Wycheproof - VIC

Wycheproof is an unusual town with a very wide main street - known to the locals as Broadway - and a huge grain silo. It is a service town for the surrounding cereal growing properties and is famous because Mount Wycheproof, which rises only 43 metres above the surrounding countryside, is the smallest registered mountain in Australia.

Mount Wycheproof, at 43 m above the surrounding flat countryside, is said to be the smallest registered mountain in the Australia. It has pleasant views over the town and the surrounding plains. From 1978-1988 the King of the Mountain race saw men carrying 70-kg bags of wheat racing each other up the hill. There are walking tracks around the mountain and it is sometimes possible to see emus and kangaroos. Mt Wycheproof is geologically known as a ‘metamorphic boss’ or a granite eruption. These unique granite outcrops feature a very distinctive botanical composition, quite different to that of the open country.

Before European settlement Mount Wycheproof was a crossroads for the local Buller Buller Wycher Aboriginal people.

The first station in the district was established in 1846 by Robert Macredie. It was 76,800 acres (31,800 ha) and by 1867 it was running 50,000 sheep.

By 1874 there was still only one settler in the district but a subdivision on the northern side of the mountain in that year saw the population rise to 130. James O'Connor built the Wycheproof Hotel in 1874. The town was surveyed in 1875.

The railway arrived in 1883 with the railway line running up the main thoroughfare. The government was unwilling to pay extra money to purchase land for the track. The wide main street (officially the Calder Highway) is known as Broadway Street apparently because an American-born chemist said it reminded him of New York's Broadway.

The grandfather of the Sir Douglas Nicholls, the first knighted Aborigine and first Aboriginal Governor of South Australia, lived in Wycheproof in the 1880s.

In 1918 the Lonsdale Channel brought reliable water to the district.

Today the town's economic base is evident in the one-million-bushel silos at the northern end of town. The district is known for its broad acre cereal farming.