Buttlejorrk is a parish of the County of Bourke located to the west of Sunbury, in Victoria, Australia and a neighbourhood within the locality of Diggers Rest. It was named in 1839 by the surveyor William Darke. A township developed and was initially known as Aitken's Gap, after settler and farmer John Aitken and was the first staging stop for miners on their way to the Bendigo gold fields. Hotels (the Gap Inn, the Manchester Hotel and the Bald Hill Hotel) and stores were erected in the vicinity, and in 1854 the Government moved to formalise the township. The original Gap Inn and a store (in which a post office was established in 1856) were located in the middle of the main street of the Government’s later survey. Archaeological evidence remains of the Gap Inn and Bald Hill Hotel. By the 1890s it had commonly become known as Buttlejorrk. The present location of the Calder Freeway was once the main road (Victoria Street) through Aitken’s Gap with various smaller streets crossing it. This formed part of the main town with the remainder of the town stretching as far west as Koroit Creek. This area is now known as Digger’s Rest, the town’s name arising from the diggers (miners) who would rest here on their way to the gold fields.
A historical mystery has been solved, revealing many more stories about the Diggers Rest / Sunbury townships through geographical maps of 1860. Historians have suspected that a small graveyard was lost over time. The cemetery contained up to eight bodies of railway construction workers and the friend of Jack Sanger (who's remains now reside near the Diggers Rest railway station). In recent historical articles we learned that unmarked graves were probably situated near the Bald Hill.
Monty Russell, from Diggers Rest, has possessed copies of some ancient geographical survey maps and, hearing about the lost cemetery mystery, examined the maps in great detail. One of his maps clearly identified a cemetery site at the corner of Gap Road and Wilsons Lane (current township Sunbury).
Small swaps only and BYO pen.