Gippsland was first entered by white people down the Tambo Valley and on to the Gippsland Lakes. From 1835 there were squatters in the Omeo district, and they gradually extended their use of the land down that valley. We've talked about that before.
We've also talked about the role of Port Albert from 1841 as the entry point for Gippsland, and then we've talked about the 1860s opening of the Gippsland Lakes to navigation (there were already little steamships working on the Lakes, all built locally, which I find amazing) but the opening of the entrance to the lakes changed things greatly, and started the beginning of the end for Port Albert as Gippsland's de facto capital.
During these developments there was no real communication directly between Melbourne and Sale. There was a vast barrier in the Great Swamp and it is obvious to us, now, that a route had to be found along the foothills of the Great Divide.
There were a number of events leading to the opening up of "the Gippsland track". As early as 1841, a party of seven left Port Albert and headed east, then northwest when the route east was blocked by dense ti-tree. This brought them to the La Trobe Valley. They headed east again and were pleased to find good grazing country. They then headed west, up the La Trobe Valley and on to Jamieson's run at Pakenham. That took 11 days of hard going, but from Jamieson's there was a cleared track to Melbourne.
Commissioner Powlett came to Rosedale in 1844, from Melbourne, and the scrub-bashed his way back to the city. There was still no ready route into Gippsland from the city.
The route seems to have ben defined fairly successfully in 1845 when a Mr Walshe, an officer of the Native Police Corps found a route into Gippsland on which there were no river crossings, though this claim seems just a little unlikely, depending on one's definition of the word "river". However, Captain Dana, head of the Native Police Corps used the route in travelling from Dandenong into the Latrobe Valley in only three days. That was in February 1846 and that probably marks the beginnings of the Gippsland Track, soon to be called the Gippsland Road though it was not much of a road.
In 1847 Governor La Trobe travelled at least the barely-known route and agreed that a road was necessary, but that it would be unwise to expect more than a bridle-track. By 1850, earlier than most folk realise, there was a track between Melbourne and Sale, though wheeled vehicles could only use part of it. A couple of drays had made it right through to Sale in 1849 but the drivers did not recommend the experience
Commissioner for Land Charles Tyers agitated strongly for enough funding to make the track a road. A government surveyor named Campbell had identified a route but the cost was too high. Nonetheless, a road of sorts was built as far as the Bunyip River. Tyers got small amount from the government to develop the road and he took the route a little further north to avoid the swamps.
The Gippsland Road, as it was called, sometimes mockingly, gradually developed until in 1865 regular coach services were using it. There was some conflict over the road being used for the mobs of cattle coming down to the city. Though the mobs were rarely much more than 200 at a time they could wreak havoc on the soft surfaces of the road. (Two hundred was about as many as could be kept together in the scrub).
The Hobson brothers had built a bridge over the La Trobe in the mid-1840s but the La Trobe was only one of the rivers. Tyers arranged for bridges to be built over the Moe and Morwell Rivers, and later he had another put over the Narracan Creek.
Josiah Perrin, assistant to the Superintendent of Bridges for the Port Philipp District travelled the road in 1849 and wrote a scathing report. The Dandenong Creel bridge need replacing. The Connors Creek bridge (over the Toomuc Creek?) needed repairs. There was no bridge at Howey's Creek (perhaps Deep Creek?) and the bridge over Cannibal Creek had been burnt.
There were little bridges over the creeks running south out of the ranges but they were not grand constructions and they did not last well. The bridges over the Moe and the Morwell Rivers had collapsed.
I mentioned that there was a coach service to Sale from Melbourne in 1865, though a few coaches had made the journey before that. Ironically, there was a regular coach service between Sale and Bairnsdale three times a week from 1861. The Perry River was a problem, with the horses having to swim it and then haul the coach across. There was no road alignment or right of way in this part of the world so much time was wasted opening and closing gates onto various private properties.
Some East Gippsland rivers are significant and crossing them was extremely hard. At fist one went upstream to find a ford, swam stock or horses across, or used the punt where there was one.
In 1888 Providence Ponds (aka the Perry River) was bridged. A swing bridge crossed the Snowy in 1890. Floods damaged this while under construction but it lasted until 1922 when a better bridge was built. The Snowy took two spans of it downstream in a 1934 flood
James Biram's store is recognised as the first building in the Warragul township. It was built in 1876, before the railway was opened in 1879 and the few pictures that exist seem to show a track leading past the store, which makes me wonder a little about the belief that Drouin and Warragul came into existence only when the railway came through. There would, of course, have been some rough tracks for use of the railways construction people before 1879, but it was normally the railway right of way that acted as an access track.
Warragul was one of the first stations built on the line, and that, again, suggests that there might have been a settlement of sorts there before 1879. Certainly there was a track down from Shady Creek to the Warragul area. Certainly, within a decade Warragul was a sizable little township. James Biram would be staggered if he came back today.