Glenormiston

Glenormiston is a rural locality, chiefly known for its agricultural and horticultural college, about 10 km north of Terang in Western Victoria. It was named after the Glenormiston pastoral run.

In 1840 a Scottish pastoralist, Niel Black, acquired the Glenormiston pastoral run on behalf of a British company. He named it after Glenormiston, Peebleshire, Scotland, the birthplace of a member of the company. During the 1850s Black began the building of the Glenormiston homestead, later to become the site of the agricultural college.

In 1889 the Glenormiston estate was subdivided into several smaller farms and the homestead site of about 400 ha was re-acquired by the Black family after Niel Black had been parted from it in 1869. Many of the farm blocks were taken up for dairying, and a butter factory was opened in a woolshed in 1895. The Glenormiston Butter and Cheese Factory moved to larger premises at Noorat in 1910.

A school had been opened in the northern part of the Glenormiston district (known as Kolora) in 1875, and a school had been opened at Noorat in 1875. The subdivision of the Glenormiston estate prompted the opening of Glenormiston school in 1898, and the subdivision sale of another estate of the Black family in 1911 ultimately lead to another primary school in 1921. The district was enumerated as Glenormiston North and Glenormiston South from 1921 until 1961.

In 1949 the Glenormiston homestead and about 280 ha were sold to the State Government for an agricultural college and research station. The butter factory became the Trufood powdered milk factory and was merged with Camperdown interests in 1960. It closed in 1974 and the buildings were acquired by the college in 1980. The college became a campus of the University of Melbourne until 2006 when it was taken over by South West TAFE until it was closed in 2014-15. The homestead is on the Australian and Victorian historic buildings registers.

Glenormiston’s census populations have been:

At the 2011 census dairy farming accounted for 36.5% of employment and other farming 6.3%.