Lake Cairn Curran Vineyard is located on the historic ‘Park Hill’ homestead site of the Tarringower Run with an interesting past.
Before recorded history, roving aboriginal tribes frequented the fertile volcanic and river plains of the local area and the series of waterholes now know as the
Loddon
River
. In 1836 Major Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor General of New South Wales, led the first non-indigenous exploration party across Northern and Western Victoria and named the region ‘Australia Felix’. His route was South-east between
Mount
Franklin
and
Mount
Alexander
, crossing the
Loddon
River
near what is now the town of
Newstead
in spring 1836. He named the tributary after his birthplace, the
Loddon
River
in
Hampshire
,
England
, which he believed it resembled.
On the strength of Major Mitchell’s enthusiastic reports of fertile soils and abundant water, squatters from NSW followed the tracks of the Major’s line and quickly settled the region despite then having no legal entitlement.
The Tarrengower pastoral run was established in the1830’s by licence No. 94 issued to Lachlan MacKinnon, who later became co-editor of the Argus newspaper and a member of the Victorian Legislature. It consisted of 61,209 acres from Mt Tarrengower (named after it near Maldon) to Mt Franklin (near Daylesford) and then carried 12,000 sheep and 300 cattle.
The ‘Park Hill’ homestead was built in around 1850 by John Menzies from local Castlemaine stone.
The discovery of gold at Mt Tarrengower in 1853 quickly changed the peaceful farming area. Soon over 20,000 diggers swarmed to goldfields at Forest Creek (Castlemaine). The towns of Maldon and Newstead were established. Welshman’s Reef became a small gold mining hamlet with its own school.
