Happy Wattle Day!

Posted on Sunday, 1st September 2024 by Janine Rizzetti

Did you know that Heidelberg was once known as the “Wattle District”? Once the railway was put through to Heidelberg in 1888, a popular Sunday outing on a spring day in August or September was to come out to Heidelberg to gather armloads of wattle.

The people of Heidelberg weren’t too happy about it, though: Mr Wallis from the Agriculture Department said at a meeting of the Heidelberg Progress Association in September 1917 " On Sundays people are seen laden with the golden wattle which they have ruthlessly torn from the trees. They act like barbarians, and if they don’t know any better they should be taught to know. After they have torn the wattle down it is dead before they get home.”

The Wattle Day League was formed in 1909 in Sydney and the first Wattle Day was celebrated on 1 September 1910. In 1912 it became associated in Melbourne with charitable collections, and women dressed in white sold blossoms and badges in city streets. From the 1920s onward, it became associated with fund-raising for children’s charities.

Over the years, Wattle Day became less important until it was almost forgotten. It was revived in 1992 when it was declared that “1 September in each year shall be observed as ‘National Wattle Day’ throughout Australia and in the external Territories of Australia”.

As long as you don’t “act like a barbarian” by going home with armfuls of wattle, why not celebrate Wattle Day by visiting the wattle trees around Heidelberg on Sunday? There are wattles along the Yarra flats in Heidelberg, and along Salt Creek in the Rosanna Parklands. While you’re there, you can call in at the Old Courthouse Museum between 2.00 and 5.00 p.m. to see the “Back to School” exhibition.