Cowwarr, Victoria

Cowwarr is a town in Victoria, Australia, 27 kilometres north-east of Traralgon, 174 kilometres east of Melbourne, in the Shire of Wellington. At the 2006 census, Cowwarr and the surrounding area had a population of 563.Established in the 1860s (when the usual spelling was "Cowwar"), the town serviced the area around Walhalla during the Victorian Gold Rush. The Post Office opened on 1 February 1869 as Upper Heyfield and was renamed Cowwarr in 1870. Historic buildings remain in the town today. A Heritage Listed Arts & Craft butter factory built in 1918 has been converted into a gallery for contemporary art the Cowwarr Art Space and the Open Sculpture Studio of Clive Murray-White.Cowwarr was a wayside station on the former Traralgon-Maffra-Stratford railway, which opened in 1883. Daily passenger trains from Maffra ran through to Traralgon station (connecting to Melbourne and beyond) until 1977, and the last freight train passed through the town in 1987. The former railway has been converted to the Gippsland Plains Rail trail. Cowwarr Arts Network Inc. CAN Inc. the not-for-profit community arts organisation based at the Art Space delivers a program of; residencies, exhibitions, performance. The Cricket Club Hotel first established in 1880 as a wooden building the current concrete Art Deco building was constructed in 1930 as was the Cowwarr Community Hall opposite. The town is supported by district farming, including dairy farming, irrigated from the Rainbow Creek, which runs past Cowwarr, and the Thomson River.