Kerang, Victoria

Kerang
Victoria

Main street of Kerang

Kerang

Coordinates

35°43′0″S 143°55′0″E / 35.71667°S 143.91667°ECoordinates: 35°43′0″S 143°55′0″E / 35.71667°S 143.91667°E

Population

3,872 (2011 census)

Postcode(s)

3579

Elevation

78 m (256 ft)

Location

277 km (172 mi) from Melbourne
129 km (80 mi) from Bendigo
60 km (37 mi) from Swan Hill

Mean max temp	Mean min temp	Annual rainfall
22.8 °C ^{73 °F}	9.4 °C ^{49 °F}	368.9 mm ^{14.5 in}

Kerang is a rural town on the Loddon River in northern Victoria in Australia. It is the commercial centre to an irrigation district based on livestock, horticulture, lucerne and grain. It is located 279 kilometres (173 mi) north-west of Melbourne on the Murray Valley Highway a few kilometres north of its intersection with the Loddon Valley Highway, elevation 78 metres (256 ft). At the 2011 census, Kerang had a population of 3,872.Kerang is believed to be an Aboriginal word for Cockatoo.

The Wemba-Wemba Aborigines are thought to have been the area's first occupants. Thomas Mitchell was the first European to visit the area, in 1836. Squatters began to settle in the area in 1845 and in 1848 Richard Beyes opened a public house at a river crossing near the future townsite. This was followed by a saddlery and a church. In 1857 Woodford Patchell built a bridge upriver from the settlement which drew traffic from the earlier settlement. He built a store, house and hotel that became the center of what was to become Kerang. Patchell was the first farmer in the state to use irrigation and experimented with oats, barley, maize, millet, tobacco, beet, cotton and sugarcane. The Post Office opened on 29 July 1858. An earlier Kerang office, quite distant, was renamed Wedderburn on the same day.

Kerang was declared a shire in 1871; at the time the settlement's population was 109. The arrival of the railway from Bendigo in 1884 and the construction of a tramway to Koondrook in 1888 led to expansion; by 1891 the population had increased to over a thousand. The spread of Patchell's irrigation ideas improved local productivity and the town continued to expand.

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