They formed the first rural settlement of Australian Jews on the land — earning the friendly soubriquet “Schlepparton” — and brought with them the culture and language of their homelands.
As one descendant later wrote: “There was, thankfully, one important difference: there were no pogroms. On the contrary, it was a democracy that offered equal rights to all its citizens.”
The settlers participated in the broader farming community, sometimes working on properties beyond their own, yet they retained strong social and religious Jewish traditions.
By 1915, there were 15 Jewish farms, and by 1924 the community had established a humble synagogue in Doyles Rd.
At its peak, the Shepparton Jewish community numbered about 60 families, around 400 people, a relatively small but close-knit and vibrant cultural group.
In 1945, Grahamvale Rd orchardist Leon Pratt pioneered the use of cardboard boxes instead of wooden ones to transport fruit, sparking the creation of Visy Board. A division of Visy is still active in Shepparton today.
The Feiglins, meanwhile, continued making wooden fruit boxes and expanded into the timber industry.
By the 1950s and 1960s, many of Shepparton’s Jewish teenagers, predominantly girls, sought broader opportunities for education, work, social life and marriage elsewhere.
By the 1990s, only a handful of Jewish orchardists remained, and by the early 2000s most of the Jewish families had moved away.
