Nyora

Nyora is a rural town in south Gippsland, about midway between Lang Lang and Korumburra, 90 km south-east of Melbourne. It is situated where the foothills of the ranges enclosing Korumburra give way to the heathlands and sandy woodlands around Lang Lang and Western Port.

Nyora is on McDonalds Track, a route surveyed from Lang Lang to east of Poowong in 1862. In the late 1870s farms selections were taken up around the future Nyora township, then known as Lang Lang East. In 1883 Lang Lang East primary school opened. A few years later planning began for the Great Southern Railway from Dandenong to south Gippsland and station locations were mapped out. The station at Lang Lang East was named Nyora, thought to derive from an Aboriginal expression describing a ‘cherry tree’.

In 1886 the Nyora township was proclaimed and town lots went on sale the next year. The railway reached Nyora in 1890. By 1893 there were a post office (1890), stores, blacksmiths, rudimentary hotel, a hall (1892), a coach service to Drouin and a racecourse (1890-c1944). The short lived Great Southern Agricultural Society also had its showground (1893) at Nyora. A school opened in the town in 1903.

In 1910 Nyora became a railway junction when a line was opened through the Bass Valley dairy towns and on to Wonthaggi. Travellers changed trains at Nyora or waited while freight and luggage were loaded. The refreshments stall served astonishing amounts of milk coffee and nourishing snack food in ten or fifteen minutes.

An Anglican church was constructed in 1930 and a car club speedway was opened in 1960 next to the recreation oval. The timber hall burnt down and was replaced in 1968. Perhaps the most influential change was a rural/residential subdivision off McDonalds Track, north of the town, which added substantially to the population.

The railway line to Wonthaggi closed in 1978 and the Great Southern Railway closed in 1993. Soon afterwards the line was refashioned as a tourist railway and the Nyora station (c1915) was saved.

Nyora has a primary school (39 pupils, 2014), a general store, a hotel, a football club with recent premierships in the Ellinbank League, Uniting and Baptist churches, a railway complex and a public hall. Its census populations have been: