Еа: История и современность австралийского городка.

Yea ('/j//eɪ/ YAY') is a town in Victoria, Australia north east of the state capital Melbourne at the junction of the Goulburn Valley Highway and the Melba Highway, in the Shire of Murrindindi local government area. In an area originally inhabited by the Taungurung people, it was first visited by Europeans of the Hume and Hovell expedition in 1824, and within 15 years most of the land in the area had been taken up by graziers. Surveyed in 1855, the township grew as a service centre for grazing, gold mining and timber getting in the area. The town has had a fairly stable population (around 1,100) since 1900, though it now has a relatively old population. The town economy is based around servicing the farming sector, and tourism, with good road links but little public transport. The town has education supplied by three schools (state primary and high schools, and a Catholic primary). It has three churches, and active sporting clubs. Heritage sites around the town include the railway station buildings, Purcell's General Store (run by the same family for approximately 100 years), and the nearby Yea Flora Fossil Site, where the most ancient leafy foliage so far found on earth was discovered.

The area was historically inhabited by the Taungurung people. They knew the Yea River as Caluther, and the Goulburn River as Warring. The first Europeans in the area were a party of explorers led by William Hovell and Hamilton Hume, who crossed the Goulburn River at a point near Molesworth in December 1824, and crossed the stream they named Muddy Creek the following day. – a British Army colonel killed in June of that year at the Battle of the Great Redan in the Crimean War, and who had been Clarke's commanding officer in England in 1830s. Town lots went on sale at Kilmore the following year.

Yea is located on the inside (west and south) of a bend in the Yea River about south east of where it meets the Goulburn River. It is north east of Melbourne at above sea level, on the northern slopes of the Great Dividing Range. The centre of the town is on the flood plain of the Yea River, but the residential area to the south extends onto the slopes of the nearby hills. The Goulburn Valley Highway (B340) passes through the town, and the Melba Highway (B300) from Melbourne's eastern suburbs ends there. The other direct route to Melbourne is via the Yea Whittlesea road (C725). Yea's built environment consists of commercial, retail and public buildings along the Goulburn and Melba Highways as they run through the town, with residential areas largely to the south of the commercial centre, though newer residential estates have been developed to the west. The residential areas consist almost entirely of low density, single storey detached houses on their own blocks. The surrounding area consists largely of pastoral properties running beef cattle and sheep.

No intact examples of native vegetation survive in the area immediately around Yea. That vegetation consisted of grassy woodlands dominated by river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) on the creeklines and nearby plains, grading to grassy forest dominated by Acacia and box Eucalyptus species in the nearby valleys and hills. The Yea Wetlands, an area of immediately to the east of the town, and situated between two branches of the Yea River, has had extensive work done to restore its native vegetation. This site is one of only six known locations of the ancient greenling damselfly (Hemiphlebia mirabilis), although no specimens have been recorded there since 2001.

The first local governance in the area was the Yea District Road Board, formed in 1869, which became the Shire of Yea in 1873.

At the , the town of Yea had a population of 1,209. Census records show the population of Yea has remained relatively stable since the beginning of the 20th century, except for a dip in the post second world war period. The number of dwellings has doubled over the same period.

Yea has been a town servicing the agricultural and resources industries of the surrounding area since its inception. These included pastoral agriculture for the entire period, gold mining before 1900, and timber cutting and dairying from then until the late 20th century. The Yea Dairy Factory opened in 1891, and closed in 1993, but other industrial or manufacturing activities have never reached significant scale. The retail area of Yea still services the farming activities of the area, but over half of the shops now involve food service.

The Yea District Road Board and its successor the Shire of Yea achieved substantial improvements in transport infrastructure in the area, including the bridges at Molesworth (1874) The last passenger service ran on 28 May 1977, with the line closed on 18 November 1978. The railway line from Tallarook to Mansfield has now been converted to the Great Victorian Rail Trail. With the withdrawal of the train service, public transport services to Yea are now limited to a V/Line coach service to Melbourne or Mansfield twice a day, and a coach service from Alexandra to Seymour via Yea once a day (on weekdays) The Seymour train line 30 mins away by car is easily accessed for commuting to and from Melbourne with a frequent time table of train services.

Although private religious worship occurred beforehand, the first public services were probably held in the 1850s. Managed also from the school is the Access Yea Community Education Program (AYCE), a statewide educational program that is designed to help school leavers and other students who do not fit into the regular school system. The Yea Primary School and the catholic Sacred Heart Parish Primary School provide education for primary level students.

The earliest available record of a cricket match in Yea is for January 1869, against a Murrundindi side, though formal creation of a club seems not to have occurred until 1872. An early record of a lawn tennis match between teams from Yea and Alexandra one which 'created a large amount of interest in consequence of its being the first occasion that the local club has pitted its members against those belonging to a distant club' occurred on the Queen's Birthday holiday in June 1891, though a petition (submitted in the same year) to formally reserve land for tennis stated that it 'has been used for years by the Tennis Club'. Although signs at the entrances to the town state that Yea is the birthplace of olympic equestrian Bill Roycroft, he was actually born in Melbourne and grew up in Flowerdale. The Yea Football Netball Club administers the two sports in the town, seniors playing in the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football and Netball League, and juniors in the Seymour District Junior Football Netball League. The senior netball teams have met with recent success. Due to the relative isolation of the town, the Tigers have competed in a number of different leagues, including the Kyabram & District Football League and the now defunct Central Goulburn Football League. The Yea Racing Club schedules three race meetings a year, and Yea St Patrick's Racing Club also hold a picnic race meeting each year at the Yea racecourse. Golfers play at the course of the Yea Golf Club on Racecourse Road.

Yea has a number of buildings on the Victorian Heritage Register. The former Yea railway station "is the most intact example of a small group of standard Gothic styled Railway Station buildings." Built in 1889, it is now managed by a Committee of Management and used for community events, including the monthly Yea Country Market. The former Purcells General Store "is one of the oldest buildings still intact in Yea and was owned and operated by several generations of the Purcell family until 1986."