Another one in a series of caches to highlight the many towns, villages, hamlets, localities and crossroads around Victoria. Based on a series of caches in South Australia by local SA cacher adelaideram, with others in the series by Jamms_SA .
The cache is not at the given coordinates but if you go there you will find nearby the General store, fauna Park, the tank art and don’t forget Pinkpiggy7’s Really Side Tracked and The BigO's Truckies Nightmare.
Bayles is a small rural village situated in the area formerly known as ‘the Great Swamp’, neighboring Koo Wee Rup in the Shire of Cardinia. It is 70 km south-east of central Melbourne with a population of 445 according to the 2021 census.
Prior to the 1850s, the area was inhabited by the Bunurong tribe, who camped along Yallock Creek.
The township was previously known as the Yallock Village Settlement, but with the opening of the railway station, the village was renamed after Frederick Bayles, the first member of the Victorian Railway Construction Branch to be killed in World War I.
The railway station was built in 1921 as part of the Strzelecki Branch Line, connecting Bayles to other towns. The town grew around the station and the Butter Factory, played a significant role in the town's economy, using the railway to transport cream, milk, and potatoes, the main crop of the area at that time. Asparagus now rivals potatoes as the main vegetable crop grown locally.
As the railway line was truncated in 1950, the town began to evolve.
The decline in the dairy industry, including the break-up of larger land holdings into what are now mainly hobby and poultry farms, contributed to the closure of the Butter Factory in 1979. It was taken over in 1981 by Bush Boake Allen to process vegetables and chickens produced both locally and from elsewhere.
The Bayles Fauna Park was established in 1972 and resides on the former railway site. It was extended in 1984, and soon after was estimated to be attracting approximately 20,000 visitors annually.
To locate cache you will need to slove this puzzle A Jigidi for Bayles