Len Claus Kirchheim Reserve

Using horse-and-scoop the contractors, Taylor Brothers, excavated a Government-funded dam on this site in 1898 to supplement the meagre water supply from settlers' slab-shored home wells. Although the dam dried out during the severe 1902 drought it satisfied the needs of the farmers well into the twentieth century until the daily demands of the burgeoning dairying overtaxed its capacity.

Originally known as Walloon Scrub the district was named Kirchheim by the German settlers after one of several homeland towns of that name. At the height of anti-German feeling during World War 1 the name was changed by Government decree to Haigslea after Field Marshall, Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of British forces. The resurrection of the name for this reserve is in tribute to those pioneers, their families and descendants.

Cr Dave Pahlke, May 1998