January: Australia Day concert. February: Rogaine event. November:
Arts & crafts fair and Rodeo. December: Christmas extravaganza.
Last Sunday of each month: Sunday markets.
Description
The town is
located on the banks of the Hotham River and was named after Henry
Boddington. The first settlement occurred in the 1860s
where wheat and sheep
became the region's main industries.
The town was gazetted in 1912 after the arrival of the first railway line.
The town began to go downhill until the discovery of bauxite in
1979. In 1986 more development came with the opening of a gold mine.
Marradong was originally the centre of the area and the local Road Board was
founded there in 1892. In 1961 the Marradong Road Board was renamed the
Shire of Boddington. Marradong originally had a shop, post office, hotel,
church and a one roomed school. The only structures remaining are St Albans
(a centenary old church) and a few old homes in varying states of repair. Marradong was the centre of Local Government until 1925 when a new building
was built in Boddington which replaced the old site. This building still
stands in Johnstone St, next to the Town Hall. Marradong was settled by the
Batt family.
Ranford is a small settlement 4 kilometres east of Boddington and was
established in the 1930's as a result of the tannin extracts factory that
was built there. Although Ranford had a boarding house it relied on
Boddington for its services.
The tannin
extracts factory opened in April 1937 and processed white gum timber. Tannin
was used in the production of leather. Logs of up to 11 feet in length were
fed into a machine that broke the wood up in such a way as to expose the
cells of wood ready for the tannin to be leached out. The leaching process
took 24 hours and was done with a combination of water and steam. In 1939 a
second factory was built but by 1957 the first factory closed down with the
second following in 1964 after timber stocks were almost exhausted.
The first
school was known as the Hotham River school and
operated until September 1920. The next school was built in the townsite and was in operation until 1999.
In 2000 a modern school came into operation.
The Boddington Rodeo is held in November each year and is a major tourist
attraction. The shire is almost half covered by state forest and picnic
areas like Lions Weir and the Tullis Railway Bridge, offer visitors a
pleasant relaxing atmosphere.
The town is set for quite a lot of development as mining in the area
has expanded from
2006 with the resulting influx of workers doing little to
maintain the relaxed atmosphere that existed previously.
(Parts of the above text were supplied by the Shire of Boddington.)
