Former Pomonal teacher Roy Trimble has begun a mission to preserve Dobie’s history.
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Mr Trimble said the area beginning on Ararat’s south-east outskirts was not that well documented, especially in photographs or illustrations.
Dobie is also set for major changes over the next two years with the duplication of the Western Highway from Buangor to Ararat.
“I am very interested in the history of a place called Dobie, which is seven kilometres east of Ararat o the Western Highway,” Mr Trimble said.
“Dobie was never a township; however it was a community that had a focus on number of public buildings and private properties in the district.
“Why i have taken a special interest in this, is because the more I have learned about it, the more fascinating Dobie becomes.”
Last week, Mr Trimble invited long-time Dobie residents John Richardson and Ray Clark to help confirm a theory that Dobie’s hall or school building was relocated to the grounds of Ararat’s Lutheran Church on High Street.
Mr Richardson, a Dobie landowner, said his great grandfather had come over from Scotland to settle in the area.
He thought the building towards the rear of the Ararat Lutheran church grounds might be the old Dobie hall, but he was never a student at Dobie’s school.
He caught the train to Ararat.
Mr Clark left Dobie to work at Prestige in Ararat after living on the former Gorrinn Station.
“She was a pretty austere life in those days,” he said.
“I was the youngest of five in the family.”
Mr Clark believed the Lutheran Church building could have been the main school building at Dobie.
“I’m pretty sure that the school, when we left there, was moved to Bayindeen.”
Mr Trimble said he found records that the building at the Lutheran church previously had been a Presbyterian Church had come from Dobie, and he now thought it was the former Dobie Hall after speaking with Mr Clark and Mr Richardson.