Craigie

Craigie is a rural locality and former mining township 8 km south-east of Maryborough and 130 km north-west of Melbourne.

Gold was discovered in a gully near Craigie in October 1854, and the village grew from that activity. The origin of the name appears to have been the Craigie Parish, surveyed in about 1855, and a prominent gold working was a craggy outcrop known as Gilbralter, 3 km south-east of Craigie.

Craigie was linked with Majorca, a few kilometres to the south-east, and the Craigie borough (including Majorca) was proclaimed on 28 December 1864.

An Anglican school opened in 1860, named McCallum’s (after the creek), and it was replaced with a government school in 1870. There were only Wesleyan and Presbyterian churches recorded in the Victorian municipal directory in 1880. Majorca had risen above Craigie, taking the borough’s name in 1876 and becoming its administrative centre. In 1903 Craigie was described in the Australian handbook:

Within 30 years Craigie’s population was fewer than 100 people and only the Methodist church remained. The school closed in 1941. Craigie is now a farming district with an oval and a few buildings. There are many old gold workings to its north and west. Its census populations were:

(Before 1911 the census figures were included in Majorca’s).