The Creswick Old Boys & Brackenbury Hill.

Just about every student who has spent time at the Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick will be familiar with Brackenbury Hill, but few would probably know about its interesting history.

Brackenbury Hill sits just north of the Great Dividing Range, with an elevation of 1757 feet, and is about a mile to the east of the Forestry School on Tourist Road.

The Hill is named after Creswick’s first gold commissioner, Lieutenant Walter Charles Brackenbury.  He was appointed in December 1852, and his camp later became the site of the Botanic Gardens.

But with the decline of gold mining from the late 1880s, Creswick sought to reestablish its prestige and wealth through forestry and tourism.

Brackenbury Scenic Drive was created in 1917 to give the growing number of visitors better access to the State forests and is the main entrance to the school’s 1200-acre demonstration forest.

The metal Toposcope, or disk, on top of the stone plinth on Brackenbury Hill was funded with donations from the “Creswick Old Boys”.

The Creswick Old Boys… just who were they?

In 1869, Creswick Grammar School was founded by the Reverend Alexander Pyne and became a significant educational institution in the bustling gold-mining town. The school campus, which was in Cambridge Street, then flourished from 1872 under the leadership of its popular Principal and owner, Samuel Fiddian, who had previously been a Wrangler at St John’s College in Cambridge. 

The Creswick Grammar School produced a number of significant and influential alumni, including several senior politicians, before closing in 1903.

Probably, the most prominent Creswick Old Boy was Victoria’s first State Premier after Federation in 1901, Sir Alexander Peacock, who remained a enthusiastic and enduring supporter of his old home town. He later held the portfolio of Minister for Forests, so it’s no coincidence that the Forestry School ended up being established at Creswick in 1910. The magnificent school entrance gates were opened at a ceremony in October 1952 and are named in his honour.

The powerful Surveyor General and Secretary of Lands, Joseph Martin Reed, also grew up in Creswick and attended the Grammar School. He was instrumental in designing and producing a lavishly illustrated tourist map and guide of the Ballarat and Creswick District. The map was first published in 1917 and revised in 1925.

A detailed drawing of the metal disk showing the compass points and distance to notable landscape features, which can be seen from Brackenbury Hill, is included at the top righthand corner of the 1917 tourist map. The Creswick nursery and plantation are also highlighted.

Coincidently, Reed was also the Chairman of the Tourist Resort Committee between 1911 and 1931 which focused on ad-hoc funding and construction of “tourist roads” that gave improved access to scenic locations like Brackenbury Hill, as well as major destinations like the Grampians and Mt Baw Baw.

Another of the many influential Creswick Old Boys was Mr John Clarkson Boyce, who was conveniently the Manager of the Victorian Tourist Bureau at the time. He coordinated the collection of funds for the cairn, which was similar one on Mt Donna Buang.

Notable Creswick Old Boy, and local historian, John Alexander Graham, was a long-standing advocate for tourism at Creswick and actively promoted the tourist drive and construction of the lookout and cairn on Brackenbury Hill.

John’s older brothers, William and Thomas were two of the three lost in the tragic story of the “Children’s Tree” at nearby Daylesford in 1867. He later published two significant books including “Creswick Grammar School History” in 1940 and “Early Creswick: The First Century“ in 1942.

The tourist guide, building the new road and the stone cairn on Brackenbury Hill were all supported by William Hutchinson who served as both the Commissioner of Crown Lands and Survey as well as the Minister for Forests in the Peacock Government.

In November 1912, the second National Forestry Conference had been held in Melbourne and Creswick with the State Forests Department’s Conservator, Hugh MacKay, as the host. It’s believed that the importance of State forests for tourism was on the agenda.

It therefore comes as no surprise that later in 1917, in response to the proposal for the Brackenbury Scenic Drive, and particularly with the enthusiasm shown by both his Minister and the Premier for it, that Hugh MacKay, readily agreed to erect a rustic pavilion over the lookout.

The only known photo was taken in 1921 and is part of an extensive collection of historical artefacts assembled by the Forestry School Principal, Edwin James Semmens.  

The shelter at Brackenbury Hill bears a striking resemblance to the pavilion at the nearby Creswick Nursery with round verandah posts which look like branching trees. The nursery gazebo was built in about 1912 with a whimsical “Shingle and Stick” design that was popular in America at the time.

The design and construction of the nursery pavilion is attributed to John Johnstone, who had been a prominent landscape designer at Maddingley Park near Bacchus Marsh, before being appointed as the Superintendent of State Nurseries in about 1901. And while the success of the Forestry School is usually credited to Peacock, it more likely belongs to Johnstone.

I’m not sure if any forestry school students were involved in building the cairn or the rustic shelter, but it seems very likely.

The views from Brackenbury Hill have varied over the decades as the adjacent pine plantations grew and were harvested. Sadly, the shelter no longer exists while the stone cairn has been vandalised with graffiti and is looking a bit sad and neglected.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/132685896