The history of Launching Place

John and Catherine Ewart arrived in Launching Place in the 1840s, where they set up a store, hotel and post office.  The Home Hotel, known first as Ewart’s, began as a large slab and bark building.

The first wheeled traffic into the area, mostly bullock drays, came only as far as Launching Place.

For some time, goods headed further up the river from Launching Place were loaded into flatbottomed punts made from timber pit-sawn on the spot.  These were then launched upstream, their crews straining against the current as they poled or hauled them along.

Where rocks, rapids or snags blocked their way, the punt had to be unloaded and both punt and cargo hauled along the bank, a task that could involve a passage through dense scrub or over steep hills.  When this transport by punt had gone as far as it could, supplies were taken further on by pack-horse.

Parents in Launching Place first asked for a school in the early 1880s.  Local people organized a working bee to build a school on the west of the Don River.  It opened on 1 July 1884, with Head Teacher working on a half time basis at Woori Yallock.  When Woori Yallock was restored to a full time basis, Launching Place was attached on a half time basis to Hoddles Creek.

A new school opened on 14 July 1891, still on a part time basis with Hoddles Creek.  By 1892 it was a full time school, but on 6 August 1894 it was closed and it was over 30 years before Launching Place got another school.  This was opened in August 1927.

Records mention St. Johns Anglican Church at Launching Place for the first time in 1901-1902.

Once World War One was over, the Launching Place Returned Soldiers’ Welcome Club was proud that it had been able to continue giving a gold watch to each of its guests of honour.

In the early 1930s a steady stream of Albanian Migrants came to the Yarra Valley and settled as market gardeners, farming the fertile flood plains of the Yarra and Little Yarra.  A group of Albanians, including the Ismail bothers, farmed at Launching Place.  At the market gardening peak in the late 1940s the volume of produce from the Ismail brothers was 700 bags a week.

John Johnstone Dedman, twice President of the Shire of Upper Yarra, became one of the best known ministers in the Curtin – Chifley Labour Governments in the 1940s.  In 1922 he started a small dairy farm at Launching Place with forty cows and a few potatoes.  He felt the tight squeeze of the depression and he was determined to enter parliament “to try to right things”.  In Curtin’s Government he became Minister of War Organisation of Industry and became known as Mr. Austerity.