Tempy

Tempy is a rural village on the Sunraysia Highway and railway line to Mildura in north-west Victoria. The nearest town is Ouyen, 32 km northwards.

Both the settlement and its name arose from the construction of the railway line in 1903. The fettlers’ camp became a temporary stopping place for the delivery of supplies, and the sign ‘Temp’y Stopping Station’ was shortened to Tempy.

The settlement of Tempy was part of the occupation of the Mallee region, mainly for wheat growing. Farms had been allotted since the late 1880s, but it was the railway which brought about the Tempy village. A school was opened in 1910 and a bush nursing centre in 1917. Anglican and Catholic churches were opened in the 1920s. Channels were constructed in the Tempy district for the supply of water from Grampians storages for livestock and domestic use by 1928. Silos were built at the railway siding in about 1939.

The postwar years were relatively prosperous, and a new Catholic church was opened in 1966. Prosperity waned with the advent of wheat quotas in the 1960s, although better drought resistant wheat varieties were a help.

Tempy has a general store, an infant welfare centre, and a school which had 37 pupils in 1998 and 20 in 2014.

Tempy’s census populations have been: