bridge. This had belonged to the Hobson’s Bay Railway Company, one of several private companies which had operated railways in Victoria.

The Hobson’s Bay Railway Company was bought out by the government.

So, by 1878, passengers could travel in comparative comfort from Oakleigh to Dale in one short day, though they were advised to wear old clothes because of the damage caused by cinders. It s not hard to imagine just what a boon this line must have been to the lonely settlers of Gippsland.

The Argus newspaper reported the official opening of the Oakleigh-to-Sale section on 7 March 1878. A special train with 300 dignitaries aboard left Oakleigh at 8am and arrived in Sale only five hours later. The train was greeted in Sale by the firing of salutes, cheering crowds and a huge banquet.

All the contracts for the building of the line were satisfactorily completed, an unusual fact in itself. The Sale-Morwell section was completed on time by Messrs Millar and James. They built 62 kilometres of track for 140,499 pounds.

The Bunyip-Moe and Moe- Morwell sections were built by the Noonan brothers, who were paid 101,750 pounds for sixty six kilometres of track Neil McNeel secured the contract for the

Oakleigh-Bunyip section but transferred it to James Leggatt. The contract price for the sixtytwo kilometres of track was 101,375 pounds. It is hard not to imagine Bunyip as a busy railway terminus, but for a time that is exactly what it was.

The total cost of the line, including the heavy compensation paid to landowners along the Oakleigh-South Yarra route, was 757,327 pounds.

Though the problems were less severe in building this line than there were in other cases and places, there were significant difficulties. Clearing was an expensive process.

One tree felled in the Warragul yards was reported by Ebenezer Black McTaggart to be 100 metres long. This McTaggart was the first Station Master in Warragul. he had a “small shack’ just over four metres square, for his residence, and an even small “shack” for his office.

The contractors had the problem of moving their locomotives into position, too. Millar and James had two engines delivered to Sale by ship, with the first, the ‘St Kilda’, being shipped on the flat-bottomed coaster ‘Warhawk’, one of the few boats large enough to carry a locomotive but shallow enough to cross the bar at akes Entrance.

The ‘St Kilda’ was unloaded at the old wharf below the Swing Bridge at Sale. The remains of this wharf could be seen until a few years ago. The engine was then towed to Sale on a bullock wagon, with a second wagon carrying the wheels.

The second locomotive, the ‘Rosedale’, was unloaded at the same lace. It was moved to Sale under its own steam, using two sets of tracks. One set was laid in front of the locomotive, which then moved forward, while the other set was dismantled and moved forward of the first set. It must have been a hot and sweaty little procession that finally reached Sale.

Another amusing little story came out of the re-routing of the line near Warragul. The original route passed well south of Warragul, through the Minnieburn area. The caused some consternation in the little settlement that became our Warragul, so a dinner was given for the planners. The dinner was ‘very convivial’ and the route was altered to pass through Warragul.

In the 1950s the line was duplicated as far as Traralgon and electrified, mainly to speed up the transport of coal and briquettes to Melbourne. The duplication was never quite completed.

There was apparently no sound foundation available for the bridge over the Bunyip River and so the section between Bunyip and Longwarry is still a single track and trains must carry a ‘staff’ to enter it. The staff is transferred back and forth so that no two trains can be in the section at the one time.

The first electric train to use the line was hauled by locomotive L-1150, the ‘George R. Wishart’, first of the L -class locos that became the workhorses of the Gippsland line.

From ‘Colourful Tales of Old Gippsland”, Landmark, Drouin, 1984.