THE 200th anniversary of Hume and Hovell’s exploration of the region will be marked this Sunday, November 24, when the Myrtleford and District Historical Society (MDHS) hold a special tour and unveil a prepared display to showcase the pair’s journey in 1824.
Guests are invited to gather at the Old School Museum from 9:30am, to sign in and pay the $5 entry fee, before the group leaves at 10am to walk to the memorial at Reform Hill.
John Taylor OAM will lead the group to the memorial and give a talk, outlining Hamilton Hume and William Hovell's travels through the area, as part of their expedition from Sydney to find new grazing land in the south of the colony, and also to find an answer to the mystery of where New South Wales's western rivers flowed.
At 11am, the Old School Museum will be opened to the public and the group can then view the display the MDHS has assembled and peruse the rest of the museum.
The anniversary of Hume and Hovell's journey through Myrtleford is marked on November 24, but a century ago, the memorial was first unveiled to the public on 17 November 1924, a week before the anniversary.
"The Myrtleford memorial was the second in Victoria to be unveiled to honour Hume and Hovell's travels in 1824," Mr Taylor said.
“It all began on 15 November, 1924, when the centennial committee, which included people from the Education Department, the government of the day and the local centenary committee here, all visited the chalet at Mt Buffalo and unveiled the plaque up there.
“They then came to Myrtleford.
“The people that were the two co-chairs of the organising committee - David Black, head teacher of this school from 1924 to 1927 and Alexander Hill, who was the manager of the Myrtleford Co-Store - drove the fundraising, because it was all locally funded.
"And the fellow who was the licensee at the Prince of Wales Hotel, which no-longer exists, was John Clancy who built the cairn.
"Ours is one of 10 plaques unveiled on November 17 and 18 by the Victorian ‘Centenary Commemoration Committee’.
"[From there] they went out to Whorouly, of course and they went to Everton, Murmungee and then they went up to Beechworth and stayed the night there."
For the display, MDHS members catalogued the list of places Hume and Hovell visited in Victoria and photographed memorials all the way down to Seymour and Avenel.
They had a difficult time finding the cairns as some had faded or become hidden behind newer buildings or overgrown with weeds.
“There are a lot of people our age who have probably forgotten they’re there," Mr Taylor said.
"Each monument has got a little transcription that you can read, but with a lot of them you can’t read anything, which is most unfortunate.
“You can see them all over the place; they are there, but most people pass them by.
"Our cairn in Myrtleford was restored 20 years ago and we’ve still got some of the marble remnants from it.
"The cairn is in very good order, it’s carefully monitored by DECCA and myself.
“The Hume Weir cairn (and one other) is the only monument that lists the whole exploration party, all of the others only note Hume and Hovell.
“What we have with each one of these now is a commentary on every memorial which will go on file here.”
In 2004, a sheltered historical summary was built behind the monument which tells the story of Hume and Hovell, featuring a paragraph of them passing through the district, with a master map of their whole trek on the reverse side.
