Camperdown

Camperdown is an historically significant rural town in southwestern Victoria, Australia, 194 kilometres (121 mi) south west of the state capital, Melbourne. At the 2006 census, Camperdown had a population of 3,165. The Djargurd Wurrung people are the traditional aboriginal people of the Camperdown area, who had lived in the area for thousands of years as a semi-nomadic hunter gatherer society.

The first British settlers arrived in the area from Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) after 1835 to establish sheep runs. Although settlement was met with resistance by some of the local aborigines, the town's history also records remarkable instances of mutual assistance and friendship between native and settler peoples. Notable on this account is the family of David Fenton, the Scottish Presbyterian shepherd and drover who built the first house in Camperdown in 1853.