About Us

1st Eltham “Gellibrand” Cub Pack
Eltham, Victoria, Australia

Eltham is located 20 kms North East from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Eltham is in the shire of Nillumbik.

1st Eltham Joeys, Cubs, Scouts, Venturers and Rovers all meet at the hall in Youth Road Eltham.

Why are we called “Gellibrand” Cub Pack (Thursday Nights) ?
What about “Sweeney” Cub Pack (Wednesday Nights)?

Early Eltham

In February 1836 five men were following the banks of the Diamond Creek towards where Eltham now stands. They were tracking some horses which were heading that way after breaking away from their camp not far from the present site of the Diamond Creek township.

The leader of this group was Joseph Gellibrand who came across from Van Dieman’s Land, which is what Tasmania was then know as, to explore the district around the settlement of Port Phillip. Gellibrand camped overnight and woke the next morning to find his horses missing. Their tracks led him and his party along the creek for some distance. In following his horse’s tracks he reached the site of Eltham and was thus the first white man to look over the area now called Eltham.

Over the next few years Eltham was visited only by a few adventurous men looking for land that would provide them with a living. In 1838 Thomas Sweeney came sailing up the Yarra and in 1842 he applied for permission to purchase a piece of land in the recently surveyed ‘Parish of Nillumbik’. The first wheat crop in the district was planted by Sweeney who also supplied the first grain for a mill that was later built at Eltham. Many travellers passed by the tiny settlement of Eltham and some of them stayed and worked with Sweeney. A tribe of Aborigines living on the river below the Sweeney property were apparently on good terms with Sweeney, for it is said that they helped him build his house.

Very little is know about the Aborigines who originally lived in the Eltham district. There must have been many of them because their stone axes, grinding stones and anvil stones have been found around Research. […]

There we go then, that snippet from the Eltham Then and Now Web Quest gives us most of the answers.