Skipton

Located 165 km west of Melbourne on the Glenelg Highway, Skipton is a small rural centre of about 500 people.

The Bamganie station was taken up hereabouts in 1839. A townsite was surveyed in 1852 on a crossing over Mt Emu Creek where tracks from Geelong and Melbourne met. Land sales proceeded and 25 people were recorded in the village in 1854. It was named after a town in Yorkshire, England. Appropriately, the name is Anglo-Saxon for 'sheep town' as Skipton became a major centre for sales of pure wool and the first rural show in the Western District was held here in 1859. The Skipton Hotel (still standing in Montgomery St) was also built in 1859.

Novelist Henry Kingsley worked as an overseer on a nearby pastoral station in 1857 and Victorian premier from 1955 to 1972, Henry Bolte, was born at Skipton in 1908. The railway arrived in 1916.

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