Gippsland's growing councils

I must have driven through Dewhurst when it was still a tiny village but I'll be blowed if I can remember it. That frustrates me a little.
Dewhurst was removed, destroyed and drowned by the building of the Cardinia Dam and the name has only been saved by a rather arbitrary signage on the Rd between Upper Beaconsfield and Emerald – near the famous Elephant Rock, though that is a story for another time. When I say the signage is arbitrary, it does cover a community, with about 200 people living there.
It is essentially the area along the Beaconsfield Upper Rd to Emerald, abutting Beaconsfield Upper. It is above the Cardinia Dam on the west, and slopes toward the Cardinia Creek to the east.
Perhaps I shouldn't, but I think of that as a new Dewhurst. The old one was further west. It was bulldozed, if that is an acceptable verb, and is now submerged.
There is not too much recorded in anything that I have here, or on the "web".
"From Bullock Tracks to Bitumen" (Shire of Pakenham, 1962) has a chapter on Dewhurst but it does not say much, really.
"Dewhurst…was originally a portion of Beaconsfield North…In the 1920s an enthusiastic Progress Association (it was begun in 1923) caused the locality to be called Dewhurst, and obtained a mail service between Upper Beaconsfield and Emerald, the first mail man being Mr A Wain. A Post Office was opened in the residence of Mr Cation, a School house was built, mainly by voluntary labour, and Dewhurst became a place."
"Possibly the first residence was erected by Dr L.L. Smith, in 1888, on the Gembrook Rd, opposite the turnoff to the Emerald Rd…(this refers to the old Rd, now submerged) Capt Jones' orchard was planted in the 1890's…where there is today the Falls Guest House was a large piggery established in the 1890s by Mr Bateman. That would be about the northern boundary of Dewhurst."
"The district is becoming modern, with electricity and good Rds…"
It was a loose little village but it did have a centre where Stockyard Hill Rd, later to named Ladd Rd branched off to the east from the north-south Beaconsfield-Emerald Rd,
Twenty years later the City of Berwick and the Shire of Pakenham funded "In the Wake of the Pack Tracks", published by the Berwick-Pakenham Historical Society. Again there is a chapter on Dewhurst but it does not tell us all that much more.
It does tell us that L.L. Smith's place, first named Louisville, was later called Bim Bim Be, which would seem to be the origin of Bimbimbie Rd's name.
At some stage a small non-denominational church was built by George Lewis and John Shanks. There was later a Methodist Church on the site but I have no dates at all. There is a reference to the church burning down and services being held in Bim Bim Be so I don't know if this was the non-denominational church that preceded the Methodists or not. For a reason to which I will come to later it seems probable that it was, but I can't be sure.
There was, of course, a state school at Dewhurst but it was a very temporary affair. The locals donated a block of land and leased it to the Education Department. I'm not sure who put up the actual building but I suspect that was also a local effort. The school opened in 1934 and closed in 1953 when the average attendance was down to 9 pupils. Dorothy Armstrong was the first Head Teacher and it seems that she was there for most, if not all, of the school's 19 years.
By 1938 there was a Dewhurst Hall built, a weatherboard of the standard pattern one sees in old photos from all over Victoria but which has now largely disappeared, with a large main space and a front 'room' as the entrance, with space to hang coats and so forth.
Even in those early days Dewhurst began to cover a large area. It also held the houses of some very famous people. Dr L.L. Smith was a famous politician, at least in his own mind. Mary Grant Bruce lived here a while.
Harold Holt had a weekender here. Whelan the Wrecker had a house. The Falls Guest House was owned by A. Holman and the village even had its own 'hawker', called Valentino by the polite and Donkey Dave by the less-so. He had a covered cart or wagon from which he sold clothing and hardware items. That was not at all uncommon at those times when shops were a long way apart, in time as much as is distance.
Dewhurst was a farming area, with at least three significant orchards and two commercial pine plantations. "Trinham's orchard, the first one, went to two soldier settlers after the First World War".
The first stage of building the Cardinia Dam was the removal of Dewhurst's people and their buildings. When the compensations were paid and the people moved, the bulldozers came in and cleared all the vegetation up to the projected waterline, meaning that Dewhurst is not really there under the water. It is nowhere at all, or not the old Dewhurst, anyway.
By 1970 the roads were closed, the town was gone and the site was available to the Fluor-Brown-Root consortium, who wasted no time. Our need for water was desperate. Planning had started in 1966 and construction ran from 1970 to 1973, brought forward by the 1967-68 drought.
The water that covers Dewhurst is nominally the flow of the tiny Cardinia Creek, the only stream impounded by the Cardinia Dam. In fact, it contains mostly water that has come from the Thomson Dam to the Upper Yarra Reservoir, thence to the Silvan Reservoir and by yet another pipeline to the Cardinia Reservoir.
The water serves another purpose, too. As it leaves the Thomson it drives a hydro-electricity plant, and again as it leaves the Silvan. Electricity generation from Melbourne Water's reservoirs comes to about 70,000 Megawatts daily.
I said that I'd come back to the story of the Methodist Church from Dewhurst. It seems that it might be the only church in Australia that was actually stolen. The buildings were sold off wherever possible for removal, and someone bought the Methodist Church. When the truck arrived to collect it – it was gone. To this day no-one knows who stole the Dewhurst Methodist Church. I should say, someone knows, but they are not telling.
At least Dewhurst did not slowly fade away as so many mining towns (mainly) have done in Gippsland. It died a quick and fairly clean death, and its going served a great need.