Making history

Andrew Mathieson
ST LEONARDS had no past to speak of – so thought some at Queenscliff.
But historian Dr Peter Munster has debunked that myth, documenting in several books how St Leonards was more than just good fishing.
“A lot of people first said there is no history here – the place doesn’t have any,” Peter remarks.
“I remember going down to Queenscliff to talk to people at the historic museum and telling them about what I already knew.
“A chap came up to me afterwards and said he was absolutely gobsmacked because ‘We didn’t think St Leonards had any history – we thought we had it all’.”
But Queenscliff might have given something back to Peter’s home town – its name.
“We think it’s named after St Leonards in Sussex, England – it’s not unlike it,” he muses.
“But what is not well known is that Queenscliff was originally gazetted as St Leonards and they didn’t like it.
“They wanted to be named after Queen Victoria and the (St Leonards) name only lasted for a month or so, so there was a name floating around.”
Explorer Matthew Flinders and pastoralist John Batman had both crossed the town’s location before buildings appeared.
The discovery of old journals initially placed Batman as landing and camping at neighbouring Indented Head.
But, according to Peter, doubt over Batman’s footsteps emerged when it was later discovered that the Bellarine Peninsula was commonly referred to as Indented Head.
“I think the indent that was referred to was at Swan Bay, actually,” he says casting an eye over one of his old maps.
Peter points to a St Leonards site just above South Red Bluff and also fingers another historian’s references to an ancient natural creek as evidence his home town was where Batman first set foot on the peninsula.
Peter has been piecing together St Leonards’ history for close to two decades.
He had previously researched and taught in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea.
The experience convinced him of the importance of recording history.
“With the New Guineans, it was all oral with the stories they told,” Peter reflects.
“I’d sit with them on the ground in the village and would have an interpreter with me.
“Away they would go with their stories and if somebody got it wrong someone else would interrupt and correct them.”
Years after completing a 120,000-word PhD thesis on ‘A History of Contact and Change in the Goroka Valley, 1929-1950’, Peter is now working on the complete 150-year history of St Leonards.
He’s readying himself to transcribe more than 12 hours of tape from recorded interviews with the town’s longest-living residents.
“It’s easy enough to get facts and figures and how much the population was,” he insists, “but what I’m interested in is how people lived and what their life was like – and that’s why these stories are vitally important.”
Peter also got his hands on a copy of the 1934 memoirs of the Holden brothers whose family ran a famous travelling circus.
An ageing George Holden had also sketched St Leonards nearly 80 years ago after George Ward Cole founded the town.
A jibe a few years later in a newspaper report that St Leonards had “nothing of interest” helped spark Peter’s final book on the town he loves.
“I thought it was possible you could have ‘Nothing of Interest’ as the title (of the book), with a question mark,” Peter smirks.
“That was a common view but, really, there was an enormous amount of things going on then.”