BURLEIGH- the place without signposts

BURLEIGH

Burleigh is a deeply rich volcanic soil district of both the Dandenongs and the Upper Yarra Valley. Burleigh is situated east of the Silvan Dam [or Reservoir] which submerges the western boundaries of the area in the Stoneyford & Coralfern Creeks. Burleigh can be roughly defined as being contained in the north by the rim of the watershed of the Middle Creek up its Ferndale tributary, and in the south by the length of Stoney Creek - which is also the Monbulk border of the local land district.

Burleigh was once a shadowed land of open wet-schlerophyl forest of messmate trees on the upper slopes which could be driven through with a horse and wagon, and the white gums [manna and mountain grey gum] in the valleys, with the lower creek gullies full of treeferns and fern understories appreaching in thickness and varieties to the the nearby Dandenongs rainforests. As borderlands of what were once the rainforests of Monbulk, Burleigh was a part of what was gazetted early on, as the 'Old Woori Yalloak Forest', and it is the most southerly part of that messmate-oak open forest area, out on the borders of the Parish of Wandin Yallock. It was opened up, and settled, long before the denser-timbered area that became Monbulk.

In the east, parts of it go down to wilder 'bulls-wool' tussock and pasture lands, once called 'Kelly Country' after a large landowner there, or 'Kangaroo Country' for its more open-country wildlife, on the once-native-burnt grassy downs leading down to the floodplains of the Woori Yallock Creek.

If the main Monbulk -Lilydale road can be thought of as its screened frontage, then the grassed and tea-treed Woori downlands of Burleigh constitute its hunting grounds, its wild backyard.

As a district Burleigh or Wandin South can be said to have four institutions which have given it a sense of substance as a place in the minds of those elsewhere, where the real substance was and is, of course, in the stories and lives of the intrepid people who settled in its dripping shadows and struggled to open it up to ongoing productivity, to live and work on Burleigh's slopes, hilltops and creek valleys. I hope to publish some diary accounts of some such settlers and battlers.

Link to pages on Burleigh Settler Family, Hubert John Hollis & Eliza (nee Suckling) Hollis -by Barbara Hollis http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~barbarahollis/hubert_hollis.htm

Link to pages on Burleigh Settler family George Walter Parker & Ann Hampton (nee Wiseman) Parker - by Ian Marr
http://members.datafast.net.au/marrtronics/g0000001.html#I0135

Note: Two of the above, Eliza Suckling and George Walter Parker are first cousins. I will in future be publishing something which tells of these cousins links with the village of Widford, Hertfordshire, strong place-of-origin and family links which becomes a multiple cousinship also with two families of the Wiseman Brothers who provided capital support as a bond of relationship intergral to the first settlement of South Wandin.

'Burleigh' is prior to Silvan. Burleigh was in existence from 1908, whereas the rest of South Wandin came to be called Silvan in only 1917 after the community drew a fanciful name out of a hat for a change of name to eliminate confusion between too many Wandins.

The Four Main Institutions in chronological order are;

1. The Try Boys Society Farm at " Fernydale House" 1890s and early 1900s till WW1.
- This was defined as being "near Lilydale". [At the corner of Ferndale & Monbulk-Seville Roads]

2. The Burleigh Post Office - 1908-1963 - See archive of Burleigh Post Office post.
http://burleigh-way.blogspot.com/2007/03/burleigh-post-office.html
- Monbulk -Liydale Road (early) -then Wiseman Road, Burleigh.

3. The Silvan South Primary School -1928-1982
- the corner of Monbulk-Seville Road and Reeves (Link) Road

4. The Gospel Hall & Sunday School & Christian Endeavour - 1932-1992
- at the third Junction Corner of Monbulk-Seville Road & Wiseman Road as you go east.