The recent heatwave, summer and the festive season has me thinking of long cool drinks and how the thirsty European settlers, who generally came from cold climates, coped in the hot summers of North Eastern Victoria after a day of back breaking work.

Many sources agree most of the early settlement was on the north side of the river as that was where the first European settlement of the British Colony was.

Hume and Hovell arrived (1824) and all the first settlers arrived down the sa