Serviceton is a small town in Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, located near the Victorian-South Australian border

South Australia-Victoria border dispute

The border between the Australian states of South Australia and Victoria was established in 1836 by imperial letters patent "as the 141st degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich"...

, 437 kilometres north-west of Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

. The town was named after James Service

James Service

James Service , Australian colonial politician, was the 12th Premier of Victoria, Australia.-Biography:Service was born in Kilwinning, Ayrshire, Scotland, and as a young man worked in a Glasgow tea importing business, Thomas Corbett and Company...

, Premier of Victoria in 1880 and from 1883-86. At the 2006 census

Census in Australia

The Australian census is administered once every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The most recent census was conducted on 9 August 2011; the next will be conducted in 2016. Prior to the introduction of regular censuses in 1961, they had also been run in 1901, 1911, 1921, 1933,...

, Serviceton and the surrounding area had a population of 377.

When the Victorian and South Australia

South Australia

South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

n railways were joined at the old border in 1887, a station was built on the border. The border was intended to be on the 141st meridian east

141st meridian east

The 141st meridian east of Greenwich is a line of longitude that extends extends from the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, Australasia, the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica to the South Pole....

 but, owing to a surveying error, border markers were placed 3.6 km west of the meridian. Victoria finally succeeded in having the erroneously surveyed border

South Australia-Victoria border dispute

The border between the Australian states of South Australia and Victoria was established in 1836 by imperial letters patent "as the 141st degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich"...

 declared to be the legal border in 1913, and therefore Serviceton is now fully in Victoria. The station is not used but The Overland passes through the town. Nevertheless, the old South Australian Railways

South Australian Railways

South Australian Railways built and operated railways in South Australia from 1854 to the incorporation of its non-urban railways into the Australian National Railways Commission in 1975, together with the former Commonwealth Railways and the former Tasmanian Government Railways...

, and its successors, the Australian National Railways Commission

Australian National Railways Commission

The Australian National Railways Commission was a government owned railway operator in Australia. ANRC was also known as Australian National Railways in its early years and was later rebranded as Australian National .-History:...

, the National Rail Corporation

National Rail Corporation

The National Rail Corporation was a rail operator in Australia. The Australian Government, New South Wales and Victoria established the National Rail Corporation in 1992...

 and the Australian Rail Track Corporation

Australian Rail Track Corporation

Australian Rail Track Corporation is a federal government owned corporation established in 1997 that owns, leases, maintains and controls the majority of main line standard gauge railway lines on the mainland of Australia, known as the Defined Interstate Rail Network .-History:The Interstate...

 have continued to own the railway to Serviceton outright. Serviceton Post Office opened on 16 September 1886, from 1908 to 1911 it was known as Serviceton Railway Station. A Serviceton North office on the Western Highway

Western Highway, Victoria

The Western Highway is part of the principal route linking the Australian cities of Melbourne and Adelaide with a length of approximately 314 kilometres. It is a part of the National Highway network and designated as National Highway A8...

 operated from 1911 until 1954 and a Serviceton South office was open briefly in 1926 and 1927.

The town is the subject of a Tom Waits

Tom Waits

Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...

 song entitled Town With No Cheer from his album Swordfishtrombones

Swordfishtrombones

Swordfishtrombones is an album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1983. It was the first album that Waits produced himself....

.

Golfers play at the course of the Serviceton Golf Club on the Adelaide-Melbourne Highway.