A quiet wheatbelt town on the tree-lined Wimmera River adjacent to Little Desert National Park.
Location: 334km north-west of Melbourne; 30-minute drive from Horsham. Map
Origin of name: A Ceylonese (Sri Lanka) word, meaning 'land of figs'. Europeans initially knew this area as Nine Creeks, owing to the many branches of the Wimmera River. The first station was established in 1846 by Horatio Ellerman and George Shaw. Ellerman named it Antwerp after his birthplace in Belgium.
Brief history: the district was occupied by the Wotjobaluk people prior to white settlement. It was estimated that there were some 1200 Aborigines in the area in 1852 while an 1877 census recorded 103 survivors, many of them at Ebenezer mission. White selectors began to take up land as of 1873. In 1882 Dimboola became a railhead and remained so until the Serviceton line opened in 1887. It became the changeover point for crews on the original Adelaide-Melbourne railway.
Natural features: Wimmera River; Pink Lake; Pomponderoo Hill Nature Walk; mallee fowl prowl in the Lowan Sanctuary at Kiata 26km to the west
Heritage features: Ebenezer Mission Station (1858); Mechanic's Institute (1877); Aboriginal canoe trees, where canoes have been cut out of the red gums in a single piece of bark, are near the town on the Wimmera River.