Tarwin Lower
This riverside village is 160kms from Melbourne, 25kms from Inverloch and 5kms from Venus Bay beaches offers a relaxed lifestyle by the beautiful Tarwin River, which is the centre of activity with fishing, boating and water-skiing very popular.
Stroll along the boardwalk, view the birdlife and enjoy the peace and serenity on offer.
Tarwin Lower is well serviced with a hotel, motel, general store/newsagency, post office, real estate agent, takeaways, hardware store and butcher all catering for your requirements.
If you are a landlubber, there is plenty to see and do including tennis, bushwalking, an abundance of wildlife.
Baldhills Wetland Reserve is well worth a visit.
Excellent beaches are close by at Venus Bay, so there is always something to see and do in this part of the Prom Country.
Tarwin Lower gained notoriety in 1877, when Martin Wyberg, a ships carpenter concealed 5000 sovereigns in the handles of his tools and escaped ship in Melbourne.
He turned up at Tarwin Lower and was arrested and jailed for 5 years. Some souvereigns were found on the river bank, but most were never recovered.
Farming first commenced in Tarwin Lower In 1851, with Mr George Black draining the swamp land and planting strawberry clover, the first in Australia which he imported from Holland. He also introduced rabbits for the pleasure of shooting them, but they quickly multiplied to plague proportions-he remedied this by bringing hundreds of cats from Melbourne. The result – the rabbits almost disappeared.
The Tarwin River took its first recorded toll of human life in 1861 when Mr Simpson a visitor to Tarwin Meadows neglected to wait for an answer to his smoke signal from Blacks Bluff, which would have brought someone in a boat to collect him, however he attempted to swim his horse across. He drowned and his body was buried where it washed up. The tombstone still stands today on the edge of the road 100 metres before the old butter factory building.
Approximately two miles from the Tarwin River on the coast many wrecks have been discovered. The latest was in 1900 when the barque ‘Magnet’ came ashore in dense fog. It was discovered by local stockmen, they saw tall poles showing over the hummocks, and hurrying to the top saw a beautiful ship high on the sand, and close by a row of sea chests, on each sat a German sailor with his knife drawn, prepared to defend his life.
Tarwin Lower today is a fast growing tourism destination and residential coastal village with good fishing, good services and excellent water skiing – well worth the time to explore. |