Needs transcription from Original Scan Images DN2023-05-28B-02
Caption under images: THOMAS Petty, one of the founding fathers of Victoria’s fruit industry, and his wife Jane.
MAY 6, 1961
BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
Founding fathers of fruit
By JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
DONCASTER has a bi-cultural heritage of German Lutheran and English Church of England.
First of the English orchardists in Doncaster was Thomas Petty. In 1853, six months after landing in Melbourne from the good ship “Red Jacket” with his half-brother Henry, he pitched his tent by the Koonung Creek.
Thomas was more suited to weaving a tent than living in one. He had once gone to Germany to teach new weaving methods to her craftsmen. A slump in the cotton industry had sent him from his birthplace, Bradford, England, to Australia.
During the next 100 years, his sons and grandsons would become leaders of a new industry in a new land. Hard-working, straight as the stringybarks under which Thomas camped and with the ingenuity of which legend is made, it was inevitable for them.
He and Henry batched in their tent and prepared a livelihood for his wife Jane and four little ones, still in England.
Within two years, Thomas Petty had built a two-storey house on the hill, and had written proudly to Jane to come. The children, Tom, Elizabeth, George Thompson (Thompson was Jane’s maiden name) and John walked all the way from Sandridge (now Port Melbourne) and were excited at the prospect of seeing their father after two years.
But they ran in fright from the bearded, sunburnt man who hurried down the hill to greet them. They thought he was a blackfellow.
Jane glanced past the little cottage with a rope ladder leading to its attic, and looked for her two-storey house. She had imagined it to be much the same as the grand house she had been used to in England. Then she realised this was it. The earth floors were covered with sacking.
She cried every night for three weeks, like most of the women at first. Not so much because of the hardships, but because of the strangeness of animal noises at night in the bush and of imagined unfriendly black people, although few had been seen in this area.
Later, with pioneering pride Jane boasted the first wooden floors in the district. When Thomas was killed in an accident 22 years later, she farmed their 47 acres on her own.
Young Tom Petty grew up with a growing enthusiasm for fruit trees, as opposed to Doncaster’s early berry crops, an enthusiasm shared by the younger generation of Doncaster’s first German settlers, the Thieles.
When it was said that too much fruit was grown to be sold profitably, Tom planted more and encouraged sceptics to do likewise.
He became one of the leaders of a new industry for the blossoming colony of Port Phillip, and an inventor of implements and improvements.
051 ByWays DoncasterMirror
MAY 13, 1981
BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
Petty — the man with a mind
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
DONCASTER’S earliest crops were grapes and gooseberries. Mending gooseberry pickers’ gloves was an inescapable chore for the women — even on her wedding night, John Petty’s bride sat up late mending the holes ready for the next morning’s work.
If Tom Petty hadn’t been a farmer, he would have been a time and motion man. To save the long haul by hand from berry bush to packing shed he invented a sled.
He drove the district’s first spring cart to market. But not until he could save the back breaking heave to get the load on to it was he satisfied. A lower axle, lower shafts and Tom set a new fashion with his low slung “jingle”. No other district had thought of it.
In 1882, Tom Petty with Alfred Thiele and Richard Serpell became the first in Australia to export pears successfully to England.
In 1891 the Petty’s were still inventing. Herbert, son of George, made a new type of plough which was still sold in 1967.
Tom and his son-in-law, engineer Jack Russell, invented the first motor spray pump the “Ba-vu”. The children, before this invention, had had to pump manual spray handles monotonously before and after school.
Tom Petty was among a few Doncaster orchardists who experimented in storing fruit at the Melbourne Glaciarium Ice Rink. Tom Petty suggested to the Premier Sir Thomas Bent building a refrigerated store at Doncaster, and the first Government Cool Store was subsequently built in West Doncaster in 1908. Tom Petty pioneered Park Orchards. In 1900 he bought 300 acres of virgin bush.
Tom Petty was a member of the Templestowe District Roads Board for 12 years, and later a councillor for Doncaster Riding in the Shire of Bulleen and Shire of Doncaster. He was shire president in 1887 and served 25 years on council.
He was on the first committee formed to build the Athenaeum Hall, and also collected sixpence a week from neighbors to build the Church of England (1868).
At one time, Tom increased his orchard laboring men’s wages, and was very unpopular with other employers, who said they couldn’t afford to pay more.
He was one of those responsible for arranging payment to men for cartage of stone at 15 shillings for a man and his horse and dray.
All the Petty family stayed in orcharding in Doncaster-Templestowe for generations. Thomas Petty’s half-brother Henry went to Templestowe.
Tom (junior) had 13 children. One daughter married engineer Jack Russell, who with Tom had invented the first motor spray pump. Russell became part of the well known firm Russell-Borrows.
[Image Caption]: THE second home of Thomas and Jane Petty, near where Petty's Lane is now situated, opposite the golf links.
[Typed notes at the bottom of the page]:
Re Pettys (issues May 8 & 13) Henry Petty was a son of Thomas and half-brother of Tom. Tom had 13 children, one of whom was named Thomas Henry. Thomas Henry settled in Porter St. Templestowe in 1900 - the year Tom Petty bought 300 acres of virgin bush at Park Orchards).
052 ByWays DoncasterMirror A
MAY 20, 1981
BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
Germans in Doncaster
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
IN 1853 there was no bridge across the narrow but steep banked Koonung Creek, which marks the boundary of the City of Doncaster and Templestowe.
Gottlieb Thiele got his bullocks safely across it, and their load of household goods, food, hens, flail, vegetable and fruit seedlings. With him was his wife Phillipine and little Oswald and Adelaide. Their cow trudged behind.
It had been a day's walk from Melbourne. They had left civilization five miles behind at Kew, then a sprawling market garden village. Ten acres of virgin bush before them was theirs. Gottlieb had paid 100 pounds for it, and hoped he had done the right thing.
Still, it was a good country, a free country, where a man could worship as his soul dictated. In the five years since they had left their native Breslau to escape the religious regimentation of a militant Prussia, the Thieles had been grateful for this freedom. They had arrived in Australia in 1848, by the ship "Wappaus".
[Image Caption]: GOTTLIEB Thiele
They were the first of Doncaster’s German Lutheran settlers. They set the foundation for a rich bi-cultural heritage. Gottlieb, a tailor, had become established in Melbourne's Bourke Street, under the patronage of Governor La Trobe, but his doctor had urged him out of the cutting room.
He mused now on the irony of it: anyone who could negotiate this stump-riddled track to the Andersons Creek diggings (now Warrandyte) needed to be in the peak of health.
As Gottlieb paused for breath half way up the steep hill, he saw Thomas Petty’s tent down by the creek. Philippine hoped this could mean a woman’s company for her.
Gottlieb’s map showed various estates and boundaries, but not the density of unaxed trees and tangled scrub through which they still had to push. Oswald, a bright lad, who helped his father plot the way would one day teach the boy whose name was given to Victoria’s second university: Monash.
He would see his own son a professor and knighted (Sir Edmund Teal), and would see his yet unborn brothers recognised as leading authorities on fruit in Australia.
These first gardeners, as they were called, planted as windbreaks pines which have become an integral part of the Doncaster scene. The Thieles built a two-roomed wattle-and-daub cottage.
This became the kernel of the later well known National Trust homestead Friedensruhe (Rest in Peace). It was built by Gottlieb’s brother, Gottfried, who arrived two years after Gottlieb, and was a stonemason.
It can still be recognised in the bedrooms of Friedensruhe. In 1865 a flower garden was planned by Gottlieb’s friend Baron von Mueller, who became the first director of Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens.
Phillipine had the honor of bearing the first white child in the district, a son, Frederick. The Lutherans were the first to build a church in Doncaster in 1858. Around it, on Waldau Hill (Victoria Street) they laid out a cemetery, beautified by Baron von Mueller’s gift of cyprus pines and shrubs.
The church fostered the budding community spirit, from which the orchard empire was to grow and its bell tolled at dawn, noon and dusk to mark the time for everyone.
052 ByWays DoncasterMirror B
Athenaeum: hall of learning
Date: June 16, 1981
IN the 1890s Doncaster’s Athenaeum Hall boasted a library of 1100 volumes. It was regarded as one of the finest collections of reference books outside Melbourne.
The original hall was built in 1871 at the suggestion of an evangelical group "Band of Hope."
This lively organisation planned to reform the hard living wood splitters and itinerant workers of the district, but felt their usual meeting place, the Methodist Hall in East Doncaster, could be thought too "churchy" and would hinder their efforts.
The present site of the hall in the main road, Doncaster, was chosen in 1870.
Mr Alfred Hummell (of Doncaster Tower fame), a young Englishman, who had inherited a great deal of money, purchased three acres from the government and presented one acre to the Trustees. He also lent 70 pounds towards the 258 pounds cost of the building.
A government subsidy of £40 helped to purchase the first 225 books.
Care in the selection of reference material was largely exercised by Mr A. O. Thiele, head teacher of the Doncaster State School at the time and a member of a pioneering family.
After the First World War, the massive granite pillars to the entrance were added as a memorial to those from the district 2 gave their service and their lives. The pillars contain about 100 names.
The library lapsed into disuse during the Second World War, chiefly through disinterest and because books were not replaced with more modern literature.
Since the modern suburban era of Doncaster in the late 1950s and early 1960s the Athenaeum was used mainly for meetings, injection days and naturalisation ceremonies. It was modernized in the late 1960s.
A concrete slab now covers the scars where wreckers excised its old entrance and annexes which were themselves added in 1914. Now only by looking sideways, can one see from the road, anything of the 20th century community Centre.
But the old Athenaeum Hall was as symbolic of Doncaster’s former small town life as any Mechanics Institute.
It hosted the balls, meetings concerts, which were the social life of the district.
Correction: A caption to a sketch of Henry teals store of 1870 Mira, May 27, wrongly described Henry as the grandson of Gottlieb. Teal, Henry was the son of teal. This makes Henry Gottlieb's nephew.
053 ByWays DoncasterMirror
**Date:** May 29, 1981
THE Thieles were the first commercial orchardists in Doncaster, according to Dr Margaret Finke, who wrote a thesis on early Doncaster orcharding families.
Frederick Thiele, Doncaster’s firstborn of European settlers, and his young brother Alfred, eventually became leading Australian authorities on fruit, and their peaches and pears were household words (Thiele’s Fireside Fruits). Alfred Thiele, with Tom Petty and Richard Serpell became the first in Australia to export pears successfully to England, in 1882.
Frederick was a driving force in supplementing general farming and berry growing with orcharding in Doncaster.
His father Gottlieb scoffed that not enough people lived in the Colony of Victoria to eat all the fruit Frederick wanted to grow, but he persisted in his belief in the commercial possibilities of fruit trees.
In "self-defence", Gottlieb sent him to learn the care and propagation of fruit trees from Mr H. W. Cole who had an experimental nursery in Burnley. It was on the site now known for its "Skipping Girl" sign and the forerunner of the Burnley Horticultural College.
Watering was a problem. Sometimes creeks dried up. The resourceful men of Doncaster initiated irrigation. When drought withered the leaves and fruit elsewhere bringing a loss of two years’ crops, Doncaster’s thriving orchards aroused the curiosity of the authorities.
"See Fred Thiele’s orchard," Tom Petty told the Premier. "It’s like an Eden. He’ll tell you why."
Frederick explained the local system, obediently made a map of all dams and depressions in the district for the government and paved the way for irrigation in the State’s northern districts.
In 1908, Frederick (A. F.) Thiele won 10 guineas as first prize for the best kept orchard at the Doncaster-Box Hill Fruit Association Show. The prize money was donated by the Argus and Australasian.
He had won the prize twice in succession, and announced he would withdraw from the contest in future.
Alfred (A. E.) Thiele drove the first motor car in the district and became the first president of the Victorian Central Fruit Growing Association in 1909.
In the same year Frederick Thiele and Tom Petty were the moving spirits in getting fruit inspected at interstate points of entry, to detect fruit disease.
Six acres of the land first cleared by Gottlieb Thiele, down by Ruffey’s Creek, was given by his descendants to the people of Doncaster as a nucleus of a botanical parkland.
The parkland is the Doncaster Templestowe Municipal Gardens, at one time tentatively called Pioneer Park.
Over the hill lies the small fenced graveyard, on Waldau Hill. Beside it, the relocated Schramms Cottage replaces the original burnt down timber Lutheran Church, with bare mounds beneath the cypresses.
**[Handwritten Correction at bottom of page]:**
*A caption to the picture of Henry Thiele's store of 1870 (issue May 27) wrongly describes Henry as the grandson of Gottlieb Thiele. This was a misprint. Henry was the son of Gottfried Thiele. This makes Henry Gottlieb's nephew.*
054 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Uphill ride for first tram**
**Date:** [Circa 1981]
THE first electric tram in the southern hemisphere ran from Doncaster to Box Hill. It ran up and down what is now called Tram Road, which leads from Westfield Shopping Centre to the Box Hill Post Office.
It was a jubilant day for Doncaster in 1889 when the tram car finally traversed the 2 1/4 miles from the terminus in Box Hill to its destination at the top of the hill.
It ran for a year, when bickering over right of carriageway forced it off the road.
On the tram’s launching day a banquet to celebrate the occasion was held at the Tower Hotel and it seems that almost everybody of importance, except the Premier of the day, turned up.
Maybe a good friend dropped the Premier a hint in advance for in the course of an address the local member Mr E. H. Cameron, said it was a good thing the Premier had not attended because he would almost certainly have been asked to explain why the Doncaster Railway Bill had been dropped.
The tramway, it was thought, had given the Government an excuse to postpone the railway. As a practical — or impractical — public conveyance the tram car might never have started rolling but for the enterprise of an eastern suburban land syndicate which formed the Box Hill Doncaster Electric Tramway Company.
Richard Serpell, farmer, and William Bell, agent, of Doncaster were among the original shareholders.
The tram car had been brought to Melbourne for the Centennial International Exhibition in 1880 and for a time ran temporarily on rails in the Exhibition Gardens, after which nobody seemed to want it.
To form a permanent way the company spent £4,600 laying rails on blue gum sleepers let into the surface of the road (which later was to derive its name from the tramway) Tram Road. Other difficulties were encountered before the formal opening of the tram service took place.
"The Age", in reporting the formal opening said: "The grade up the hill into Doncaster is the steepest on the line, the ground rising as much as one foot in 16. When all was ready for the start the brake was released and the vehicle glided down the track with a smooth, easy motion."
"Starting down the slope, the pace was allowed to increase, after the style of a switch back railway, until the car was travelling at the rate of some 12-14 miles an hour. The impetus obtained in this way was used in mounting the opposite slope."
"The pace slackened considerably going up the hills and on the steepest grade only five miles an hour was effected. The whole distance of 2 1/4 miles was travelled in 20 minutes."
"The car will run regularly from this date and the company proposes to charge 6d. for a single journey."
It had a 15 horse-power motor.
On Easter Monday, 1892, the little tram is said to have carried 1,500 passengers. It usually made 10 trips a day for a 9d fare.
On one trip overloaded with the Box Hill Endeavour Society, the brakes failed going home down the hill. The Endeavourers, unaware of the dangerous increase in speed continued boldly to sing: "Hold the fort, we are coming".
"Yes", the driver was heard to mutter, clinging desperately to his useless brakes, "You are coming with this darned tram all right. But after we hit the bottom I don't know where you are all going!"
However, no tram traveller was ever injured during its eight years' running.
A replica of the tram car can be seen at Schramm's cottage in Victoria Street.
055 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Fight against rotting fruit**
**Date:** June 9, 1981
THE first Growers Co-operative Cool Store in Australia was built in Doncaster Road, West Doncaster in 1911, roughly opposite Shoppingtown.
In the early days of the fruit growing industry, the only method of keeping fruit was to lay it in straw in the cool part of a barn, or store it in holes dug in the ground.
Some growers excavated caves, by hand, in the side of hills and stored fruit in these, boarding up the openings.
Peaches, Doncaster’s chief crop, had to be sold immediately after picking, and orchardists suffered frequent losses.
By 1903, a few Doncaster orchardists were storing fruit in Sennit’s Cool Chambers at the Melbourne Glaciarium, with good results.
At a meeting of local growers, Mr Tom Petty had suggested the building of a special refrigerated store at Doncaster to keep fruit fresh and cool during the off-season. A Government Cool Store was therefore built in 1905, the Premier, Sir Thomas Bent, having agreed to this suggestion.
But the project did not quite work out as growers had hoped. They wasted up to half a day getting their fruit in and out as stacking of fruit was permitted to be done only by a government man.
Impatient at this red tape, Tom Petty and Mr B. Lawford suggested that local growers unite to build their own cool store. So the first Co-operative Cool Store came into being in West Doncaster.
It was opened free of debt and remained so without government assistance until it was closed down on November 30, 1966, when Herbert Shepherd, engineer of the West Doncaster Cool Store for 27 years, closed off the valves of the refrigeration plant and closed off some of Australian history.
Operation of the Co-operative Cool Store was geared to suit the convenience of the 36 grower shareholders. Each had his own storage racks and fruit was delivered, stored and collected at his own convenience.
The co-operative brought the cost to growers down to 1/2 penny per case of fruit from the government cool stores cost of 18 penny per case per week.
The West Doncaster Cool Store held 36,000 cases of fruit. Other States and New Zealand soon followed the Doncaster example.
Other Co-operative Cool Stores were later opened in Doncaster. The "Orchardists" in Doncaster Road at the corner of Devon Drive where Safeways now stands, in 1914, and the "Donvale" in Springvale Road. Templestowe had one and many orchardists followed with private stores.
Tom Petty (son of Doncaster’s first English orchardist, Thomas Petty who suggest the Co-operative) was on the Board of Directors for 55 years, the life of the cool store.
Little change occurred in the names of other West Doncaster orcharding families initially associated with the cool store: Petty, Tully, Lawford, Thiele, Mitchell, Williamson and Serpell.
As suburban development took over the orcharding area, the West Doncaster Cool Store filled empty shelves with fruit from Shepparton.
The refrigeration used in a cool store was suitable only for fruit.
056 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Early life on the creeks**
**Date:** June 23, 1981
THE pioneer women of Doncaster and Templestowe used "cold power" for the family wash — the cold water of the nearest creek.
If warm water were needed, they would boil a kerosene tin full at the side of the creek bank.
The attraction of the area today is its valleys and hill-top home sites, but for the pioneers "high living" had its penalties — the main one for the women being that of having to walk up and down to the creek for every drop of water until wells were dug.
The creeks were life to the early pioneers. The Koonung and Ruffey’s Creeks in the west, Mullum Mullum and Deep Creek to the east, where the Lawsons, Pickerings, Bucks and Beavis’ had taken up land.
The English family Petty first camped by the Koonung Creek of Doncaster Hill and the German Thieles took up land by Ruffey’s Creek.
In the creeks the women did the family wash and from them they carted buckets full of water to the struggling rows of potatoes, vegetables, grapes and berries in the narrow clearings, until house wells were dug.
The women of Templestowe met on the river bank behind Finn’s Pub for wash day. It was an occasion for the exchange of gossip.
With alarm they might hear how a neighbor, returning from market at Kew or Collingwood or from a visit, was chased up a tree by wild dogs. Or fears of bush rangers and blacks, and news from home.
Every gallon of water from every such creek had to do the work of 10.
It was not uncommon for women to carry water over a mile from the creeks to their homes.
As late as the 1870s the lack of water in dry seasons became a danger to crops. One visiting bishop, Bishop Moorhouse, during a visit to Doncaster in drought time, was urged by the orchardists to pray for rain.
"Dam the water!" he exclaimed. Did he mean dam or damn? Nobody really knew whether what he said was just an impatient remark, but the remark became historic. The Doncaster settlers in the years ahead became known for the number and size of their dams. In some cases they were miniature lakes. Sometimes in summer the creeks dried up.
The resourceful men of Doncaster began to edge up hollows on the hillsides above their crops and gouged out others with horse and scoop. No man had to build his dam alone. Tom Petty, son of Doncaster’s original English orchardist, boasted he helped build every dam in the district.
A pipe with holes in it (something like the forerunner of a Soakit hose) ran from the dams and was shifted from row to row of fruit trees. For his 40 acre lemon orchard, Sidney Williams and his bullocks built one of the biggest dams. It was in the dip of what is now Renshaw Street. Every orchardist in Doncaster helped at some time during the two years it took to build. Once the wall broke, the welled-up creek flooded his land and they had to start again.
When completed, this dam was 22 feet deep, two acres in surface and held 22 million gallons of water. This was in 1891.
057 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Schooling in Doncaster**
**Date:** June 30, 1981
FOR pioneer schools, parents paid the teacher’s salary. At one time, teachers’ salaries were calculated according to pupils’ exam results.
In 1876, Oswald Thiele, son of Doncaster’s first German settler, was head teacher of Doncaster National School. He received 59.1 per cent of the possible salary, because this was the average of his pupils’ marks.
Before the State made education "free, secular and compulsory" in 1872, the only learning available to children of settlers was that provided in their own homes or churches.
Teachers had two essential qualifications — a knowledge of the Three Rs and an enthusiasm to impart this knowledge to their pupils.
In 1847 a 27-pupil school was held at Templestowe, near the Heidelberg bridge. Next known school in the municipality of Doncaster and Templestowe was at Warrandyte. This was in 1856, when the now tranquil riverside town was the bustling Anderson’s Creek Diggings, restless with gold fever and swarming with children.
The local Church of England established a class in their church hall with a Mr Thomas Downard as head teacher. In 1859 Miss Elizabeth Blair held a school in the courthouse, and near Fiveways a Miss Hill held a 12-pupil school.
In Doncaster, the German settlement of Waldau had tried to hold classes in a private home, but this was not successful, and education reverted to individual families.
About 1860, small classes were dotted around the district. The Misses Finch taught for a while at a home in High St. The Misses Ann and Robina Wilson taught in a log cabin just over Wilson’s Lane, Doncaster.
By 1864, children walked up and down the switchback tracks and cut through paddocks, in mud or dust depending on the season, to the class of Mr Ferguson on Williamsons-Serpells Road corner.
In 1866, the Misses Faulkner held night classes in the Primitive Methodist Church, at the corner of Blackburn and Doncaster Roads, East Doncaster.
That same year, 38 children attended a Church of England School in Templestowe, which had a master and a pupil-teacher. There were 46 children at a Presbyterian school in the same area, with a head master and a work master.
There was Kate Duncan’s school on Sandilands Hill in Thompsons Rd., Bulleen. Another school, by the Koonung Creek, at the junction of Bulleen and Thompsons Rd., was said to have had Sir Frank Tait, who became a Minister of Education, as its first head teacher.
Schools were visited by singing masters and drawing teachers. Teachers’ wives often taught needlework.
In 1860, Mr Max von Schramm, a German immigrant then in Melbourne, was asked by Gottlieb Thiele to come to Doncaster to teach the Lutheran children. Schramm — a marine officer turned gold digger turned soap factory hand — became the best known and longest serving of all the early school teachers. He held his classes in his home — the second of which was the well known "Schramm’s Cottage", then situated in Doncaster Road, just to the west of the Municipal Offices.
Schools were denominational or church from 1848 to 1862, then Common Schools from 1862 to 1872, then after the Education Act of that year National Schools.
Many existing schools had their origins in these National or Common schools, and many shifted their locations, while keeping their names.
058 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Trees form avenue of honor**
**Date:** July 7, 1981
THE trees in Blackburn Road by the East Doncaster Primary School are an Avenue of Honor.
They were planted in the early 1920s by pupils of the school as a memorial to all those soldiers who enlisted from East Doncaster for the 1914-18 war. The original avenue stretched from just below George St. to Anderson’s Creek Rd.
At first trees were planted for former scholars, then for any man who lived or worked in Doncaster. When planting was finished, there were still some trees left over, so anyone with a relative at the war was allowed to plant a tree there for him.
Name plates were attached to the trees, and each tree had its own student to water and care for it. The school children polished up the plaques with metal polish.
Name plaques in the form of crosses stood for many years at the base of each tree.
Gradually, the name plates were taken off. In 1966 when one of the trees was felled by council workmen in order to make the school crossing safer, a furore of memories erupted, and 38 of these brass name plates were found in the school tool shed.
Blackburn Road, in 1882, was called the "circuitous road from Deep Creek to Melbourne."
Residents of Deep Creek (north-east Doncaster) cut across private property rather than travel up its steep grades. They detoured through the land of Mr Rutledge, who demanded, they claimed, "an expensive and vexatious toll."
People asked council to make a proper road through this property, but this was never done.
In 1884, council fenced off all back roads, to protect ratepayers. (This is said to be why Church Road was always fenced off, even before the municipal gardens cut through it).
The then Shire of Bulleen had been almost bankrupted by a road accident compensation claim.
Mr F. Haydon, wife and sister of Ascot Vale sued the Shire of Bulleen for 800 pounds damages for themselves, their horse and carriage.
This legal action, which went on from 1881 to 1884, cost the Shire 2,000 pounds, much of which was met by striking a special rate on landowners.
In the early days of settlement, all the roads round Melbourne were shocking. Many letters were written to the press. In 1856, an editorial in the Argus said: "If the roads of Bulleen are so bad, why don’t residents form a District Roads Board?"
They did. And the Templestowe Roads Board came into being, from the Parish of Bulleen, and portion of Deep Creek.
These forerunners of municipal councils were purely for the construction, repair and maintenance of roads. They had no power then to fix rates.
The Colonial Treasury acted as bankers. When the Templestowe Roads Board was formed in 1856, it did not even own a wheelbarrow, and applied for a grant from the Central Roads Board to repair its roads before the wet season.
The board was deluged with requests from residents to fix roads. A "bad road" wasn’t good enough to get action. It had to be proved to be dangerous to spare money for mending.
Roads from Melbourne to Templestowe and to Doncaster were mires, where horses sank to their knees in mud. Whitehorse Rd., in the dip of Deepdene, was called "the Bay of Biscay".
Brushwood was used to fill ditches. But even this cost money.
As you drive up and down the switchback roads of East Doncaster and Templestowe, imagine them unsealed, sticky clay and that you are driving a horse and dray — or that you are walking them as did the children to school, and the women to market or music lessons.
059 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Who was Schramm?**
**Date:** July 14, 1981
SCHRAMM’S Cottage is a Doncaster tourist attraction. Who was Schramm? Much of the life of early Doncaster was intertwined with the life of Schramm: scholar, sailor-turned teacher, and first resident pastor of the Lutheran Church of Doncaster.
Originally the family name was Schrom.
An ancestor, serving in the personal bodyguard of Emperor Maximillian I was given the title "von" for saving the life of the emperor. He was also commanded to change his name to Schramm — meaning "scar."
Maximillian von Schramm received a classical education and spoke six languages, including Greek and Hebrew. He served for seven years at sea, rising to the rank of mate, before coming to Australia in 1852.
Like most immigrants then, he tried his luck on the goldfields, but with little success. Penniless, he walked back to Melbourne from Bendigo and is believed to have worked in a soap factory at Port Melbourne, there being little work available for an educated man.
He was met in Melbourne by fellow countryman Gottlieb Thiele, who was a military tailor in Bourke Street, Melbourne before becoming Doncaster’s first German orcharding settler. Thiele persuaded Schramm to come to Doncaster to teach the children of the German settlers.
Schramm taught a normal curriculum for three hours a day, then added special lessons in the German language and Lutheran religion in the church in Victoria (then Bismarck) Street. This was a tiny wooden church on top of the hill where Schramm’s cottage now stands, known as Waldau Hill.
Soon children of all nationalities and faiths were amongst his pupils and by the end of the first year 1860 — his pupils numbered 50. Subjects in the English language were then added.
He was Registrar of Births and Deaths from 1871 to 1908 and a great force behind the establishment of the once famous Athenaeum Library.
He was a regular weekly visitor to the Melbourne Children’s Hospital for 40 years.
He married Kate Pickering, daughter of a lay preacher of the Church of England and Doncaster’s first storekeeper, and they had a large family.
060 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Schoolmaster Schramm**
**Date:** July 21, 1981
SCHRAMM’S COTTAGE, now in Victoria St., was not Schramm’s first Doncaster home. This was a small bluestone cottage.
It was built a little to the west of the well-known cottage’s first site in Doncaster Rd., which was adjacent to the municipal offices.
After the "cottage" was built in 1864, this first home was converted to a school. Its conversion was helped by a government grant. In 1867, this privately conducted school of Schramm’s was taken over by the National Schools Board.
Schramm stayed as head teacher, and his wife, Kate, assisted by teaching the youngest pupils.
But in 1876, education became free, compulsory and non-religious. Schramm resigned, and took his teaching to his own cottage, where he taught in a large rear room.
(When the present Doncaster Primary School was built, the bluestone National School (Schramm’s first house, converted), converted again, and became part of the timber E.S. & A. bank.)
Maximillian von Schramm had been a Roman Catholic. He married a Church of England girl who was the daughter of an Anglican Lay preacher and brother of an Anglican clergyman. Schramm was an Honorary Secretary of Doncaster’s Holy Trinity Church of England. Then, in 1876, he became a Lutheran Pastor.
He studied and became ordained in the Lutheran ministry the year he resigned as head teacher of Doncaster National School. His parish was the newly formed Doncaster parish, centred at the tiny church on Waldau Hill, where there are remains of its cemetery beside his relocated cottage.
But as well, Schramm conducted monthly services at Bayswater and visited Berwick-Harkaway-Narre-warren. In the cottage, he opened a congregational school, which he conducted until 1884.
After that time, until his death at 82 in 1908, Schramm continued to give instruction in the German language, Bible history and catechism.
An ex-pupil of these classes told me that Pastor Schramm’s German accent was so thick, it was difficult for his pupils to understand his lessons... though Schramm was a classical scholar who spoke six languages. Even in his old age he enjoyed reading in Greek and Latin by the evening’s lamplight.
It is said that a large ham always hung, curing, over the great open fireplace of this kitchen-classroom, causing a welcome diversion for pupils when one day it fell from its hook in the chimney into the fire. Schramm was reputed to be a stern teacher and father.
But to illustrate the kindly side of his nature, his granddaughter, Mrs Alix Craig recounted for me this story: A visitor to the cottage one Sabbath was invited to play the piano. With embarrassment, the young lady confessed that she did not know any hymns. To which the Pastor replied: "My dear, the birds don’t change their tunes on Sundays".
061 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Teaching temperance**
**Date:** July 28, 1981
ONE hundred years ago, on July 16, 1881, young John Tully, 19, started the Doncaster Church of Christ Sunday school.
Before the coming of the car, one of the highlights of the year was the Sunday School picnic.
On the first Thursday in March, at 8 a.m., the horse and wagons started from Lauers Corner (Doncaster junction), on the three hour journey to St. Kilda beach. The horses then unharnessed, had the luxury of a roll in the sand, then were tied to the wagon to enjoy a well earned feed.
Ice cream was a novelty and the ice cream cart was well patronised by the young.
If the day was warm enough the adults also took the opportunity for a swim using the nearby baths. A blue flag showed the baths were open for woman, who, of course, wore the two piece neck-to-knee bathing costume. Later, a red flag signalled the time for men.
It was a happy but tired group who set off for the long journey home. The coming of the car seemed to change the nature of these outings.
There were 21 scholars, and John Tully had two lady teachers to help him. The church had opened in 1863. It met in a small wooden building on the present site in Doncaster Rd. Later, Doncaster man Tom Petty suggested a Sunday school.
Later in 1889, to make room for increased numbers in church and school, the old wooden building was moved back, and a brick one built in its place. This still stands.
The school first met on Sunday morning. An afternoon school was also started. Later the morning school was discontinued.
The founder, Mr J. Tully, was superintendent for 42 years. He also served on the church board for 54 years, and served on the Doncaster Shire Council. He took an active part in the development of the Doncaster fruit industry, such as cool storage and marketing.
Fourth and fifth generation of the original founder still take an active part.
As well as religious studies, the school took an interest in the district’s social problems.
In the early days there were four hotels and several wine halls between East Kew and Doncaster East. The result was that quite a few growers and wood carters returning with their small takings, arrived home well over .05, but short of money they could ill afford to lose. This led to a lot of hardships and unhappiness, so the school tried to teach and set an example in temperance.
### **Renshaw Street**
If you live in the big dip of Renshaw St., East Doncaster, you are living beneath what was once the biggest dam in the colony. In 1891, every orchardist in Doncaster helped build the two acre dam of W. Sydney Williams.
It covered the area southwest of Leeds St., within the valley between Leeds St. and Wetherby Road. It took two years to build the dam, working with bullock teams.
When finished, it was 22 ft. deep and held 22 million gallons of water. One time during the building, the wall broke, the welled-up Koonung Creek flooded Sydney Williams’ land, and the men had to start building again.
The bank of the dam was so wide it was used as a road for transporting the orchard’s lemons. At that time, the land was a 40 acre lemon orchard. As a side line, Sydney Williams grew water lillies.
Originally, his orchard covered as well the Beverley Hills area, south to the creek and east to Blackburn Rd.
The Leeds St. west part was later sold to Gedye, and the dam became known as Gedye’s lily dam. This was the forerunner of the well-known Gedye water gardens.
Sydney Williams’ big dam was still there when the land was sold for subdivision in the 1960s.
The Board of Works said the dam had to be cut, because it was a danger and a health hazard. Workmen tore the bank to pieces and just let the water go.
Later it was said, the subdivider had trouble putting in storm water drains because of the accumulation of 80 years of silt. Whenever I drive down the dip of Renshaw St. on rainy days, I wonder about this.
062 ByWays DoncasterMirror
East Doncaster Primary School**
**Date:** Aug 4, 1981
EAST DONCASTER Primary School on the corner of George St. and Blackburn Rd. once doubled as a post office.
Doncaster East School No. 2096, now situated at the corner of George Street and Blackburn Road, began life as the Deep Creek School in 1877, at the corner of Reynolds Rd. and Andersons Creek Rd.
In the 1870s the education of the children in East Doncaster had been provided by the Misses Faulkiner, who conducted classes at night in the Methodist Church at the corner of Blackburn and Doncaster Rds. In 1875, the Misses Faulkiner were supplemented by the opening of State School No. 2096, a tiny school at Deep Creek, on a hill above the St Phillips Church of England.
In 1877 this school was moved to the corner of Reynolds Rd. and Andersons Creek Rd., and again in 1886 moved to its present site at the corner of Blackburn Rd. and George St. The school had the teacher’s residence and one big classroom combined.
In 1887 the big classroom doubled as a post office. A slot in the front wall, facing Blackburn Rd. received mail and the signs "V.R. Post Office" and "State School No. 2096" shared honors.
The teacher’s residence which was part of the building was demolished in 1920 and classrooms added, but the original big room remained in use as the 6th grade.
In its early days, epidemics of diphtheria, scarlet fever and typhoid caused the school to be closed many times, and it became known as an "unhealthy" school. Possibly the habit of city dwellers dumping their night soil in the area was a cause.
Other types of troubles beset the school. One teacher was dismissed by the Education Department, another burnt the school records and there was community turmoil after the burning of an effigy of a member of the school committee.
During these troubled times preceding the dismissal action many parents kept their children at home so disturbed were they over the conduct of the school.
063 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Aug 4 1981
BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
Mail by a dray track
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
"TO and from Kew and Warrandyte, by way of Doncaster."
Doncaster’s first mail service operated by horseback on this route, three days a week.
A post office opened on May 17, 1860 in Doncaster at the small store in Doncaster Rd. of John Pickering. Mr Pickering received remuneration based on a percentage of postal business transacted and in that first year he earned 10 pounds ($20).
We know what Doncaster looked like in 1865 from the Victorian Gazetteer of that year, and how the mail got through then. The town was described as being “10 miles north-east of Melbourne, with which place it has communication only by dray track to Heidelberg and Kew, and thence by omnibus.”
There were two shoe manufacturers and a heel manufacturer, the Doncaster Hotel and a population of 200, most of whom were described as engaged in agriculture or wood carting.
The next post master after Mr Pickering was T. W. Grant who took over on April 8, 1861 and had charge of Doncaster post office for the next seven years. 1872 post master was Mr. H. Hoare and then James Gill.
The pay by then averaged 20 pounds ($40) per year which indicated that the little community was steadily growing or at least its letter writing was.
Letter reading nights were a common form of local entertainment. Families would get together and read each other’s letters from home — their overseas origins. The mail service had increased from three to six days a week.
Mail closed at Melbourne 7.30 a.m. and arrived at Doncaster at 9.45 a.m. Outward bound mail closed at Doncaster post office at 1.30 and arrived at Melbourne at 4 p.m.
By 1879 Doncaster had become “an agricultural district consisting principally of market gardens. The nearest digging is Andersons Creek, where gold has been obtained for many years.
“The nearest villages are Templestowe, three miles north of Doncaster; Nunawading, two miles south, and German Town about one mile from Doncaster.”
German Town would have been Waldau, (meaning “the forest”) which was where the Germans had settled around the Victoria-George St. area.
The only means of communication between Melbourne and Doncaster via Kew was the mail coach which conveyed passengers to and fro. But arrangements had to be made with the contractor of the mail, as the vehicle did not run regularly every day. Mail was sometimes still conveyed on horse back.
According to the Victorian Gazetteer of 1879, the only public institution in Doncaster was the Atheneum Hall “where public meetings are held in connection with such as a public library reaching all.”
By 1882 a Post Office Hotel had been built. The Post Office Hotel had a terribly short life. For the Australian Hand Book of 1895 lists four hotels — The Doncaster, i.e. the original Doncaster Arms, and the Morning Star, Meader’s and the Tower Hotel.
By 1884 when a Mr H. G. Reynolds was Post Master, 6074 letters were handled and total postal revenue had gone up to 50 pounds. Exactly half of the postal revenue was paid to Mr Reynolds in wages.
064 ByWays DoncasterMirror
BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
THERE is believed to be no other place outside of fiction called Templestowe.
Some say that Templestowe was so named because of its closeness to Ivanhoe.
Ivanhoe is the title of a Walter Scott novel. Scott gave the name Templestowe to Preceptory of the Knights Templars in England. A scene in the novel has the hero and villains meet at Scott’s Templestowe.
Scott’s novel, published in 1819, would still have been very popular around the time Templestowe township was being formed in 1846. But why was Ivanhoe so called in the first place? And from where did Sir Walter Scott derive the name Templestowe in the first place?
A boys’ school in England is called Stowe.
Set in 750 acres, Stowe became a school in 1923. Before that time it was known as “the most influential garden in Europe, the finest example of landscape gardening in the traditional English style.”
It was the haunt of poets and writers and it was the home of Earl Temple of Stowe.
This fact was revealed to me in 1974 by a visitor to the district, Mr Robert Drayton, who had at the time been principal of the School at Stowe for 10 years. Could Scott have got the name Temple-stowe from “Stowe” for his book?
Could the early arrivals to this part of the Yarra Valley have been reminded of the sparsely populated agricultural area of the Midlands surrounding beautiful Stowe through which also flows a river?
Stowe is not only connected with temples by the name of its Lord. Actual temples abound there. Thirty-eight of them.
Stowe was originally built in the early 1600s and was developed over some centuries to its present splendour by the Temple family who bought it in about 1700. One of Marlborough’s generals provided money for extensions and improvements in the 18th century.
The landscaping of gardens and artificial lakes was so beautiful that on the opening of Stowe as a school, its headmaster remarked, “If we do not fail in our purpose, every boy who goes out of Stowe will know beauty all the rest of his life.”
The Temple’s Stowe house was sold in 1921 for 40,000 pounds after which it became the school.
Mr Drayton believed it was quite possible that Scott used the name Templestowe in his book because he, like so many other writers, visited Stowe.
(Is it co-incidental that for long a battle has raged over conserving the landscape of our Templestowe for its special peace and beauty!)
Another link with Templestowe, though obscure, is interesting. One of the Templestowe family married a Newman from Melbourne in 1913 — Major Charles Newman was an important Templestowe pioneer.
065 ByWays DoncasterMirror
August 25 1981
BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
DONCASTER and Templestowe have been municipally much married and divorced.
From the first Templestowe Roads Board to the City of Doncaster and Templestowe, the farming flats of Templestowe and orcharding heights of Doncaster have lived together in a love/hate relationship.
Leaving home and reuniting, partitioning, opening up the municipal home is an old habit.
Struggles over how to spend the housekeeping budget, whether to be municipally semi-detached or split up, make the area sound more like a family property than dignified deliberations.
Local government of the area began in December, 1856, when the Templestowe District Roads Board was constituted.
The first meetings developed into arguments over whether to spend the Board’s meagre funds on improving the road to the front door (or the back door) depending where you lived i.e. the Templestowe Rd. or Doncaster’s main road.
From 1875 until 1926 the area and its partitioning could be likened to a house re-modellers dream.
In 1875 the former Templestowe Roads Board was declared the Shire of Bulleen and divided into two apartments.
Templestowe lived in one, Doncaster in the other.
Fifteen years later in 1890 the fledgling Doncaster was granted independence, with an individual name for the Shire of Doncaster. The remaining portion was called the Shire of Templestowe.
This original shire of Doncaster did what many other youthful breakaways do in their mature wisdom on lack of funds, it returned to the fold. This was 1915.
It would be sentimental to imagine the war had something to do with the reunion but the fact is Doncaster was ordered home by the Municipal “Family Guidance Clinic”, the Local Government Department.
Doncaster and Templestowe were united again under the same roof.
The household took the name of the Shire of Doncaster. Sadly, there must have been in this marriage a continual bickering over who owned the title for in 1926 the name was amended to the Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe.
The identity crisis over, in that same year 1926 the happy couple were blessed with a new Riding — Warrandyte.
In 1967 when the shire was to become a city, another identity crisis happened.
Doncaster wanted the “City of Doncaster”, Templestowe wanted the “City of Templestowe” after the ancestral Roads Board.
Bulleen, the first shire name, was suggested and then the inspirational “Koonarra”. This was meant to be the brainchild of compromise, the Koonarra Creek, flowed by the back door (or the front depending where you lived) and the Yarra River by the front door — or back. Who could knock this back? Practically everyone, it seemed.
Voting hands were raised in horror and so the joint name remained — City of Doncaster and Templestowe.
066 ByWays DoncasterMirror
# BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
**by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER**
*Sept [1], 1981*
THE top of Doncaster hill has recently been sliced off and excavated for extensions to Doncaster Shoppingtown.
Earlier work in the late 1960s in Doncaster Rd. had left the top of the hill like a cliff, and on that cliff behind overgrown shrubbery, nestled an old house named after a castle.
The now-demolished old home of the Goodson (nee Serpell) families named it Mt Edgecombe after a castle in Cornwall where a Richard Serpell had served, has an interesting story behind it.
It was literally a house of memories.
The house was built in 1883 for Mrs Jane Serpell, mother of Richard who owned the old brick store which stood on the corner of Doncaster and Williamsons Rd. for many years — replaced by Shoppingtown.
Richard became prominent in much Doncaster history, but that is another story.
Jane had come to Australia from England with her family in 1851 and settled in Doncaster in 1853. When the Doncaster Rd. house was built she moved there with Richard's sister Jane, and his daughter by his first marriage, Annie, who later became Mrs Goodson.
Annie was brought up by her grandmother Jane Serpell and became devoted to her. This affection had a great influence on evidence surrounding the future of the house and its site.
Annie's husband William E. Goodson was a district personality. He was head teacher of the Doncaster State School after Schramm and introduced innovations to the curriculum which outpaced city schools in some respects.
Swimming was not the popular sport then that it is now but William Goodson taught it to his pupils in a dam behind the school. Unquestionably this influenced the later building of the school's swimming pool; one of the first school pools in the state.
Annie Goodson was very fond of painting and in every room of Mt Edgecombe hung samples of her art.
In the 1960's, to walk into the house was like walking back to the 19th century. All because of Jane Goodson's great love for her grandmother (Jane Serpell), Annie kept everything the way it had been in her day from the time of Jane Serpell's death at the age of 90 in 1901 to Annie's own death in 1965.
The rooms were still furnished with the pieces of yesteryear. A four poster bed with hand painted bedstead, wash stand with rose patterned china, even long frocks were kept. Many of these items were lent to the Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society for its reincarnation of Schramms Cottage in 1967 which marked the first function of the newly formed society.
In the old home, in cupboards and what-nots, were shells collected from many countries (beautifully preserved and catalogued), photographs and pressed native wild flowers. Collecting these was a favorite hobby of Annie's.
On the seats were velvet cushions embroidered by the younger Jane (Annie's Aunt) and on sidetables artificial flowers preserved under glass frames.
From the time of Mrs Annie Goodson's death, the house and its contents were not touched nor its land bought. The terms of Annie's will kept the house like a cameo itself.
According to Mrs Goodson's complicated will, the house with its three acre garden was to become a home for elderly women. What a beautiful twilight home it would have been with such a breathtaking view from its lovely gardens.
But because of Annie's explicit direction that "no publicity be given to the matters of my will" and that "my will shall not be read out," full details are not available.
Greater difficulties were involved in carrying out the express details of the will.
Annie wished that the Church of England should run her home. A court case over the estates began in August 1969. Direction was finally obtained and charities named in the will benefitted from the sale.
Now, not only has Mrs Goodson's home gone, her ideals and her memories gone, but the very ground has been pulled out from underneath them.
067 ByWays DoncasterMirror
# BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
**by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER**
*Sept 8, 1981*
THERE was an old publican named Finn (again)
**His name blew out and then blew in again.**
FINNS Reserve by the Yarra at Templestowe nearly lost its historical name in 1973. Doncaster Council wanted to rename it after a councillor. The reserve was part of the land on which stood the Finns Upper Yarra Hotel which was mysteriously burnt to the ground in 1967. Finns had owned the land for more than 100 years.
James Finn, who bought the hotel and land in the early 1860s, was there until he died in 1908. His family managed it as a hotel until it was delicensed in the early 1930s.
He was remembered as a smallish, strongly-built man, always immaculately dressed, but not overly so, and who was spoken of as one of the greatest characters of the valley. He had a quick Irish wit and, although a devout Roman Catholic, espoused all local good causes, even of other denominations.
James Finn arrived in Melbourne in the early 1820s with only a few pence in his pocket. After working at many hotels he saved enough to buy what was then a beer shop on the land in the Templestowe Road, about two miles from the punt which took folk across to Heidelberg. It was not licensed as a hotel until a number of years after he moved in.
Fire featured in the Finn's area in those days too. Two other beer shops were just down the road and bitter rivals they were. One night in June 1870 a fire started in the hay stack of one and ended with the burning to the ground of the other, with each angry beer shopkeeper blaming the other for arson.
Jimmy Finn did things more pleasantly — he married the daughter of his rival — the owner of the Templestowe Hotel which still stands.
It is said that James Finn attempted one of the first mergers in the Victorian hotel business when he married Hannah Sheahan. As business grew, Finn bought up more land and developed a farm of about 130 acres which became one of the model farms in the valley. He bought a squat two-storied brick, stone and timber hotel and added a tall timber extension which made it a quaint split-level design which drew artists from all over Australia.
The historical significance of Finn's Pub is the fact that it was in this hotel that the first meeting on December 8, was called to form local government in the area, in the form of the Templestowe Roads Board.
At that time the hotel was owned by a Mrs Bell and called Bell's Hotel. It subsequently passed through a number of hands but the Finns were licencees from at least as far back as 1863, according to records, if not earlier.
About 1967 Finns Pub was classified "D" by the National Trust. It was also under order of demolition by Doncaster - Templestowe Council to make way for road widening at the intersection of Thompsons Rd. and Unwin St. Ned Finn and his sister Marie then lived in the family pub.
Ned had been a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese for four years and never fully recovered. When newsmen visited the pub during this time of controversy over demolition, Ned chased them away. He thought they were coming to help Council evict him and his sister.
A public outcry to save the building by possible removal and re-erection, was led by the newly formed Doncaster - Templestowe Historical Society and backed by the National Trust. Artists flocked to paint the seemingly doomed ramshackle building.
It was doomed, but in another, unexpected way.
On the day the National Trust newsletter featured Finns Hotel in an effort to stimulate support for its protection, the hotel was mysteriously burnt to the ground. This was May 29, 1967. Thirty men from six fire brigades fought the blaze. Souvenir hunters took everything from burnt bricks which had been handmade, to a brass doorknocker.
Even the name Finn was threatened with eradication in 1973. Residents, led by Mrs Hazel Poulter of Templestowe, (a descendant of one of the district's earliest pioneers) obtained hundreds of signatures on a petition to retain the name of Finn's Reserve.
068 ByWays DoncasterMirror
# BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
**by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER**
*Sept 15, 1981*
SCHRAMM'S Cottage in Victoria St., Bulleen, the successful tourist attraction and focus of local history was twice nearly demolished.
It was all but doomed in 1960.
In 1960 the only hope that it would remain in its then original situation next to the Municipal Offices, was for it to be renovated and used as a library. Those in favor of demolition said that some of its attractive Ruffey's Creek stone could one day adorn the foundations of some future municipal building, or decorate the bowling club. But the voice of the people and the readiness of the council to hear it saved the day — and the home.
November, 1960, hopes were that the cottage would be retained as a library. Construction costs of between $3600 and $4400 caused Council to abandon any idea of reconstruction and the then shire president, Cr A. P. Withers, said its atmosphere would be lost if modern windows and doors were installed and a tiled roof added as had been proposed.
Cr A. E. Ireland agreed, adding that the cottage would be in the way when Doncaster Rd. was widened.
Cr Ron McKenzie then warned his colleagues to tread warily. He said feelings at the Doncaster Progress Association meetings had been strongly in favor of the building's preservation.
A council recess and deferance of a demolition order gave the Doncaster people time to fully express its opinion. Led by Mrs Phyllis Whitten, this opinion was expressed by 754 signatures on a petition "For the Preservation of Schramm's Historic Home which will probably be the last links with early Doncaster-Templestowe."
Local interest was such that extra chairs had to be brought into the public gallery of the Council Chambers for the hearing of the petition.
The petition was presented by Cr Les Cameron whose family had been in the district for the last one hundred years. Support was given by the Royal Historical Society and the National Trust, and Council carried the motion to preserve the cottage unanimously.
All correspondence, and the people's viewpoint were included in the Minutes "For the guidance of any future Council faced with a similar decision."
In April 1967, more than one thousand flocked through the cottage in the first 10 hours of a display organised by the newly formed Historical Society.
In 1968, the widening of Doncaster Rd. brought a crisis as to whether the cottage could stay on its original site. An ingenious design was put by local architect, Mr Horace Tribe, to route the widened Doncaster Rd. in such a way that the cottage would stay as an island in the road.
Moving of the cottage to Victoria St. on the site of the old Lutheran Church and cemetery, was almost like completing an historic circle.
069 ByWays DoncasterMirror A
# BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY
**by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER**
*Sept 22, 1981*
## Orcharding
### Part One
STAND on Doncaster Hill today and look north to the mountains and south to the sea — the red weed of suburbia creeps over the slopes once pink and white with orchard blossoms.
The army of bulldozers covering up Victoria's history leaves only bituminous scars bearing such names as Thiele St., Petty's Lane and Serpells Rd. as memorials to those who harvested an empire in fruit from an unwilling countryside.
Doncaster, a day's walk from the Melbourne markets, has grown fruit continually since 1853 — 30 years before other areas. It is acknowledged as the first commercial fruit growing area in Australia.
The first Doncaster settlers to cultivate the land were called gardeners. As the bush was slowly pushed back the gardeners found they had also pushed back the shelter plants needed from hot winds. They planted as wind breaks the pines which have become an integral part of the Doncaster scenery.
The whole agricultural process was one of trial and error. The soil was found to be too shallow for vegetables; grapes, raspberries and strawberries and gooseberries seemed more favored. Besides, the quick bearing soft fruits were "early money."
To make a living while waiting for a harvest, men carted wood from the trees they felled to Melbourne and Kew. Depending on the season they received 4d. to 1/1d. a cwt. While their husbands were away on their day-long journey, the women and children chopped the next load.
Richard Serpell who lived with his wife and three children in Glenferrie bought an American plough for six pounds, 40 acres at eight pounds an acre and walked regularly to his block clearing, cutting and planting. In his diary of June 1854 he wrote "Visited the highlands today, mother, Dick and I taking some fruit trees with us," and mentioned a number of Germans residing to the west. One, 17-year-old Reinold Denhert, cleared 22 acres as a vineyard from virgin forest in which is now George St. and became uncrowned pear king and lived to be 100.
James Read, who farmed for a while at Gardeners Creek, carried in his hands precious cuttings of trees from Hawthorn. He planted the first fruit trees in Templestowe on the edge of the orchard belt.
W. Sydney Williams, who had landed from Pembrokeshire two years before as a 19-year-old lad with high hopes and 4/6d. in his pocket, at last saved enough from his wages to buy his own land on what is now Leeds St., East Doncaster. Later, he and his bullocks built the biggest dam yet seen in the dip of what is Renshaw St.
Readers are invited to send family histories or local historical anecdotes to Joan Seppings Webster, Byways, C/- Doncaster Mirror, P.O. Box 14, Doncaster, 3108.
Continued next week.
---
*[Handwritten annotation on image 4:] "his" "he" = Thomas Serpell, son of Richard Snr, Elder brother (22yrs–8yrs) of Richard Serpell Jr. of Doncaster historical fame.*
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