Miram

Miram is a rural village on the Melbourne to Adelaide railway line, 10 km north-east of Kaniva in the northern Wimmera region. It was named after a locality expressed as mripiram later expressed as Miram Piram, and shortened to Miram in 1904. According to Bunce's Language of the Aborigines of the Colony of Victoria (1859) Miram is an Aboriginal word for bough of a tree.

Closer settlement in the Miram district came with the occupation of farm selections in the late 1870s. A school was opened in 1884. Upon the extension of the railway from Dimboola to Serviceton, via Miram in 1887, the district’s farming activity expanded. Prior to then the wheat crops were carried by road wagons to Dimboola or South Australia.

Miram’s first store was opened in 1888 by George Coles, a country store keeper who opened several stores as far apart as Jung and St James. His son, also George, was the founder of the national variety stores chain, G.J. Coles and Company. Coles’ Miram store was acquired by Philip Wheaton in 1903 until closed just before the GST in 2000 by Les Wheaton. The closure was Miram’s big Back-To celebration.

An Anglican church was opened in 1890 and the Wheaton family ran a Methodist Sunday school for nearly 50 years. A public hall was built in 1914.

Miram stands in an extensive wheat/sheep farming area, and silos were built near the railway station in 1939. The school was one of several around Kaniva which were closed in 1952 in favour of bussing children to Kaniva Consolidated school. The Anglican and Methodist churches were closed in 1960 and 1964.

Miram has a recreation reserve, but no longer any cricket or football clubs.

Miram’s census populations have been: