The first fifty years of European settlement in Colac were documented by Isaac Hebb.  Forest, Lake, and Plain recordes the next hundred years from 1888.
Colac and district has endured and grown over this perod as it was not indiscriminately developed by a lucky strike, but because of its suitability for farming. The platinum at Barongarook was never found - the wealth of the area lay elsewhere, in the forest of the Otway Ranges, in the onion fields at Cororooke, and the grazing pastures at Warrion, Warncoot, and elsewhere.