Stratford Travel Guide

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Of course, for me, there's always the local pie shop. Now, you know it must be good because, right next door there's an award-winning butcher shop (pic 2). It never ceases to surprise me at the pride in quality that can eminate from small villages such as this and that makes all the more reason to continue to stop in places such as this.

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Journalist John Stanley James (who wrote under "The Vagabond") claimed, in 1886, that "the first house in Gippsland was built on the site of Stratford, and it was, after Sale, the first surveyed township in the north". He was probably thinking of "Strathfieldsaye", the homestead of squatter William Odell Raymond, who established a run in the area in 1842, although it is fairly likely that Hartwich's Hut, on the same property, was erected before the house.
Stratford prospered in the 1860s as a supply centre for diggers from the rugged Omeo and Dargo goldfields areas. Other early buildings which are still standing include what is now the R.S.L. Hall (built 1866), the Church of Holy Trinity (1868), the Methodist Church, including its bell tower (1873), and the post office (1884).
Today a steady trickle of traffic along the Princes Highway ensures that some will stop and keep the economy going, especially at the local pub (pic 3).

The region was first settled by Gippsland's first great explorer, the largely unheralded Angus McMillan, who named the Avon River after a body of water in his native Scotland though the word "Avon" is actually Celtic for river. He established a pastoral run in 1840 at Bushy Creek, to the north-west of the current township.
With a name such as it has, you just know there's going to be links to the bard, and so it is.
The principle objective behind the Sister Cities program is to promote friendship and cultural exchange between participating countries. Membership is restricted to those Stratfords which have a Shakespeare Theatre or Festival. Stratford, Victoria, has had a Shakespeare Festival for over 10 years and therefore qualified and was duly accepted into the program.
Reunions are held every 2 years and are hosted in rotation by the member cities.
Shakespeare on the River Festival
The local Stratford on Avon "Shakespeare on the River" Festival is a diverse community celebration featuring theatre, music, visual arts and folkloric skills presented by the Stratford on Avon Shakespeare Association.

In 1863, the Ramahyuck Moravian Mission was established several kilometres downstream from Stratford, on the north bank, by Reverend August Hagenauer. The name combines "Ramah", the home of Samuel in the First Book of Kings, with "yuck", an Aboriginal term reputedly meaning "our place", though its common usage these days means something repulsive.
The purpose of the mission was to remove the local Aborigines from their tribal culture and move them towards christianity and the white ways. To this end they were taught to play cricket (perhaps the MCC might be able to beat them?). Though it was never quite self-sufficient, the mission cultivated fruit, vegetables, sheep, cattle and bees. A church, school and orphanage were built and the 931 hectares were fenced in. At its peak, eighty Aborigines were permanent residents.
Since it was never self sufficient, it was perhaps inevitable that a slow decline commenced around 1888 and caused the mission's closure twenty years later. The Aborigines were taken elsewhere and the buildings were destroyed and the land sold off. Today, the only remnants are three headstones and some lacerations around the trees where the bark was torn off to make domestic implements, shields and canoes, and where toeholds provided access to the trees' possums. One of the gravestones belongs to Hagenauer's first Aboriginal convert, Nathaniel Pepper. About ninety other tombs, eighty of them belonging to aborigines, were only marked by perishable wooden crosses.

That's something you can't say about a lot of Victorian towns. Though the rails don't have the same importance of yesteryear, for people like me there's something reassuring about a village where the train stops on a regular, if not frequent, basis.