Confusion behind a town's name

Flynn is not a major centre by any means, but it is a community. Heading past it on frequent trips from Longwarry to the trout streams in the High Country as a little bloke (a long time ago) I thought it was just a tiny railway station and nothing more. I was wrong.

I did not know, either, that the name was spelled incorrectly. It is still so.
On January 5,1848 James Manton Flinn was appointed to the position of Chief Constable at Alberton. The Port Albert settlement a short distance away was just seven years old at the time but had grown rapidly and was a 'port of entry' for people migrating to Australia. Alberton became the administrative centre of the area, gateway to Gippsland for more than a decade.

Flinn was Irish, as were so many of our pioneer policemen. He came first to New South Wales, where he and Mary had their first child in 1846. That was James Manton Flinn, his father's name, and he was followed by four siblings born in Gippsland.

William Manton Flinn was born in 1848, presumably at Alberton (but not necessarily), Maggie Flinn was born in 1851 at Alberton, John was born in 1855 at Tarraville and Mary was born there in 1860.

For whatever reason he left the constabulary and took up farming on a Tarraville property he named Williamsgrove. He stayed there until 1875 and on March 18 that year his body was found in the Treasury Gardens, apparently a suicide. His wife had apparently left him and it is possible that there was some scandal about his role as the Chief Constable but that is mere speculation. Mary died in Rosedale in 1876 and is buried there.

In 1848 Flinn's name was given to Flinn's Creek, part of the boundary of the Loy Yang 'run'. The creek rises in the Strzeleckis and flows north into the La Trobe. By 1860, though, the name was being spelled with a Y, as Flynn's Creek.
Flynn's Creek became a small township in the very early 1870s, about four miles south of what is now the Princes Highway and the same distance south of the railway station. There were a few house blocks, no more than a dozen, and a part-time Anglican church.

When the railway came through in 1878 a new township grew up at the railway, called, obviously enough, Flynn's Creek Railway Station. The coming of a railway through a district frequently meant villages grew up along the line and villages further out often faded away. In 1883, though, blocks next to the line were offered for sale under the name Flinnstead, with the Y gone and the I back in place.
That didn't last. The tiny new township called itself Flynn for some reason, instead of Flinn. I once thought it might have had something to do with the Rev John Flynn, but I know his missionary work in Gippsland was in 1906 and 1907, far too late.

E.L Bruce surveyed the township site in 1882 and the railway station was opened in 1884. The hall was built in 1920, with a local sawmiller donating the wood.
By the turn of the century the new town had a hotel, post office, store, butcher's and the ubiquitous Mechanics Institute, and the railway station was a busy place, with loading yards and shipping out timber from two local sawmills, and even some agricultural products. The soil was apparently well suited to orchards.
It is said the Ned Kelly worked at one of the sawmills for a time because he was keen on a local girl, but it is hard to make the timeline fit.

At the Staplegrove property Flynn also had an amazingly large meatworks. James Hagan, another Irish immigrant, selected land at Flynn in 1869 and built a small house. I think it was he who called the property Staplegrove, though the name might have been given by a later owner.

At some time in the 1870s Hagan realised that the workers building the new railway would need to be fed. He built a very large shed of bark and timber frames – bark was plentiful and so was wood – and set it up as a slaughterhouse. It was about 55 feet by 42 with a raised deck at one end where slaughtermen stood to kill the cattle. Sheep and pigs were also brought in. That was a very large 'shed' for that time.

A railway camp was set up at Flynn and Hagan had his customers only a few hundred yards from his business. He also had clients further away, sending meat to Melbourne once the line was operating, and selling also to the miners and prospectors around Walhalla. One has to wonder about the quality of the meat after a long journey to Walhalla in the summer heat.

The Victorian Railways even built a spur line to his abattoirs. It was a successful operation but Hagan had a manager running it and in 1886 he sold the business to John Birkley, who developed the building further, putting corrugated iron over the bark roof, timbering the walls and bricking part of the floor.

The railway crew moved on and apparently the business slowed dramatically and Birkley sold the place in the mid-1890s, since when it has been a farm. With that sale the meatworks was closed.

State School 2944, Flynn's Creek Railway Station School (and named until 1907 Flynnstead Railway Station State School) opened on May 6, 1899 and closed in 1948. It was a handsome, solid brick building, which was very unusual in rural schools at that time. That building came in 1924 and the early, rather rough, school building was closed in 1922. Education Department records show that it was called Flynnstead State School from 1907. It was often referred to as Flynn's Creek Railway Station State School but it seems that was never the official name. At the least the Department was consistent with its spelling, even if wrong.

There was another Flynn's Creek State School, No. 1320, which served the little village until it moved toward the railway. That first school opened as Flynn's Creek Rural School No. 25 in 1871 and became SS 1320, Flynn's Creek, in 1874. This one closed in 1886, reopened in 1889.

There was an even smaller Upper Flynn's Creek school on the Hyland Highway, No. 2311, Upper Flynn's Creek State School, between 1879 and 1967.
There is more to say about Flinn, or Flynn. Even the tiniest dots on the map have a story to tell.