When I went looking for information on the history of growing potatoes in Gippsland I kept running into references to Thorpdale. 
Whenever I visit the Longwarry market there is a bloke there proudly selling Thorpdale spuds. So what is it about Thorpdale that lets it claim the best potatoes in the world?
This is not about Thorpdale potatoes, though. The place produced many other things over the years.
The story of the name Thorpdale and where it really belongs shows how small and variable some of the early hill settlements were,
“These two schools started with the same number, 2012, (Narracan) in 1878 and (Narracan West) in 1880. The two schools were six miles apart and from 1880-82 they worked together as half-time schools…” The Narracan school became 2012A and Narracan West was 2012B. I don’t think it happened anywhere else in Victoria and I have no idea why it happened here.
2012B started in 1880 and closed in 1895. That was the Thorpdale school except that it wasn’t really. It was called Thorpdale but it was moved to the Thorpdale South Mechanics Institute. 2012A Narracan started in 1878, moved closer to the railway in 1893 and was renumbered 2295 at about the same time.
SS 2423 Darlimurla opened in 1880 as SS2423 Narracan South “on the Stockyard Creek (Foster) road” but it closed in 1906. In the meantime Darlimurla Railway Station school, No. 2782, opened in 1886 as the railway came through and the settlements further from the line went into decline. It was twice closed, briefly, and twice worked part-time, first with Mardan and then with Budgeree. It closed in 1965.
Effectively, Darlimurla moved over to the railway.
SS 2926 was the Thorpdale Railway Station State School. It opened in 1889 but moved right into the township in a new building in 1919 and I think it was at this time that the name changed to Thorpdale State School.
It makes sense if you follow it very, very carefully.
But wait, it gets even more complicated. SS3162 Thorpdale South was the Allambee East SS, opened in 1892 as a half-time school sharing a teacher with 3075 Allambee South. In 1928 it was renamed Thorpdale South but in 1939 it was closed. I am not sure what happened next because the school was still listed as Thorpdale South until 1953.
That is hardly clear without close study of the area but two points are relevant. One is that the little settlements named were small, with relatively few children and the second point is that the railway was the first piece of permanent infrastructure and, as happened all along the Gippsland line and many of its branches, settlements literally moved to be near the convenience and the commercial benefits of the railway.
Thorpdale was called Narracan West at first but that name covered a wide area. Thorpdale grew a little south of the present site and it was apparently a well-established little village with a hotel and a school, a hall and at least two stores.
The coming of the railway brought that change I was talking about. The line from Moe came up the Narracan Creek valley, started in 1886 and completed in 1889. A township was surveyed at the terminus and was named Warrington when the station was opened in 1888. This was changed to Thorpdale and the original Thorpdale became Thorpdale South.
The railway brought rapid growth in several rural industries because now heavy loads could be sent down the line in any weather. The original road was steep and very difficult in winter. At least three sawmills set up, with tramlines to the station. Paling-splitting continued, and the removal of timber went with the clearing of land for small farms.
The railway carried the palings and the sawn logs out, but soon it was taking out farm produce, initially fruit and vegetables. The speed of the railway was valuable in getting produce to market in a fresh condition, though the trains were very slow by 2023 standards. The comparison doesn’t matter now because the line closed in 1958, beaten by the roads it had once conquered and by the drift of rural populations toward the bigger settlements where employment opportunities were better.
In the blistering summer heat of 1898, on January 20, the ‘Red Steer’ was let loose and the Thorpdale area was devastated. The ‘old town’ was destroyed. The timber industry was shrinking at the time and the fires largely completed the task.
Thorpdale continued its transition to the peaceful and prosperous dairying and agricultural place it became. At least two creameries were established, where farmers could bring in whole milk to be separated and take the ‘skim milk’ home, usually to feed pigs. For the younger ones of us ‘skim milk’, or skimmed milk’, was the leftover milk when the cream was separated out. At first farmers would allow the milk to settle in pans overnight and would then skim the cream off the top, making it into butter, which could be kept long enough to get to market -usually. More rarely, they made cheese.
When the creameries were established they were central collection points for whole milk – with no refrigeration, whole-milk sale to the urban areas were just not possible for places like Thorpdale. – with more effective cream separation. One creamery sent its cream to Trafalgar and one sent it to Moe.
The town grew with businesses serving the farms – there were many people producing crops rather than milk, remember – and by 1903 the Australian Handbook could report the town as having, of course, the railway station but also a Post Office, a savings bank, telegraph office, etc, and also two stores, a coffee palace (not as grand as it might sound), a school, two churches and a Mechanics Institute. That made it a substantial town in the hill country back then.
It also had a hotel, one of the many named ‘The Travellers’ Rest’, from 1908, but the new and better road down to Moe was more important. It was much better than the original track, which had helped bring the railway, and the new road, from the early 1920s. started to make the railway less and less important. In 1958 the line was closed. Put simply, it was no longer necessary and road transport was faster and more reliable.
Enough of that. I still do not know why Thorpdale spuds are better then any other spuds. Or are they? Is it the soil? Is it the climate? Or is just a good marketing ploy?