Euroa Things to Do

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The first white men in the district were explorers Hume and Hovell in 1824. Overlanders drove their stock through an area to the north of the present townsite in 1837 or 1838 while following the track cut by explorer Thomas Mitchell in 1837. Squatters began taking up runs in the district in 1838. One of the first was Seven Creeks, established by Janet Templeton in 1838. The adjacent 'Urowa' station was taken up in 1840.
It was at Seven Creeks that the first fine-wool Saxon merino sheep in Victoria were introduced in 1851 by Eliza Forlonge who had selected the sheep in Saxony. There's actually a memorial to her a bit out of town, so significant was this in the history of Australia and her cottage is part of the Historical Museum located adjacent to Seven Creeks Park.
Euroa was surveyed in 1849 and planned as a roadside squatting centre in 1850-51 on the road from Melbourne to Wodonga. Drovers camped at the spot due to the presence of a permanent water supply where today there's a lovely park.
By 1852 the townsite consisted of Euroa homestead in Kirkland St and two huts occupied by a bootmaker and a married couple who worked on Euroa station. However, the town grew more rapidly than expected due to the road traffic generated by the goldrushes. A store and butcher's shop were the first commercial buildings. A hotel opened in 1853 and a post office in 1854. The first school was established in a small bark hut in 1854.
At this time the residences were all of slab or bark construction clotted with clay and roofed with stringybark. In 1856 wheat farming began on small blocks and Euroa became a regular coach stop on the Melbourne to Beechworth run. Timber and honey were also exploited commercially in the town's early days. The first substantial church (Catholic) was built in 1867.