Doncaster Templestowe Historical Society: YesterYear - Doncaster News

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Doncaster and Templestowe News, Wednesday, July 22, 1992 – Page 3

YESTERYEAR

First gold finds in Victoria

By JOAN WEBSITER

THE first gold to be seen in Victoria was a few specks in a pan held at Warrandyte by Louis Michel and his friend Bill Habberlin on June 29, 1851, at their camp where the main road now crosses Anderson's Creek. Warrandyte was registered as having, on June 30, 1851, produced the first payable gold in the colony of Victoria;

Clunes near Ballarat was just behind on July 1; Ballarat on August 25 and Bendigo November 8. Two days after the hole dug by Habberlin was officially declared gold bearing (August 8, 1851), more than 150 prospectors were digging and panning in Anderson's Creek. Towards the end of the year,

both bad weather and news of the enormous amounts of gold found in Ballarat in payable quantities arrived, and diggers deserted Warrandyte.

Lt-Governor La Trobe wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on November 15: "News of other fields and the flooded state of the Arra caused a complete but probably only temporary abandonment of the Anderson's Creek gold fields".

Stories are told of diggers rowing over the churning river to wash out their mud-flooded tents.

But someone had faith in the field. Three gold commissions stayed on.

In 1854 the Legislative Council accepted Michel's claim to the prize for finding the first payable gold in Victoria and paid him £1000 and the official seal of first gold field was set by naming An-derson's Creek diggings the Victoria Gold Field'.

At the end of 1854, with the publicity given to Michel's prize, diggers returned to Anderson's Creek.

After the Eureka Stockade, John Pascoe Fawkner and Premier Mr J. O'Shawnessy toured there to investigate miners' grievances.

The digging population was scattered over about a kilometre and a half of the river's length.

Some of the dredging methods were unusual.

Diggers spanned the river with coffee dams so they could move right into its bed. To do this they roped together piles of logs to form a square in the river and baled out the water so they could puddle the mud and scrape rock formations on the bottom.

These were precarious holdings and a rise of half a metre in the level of the river could wash them away.

Rewards for all the effort were not great.

However, by 1856 the 'Gold Circular' stated that 100 ounces to the ton was being obtained at Warrandyte and that a gold rush was in full swing.

An miner named James Sloan caused a stir in Melbourne when he got 12 ounces from one bucket of quartz.

From 1856 to 1881 it was fairly quiet on the Warrandyte gold front.

The writer Henry Kingsley tried to make his fortune there, camping at a site next to that of the later Warrandyte Cemetery. Kingsley did not strike it rich but whilst there, worked on his book Geoffrey Hamlyn.

Gold boomed again in Warrandyte in 1870.

That year, the tunnel at Pound Benton was blasted.

This venture, unique in the gold-mining history of Victoria, was led by David Mitchell, father of premier singer Dame Nellie Melba.

Mitchell formed the Evelyn Tunnel Gold Mining Company, the purpose of which was to construct a dam across the bed of the Yarra and divert the water flow through a tunnel. This work exposed the original bed of the river for three miles.

Eight thousand pounds weight of gold in one year was taken from this part of the river bed.

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TRAGEDIES AND TRIUMPHS

Babies died; new families were started; life partners died; new partners found; new lives started; stability found; heritage begun.

This is the story of so many Australian pioneer families, coming as they did to unused climates, unsuited to clothing and cultures;

living as they did in a age before infection and its spread was understood, before nutrition and its needs were cared about. Many came from crowded industrial-revolution slums to wide country spaces; others fresh from village life to new colonial city slums;

still others from genteel life with servants and well-bred society to rough life in a tent on a bush block.

Such a family of tragedies and triumph was that of Joseph Gottfried Uebergang, born the son of Samuel Uebergang on September 9, 1821, at Profen, Silesia, Prussia.

On May 17, 1853 - a year many of our city's first immigrants left their home country - Johann, his wife Charlotte and their three young children Gottfried Heinrich,

Johanne Caroline and Ernst, with his brother Carl, sister Anna and their families, sailed for Australia.

Little Ernst died on the voyage. The ship Wilhelmsburg landed the remaining members of the family at Melbourne on August 25.

Their first home was in Victoria St [then Simpsons Rd] Collingwood. There five year old Gottfried Heinrich died and the small coffin was buried in the old Melbourne Cemetery, over which Victoria Market later grew.

At the close of that year of changes, Gottfried, Charlotte and Johanne Caroline came to Doncaster's German Town and lived in German Lane [George St].

The new move seemed to promise new hope and new joy for the future when early in the new year of 1854, on January 14, the first Uebergang child to be Australian-born arrived - Carl Heinrich Gustav.

Within the year, while Gottfried was away at the goldfields, trying with his Doncaster friend Carl Aumann to better their families' situation, Charlotte died.

Gottfried was left with the toddler Johanne Caroline and the year-old Carl Heinrich.

In 1859, leaving the children with friends, he returned to his home town in Silesia. A wife with his own background was what he sought. He married Christianna Konig and brought her back to the children in Doncaster at the end of that year,

just six years after his first migration.

As the new 1860 began, Joseph Uebergang took his new country completely to heart, became naturalised, bought 20 acres of land in Wilhelm St [King St], built a wattle and daub hut and later,

on land which he turned into a successful orchard, a substantial home which stood for 100 years.

Gottfried and Christianna had two sons and a daughter. The boys, Henry and Charles, established orcharding families here. Charlottes's first Australian-born, Carl Heinrich Gustav, orcharded at St Arnaud and left many descendants in the Western district and Gippsland.

Correct Manuscript [published version has inaccuracies due to editorial changes] JKW

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DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, May 6, 1992 — Page 17

YESTERYEAR

The era of cool stores

By JOAN WEBSITER

THE experiment of a few Doncaster orchardists who stored fruit at the Mel- bourne ice skating rink, the Glaciarium, ushered in the refrigerated cool store area. In 1905 Premier Sir Thomas Bent was per- suaded by Tom Petty to build the first govern-ment cool store at cen- tral Doncaster.

Three years later the first fruit-growers’ co-operative cool store in Australia was built by a group of local orchardists who became tired of official red tape at the government cool store that wasted their time in delivering and collecting produce. Behind this move to pri-vately store 36,000 cases of fruit for 36 grower-share- holders were the Pettys, Tully, Lawfords, Thieles, Serpells, Mitchells and Williamsons.

Local growers then bought refrigerated space in a meat ship and became the first to export fruit under refrigeration.

The 1930s saw the peak of Doncaster’s expanding orchard empire. So large was the amount of dessert peaches and pears grown here in that decade that in 1931 the Southern Victoria-Pear Packing Company, later the Blue Moon Co-operative Trading Company, was formed to organise and standardise their export to the United Kingdom.

The old names — T H (Henry) Petty, John Tully, Edwin Lawford and A E Ireland — were among its first directors. But the more who pros-pered, the closer they moved towards extinction, the more desirable the district became for others to live in, the less it could remain rural.

In the 1940s and '50s began the trickle of suburban houses that grew to the present flood. New rating systems helped the decline of the orchard empire. In the 1960s orchards were classified and valued as residential land by the (then) Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works.

The annual rates of a typical 70 ha orchard rose from 69 pounds ($138) to 609 pounds ($1218). Land tax rose from nothing to 483 pounds ($970) and doubled four years later. Merely to keep the land as a family orchard could cost a thousand pounds or more a year, orchardists sold up. They subdivided.

The trees were uprooted and burnt in great pyres on their empty beds. In 1986 there were only 10 orchards in commercial production; in 1992 only two - Petty's and Aumann's. Doncaster's suburbanites are reminded of their beginnings by the orchard museum at Schramms Cottage in Victoria St and by Gottlieb and Phillipine Thiele's home, Friedensruh, in Waldau Court, which is on the Victorian Register of Australian Heritage buildings.

Two hectares of the land Gottlieb first cleared down by Ruffey's Creek was given by his descendants to the people of Doncaster as the nucleus of the Municipal Botanical Gardens. Overlooking it lies the small, fenced graveyard of Waldau Hill, where bare mounds beneath the cypress rise and fall like small waves on a sea of memory.

THE opening in 1905 of Australia’s first government cool store, in Doncaster Rd. Photograph courtesy of ERIC COLLYER.

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Wednesday, May 13, 1992

YESTERYEAR

The names have changed

By Joan Webster

ANYONE who travelled back in a time machine through this district would need a municipal history before asking directions.

Doncaster used to be known as Vermont; West Doncaster was Carleton or Kennedy's Crossing and the north of East Doncaster was Deep Creek.

Box Hill was known as Nunawading; Nunawading was called Tunstall.

A street directory even 50 years old would be no help. Street names as well as district names have had a habit of changing.

Tunstall, the area south of the Koonung Creek and east of what is now Box Hill, was so named because a band of clay there perfect for making pottery.

It was similar to that found in Tunstall, Staffordshire, England. A clay pit was worked there from 1853.

Tunstall Square shopping centre took its name from the road.

The name Nunawading was originally spelt Numphawading, an Aboriginal word meaning ceremonial ground or battlefield.

Croydon was called Warrandyte. Before 1856, the name Warrandyte referred to the whole area from Anderson's Creek to the present Croydon.

In 1882, the present Croydon Station was officially opened as Warrandyte Railway Station, and the adjacent Post Office named Warrandyte Railway Station Post Office.

There was also a Warrandyte Post Office at the area we now know as Warrandyte. This historic building was recently saved from demolition and is now functioning as a community centre.

When what is now the City of Box Hill was proclaimed the Shire of Nunawading in 1872, its council-lors tried to persuade the Templestowe Roads Board (now the City of Doncaster and Templestowe) to merge with it.

Bulleen is the name of a white cockatoo indigenous to the area that is now the Templestowe ward of the City of Doncaster and Templestowe.

In 1875, the Shire of Bulleen — as the municipal district now the City of Doncaster and Templestowe was then called — amalgamated with Nunawading/Box Hill to form the United Shire of Nunawading.

But this lasted only three months.

Mitcham used to be called New Brunswick.

Elgar Rd, which links Doncaster to Box Hill, was known as Crossman's Rd.

Springvale Rd, of course, leads to the City of Springvale, which was named the cause of the many fresh water springs there.

The Mullum-Mullum Creek, which runs through Donvale and forms part of the boundary of what was the Nunawading Roads District (later Shire of Nunawading, later City of Box Hill), was called Deep Creek.

And the area south of East Doncaster, which has controversiality now been changed to Temple Hills, was originally known as Deep Creek.

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YESTERYEAR

Tower Hotel fire re-lived

By Joan Webster

THE Australian Hand Book of 1895 lists four hotels in Doncaster: The Doncaster (Doncaster Arms), Morning Star, Meader's and the Tower. In fact, Meader's was the Tower Hotel, which in 1882 had also been miscalled the Post Office Hotel.

The Tower Hotel superseded the Temperance Hotel which had been built originally on the tower's eastern side to accommodate sightseers, and was built on the western side of the tower. It had 39 rooms, stables for 20 horses and was built of timber.

In 1895, on a typical January day of hot north winds, the Tower Hotel caught alight.

A kerosene lamp, just lit in the lamp room beside the bar, is believed to have started the fire. The barman, after lighting the lamp, had just served a customer when he saw the room ablaze behind him. And the hot north winds only made things worse.

In those days, the fire brigade could only know about an emergency by seeing the fire from afar. There were no telephones then. Struggling horses and a creaking hand pump at a well - there were no speeding trucks and high-powered hoses - were the best facilities available for for trying to save the hotel.

Men and boys pumped the handle of the hotel's big well until it broke while one of the local Petty boys was working it. Down below at Box Hill Fire Station the 'lookout' saw the blaze. The horses which were later to struggle up the hill with the firecart were not, as you might have expected, kept standing by at the ready, harnessed for emergency.

They were not even trained for emergency, nor practised at working together.

Apart from the steep incline, this was another reason for their struggle. Firemen called from their homes by the clanging bell grabbed the first available horses; baker's horses, farm horses, milk horses. They were independant animals, not used to team work.

They pulled against each other up the hill as the flames of the blazing Tower Hotel rose higher. As the horses rose higher up the hill and closer to the fire, they jibbed. A crowd running alongside the freeart urged the horses on and the firemen off the cart. "Get off and walk. They'll go better without your weight", they shouted.

The brigade finally reached the fire but, just as their hoses were let down the well and the freeart's engine-driven pump went into action, the hotel roof collapsed. Kew and Hawthorn fire brigades had also been alerted by their 'lookouts'. No doubt the same process of gathering first men and then horses from their usual work was repeated.

Though too late to save the hotel, the firemen stopped the fire from spreading to adjoining properties, the function room and other hotel outbuildings. William Meader replaced his destroyed timber Tower Hotel with one of brick and of an elaborate style with a curved entrance drive. The saved function room was sold as a private house.

This hotel was delicensed three years after its namesake, the tower, was dismantled in 1914. It first became a grocery store, then a motor-mower sales and service shop, operating at the corner of Doncaster Rd and Tower St until demolished for the 1969 widening of Doncaster Rd.

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YESTERYEAR

Doncaster and TEMPLESTOWE News Wednesday, July 1 1992

All the winds of heaven

By JOAN WEBSTER

MID-20th century commercialism has obscured and shut out from the people what was acknowledged as the best view in Melbourne: the Yarra Valley, Great Dividing Range and Port Phillip Bay from Doncaster Hill.

Mid-19th-century commercialism in Doncaster realised and developed its tourist potential, opened up and advertised its breathtaking beauty, and put Doncaster ‘on the map’ due to its renown for nearly half a century.

The Australian Sketcher of 1880 ran a feature article and artist’s impression of our famous commercially-run lookout tower, then known as the ‘Bea-consfield’ tower. Tower St, one street eastwards along Doncaster Rd from Shop-pingtown, was named for it.

To the right of the illustration, separated from the tower by a fence, is what appears to be a small wooden cottage. This was a Temperance Hotel, the forerunner of the Tower Hotel built later on the western side of the tower.

By the fence dividing tower from hotel is an entrance gate beside a lean-to which was probably where visitors to the tower paid their fee to see the view. Tiny figures can just be made out on a landing stage at the top of the first section of the tower, about half way up, while others below peer up at them.

The Australian Sketcher 1880 wrote: “This tower is an immense wooden structure 200 feet high and was erected by its proprietor Mr Hummell for the sole purpose of obtaining the extensive and magnificent view which it commands.

“Situated at the top of Doncaster Hill, from its upper gallery, the visitor obtains a grand panoramic view of the Dandenongs, the Plenty Rangers, Kew, Melbourne, Mt Macedon, Port Phillip Bay, and on a clear day, Port Phillip Heads.

“From the ground floor to the first gallery (height 100 feet or 33 metres) the steps of the tower are enclosed, and one has the feeling of starting up a shaft instead of down one. “From the first to the second gallery the height is 60 feet (20 metres), the tower is open to all the winds of heaven.

The ascent so far is achieved by means of a strong, wood-en, winding staircase, but after the second gallery is reached, the enterprising excursionist must trust the safety of his neck to a near perpendicular ladder.

“We need not remark that the majority of visitors having achieved the upper gallery, content themselves with the view it offers, and take the rest for granted. “This is the third tower erected on this spot by Mr Hummell, the two others having been blown down.

The present structure cost 1000 pounds. It is a place of reset on high days and holidays, the public being privileged to toil-up its innumerable stairs at the rate of a shilling a head.

“There is a temperance hotel attached to this tower and there are some pleasantly wooded paddocks about for the use of picnic parties. “Cabs run from Kew to Doncaster two or three times a day in the season,

but good pedestrians will find the distance (five or six miles or nine km) a pleasant and exhilarating walk through the grassy, undulating country about.” In 1885 Alfred Hummell and his family moved to Tasmania and another local entrepreneur and estate agent, William Meader, bought the tower and its recreational facilities, changing the name from the ‘Beaconsfield’ to the ‘Tower’ hotel.

When Doncaster Rd was widened in 1969 an Oregon beam plate which had supported the tower was unearthed. A piece of this was sent to Alfred Hummell’s descendants in Tasmania.

THE Doncaster tower and Temperance Hotel ... a picture from the Australasian Sketcher of 1880.

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Page 12 — DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, January 22, 1992

Unmuddling the Melba story

I AM writing to express my concern regarding the article ‘Nellie: Tomboy of the Orchards’ which appeared in the Doncaster and Templestowe News, November 13, 1991. The article is riddles with inaccuracies. The Mitchell family never lived in Doncaster and Nellie could not, as stated in the article, have arrived in Doncaster in 1858.

She was not born until 1861. If David Mitchell did own land in Doncaster (which would be a startling discovery for this has never been mentioned by Melba’s numerous biographers, researches or by her granddaughter), all evidence that the family actually resided in Doncaster is to the contrary.

The organ referred to in this article (now in our Museum collection) never resided in Doncaster. The organ remained at the family home ‘Doonside’, Richmond (where David Mitchell lived throughout his life) until Mitchell’s death in 1916 after which Melba presented the organ to the Burnley Congregational Church. The organ was later moved to the Arkarnaga Crescent Congregation Church, Black Rock.

If Melba had School friends who resided in Doncaster, she would have met them at the Presbyterian Ladies College, not as Doncaster neighbors. These historical errors should be corrected publicly. School children and other researchers may attempt to use the article as a basis for projects.

Moya McFadzean, Lilydale Historical Museum.

DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, January 29, 1992 — Page 9

Letters

Setting the record straight on Melba’s Doncaster past

RE: letter from Moya McFadzean, curator, Lilydale Historic Museum.

The sentence, ‘Helen (Nellie) Mitchell and her parents arrived in Doncaster in 1858, after living in Richmond where Nellie was born’ should have been, ‘Helen (Nellie) Mitchell’s parents came to Doncaster in 1858, while living in Richmond where Nellie was born.’

The statement that the Mitchells ‘lived for some years’ on land that is now in the Eastern Golf Links was my wrong understanding of the fact that Mitchell owned land and a house there.

It is correct that in 1858 David Mitchell bought the 30 acre lot of land on Doncaster Rd which in 1886 became Dr Thomas Fitzgerald’s ‘Tullamore’ estate, and still later the Eastern Golf Links. According to Doncaster and Templestowe Historical Society Records (Vol 8, No. 2, November 1974, page 5), Mitchell bought land as a farm and built a cottage there.

Doncaster and Templestowe Historical Society’s former president Irvine Green confirms this.

Mitchell’s purchase of Doncaster land appears in Templestowe Roads Board rate books, Mr Green maintains. It was one of Mitchell’s four farms, at which it was his habit to stay for a week or so at a time. Nellie certainly stayed and played in Doncaster, in the house on her father’s farm in Doncaster Rd.

Doncaster and Templestowe Historical Society’s records (Vol 4, No. 2, November 1970, page 5) relates to the local legend of young Nellie climbing the Bunya Bunya pine which still grows near Mitchell’s former cottage site. The story of Nellie mischievously playing a lively organ polka at Sunday service was told to me 25 years ago by a number of elderly residents to whom it had been handed down as family folklore.

The organ referred to in the article is a different instrument from that in the Lilydale Museum. The article’s reference ‘The Mitchell’s Doncaster house had an organ on which hymns were played each Sunday for Presbyterian church service’ is correct, being that organ in the Doncaster house owned by Mitchell.

Joan K. Webster,

Author, Yesteryear.

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Page 30 – Doncaster Templstowe News, Wednesday, June 10, 1992

The Athenaeum Hall, Main Rd, Doncaster, 1871.

Picture courtesy Eric Collyer.

Hall of learning

by Joan Webster

In the 1890s, Doncaster's Athenaeum Hall housed a library of 1100 volumes which were regarded as one of the finest collection of reference books outside Melbourne.

In 1870, a lively organisation known as the Band of Hope planned to reform the hard-living wood splitters and itinerant workers of the district. They felt their usual meeting place, the Methodist Hall, could be thought too "churchy", and hinder their evangelical efforts. So they suggested the building of a non-sectarian community hall.

The original Athenaeum Hall was built in 1871 on its current site in Doncaster Rd. The generosity of Mr. Alfred Hummel (of Doncaster Tower fame), secured the land for it.

This young Englishman, who had inherited a great deal of money and used it for community purposes, bought three acres from the government and presented one acre to the Athenaeum hall trustees. He also loaned 70 pounds towards the 285 pounds cost of the building. A government subsidy of 40 pounds helped to buy the first 225 books.

Care in the selection of reference material was largely the work and talent of Mr A.O. Thiele, first head teacher of the Doncaster State School. The library lapsed into disuse during World War II chiefly, it was said, through lack of interest. This was probably because the books had become outdated and were not replaced with more modern resources and literature.

Since the advent of modern Doncaster suburbia in the 1950s, the Athenaeum was used mainly for mee-tings, baby injection days and naturalisation ceremonies and an occasional theatrical performance. When it was modernised in the 1960s a concrete slab covered scars where wreckers excised the imposing old entrance and annexes which had been added in 1914.

Later renovation has made its early glory totally unrecognisable. The old Athenaeum was as symbolic of Doncaster's former town life as any Mechanics' Institute. It hosted the halls, meetings and concerts which were the social life of the district. When entertainments were few a ball was a great event. Before the building of the Athenaeum,

balls had been held privately by families who had homes large and grand enough, and dances were held in barns by those who did not. The first public ball was held in the Athenaeum in 1897. This first shire ball was an all-night affair, with dancing to the piano and violin, each dance formally booked by the men in the ladies' programs. After the 1914-18 war, Doncaster-Templestowe RSL balls began a yearly tradition there.

Civic balls differed from others because they were for invited residents who had voluntarily worked for the community during that year. When the first Civic ball was held in 1927, it was an especially proud time for shire president Joseph Albert (Bert) Smith, who had risen from a penniless orphan to the highest position in the community.

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DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWS NEWS Wednesday, June 3, 1992 Page 29

YESTERYEAR

Born again

CHURCHES have always made converts, but some of Doncaster-Temple-stowe's churches were themselves converted.

The original 1866 Methodist (now Uniting) Church building at the corner of Blackburn and Doncaster roads was converted from a butcher's shop.

St Anne's Park Orchards was converted from an army hut.

A Baptist congregation built what was known as Grant's Chapel in the 1860s on or about the site of the old Shire Hall on the corner of Doncaster Rd and Council St.

This was moved south across the road in 1863 and converted to the Church of Christ.

The pioneers first held religious services in their homes. As more settlers came and money could be pooled for church building, the various denominations erected their different places of worship.

There was usually no need to raise money to buy church land.

Local landowners were notably generous and community-minded and many churches, schools and halls stand today on land donated by early families.

The first church service of any denomination is believed to have been a gathering of Presbyterians in 1842.

It was held in a barn on the property of Scotsman Alexander Duncan in Bulleen Rd, Templestowe. Ironically until recently there was never a large Presbyterian congregation in the municipality.

The main denominations of Doncaster were Lutheran and Church of England, while in East Doncaster the Primitive Methodists reigned.

FROM butcher's shop to church (right).

The Lutherans built their first timber chapel in 1858 on the hill-top site now used by Schramm's Cottage museum.

It doubled as a place of worship for local Anglicans until Holy Trinity Church of England was built in Church St in 1969.

The present brick Lutheran Church in Victoria St was built in 1892.

Christ Church in High St, Templestowe, was originally the municipality's first Anglican Church, a small timber chapel built two years before Doncaster's Holy Trinity and converted in 1900.

The butcher's shop Methodist Church, bought in 1866 from its Warrantyte owner for 50 pounds, was carted to East Doncaster by bullock wagon along the rough, rutted roads which were little better than tracks.

For 18 years it was used as a church and Sunday school, then for 45 more as a Sunday school before being demolished.

St Anne's Park Orchards was not only a converted Army building, but also for 22 years the Temple-stowe Roman Catholic Church before being moved.

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Page 36 – Doncaster Templestowe News, Wednesday August 5, 1992

YESTERYEAR

Hall a ‘vision spendid’

By Joan Webster

ON the site of the old Shire Hall in Council St the first seed of Doncaster civilisation was planted. There, in 1852, what is believed to have been the first building structure in the area was erected — a bark hut, built as a home by Bill Thompson.

On this high ridge track to the Anderson's Creek (Warrandyte) diggings, Bill's bark hut was, said folk historian of 1916 Thomas Robinson, the only house between Richmond and Bulleen.

Bulleen was the name of the whole parish as far east as Springvale Rd. By 1860 Bill's hut was gone and the site boasted Grant's Chapel, a small timber Baptist Church. When this was moved across the road four years later the land was vacant and ready for its destiny. In 1890 the Doncaster Riding of the original Shire of Bulleen committed an Act of Severance from its municipal mother-and in 1892 the Shire of Doncaster was proclaimed.

From the moment of severance there was much discussion and dissension about the location of a home for the new seat of local government. Could it be afforded at all with most roads still muddy bogs?

For a while the management of the newly built Athenaeum Hall boosted its income by renting a room to the council for meetings. Richard Serpell, the man in the middle of so much of Doncaster's development and owner of a variety of properties, was generous and public spirited.

He offered a choice from his blocks of land on which to build a shire hall. Ratepayers in East Doncaster, though doubtless pleased at being spared the cost of the land, would have rather had any available money spent in making travelling conditions from their end of the shire to the hall made easier.

Doncaster Rd east of Church St was almost impassable in wet weather. Build the shire hall in the east, they said. But, with a vision splendid, councillors opted for a site: 'close to the future railway station.' How could they know that for more than a century routes of railway will-o-the-wisps would snake across the hills and valleys,

never to settle at rest? And to touch here again in full circle in 1992? The shire hall was intended to be an imposing building with planned additions to its 'phase one' which would have made its entrance face Doncaster Rd. In 1901, when the self-governing states joined in a federation to become the Commonwealth of Australia, a park created at the southern boundary of the shire hall was named Federation Park.

This park eventually became absorbed into the grounds of the adjacent Doncaster State Primary School.

From 1915, the wider shire — first called the Shire of Doncaster but from 1926 called the Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe — was administered from the Council St building until the forerunner of the present municipal offices was built in 1957.

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YESTERYEAR Aug12 1992 p23

Settler builds a future despite own tragedies

ATOP a hill to the south of Reynolds Rd and west of Blackburn Rd is a fine old brick homestead. From the home owner Richard Serpell could see his land stretch from Blackburn Rd down to Serpells Rd, and enjoy a panoramic mountain view. But ten years ago the home itself could hardly be seen because of the surrounding orchard. Now in place of fruit trees are rows of houses.

The Serpell home, also known as the Jenkins homestead, is at 23 Hemingway Ave near Jenkins Drive. Richard Serpell’s mother Jane brought her Cornish family of a daughter and four sons to Glenferrie where they owned a store. In May, 1853, they bought their first Doncaster land at the corner of King St, at the level of what is now Tucker’s Rd, and walked there often from Glenferrie to plant fruit trees.

By 1855 they had built a two-room bark hut. Richard’s diary of August 18, 1855, tells how: “The boys and mother came up with the dray bringing a number of fruit trees.” By July 1856: “Large piece of land planted. One hundred and eight trees of various kinds, 112 vines, 59 currant bushes and 66 gooseberries.” By 1860 he was able to report: “peaches and fruit trees bearing well.” The family bought more land.

In 1875 Richard married Annie Beeston and started building the homestead in Hemingway Ave, quarrying clay on the site, baking it into bricks in a portable kiln for the first four rooms.

Anne fell pregnant. Later, when she died in childbirth, the baby was named Annie after her.

Drowning

The motherless babe, reared by her grandmother, grew up to become Annie Goodson, wife of the Doncaster State Primary School’s first school master. In 1879 Richard married again — Alice Reid, from Phillip Island — but lived for only a short while on the Blackburn Rd property.

A tragic drowning in the orchard dam brought with it the feeling that this was an unlucky home.

He built again near his mother and little Annie on the eastern side of Williamsons Rd, just north of Doncaster Rd intersection. Richard Serpell was a member of the company formed to run the first electric tram in the Southern Hemisphere along Tram Rd.

EARLYs settler Richard Serpell: Serpells Rd and Serpell Primary School are named after the family.

He helped to establish the Athenaeum Hall and its once famous library; donated land for the Don-caster Primary School and the Old Shire Hall; carted stone to help build Holy Trinity Church of England and built the emporium on the corner of Doncaster

and Williamsons roads that proceeded Doncaster Shoppingtown.

Serpells Rd and Serpell Primary School are named after the family.