Spirit of Salts, Peiper Traditional Cache

.A series of caches designed to highlight the discontinued railway line that ran from Wangaratta to Whitfield and return. All the caches are placed near the original sidings and stops and in all cases are easily accessed from the road. Care should be taken when crossing the road and parking as this is a relatively busy country road.

Peiper

This station consisted of a name board alongside the line. (28 mile, 51 chain from Wangaratta) On a personal note, this lane leads up past the farm on which I was born and raised. First farm you come to after driving up the hill and over the top to the Myrrhee side of the range. It is an easy and relatively short 4WD trip to Myrrhee if you wish to explore a little. I have been through here quite a few times in a 2WD but I wouldn’t recommend it and especially not if it is wet. It is a little steep near the top.

14/3/1899, Opened as Whitfield line stopping Place No. 9. 9/5/1904, Renamed Pieper.

Note: It appears that the V.R. made a mistake with the spelling of the name of the family after whom the station was named. The correct spelling is Peipers. However the spelling "Pieper" was used by the V.R. from 1904 onwards in many railway documnents. John Thompson's 1961 photograph of the original name board supports this errant spelling. The incorrect spelling was copied by at least one mapmaker. Unfortunately these pages are about Victorian Railways' Narrow Gauge lines, and not about the family who have lived in the district for over one hundred years. The railways got it wrong, but the station name was Pieper, "ie" and no "s"