Smeaton is a rural town in the state of Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 near the town of Creswick

Creswick, Victoria

Creswick is a town in west-central Victoria, Australia. It is located 18 kilometres north of Ballarat and 129 km northwest of Melbourne, in Shire of Hepburn. It is 430 metres above sea level. At the 2006 census, Creswick had a population of 2,485...

. At the 2006 census

Census in Australia

The Australian census is administered once every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The most recent census was conducted on 9 August 2011; the next will be conducted in 2016. Prior to the introduction of regular censuses in 1961, they had also been run in 1901, 1911, 1921, 1933,...

, Smeaton had a population of 250.

The town was founded by Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 settler Captain John Hepburn

John Stuart Hepburn

John Stuart Hepburn was an early pastoralist and landholder in Victoria, Australia.Hepburn was born in Scotland in 1800. He initially became a seafaring man and progressed to become a Master of a 226 ton brig, The Alice. In 1835 the Alice sailed for Hobart...

 who was a colonial squatter

Squatting (pastoral)

In Australian history, a squatter was one who occupied a large tract of Crown land in order to graze livestock.  Initially often having no legal rights to the land, they gained its usage by being the first Europeans in the area....

 in the 1840s. Hepburn held under Government licence about 20,000 acres (80 km²) for his sheep and cattle run which he drove overland from Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

. He built Smeaton House in 1849 with the assistance of British colonial migrants.

Smeaton Post Office opened on 21 June 1860 and closed in 1993.

Hepburn became a very high profile figure in the district, promoted gold mines and became a Justice of the Peace

Justice of the Peace

A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...

 before he died in 1860.

The death of Capt John Hepburn was published in the Creswick Newspaper and Argus (Age) Newspapers of that period.

Smeaton is now home to 2 large seed and grain processors, one of which is a very large exporter of value added pulses, grains and seeds and is currently building a new oat mill to process an additional 60,000 tonne of oats a year.