Bernie Green, A fine reference book to the Drouin district is the book - "Buln Buln", by Graeme Butler (Drouin, 1979) - 794 pages. Selectors moved into West Gippsland in the very early 1870s, the first selections being in the vicinity of Brandy Creek (Buln Buln), a staging post on the old Melbourne - Sale road, and spread rapidly. West Gippsland was first divided into two shires - Buln Buln Shire - comprising the Drouin, Warragul and Tanjil districts, and Narracan Shire - including the Yarragon, Moe, Morwell (west of the Morwell River) and Walhalla districts and much of South Gippsland. Extracts from "Buln Buln" - p.302: "DROUIN - an agricultural and railway township on the Main Gippsland Line opened in March 1879. . . . The name Drouin ... comes from the French inventor of a chlorination process used to separate gold from ore. Gold digging had already been established for years on the Tarago River directly north of Drouin Township." p.303: "Let us contemplate Drouin in 1879 when its voice first began to be heard, or read, every Friday in the Gippsland Independent. This weekly, edited forcibly by John Malachi Gannon, spoke its first words on 13th September, 1878 ..." I understand that for a few years the Gippsland Independent was the main source of news for settlers as far east as Moe and Narracan. John Adams in "So Tall the Trees" (Shire of Narracan, 1978), page 329 provides a list of newspapers, inxluding - "Gippsland Independent, Drouin 1879-82 ... Mirboo Herald, Mirboo 1887-94 ... Moe Register 1888-9 ... Morwell and Mirboo Gazette, Mirboo 1885-94 ... Narracan Shire Advcocate, Moe 1888-1955 ... Warragul Guardian 1879-82 ... Waterloo Express, Yarragon, 1882-93 ..." Walter Savige