History of the Mildura Working Man’s Club
Today Mildura is the heart of a huge wine and fruit growing region, and centre of a range of exciting holiday activities. The municipality covers an area of 22,330 square kilometres with the population being approximately 46,000. The municipality has a regional flavour given its distance from Melbourne and its borders to New South Wales and South Australia. However, we have come along way.

The history of the City of Mildura and the Mildura Working Mans Club spans over 100 years and we can now reflect on one of Australia's amazing colonisation stories. The history of our club is one of the few in the world which runs parallel with its town’s history. It's a compelling story.

The story of Mildura, situated in the northern most point of the Australian State of Victoria can be fittingly introduced by a sentence extracted from the famous "Red Book" published in 1888 to advertise the new colony. In part, that sentence reads "…there is probably no nobler task for human enterprise in the present day than that which is to be found in the great pioneer work of colonisation…". Mildura irrigation settlement began in 1887 when two visionary Americans, George and "W.B." Chaffey signed a deed which was to bring about changes of such magnitude that could not have been envisaged during those early days of colonisation.

Settlers carved a niche out of semi-arid country against the incredible odds that had to be surmounted a century before last. No ordinary people could have survived the trials and tribulations of nature and market forces over the years. Mark Twain compared it favourably with the Mississippi River when he visited late in the 1800's. And indeed, a decade or two before he came, it seemed as if the Murray might well become another Mississippi.

Among the hardship, in the true pioneering spirit, the colonists never lost sight of the wholesome things in life. In their true determination to establish happy homes amid civilised conditions the settlers established choral and musical societies, sporting bodies and church groups in order to nurture their souls. As it has always been an inherent quality of human nature to seek the company of others, and from the first year of the settlement's existence plans were put into place to establish a licensed social club. It must be remembered that this was propagated at a time when the irrigation settlement was promoted as a temperance colony. From the start, not, as often reported, because the Chaffey brothers were teetotallers, but rather the influences of an era when prohibition was held in widespread favour for the whole of Victoria.