Lismore, Victoria 4.08

Lismore is a town in Victoria, Australia, located on the Hamilton Highway 170km west of Melbourne. It is part of the Corangamite Shire local government area. The town is located at a point equidistant from Geelong and Warrnambool. At the 2006 census, Lismore had a population of 513. At the 2001 census, Lismore had a population of 262.HistoryThe town which is now Lismore was first settled by Europeans when a John Brown was forced to stop to repair a wagon axle. It broke while he forded the creek now named Brown's Waterholes. Lismore was surveyed and named in the 1850s. The settlement at that time was a rough grog shanty called the White Swan Hotel and a few houses near the crossing of Brown's Water Holes. Lismore Post Office opened on 1 December 1864.Lismore grew through the years to become a prosperous service town for the surrounding fine wool producing properties. Its peak of population was probably in the 1950s when many of the large properties of the area were divided up to make farms for returned soldiers. Since the late sixties, Lismore has slowly become more of a retirement town, though it still has a good primary school and other facilities for younger residents. For its size, the town has a remarkable array of services and recreation and leisure activities.The Town todayA small Hamilton Highway town, Lismore lies just a few kilometres from the northernmost lakes in the Colac Lakes system. There are more than 50 lakes in the chain that spreads across the huge sweep of volcanic plains to the north of Colac. The largest lake, Lake Corangamite, is three times saltier than the ocean and only a species of minnow which has an extreme tolerance to salt can survive in its waters.