In 1844, William Taylor and Dugald McPherson established a pastoral run near the division of the
Wimmera River, where one branch forms the Yarriambiack Creek. By 1848, Taylor became the sole proprietor of his portion, naming it Longerenong. He sold the run in 1856 to brothers Charles and
Samuel Wilson, the latter of whom built the Longerenong Homestead in 1862 and later funded Wilson Hall at the University of Melbourne. In the 1870s, parts of the run were opened for farming, and a short-lived school operated from 1877 to 1879. In 1889 when the Victorian Council of Agricultural Education established an agricultural college on 966 hectares of fertile loamy land. == Geography ==