Campbells Creek is a town in Victoria, Australia.
Location
Campbells Creek lies 120 km northwest of Melbourne and 40 km south of Bendigo. It is part of the Mount Alexander Shire, which is in the Loddon Mallee Region. The town shares its name with a line of billabongs flowing south towards the nearby Loddon River. The town is on the southern outskirts of Castlemaine on the Midland Highway (Main Road). Campbells Creek depends on Castlemaine for many of its services.
The township was originally managed by the Shire of Newstead, which was amalgamated into the Mount Alexander Shire. Campbells Creek covers 24 km2 of mainly rural land and includes the township of the same name.
Transport
Castlemaine Bus Lines travel several times on weekdays from Campbells Creek to the Castlemaine Railway Station where trains and buses depart to Melbourne, Bendigo, Ballarat, Mildura and Maryborough. Weekend services are reduced and some are not provided on Sundays. A long disused Castlemaine to Maryborough via Newstead railway line still runs through the town.
Population
In the , Campbells Creek had a population of 1,266. Then in the , the population had grown by 184 to 1,510 (51.6% female, 48.4% male), with 0.62 residents per hectare. The median age was forty years with 14.0% born outside Australia. The most common other countries of birth were England (46), New Zealand (16), and United States of America (10). Compared to the rest of the Mt Alexander Shire, Campbells Creek had a smaller proportion of people born overseas and was home to a higher proportion of couple families with a child or children; 9.2 percent were one-parent families, compared with 10.4 percent for the Mount Alexander Shire. In 2011, there were 674 households in Campbells Creek. The most common religious affiliation was "No Religion" (40%), followed by Anglican (14%). At the Campbells Creek had a population of 1,786. Of these people 46.3% were male and 53.7% female. The median age was 42 years.
Economy
Campbells Creek supports a licensed post office, hotel, general store and cafe, a hardware store and numerous businesses, such as bed-and-breakfast accommodation, a beauty therapist, a bookshop, engineering and earthmoving businesses, mechanics, a transport firm and a swimming school. According to the 2011 Census, Campbells Creek has a low level of disadvantage, in fact the lowest in the Mount Alexander Shire: the median weekly household income was $1025 (compared with $838 for the Shire). Similarly, at 2.9 percent, unemployment in Campbells Creek was significantly lower than the statewide average of 5.4 percent. A higher proportion of residents of Campbells Creek held formal qualifications compared to the Shire and a lower proportion of the population were 60+ years of age.
Sport
Campbells Creek have an Australian Rules Football team named the Campbells Creek Magpies. They have the record for the largest known score in Australian Rules Football history when they beat Primrose 100.34 (634) to 3.0 (18).
History
The Dja Dja Wurrung or Jaara People are the traditional owners of the land upon which the township of Campbells Creek is situated. The Dja Dja Wurrung people have been living on this land for 40,000 years. One of their local legends talks of seeing a mountain of fire which, according to Castlemaine geologist Dr Julian Hollis, refers to a volcanic eruption north east of Mt Franklin approximately 500 years ago . Early squatters moved into the area in the 1840s with their flocks of sheep, thus displacing the indigenous people. There were many clashes between the two groups, some fatal. The local people resorted to spearing sheep for food as they were displaced from their own hunting lands, and this was used as an excuse to massacre groups of Aboriginal people.
In order to control the Aboriginal population in Victoria, the colonial government appointed a Chief Protector and four deputies to "watch over the rights and interests of Natives, to protect them from any encroachments on their property." One of these deputies, Edward Stone Parker, was responsible for a large area of eastern Victoria, including the Campbells Creek area, known as the Loddon Protectorate. While the role was nominally to protect Aboriginal people, particularly in remote areas, the role included social control up to the point of controlling whom individuals were able to marry and where they lived, managing their financial affairs, and removing children from families.