“On hot days I only wore a shift and cotton gown, but when the weather turns cold I am glad to put on all my petticoats.” Penelope Selby
Needs Work SteD: rename Images with page numbers and description
Preface
In 1969 the late Muriel Green gave a talk to a meeting of the Eastern Region of Historical Societies on the pioneer women of Doncaster-Templestowe. From this talk came the suggestion that I should write a book to record the lives of these courageous women.
A history of a district is incomplete without the story of the women who lived in it but in history books women are rarely mentioned. Official records and documents, for the most part, only show the names and activities of men; for the husband owned the land and took part in official functions. The information in this book came from stories handed down by families, a few rare letters and accounts written by those who came to the district during the early years.
I want to thank the many people who contributed stories and details of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers life in early Doncaster.
I would also like to thank my wife Paddy, for her constant help during the writing of “Petticoats in the Orchards”.
The Pioneer Women of Doncaster came to a new country of uncultivated bush and in their lifetime saw the land become the leading Orchard district of Victoria.
Part 1 The Early Years
“When the ground was wet and muddy the women tucked up their skirts as they worked in the orchard, leaving their petticoats to blow in the breeze.”
Kate Schramm stood on the verandah of her house looking over the frail trees at the panorama of orchards stretching away into the distance. On this warm New Years day everyone was talking about the new century but Kate was thinking of her past in Doncaster. She had lived for half a century in this country and seen many changes in that time. Of course she didn’t remember Doncaster in those first years, for she was only a small child but her earliest memories were of the stringy bark forest that surrounded her home and the small clearing where her father grew vegetables. There were no orchards then, only a few young fruit trees alongside houses. Now there were acres of fruit trees everywhere. Since the government had paid a levy for all new fruit trees planted, it seemed that everyone was ploughing up their farms or clearing new land to plant blocks of peaches, apples and pears.
The end of the century seemed to be a climax to the years of effort that made Doncaster a major fruit-growing district. The settlers had come to a hard land, covered with a thick forest of stringy bark, box, wattle and she-oak. The men who pioneered Doncaster faced the back-breaking effort of continuous hard work attacking the rock-hard soil, and the drudgery of carrying water to keep plants alive during the hot, dry summer, and at the same time providing sustenance for their families. The pioneer women had to contend with home-sickness, a minimum of material comforts and the burden of continual childbirth. So often, what should have been a joyous family life for a woman, became an ordeal of hopeless illness and relentless death with the anguish of loss. By the end of the century, the years of hard work were being repaid with prosperity and a happy family life for the orchardists, most of whom had survived the depression of the 1890’s.
The women who lived on the orchards of Doncaster were unique in their involvement with the land. Unlike wives of other farmers, who often never experienced their husbands work, natures yearly cycle of growth impressed itself directly on their daily lives. Spring filled their surroundings with a display of fresh, crisp blossom and the promise of the harvest to come. In summer, clusters of fruit weighed down the branches and the entire family went out into the orchard to gather the fruit.
Many women shared their husbands or fathers work. They learnt to prune, coming to know the trees, and after harvest often, like Phillipine Thiele or Mary Hislop, went to market, gaining the satisfaction of being paid for the years labour. At harvest time the women moved through the trees, handling the fruit as they picked and sorted the ripe crop. They felt the smooth skin of apples, the velvety texture of the peaches with its delicate flesh which they learnt to handle with care. Often a baby played in a packing case, used as a playpen, with a cigarette tin, containing a few pebbles, as a rattle. At night, tired and aching from the days hard work, the women shared their husbands satisfaction of bringing in a good harvest.
The first settlers in this virgin country that was to become Doncaster, grazed sheep or cattle or cleared a paddock for a crop such as wheat. They built a hut in a hurry and did not put much effort into its fittings. There would be a bench, a stool, a cracked cup or two, tin pannikins, a couple of knives and forks and several plates. When a settler came into the bush with his wife, then he took more care to make their hut comfortable. His wife, with memories of lace curtains, frilled bedcovers and doyleys on delicate furniture, added a few of her prized possessions to their crude home, but often the rain dripped through the bark roof and the cold wind would blow through cracks in the walls.
.
Margaret Harbour
Catherine Harbour lived in a hut such as this, with her husband William, alongside the track that later became Doncaster Road. Here, in this isolated spot, their baby girl Margaret was born early in 1841. She was the first white child to be born in Doncaster. Catherine stayed in the district, eventually living in Doncaster Road near Blackburn Road, and Margaret grew up to marry William Beavis. Margaret’s descendants became a well known Doncaster family.
Mrs Isabella Duncan wife of Alexander Duncan, in the front garden of her wattle and daub house near the intersection of Bulleen Road and Thompsons Road at Bulleen. Alexander and Isabella settled in Bulleen in or about the year 1847 and leased one of the farms on the Carlton Estate. DP0664, DP0395)
Isabella Duncan
From a comfortable mansion on a large Scottish estate to a mud hut on 'the banks of the Yarra, was a dramatic change in living conditions. Isabella Duncan was able to cope with this change for she was a woman of spirit and determination. Three years earlier she had defied her wealthy parents and married a groom from the family stables, Alexander Duncan. In 1839, the couple, now reconciled with her parents, left for Australia with a party of Scottish immigrants. Isabella, her husband Alexander and their two children sailed on the ship "Midlothian" arriving in Melbourne in June that year.
Isabella gained her first experience of Melbourne from a tent in Collins Street where she lived for a month just above the site of the present City Square, but it was then still bushland. The next year Isabella was in her own home, a wattle and daube hut alongside Koonung Creek near where it enters the Yarra. Isabella, Alexander and the girls shared the hut with two other men, a youth and a young girl. Her piano and a few pieces of furniture from Scotland, decorated the rooms and an oil painting of Isabella hung on the wall.
They lived on the rich river flats at Bulleen. The grassland was dotted with a few magnificent, spreading red gum trees and chains of lagoons broke up the ground. The largest was called Lake Bulleen, a large area of water surrounded by thick reeds that were almost impenetrable. The lagoons teemed with fish, and water birds filled the air with their wild cries.
While Isabella learnt to be a farmers wife, growing vegetables, making butter and bread and keeping chooks, Alexander helped his partners drain the swamps, plough the land, and plant wheat and barley. The youth spent the day watching the cows, for in the first years there were no fences to hold the cattle and protect the crops. Some years later a bull broke through a fence, escaping into the bush. The bull was not lost but continually evaded capture. For many years the determined animal forced its way into Laidlaw's paddocks or into Duncan’s pasture to mate cows.
Several fellow passengers from the “Midlothian” had settled in Bulleen and across the river in Heidelberg. In response to a call from these men, Rev. Peter Gunn, a Presbyterian minister came to Bulleen to hold a church service in December, 1843. Isabella and Alexander offered their barn for the service. A butter churn was used as a reading table and the congregation sat on planks laid across bags of wheat.
During the 1840‘s the fertile river flats were covered with acres of wheat and barley. At harvest time the fields of golden grain were a picturesque sight. Isabella and her eldest daughter were out in the fields following the reapers as they moved across the crop, swinging scythes in a steady rhythm. The girls helped gather the fallen corn, tying the sheaths and stacking the stooks in rows across the empty stubble.
Isabella’s eldest son, James, was born soon after arriving in Bulleen. In the following years she had more children, her family increasing to 4 boys and 5 girls, but she kept up the standards she had been used to in Scotland. Sunday was the Sabbath, when they put on their best clothes and washed and dressed the children carefully. Before Sunday dinner, cooked over the open fire, family prayers were held, and in .the afternoon, Alexander was asked to read from the Bible. Then hymns were sung as Isabella played the piano. She was a well-educated woman who played very well. It was a “square piano” and looked something like a flat box on legs, with a keyboard on the front. Isabella taught her children to read and write and do sums, holding regular classes. Soon other families sent their children to the house to join the children during their classes. So Isabella became the first “school teacher” in the district.
In 1857 Alexander Duncan died. James now a sixteen year old boy, took over the responsibility for the dairy farm. Continuous flooding along the river flats often ruined crops so their ninety four acres were now all turned to grass and the dairy herd enlarged, A new barn and cheese factory was built on higher ground in Thompsons Road. In 1863, after days of steady rain, the creek and the river flooded. Every day the water rose higher, flooding Isabella’s house till only the roof showed above the water. The Yarra flats were like a sea that stretched away into the distance. Isabella and her children went with a neighbour to shelter in an empty house on dry land. Gradually the water receded and as the level fell, water swirled out of the door of their home, carrying with it Isabella’s piano. It floated out the door and down the creek finally coming to rest against a submerged log.
Isabella’s eldest daughter, also called Isabella, married a fellow countryman and neighbour, George Smith. They extended their dairy farm by purchasing her mother’s farm and in 1890 built a two story mansion on the hill overlooking their new land. With nostalgic memories of their home country, they called their new home “Ben Nevis”’.
When the immigrants who came to Australia, left their home land, they dreamt of making a fortune in the new country,. Many were sadly disappointed, but those, such as Isabella Duncan’s daughter, who did succeed, wished to display their new wealth in the tangible form of bricks and mortar.
Sarah Pullin
Sarah Pullin. Born Sarah Wall in 1815. Married Ambrose Pullin in 1834. They emigrated to the Port Phillip District of New South Wales (now Victoria) in 1841 and rented farm numbers 19 and 20 of the farm subdivision of the Carlton Estate in the parish of Bulleen. Sarah died on 24 October 1899. DP0673
Among the first to lease land from Unwins Special Survey was Ambrose Pullin, and his wife Sarah was among the first women to come to the district. In 1841 Ambrose and Sarah Pullin, with their three young children came to live in a hut on the future Church Road. There were no roads then, only tracks, through the thick scrub and trees, tracks that had been made by kangaroos and used by aborigines.
For twelve years Ambrose Pullin leased a large area on the west side of Church Road, where he grew wheat. It was a lonely place. On two occasions Sarah was attacked by wild dogs as she walked through the sparsely populated bush of Templestowe. She escaped by climbing a gum tree and' stayed just above the reach of the dogs barking jaws. The second time this happened, Sarah had to wait up the tree all the morning till someone passed by and rescued her.
The Pullins left the district but their eldest daughter stayed in Templestowe. She married one of the Tucker boys and went to live in Smiths Road. Her brother married one of the Tucker girls.
Eliza Pickering
Eliza Pickering. Born Eliza Charlotte Hill in 1814. Married Joseph Pickering in 1833. In 1847, their daughter Kate was born at Bedford, England. They emigrated to Victoria in the late 1840's. Mrs Pickering died in 1886. DP0654
In 1849 Eliza Charlotte Pickering and her husband Joseph, arrived in Melbourne with letters of introduction to Governor Latrobe and Bishop Perry. Eliza had been born in 1814 and at the age of 19 married Joseph Pickering, the son of a farmer in Bedfordshire. They had comfortable means and lived in a fine, ivy-covered two-storey house. In Australia, with its vast open spaces, they saw a great opportunity for the future with land for themselves and their children.
In the stringybark forest that was later to be called Doncaster the Pickerings leased land for a farm from Ambrose Pullin. The site was just north of the present Doncaster High School playing field, but at that time thick scrub, stringybark and box gum covered the ground. Eliza came to the rough hut that Joseph built in this isolated, silent bush with six children. The eldest, 14 year old Arthur, later to become a clergyman, and the youngest, two year old Kate, who grew up to become Mrs. Schramm. Two years later another son, John was bom. Though rough and isolated, for the children it was all a great adventure. They explored the strange Australian bush around their new home, every day finding something new but, with baby John only a few weeks old, Eliza faced the Australian bush at its very worst, for on Thursday February 5th, Victoria was devastated by the fiercest bushfires ever.
The night had been hot and oppressive, with dawn bringing no relief. As the sun climbed into the intensely glaring sky and the temperature rose to 117oF, bushfires fanned by gale force winds, swept across the countryside of Victoria.
The streets of Melbourne were blotted out by dense smoke and charred leaves. So extensive were the fires, that ships in Bass Strait were engulfed in smoke. The fires rushed through Doncaster, burning the Pickering farm on its way. The family, caught in the inferno, escaped with their lives but lost everything and one of the young girls had her face badly burnt. Nothing in England had prepared Eliza for a wild Australian bushfire; but she survived the ordeal and went on to have her last baby, Frederick, in 1852.
Crown land in East Doncaster, was offered for sale in 1853. Joseph Pickering purchased twenty acres of an estate in Blackburn Road opposite Andersons Creek Road. Eliza found a happier life in her new home after the hardships of the first years. Now she had a house and could entertain friends, and Joseph, who was a lay reader of the Church of England, could conduct services in his new home.
He had already organised Sunday services in Pullins Barn. Eliza enjoyed her family for she was a good-hearted woman. She looked forward to the arrival of boxes of gifts from England. Relatives in the home country frequently sent gifts to the Pickerings. The family would gather around the boxes and open them with great excitement. Dresses, lace, bonnets and household articles were unpacked amid yells of delight and friendly argument.
In 1860 Joseph Pickering became Doncasters first Postmaster and a few years later took on the position of Registrar of Births and Deaths. The Pickerings purchased a small wine shop on the hill in Doncaster and built a general store, post office, and house on the land. The Store gave them a new, happier life, for Joseph was not suited to farming. As a storekeeper he was in his element and Eliza found the new position gave her social prestige.
Doncaster Post Office 1905? 1907?. Woman & Child on verandah. "The Age 105,000 Daily" "The Leader Illustrated". Post Office in 1905 built by Joseph Picketing. E. J Symons. DP0130. CollectionsVic791899 Daniel Harvey Collection.
Doncaster had become a town with a population of 200. Eliza enjoyed life in the home behind the post office; cooking nourishing meals, entertaining friends and making clothes for her children. Some of her family had now grown up. Arthur in his thirties, was now ordained and had his own church. Henry and Charles were in their twenties and the youngest boys, John and Fred, still in their teens. Kate and Ellen were married but Susan stayed home and never left the house for her face was scarred where it had been burnt in the fire.
As soon as he had settled in the post office Joseph Pickering agitated for a Church of England to be built in Doncaster. His efforts were successful in 1868 when work commenced on the attractive Holy Trinity stone church. Members of the congregation helped with gifts of money or by giving their services, such as carting stone. The Pickerings were in the centre of all the activities. Eliza and Kate held Sunday School classes, at first in their home and then in the church, and Kate’s husband, Max Schramm, became church secretary. At the opening, Eliza prepared the young girls who marched in the ceremony wearing white dresses with blue sashes.
Holy Trinity Church, Doncaster from the south-west, showing the nave, porch and the temporary timber sanctuary added in 1885. DP0099
In the autumn of 1870 Joseph Pickering died. Eliza, now widowed, moved into a small cottage alongside the Church of Christ and the store was sold, but she was not alone for her family was close. Kate lived across the road in the old school building and her sons Henry and Fred, ran a butchers shop alongside the old store. Fred, was her youngest son who had been born in the hut on their first farm. Fred had a way with animals and later became a vet on his farm at East Doncaster.
In 1886 Eliza Pickering died at the age of 72. She was a true pioneer, coming to the district when the land was virgin bush. Eliza was laid to rest in the cemetery on Waldau hill alongside her husband, Joseph.
Jane Petty
Jane Petty. Born Jane Thompson in England in 1818. Married Thomas Petty in 1842. Died in 1894. The Pettys lived on a 47 acre property in Doncaster, on the south side of Doncaster Road extending westerly from Pettys Lane. Thomas Petty died on 22 February 1877. DP0672
During the 1850’s, the settlers with their wives and families, took the place of the graziers and farmers who had leased large grazing runs. In Doncaster, the Carlton Estate was sub-divided along Doncaster Road. Thomas Petty was one of the first to buy land in the Carlton Estate on the south of Doncaster Road.
On a spring day in 1858 Jane Petty climbed down from the rough cart and looked in amazement at the land in front of her. This partly cleared, scrubby bush and rough ploughed earth was nothing like she had expected. She had arrived from England to join her husband Thomas on his farm, but what she saw amazed her. Thomas had written that he had built a two-story brick home on his 47 acres, but in Yorkshire, where she had lived, a two-story house suggested ideas of a country estate with green pastures set in landscaped gardens. “Where is the house”, she asked, looking past the cottage Thomas had so proudly built for her.
Thomas and his brother owned a cotton mill in the Bradford area, Yorkshire, but an industrial slump had left them with little work and as Thomas’ eyesight was failing and the doctor had advised a sea voyage, Thomas sailed for Australia to look for land and make a new home for his family in Victoria. He found land on Doncaster Road sloping down to Koonung Creek. After five years of hard work, clearing the trees and scrub, building a solid brick house and planting vegetables, Thomas wrote to Jane saying that the farm was ready for her, and to come out with the children to join him. Jane hardly recognized her husband. Hard work in the open had given Thomas a deep tan and a bushy beard covered his face. His son Tom, thinking his father was an aborigine, hid behind a bush.
Thomas Petty's house “Coonung Grange” 1856. The original home of the Petty family, Doncaster Road, now the site of Harcourt Street. It was built by Thomas Petty about 1856 in 'flemish bond' brickwork. The photograph shows Mrs Schmit and son Jimmy. DP0191
Jane soon came to love her Flemish Bond brick home. The central front door, with symmetrically arranged windows each side, gave the house a simple, attractive facade. Downstairs they had five rooms, front room, dining, two bedrooms and kitchen. A staircase in the wide front hall led up to two more bedrooms in the garret. The kitchen was paved with stone, the other rooms had timber floors. Thomas boasted that it was the first house in Doncaster to have a wooden floor. A brick terrace stretched across the front of the house but there was no verandah, for the colonists did not realize the need for protection from the hot Australian sun.
Jane cooked meals over an open fire in the kitchen or baked pies and bread in a camp oven outside. Later Thomas installed a colonial oven for her. He also built a large well; previously they had carried household water in barrels from the Yarra and Jane washed clothes at Koonung Creek behind their land. She boiled the washing in tins over a fire on the banks of the creek, using homemade soap.
Jane had spent the first thirty five years of her life in an industrial area of England before coming to Australia. After living midst the hurly-burly of a busy town, Jane was now in sparsely populated Doncaster where neighbours were hidden by bushland and night-time was silent with an eerie stillness. However she was not entirely alone, as she had other women to talk to now the new community was growing. Jane could walk down the bush track, called Doncaster Road, to buy a few simple supplies from Williams store in a small hut near the creek. A township had been planned for this comer, it was given the name Carlton, but no one used that name, they called it Kennedy’s Creek after the commonly used name of Koonung Creek at that time. The township never became more than a small hamlet, although for a while it had a store, blacksmith, bootmaker and later a hotel.
Behind Jane Petty's house, Robina and Mary Wilson ran a school in their log house. On the east, Henry and Elizabeth White leased land before moving to East Doncaster, and next to them lived Catherine Corbett. The Corbetts arrived early in the fifties and during later years, their family built two large brick houses on a flourishing orchard. Across the road, the Smiths and Phillips ran small farms and near the comer of High Street, Smedley built a house and blacksmith. Mary Maher opened the Morning Star Hotel alongside Koonung Creek in I872, but this did not interest the Pettys, for they were not a drinking family. About the same time, Edward and Bridget Noonan took over the small store. In Ayr Street, soon after Jane Petty came to the district, Margaret and Alfred Caldecott built a splendid brick house.
 |
| Morning Star Hotel, Doncaster Road. 1886. Victorian Railways horse-drawn coach "Horse bus" outside. Near Koonung Creek. Driver in driver’s seat with passenger alongside. Coach is drawn by two horses. Lamp prominent in front of hotel. Caption states bus is thought to have run from the Kew Post Office to the Doncaster Hotel (corner Doncaster Road and Victoria Street DP0042 |
Margaret Caldecott
Margaret Caldecott, an Irish girl, grew up in Canada; at the age of twenty she married a ships captain but her husband died when his ship sank in the Atlantic. Margaret travelled to Melbourne where her knowledge of French, learnt in Canada, enabled her to obtain work in the Immigration Department. In the same office she met Alfred Caldecott, a senior accountant. In 1855 Margaret, now thirty, married Alfred and went to live at Richmond. Three years later they built “Glenfern”, a solid masonry building with wide verandah and a slate roof. It stood on seventy-four acres in Ayr Street.
Margaret and Alfred planned their home for gracious living on a country estate. The imposing entrance steps were reached by a winding drive and a lawn swept down to a summer house by a small stream. They entertained guests at garden parties and on winter evenings lively balls were held at “Glenfern”.
For twelve years Margaret lived a happy life at Doncaster. Five children were born although the eldest boy died of dysentery. Alfred worked hard to build up his farm. He came home each afternoon having walked from Hawthorn Station, then went out onto the farm to work till dark.
a
Glenfern c1967 Entrance steps leading to the front door of Glenfern, 10 Amberley Court, off Ayr Street Bulleen, built in 1858 by Alfred Millwater Caldecott, a civil servant and his wife Margaret. After Caldecott's death, the house and its surrounding farmland was sold to Robert Outhwaite, whose family held the property until about 1920 when it was subdivided into smaller parcels. In 1967, it was owned by one of the founding members of the Doncaster and Templestowe Historical Society, Mrs Campbell, who in 1967 or 1968, spoke to the historical society's members about the history of her house. DP1214
In 1870 a shortage of cotton, caused by the American Civil War, sent up the price of cotton. There was talk in Melbourne that money could be made by cotton planting in Fiji. One family who responded to the opportunity were the Straubes of East Doncaster. Alfred Caldecott also determined to become a cotton planter and left Margaret to look after the children and run the farm on her own. Two years later she received instructions from her husband to sell the property and send the money for further investment. The next year Alfred left Fiji and booked a passage on a ship sailing for Hong Kong. When the ship arrived, he was not aboard and was never heard from again.
Margaret made enquiries and found that he had sold his share of the cotton plantation. There was no money left. She faced the prospect of having to support herself and the children. Margaret sold the house they still owned in Richmond, with the money and using her knowledge of the French language, she opened a small private school in Prahran.
Elizabeth Hislop
William Burnley planned his estate east of Doncaster as a future country township. He provided small blocks for town sites and large blocks for farms. Among the first women to come to the estate were Carrie Tatham, Hannah Ireland, Elizabeth Hislop and Annie Williams. Of the early Doncaster settlers the Hislops were the first to arrive in Port Phillip. In 1839 Elizabeth married George Hislop in the church of St. Pancras in Middlesex. The couple had made the exciting decision to marry and emigrate to Australia. While waiting to sail they lived in the Hislop family home, a fine Georgian house in Adam Street, London. They travelled in the “John Bull”, arriving at Port Phillip in January 1840 and went to live near Superintendent LaTrobe's house close to Jolimont.
During the 1840’s LaTrobe was sent to look after affairs in Tasmania while a new governor was being appointed. He found a shortage of educated men at Hobart, so he sent for George Hislop to help with secretarial duties. Elizabeth and the two children, George and Annie, went with him. The family stayed at Hobart for several years. While there, two more children, Louise and William, were born.
The Hislops returned to Victoria going to live at Williamstown. They arrived at a time when Melbourne was very sensitive about ex-convicts coming in to the colony. As they came down the gangway, an immigration officer asked the arrivals whether they were free-born or convict. Elizabeth was only a small woman but she held her head high and drawing herself up to full height said, “Free-born and proud of it”.
In 1853 George and Elizabeth Hislop bought land at the corner of Doncaster and Wetherby Roads. George built a large brick house for Elizabeth with bricks he had made from clay quarried across the road. They called their home “The Grange”. There were six main rooms, a dairy, a washhouse and a bathroom, all in the house. The kitchen had a large fireplace that was almost a room in itself. As well as a large open fire, the chimney held a bake oven and in the corner, a seat under a picturesque window. Elizabeth hung cooking utensils from hooks over the fireplace and used to place a tub on the seat to bathe her children in the warmth of the fire.
c1958. Chimney at "The Grange" built in Doncaster Road on the site of the present bus depot, by George Hislop in 1853. The house is notable because of its huge chimney. Three other chimneys are visible. DP0238. See also DP1028
George built a large cellar under the front room of “The Grange” to provide a cool storage place for food. Here Elizabeth hung smoked meat and dried vegetables on hooks fastened to the ceiling rafters. She also stored food purchased in bulk. Timber cutters working in the isolated bush east of Doncaster used to call in to buy supplies of food and bread baked in the fireplace bake oven, so Elizabeth became Doncaster's first storekeeper and baker. Once after taking bread to Templestowe she lost her way while walking back along the maze of bush tracks and eventually came to Crouch's bark hut in Church Road. It was becoming dark and being afraid to face the bush track in the dark, she stayed the night.
Around the corner in Leeds Street, Carrie and Edward Tatham had a small weatherboard house. Later they added two expertly built stone rooms with three french windows along the front making it a fine looking house. Wide, ceiling high double doors could be opened up to provide a large area for entertaining. Carrie Tatham often held evenings when guests would enjoy happy conversation or relax listening to their friends giving recitals, singing or playing musical instruments. Both Carrie and Edward had fine voices, adding to the evening entertainment or leading the gathering in songs around the piano. On cold winter nights a blazing fire in the large corner fireplace cast cheerful shadows across the room.
Further east in Burnley’s estate, Hannah Ireland went to live in Beverley Street in a wattle and daube house. Hannah and John Ireland had come out from England on the same ship as the Bullen family. As the ship sailed into the Atlantic on the start of the voyage, Hannah felt happy that her children had friends to help relieve the monotony of the long voyage to Australia. On the sloping decks of the clipper ship, Eliza Ireland played hopscotch with George Bullen. Later, in Doncaster, the pair, now grown-up, were married. The Bullens bought the land next to the Hislops and when George and Eliza Bullen were married they built a house on the site that is now Woolworths Supermarket.
The Bullen family members outside their house on the south side of Doncaster. Built by George and Eliza Bullen in the 1860's. The house was demolished in the 1960's, and the site was then occupied by a Safeway Supermarket at Jackson Court Shopping Centre. DP0616
Anne Williams
Anne Williams. Born Anne Toogood in 1838. Married William Sidney Williams of Leeds Street, Doncaster in 1855. Died in 1911. Daughter of Thomas and Edith Toogood, pioneer settlers of Box Hill. DP0690
Anne Williams lived in Leeds Street on two hundred acres of land near the creek. Their land stretched across the valley to Wetherby Road. Anne had been born in Dorset and grew up in Box Hill just across Koonung Creek. She was to become one of the respected members of the Doncaster community for her husband, William Sydney Williams, was one of the most successful fruit-growers in the district.
In 1855 when Anne was married, she came to live in a hut surrounded by bushland. In her lonely hut Anne always kept a gun handy as protection from aborigines. During the early years the fear of being attacked by a blackfellow was never far from a woman's thoughts. Often if the men were away and aborigines were seen in the area, the woman would call out to her husband as if he were nearby.
Anne’s mother, Edith Toogood, often walked across from Box Hill to visit her daughter. She had to cross the creek which was always tricky, stepping from rock to rock. One day she slipped and fell into a deep hole in the creek called frog pond. The banks were steep and slippery with mud so Edith had trouble getting out. When she arrived home, wet through and covered with mud, her family were alarmed and asked what had happened. Edith said casually, “I fell in frog pond” then added, “I’m glad I didn’t drown, people would have thought I did it on purpose”.
Edith Toogood often crossed the river to visit women in Doncaster for she was a midwife. In the first years of the district a mother would be helped during her confinement by a neighbour or friend who had experienced childbirth, but midwifery became the accepted way of caring for a pregnant woman during the birth of a child. Midwives understood the feeling and problems of the patient, for they were married women with children of their own. They played the role of physician, midwife, family counsellor and friend. Their approach varied with their personality. At the time when the pain was very bad they either encouraged, bullied or comforted the mother who put her trust in the midwife so that a bond developed between them. The pregnant mother relied on a midwife and would send a young child with a message - “Ask her to come in March because we want a little brother or sister”.
The Williams built a large weatherboard house a few years later. During the next twenty-two years, Anne gave birth to fourteen children but only seven lived to become adults. Women lived close to nature. They took most of their food straight from the ground, they milked cows, fed fowls, and often the meat was killed by their husbands. Their life followed a two year cycle. They became pregnant, gave birth, nursed a baby, weaned the child and again became pregnant. On an average women had eight or nine children, but women were never able to feel secure with their families, their children or their husbands. One quarter of all babies died at birth or as young children. The women lived amidst life and death, but the loss of her own child was always a heart-rending personal tragedy. For some the church gave comfort and in this close community neighbours gave support and assistance.
On Doncaster Hill a handful of settlers brought their wives to live on small farms. There was Eliza Pentland, Margaret Whitten, Agnys Clay, Charlotte Tuckerbaud and Jane Tully. John Tully, William Pentland and John Whitten had left Ireland together to emigrate to Australia. The three, being Protestants, suffered religious persecution at the time when a depression followed the great potato famine.
Charlotte Tuckerbaud/ Tucheband’s home and store on the south-east corner of Elgar & Doncaster (or Doncaster and Tram?) Roads. Built in the late 1850s by Christian Frederick Tucheband. DP0124
John Whitten met his future wife, Margaret Harvey, on the ship coming to Australia. During the six month voyage a romance developed and by the time they reached Victoria, the couple were deeply in love. They agreed to marry but both were contracted to work for their sponsors so they planned to marry in one years time. They parted at Geelong harbour, Margaret went to her employer as a housemaid in Geelong, John to work - on a farm in the Western District. In one years time to the day, John came back to Geelong to claim his bride.They made their home in the lane that bears their name. John Tully and William Pentland both met their wives in Melbourne. When William and Elizabeth Pentland were married, both John and Margaret Whitten witnessed their marriage certificate.
On the other side of Doncaster Hill there were a few German families. Most of the Germans who came to Doncaster formed a community further east in the area they called Waldau, but the Hankes, Tuckerbauds and Wittigs came to Elgar Road. Ernst Wittig, an emigrant from Hamburg, was married soon after arriving in Melbourne. He took his wife Anna to the goldfields for their honeymoon. They walked all the way to Bendigo, taking their possessions in a wheelbarrow. Ernst Wittig was unsuccessful so returned to Melbourne. This time Anna refused to walk, so another German, Carl Aumann, offered to bring her in his cart.
At the corner of Doncaster and Elgar Roads, Charlotte Tuckerbaud lived in a shingle roof house where she opened a store. Across Doncaster Road on the corner of Williamsons Road, Jane Tully came to a one room hut in 1857. Jane Tully, the daughter of John and Maria McAuley, came from Ireland at the age of five when Melbourne was still a primitive town. John McAuley bought a small block of bushland on an unmade road, (later to be called Victoria Street) in Richmond. Here he earned good money as a carter. When the gold rush started, John McAuley went to the goldfields, making a large amount of money carting goods for the miners. He decided to take the family back to Ireland and booked a passage, but they arrived late at the dock and saw their ship sailing away down the bay. Disappointed but not discouraged, he bought a pair of horses and a carriage and settled on a small farm in Wellington Street, Kew. They called their farm “Ballinderry”, growing vegetables which sold profitably in Melbourne.
At the age of nineteen, Jane, now an attractive Irish girl, worked as a maid servant as well as helping her mother look after the younger children. She fell in love with one of her father's seasonal workers, an Irishman Thomas Tully. Jane and Thomas married in the manse of Scots Church, Melbourne. Jane had never learnt to read or write so when it came time to sign the marriage register, she signed her name with a cross. Jane's’ father helped them buy a small house in Collingwood and Thomas obtained work as a labourer. Their first child, Maria, died of whooping cough when fourteen months old and the second died in infancy. Thomas did not earn much so they had no money to pay for a funeral. Jane had the humiliation of having her babies buried in paupers graves.
In 1857 they sold their Collingwood house to buy twenty acres on bushland in Doncaster for LI68. Here on the land where Shoppingtown now stands, Thomas and Jane built their home, a small slab hut with one door and no windows. They called it Carlton Cottage after the Carlton Estate. Thomas worked hard cutting stringy bark and box that covered his land.. He sold the wood at the Fitzroy firewood market to bring in their first income and also did some work for the Roads Board.
Jane grew vegetables and planted a few cherry trees.
On Doncaster Hill the population increased during the 1860’s. Many of the settlers had by now established their farms so their thoughts turned to building a place of worship. They planned to erect a Church of Christ on Doncaster Hill. The Tully’s, with their friends the Whittens and Pentlands, helped build the weatherboard church and attended services. Thomas became a trustee of the church but Jane found the rules of total abstinence, too hard to keep up. Like many of the Irish, she had grown up to enjoy an occasional glass of gin.
Doncaster was becoming a township at the top of the hill. As well as the Church of Christ, there was now Pickering’s Store and Schramm’s School. Jane had four children and because she did not have the advantage of an education, she made sure her own children did have, so she sent them to Schramm’s school. After school they would often cross the road to buy licorice straps at Pickering’s store.
Thomas cleared an area on his land for a cricket pitch. Enthusiasts very soon played the first cricket match in Doncaster on this land. At half time, the players crossed the road to Charlotte Tuckerbaud’s store for drinks. Other sports-minded residents organised horse races along Doncaster Road. The start was at Blackburn Road and the finish line was, of course, at the Doncaster Arms Hotel. Jane Tully had the dubious honour of having a racehorse named after her. Thomas had a horse that he used to race and he named it “Crazy Jane”.
Jane’s parents, the McAuleys, invested their money in land during the boom years that followed the gold rushes but they lost their money in the depression that inevitably followed the boom. They came to Doncaster and built a small house on the Tully’s land. Here John McAuley and Thomas Tully worked together when they were able to obtain work from the Roads Board, but after a few years work became harder to find. Thomas looked further afield and was offered work on the vineyards at Yering. Jane had been pleased to have her mother living near to her but now Jane had to leave Doncaster with her children and go with Thomas to Yering.
The move brought misfortune to the Tully family. Jane’s eldest son died after falling down a well and soon afterwards, Thomas died. This left Jane destitute with six young children to look after. She moved back to Doncaster to be with her parents. Maria, the eldest, was now twelve and John, who was to become a leading member of the Doncaster community, was nine; there were two other boys, David seven and William five. Jane also had Ellen only three and Eliza, a young baby.
After two years of struggle, Jane re-married, this time to David Tully, her late husband's brother. Two years later Jane sold her Doncaster land to Alfred Hummel and the family moved to Rochford near Lancefield, to make a new start. John, the eldest boy, stayed in Doncaster working for Henry Crouch.
Jane did not find happiness in her new home. David, her new husband, drank quite a lot and while drunk, was violent. Jane often became the victim of her husbands anger. As a result of one drinking bout she received injuries from which she never recovered. Jane Tully died at the age of forty two after a life of continual struggle and hardship. The tragic events of her life and death were deeply etched on the minds of her children. Her sons John and David grew up to lead industrious, temperate lives, carving a niche for the Tully family in the history of Doncaster.
Agnes Clay
A news item appeared in the Melbourne “Argus” in the 1850’s saying that bush fires could be seen on Clay’s Hill at Doncaster. The word ‘clay’ had nothing to do with the soil, the hill was called after John and Agnys Clay who owned land on the south of Doncaster Road where the Shell Computor building now stands.
John Clay and Agnys both grew up in Devon and were married in 1833 in the parish church of Frithelstock, a small town near to Great Torrington. In this same church Agnys had been christened twenty two years before. She and John went to live at “Hall Farm” in Petrockstowe, a small farm the Clay family leased on Lord Clinton’s estate.
Seventeen years later the couple decided to emigrate to Australia, the country everyone was talking about. John began to dream about owning his own farm and Agnys thought of her children growing up in the land of sunshine. She also thought of the long sea journey. After living all her life in a corner of Devon, without travelling more than a few miles, Agnys was faced with a voyage to the other side of the world.
Hall Farm at Petrockstowe, Devon.
June 1913. Clay house in Petrockstowe, Devon, England. Ancestral home of John Clay. in 1913, owned by the Moore family. Pictured are Mr and Mrs Moore and their daughter Annie. John Clay left England in the 1850s and purchased land in Doncaster, being part of portion A of the Carlton Estate. DP1007
The family sailed from Plymouth in March 1851, in the ship “The City of Manchester”. Four months later they arrived in Adelaide where they intended to settle but Agnys did not like the town, after the neat green meadows of Devon, it was rough, dry and dusty. She was shocked to see children running around the street in bare feet. News of the gold discovery at Ballarat reached Adelaide, so John decided to go to Victoria and try his luck at the goldfields. However, on arriving in Melbourne, Agnys developed typhoid fever.
The Clays settled in Condell Street, Fitzroy, where John became a storekeeper. The people of Fitzroy found the spelling Agnys’ name difficult so she changed it to “Agnes”.
Their ninth child, Catherine, was born at Condell Street and the same year Agnes had the sorrow of losing her five year old daughter Elizabeth. The house was small and crowded so John bought land in Doncaster and built a large home for his family of eight children. The eldest, William, was twenty and the youngest, three. The older boys helped their father clear the land and plant vegetables while the younger children went to Misses Wilson’s log school in Wilson Road. Agnes enjoyed her new house, with plenty of room for her large family and being a generous, hospitable woman, who made friends easily, she was pleased to have a spacious home for entertaining. She became a familiar figure as she walked along Doncaster Road in her poke bonnet, long black skirt and shawl. Often when a woman’s time had come she would call for Agnes to act as midwife for the occasion.
The Clay family took part in the social life of the district, for Agnes always welcomed her neighbours and the many friends of her children. The eldest girl, Anne, became engaged to William Mitchell in 1865. Agnes enthusiastically prepared for the wedding festivities in her home. When Holy Trinity Church was opened, Agnes helped Eliza Pickering organise a tea meeting and at the opening of the Athenaeum Hall, she offered to provide for a table of fifty.
During the next years the Clay children gave their mother many opportunities for entertaining as they grew up and found wives in the district. Joseph married Lucy Crossman, Mary Anne married William Mitchell, Catherine fell in love with and married Edwin Wilson, the brother of her former school teacher at the log school, Eliza married Jane Petty’s son Tom, but Richard found his wife Mary Anne Carnegie in Collingwood where they were married in the Congregational Church. Richard brought Mary Anne to live in a new house on the family orchard. Eliza and Tom Petty were married in the front room of the Clay home on Clay’s hill at Doncaster. Eliza’s mother Agnes revelled in preparing the house for the wedding, cleaning, polishing and decorating and cooking ham and meat for the wedding breakfast. The ceremony was performed by the Reverend William Pentland, according to the Rites and Usages of the Congregational Church, in the spring of 1873. The couple went to live in a house Torn had built in Doncaster Road near his parents home.
John Clay died In 1871, exactly twenty years after his arrival in Australia. He had been a quiet retiring man whereas Agnes was an outgoing woman. With John’s death Agnes became a farmer, for she had inherited the orchard. Then years later Agnes Clay also died.
Elizabeth White
Elizabeth White. Born Elizabeth Raney in 1829. Married Henry White in 1852. Died 1893. Henry and Elizabeth were orchardists in Anderson's Creek Rd, East Doncaster. DP0641
One of the first settlers in Doncaster Road, Henry White and his wife Elizabeth, later moved further out to an area called Deep Creek, past East Doncaster.
Elizabeth Raney, an attractive twenty year old girl, with a rounded face and friendly smile, came to Australia as a maid servant in 1850. She fell in love with the handsome man who delivered firewood to her mistress, Henry White, two years after her arrival in Melbourne, Henry and Elizabeth were married in St. Peters Church, Eastern Hill. Several years later they came to Doncaster, leasing land between the Corbetts and the Pettys.
In 1864 Henry White had the opportunity to purchase a farm on part of the virgin bushland in Andersons Creek Road that had been Lewis Robinsons grazing right of eight square miles. So Henry and Elizabeth cleared part of the land to plant vines and fruit trees. The family lived in a slab house. During the following years they rebuilt the house, one room at a time, changing the primitive hut into a well built stone house. They built the house from materials on their land, collecting stones as the land was cleared and cut sturdy branches to form beams for rafters and lintels for the door and window openings. Sacking covered with paper lined the inside walls.
The area became known as the Deep Creek Settlement, but when Henry and Elizabeth arrived, there were only a few scattered houses. Next to the Whites and Thomas Buck, down the hill on the right was Matthew Hoare, who later on ran the hotel, and on the left, Mrs. Honara Kent and her sons owned the land. Henry and Elizabeth called their farm “Deep Creek Farm”; it became the centre of the settlement. They hung a mail bag on a gum tree in front of the house ready for the mounted postman to leave the Deep Creek mail, as he rode past on his way to Warrandyte.
1967 “Deep Creek Farm”. Henry White’s homestead/ cottage on the east side of Andersons Creek Road, East Doncaster. Built in stages from 1865. Demolished after land subdivision in 1977. DP0249
Henry, a deeply religious man, who had been “converted to Christ” in England, became leader of a group in East Doncaster who founded the Primitive Methodist Church on the corner of Doncaster and Blackburn Roads. Elizabeth shared Henry’s interest in the Church and encouraged him to become a lay preacher. Quotations from the Psalms and Epistles flowed easily from his lips, he christened some of his children with biblical names. When Henry returned from registering the birth of their seventh son, Elizabeth said, “Well, what have you called this one?”. When he told her that he had named him Elijah, she said, “Oh, Henry not another biblical name”. Elizabeth had a benevolent nature, but the next child was given the good old English name of William.
On the day that Elizabeth's ninth child was due, she sent her six year old daughter Sarah to call the midwife, Martha McKinlay, from further down the road. She didn’t tell Sarah about the baby. Women would not have spoken to children about such things. She merely said: “Tell Mrs. McKinlay that I need her”.
When Sarah approached the McKinlay house their large dog frightened her, so she came back and told her mother that Mrs. McKinlay couldn't come. Elizabeth was left to cope with, not only giving birth to the baby on her own, but also looking after her two younger children. Actually Martha McKinlay couldn’t have come because she was having a baby herself that day.
Elizabeth lived in a sparsely populated area without cleared roads. The track that wound between the trees in Anderson Creek Road was only wide enough for a horse. Carts and jinkers used the maze of bullock tracks that wound through the bush in various directions. By daylight the main tracks were obvious, but at night they were hard to find. Once when Elizabeth’s daughter Sarah was late walking back from Kew and reached Blackburn Road after dark, she took a wrong track, becoming lost. Elizabeth started to worry, as tramps, cattle-duffers and undesirables camped in the area. She told Henry to light a large fire to help Sarah find the way. He also started to hit a tree with an axe. In the quiet of the evening Sarah heard the sound, and knowing that no-one chopped wood in the dark, walked towards the sound, and soon, seeing the light of the fire, hurried home.
Elizabeth had nine healthy children, most of them remaining to marry and live in the district. At the age of sixty-four, Elizabeth White developed double pneumonia, and died. Her death was a great blow to Henry. She was a loving woman whom he had always relied on for support. He steadily declined and died in the following year.
Alice Knee
William Knee and his wife built a bark hut on Deep Creek, south of the track to the Anderson Creek goldfields. Old Warrandyte Road runs through there now but in the 1850’s only a few people lived between Doncaster and Warrandyte. On one occasion when Mrs. Knee was alone, an aborigine walked into her hut carrying a rifle, she was terrified. He put the gun on the table and demanded food, but her fears were unwarranted for he took the food and left peaceably.
Tall, straight timber grew alongside the creek. William had a contract to supply piles for St. Kilda pier from trees. One day he took his young son Jim with him while carting piles to St. Kilda. Jim looked at the bay and was amazed at the huge expanse of water, he had never been out of the bush before. When Jim asked if he could have a drink his father said, “Son, drink to thy heart's content”. Jim drank and was promptly sick. On the way home they passed St. Kilda railway station. Jim had never seen anything bigger than a horse and cart so when the train drew into the station he was terrified and when the engine blew its whistle, it was too much for young Jim, he ran off deep into the surrounding bush and became lost. Several days later Jim arrived home at East Doncaster to the relief of his distraught mother. They never did learn how this young boy made his way home.
The floods of 1863 inundated the valley along Deep Creek and covered the Knees home. When the water subsided, they began to clean up and collect their possessions. Mrs. Knee had to climb the trees to bring down the chooks that had become stranded on the top branches.
The Knees son, George, married Alice Lisle whose mother had arrived in Melbourne at the age of sixteen. Alice’s mother married Thomas Lisle and came to live in a wattle and daub house on the north of Doncaster Road near Tunstall Square. Her husband had an accident while chopping wood and cut off his foot. She wrapped his leg in hessian and took him to the nearest doctor in Kew, but he died from loss of blood. Her daughter, Alice Lisle worked as a governess at Kew. On her days off she would walk home to East Doncaster in the morning and walk back again at night.
When Alice married George Knee, they bought land in Woodhouse Road and Alice helped him, grubbing out roots as they cleared the land to plant an orchard. Alice became a keen gardener, planting a large garden around their house. She persuaded George to dig a dam to supply water for her garden, but was most annoyed when he installed a steam pump and used the water for his lemon trees.
When the orchard was producing fruit, George had to leave home at midnight to reach market ready for opening time. It was the woman's job to stay up while the men had some sleep. On Market nights, sometimes relations would come in and, as the women would do handwork, the men visitors would read out loud till it was time to call the husband to go to market.
While Alice worked in the orchard she put her young child in a large packing case in the shade of a pine tree. Toys were scarce and expensive, but Alice had a simple way of keeping her children quiet. She would put honey on his fingers and then give him a feather to play with. He would sit there picking the feather off one finger then take it off the other.
Part 2 Waldau - The German Settlement
Phillipine Thiele
Phillipine Thiele. Born Phillipine Burckner in 1823. Married Gottlieb Thiele in 1845. Arrived in Victoria in 1849. Gottlieb established himself as a tailor in Bourke Street Melbourne. Died in 1915. DP0647
During the late 1840’s a prominent Melbourne man, William Westgarth, obtained approval for a scheme to bring German migrants to the Port Phillip district. The colonial office promised a grant of L1000 for a party of 200 German vine-dressers, if they would form a settlement. Westgarth argued that Germans were industrious people who would help develop the unoccupied land around Melbourne. He visited Germany with promises of cheap land, prosperity and religious freedom. Westgarths offer was readily taken up. Germany had become an unhappy country, with harsh military training, social unrest, economic problems and food shortages. The desire for religious freedom influenced many Lutherans for although the religious restraints and persecution had ended, there were memories of the past and fears of renewed problems.
Therefore on a cold October day in 1848 the 304 ton ship “Wappus” sailed from Hamburg carrying 134 Germans bound for Australia and a new life with all its hopes and possibilities
On board the “Wappus” Phillipine Thiele stood on deck nursing her baby daughter while little Oswald hung onto her skirt. Her husband Gottlieb stood alongside. Phillipine had been worried about him. Gottlieb had become ill shortly before the time to leave and it looked as though they might not be able to go, but she was a determined woman who intended to sail with the ship; by good nursing and encouragement she cured him. Later Phlllipine boasted that her treatment of feeding him boiled dog fat was responsible for his recovery.
For five months they sailed through high seas and hot becalmed weather. Phillipine fed and cared for her children in the hot, crowded space below decks. On fine days they came onto a small section of deck and on Sundays attended church services with their new found friends. On the long voyage water became stale and no fresh food was left, then scurvy broke out; so the Captain put in at Brazil for fresh vegetables and fruit There were unhappy days when a brief funeral service was held as another child, sewn up in sailcloth, was thrown into the sea. Often Phillipines’ strength of character helped support a grieving mother for there were fifteen deaths before they reached Melbourne, but the birth of three babies were happy occasions.
At Hobsons Bay, Westgarth arranged a formal reception for the newcomers. Charles LaTrobe, then Superintendent of the Port Phillip District, boarded the ship and made a speech of welcome, promising them accommodation and assistance to find work. LaTrobe was impressed with the Germans and arranged for them to go to the migrants hostel in St. Kilda Road until they could find work and housing.
In Bourke Street, Gottlieb Thiele rented a two-story stone building next to the site of the present McEwans Store. He set up the ground floor as a tailoring shop (for he was a skilled tailor) while upstairs Phillipine made a home. Across the road squatters and horsemen rode into Kirks Bazaar, the leading livery stables. The position was ideal for Gottlieb, for the squatters arrived to enjoy a visit to town and needed new clothing, but the many horses milling around in Bourke Street made it a dangerous area for young children. When Phillipine went shopping she used to tie up three year old Oswald with a length of rope to prevent him straying onto the road.
Gottlieb suffered from poor health and soon after arriving developed a fever. The doctor said to Phillipine, “Too much heat", but with her still poor English she thought he said “too much eat" and promptly put him on a liquid diet of buttermilk. He soon recovered but four years later when they were living in Collingwood his health began to worry him again and he was advised to get out into the fresh air.
Before 1908. Victoria Street (then called Bismark Street) looking south from the cutting. The new Trinity Lutheran Church is on the hill with Carl Aumanns home in front. Several posters can be seen attached to the cutting. DP0257. Compare with DP0256.
The Straube and Walther families, who had both come out on the “Wappus” with the Thieles, had purchased land in East Doncaster. Gottlieb and Phillipine Thiele bought a ten acre block across the road from Straube in 1853. Their land was alongside Ruffys Creek on the road now called Victoria Street.
They pitched tents and camped in a clearing on the banks of the Ruffy Creek surrounded by a thick forest of stringy-bark and yellow box. Phillipine who had been living in a comfortable house in Collingwood, now had to face life in primitive conditions with no comforts and four young children to care for. The youngest was Edmund, only a few weeks old.
While carpenters built a small house, Phillipine worked alongside Gottlieb grubbing out trees and scrub. They saved straight even saplings to form the framework of the house and cut long branches to nail around the walls as laths. Mud, dug on the site, was packed and plastered over the laths making solid walls. Gottlieb earned his first income by selling firewood and while he carted loads into town, Phillipine cleaned up the land, burning large heaps of branches, filling the air with the acrid smell of burning gum leaves. Soon they had a well-built wattle and daub house with two rooms below and an attic under the steep gable roof. Close by, on the north side, stood a separate kitchen with a well for household water. The parents slept in a downstairs room while the two elder children occupied the attic. The only access to this attic room was a door in the rear gable reached by a rough bush ladder that leant against the outside wall.
They worked hard to establish their farm. As soon as some land was cleared Gottlieb harnessed up the horse to start ploughing and Phillipine was able to start planting, first vegetables and berries and potatoes. When the hot weather came they carried buckets of water carefully pouring a little onto each plant as the dry soil soaked up the moisture.
They continued to work week after week till thirteen acres were all ready for planting and soon Phillipine could look out and see a field of fresh green vegetables and the first rows of fruit trees.
Phillipine soon found more friends, for other Germans came to Doncaster. She liked people around her and she cared for people. Her strength of character and personality made her a leader in any group. Gottlieb too, was a gregarious man, he was not satisfied to shut himself off working on a farm all day; whenever possible he rode into Melbourne to meet his Lutheran friends and would meet new arrivals from Germany encouraging them to settle in Doncaster. He would write to Germany telling old friends to come to Australia. “Doncaster is an ideal place,” he would tell them, “here there is wood, stone and water.”
The new community called their village Waldau, the name used in Germany for a ‘clearing in the forest’, and gave German names to the roads - Bismark Street, Wilhelm Street and Waldau Lane, called by the English, German Lane. Sixty years later when Australia was at war with Germany, the names were changed to Victoria Street, King Street, and George Street.
The women lived a hard life with little relaxation. They worked on their farms and cared for their family and on Sunday their religion occupied their minds. Phillipine’s home was too small for them to hold services so they went to Carl Aumanns and Frederick Straubes house. Social occasions were few. When Gottlieb Walther’s son, Johann married Straubes daughter, Christianne in 1854, the community celebrated the wedding in the Straube house in Waldau hill. Phillipine had the opportunity to arrange her sister's wedding a few years later. Johann Straube had been calling at “Friedensruh” to see Antonie Burchner and in 1857 they were married.
“Friedensruh ” in 1853.
Weddings, births and deaths were the highlights in the settlement. Only the year after they arrived Thieles neighbour Catherine Lenkerstoff lost her one year old baby, August. Straube buried him in his land on the hill alongside Bismark Street. The next year Caroline Uebergang was also buried near August. Caroline had come from Silesia with her husband Johann, two years before. They arrived with two children, a five year old boy who died in Melbourne soon after their arrival and two year old Caroline. In December that year they settled on a block in German Lane. The next year Caroline was left alone in a flimsy bark hut with her two children when her husband went to the goldfields. While he was away she became ill and before Johann could return, she died.
As soon as their farm was established the Thieles began to think of a church for Waldau. The congregation, who met for services in homes, was growing, so early in 1858 Gottlieb called a meeting in Carl Aumann seniors house and proposed that they build a church. Straube offered an acre of his land around the Germans cemetery for the Church. August Lenkerstoff and Johann Walther carried out the building and by December it was ready to be opened.
Pastor Goethe dedicated the Waldau Church on December 26th,1858 in the presence of a large gathering of Lutherans from far and near. After the service they all sat down to a tea meeting arranged by Phillipine and her group of helpers.
A church bell was proudly installed the next year. The bell was rung at dawn, midday and at the setting of the sun to tell the time to the people in the surrounding farms. It was to be pealed at weddings and tolled at funerals. Only a few weeks later two year old Hedwig Thiele lay in her bed, her face pale and her forehead burning hot. Phillipine nursed her with the care and warmth she had always given when her children were sick, but with an inevitability that the people of Waldau were coming to expect, Hedwig died. Up on the hill the church bell tolled. The new bell that they had so proudly placed there, rang out across the valley and hills informing all that a death had occured in their community. For fifteen minutes the bell slowly tolled it's sad message. Men working on their farms stopped and women came out of their homes to stand in humble silence.
Waldau
Gottlieb came back from Melbourne one day eager to tell Phillipine about an idea he had. At the docks he met a well-educated German, Max von Schramm and just the man to run a school in the church at Waldau.
Phillipine’s family walked through the bush to Ferguson’s school at Templestowe, but many children had no schooling. Without being able to read or write they could not learn their catechism. A few years previously Johann Walther attempted to hold a school at his home in Blackburn Road but not enough children had attended. Now the Lutheran population had grown but Walther had left the district. Gottlieb called a meeting and brought Schramm out to meet the elders of the congregation, and on Ascension day, 1860, Pastor Goethe installed him as teacher in the Waldau church with eleven German children.
Phillipine grew up steeped in the German traditions of Christmas so that when Max Schramm said he would like to hold a Christmas celebration for the children of the school, she was very enthusiastic. Gottlieb Thiele and Max Schramm met with the congregation to elect a committee of men to run the celebration. Phillipine could not be at this meeting as women did not attend meetings of the congregation, but she and a group of women met with the committee. They collected gifts for the children, arranged the tea meeting and decorated the church.
On Christmas Eve, I860, the people of Waldau with many English friends, collected in the church grounds. Fifty children played games, laughing, shouting and having a thoroughly good time all the afternoon. Their parents stood around talking while they enjoyed a full day of relaxation. As evening approached, their parents called them to the meal set out on tables under the trees in front of the church. Pastor Goethe led them in hymn and prayer before they settled down to enjoy the Christmas tea.
At dusk, the ringing of the church bell invited the gathering to the church. As the children entered, they were awed at the magnificent sight of a Christmas tree reaching right to the roof, covered with decorations and gifts, and brilliantly lit by many candles.
The children sat patiently, perforce, listening to long addresses by five men, Pastor Goethe, Gottlieb Thiele,
1860s Waldau Church looking across Victoria Street (then called Bismark Street), Dincaster from Friedensruh. The cemetery and original wattle and daub Lutheran Church. The church grounds are enclosed with a post and three rail fence on the west and by a picket or palling fence on the other three sides. Straube's house can be seen at the rear and large trees remain in the distance. The other house is the Finger's. The site of the church is now occupied by Schramm's Cottage and Museum. Inscription on the back "Old Lutheran Church and Graveyard, Doncaster(?) DP0452
Mr. Newman, Mr. Grant and Mr. Serpell, then gifts were removed from the tree and handed round till the tree was emptied and every child had a present. Afterwards there were prayers and singing.
As the happy group joined in the carols, a feeling of goodwill and contentment spread among them. They had left their families and homes in Germany to come a long way to a new land, driven by faith and a love of freedom. They had experienced heartbreaking adversity, hard work and home-sickness for a country on the other side of the world. Phillipine looked around at the faces of the women who had become her friends and neighbours. On this happy Christmas Eve they were gathered in their own community, established by their hard work. No longer need they feel homesick, for this was their home.
Waldau
Gottlieb Thiele had a disagreement with Pastor Goethe. There had always been a problem finding a Lutheran pastor in Melbourne so Gottlieb wanted the Melbourne church to join the South Australian Synod where pastors would be available. He was supported by the old orthodox Lutherans, for the South Australian church was orthodox. At the Synod held at Bethany in South Australia in 1860, Goethe agreed to the union, but on returning to Melbourne, changed his mind. He had been inducted as pastor by a non-Lutheran minister, this made his position doubtful to orthodox Lutherans, also he found the majority in Melbourne were against union. Those who had come to Australia in the 1840’s had left Germany to have freedom to worship in the old ways, those who migrated later did not do so for religious reasons and were more liberal in their outlook. Therefore the members of the church were divided. Gottlieb tried to address the congregation at Melbourne to explain his reasons for the union, but was humiliated by being refused by Goethe. For conscience sake he severed his connections with Pastor Goethe and the congregation he ministered. Gottlieb's supporters, the "Old Lutherans” then formed St.John's Evangelical Lutheran Congregation.
The split caused ill-feeling in the community, mainly due to lack of knowledge of the events and the reasons for wanting to join with South Australia. With some, the ill-feeling continued long after the cause was forgotten and events were sometimes given the wrong interpretation; such as the time when Gottlieb had arranged with his friend, Baron von Mueller, for a gift of trees and shrubs for the church. When his son Oswald drove into the Botanical Gardens for the plants, Mueller, as was his custom, also included some trees for Gottlieb. Envy caused some to say he had kept trees intended for the Waldau Church.
Now Gottlieb was no longer leader of the Waldau community and Phillipine was no longer asked to arrange and lead social functions. These events were to have a lasting effect on the Thieles’ and influence the future shape of their family life. Gottlieb now took more interest in affairs outside the local community and Phillipine shaped her life and the life of her family in her home. She had Gottlieb enlarge the house. Her home had never been big enough to hold a social event, in the early days she had to go to other homes for church services.
They pulled down the old kitchen and built a large sitting room and kitchen attached to the house. Services with the breakaway Evangelical Lutheran Church, could now be held in Phillipine’s sitting room. She made it a tradition to hold festivals and functions at “Friedensruh”. Home life became all-important, it was her security. When the family went out to picnics or a meal with friends, Phillipine would say, “People will think there is nothing to eat in my house and starvation drives you out.”
The dispute caused other problems in the family. Phillipine’s sister-in-law was a sister of Goethes. Gottlieb’s brother Gottfried, had married Anna Maria Goethe. The family estrangement came at a bad time for Anna at a time when she needed sympathy and support. In January 1862 her children contracted Scarlet fever and Maria, her four year old daughter died. Differences were forgotten as family and friends gathered at the cemetery for the funeral. Anna and Gottfried walked back to their home in Wilhelm Street, grieving for their daughter and worrying about their other two sick children. They arrived home only to find that two year old Magdaline had died while they were at the cemetery.
Anna Thiele was a small delicate woman with features saddened by tragedy. She had ten children but one after the other they died, some soon after birth, others only a few years old. Only Henry, her second child, survived to become an adult.
In 1870, Anna purchased a block of land in Doncaster Road and opened a shop. Gottfried and Henry had built a four room house and Anna used one front room as her shop, a general store. Meanwhile Gottfried and their son, Henry worked as carpenters. While she was busy in the shop Anna had a maid to help with the housework. The maid slept in the attic. To reach this she had to climb up a ladder leant against the manhole in the parlour. Many of the German women welcomed having a storekeeper who spoke German as they still had difficulty with the English language.
Johann Uebergang had married Christiana a few years after his first wife Caroline had died. He returned to Germany and came back with his new wife. When twenty four year old Christiane came to Australia, she had to face not only a new land where people spoke a different language, but also two step-children, Caroline ten years old and five year old Carl. However language was not a problem for her for she had come to a German settlement where her native tongue was spoken.
The Uebergangs purchased twenty acres from Gottfried Thiele in Wilhelm Street and lived in a wattle and daub hut alongside Anna Thieles previous home. When Anna opened her store, Christiana regularly walked the two miles there because she would have no language problem.
There were nearly twenty German families in Waldau in 1860. One of the newest arrivals was Christian and Caroline Fingers family. Unfortunately a few years later Caroline died. Her death took place in hospital after a long and difficult confinement. She had already borne seven children when at the age of thirty nine baby Gustav ended her life in 1864.
Her first child was born in Richmond in 1851, soon after arriving from Germany. She, with her husband, moved around Victoria, first at Richmond then on the family vineyard at Hawthorn and for several years living on the Ballarat gold fields, before finally settling in Strip Road (now Church Road) in Doncaster.
After their mother died the family had an unhappy time. Their father often came home drunk and abusive, leaving the elder boy to look after the young children. The boys were only fourteen and twelve so the German community at Waldau stepped in and arranged for the baby and two youngest girls to be cared for by other families.
Close by in Bismarck Street a German couple, August and Catherine Lenkerstoff, had become childless when the second of their two children died. Catherine and August took Emma Lenkerstoff Finger who lived a happy life with the kindly couple.
Christine, the younger sister, was adopted by another German couple and went to live on an orchard in Burwood. Christine’s adopted parents had been childless and wanted a girl to help the wife with all the many chores of a farming household.
Christine was not told about her family and lived a lonely childhood with no other children to play with. Whereas Emma lived close to her brothers and sisters and cousins, meeting them regularly at school and church. Emma, a bright girl, was aware of everything that had happened in her family.
One fateful day the two girls met by chance at the market when Christine was pointed out to Emma by her adopted parents. Emma was delighted to see her young sister again and went up to her but Christiane was bewildered. After growing up as an only child, she couldn’t believe that, not only was this friendly, smiling girl her sister, but that she also had another sister and brother. When the reality sunk in, Christine hugged Emma and cried in her arms.
When Emma Lenkenstoff Finger was nine years old, her uncle, Henry Finger and his wife Caroline and their children came to live at Waldau Lane across Bismarck Street. The Fingers had five daughters, they were great companions for Emma. The twins, Emma and Anna were thirteen, Christine eleven, Henrietta ten and Martha six. They all went to Schramm’s school in Doncaster Road and attended the old church on Waldau Hill.
Caroline Finger (nee Aumann) came to Melbourne in the 1840’s. She was an eleven year old girl and the eldest child of Carl and Johanne Aumann. Her mother died five years later, so her father, unable to cope without his wife, took the family back to Germany to be among his own relatives. He remarried and Caroline returned to Australia with her father and step-mother, Charlotte, and the other children.
Carl Aumann built a house in Bismarck Street (Victoria Street) on the site of the present Lutheran Manse but Caroline did not live there for very long as she married Heinrick Finger the same year and went to live in Deepdene.
In 1870 Caroline Finger returned to Waldau to live in their new home “Tannenwald”. It was like coming home, for all Caroline's family lived at Waldau, and she was close to her sister Christine Dehnert, who lived the other side of German Lane.
Heinrich built this fine house of bricks, baked on the site from clay dug out of the hill-side behind the house. In designing his home, Heinrich was influenced by memories of houses in Germany, but with the addition of wide verandahs typical of an Australian homestead. It was charming in its simplicity and pleasing proportions. They called their new home “Tannenwald”. The rooms were spacious with a large garrett and a cellar. One small luxury was a fireplace in the cellar, added to keep the cream warm when making butter in the winter - it also kept Caroline warm.
c1880. “Tannenwald”, the Finger homestead, built in 1870 on the north side of German Lane, now George Street. Before alterations. Caroline now had her own two room cottage on ten acres of land near the corner of Burke and Cotham Roads. A man and woman are in the foreground, possibly Henriette Finger (later Mrs August Rieschieck) and one of her brothers. DP0205
Life became exciting for the Finger girls in 1880’s. In 1879 one of Caroline’s twins, Anna, married Gottfried Baum from Grovedale. As the wedding date came closer, excitement for the five Finger girls grew, with cleaning, polishing and preparations. On the days before, the household was alive with activity, picking feathers from fowls, baking and decorating. The girls rose early on the day of the wedding, the food had to be prepared, the fowls and ham carved, flowers were picked to make “bunches” for the bride and bridesmaids, and then they all had to be dressed, the girls helping the bride with her hair and dress. Henry Finger led Anna through the orchard to her wedding, the fruit trees were in full floom and the grape vines alive with fresh new shoots. .After the wedding Anna left the district to go with Gottfried to his home at Perrys Bridge in Gippsland.
Anna Finger, one of the five daughters of Henry Finger, was born in 1857. In 1879 she married Gottfried Baum. DP0650
In April the next year Caroline’s other twin, Emma, married Henry Thiele in the Waldau Church. Emma walked through their orchard led by her father Henry Finger. In a happy procession they crossed the bridge over Ruffys Creek, they walked between the rows of grape vines and the fruit trees up on the hill. Here the procession passed under the branches of the pear trees heavy with clusters of pears. Pastor Max von Schramm conducted the service, his second wedding since being ordained five years before. As Emma and Henry Thiele turned to walk down the aisle, the church bell pealed, filling the air with its joyful sound. Caroline watched her daughter as she left the church and her eyes filled with tears of happiness.
Emma Finger, one of the five daughters of Henry Finger, was born in 1857. In 1880 she married Henry Thiele, and they lived in Doncaster Road, Doncaster. DTHS Archive dp0651
After the wedding, Emma Thiele went to live at the Thiele store in Doncaster Road. Henry had built a fine house alongside the old four room cottage. Emma soon took over the running of the store, for Anna Thiele, Henry’s mother was not well and died a few years later. The store, with the support of the German community, did well and twelve years later a splendid brick shop was erected in front of the old one. This was on a higher level so Emma had to climb four steps when coming from the old shop to the new one. On the lower level, hardware, metal pots and pans, buckets, dishes hung in great profusion. In the crowded new section, Emma kept haberdashery, groceries and sweets. The store was a favourite place for children from the school for Emma always gave good measure with aniseed balls and boiled lollies. She never let a child go without because he had no money.
Henry Thiele and family at the welcome home to his son Ferdinand and his English bride, Daisy, outside Henry's home in Main Road Doncaster. The photograph was taken by Henry's brother August Thiele. This store (later Mitchell's grocery) and house were recently demolished to make way for shops in Doncaster Road immediately east of Shire offices (Municipal offices). The Mirror 22Feb1967 DP0796
Emma Thiele was a fine looking woman with a very correct manner. One fine, warm summer morning, on the first day of school, Mrs Robinson brought her daughter Lilian into Emma’s store for a glass of raspberry vinegar, before facing her first day at school. Emma looked at Lilian in her new dress, with her hair freshly brushed and plaited into pigtails and said in her thick German accent, “You vill not always look so nice and clean”. Lilian looked at the stern German lady and thought, “Oh, yes I will”. Emma remembered her remarks and often said to Lilian “Your mutter keeps you very nice”.
Many of the Waldau women continued to speak German in their homes; even Emma’s children grew up with German accents and it was not until 1917 that English was used for Lutheran church services.
Henry gave up his carpentry and now worked full time in the store. When he needed to call Emma to the store he would go to the door and call out “Shop Emma”. Very soon the customers began calling her “Shop Emma”.
When Christina’s wedding procession moved through the orchard it was a cold July day. They walked between the trees, the bare branches silently waiting for spring to once again bring fresh green life to the trees. Christina, the third daughter, married John Winter, of High Street Doncaster, and went to his small weatherboard house to make her home.
Christine Finger was one of five daughters of Henry Finger, and was born in 1859. She married Frederick Winter in 1881, and they lived in High Street, Doncaster. DP0648
This marriage was a true partnership, for Christina and John worked alongside each other, clearing the land and establishing an orchard. The Winters grubbed out the trees then cut them up for firewood. John carted the wood to Melbourne where the demand for firewood for the kitchen stoves of Melbourne was growing, as the population grew. With money from the sale of wood they bought fruit trees. Christina grew vegetables, kept fowls and made butter. They often loaded produce on top of the firewood and while John sold his wood, Christine would sell her produce. The roads were rough with deep ruts. Sometimes, on the steep hill into Kew, the wheels would sink into a rut and the load fall off the dray. Despite these many problems they would reload the dray and continue on their way.
Every year they planted more trees. Christina carried valuable water to keep the young trees alive in the hot weather, then with her pruning knife, she shaped and formed the growing branches. John had bought his land at an ideal time. He and Christina had the advantage of the prosperous years of the Eighties to help develop their orchard. They worked hard and led a thrifty life, so when the depression of the Nineties came, they were able to survive.
At the end of the century wages were low, making it possible for orchardists to employ workers during the depression years. A person working for wages barely survived but those with large enough business to employ labour, had the opportunity to re-establish themselves and they brought prosperity back to Doncaster.
Early in the new century the Winters built a large brick home named “Kere Weider”, meaning “Come again”. In the living room with its carpets and Venetian glass lamps, Christina entertained friends and relatives. She began to enjoy an easier life but she was always active, even when she was old her fingers were always busy. Christina’s daughter Rosina, had six children and they lived at “Kere Weider” also. It was Christina’s delight to help care for them; she was always ready to protect them. While in the garden with the children one day, a snake slithered across the ground and went under a shed. Its tail was sticking out so Christina grabbed the snake by the tail, pulled it out and killed it by ‘whip-cracking’ it. She had grown up close to the land, growing plants, enjoying nature, always producing an ample supply of vegetables as well as tending flowers in the attractive garden with its rows of box hedges. Later the hedges were to be classified by the National Trust.
Christina lived the life of a devout Christian; the church was the pivot of her life, it gave her a strong sense of right and wrong. In 1951 Christina Winter died at the age of ninety-two.
Two years later it was the fourth daughter, Henrietta’s turn to be a bride. On an Autumn day in 1883, Henrietta Finger married August Rieschieck, a blacksmith of Tanunda, South Australia. Henrietta left Victoria for South Australia but at the age of sixty six returned to Doncaster to once again live in the family home, “Tannenwald”.
Henriette Finger, one of the five daughters of Henry Finger, was born in 1862 or 3. In 1883 she married August Rieschieck. She died in 1932. DTHS Archive DP0652.
The youngest daughter, Martha, married George Fankhauser. Martha left Doncaster to live at Nunawading but kept in close contact with her mother and sisters.
Martha Finger, one of the five daughters of Henry Finger, was born in 1864. In 1886 she married George Fankhauser, and died in 1920. DTHS Archive dp0649
Their cousin, Emma Lenkerstoff Finger, was married the following year. Emma lived the other side of Bismarck Street, so her bridal party walked up the road to enter the church grounds through the front gate. Emma approached the church along the shrub-lined path to enter the church porch, she walked up the aisle to where David Rettich was waiting to make her his wife.
During the years that Waldau was developing, Phillipine Thiele worked from dawn to dark, for in an orchard household there were always tasks to be done. As well as running the house she started going to market with Gottlieb. Gottlieb was a most impressive figure dressed in his frock coat, as he set off with his fruit and vegetables to go to market, but he was a ‘soft touch’ for buyers. Phillipine found that people took advantage of his generous overweight. After watching a woman buy a quantity of grapes, one pound at a time to get a bit extra each time, she couldn’t contain herself and shouted “you greedy woman, you”. After that, Phillipine took over from Gottlieb and always made sure of a good price. In 1860 Phillipine still went to market while pregnant, but the day came when she had to stop at a friends house on the way home, while her youngest son, Alfred, was born. Phllipine took it in her stride.
It was Alfred who took over “Friedensruh” when Gottlieb died in 1893. Gottlieb Thiele had been a great influence wherever he went. He had the presence, the initiative and intelligence and Phillipine supported him with her strength and drive.
Friedensruh c1910 homestead, off Victoria street, Doncaster, the home of the Thiele family since 1853, The gable section on the left was built by Gottlieb Thiele in 1853. Pictured is the east side of the house. DP0344
Alfred Thiele was married to Minna Nichterlein from Natimuk in the Wimmera. “Friedensruh” now belonged to Alfred, and Minna became mistress of the house. Phillipine reluctantly relinquished control of the household but for Minna it was a difficult situation. Although Phillipine was no longer mistress she wanted to show that she was the best cook. When she and Minna made Kuchen Cake, Phillipine would use the pretext of “going down to the line to see if the washing is dry.” She would collect an extra egg from the fowl-yard and slip it into her cake when Minna wasn't looking. One day, Minna caught her and was most indignant - “You cheat, you”, she exclaimed.
Her grandchildren called her Grossemutter, the German for grandmother and soon the name was shortened to 'Mutter’. For the rest of her life Phillipine was always called ‘Mutter’,
The Cedar of Lebanon, planted in I862, grew to be a beautiful shady tree and here, Mutter, now over seventy would sit on a fine afternoon. She would sew or crochet or make wreaths or posies with flowers from the garden. She always made a birthday wreath for everyone and on Saturdays she made a special posy to take with her on Sunday. On the way to church they would stop while Mutter went into the Kew Cemetery to lay the posy on Gottlieb's grave.
When her granddaughter Selma came home from school, Mutter would call her into her room to teach her to sew, knit and sing German songs. After school Selma tired of being taught, wanted to avoid Mutter so she used to come in the other side of the house to avoid passing Mutter’s window but Mutter would always come out and collect her from the kitchen. This puzzled Selma till she realized that Mutter knew what time she arrived home. Selma preferred being with the boys collecting starling and sparrow eggs. These birds were great pests in the fruit growing area and the council used to pay two pence a dozen for their eggs. The boys used to send her to climb up the tree, and she would bring down the eggs in her mouth.
Phillipine Thiele and her granddaughter, Selma Thiele. Phillipine Thiele was the widow of Johann Gottlieb Thiele, and Selma became the wife of Louis Edward Collyer. (See 'The Thiele Family of Doncaster 1849-1989', pp 249-50). DP0300
Every Sunday the family went into town to church. They drove in their fruit growers waggon, that during the week took the fruit to market, but the time came when Mutter could no longer manage to high step up into the waggon. In 1912 Alfred bought a motor car, a Fabrique Nationale, the first motor car in the district. Now they proudly drove off from ‘‘Friedensruh” on Sunday morning to motor to Melbourne. . '
Phillipine Thiele died in 1915. She had the strength of character that held her family together and she established traditions that still unite them. It was difficult for such a strong-willed woman to live in her home run by another, but although they were different, Mutter did appreciate Minna, and on her death bed beckoned to Minna and whispered, ‘Thank you so much for all you have done”.
At Mutter's funeral the procession moved off down the drive from “Friedensruh”, two matched black horses pulling the hearse with black ostrich feathers waving above the horses heads. On the verandah the women watching their Grossemutter leaving for the last time, saw these black feathers moving up and down and as the procession turned into Victoria Street, their final glimpse were these feathers waving over the top of the fruit trees she had known so well.
Part 3 The Growth of a Community
Jane Serpell
Jane Serpell grew up in the little Cornish Village of St. Winnels where she lived in an environment of family tradition, historic buildings and churches with beautiful stained glass windows. She used to walk three miles to school, with her two brothers and three sisters, through hedge-lined Cornish lanes to the neighbouring village of St. Germain; an exercise that was to prepare her for her future life in Doncaster.
In July 1833 Jane married Richard Serpell, a handsome coast guardsman stationed at Walmer Castle. While living in Cornwall she gave birth to five children, one girl and four boys. During this time Jane’s sister Selina came to live with them; the two sisters were very close throughout their lives. While staying with Jane, Selina opened a very successful straw bonnet business, but she soon met, and afterwards married, Edward Beeston of Sidmouth Lymington captain of a gentlemans yacht. Edward developed tuberculosis and the hope that the warmer climate of Australia would cure him, led the Beestons to migrate to Melbourne in 1850. Jane and her family followed them a year later.
The Serpell family sailed from Plymouth in the sailing ship “Aaronache”, taking six months for the trip, they arrived at Williamstown on 10th March 1851 and went straight to the Beestons house in Collingwood.
Uncle Beeston had found land at Glenferrie and the very morning after their arrival, Richard Serpell and his son Thomas set out to see their new estate. They walked across country to Palmers Punt on the Yarra at Richmond, then one mile further east to Glenferrie.
Thomas was delighted with the spot chosen for their new home and was full of excitement as he described the land to his mother. There was a splendid frontage to Burwood Road from Glenferrie Road to past the site of the present Swinburne College. The ground lay high and dry, sloping to a valley with enormous red gums and wattles.
All winter the family revelled in the task of clearing the bush and building a hut. The life was rough and Jane was plunged head first into the ways of Australian bush life. She found the winter mild after the cold of England, but the air was exhilarating, it made the youthful pulse of the children bound with health and vigor. In the spring, the wattles bloomed filling the air with their fragrance. Amazed and delighted the family watched the muted bluish grey wattle bushes light up with a mass of little golden balls of sunshine. They called their home “Wattle Hill”.
Soon after settling, Jane’s husband, Richard, made a trip back to England and while there was killed in a traffic accident. This tragedy left sole responsibility for the Serpell family with Jane. Of her four sons, the eldest Thomas 19, and Alfred, 17, were ready for a days work, Richard, was 15, Henry, the youngest boy, 13, and Jane, the only girl, was aged 11. The land at Glenferrie was by now too small for the family to make a living so in 1853 they took up twenty acres in the Highlands estate Doncaster East, at what is today the corner of King Street and Tuckers Road.
Thomas kept a journal of his life in Australia. In May 1853 he tells of buying twenty acres from Mr Collins for 8 pounds an acre. It was thickly timbered. On October 10th, Thomas says, “Mother, Dick and myself started out for a few weeks stay in the bush on our new ground. (Horse hurt his leg). After a great deal of bother reached our ground. I immediately began to fix the tent. Mother boiled the kettle, while Dick attended to the horse. We spent ten days very pleasantly. Dick dug a large water hole. Black and grey magpies and many of the small birds made the woods rejoice in the early morning, nearly equalling some of the English songsters. Lost horse. James Mays who has some ground near, went with Dick to find him. We think of going to live there someday, since then we have bought twenty acres adjoining. There are plenty of neighbours, some have lived about here and are known to us.”
- March 31st. 1854 “Bought an American plough for 6 pounds”.
- April 14th. 1854 “Being Good Friday we went to see our land in the bush”.
- May 17th. 1854 “Arthur and Henry started for the Highlands intending to clear a few acres of land for the plough, before Alfred and Dick go up there”. ..
- June 13th. 1854 “To show that we did not starve in the bush, we had a fowl and parrot pie, turnips, puddings etc. There was also hanging up a leg of mutton, a duck, and also a piece of beef.
- February 18th. 1855 “Mother and Harry went to Mrs May's for tea”.
- April 1855 “Today we planted some fruit trees. Fruit trees 108, Vines 112, Currants 59, Gooseberries 66.
- August 18th. 1855 “Planted 24 kinds of fruit trees”.
- February 1858 “Bush fire at Doncaster, Mr. Dally’s ground was burnt all over, and most of the fencing burnt down. Semens, a neighbouring German from us, had his hut burnt”.
- April 3rd 1858 “At 4 o’clock went down to German Chapel, with Mother, Aunt, Dick, Alf, Jane and Annie, and heard an excellent sermon.”
Jane Serpell was a small woman but prior to moving to East Doncaster she often walked the eight miles from Glenferrie laden with goods for the farm. The rough bush tracks, which were then the only road to East Doncaster, made walking a much tougher proposition than the neat country lanes that Jane had known during her childhood.
In 1856 the Serpells built a house on their East Doncaster farm and the whole family moved in. Selina Serpell’s husband Edward Beeston had died a few years after arriving in Australia, so Selina once again came to live with Jane and brought her ten year old daughter Annie with her.
The Serpells were one of the first families to grow fruit trees in Doncaster. The original trees planted in 1855, soon bore fruit. As the children grew older more and more trees were planted and by the time the eldest boys married and moved away, the family had a flourishing orchard.
Thomas built a store, (now classified by the National Trust) at the corner of Glenferrie and Burwood Roads, Alfred took over a farm in Whittens Lane for a few years, then opened a clothing store in Box Hill. Richard junior purchased his own orchard adjoining the family land, but the youngest son Henry remained home to look after his mother’s orchard.
Jane and her daughter joined in the community life of Doncaster. They attended Church of England services in Pickering’s home and at the Waldau church, becoming friends with Eliza Pickering. When the Anglicans built Holy Trinity, the activities of the church became an important part of the Serpell life. Jane’s son, Richard, took a leading role in the building of the Athenaeum Hall in Doncaster, becoming a trustee while her eldest boy Thomas, designed the hall, and Jane herself helped with the tea meeting at the opening.
The original Athenaeum Hall designed by Thomas Serpell in 1870.
Richard junior became a successful orchardist and in 1875 married his cousin Annie Beeston, Selina’s daughter. They built a brick homestead on the hill above the orchard. Sadly Annie did not enjoy her new home for long. After only one year she died while giving birth to a girl. The baby was christened Annie after her mother. Richard’s sister, Jane Serpell junior, now thirty-four, had never married but took over care of young Annie, bringing her up with all the love and attention of a real mother.
Four years later, while on a holiday at Phillip Island, Richard met Alice Jane Reid, the daughter of a sea captain. Alice had grown up on a ship, for her father had taken his wife and two children with him as he traded between China, New Zealand, and Tasmania. By the time Alice met Richard, her father had retired and settled at Rhyll on Phillip Island. After a short courtship Alice married Richard and moved to East Doncaster.
In 1833 the whole Serpell family left East Doncaster. Once again tragedy had visited them when Alice's young son was drowned in a dam on the orchard, and the same year Aunt Selina died. To get away from this land with its sad memories they purchased twenty acres at the comer of Doncaster and Williamsons Roads, where the Tullys had lived.
Jane Serpell built a weatherboard house facing Doncaster Road. She called it “Mount Edgecombe” after a castle where her husband had been stationed in Cornwall. The house had four large rooms, two smaller sitting rooms, and an inconvenient kitchen.
In contrast to the makeshift abode of their early days in Victoria, the life led by Jane and her daughter at “Mount Edgecombe” could be described as "elegant ladies in retirement”. Intricate embroidery and preparations for church bazaars dominated their days in an atmosphere of padded furniture, samplers and antimacassars. The parlour contained an oval table with matching chairs, a glass dome with artificial silk flowers, made by Jane junior, stood on the bookcase and velvet cushions with chenille embroidery lay on the couch. Over the fireplace hung a large picture called “Hush” (typical of the era) it portrayed two children on a red armchair with their mother holding up her hand to indicate hush.
The large dining room held a suite of horsehair furniture and a sideboard as well as the dining table, (always covered with a velour tassel-edged cloth). A picture with a bulky leather frame dominated the room. The frame was made by Jane junior who was clever with her hands. It was titled “Suffer the Little Children”. An unusual piano stood on the side wall, it was large and black but the interesting feature was the keyboard, which could be moved to transpose music.
'Mount Edgecombe'. Built by Richard Serpell in 1883. Given to his daughter. Jane Serpell, as a wedding present in 1906. Owned later by Mrs Annie Goodson, wife of William Goodson, head master of Doncaster Primary School. Demolished in the 1970s to make way for the first extension of Doncaster Shoppingtown. DP0213
Though Jane was a small women she had to cope with heavy pots and large pans in the small primitive kitchen. The cast iron sink had a pump to draw water from an underground tank, (a luxury, when most housewives had to walk outside for water). A large safe was fitted with shelves where flat pans of milk were left for cream to rise. Jane skimmed the cream, putting some in a bowl for the house, the remainder she used for making butter. A brimming bowl of cream on the dinner table was one of the compensations for the daily chore of milking a cow.
Both Jane's mother and daughter, took an active part in the social life of the district. They were among the elite of Doncaster, a group of the more successful land owners of the district, for there was a definite social distinction between those who owned an orchard and others who worked for wages. They enjoyed meeting their friends, the Lawfords, Clays, Pettys, and attended Alfred Hummel’s dinners and social evenings at his home “BayVu”. Holy Trinity Church took an important place in the Serpell’s lives. They filled the house with preparations for church fetes, tea meetings or harvest festivals. Jane senior cooked cakes and food while Jane junior covered the sitting room with the decorations and large cutout letters she was preparing for the day.
Miss Jane Serpell (Junior). Born in 1842 at Watchet, Sommerset, England. Arrived in Melbourne with her family about 1850. She died in 1891 at Doncaster. DP0802
Jane always looked well-dressed as she walked to church, frequently wearing a garment called a dolman made of black watered silk and wide black lace. At home she dressed in a black homemade tight fitting bodice trimmed with black beads and full skirt. Jane junior wore a tight fitting bodice and full skirt with her hair parted in the middle and brushed back in a chignon. Jane junior was a keen horsewoman, riding a black horse called “Prince”. She was a popular guest during Alfred Hummel’s picnic parties in the hills. Jane looked attractive in a smart black riding habit and small black bell topper with blue veil.
Jane, like her mother, lived a full happy life. At East Doncaster, work in the orchard and house filled her days, then baby Annie came into her home to bring her new happiness. The move to “Mount Edgecombe” gave her the opportunity to enjoy living as a country gentlewoman, but her life was short. At the age of 47, after a short illness, Jane Serpell junior died.
Richard Serpell had purchased eighteen acres in Williamsons Road when the family moved in I883. It cost 50 pounds, and was on the site of the present Westfield Shoppingtown. In contrast to life next door at “Mount Edgecombe”, Richard’s wife Alice lived and worked as an orchard housewife. She was an industrious woman who raised a family of four girls and four boys.
Alice Serpell
Alice Serpell. Born Alice Reid in Newcastle N.S.W. in 1859. Married Richard Serpell in 1879. Died at Doncaster in 1939. She was Richard's second wife. DP0665
When Alice first came to East Doncaster she cooked in the cast iron pots hung over an open fire. Later a colonial oven was installed. It acted much on the lines of a camp oven and was merely a wide iron box with a long door across the front. It was set in a fireplace with a space left underneath for a small fire to heat the oven for roasting joints or cakes. For heating pots, hung from a bar in the chimney, a fire was lit on top of the oven. Later Richard obtained a more convenient fire stove for Alice.
Alice made the household almost self sufficient making the produce from the farm last the year round. Alice preserved fruit in lacquered tins with press lids, until the year a disastrous batch of rhubarb corroded the tins, after that she used more satisfactory glass preserving jars. Alice made jams and sauces in large quantities using the copper, of course it was thoroughly cleaned with salt beforehand. Richard kept pigs to supply the house with bacon and other pork meat. When a pig was killed it was well scraped by one of the men to remove the bristles and hung in a shed overnight. Next day they divided it into portions, such as the forequarter, ham, and bacon. Alice rolled the bacon and tied it tightly, then put it all in a large tub to soak in brine. She made sausages from pork and beef filling, the hocks were used for soup. Nothing was wasted by the pioneer house wife.
Alice dressed simply. When she went out she wore a bustle under her dress and tiny bonnet on her head. Her skirt reached the ground and frayed so she sewed up the hems with a fringed binding.
At “Mount Edgecombe” Annie Serpell was 13 years old when her Aunt, and foster mother, Jane had died. She was sent to a private school for a few years and then following the custom of better class families, she finished her education at home with a governess. Annie learnt the gentle arts of music, singing, painting, and needlework. Specimens of her handwork, drawn-thread cloths, pillow lace, pressed flowers, and many paintings added to the abundant decorations at “Mount. Edgecombe”.
Annie loved animals. Among her many pets were two St. Bernard dogs. When they eventually died, she had them buried in a little plot of land which became a cemetery for her pets. Like her aunt, Annie was fond of riding and had a pony and jinker. She kept them in a stable and shed at the rear of the house.
A new headmaster came to the Doncaster school at the end of the century, Mr. William Goodson. Each day he rode from his home at Fitzroy, on a white pony. The school children named him “The Knight of the White Pony”. During the day Mr. Goodson left his pony in the Serpell stable. So began a romance with Annie that resulted in their marriage in 1906.
In 1901, at the age of ninety, Jane Serpell senior died peacefully in her sleep. At her funeral two black horses adorned with black ostrich feathers led the funeral procession to the Kew cemetery. Jane had been the leader of her family. She did not take the role of a wife supporting a husband, in her case the family provided the support for Jane’s leadership. Her memories of life in an English Village were woven into her life in Doncaster, helping to enrich the social group of the community; Jane had brought her family to a virgin country and from rough bush beginnings, the family had built up a life of culture and elegant comfort.
Kate Schramm
Kate Pickering was born in London in 1847 and came to Doncaster with her family two years later. She grew up in the secluded bushland of East Doncaster with her older sister and younger brothers as companions. Their nearest neighbour, Johann Walther was a well educated German from Silesia. Johann supplemented the meagre income from his farm by teaching the children from the nearby scattered farms, but after a few years he left the district. Then the children either walked to Ferguson’s school in Templestowe or were educated by their parents. Joseph Pickering having spent some time at a university was in a position to teach his own children and Eliza, who later taught sewing at Schramm’s school, instructed Kate in needlework, cooking, and all the housewifely skills.
Kate was a thirteen year old girl when Max Schramm opened a school in the Waldau Church not far from the Pickering house in East Doncaster. Friendships were important in a sparsely populated area so Schramm became a friend of the Pickering family. Schramm had come to teach the German children at Waldau but many English parents also sent their children to his school. This success led him to build a new school-house in a central position in Doncaster Road.
Kate, at seventeen, became engaged to Max Schramm who was thirty six, and the couple arranged to be married when the new school-house was finished. The wedding took place in December 1864 and they moved into the two-story brick building that Schramm had designed. A central entrance porch opened into the school room, from there a door led into the family room that Kate used as her kitchen, dining room, and sitting room. A steep staircase led up to the garret with two bedrooms. When the family grew, one end of the back verandah was closed in to provide another bedroom.
The Schramms were becoming important members of the community. Max led the group of men who built the Athenaeum Hall in Doncaster. At that time many men and women were concerned about the excessive drinking in the district. The only form of entertainment was to be found in the hotels. They thought that a hall where concerts, dancing, and instructive lectures could be held, would attract people away from the hotels. Max held meetings in his schoolroom for the committee who built the hall. On the opening night of the finished hall, Kate entertained the artists and visitors from Melbourne, at a dinner in their schoolroom before going to the opening.
Kate’s first baby died after five months, but four other children were born in this small school-house. Rachel, Rhoda, Arthur and Ada; the next child, Victor, was bom in the new stone house now known as Schramms Cottage.
c1869. Max Schramm working in the rear of Doncaster Common School garden; Kate on the back verandah of the school house. 3 year old Rachel near the path. Dr Buchanan lived in the substantial out-building at the rear of the school on the right hand side of the photograph. The garden is in an early state of development. DP0075. Compare with DP0076.
Max Schramm sold his school to the Education Department in 1874 because the new Education Act declared that education must be compulsory, free and secular. Religion played a big part in Schramm’s teaching and as his beliefs would not allow him to abandon religion in class, he could not continue the school. He erected another stone house with a school room at the rear, on a twenty acre block alongside the old building.
It was a wonderful day for Kate Schramm when the new house was finished and they finally moved in. After the crowded living conditions in the old schoolhouse, she could now enjoy her love of fine furniture, decorating the rooms in elegant style with ornaments and furnishings sent by relatives in England. The home was a combination of Max Schramm’s austerity and Kate’s English tradition.
Meals in the Schramm household were held with strict formality. Max Schramm sat at the head of the table and Kate at the other end. Schramm was a strict man. The children had to finish all their meals, if one of them didn’t eat something, it would come back at the next meals until it was finished, also they were not allowed to speak unless spoken to at the table, and if any of the boys spoke out of turn, they were sent to the punishment table in the comer.
1870? 1880 ? The township of Doncaster in viewed from the Doncaster Tower looking eastward. Buildings shown are the Doncaster school (later the E. S. & A. Bank and now demolished), Schramm's house, the Church of Christ, John Petty's house, and the Post Office. DP0019
In the 1870’s Doncaster was a growing town. At the Athenaeum Hall the library had become popular and regular evenings, starting with poetry reading, followed by dancing, were being held. Kate and her mother ran Sunday School at Holy Trinity Church, while Max shared his wife’s interest in the church by acting as secretary.
c1900 Doncaster Road, Doncaster c the Doncaster Athenaeum Hall, looking west towards Church Road. Hall was enlarged in 1897. Tower in background. A horse and cart approaching. Doncaster Tower visible in the distance. DTHS-DP0051
Max Schramm was ordained as a pastor of the Lutheran Church the year they moved into the cottage so Kate was now a pastor’s wife with social obligations: She retained her interest in her own church, Holy Trinity, but served her husband, entertaining ladies of the Lutheran Church. She was very much a home person, leaving outdoor work to the children, who fed the fowls, milked the cow and helped their father in his orchard, for he planted fruit trees in the twenty acres to supplement his income.
Outbuildings rose near the house. There were stables, fowl-houses, a smoke-house made from an old tank and down by the orange trees, toilets. They were earth closets - a double for boys and a single for the girls, for the cottage was also the school. A lattice screened the entrance with a climbing red geranium growing over it.
Schramm's cottage in original location 1950 (DTHS-DP0537)
In 1884, the Lutheran school closed. Soon Kate began cooking all meals in the open fireplace in the school-room. Later they installed a fire stove and the room became the kitchen. It was primitive, a table, safe and cupboard were the only kitchen furniture. All the water was carried from the tank or well along the verandah through the front door and down the passage. Even when Kate was old she would walk to the tank often on a cold stormy night, to fill a kettle with water. No one ever thought to keep a supply of water in a bucket.
Kate’s sister Susan came to live with them after their mother died. They built a partition at the end of the school-room to make a room for Susan. With her lively blue eyes and black hair, Susan would have been a beautiful girl if her face had not been burnt. She grew up embarrassed by her injury, always avoiding being seen by strangers till, as an adult, Susan had become afraid of people. Whenever anyone came to the house she scurried into her room and stayed there till they had gone.
Kate had a happy family. The three girls Rachel, Rhoda, and Ada were growing up. The eldest boys were invited by Max Schramm’s relatives to go to Germany to finish their schooling. The boys didn’t want to go, so Rachel and Rhoda took their place, travelling to Germany for their last year’s schooling. The language was no problem for both English and German were spoken fluently in their home.
On the way back to Australia they stopped in England to visit Kate’s relatives in Bedfordshire. They returned to a warm reunion with the family, the girls excitedly laughing and talking, the lively Ada being full of questions.
Rachel and Rhoda were happy to be home and ran out to see how the two peppercorn trees they had planted the day before leaving, had grown. For many years the trees hung over the footpath making a cool shady place on hot, summer days. They had been school girls when they left, but returned poised, charming women, skilled in social graces. Rhoda had become a gifted pianist, so Max Schramm purchased a piano for her. She set up as a piano teacher giving lessons in the drawing room.
In 1890, an exciting time began for the women of the family. There was romance, animated talk of wedding plans and preparation for new homes. Kate’s second daughter, Rhoda, and Herman Fischer, a Lutheran pastor, were first to be married. They went to live in Horsham. Rachel fell in love with tall, handsome Karl Neher, from Wurttemberg, in Germany, and was married three years after Rhoda. The couple lived on an orchard in Bayswater. Two years later Ada, the youngest girl, who was like a bright little bird, married Alfred Pardy. They were comfortably off, and went to live in Surrey Hills. On one of their visits to the family home they created a sensation by driving up in their new car, a Stanley Steamer, for cars were a rarity in the district. Ada was smartly dressed in a Tussor silk coat with a blue motoring veil over her hat and tied under her chin.
Max Schramm moved into their empty room. He used to sit up late at night reading Greek and Latin texts by the flickering light of an oil lamp and so as not to disturb Kate he moved his bed into this room, now the room became his study and was Schramm’s domain. Kate would never consider entering the room without first knocking and receiving permission to enter. The boys did not often see the inside of the study, when they did, it was generally to be reprimanded. It was after one such occasion that Albert, now a grown man, decided to leave home. He went to live in New Zealand and never saw his mother again.
In 1908 Max Schramm died. Kate had done much to support her husband. He had come to Doncaster with a strong accent and imperfect English, Kate with her correct English speech had helped him overcome this. Although she attended her own church, Holy Trinity, Kate still took her place as the Pastor’s wife, gaining the respect of both communities. Her warmth softened Max’s strict ideas. While entertaining guests one Sunday evening, Kate turned to a young woman with a reputation for her fine voice and asked her to honour them with a song. The singer was surprised at the request, it being Sunday, and turning to Pastor Schramm said, “Surely it would not be correct to sing on this day?” Schramm answered simply, “The birds also sing on Sunday”.
Kate’s family all left home; Victor married and lived on the other side of their land, two other boys moved away from the district. The house was not left without children, for the year before Max died, Rachel lost her husband. To help her over the next years, two of her children came to live with Kate and by the time they left, Ruby, Victor’s girl, was a three year old who often walked across the orchard to be with Grandma.
As they grew older, Ruby and her young sister, Nina, used to call in to see Grandma on their way home from school. Kate always had a piece of cake or biscuit for them. On the first Tuesday of each month, Kate would say, “You can’t come in today, the ladies are coming”. That was her “At Home” day when the “Ladies of the Parish” came to call. Sometimes the children would peep through the door and see the silver tea service and tea cups set out on the white lace cloth and perhaps see the ladies drop their visiting cards on the round silver tray.
Kate Schramm became worried at the outbreak of the 1914 war for there were strong anti-German feelings in the community. She hid all of Max’s school books and charts in the roof of the house and the English accent she had always had became more pronounced. Kate need not have worried, she was held in such respect that there was never a word spoken against her.
Kate Schramm died in 1928 at the age of eighty-one. She had given her family a happy life. Perhaps the strict code of behaviour in their home, tempered by Kate’s warmth and love, gave her children the sense of security and well-being that they remembered all their life.
In the 1880’s, while Kate Schramm was enjoying her new stone house and Jane Serpell lived in elegant comfort at “Mt. Edgecombe”, many women still sheltered in crude huts. Across Doncaster Road from Margaret Corbett’s Italianate brick house, Theresa Brocco lived in a canvas house. Straight saplings were lashed together to form a framework then covered with canvas. During the day a soft glow of light came through the roof and walls but on wet nights the canvas had an uncomfortable habit of leaking. On the other hand, Elizabeth Smith’s family enjoyed close companionship in their slab hut.
Elizabeth Smith
Elizabeth and James Smith coped with eleven children in their hut. The hut, built in the 1860’s, had walls of red-gum slabs neatly fitted together and trimmed smooth. Weatherboard rooms were added to the hut as the size of the family grew but the main room they lived in was always the kitchen. James had built a window on the west side but it had no glass, only a flap, so when they opened the window, they opened a hole in the wall. If it rained or blew hard, they closed the window and the room was dark. The opposite wall was taken up with a large stone fireplace. A swivel bracket with hooks held pots hanging over the fire. When Elizabeth wanted to see how the food, was cooking, she pulled the bracket with an iron hook and all the pots swung out into the room. About once a month the eldest children cleaned out the fireplace and a new back log was brought in. James selected a large log and pulled it up to the kitchen door with the horse. Then they all rolled it across the kitchen floor to the back of the fireplace. A fire was set with smaller wood and once lit, it burned for the next month. When the new “set up” was finished, the children sat around it on the the floor and celebrated.
The family lived in the kitchen, making it a crowded place. Everything that could be, was hung from the walls. There were no chairs but a red-gum log, cut to the right size for a seat, stood inside the door. They called it the ‘gentlemans seat’ and always offered it to visitors. The children sat on the floor, generally being in Elizabeth’s way as she prepared a meal, so she constantly had to get them to move. Food and provisions were stored on boards on the roof rafters and were reached by a ladder fixed to the wall.
The children used the floor as their playground; it was made from red-gum off-cuts fitted together and polished smooth by years of continuous wear and constant scrubbing. A favourite game of the children, was to roll a large glass marble, about two inches in diameter, across the floor and into a knot hole in one of the red-gum slabs. Beatrice, one of the eldest girls, would keep the score.
The Smiths ran a dairy farm but a steady income came from cutting and selling timber, for large red-gum grew on their land. James and his eldest son cut the trees and split the timber to eight foot lengths for coach-builders to use in wagon wheels and bullock carts. Elizabeth and the eldest girl milked cows and made butter from the cream.
In the evenings, when Elizabeth was busy, Beatrice was left to look after the younger children. She was a real ‘bossy boots’ but did a good job of keeping the children interested. She had seen meetings and concerts in the Mechanics Institute and ran her own concerts the same way. Beatrice would write a program and call on the children to recite, give a speech or sing a song. Most evenings the concerts ran well, everyone enjoying themselves. If anyone didn’t get up as soon as their name was called, or if the speech was not learnt properly, she would cross their names off the program. This would cause complaints; sometimes others thought it unfair and joined in the complaints. Beatrice would try to penalise them, only causing a bigger uproar; finally the shouting and yelling was so loud Elizabeth would hear it in the cow-shed and hurry down to see what it was all about. She would come in, see that nothing was wrong, look at the baby asleep in his crib in the comer by the fireplace and say, “How that baby can sleep through this racket I don’t know”. Beatrice would get her mother back to the milking and start another program with everyone happy again.
James and Robert used to leave early in the morning to cart timber and return about seven in the evening. When time came for them to be home, Elizabeth and the children always listened for them. On a fine night the crack of his whip could be heard a half a mile away. If it was wet she would worry, for the muddy roads were shocking. Eventually she would hear a sound, “What was that?” she would say and all the children would be quiet and listen too. “Yes, I think it was Dad’s whip”. Then they would hear the team coming in the gate and driving past the kitchen door. Elizabeth would hurry the children into bed and get James’ tea ready while he fixed the horses. James came into the kitchen and as he stood there, asking about the children, water ran off his raincoat and poured out of his boots all over the floor.
In 1890, during the prosperous days of the land boom, James saw his brother, George Smith, build his mansion “Ben Nevis”. James and Elizabeth also built a large, new house. The family were now old enough to look after the work on the dairy farm and Elizabeth was able to enjoy her comfortable large home, a far cry from the crude slab hut.
Jane Hummel
Alfred O. Hummel and his wife Jane (nee Lawford, sister of Edwin Lawford). Alfred O. Hummel built the famous Doncaster Tower in Doncaster Road in 1879. DTHS dp0280
Jane Hummel came to live in Doncaster soon after Kate and Max Schramm opened their school in Doncaster Road. Jane was a member of the Lawford family who lived in Box Hill, but as their farm was close to Koonung Creek, near Elgar Road, the family frequently visited friends in Doncaster. The younger children went to Max Schramm’s school, crossing the creek on a fallen log behind their home. Balancing on a narrow log was much more exciting than walking round to the bridge at Elgar Road. It was also more dangerous when the creek was in flood and the log wet and slippery. Several of the Lawford family married and made their homes in Doncaster. Two of the girls, Sarah and Jane, were visitors to the first Church of Christ in Porter’s home, and both later fell in love with Doncaster men. Sarah married Thomas Bayley of Doncaster Road and Jane married the handsome, rich Alfred Hummel.
Jane Lawford was bom in 1844 when the Lawfords ran Richmond's first general store. Ten years later the family built a brick home in Box Hill. Jane, a tall elegant girl, made a perfect partner for her husband, the proud, flamboyant Alfred Hummel, and she became a charming hostess to welcome guests to his large, stylish home. Hummel had purchased land on Doncaster Hill between the Clays and the Church of Christ, and he extended the small cottage on the land to make a fine new house. A coach house, with quarters for Hummel’s workmen, completed the farm. “Bay Vu” as they called the new home, with its new timber shingles and decorated barge boards, was an impressive building.
Alfred purchased two blocks of land in Doncaster Road. He presented one to Holy Trinity Church and the other to the Athenaeum Hall. Concerned men in Doncaster built the hall to provide a distraction from the excessive drinking and drunkenness in the district. The Trustees of the Athenaeum held a tea meeting to celebrate the opening of the hall. Jane supported her husband by joining Agnes Clay and the other wives who each hosted a table for fifty guests. Jane shared in the prestige that Hummels generosity brought them.
Jane became the ‘first lady’ in Doncaster. She graciously entertained important guests from Melbourne and the elite of Doncaster at dinner parties in the large dining room, and received visitors for afternoon tea in the spacious drawing room, with its bay window looking out on a view of Melbourne. Alfred and Jane led delightful picnic parties in the mountains; guests in a gay mood set off in carriages, while some ladies and gentlemen dressed in full riding costume, rode to the picnic. During these years, Doncaster enjoyed a happy whirl of social functions. At the Athenaeum Hall, balls became popular, often running all night and enthusiasts formed a quadrille club. The elite of Doncaster decided that the men should wear white gloves for dancing, a matter looked on as a pretension by those not included in the elite circle. One man showed his scorn for this affectation by wiping dirty axle grease on his hands and greeting all the gentlemen with a hearty handshake.
The Hummels prestige increased when he built the 285 feet high Doncaster Tower in 1879. To take advantage of the magnificent view from Doncaster hill, Hummel had made two previous attempts to build a look-out tower. Each time the tower blew down in gale force wind. He felt humiliated by his failure and Jane also suffered a loss of standing in the community. Alfred's proud mind began to form plans to erect a new tower. He talked about it with Jane and she encouraged him. This time chains and cables would be attached to defeat the effect of the winds. It must be bigger, a small tower would be an admission of defeat. It would be tall, taller than any building in Melbourne. An attraction that would put Doncaster on the map; it would bring sightseers and picnic parties. He would build a refreshment room and a large hall at the base of the tower to cater for the visitors.
Hummels spirits lifted, and Jane felt caught up in the excitement. They brought shipwrights out from England to erect the tower. Hummel tackled the problem of construction.
The top half was built first, then the lower section assembled around it. Guy lopes were attached and the top half hauled up into place. A network of thick oregan beams, some over two hundred feet long, supported the tower. Cables from the top were spread out and fastened to logs deep in the ground, to prevent the tower being blown down. Hummel stopped calling himself a gentleman and farmer, now he used the title — architect and engineer.
Hummels Tower, 1879 with its refreshment room.
From her home Jane had watched the tower rising on the hill across Doncaster Road. The top seemed to be right up in the sky, it dwarfed her house. The tower was visible for miles around; it dominated the countryside, it was a landmark. An enclosed staircase wound up to the first platform from there, open stairs led to the top platform and then a straight ladder to the base of the flagpole. In the wind the tower swayed and creaked. It took a good head for heights to climb to the top platform. The view was awe inspiring; from Bass Strait in the south, to Macedon in the north, to Woods Point in the west and as far as Ballarat in the east.
In 1879 Hummel opened the tower with a grand dinner in the entertainment hall. Alfred, with Jane at his side, presided over the dinner and received praise and compliments from the guests. Once more they were social leaders of Doncaster.
Hummel’s Tower became a tourist attraction. Horse-drawn drays brought picnic parties and visitors from Melbourne and visitors came from all around. After the effort of climbing all those stairs to the top, the tourists ignored Hummel’s tea rooms, they felt in need of something stronger than tea and walked down the hill to the hotel. Seeing his tea rooms ignored and losing money, was too much for Hummel. He built a hotel alongside the entertainment hall. Of course, it was bigger than any other hotel in the district, with thirty nine rooms and stables for twenty horses. On the thirteen acres surrounding the tower, were picnic grounds with swings and slides for children and a small racecourse.
In his final enterprise, Hummel had ignored the advice of his wife, Jane. He had married into a family of the strictest teetotallers. Building a hotel cast a cloud over the Hummel family life. The Athenaeum Hall had been built to attract men away from hotels. The fact that a member of the committee had built a hotel caused a set back to these ideals. Hummel had the humiliation of having to resign from the Athenaeum committee. For Jane, the disapproval of her family was more personal, for her brothers and their wives had been her closest friends.
For a proud man, life in Doncaster became impossible. He sold all his properties in Doncaster and moved to Tasmania, where he died eighteen years later. The heady days, when Jane Hummel had been Doncaster’s ‘first lady’, ended unhappily. She continued to live a quiet life, dying in Hobart thirty-five years later.
c1910. Doncaster Tower an Tom Wenke's Tower Hotel. The first hotel was burnt down in 1895. Both on the north side of Doncaster Road between Williamsons Road and Council Street. Among the signs on the cladding of the tower is an advertisement for Latham's prize ales. The sign on the picket fence behind the lamp post reads "Tower Hotel - Martin Wenke - Afternoon Teas - Good Accommodation". Another sign, on the front of the hotel, mentions "The Cyclists Rest", indicative of the time when cycling road races [such as the 'Kew Flyer' race] were in vogue. The original of this photo was a Kodak Post Card. DP1058
Mary Anne Clay
Mary Clay. Born Mary Ann Carnegie in 1851 Married Richard Clay in 1873. Died in 1917. Mary was the eldest daughter of James Clark Carnegie born 1824 at Arbroath, Scotland, and his wife Mary Ann Bland. They were married in 1850 in London. The Carnegie family arrived in Melbourne in 1855. DP0668
Richard Clay ran an orchard on the west of Hummel’s land where Mary Anne Carnegie came to live after her wedding in 1873. She soon adapted to the new role of farmer's wife, learning all the skills of a country woman. Both Mary Anne and Richard took great pride in their work making the effort to do everything correctly. Richard was a good fruit grower and in 1887 won the Leader Cup for the “Best Fruit Garden in the Melbourne District”. Mary Anne had the rounded face and pleasant smile of a good natured woman. She was a hard worker and soon joined in with the Clay family's social activities, such as helping to provide for tea meetings at Holy Trinity Church.
“Tea Meetings" were a favourite way of raising money. At the tea meeting held to mark the opening of the Athenaeum Hall the wives of the committee members each provided all the food for a table of fifty people. Married people were charged two shillings and sixpence (25 cents) each and bachelors, who sat at a separate table, paid three shillings (30 cents) each. Typical of the quantities of food supplied are the following figures for a Tea Meeting held at Holy Trinity in 1880. Each of the ladies helping to run the meeting provided milk and sponge rolls. The Church paid for other provisions and purchased the following items:
- 40 pounds of currant cake
- 10 pounds of seed cake
- 16 dozen jam and custard tarts
- 16 dozen seed buns
- 10 dozen sausage rolls
- 6 dozen pastry cakes
- 213 pounds of ham
- 3 pounds of tea
- 20 pounds of sugar
- 9 pounds of butter
- 17 large loaves. 14 would have done
Mary Anne stayed up late the night before this meeting to cook a ham, keeping the fire going under the copper. At midnight when the ham should have been cooked, the water was still clear, it didn’t have the usual scum on the surface. She had forgotten to put in the ham. After that, whenever a tea meeting was being planned, someone would brightly say: “Don’t forget to put the ham in the water!”
During the land boom of the I880’s, the Clay family subdivided their family orchard. After the estate was sold in 1889, Richard and Mary Anne moved to Kew, living a life of retirement in an expensive house in Princess Street.
Mary Anne and Richard Clay came back to the district in 1894. They bought William Franklin’s land on the south west corner of Doncaster and Blackburn Roads. The large brick house they bought stood well back from the road and was surrounded by orchard and trees. Both Mary Anne and Richard enjoyed living among trees. With their care and skill the orchard soon became a showplace. Pine windbreaks surrounded the fruit trees and an avenue of flowering gums led up to the home where a group of mulberry trees grew. On the verandah Mary Anne’s pot plants bloomed and in the house her antique furniture and alabaster ornaments enriched the comfortable rooms. The front of the house was decorated with Flemish bond brickwork, but the other walls were of plain bricks. There was no air space between the hand-made bricks, which, being porous, allowed moisture to seep through the walls. The rooms were often damp, so Mary Anne leant galvanised iron sheets against the outside of the house when it rained.
It was in this house that Mary Anne solved the firewood problem. Every housewife had the same problem: she needed a constant supply of firewood for the kitchen stove. First thing in the morning, the fire had to be lit for breakfast. The usual routine was: get up, light the fire, fill the kettle, go to the outhouse, wash, dress, then put more wood on the stove and cook breakfast. The stove was kept gently burning all day, more wood being added each time a cup of tea was needed or when a meal had to be cooked. The problem was continually having to ask for firewood. The men were usually reluctant to cut wood and needed constant nagging. One time, when the wood had run out, Mary Anne decided that she had had enough. She prepared a meal, set the table carefully, with water jug, glasses, cruet, flowers, and serviettes, then she put the food on the table. When the family came in to the dinner, there was the meal, a leg of lamb, potatoes, and vegetables, all ready in serving dishes, but all cold and completely uncooked. She never had to ask for firewood again!
At the beginning of the new century Mary’s family began to leave home. The eldest girl Beatrice was 25 in 1900. Four years later she married Henry Reynolds and went to a home of her own on his orchard. Of Mary’s other children, Percival was 23 in 1900, Maud 20, and Herbert 16. There were also four younger girls and Harold, the youngest boy then aged 6. When Percival was to be married Richard purchased twenty acres of bush land on the north side of Doncaster Road. The whole family went to work clearing this land for a new orchard. The family then moved into a timber house on the new property, leaving the old brick house for Percival and his new bride.
Mary Anne raised a happy family who loved their family life. They enjoyed being together even for simple things like melon nights. They would sit round the kitchen table together cutting up the melons and picking out the seeds ready for jam. Picnics with Aunt Eliza, Uncle Tom Petty, and their cousins, were great occasions. Food was prepared, and the hamper packed for a picnic lunch on the beach. They rode to Box Hill in their fruit wagons. (The covered wagon was used by orchardists to take fruit to market filled a similar role to today’s station wagon). There was a wide front seat and many children could crowd into the spacious interior. The family used their wagons for picnics, camping, or to go anywhere they all needed to travel.
On these beach picnics the Clays and Pettys left their wagons at Box Hill station, then travelled by train through Richmond.
The family off to a picnic in their fruit wagon. The covered wagon used by orchardists to take fruit to market, filled a role similar to todays station-wagon to Brighton Beach. They would come home in the evening tired but happy. At lunch time, hungry after their morning swim, the families enjoyed a picnic lunch on the beach. Except for one occasion. The children ran out of the water ready for lunch only to find the hamper had been left in the wagon at Box Hill.
The Clays enjoyed their family life. They used to delight in being together, telling funny incidents and laughing with each other, it was this feeling of closeness that existed between Mary Anne and her son Harold. During the first World War Harold Clay joined up and went overseas in 1915. He was one of the many local men who went to serve their country. In one of Harold’s letters to his Mother in 1916 he told of Temple Crouch and Herman Zerbe taking a photograph of twelve Doncaster boys at Tel-el-Kebir.
“Last Monday night we were told that we were to leave the next morning. Reveille was sounded as 5.30a.m. We entrained and left Tel-el-Kebir at 11.50a.m. in the big open trucks. There were about fifty of them. It took us three hours to reach the canal. When marching from the train we passed the new brigade and Stan Crouch picked me out. (Just time to recognise him.) and a little further on, Charlie Aspinal spotted me. Then we crossed the canal on a pontoon bridge.”
On April 20th Mary Anne received another letter:
“Another week has gone. In the last letter I told you of the sand storm we experienced, the next day heavy showers fell. Tuesday morning we had orders that Lieutenant General Sir John Murray would inspect the lines at 7.30a.m. He came down our line of tents just as we were at breakfast, accompanied by a host of generals and staff. Right at the rear we were surprised to see the Prince of Wales. The General told us to carry on with our breakfast. I had a lump of fat bacon in one hand, and my dixie of tea in the other — I’m sure the Prince envied me. We had a yarn with Joe Beale and some other Templestowe boys, also Ferdi Thiele, last night. They are all camped here.”
Harold’s letters gave glimpses of the life at Doncaster.
August 24th: “Today I received more letters and a bonza hamper from Adrienne, plum puddings, tongues, chocolate etc. The Doncaster growers seem to have developed “Cool Store Mania”, but Perce tells me we were short of space again this year, so three more stores will be handy”.
January 16th: “I am at the waggon lines and still O.K. Had a nice letter from Mr. Goodson today, and a parcel from Lena Serpell — a fine cap comforter and a tin of home canned pears (from Serpell’s cannery) which were delicious. A few days ago I rode a couple of miles to see Roy Cameron. He is A1. I suppose Dad is kept busy with the fruit now, but I hope it won’t be long before I will be home to help him and the boys.”
Mary Anne loved Harold’s letters and was proud of her son. She longed for the time when he would come home. But Harold did not return. On July 31st, Sgt. Harold Clay was wounded in action and a few days later died. The same time his mother, Mary Anne, died in Doncaster. It was a fortunate circumstance that mother and son who had been so close, were both spared the anguish of bereavement. Beautiful stained glass windows were installed in Holy Trinity Church to the memory of Mary Anne Clay and her son Harold.
Eliza Petty
Eliza Petty. Born Eliza Clay in 1850. Daughter of John and Agnes Clay of Doncaster. Married Tom Petty in 1873. Died 1928. DP0696
After Hummel had left the district, his house, “BayVu”, was purchased by Tom and Eliza Petty, Tom had been the young boy who had come to Doncaster with his mother, Jane about thirty years before. After her years of life on the orchard at Doncaster, Jane Petty had matured into a beautifully spoken woman, who, although small, stood up straight and was always elegantly dressed. Jane had four children as well as a boy from Thomas’ previous marriage, but ten years after coming to the district they took an eight year old girl to look after. The mother of the girl, Isabella Stone, had died and her father brought her to stay with his friends Thomas and Jane, - “To stay for a few months”. Time passed, the months became years, and Bel stayed on. Her father sometimes wrote but did not come to take her home until she was about fourteen. Thomas and Jane did not want her to go, and Bel was happy with them, so she remained with the Pettys. When Isabella Stone grew up she married Tom Lawford, the brother of Jane Hummel.
In 1877 Thomas Petty had an accident in his cart and, shortly after, died from his injuries. Jane was now left a widow, she ran and organised the orchard with the help of her sons to do the heavy work. Jane Petty remained at her home “Coonung Grange” until her death in 1894.
Tom and Eliza had been living in a house near Jane Petty in Doncaster Road. When they moved to “BayVu” it was like coming home for Eliza. They now lived alongside her family, the Clays, where she had lived since the age of eight.
Eliza Petty, the daughter of Agnes Clay, was born at picturesque Hall Farm in Devonshire in 1850. The family lived at Fitzroy when they first came to Melbourne, and while there, Eliza attended Collingwood Ladies College. When they moved to Doncaster she went to the school run by Misses Robina and Mary Anne Wilson in their Log Cabin in Wilsons Road. After leaving school Agnes sent Eliza to learn dressmaking in Prahran. She stayed with a friend Mrs. Witchell. She learnt merely to make her own dresses nicely, not to sew for others. Probably her wedding dress was the last dress Eliza had time to make for many years, for being the wife of the highly active Tom Petty, she had an extremely busy life. Eliza managed her household and not only cooked for her family and the men, with help of one woman, until her daughter Ethel was old enough to help her.
All fruit growers wives cooked for the men, but Eliza had a particularly onerous task as Tom employed so many men. When the girls were growing up Eliza engaged two dressmakers who came for several weeks each year and stayed in the house whilst making dresses and sewing for the family.
One of Eliza's helpers, a girl called Sarah, was an ardent follower of the Salvation Army. As she sang hymns from morning till night, she was always known as “Salvation Sarah”. One day Tom Petty arrived home with a load of bricks on the dray. When he was unyoking the horse he left one chain attached to the hook in the dray shaft, the horse moved out of the shafts, the dray swung sideways knocking him over, the shaft resting on his neck. He shouted and Sarah, who was crossing the yard, heard him. She rushed over, held the shaft up enough for him to breathe, then called for help. A passerby heard her and came to the rescue. Together they lifted the shaft high enough to release Tom.
“Bayview”, the home of Eliza and Tom Petty. The house was built by Alfred Hummel in the I860's.
The move to “BayVu” or “Bay View” as they now called their home, gave more room for the growing Petty family and accomodation for the men Tom Petty employed. Also Eliza was close to her brother, Richard Clay, but only a few years later the Clays moved to Kew.
Eliza and Tom Petty missed having the Clays as neighbours, but these were the exciting days of the 'Land Boom’. Tom Petty was the most dynamic of all the Doncaster fruit growers. He bought uncultivated land, established orchards, and built houses for the men who worked them. In 1892, the Land Boom ended with a disastrous depression. Some banks closed their doors, mortgages were foreclosed, and people lost their entire life savings. Tom Petty faced ruin. He had expanded his holdings with the optimistic expectation of the time. Like everyone else, he thought the Land Boom would go on forever. When the crash came Tom’s hair turned white overnight.
Eliza Petty was a great help to her husband during the crisis, she listened to his problems with patience and her happy serene disposition gave a sense of security in the home.
In a depression, the ultimate burden falls on the mothers. The men worried about finding money to buy food and clothes, but the mothers had to prepare meals for their children without adequate provisions, generally going hungry themselves, and they had to keep family clothed and warm in winter. In some cases, mothers were separated from their children who were sent to stay with relatives who could afford to care for them.
During the depression of the 1890’s, Doncaster had the great advantage of being a rural area. There was plenty of fruit to eat during the picking season, vegetables could be grown on the land, and most people had a cow. Because fruit was hard to sell and fetched only a low price, the orchardists were not well off. However, by going to market they had opportunities to buy meat and other supplies cheaply. Percy Crouch once surprised his family by bringing home a leg of lamb that cost only one shilling and sixpence (15 cents).
After the depression, a few bare paddocks were left where orchards had been cut down and subdivided by land boom companies, ready for sale as housing blocks. In other cases orchardists re-possessed land that had been sold, but not paid for by land speculators who went bankrupt. Tom Petty thought that he would never recover from the depression, but he did recover, and in later years went on to buy more land and establish more orchards.
Eliza carried on the Clay tradition of hospitality. Her daughters often had friends to stay at “Bay View” (as it became known), and when the younger girls were growing up, they invited friends to musical evenings in the large front room where years before Alfred Hummel had held his social evenings. Lily and Ruby with their pleasing voices, were favourite singers. Occasionally Eliza went on camping trips with Tom and some of the family. They would go to Ferntree Gully or Tom and the girls went riding with visitors.
Eliza took an active interest in all district affairs and supported Tom in all his activities. Tom was a born leader and an active member of fruit grower organisations. He was a good speaker with a keen sense of humour. Eliza frequently travelled to functions in Victoria and other states, meeting wives of other fruitgrowers.
c1920. The family of Tom and Eliza Petty camping at Sassafras. A fruit waggon and tents are shown. OR The Petty family picnicking at Ferntree Gully. ??? DP0306
Tom retired in 1913 and he and Eliza went for a trip to England. A farewell function was arranged at the Athenaeum Hall in Doncaster. The farewell committee took up a collection and presented Mr. Petty with a travelling bag, suitably inscribed; Mrs. Petty with a handsome handbag and a rug to each. In his farewell speech, the chairman spoke of their visit to the “old country” but Tom talked of leaving for “home”. England was always referred to as “home”, even by those born in Australia.
They enjoyed the sea voyage, calling at Eastern ports and visiting the Continent. In England the gardens were gay with spring flowers. Tom and Eliza went to Doncaster in Yorkshire where they presented a flag from Doncaster School in Melbourne to Doncaster School in Yorkshire. Eliza sent a postcard to her son Edwin with a view of Bingley, the village where Grandma Jane Petty was born. It showed a pretty little place with pleasant views of the River Aire. They went to Devonshire to visit Hall Farm at Petrockstowe where Eliza was born and Frithelstock, her mother's’ birthplace.
The farewell committee found, after balancing their accounts there were some extra funds. On the Pettys return they offered this to Tom to buy a present for his wife but Eliza said Tom had given her plenty of presents in England. She suggested they purchase a clock for the library at the Athenaeum Hall.
Tom and Eliza moved to Box Hill, leaving “Bay View” to their son Frank. Later they returned to Doncaster Road to a new house, “Bingley”. Now that Eliza had more leisure, she was able to enjoy sewing for organisations in which she was interested. She was a skilful needlewoman and her work graced stalls at frequent bazaars and she loved crocheting for her friends.
Tom Petty died in 1923. Eliza received letters of condolence from the many organisations in which he had been highly esteemed.
Eliza continued to live at “Bingley” till her death in 1928.
Mary Hislop.
Mary Hislop. Born Mary Hardidge in 1855. Married William Hislop. Died in 1931. DP0683
At the Grange, Elizabeth Hislop prepared for the wedding of her son William to Hester Mary Hardidge. After Mary became Mrs. William Hislop, she went to live in the new house on William's own orchard in Wetherby Road behind the Hislop land. William had built a long, low house of vertical blackwood slabs with white painted windows. At the rear, a path of trodden earth wound through cherry trees to the “Grange”.
Hester Mary Hardidge came from England as a young girl and was given the nickname “Polly Long Stockings". She grew up among a family of farmers who were planting fruit trees on their farm in the 1860’s. Mary heard them talk about grafting, pruning and treating orchard pests and helped with picking and packing fruit. She was accustomed to walking among the fruit trees, handling the fruit and feeling the leaves brush against her face. So Mary willingly shared William's enthusiasm and helped in the work of the orchard.
By 1855 Mary had six children and was enjoying a happy life when William had an accident with his cart. Coming home from market he dropped his whip and jumped down to retrieve it, but his foot caught in the reins and he fell under the wheel. William was brought home but Mary was away, she had gone to visit her family at Burt's Hill in Croydon. A message was sent to her and she immediately hurried home. Although seven months pregnant Mary ran most of the way to Doncaster, but William had died by the time she arrived.
Mary now had the responsibility of running the orchard on her own, while caring for her six children. She also had a baby, this time without the support of William. Mary had help from the eldest girls, they were thirteen and eleven and accustomed to help in the house and to look after the younger children. Wives and children were always called upon during the busy times when fruit was ripe and had to be picked, sorted, packed and sold while still fresh. Now Mary was not just helping her husband; it was her orchard and her responsibility. While the baby was only a few weeks old her first job began, the trees had to be pruned.
Other wives in Doncaster lost their husbands and found themselves in the same position as Mary Hislop. Among the widows who ran their orchards were Jane Petty, Ernestine Fromhold and Agnes Clay. They employed men, rising early to give them their daily orders and during the fruit season organised the work of picking, packing and selling their years crop. They gave their occupation as fruit growers.
Ernestine Fromhold. Studio portrait. DP1136. See also cropped version DP0676
Five years after William’s death, a diptheria epidemic broke out. Three of Mary's children became ill. At the height of the fruit season ten year old William was critically ill. A load of fruit had been packed ready to go to market to be sold while still fresh. Mary had to go off to market knowing that William was not expected to last the night. Diphtheria was a dreaded illness, for it invariably led to death. Mary had to sit helplessly and watch her children die. After William, then Amelia, the baby who was born after her father died, and finally eight year old Fred. The four elder girls survived.
Elizabeth Hislop, Mary’s mother-in-law, left the “Grange” after her husband died and went to live with her granddaughter in Kew. Mary and her daughters moved into the Grange. She enjoyed coming into the large comfortable house with its homely kitchen, but the front room worried her. The floorboards over the cellar, where Elizabeth had stored supplies, tended to sag and creak when she walked over them. The family tried to assure her the floor was quite safe, but Mary imagined the floor collapsing under her and falling into the cellar. Eventually she had the “Grange”, with its solid brick walls, demolished. A new home was built in its place.
Life became easier for Mary when her children were grown up. As a grandmother, Mary enjoyed many happy years. Holy Trinity, where her niece Fanny Hislop played the organ, became a great interest in her life. Mary used to delight in the company of her grandchildren and liked them to go to church with her. One of the girls, Lillian, appreciated her grandmother and the way in which she helped her and talked to her as a real person, so much, that although she would have liked to be with the other children after Sunday School, she liked to go to church with Mary, just to be with her.
Her death at the age of seventy-eight left a gap in the lives of those who loved and admired her.
|
| Holy Trinity Church of England, Doncaster from the south-west. Erected in 1858. Nave, porch, vestry and the temporary timber sanctuary added in 1885. DP0099 |
Salome Crouch
Soon after Tom and Eliza Petty moved into Bayview, Percival Crouch and Edwin Lawford were married, and brought their wives to Doncaster. Percival Crouch visited England in 1887, on the return journey he met Salome Russell on the ship. Percy was a handsome, well-spoken man and Salome a strikingly beautiful twenty-eight year old woman, coming to make her home in Australia. During the long voyage they fell in love and soon after arriving in Melbourne, were married. The wedding was held in Christ Church, South Yarra, where Salome had been singing in the choir.
Salome came to live in a four-roomed weatherboard house in Williamson Road where Percival had his orchard. It was all so different to anything she had experienced in England and at night, when her husband had gone to market, she used to lie in the bed in terror at all the strange sounds of the Australian bush. In the silence of the night, possums would thump on the roof with startling suddenness, she would hear mopokes and the curlews wailing call. Gum trees, so different from the trees of her native land, looked scraggy and shapeless, while the bush was dry and untidy. Salome longed for the rich green fields and forests of England.
In time, her children taught her to appreciate the Australian bush, for they used to roam the paddocks looking for wild flowers, grasses, berries, lichen or fungi. They would take their treasures home to show their mother who soon came to understand and love the variety and beauty of her new land. Her favourite wildflowers were the little blue pincushions which she used to put on the table in a small yellow bowl. She would tell the children stories of wild flowers that she picked when a child in England; primroses, cowslips, bluebells and a special honeysuckle with pink flowers in clusters that grew in the hedgerows. They often heard about the honeysuckle but had only seen the one that grew in their garden. Then one day Percival found one at the market with a lovely pink flower cluster of blooms and brought it home. He gave it to little Enid to take in to her mother. She ran in all excited, holding it carefully. Salome took the flower in both hands, looking at it tenderly then to Enid’s dismay, she burst into tears. Enid tore out and told her father that her mother was crying. He hurried in with Enid at his heels. Salome looked up with a smile through her tears, he patted her shoulder and quietly went out. He understood, but Enid was puzzled and for years afterwards wondered why her mother had cried when she should have been pleased.
c1890? c1910? Main Road Doncaster looking west along showing the Doncaster Primary School, the Church of Christ, and the Doncaster Tower. Photographer: Thiele DP0173
The beautiful Salome Crouch with her cultured voice and careful manners, would have been at ease in the drawing rooms of Melbourne’s leisured class but instead she went to Doncaster to experience hard work as a farmer's wife. She learnt to milk a cow, make butter, preserve fruit and sew her children's clothes on a treadle sewing machine. She always had a cow and made butter in a dear little cherry churn, then she moulded it with butter pats and finally stamped the rounds with a wooden stamp in the shape of a scotch thistle.
Nothing was wasted in an orchard home. Reject fruit was used for jam and Salome used stale bread to make a delicious cake the children liked. She soaked the bread in plenty of milk, then mashed it to make a sloppy mixture, raisins, with plenty of sugar and spice, were added and the mixture baked in the fire stove with the dampers closed, for a long time, till it was solid and brown. She cut the cake into squares for the children when they came home from school hungry and ready for a snack.
Salome insisted that Sunday was a day of rest and woe-betide any of the children who disobeyed orders, for she was a strict disciplinarian. At one stage the girls were not even allowed to press a hair ribbon on Sunday, if any clothes needed pressing she said there were plenty of other days in the week. The family all went to Holy Trinity Church. Before leaving, Sunday dinner had to be prepared. The children helped; they scrubbed potatoes and put them in the hot oven to cook, ready to eat with cold meat when they came home. They ate them skin and all with plenty of butter and lovely brown gravy from the bottom of the dripping basin.
The family walked along Williamsons Road to Serpells corner then down Doncaster Road to the church. On wet days they drove in the market wagon, Salome sitting up straight on the front seat wearing a dress with leg o’mutton sleeves, a high collar held up by whale-bone and a crisp bonnet on her head.
She sometimes wore a lovely black lace-beaded cape that the children thought was fabulous. The childrens clothes were neat and clean. They didn’t have many clothes so a new dress or hat was a real treat, what they had they wore till it wore out — not just became out of fashion.
Salome did her best to instil her faith and beliefs into the hearts of the children. In 1895 she went home to England to visit her mother and sister, she was also a delegate from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union being the first delegate from Australia. She took her two children Temple, five years old and Enid, three, to show her mother and family in England. Salome happily returned to Percival and her home in Doncaster, now content with her lot.
By 1901 there were four children in the Crouch family. When her sister and brother-in-law died, Salome and Percival took in their two children to live with them, increasing their family to six. On Sunday evenings they all gathered around the harmonium to sing hymns while Salome played. Harmoniums or small pedal organs were popular, being less expensive than pianos. Later Percival did buy a piano and the children were taught to play by a music teacher who visited the house. By then, all the children could sing in tune for they used to practice the Solfa scale. They always remembered those happy evenings singing to the rich tones of the harmonium.
During the new century, hawkers and canvassers came to call on homes in Doncaster. There was “Pretty Mary”, a plump Indian woman who carried haberdashery and all sorts of pretty ribbons, laces, buttons etc. She used to unroll the big cloth she carried her goods in and carefully spread out her wares to advantage before she knocked on the door. She had such a sweet smile that Salome could never resist her. They used to call the man who came around selling tin goods, “Tinny”. He walked, carrying on his back a huge load of tins, buckets, billies, dippers and mugs, while strings of gadgets, egg beaters and nutmeg graters, hung from his pack. They would hear him coming, for the tins banged and jangled as he walked. One day they were driving home in the wagon when they saw “Tinny” arrive at Mrs. Hanke’s house. She had a very nice garden in Elgar Road with great clumps of Christmas Lilies. Almost without stopping he tore up a great armful of lilies, so roughly their bulbs and all came up. Salome, who loved flowers, was so infuriated she was ready to hit him but Percy wouldn’t stop to let her out so she called out, “You’re a bad man”. He looked up in surprise not realising he was being watched. Needless to say, he wasn’t very popular at the Crouch house after that.
Around the house, Salome planted a large flower garden, spending all her spare time in later years, working in the garden. She specialized in Daffodils, growing many varieties. In 1912 she put on an exhibition for charity in the Athenaeum Hall with a wonderful display of these charming spring bulbs.
Many of the women who lived on the orchards of Doncaster turned to gardening later in life. Their involvement with the soil that had provided their livelihood, seemed to beckon them when freedom from family cares gave them time to enjoy their garden for pleasure and recreation.
Elizabeth Lawford
Elizabeth Lawford. Born Elizabeth Inglis in 1865. Married Edwin Lawford in 1887. Died in 1950. She was a daughter of John Inglis, a pioneer of Box Hill. DP0682
In Max Schramm’s school, a quiet, blue eyed girl, Elizabeth Inglis, came from the other side of Koonung Creek in Box Hill. Elizabeth crossed the creek and walked up Elgar Road, meeting Martha Hanke, Mathilda Wittig and other girls, on the way to school. Elizabeth enjoyed her days at school and being a perfect mimic used to make the other girls laugh with her imitations of Schramm, copying his oft repeated commands such as — “Stand mit your face to the vall”.
Elizabeth’s parents, John and Helen Inglis had come from Scotland and in 1862 bought forty-seven acres in between Koonung and Bushy Creeks. They built a brick home close to a vehicle track that crossed their land and was shared by their neighbours, Aspinall and Lawfords. The track later became Woodhouse Grove. Elizabeth was taught the piano and singing, in the strictly tidy front room of the Inglis home.
At the age of twenty-two Elizabeth married Edwin Lawford, the younger brother of Jane Hummel. Edwin had been considered to be a delicate boy, so his parents sent him to Scotch College to fit him for a less strenuous life than that of the land. He became a teacher at the Deaf and Dumb Institute but was restless for an open air life, so in 1881 he bought land in Doncaster near his brother Birkby’s fruit tree nursery. Six years later when they were married, Elizabeth came to live in Edwin’s house in Williamsons Road opposite Serpells orchard.
This pleasant-faced, brown haired young woman of average height and build, was a comely person, quiet but always ready to help her enthusiastic orchardist husband. When her first baby was born the next year, she went to stay at her mother's home for the confinement. They called the baby Edwin, after his father. Four years later their second child Winifred, was born.
Working conditions in the home lacked convenience in the first years. Elizabeth pumped water from an underground tank or well, built of brick, and plastered over with cement to keep the water clean. Rain from the galvanised roof ran down pipes into the tank and Elizabeth filled her kettle or dipper with an iron pump. A jug of water sat alongside the well to prime the pump, and if the jug wasn’t re-filled while the water was running, there was trouble!
c1910 Edwin Lawford's house and sheds, at the north end of Carnarvon Street, alongside Williamsons Road. In 1904 Edwin Lawford built a cool store, and this is probably the building that can be seen at the rear of the house. The house in the far distance belonged to Henry Crouch. DP0218
Elizabeth was a happy person, singing songs, taught by her Scottish mother, as she went about her work. In the kitchen she washed dishes in a tin washing-up dish on a narrow table against the wall. Whenever a hole developed in the dish, Edwin mended it, soldering the hole; then he bought the tin dish back to the house saying “There it is, good as new again”. Alongside the washing-up dish was a metal tray for wet dishes and at the back of the table a wooden box to hold the home-made soap - always in the same position, year after year.
On bath night, Elizabeth placed a galvanised iron bath tub on the kitchen floor in front of the fire. She filled it from a big black kettle warmed over the wood fire; then declaring the temperature was “just right”, called one of the children to “hop in”. The children would sit up straight, being careful not to lean against the cold rim of the tub. Elizabeth would squeeze out a wet washer and, commencing with the face and behind the ears, proceed with the cleansing program telling the children stories of her life as a young girl in Box Hill. Such as tales of crossing the flooded creek over a slippery log. Then after being dried on the mat in front of the warm fire, prayers were said and they curled up in a cosy bed or their black iron cot. Years later when Winifred was married, the cot was used for her children. It brought back happy memories of happy bedtimes.
They added to the house, making improvements that delighted Elizabeth. Edwin installed a high, square tank to provide running water. Now she could turn on a cold tap over a new kitchen sink. There was a bathroom with a white enamel bath standing on four claw feet. The children found it great fun, slithering around in the large, smooth bath.
Edwin employed several men on his orchard who lived in a hut behind the house. The workers had hearty appetites, keeping Elizabeth busy cooking substantial meals for them. They ate three large meals a day and made a happy group round the kitchen table. They also had a snack in the orchard during the morning and afternoon. They called it morning and afternoon lunch; it consisted of sandwiches, scones or perhaps apple pie with billy tea. During the picking season Elizabeth made countless jugs of lemon squash for the packers in the shed. At one time, when homemade brews were popular, they made hop beer, but this was never given to the workers.
Elizabeth cooked her wholesome meals over a colonial oven or in pots over a fire. They grew vegetables, Edwin supplementing these from the Victoria Market in off seasons. The orchard provided plenty of fruit, reject of course, for no thrifty housewife used unblemished, marketable fruit. Elizabeth made delicious pies with the fruit and rolled out the leftover pastry for small custard tarts. She kept her pantry shelves laden with jam, preserves, pickles, sauces and chutney. A home-made coolgardie safe kept butter, milk and cream cool. The safe was improvised from a kerosine tin with portions of the sides cut away. Towelling lying in a vessel of water at the top, hung down the sides and dripped into a waterproof tray underneath. The ready-made safe, placed in a draughty position, was all that was necessary to keep butter firm on a hot day.
Elizabeth never wavered about helping outdoors. She found the orchard interesting, for Edwin tackled fruit-growing with enthusiasm, always thinking of new ways to improve his fruit production. As the years passed he took more and more interest in affairs of the district, such as the I.O.R, Lodge, the Rifle Club, Athenaeum Hall, library, the Fruit-Growers Association and took a seat on the Doncaster Shire Council. Elizabeth was always there to quietly help and support him. She also had her own community interests and belonged to the Women's National League and the Red Cross. In 1900 Elizabeth was asked to plant an Elm tree in the recreation pound to commemorate the Relief of Mafeking on the day of public rejoicing declared by the Commonwealth Government. The Rifle Club became popular with the wave of patriotism generated by the Boer War. At field days, in a paddock by Koonung Creek, women also took part in the shooting.
Life was pleasant and leisurely in the early days of the century. They attended concerts and Band of Hope meetings in the Athenaeum Hall and enjoyed camping holidays with other families. They travelled to Carrum in their fruit wagons which made splendid sleeping quarters for Elizabeth and the girls; the males of the party occupied tents.
Eventually the time came for Edwin to retire and hand over the orchard to his son. He built a new six room cement brick home in front of the old house. As a fanciful touch, he had tiles in the shape of an apple and pear, placed in the centre of the roof. Edwin and Elizabeth turned their love of gardening towards laying out a new garden. Elizabeth used to delight in propagating plants. She grew old-fashioned flowers, among them cherrypie, calceolaria, herbaceous peonies, violets, fuchsias, bleeding heart and lilac. Their garden began to create interest with its rare shrubs and favourite old perennials.
After Edwin's death, Elizabeth’s troubles began to show; her feet rebelled against long hours out of doors. She was weary and began to spend all her days in Edwin’s old leather armchair, reading or mending and darning clothes for her grandchildren. At the age of eighty-five, Elizabeth Lawford died. She had experienced the change from Doncaster as a primitive village to the beginning of a modern suburb, living through two crippling depressions and two world wars.
The pioneer women who settled on the virgin bushland of Doncaster, suffered the type of hardships that are unknown today. By their endurance, these women and their children, created a close knit community of fruit-growers, a community whose efforts were rewarded with success.
One hundred years after the first pioneers cleared the bush-land and changed the face of the landscape, another change took place. The demand for housing blocks in the 1950's pushed out the orchards, and suburban homes covered the land. Profits from land sales became the final legacy of the early settlers to their great-grandchildren.
Many orchard families left the district but they are remembered by names of streets and public places such as Petty’s Lane, Clay Drive and Aumann Drive, to mention just a few. Schramm's orchard is now a sports ground called Schramms Reserve and Kate’s home, Schramm's Cottage, a living museum where people can see her rooms as they were during Kate’s life time. The kitchen at “Friedensruh” where Phillipine Thiele cooked her Kuchen cake, still has its old kitchen table surrounded by brown, stained lining boards and the original wattle and daube rooms are now restored by her descendants.
Many pioneer homes have gone over the years, Elizabeth Hislop’s home, “The Grange” has been replaced by the Doncaster bus depot; and the very land itself, where Jane Tully lived in her small hut and Jane Serpell built her elegant home, has been dug away for the Shoppingtown car park. As a final and fitting tribute to the pioneer women, Kate Schramm’s house, Phillipine Thiele’s “Friedensruh”, Margaret Caldecott’s “Glenfern” and Christina Winter’s box hedges have been classified by the National Trust.
Source: Green, Irvine. & Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society. 1987, Petticoats in the orchard / Irvine Green Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society, 81 McGowans Road Donvale Vic. 3111, Vic Illustrated By Irvine Green. ISBN: 0950092096. NLA https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1453230
No comments:
Post a Comment