Barrabool Hills

The Barrabool Hills are a small region in south-Western Victoria, on the western outskirts of Geelong. The National Trust of Australia describes the hills as being a "distinctive upland ridge located to the west of Geelong, on the south side of the Barwon River", that "slope steeply on the northern side down to the Barwon River, and more gently southward to the coastal lowland." The area stretches roughly through the modern localities of Gnarwarre, Barrabool and Ceres, and straddles the intersection of the City of Greater Geelong, Surf Coast Shire and Golden Plains Shire.

The area was first settled by pastoralists in the late 1830s. Wynd (1992) suggests that there was less conflict with the Wautharong traditional owners in the Barrabool Hills than further inland, but that incidents where settlers' animals were killed in the area sparked the 187 decision to send Foster Fyans as police sergeant to Geelong in 1837, followed by a thirteen-man military detachment in 1838. An Aboriginal reserve was proposed for the Barrabool Parish in 1840, but the suggestion was ignored and the land sold. The last member of the Barrabool tribe of the Wautharong died in 1885; Wynd attributes intertribal warfare, retaliation murders, disease, liquor, and the loss of their lands as causes of their demise

The first road through the Barrabool Hills was surveyed by Alexander Skene in 1839, running from Highton through the "Roslin", "Merrawarp" and "Strathlachlan" estates to Winchelsea (then known as Austin's Ford). The first sale of lands in the Barrabool Hills took place on 5 February 1840, when the lands of the Barrabool Parish, divided up into 25 blocks of varying sizes, were sold. Wynd writes that there was "plenty of competition for the rich lands of the Barrabool Hills". A sale of the Gnarwarre Parish in the west of the hills on 10 June 1840 was much less successful, with only four blocks being sold; the vast majority of that parish later sold during the 1850s. Transport continued to be a significant challenge through this period, as the road between the hills and Geelong was of very low quality and was claimed to be "impassible" in winter. The first community building in the region was an Anglican school at Barrabool in 1847, and Ceres became the first settlement in the hills when it was first built in 1850. Throughout the 1850s, the village of Ceres prospered, and a smaller village at Gnarwarre (also known as Shankhill) developed; a number of churches and denominational schools were also built at Barrabool in this era, but a clear centre there never developed. The Barrarbool Road District (note the spelling), the forerunner of the Shire of Barrabool, was created in 1853, and marked both an attempt to resolve the area's transport problems and its first local government. The road board was later renamed "Barrabool Hills" by the 1850s.

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