Bena is a rural village in south Gippsland, 100 km south-east of Melbourne and 8 km before Korumburra. It is thought that the name derived from an Aboriginal word describing the lyrebird. Bena was on the Great Southern Railway (1890-1993) and until 2008 when a bypass opened it was on the South Gippsland Highway.
Farm selections were first taken up at Bena in the late 1870s and a town survey was made in 1887 in anticipation of the opening of the railway. A father and son, Robert Fuller and Robert John Fuller, privately had a township surveyed on their land around the railway station. The town was named Cromwell, but the naming of the station and the school (1890) as Bena caused Cromwell to slowly disappear as a name.
The town was expected to be one of the main stations on the railway line. A bakery, coffee palace, store, butcher and large two-storey 40 room hotel were opened by 1890, to cater for the hundreds of workers employed on the railway construction. When the post office was opened in 1890 it was named Bena, thought to have been taken from Longfellow's poem Hiawatha. Bena, the Indian dialect word for pheasant, may refer to the lyrebird, probably common in the area. The once busy area now is a small township with a small children's park, a beautiful bridge over the railway line, a historic church and a few shops. You are looking for a small mint size container.