National Trust Victorian chief executive Collette Brennan and Victorian heritage agency and organisation leaders visited Beechworth on 12-13 March.

Ms Brennan met with Beechworth History and Heritage Society (BHHS) to discuss preservation goals and exhibition opportunities for horse-drawn vehicles from the Trust’s carriage collection long held in Beechworth.

The Trust in February moved to relocate from local storage some of the vehicles neither built nor operated in the North East.

These will be exhibited and interpreted at Trust properties in Melbourne and southern Victoria.

BHHS is working to exhibit up to eight vehicles from the collection that are to remain in Beechworth.

President Jamie Kronborg said the society’s goal, with the Trust’s support, was to interpret the vehicles to tell how horsepower drove Beechworth’s colonial goldrush, migration and later development as a government, service and commercial centre in the North East.

“We were delighted to welcome Collette to Beechworth and to talk about our ambition and proposed plans for these extraordinary horse-drawn vehicles used in ‘heavy lifting’ that made Beechworth,” he said.

“We are also looking to collaborate in a range of ways with Beechworth Secondary College.”

Ms Brennan’s visit coincided with a tour of North East heritage sites and communities by the Heritage Council of Victoria.

Councillors were joined by Heritage Victoria executive director Steven Avery, some advisers, and Royal Historical Society of Victoria executive director Steven Cooke.

The group visited Mount Buffalo and in Beechworth had dinner at the Hotel Nicholas, toured Old Beechworth Gaol, inspected the historic administrative precinct, including the police stables and town hall, Burke Museum, Mayday Hills site, powder magazine, an American pattern-book house in Finch Street, and the Chinese and Jewish sections at Beechworth cemetery.

The tour was guided by independent heritage adviser Deborah Kemp.

The visitors went on to look at hydraulic sluicing sites for mining in Yackandandah and heritage sites in Wangaratta and Benalla.