Stronger together. Proud of Skipton.
SKIPTON
PROGRESS
ASSOCIATION INC.
SKIPTON
Located 165km west of Melbourne on the Glenelg Hwy., (51km south-west of Ballarat) Skipton is a small rural township with a population of 500.
The Bamganie station was settled in 1839 and a town site was surveyed in 1852 on a crossing over Emu Creek. This was where the roads to Geelong and Melbourne crossed. By 1854 25 people had settled in the area.
It was named after a town in Yorkshire, U.K. and the name is Anglo-Saxon for ‘sheep town’ Consequently Skipton became a major centre for wool sales.
Novelist Henry Kingsley worked as an overseer on a nearby pastoral station in 1857 and Victorian premier from 1955 to 1972, Sir Henry Bolte, was born at Skipton in 1908. The railway arrived in 1916.
The railway no longer exists, instead it has been converted to a popular bicycle track all the way to Ballarat.
Now known as “Home of the Platypus”, the town offers visitors a number of natural park settings and buildings of an historic nature.
For more information on the history of Skipton, visit:-
The Skipton Historical Society’s website.
