Chum Creek

Chum Creek is a rural locality 53 km north-east of central Melbourne and immediately north-west of Healesville. The creek’s headwaters are in the vicinity of Toolangi. It joins the Watts River in Healesville which in turn joins the Yarra. The name originated as New Chum Creek, a reference to traces of gold found in the creek in the mid-1850s, which attracted a few ‘new chum’ miners.

There were a few grassy flats near Watts River, but most of the creek’s terrain was tree covered. A sawmill was established on Chum Creek in 1891, and tree cutting gave way to clearing and farm selections. New Chum Creek was surveyed for selection in 1892 and a school opened in 1897, operating part time with Toolangi, 14 km to the north. There was an early Methodist church.

In the 1930s Lake Yambunga was excavated on Chum Creek for swimming and camping. A new Presbyterian church was built in 1937. There is rural/residential living near Healesville, and settlement thins out further north along the Healesville-King Lake Road in the vicinity of the school (55 pupils, 2014). Chum Creek’s census population has been: