Longerenong is a locality in the

Rural City of Horsham The Rural City of Horsham is a Local government areas of Victoria, local government area in Victoria, Australia, located in the western part of the state. It covers an area of and in June 2018, had a population of 19,875. It includes the towns ...

and the

Shire of Yarriambiack The Shire of Yarriambiack is a Local government areas of Victoria, local government area of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, located in the north-western part of the state. It covers an area of and at the , had a population of 6,556. I ...

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 Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. At the , Longerenong had a population of 237. The agricultural college

Longerenong College Longerenong College, often abbreviated ''Longy'', is an agricultural college in western-Victoria near the city of Horsham, Victoria. The focus of study at the College is "agronomy, rural merchandise management, wool classing, agricultural educa ...

is located in Longerenong. The name is derived from a

Jardwadjali The Jardwadjali (Yartwatjali), also known as the Jaadwa, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Victoria, whose traditional lands occupy the lands in the upper Wimmera River watershed east to Gariwerd ( Grampians) and west to Lake ...

word meaning "the dividing of the waters."

History

In 1844, William Taylor and Dugald McPherson established a pastoral run near the division of the

Wimmera River The Wimmera River, an inland intermittent river of the Wimmera catchment, is located in the Grampians and Wimmera regions of the Australian state of Victoria. Rising in the Pyrenees, on the northern slopes of the Great Dividing Range, the Wimm ...

, where one branch forms the Yarriambiack Creek. By 1848, Taylor became the sole proprietor of his portion, naming it Longerenong. He sold the run in 1856 to brothers Charles and

Samuel Wilson Samuel Wilson (September 13, 1766 – July 31, 1854) was an American meat packer who lived in Troy, New York, whose name is purportedly the source of the personification of the United States known as "Uncle Sam". Biography Wilson was born in the ...

, the latter of whom built the Longerenong Homestead in 1862 and later funded Wilson Hall at the University of Melbourne. In the 1870s, parts of the run were opened for farming, and a short-lived school operated from 1877 to 1879. In 1889 when the Victorian Council of Agricultural Education established an agricultural college on 966 hectares of fertile loamy land. Longerenong Homestead was added to the

Victorian Heritage Register The Victorian Heritage Register (VHR) lists places deemed to be of cultural heritage significance to the State of Victoria, Australia. It has statutory weight under the Heritage Act 2017. The Minister for Planning is the responsible Minister. ...

in 1974.

References

Towns in Victoria (state) Wimmera Rural City of Horsham Shire of Yarriambiack {{VictoriaAU-geo-stub