There is a special place in Halls Gap which I revisited
recently. Behind the Halls Gap caravan park and just beside a
track leading to places with whimsical names such as Venus Baths
and Wonderland Range, lies a stark reminder of pioneering days
in the little town. Halls Gap has few visible reminders of its
pioneering past, but the lonely grave of baby Agnes Folkes, has
seen most of the town’s history pass before it. Fire, flood and
countless tourists have gone before Agnes. John and Phoebe
Foulkes (later to become Folkes), originally from
Worcestershire, arrived in Victoria aboard the “Northumbria“, in
1853. Ida Stanton, in her book Bridging the Gap, tells of John
working as the ship’s carpenter and upon arrival, obtaining work
making architraves and balustrades for the new Victorian
Parliament House. They had moved to the Grampians area by the
end of the 1850s with son George born in 1858 at Moyston. By
1870, John Folkes was operating a sawmill in Halls Gap. The
family home, made of logs, was close to the b