The Kilmore Free Press of Thursday June 8 1911 reprinted an article from February of 1856 under the heading “Kilmore Fifty-Five Years Ago.” The article itself contrasts the Kilmore of 1853 with the same town three years later, showing what remarkable changes had occurred in a relatively short period of time. This excerpt should be of interest to historians.

“When we at the Examiner set foot in Kilmore three years ago, the place was very difficult of access, there being no roads, bridges, or other like conveniences from here to Melbourne, and even horse-drays frequently required fourteen days to perform the journey. The only public institutions then in the place were three churches of different religious denominations, with scanty congregations, and three denominational schools, with a very few children at each. A cabbage, a potato, an onion or cauliflower could rarely be procured, and then only by the lucky digger, and to many were known only by traditional description.

Water was nearly as difficult of procuration, and when procured held so large a quantity of mud and other ingredients in suspension that it more resembled thick gruel than the limpid life-giving element. In many instances it was necessary to procure a strong horse to pass from one side of the street to the other and as to a pedestrian excursion from Morris’ Inn to the Dunrobin Castle it generally required almost as much preparation and arrangement as an expedition to the Crimea would now require, and then was performed in something like the same style of locomotion as monkeys pass from tree to tree, or as cockatoos climb up the area railings, that is by holding on by teeth and feet.

As, however, after the waters of the deluge had settled and the dry land appeared, so, in Kilmore, as new blood came to be infused, bringing with it those rich elements of which it is composed, a new order of things began to be manifest, and although we can only be yet said to be in a transition state still we are able to exhibit the exact opposite to that which belonged to the past. The town is now, comparatively speaking, easy of access, the road, with the exception of about fourteen miles of intervening space between here and Melbourne, having been completed, and the exception alluded to has some chance of being connected during the ensuing two months. A daily mail, as well as two daily coaches, up and down, regularly pass through here, by which passengers can arrive in Melbourne in five hours. Four numerously attended churches now exist, with three denominational and one national school.

There is a Mechanics’ Institution, with large and airy reading room, in which lectures and readings are weekly delivered. A Total Abstinence Society holds weekly meetings in its own buildings, and there is a Society for the establishment of a Benevolent Asylum and Hospital; who are energetically going to work in the furtherance of their office. Vegetables are now so abundant that they encumber the ground and are going to waste. Artesian wells have been sunk to nearly every house, And beautiful clear and cool water is abundant. The streets have been mcadamised and the footpaths are now in course of alignment, preparatory to kerbing them.”