Stanley, Victoria

Stanley is a small town approximately 9km from Beechworth in Victoria noted for its apple & nut farms. At the, Stanley had a population of 324.The town was formerly known as Snake Gully and Nine Mile Creek. Many parts of this rural community have the remains of gold diggings from the Victorian gold rush of the mid-1800s.Gold rush eraThe district has an important historic gold mining past and produced some colourful people during that heyday. Among them was John Scarlett (1824-?), a Scottish miner. Scarlett was involved in all things associated with writing to the newspapers, calling meetings and voicing his opinions. Originally a dry miner, he advocated rights for this type of operator, then on acquiring access to water he became an advocate for wet miners to the exclusion of the dry operators. He stood for mining board elections and then Victorian parliament in 1859. He appears in two historical works of the district: Woods, Beechworth and more so in O'Brien, Shenanigans. Scarlett eventually became the Secretary for the local roads board. No known photo of him exists. In her book, Carole Woods termed Scarlett the "Nine Mile Warrior". O'Brien's work with the local 1850s papers uncovered an advertisement against Scarlett and much doggerel verse: a local paper christened Scarlett a "water squatter".During the gold era, the Stanley region comprised a higher proportion of miners from Scotland, in comparison to other localities in the surrounding area. (O'Brien) The gold mining carried out in the district involved (wet) sluicing operations.Like many goldfields in northeastern Victoria there was a Chinese presence at Stanley.