Brief History of Mount Leaura & Mount Sugarloaf

Source: Mt Leura & Mt Sugarloaf Development Committee



Aboriginal History

The Camperdown district was originally inhabited by the Leehura language groups who named Mount Sugarloaf "Tuunumbee Heear" or "moving moving woman". Mounts Leura and Sugarloaf were used by the Leehura people as signalling towers and lookouts to observe movements of game and neighbouring peoples. The mounts were also important landmarks, guiding the local people's semi-nomadic lifestyle.

The last full-blooded member of the Leehura people, Wombeech Puuyuun (Camperdown George) died in Camperdown in 1883. A stone obelisk memorial to Camperdown George was erected in the Camperdown Cemetery by James Dawson, local Aboriginal Protector at the time.


Post-European Settlement

In 1839 the Manifold brothers, coming from Batesford near Geelong , drove their sheep into the area from the north between Lakes Gnarput and Corangamite. They settled on the banks of the freshwater Lake Purrumbete , taking up an area of 80 000 acres including Mount Leura and Mount Sugarloaf . Others were soon to follow, taking up the land for their cattle and sheep.

In the same year, Henry Gibb built huts beside a small stream north of Mount Leura and the settlement of Timboon was born. This area is now referred to as 'Old Timboon'. It was not until 1851 that the town of Camperdown was surveyed at the base of Mount Leura .

Photos taken as early as 1860 and 1870 show remnants of the Manna Gum and Drooping She-oak woodlands which once covered Mounts Leura and Sugarloaf.




The Land Act of 1865 opened up all land between Geelong and the South Australian border to a ballot. The area around Mounts Leura and Sugarloaf was leased for farming, and heavy clearing followed. Within 50 years of settlement, the Mounts had been cleared of timber.

In 1899, the Manifold brothers donated the Mount Leura Reserve to the Hampden Shire, after several unsuccessful attempts to negotiate a land swap in which the Manifolds would provide an access road and land at the summit of Mount Leura in exchange for a road extending through the Manifold's property to the Cobden Road.

In the 1920's, Cypress and Pine were planted on Mount Leura as part of a Returned Soldiers' Employment Scheme, and in 1963 the road to the summit was sealed.