wo recent queries about Whim Holes makes it useful to record a little of the history of a former gold diggings in our area.
Whim Holes was a former gold diggings just north of Enfield (Napoleons and District Historical Society marker, just off the main Colac road, at Hansons Road.)
It was named by a party of Canadians who opened up the gold field in February 1858, using whims. (James Flett, The History of Gold Discovery in Victoria, p. 329; Ballarat Star, 16 February 1858). Just to the south, on the headwaters of the Mount Misery Creek, the Little Hard Hills had been opened up by a party of Americans in March 1856. (Flett, p. 329; Age, 8 April 1856)
The locality incorporated hundreds of miners, timber workers and carters. There were stores, a school, a Wesleyan Church, blacksmith and a post office. The communities of Whim Holes and Little Hard Hills combined in about 1874 and adopted the name Enfield. In 1865 it was reported that Enfield had a population of 650 Europeans and 300 Chinese.
The Buninyong Church of England minister, Rev. Garrett Russell, established a denominational school at Whim Holes which opened on 11 January 1858 under the supervision of young Lawrence Kildahl. According to Vision and Realisation, the school building had been moved from Mount Misery, and the school was known as Little Hard Hills until 1859. This school closed n August 1862. (Vision and Realisation, Vol. 2, p. 670)
A new school opened on 12 September 1864, under the auspices of the Wesleyan church, as Whim Holes Common School No. 751, with the Irish-born Emily Leahy as head teacher. She obtained a grant of £80 for the school. The name changed to Enfield in 1878, when after the passing of the Education Act of 1872, the State purchased the property and built a new school to accommodate 60 scholars. Attendances declined with the drop in gold mining in the 1890s, and the school closed in 1935. (Vision and Realisation, Vol. 2, p. 682)
The Wesleyan Church opened in May 1864. Later in the 1940s another church was shifted here from Happy Valley, When it closed it was shifted to Sebastopol. (Napoleons and District; the first 150 years, p. 60)
Reference:
Napoleons and District Historical Society, Napoleons and District; the first 150 years
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