Access
- Easy access by any form of motorised transport
Cache:
- This cache is a Bison, make sure you bring your own pen.
Parking:
- Lots of parking, near the gardens and the monument
Muggles:
- Residents/ Farmers, with farm vehicles and machinary
- Council vehicles
-Tourists, caravans
- Cyclists, Mounatain Bikers and Horse Riders
-Traffic will be heavy when the Western highway is clsoed, as this is the emergency detour between Ararat and Stawell.
Other Hazards:
- Mosquittoes in wet weather
- Watch out for snakes in warmer weather, use a walking stick to tap the ground
- Watch out for kangaroos, esp at sunset
Significance (adapted from Wikipedia and local sources):
This momument commemorates the birth of Australian Rule Football (Marn Grook), which was adapted from the Indigenous form by Tom Wills. Wills was an accomplished athelete, and is considered to be Australia's first Cricketer of significance.
Moyston is a town in the Western District region of Victoria, Australia, near the Grampians mountain range. The town is located in the Rural City of Ararat local government area, 224 kilometres (139 mi) north west of the state capital, Melbourne. At the 2016 census, Moyston and the surrounding area had a population of 348.
The first European to see the Moyston area was the explorer Major Thomas Mitchell in 1836. Squatters and their flocks of sheep followed soon after, among them Horatio Wills. His son, Tom Wills, was Australia's first great cricketer and a pioneer of Australian rules football. It has been claimed that, while living in the Moyston area, Wills witnessed or played Marn Grook, an Aboriginal football game that inspired his laws for Australian football. The discovery of gold in 1857 started a small gold rush and the establishment of a township. The Post Office opened on 19 March 1860 as Campbell's Reef and was renamed Moyston in 1866. In 1861, a formal survey of the township was made and blocks offered for sale. By then, the town included two churches, three hotels and a police station.
By 1880, mining in the area had declined and vineyards and orchards were established along with dairying and grazing on newly developed selections. The last mine in the area, the "Golden Gate", ceased operation by around 1910.
Today, Moyston is an historic town surrounded by farming properties and where workers employed in the nearby towns of Great Western, Ararat, Stawell, and Halls Gap, reside. Several public businesses operate in and near the town which included the post office, the general store and a Winery. The town shares an Australian rules football team with nearby Willaura, the Moyston-Willaura Pumas, competing in the Mininera & District Football League.