Former Royal Mail Hotel, Avenel. in Avenel, Victoria | Landmark & historical place

Former Royal Mail Hotel, Avenel.

Locality: Avenel, Victoria

Address: Henry Street 3664 Avenel, VIC, Australia

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• Landmark & historical place
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24.01.2022 Monday night. They say rain's coming.

24.01.2022 Hidden gems. Like the place in this story, the Former Royal Mail sometimes reveals new stories. https://www.abc.net.au//rococo-wallpaper-uncovere/12567422

22.01.2022 How fabulous! We returned a visit to a history-mad home owner in South Melbourne today. He visited us on the weekend and was so excited with the old coach house that he invited us to pop in to his. Similar vintage. A small weatherboard. His collection of old Lino is wonderful and that bathroom! Love it!

21.01.2022 The old hotel was nearly 100 years old by the time power came to Avenel in 1948. Before then kerosene lamps, both hanging and wall mounted, might have been used. The earliest days probably used tallow candles. We’re slowly doing a sympathetic tidy-up of the old electrical fixtures that are cracked or need replacing. We can’t Facebook via candlelight! LOL. The electrician visited today. Our ‘Dutch’ lamp is up in the hallway. Just hanging on an early hook, it just acts as a shade, easily removed. It replaced a green tin railway shade removed from the old signal box that was moved next door in the 1980s.

20.01.2022 We've an interesting connection to the Ned Kelly story here at the old Former Royal Mail Hotel. https://www.smh.com.au//beneath-the-metal-armour-20121102-

20.01.2022 We're pretending it's 1855. A tap in the garden broke which means we've turned the water mains off! Our plumber needs a part that he can't buy until the morning. Buckets filled (just like when we started this adventure). A skinny dip in Hughes Creek tonight, or a shower @ the Roadhouse more likely. I know electricity was connected here in 1948. I'll spend my dry afternoon researching when mains water was connected. A good research prompt!

19.01.2022 Aussie bushranger Ned Kelly, as a school boy, rescued a classmate from drowning in a creek at Avenel in Central Victoria. The boy he rescued was the son of the publican of the Former Royal Mail Hotel. The publican awarded Ned a green sash that boasted a gold bullion fringe. Ned was wearing the sash under his 'armour' the day he was shot @ Glenrowan, 140 years ago. The original is now in a museum at Benalla, just up the road. Our copy hangs in the bar window.

18.01.2022 Anyone else watch Restoration Australia? Clydesdale, Victoria, this week. Two wattle and daub cottages. Rich conservation. Loved it.

18.01.2022 The old hotel was built before ‘double brick’ was known. It is built solid, three bricks wide. The bricks themselves were ‘slop’ made. Ridges on the bricks were made when they were stacked to dry, before firing.

18.01.2022 An interesting article about the secrets old houses hold. https://www.theguardian.com//restoration-of-norfolk-hall-u

18.01.2022 'Dundallimal' at Dubbo in Central Western NSW is an amazing old place. Although 10 years earlier than our Avenel home, there are similarities in style. Thank goodness we're brick, though. Slabs wouldn't have survived the fierce Avenel termites!

17.01.2022 Project #1 has been to make the old place warm and dry. Heritage Victoria approved the installation of a hydronic heating system. It’s a gentle and continuous heat that avoids damaging the fabric of the building. We’ve also installed drainage and attended to plumbing. Landscaping planning happened today. The final part of Project #1. We’ll be dry in no time!

17.01.2022 It almost a spring day outside but 21 year old pussy prefers her chair to an adventure.

16.01.2022 While ‘Grimes Cottage’ on Restoration Australia tonight is magnificent, in my mind a flashy renovation erases history. We much prefer ‘conservation’. Here I spent this arvo painting linseed oil on a 170 year old door to revive, protect and conserve 170 year old paint showing through a 150 year old repainting. That ‘crocodile’ finish is irreplaceable!

16.01.2022 11.11.2020. A day of historic events to remember and reflect upon. Armistice Day, 102 years since the end of WWI. 140 years since Ned Kelly’s hanging. 45 years since the Whitlam dismissal. Folks living at Avenel’s (former) Royal Mail Hotel watched all these events unfold from the relative comfort of these walls.

16.01.2022 NAIDOC Week 2020. *Always Was. Always Will Be.* A scar tree just around the corner hints at the thousands of years the Taungurung have lived here. Truth telling.

16.01.2022 A few old lino fragments we've found hint at early floor treatments and colour schemes.

15.01.2022 A visit to the archives before the plague located the original grant of the hotel license in 1859.

15.01.2022 Nifty archaeology. Each dig in the garden at this place uncovers an artifact. The striped white piece had me puzzled until a call out to ‘experts’ on a page I follow solved the riddle. One of them shared the pic with the shoe, showing our piece to be a doll fragment. The doll pic shows what sort of doll she would have been. Other toys we’ve found include glass marbles and a rubber ball. All documented, stored and ready to tell their story.

15.01.2022 170 years of dirt and more was removed from the ceiling cavity. The original ironbark shingles are still in place, under the old iron. Wow.

14.01.2022 Preparing the Western facing verandah for summer. Lotsa work ahead before the Virginia Creeper is planted. Lotsa work already done.

14.01.2022 Whroo is a ghost town. Now just a cemetery hints at the mid 1850s goldtown that was, just up the road from our place. A Mechanic’s Institute, school, post office, bank, library, 2 churches, 3 ore crushing mills, 3 hotels and a cordial factory. 139 buildings were still present in 1871. Like early Avenel the buildings were mostly bark, timber, wattle and daub, canvas. They were temporary shelter. This underlines how significant the former Royal Mail Hotel is. Built mostly of b...rick (the timber wings are long gone) it shouts a confidence by the original owner, Hilet, in a future at Avenel. 15% of the 400 graves in the cemetery are Chinese. Whroo underlines the multicultural essence of goldfield Victoria. Chinese, American, Irish, English, Scottish, German, Italian, Greek and more. Picture credits: R.H.Baud Collection of photographs of Whroo, State Library of Victoria. 'Baud and Bazley's Balaclava Store' circa 1858/9, H39204 'The Balaclava mine from the North' circa 1858/9, H39205 'Lewis and Nickson's crushing battery at the Balaclave mine Whroo, circa 1858/9, H39206

13.01.2022 Our place was built in 1855/6 by James Hilet. James was a carpenter who was indentured to a Sydney, NSW, landowner. He absconded from his indenture after marrying in Sydney. In Avenel, Victoria he bought 5 blocks of land and began building the Hotel. Local folklore says the building was operated as a store before he gained his hotel license. Maybe. Hilet built and owned a weatherboard store opposite the Hotel. He took several attempts to gain a liquor license in 1856. Can't wait for the plague to be over (or restrictions eased), at which time a trip back to the archives will be possible to help sort the fables from fact. Thanks to Hilet descendent Karen L Corbo for land sales and pic of two of Hilet's sons.

13.01.2022 One of our eleven rooms is an external one. An historical explanation is that late arriving travellers along the Sydney Road could seek shelter long after the Hotel had closed. We call it the 'Traveller's Room.' The plan of the old Hotel echoes those of early colonial bungalows like Glenfield Farm in Sydney, though it was built much later.

13.01.2022 What's your dream car? I just found mine! Imagine this beauty outside the old place. OK, we've enough 'project' on our hands without a car as well. #dreamin

12.01.2022 Some Hughes Creek autumn colour in the late afternoon sun.

11.01.2022 Keera Vale, Wollongong NSW. We're mad keen on old places. Watching 'Restoration Australia' for the millionth time helps make us feel better about the job we've taken on. LOL. Google this place. Amazing.

11.01.2022 The archaeology at this place is a cracker! All being documented, researched and stored as found. Lots of glass and white ceramics and a bit of early transfer ware too.

11.01.2022 James Hilet sold this place in 1860 to another early settler, Frederick Ruffy, squatter of ‘Tarcombe’ run. Ruffy and his brothers had taken up leases around Seymour, Avenel, Longwood, Moleswood and the township of Ruffy is located centrally to these places, presumably named after them. The brothers were sketched in a hut by adventurer George Henry Haydon. This picture is a well known colonial record. Photos *advertisement Ovens and Murray Advertiser Wed 29 Feb 1860... *the Australian Emigrant, George Henry Haydon 1845 *Frederick Ruffy, drawn by George Henry Haydon See more

11.01.2022 Cleaning the wall with a scrub, behind the (newly installed)kitchen sink, revealed a goldrush era mural of a ship!

11.01.2022 ‘Bedroom 1’ is the only room with a gable ceiling. It’s also the only room built on brick, rather than rubble, foundations. A couple of metres from the door lies the remains of a gum tree stump under the floorboards of the next room. I suspect it’s the first building onsite in 1855 and the hotel was built around it. It may have looked like the little hut in the black and white photo. We’ll never know for sure.

10.01.2022 Some early decoration survives @ the Coach House. Gold rush era murals and a variety of wallpaper fragments.

10.01.2022 Avenel Spring is beautiful. The garden is loving it.

09.01.2022 Wow https://www.domain.com.au/54-kinghorn-street-neurea-nsw-282

09.01.2022 We’ve just half an acre now. The previous owner subdivided and sold blocks on three sides. A pity, but the ‘bones’ of the old block remains. New fence on the most recent neighbour’s side.

08.01.2022 WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that the following post contains images of deceased persons that may cause sadness or distress. *we walk with you* Historical records of this area in Central Victoria tell the story that in the 1860s the Former Royal Mail Hotel’s innkeeper encouraged local Taungurung women camping by the adjacent creek to sell their baskets and mats to folk travelling on the carriages that stopped at the inn.... The stories don’t tell us that settler smallpox, influenza and syphilis had decimated the local groups during the ‘Overlander’ and Squatting’ period before the inn was opened. The local stories don’t record that the squatter of ‘Avenel Station’ kept an Aboriginal woman in his hut in domestic/sexual slavery. He later returned to England to marry the daughter of a London merchant before returning to SA with his bride. Our stories don’t talk of the Taungurung resistance to the settling of their Country with attacks on ‘stations’, disruptive actions like fires and the dispersing of cattle and sheep. Our local histories are silent about the genocide when the Taungurung were massacred in retribution by musket or arsenic. *Mundy massacre near Kirwan's Bridge and *Faithful Creek massacre Benalla. When an Aboriginal ’Protectorate’ was first established in the area it was located between a hotel and a police camp, with settler men from both pestering the Aboriginal women, and some young Aboriginal men, for sex. It had to be moved away from these sexual predators. Truth telling. Our local history has largely been silent. Photos *Taungurung Sovereign Flag, designed by Loraine Padgham, Taungurung Land and Waters Council 2020 *Basket making, Lake Tyers [picture] Howard Decimus Bulmer 1883-1950? photographer. [ca. 193-] SLV H37680 *Jenny Green, a Gilgar Gunditj woman from Lake Condah. [1865?] SLV H32549/13

08.01.2022 Avenel c.1870. Our place to the left. Toll house between it and the bridge. Shop, butchers and grain store opposite. Carrier’s camp also opposite. Telegraph line (poles). Look carefully and you also see a bark hut just up from the hotel. source Victorian State Library.

08.01.2022 A still from the early 1980's 'Search for Identity' film.

08.01.2022 Fabulous! Our prefabricated architectural history is more than interesting. One chapter of my book, Guide to Historic St Kilda, was about these buildings. The Collingwood one in this story began life in St Kilda.

08.01.2022 Early owners, the Sheltons. 1908. Our monster pepper trees are obviously over 112 years old.

07.01.2022 It’s started to warm up in Avenel. The old ‘pepper’ trees have shaded the place for about 120 years.

07.01.2022 Imagine the bone-shattering ride in the old express carriages. A lemonade at the Royal Mail Hotel in Avenel would have been welcome!

06.01.2022 Must be close to Spring! The garden is about to explode. We’ve planted our borders and started some beds. Can’t wait to plant the heritage tomatoes!

05.01.2022 Drainage work has helped dry the old place out.

05.01.2022 A short documentary about the old place written and directed by a former owner, Peter Drummond. Circa 1982.

04.01.2022 The Ned Kelly trail signage around Avenel is at least 15 years old. We've approached Council to update and replace our sign that has become cracked and faded and one of the larger Kelly signs by the old bridge that has been vandalised. We've agreed that they will replace the signs and we will re-paint the frame. As if we needed another job! LOL

03.01.2022 Late Friday night, just before bedtime, our chimney guards, chimney draft stopper and the largest possum you've ever seen joined us watching telly. It was a circus for a while till we gained control and removed Mr Possum.

03.01.2022 Check out Day's Mill in Murchison via this 3D tour. Just down the road from this place. Many similarities. https://my.matterport.com/show/

02.01.2022 Built by James Hilet in 1855 the old hotel was a busy place during the goldrush. It was the coaching stop, meaning coaches would stop here to change horses and to refresh passengers. The mail coach from Sydney would throw out the mail bag at the post office across the creek, pass the Avenel Arms Hotel established in 1852, cross the timber bridge (built 1847) and later the stone bridge (1859) before stopping at the Royal Mail Hotel. James Hilet had also built the police lock up and Avenel's first court house where the gold escort would stop overnight on the corner of Anderson and Ash Sts.

02.01.2022 These small discoveries hint at floor coverings of the past.

01.01.2022 Rear ‘courtyard’.