Long Gully is a suburb of

Bendigo Bendigo ( ) is an Australian city in north-central Victoria. The city is located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital. As of 2022, Bendigo has a popula ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

, Australia. It is located north-west of the Bendigo central business district. At the 2016 census, Long Gully had a population of 3,383. Long Gully is a working-class suburb of Bendigo, with many older style

fibro Asbestos cement, genericized as fibro, fibrolite (short for "fibrous (or fibre) cement sheet", but different from the sillimanite , natural mineral fibrolite), or AC sheet, is a composite building material consisting of cement and asbestos fi ...

houses, punctuated by well-established light industry. The suburb is the location of the Bendigo RSL club, in Havilah Road.

History

Long Gully was home to the Carlisle United Gold Mine (formerly the Kentish Mine), which was the richest mine in Bendigo, producing 21.5 tonnes of gold in its lifetime.Arnold, Jean; Arnold, Ken (2007). ''Out & About: Eaglehawk to Bendigo CBD''. Bendigo, Victoria: Crown Castleton Publishers. p. 23-25. ISBN 9781875342709. Long Gully was heavily affected by the

Black Saturday bushfires The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that either ignited or were already burning across the Australian state of Victoria. Saturday, 7 February 2009 was one of Australia's all-time worst bushfire disasters. The fires occurred ...

on 7 February 2009, causing one death.

Amenities

Schools and churches

Long Gully Primary School (No. 2120) was built in 1879. When it closed in 1992, a majority of the students were transferred to Comet Hill Primary School. Long Gully had several churches built throughout its history. A

uniting church The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) is a united church in Australia. The church was founded on 22 June 1977 when most congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and almost a ...

(originally a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

church) was built in 1877. In 1883, St Matthew's Anglican Church was built. A third church, the Church of

Pius X Pope Pius X (; born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto; 2 June 1835 – 20 August 1914) was head of the Catholic Church from 4 August 1903 to his death in August 1914. Pius X is known for vigorously opposing Modernism in the Catholic Church, modern ...

, was built in 1956, and is now privately owned.

Fire stations

In 1873, the Long Gully Fire Brigade was formed. It operated from a fire station until a second fire station was opened in 1932; the first station was deregistered the same year.

Notable residents

It is the birthplace of

Dick Richards Dick Richards (born 1936) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Known as a storyteller and an "actor’s director", Richards worked with Robert Mitchum, Gene Hackman, Martin Sheen, Blythe Danner, Catherine Deneuve, Alan Arki ...

, GC (14 November 1894 – 8 May 1986).McOrist, Wilson ''Shackleton's Heroes'' The Robson Press, London, 2015 Richards was an Australian science teacher who joined

Sir Ernest Shackleton Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarc ...

Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 is considered to be the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Ernest Shackleton, Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the ...

in December 1914 as a physicist with the

Ross Sea Party The Ross Sea party was a component of Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914–1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Its task was to lay a series of supply depots across the Great Ice Barrier from the Ross Sea to the Beardmore Glacier, along the polar ...

. He was 22 years old. He outlived all other members of the expedition and became the last survivor of the so-called "Heroic Age" of Antarctic exploration, dying at the age of 91 in 1986. His life-saving feats in the Antarctic are detailed in the book ''Shackleton's Heroes''.

References

Suburbs of Bendigo {{VictoriaAU-geo-stub