European settlement began in the area when Lieutenant Andrew Baxter and his wife
Annie Baxter squatted on the Yambuck pastoral run in 1843. Annie Baxter's diary notes 13 occasions where European settlers formed armed and mounted hunting parties to attack and harass the Gunditjmara people. Those events were part of the significant
conflict between Aboriginal people and Europeans that occurred around Yambuk at the time. Some of the most violent clashes in the
Western District of Victoria took place near the Shaw River and the
Eumeralla River. That conflict, known as the
Eumeralla wars, occurred from the 1840s until about 1860. In 1921, legislation was passed in the
Victorian Parliament authorising the extension of the
Port Fairy railway line to Yambuk, a distance of . Work on the extension never began. Lake Yambuk and the
Yambuk Important Bird Area lie between the town and the coast. Near the lake is the 33-metre-long Yambuk Slide. Yambuk is the site of
Pacific Blue's
Yambuk Wind Farm and the adjacent
Codrington Wind Farm. ==References ==