TRENTHAM TALES: A WALK DOWN PIPER STREET

Sunday, January 24, 2016

A WALK DOWN PIPER STREET

Kyneton has three main streets with two sets of traffic lights, one set being a pedestrian crossing. The main tourist drag is Piper Street. From Melbourne, you enter Kyneton via High St, turning right you enter Mollison St which is the commercial shopping area. Less than 500 metres you turn left into historic Piper Street. We had a friend stay this weekend and took her for a walk down Piper Street.

Piper Street is full of art and craft shops, antique shops with cafes, restaurants, bakeries and two hotels. Many of the buildings retain their original architecture and are built from a mixture of bluestone and/or timber which was plentiful in the mid 1850s as Kyneton grew. One of the original stonemason business operate to this day.

In 2011 the census recorded a population of 6650 however in that time with all the new housing in the outer areas of Kyneton, I'm sure it will have grown significantly. Explorer Major Mitchell opened the area in 1836 and not far behind the first settlers opened the land to farming. The Humanitarian Caroline Chisholm settled here with her family in 1857 - She appears on our stamps and banknotes. You can read more about this amazing woman here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Chisholm

Even the infamous Bushwhacker, Ned Kelly features in Kyneton history as he was tried for "Robbery under Arms" at the Kyneton Courthouse in 1870.

I was reading only today that due to the very low pollution levels in the area that it is very popular for Astronomers to view the southern skies. After riding the bike over the last few weeks here, I can feel my body being cleansed by the fresh country air and Sue says she is not getting any bouts of asthma.

Later in the day we went to see our block of land in Trentham - we had settlement last Friday and now its ours to start building. A few big Gum trees need to go and several smaller trees will be cleared but there are many that we will retain that add a softness to the property. We are told that there is a big old kangaroo that lives by the creek that runs at the back of the block on the government reserve. There are signs that he likes to roam our property in the early hours of the morning and at dusk.
Last visit, we had a group of ducks that also liked to wander through.