Benambra - Angus McMillan Traditional Cache
Benambra - Angus McMillan
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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Strictly speaking this is not a McMillan cache, but reading tells us this is where he started from on his trail blazing journey towards Port Albert.
The plaque actually commemorates the earlier discoverers of the Omeo plains - McKillop, McFarlane and Pendergast
The co-ordinates point to the cache and not the cairn, which is only about 50 metres to the north. Check out the details on the cairn.
History...
In 1835 George McKillop journeyed south from Monaro in New South Wales in search of new pastures. Another member of the party, James McFarlane, returned and founded what was probably the first cattle station in Victoria - Omeo B at what is now Benambra - which he sold in 1859. In his novel, Providence Ponds (1950), Stanley Porteous described the sight which greeted the original settlers:
The creek valleys narrowed, the forests closed in, until suddenly the Omeo basin fairly burst upon us - an open treeless plain, encircled by a rim of mountains upon which the peaks of Mount Tambo and the Three Brothers stood out distinctly....from its expanse came the shimmer of two lakes, one large, one tiny.'
John Pendergast arrived with his two brothers in 1836 or 1837 and established the Mount Leinster station. His family, Welsh immigrants who had settled for several generations in Ireland, are perhaps the most prominent pioneers of the district as the other early families soon moved further south. Pendergast's descendants still live at Pendergast's Court. A hut from the property, built in 1868, is now on display in Omeo's historical park in the centre of town.
Angus McMillan rested in the Omeo vicinity in 1839 while following an Aboriginal track south to establish Numblamunjie station on behalf of Lachlan Macalister. The name was changed to Ensay in 1844 by Archibald Macleod, after an island off the coast of Scotland. McMillan used the station as a base for his extensive and ground-breaking explorations of Gippsland to the south.
(Exerpt from www.smh.com.au)
Additional Hints
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