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070 ByWays DoncasterMirror B
Byways of Local History by Joan Seppings Webster
29th September ‘81
In those days of 1850, two acres planted was then a large commercial concern.
In the 1850s and 1860s not much fruit was sold to Melbourne’s Eastern market except berry fruits and apples. Peaches, pears and plums began to be sold in 1873-4, then lemons and thick skinned oranges. Little fresh fruit was available for Melbourne residents but, by 1856 Victoria began to provide her own needs and Doncaster’s gardens grew.
Richard Serpell noted that he had planted 108 fruit trees, 112 vines, 59 currant and 66 gooseberry bushes. The government of 1858 was concerned with encouraging production but was in two minds on how to go about it and considered bringing an English farmer to teach the inexperienced settlers.
“No,” said Sydney Ricardo, “The land is different. The climate is different. The soil is different. The methods must be different too.“
Ricardo was one who knew. He had settled in Templestowe and seen his tomato gardens flooded out. He had seen the plants of his neighbours in the “highlands“ with their fruit. He had been a member of the Templestowe Roads board before being elected to represent the people in Parliament.
Ricardo persuaded the government to assist with grants for the establishment of an experimental farm to learn how to grow under Australian conditions.
One such, Cole’s of Burnley, was to teach Frederick Thiele to grow fruit crops profitably, and had become the means by which he and his younger brother Alfred became leading Australian authorities in fruit.
In the 1850s grapes were the main fruit growing in the colony, Phylloxera, an insect pest, wiped out Victoria‘s grapes in the 1890s.
The 1860s were an important decade for the orchard industry. Many of Doncaster‘s first settlers children had intermarried and started their own market gardens.
In 1873 Doncaster orchardists exported their first fruit. Wax models in the Vienna Exhibition and later fresh fruit to the Botanical Conference at Florence with great success. Fruit, vegetable and flower shows at Melbourne Town Hall and the Exhibition Buildings followed.
In 1882 Tom Petty, Alfred Thiele and Richard Serpell became the first Australians to successfully export pairs to England.
(Continued part three next week).
Corrected: CarolynS
070 ByWays DoncasterMirror C
Byways of Local History by Joan Seppings Webster. 6/10/81
Orcharding Part 3
We think today of the Goulburn Valley as the great orchard area of Victoria, but this part was not opened up agriculturally until 1870 and then as a grain producer - The Golden Granary - with the opening of the railway line north from Melbourne.
In 1887 the Shire of Bulleen, as the municipality was then known, had all Victoria in output of fruit with 1378 acres of Orchard, 91 acres of garden and 45 acres of vines.
Doncaster developed as a major fruit growing area long before the Goulburn Valley or other outlying areas. It’s undulating terrain was suitable. It did not require drainage as water would run off into the creeks and gullies.
Flat land such as in the Goulburn Valley was suitable because of the climate but needed drainage and irrigation.
Doncaster was close to Melbourne. Fruit could be marketed easily and quickly. There was no way of transporting fruit from further out as only horses were available before the railway of 1870.
In 1903 the Doncaster Fruit Growers cooperative was formed to buy refrigeration space in overseas steamers for export.
In 1904 F. W. Pickering of Doncaster went to Mildura and to quote the Australasian of March 2, 1904 – “Carried out some interesting and valuable experiments. One of them is in regard to manuring for vines and citrus from which striking results have been obtained. Mr Pickering is a disciple of irrigation.”
1906-1912 marked a great increase in fruit production when many more orchards were planted in Doncaster and Templestowe.
But the peak of the expanding orchard empire was in the decades of the 1930s. An enormous number of dessert peaches and pears were grown in this decade and in 1931 the Southern Victorian Packing Co. - (later the Blue Moon Co-operative Trading Co.) was formed to organise and standardise exports to the United Kingdom.
But the more desirable the district became for others to live in the less it became rural. In the 1940s there began a trickle of suburban houses that grew to the present flood.
New ratings helped erosion and decline.
In the 1960s classified and valued as residential land, rates of a typical 36 acres. orchard rose from £69 to £609. Land tax rose from nothing to £485 and four years later doubled.
Merely to keep the land as a family orchard cost many 1000 a year.
Orchardist sold up. They subdivided. The trees were uprooted and burnt in great fires in their empty beds.
The year the municipality of Doncaster and Templestowe became a city 1967, 179 orchards remained, many still being worked by fifth-generation gardeners. That year the Department of agriculture said that Doncaster as an orchard area was finished.
071 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Byways of Local History by Joan Seppings Webster
October 13 1981
Pioneer life in Doncaster-Templestowe was in a humpy made of gum saplings, a wattle and daub home with sacking on the floor.
Stone houses were later built from quarries in the Ruffey and Koonung Creeks, but shingle roofs stayed for a long, long time. No iron or galvanised iron was available in the colony for some time. Pink belladonna lilies grew in the house gardens and water lilies on the dams. Wildflowers were all around - green elephant, spider orchid, Jack in the pulpit, blue harbinger of spring, maiden hair fern and hawthorne hedges.
Modern houses may have had construction problems because of the enormous tanks on the kitchens of the pioneer homes. Butter and milk were let down on a rope into these to keep them cool. These were lined with iron, when it came to the colony. It was wonderful when iron came out so water could be caught off roofs, as well.
Women made their own candles by setting them in moulds with tallow. Water from the well was pumped up onto the roof and went through to the wood stove. The pots on the stove were very heavy. People made their own bread, tendered their hens and cows and did the family wash in the nearest creek with a scrubbing board. They made their own vinegar from pears, dried their own currents from grapes.
Women helped their menfolk in the orchard. They still wore 5 to 6 stiffened petticoats and bone corsets. For comfort they took their shoes off and worked barefoot, but kept on their voluminous petticoats.
A pioneer woman’s place wasn’t only in the home. A Thiele sister drove a newly bought reaper and binder from Mount Gambier to Doncaster.
Another chore for the womenfolk was mending the gloves of gooseberry pickers.
During the week the women carried their butter or eggs to Kew and Collingwood to sell them at the markets. They were appreciative of a lift home in an empty dray that had carted firewood to the city. They walked to Hawthorn for music or dancing lessons.
Shopping was at Box Hill for Doncaster people and Heidelberg for Templelestowe people. Shops were open until 11 o’clock on Saturday nights.
A great treat was to visit the theatre in Melbourne. They rode on a chaff bag in a cart.
From East Doncaster to Melbourne took one hour with a trotter (17 kmh). But this compares reasonably with today’s bus trip.
Entertainments were letter reading, singing around the piano, and church. The men played cricket if they had enough money to buy a 3d ball.
On a clear day from Doncaster’s hills you could see ships entering the bay through the heads. Sound carried far too in the pre-industrialised area. A man swearing at his horse in what is now Greendale Rd., East Doncaster could be heard clearly 400m away.
Men worked long hours. At the turn of the century they worked from 7:30 am until dark and until 3 pm on Saturdays. Often they camped out on the job in paddocks. Preparing for market they would go to bed at 8 o’clock, have the wagon and horse ready always at 5 to midnight, and leave home at midnight to reach the Victoria Market before it opened at 4 am. They arrived home by midday next day.
Victoria Street Melbourne would be lined with horses and wagons of growers and fruiterers.
The wagon would be filled with manure from the Carlton breweries on the way back.
But, before the orchards could be worked, the land had to be cleared. Trees were chopped out by the roots, then the stumps burned or cut up. It would take one man two weeks to clear an acre this way. Stumps would be pulled out with a jack. The biggest stump found in 24 ha. of Petty’s land at Park Orchards was 150 cm in diameter.
072 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Byways of local history by Joan Seppings Webster
October 20 1981
In 1854 a wood cutter in the Melbourne area was paid 8 pounds a week; a sawyer was paid 10 pounds a week. Outside the settled area the wages were 4 pounds a week for a good cutter and 5 pounds a week for sawyer. Farm labourers of 1854 were paid one pound 15 shillings per week, in 1857 one pound five shillings a week, 1861 one pound fifteen shillings a week. Day labourers wages rose to 6 shillings a day then dropped to 5 shillings a day.
By 1900 a labourer received five shillings a day for clearing land of trees - take own lunch. In those days 24 shillings a week would keep a family well.
Workers ate separately from the farm or orchard owning family. The German settlers usually gave the man a meal in the shed - for other farmers the men brought their own food.
One or two orchards had men whose only job was to cart manure from the brewery stables and Foy and Gibsons every day. They would leave in the morning with one or two horses and a dray or lorry, perhaps taking wood or produce in. Manure is one of the things that helped to make Doncaster such a prolific fruit growing district. Our orchardists were early “believers” in manure.
Others earned money by contracting to cart goods to Woods Point where Chinese were digging for gold. They took with them food and produce. It took them three weeks to go there and back via the Spur to Healesville. On these twisting mountain tracks there were sometimes 40 horses with empty rays with mud up to the axles.
Part of the Doncaster-Templestowe working scene was the gooseberry pickers. They wore gloves to save their hands from the prickles.
The local settlers said you had to watch these itinerant workers, and that sometimes gooseberry cases were partly filled with dirt instead of gooseberries. Often these men were sailors, deserters from ships.
Local men worked in a quarry at Lilydale. They walked to work from their homes in Doncaster-Templestowe.
In 1855 the work was mostly timber cutting and carting, selling butter at Kew and keeping fowls.
Cherries and gooseberries made early money. Most early settlers had a vine patch. Vineyards were doing well in most of Victoria until 1890. When many vineyards were wiped out by the insect phylloxera which attacked rootstocks.
Peach trees bore quickly but apples took 10 years to bear.
To keep apples cool they were stored under pine trees in holes in the ground or barn or dug into the side of the hill. They could also be kept cool by packing in straw and laying them in a cool part of the shed. Peaches had to be picked and sold immediately.
In the old days fruit was graded by hand on a packing bench lined with hessian and padded. Later they went on rollers into grading beds.
It was a long way carting gooseberries from where they were picked to their storing shed so to make this job easier a sled was invented.
Doncaster was the only place with a “jingle“ - a spring cart which held 20 cases of fruit. It was the only place which had thought of it to save time and backache.
In the very early days most heavy haulage was drawn by bullock team when there were no roads, only bush tracks. Later, with horses, coming back from market, people used to dodge the bad pull of “big hill” by detouring through Petty’s land near where Petty’s lane is now. Mr. Petty would charge them sixpence a horse and dray or three pence a horse as they cut up his land and spoilt it.
PIONEER LIFE Part Threes
"Out in the orchard six horse teams pulled ploughs to cut up the ground between the rows of orchard trees, and then this ground was rolled."
"Later, it was thought better to mow the"
grass between trees.
"At yet another time, peas and lupins were planted between the rows and ploughed in"
for fertilizer.
Doncaster orchardists pioneered the use of sprays in treating fruit pests.
Spraying was done from horse drawn carts. There was one man to pump and two men to spray. The two men' on
the hoses held a length of two cm rod on the end of one cm hose and directed these from barrels on the cart. Young
men would boast of how many barrels of spray a day they could pump with these old outfits.
"Hand pumps were drawn on sleds and children often had the job of pumping these up and down, up and down before and after school."
Doncaster
other areas followed
orchardists were the first to realise the value of water conservation and
Byways
of local
history
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
"their ideas. Dams were on top of the hills so that the water could be run down to the trees. It was hard to fill the dams this way, as rain"
"water could not run off into them. Hill-sides above the crops were edged up by Don- caster men, and dams were"
"gouged out. At first, water was carried from these dams"
down to the crops by hand pipes and later by hoses.
"Galvanised iron pipes in 183 cm lengths were all connected together like vacuum cleaners, and laid on the top of the ground around the dams. These were connected by hoses to the rows of trees. To water the next row the iron pipe had to be moved while holding the hose."
"Water ran into holes dug around the trees, filled with straw to stop hardening out. Moving the iron pipe from row to row was a perpetual after school activity for the children. Aching little hands would have appreciated modern light aluminium piping."
The forerunners of today's soakit hoses were made by East Doncaster men.
"Knee was one of the first to cut small holes in his hoses for a drip system of irrigation, which allowed a slow drip to each tree."
"Orchardists helped one another to build dams with horse and scoop. When steam pumps came in, it was possible to build dams in hollows which allowed for better catchment and the water was pumped up to the"
trees.
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Byways of Local History
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
Doncaster Mirror 1981
"THE WARRANDYTE STORY"
White men first came to the Warrandyte area in February, 1836. An expeditionary party led by J. P. Gellibrand with Richard Buckley, the wild white man who had lived for years with the blacks around Port Phillip Bay.
He had re-learned his native English and was an invaluable interpreter and go-between.
Gellibrand and his party came upon a fast flowing stream as they returned to the
Western part of Port Phillip and they named this the Plenty River.
They had hoped to find the upper reaches of the Yarra Yarra River. They followed a high ridge which is believed to be what is now the Research Rd. from Eltham to Warrandyte.
The first white man to explore the Upper Yarra was probably Jack Gardner who, with his brother David Fletcher Gardner, built a cattle run at Mooroolbark in 1837.
James Anderson was the founder of Warrandyte. He took up a selection on
Anderson Creek in 1839 and brought stock from Sydney.
Anderson engaged on his property Samuel Furphy and his wife who had just
arrived from Scotland in 1841.
Mrs Furphy, aged 21, was believed to have been the first white woman to live and work among ticket-of-leave men in the Upper Yarra locality.
The Furphy's were the parents of Joseph Furphy, better known as “Tom Collins", author of "Such is Life".
The Warrandyte district was first surveyed in 1841. In 1843 Anderson sold out to Major Newman. Anderson had discovered gold in the Plenty Mountains in 1841, but as he did not receive the results of an assay from Launceston, he did not look further.
In 1841 Warrandyte Station, at the bottom of Pig Tail Hill, was opened by James Anderson.
The name Warrandyte is made up of two Aboriginal words Warren meaning to throw, Dyte, the object thrown at. Some of the maps of Warrandyte roads are spelt Warrendyte.
Under the Survey of 1841, 1103 acres at Pound Bend were reserved for Aboriginal Settlement.
In 1851 when gold was discovered in Bathurst, New South Wales, Melbourne was deserted by most of its population. Mayor, William Nicholson, formed a Gold Discovery Committee. A reward of 200 was offered for the discovery of gold within one hundred miles of Melbourne.
In June, 1851, gold was discovered in Anderson Creek by Louis Michel and William Habberlin.
Anderson's Creek (Warrandyte) won the prize for the first official Victorian gold find by a narrow margin. It was proclaimed the first goldfield in the Colony of Victoria. Michel's find was on June 30, the 1851 Clunes find was July 1, Ballarat, August 25 and Bendigo, November 8.
074 ByWays Doncaster Mirror
Byways of local history
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
Doncaster Mirror Nov 17 1981
WARRANDYTE STORY Part Two
Two days after the hole dug by Louis Michel at Warrandyte was declared gold bearing (August 8, 1851), more than 150 prospectors were digging in Anderson Creek.
Towards the end of the year bad weather and news of the enormous amounts of gold found in payable quantity in Ballarat both arrived, and diggers deserted.
Lt.-Governor La Trobe, writing to the Secretary of State for Colonies on November 15, said: "News of other fields and the flooded state of the Yarra caused a complete but probably only temporary abandonment of the Anderson Creek gold fields."
Stories are told of the diggers rowing over the flooded Yarra washing out their muddy tents.
Three Gold Commissioners stayed on at Anderson Creek, showing someone had faith in the field.
In 1854 the Legislative Council decided to accept Michel’s claim for the prize and paid him 1000 pounds. This set the final seal on Victoria’s first gold field. The Warrandyte gold field was named the Victorian gold field.
With the publicity given to the prize, miners returned to Anderson Creek at the end of 1854. In 1855, John Pascoe Fawkner with Premier Mr J. O'Shannessy toured the gold fields to investigate miners' grievances following the Eureka Stockade. The digging population was scattered over about a mile of the river’s length.
Some of the dredging methods were unusual.
Diggers had moved right into the bed of the Yarra and were looking for gold by spanning the river with coffer dams. They roped piles close together so as to form a square in the river, they baled out the water so they could puddle the mud and scrape the rock formation on the bottom of the river bed.
These holdings were precarious, and a rise of one foot in the level of the Yarra would probably wash them away.
Rewards for all this effort were not great.
But, by 1856, "The Gold Circular" stated that up to 100 oz. to the ton was being obtained at Warrandyte and that a gold rush was in full swing.
A miner named James Sloan caused a stir in Melbourne when he got 12 oz. from one bucket of quartz.
From 1856 - 1880 it was fairly quiet on the Warrandyte gold front.
The writer Henry Kingsley tried to make his fortune at Warrandyte diggings. He camped at a site next to the Warrandyte Cemetery. He did not strike it rich but while there worked on his book "Geoffrey Hamlyn."
Gold boomed again in Warrandyte in 1870.
The Warrandyte tunnel was blasted that year.
This venture, unique in the gold mining history of Victoria, was led by David Mitchell, father of Nellie Melba. He formed the Evelyn Tunnel Gold Mining Company. The purpose was to construct a dam across the bed of the river and divert the water flow through a tunnel. This exposed the original bed of the river for three miles.
Eight thousand pounds weight of gold was taken from this part of the river at Pound Bend in one year.
075 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Byways of local history
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
DoncasterMirror November 24 1981
THE first gold to be seen in Victoria was a few specks of gold in a pan held at Warrandyte by Louis Michel and his friend Bill Habberlin.
They camped at a spot where the main road now crosses Andersons Creek. This was June 29, 1851.
Here is Michel's own description of the small find which sparked off Victoria's gold rush.
"In company with Mr. Habberlin I left my hotel about 4 a.m. in order to elude any prospectors who had inclinations to follow.
"We made direct to the ranges by way of Barkers Rd. (now Whitehorse Rd. or Maroondah Highway). Not knowing exactly our position we determined to follow some creeks down to the Yarra and in doing so a particular bend under a steep bank led me to think that the creek had not always run in its present course. If gold were to be found, it seemed a likely place.
"Taking a spade and pick I crossed the creek into the bend. Habberlin in the meantime lit a fire and slung the billy. I proceeded to remove the surface (of soil) for about four feet square having got into the second spit. I called to Habberlin to bring the dish and gave him strict instructions to wash the earth carefully away until the last few grains were left in the dish.
“Do you see anything Bill?” said I.
"After once or twice saying 'No' he suddenly exclaimed: 'Your worship, here's the clickety.'
The next golden glimpse is a scene in Melbourne. The time is between 1851 and 1853.
The Gold Rush had left the streets and the houses of the town almost empty of men. The small boy Oswald Thiele stands outside his father's Bourke Street tailor's shop.
A bright eyed man, face flushed, rides his horse down the street, hands in pockets instead of on the reins of his horse. "A peanut scramble? A lolly scramble?"
A popular treat was for a horseman to throw peanuts or lollies from his pockets to the children who scrambled after them.
But it was not peanuts the man threw from his pockets. Sovereigns! Gold sovereigns, for the gathering crowd of children and old men.
The happy horseman was fresh from success at the goldfields.
Acknowledgement for this story is from Max Bunge, a nephew of Oswald Thiele.
075 ByWays DoncasterMirror B
Byways of local history
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
Doncaster Mirror December 1 1981
GOLDEN GLIMPSES (II)
"GOTTLIEB Thiele came to Doncaster from Melbourne in 1853. Every man in Melbourne, it seemed, had gone to the goldfields and there was no one left in the town for whom he could tailor suits.
His idea was to grow wheat at Doncaster to take to the gold fields.
It is not known whether Gottlieb did take wheat to the goldfields but he did take potatoes.
There was not enough food at the diggings at Bendigo and good prices were to be had.
It was hard making a profit as a grower in those days, especially when farm hands walked off to the diggings. Gottlieb thought he would make big money by selling potatoes.
He filled a barrow load and trudged all the way on foot.
The gold rush had made horses and all vehicles very scarce - it is said one was not be had for love nor money - and wheelbarrows were common vehicles.
At Kyneton he was offered what seemed a good price so he sold them and walked back home.
His family said he had forgotten to take into account a return for the cartage and so the profit wasn't
as much as he thought.
What is more, Gottlieb was lucky to get back alive. Men were often waylaid and robbed of potatoes.
He had sold his potatoes, but at Kilmore, Gottlieb was attacked for his money and nearly killed.
Gottlieb Thiele is the one whose name has gone down in local history. But he was not thought by his family to be a good businessman.
The fourth golden glimpse is taken from the Melbourne "Argus" of January 1, 1855.
"On the way to the Warrandyte diggings, three small nuggets were picked up near the Doncaster Hotel."
Some historians have discounted this and suggest that the nuggets fell out of the pockets of an inebriated digger.
Quartz has certainly been unearthed during excavations and gardening in Doncaster soil up to modern times.
Most Doncaster orcharding people contend that more gold was to be found in Doncaster soil by planting fruit trees in it, than ever was dug out of it.
076 ByWays DoncasterMirror C
ByWays of Local History
By Joan Seppings Webster
DoncasterMirror December 8 1981
GOLDEN GLIMPSES III
A relic from gold and miners' rights carried over in all property transfers.
Property transfers carried a clause stating that the land purchased became the property of the purchaser to only 50 feet below the surface. Is it possible that a miner could tunnel underneath your home in Warrandyte?
The story is told of Stiggants and the sleepy horse.
Henry Stiggants was a digger who came to Warrandyte in 1864 by bullock wagon. Travelling along he saw another group with a wagon pulled by one bullock only. The bullock was led by an old horse. The tired old horse kept going to sleep but each time he sleepily slowed down the bullock gave him a hard butt in the rump.
Henry Stiggants was not asleep. He found 500 ounces of gold right in the centre of Warrandyte town.
(Acknowledgement to Doncaster and Templestowe Historical Society).
Another tale of the golden days of Warrandyte is a very grave story. It is the story of the
busy grave diggers and mourners.
Legend has it that the lost gold reefs passed through the Warrandyte cemetery, so there was never a lack of grave diggers. Graves were dug very slowly and with great care not so much out of reverence but in an effort to find the lost lode.
The local grave digger and his mates are said to have washed the earth taken from graves
before all burials to see if they could find a gleam of gold.
One time, it is said that grave digging stopped "mid- stream” when the diggers came to a reef of rock believing it to contain gold.
The grave diggers left the rock undisturbed across the open half-dug grave so that the coffin had to be lowered into the grave by an end- wise manoeuvre under the rock.
Many bereaved families wondered why so many male mourners followed their loved ones to the funeral. Standing around the grave dressed in their Sunday best and with suitably sad faces the men would scan the walls of the grave with a practised eye for signs of the lost lode. When they found none they took no further part in the funeral proceedings and left. (Acknowledgement to Louis Cranfield for this story.)
The name Warrandyte at first covered the whole area from Anderson Creek to Croydon. The present Croydon station was called Warrandyte even in 1882.
The Warrandyte railway station being at Croydon caused a lot of mix-ups, particularly with mail.
The Anderson Creek area was officially called Warrandyte in 1856.
To end all the confusion the Warrandyte Railway station (at Croydon) was renamed Croydon in 1884.
Warrandyte became a part of the Shire of Bulleen at the elections in 1876.
And it became part of the Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe in 1926.
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Byways of local history
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
Doncaster Mirror Dec 15, 1981
Golden Glimpses (4)
"Ghouls at Warrandyte" said the English Press.
A bit of rough Aussie humor in 1893 ended up as almost an international incident.
A Chinese resident of Warrandyte, John Chatty, an early miner and gambler, who had many friends looking after him towards the end of a long illness, died just before the local policeman, Constable Wade, called at his house to help him make his will.
The policeman arranged for a local named Joe Shortman to take charge of the corpse until the burial could be arranged as he had died on a Saturday.
When Shortman woke up on Monday morning and went to the dead Chinaman's house he found the door off its hinges and the corpse missing. The body was found in a culvert, close to the river. Confused and complicated court proceedings ensued.
It seemed that the night before Shortman had two mates (John Mullens and Bill Atkins) call around to share a half gallon beer, some ale and whiskey.
Another mate, a miner named Blair, called in about midnight and they all decided it would be great fun to pinch the corpse.
Mullens and Atkins were later arrested for offensive behavior.
A noisy crowd gathered outside the court house. A plain-clothes constable had come from
Brighton to investigate an alleged associated attempt to spirit away a witness.
Feeling the need to make a good show for the crowd and the visiting official, the police hurriedly arrested Mullens' three brothers along with two other men charging them with riotous behavior.
Instead of the original miscreants Mullens and Atkins being charged for body snatching, they were charged with "indecent behavior towards a corpse.'
The court did not know what to make of the stories which were told of the comings and going in the house that night. One witness said a young man sat beside the body of the Chinaman and sympathised with his soul.
By this time everyone was thoroughly confused by the stories of the police, the hotelkeeper and the men charged. It is said the police concocted evidence of secret meetings and spiriting away witnesses simply because people were seen entering and leaving the hotel for the grog.
077 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Byways of local history
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
Doncaster Mirror Dec 22, 1981
Golden glimpses (5)
WARRANDYTE'S disused mine shafts are overgrown with stories. This story is of Joe Bloe.
Joe had spent a very heavy Saturday at the local pub where he drank more than his quota of cheap wine. At the end of the day he lurched towards the road pointed in the right direction and zig-zagged for home.
As he had left the pub armed with several bottles of cheap Muscat someone told him as a joke to steer clear of mine shafts. As he staggered on his way he kept muttering over and over: "Minesharfs, musn't go near minesharfs. Must go straight to bed, good thing, no minesharf there."
It grew dark and Joe sank down wearily to sleep it off, his bottles of Muscat cradled in his arms.
Towards morning he woke, fuddled in the head, without a clue as to where he was. He looked around. It was dark, very dark and smelled dank anyway that is what he thought. Then in a nightmare panic, mineshafts popped into his head and he looked up. High above was a small square of light, the night sky. That did it. He knew he had fallen down a mine shaft without a doubt, despite all the warnings.
Joe felt himself all over. No bones broken, no blood, even his bottles intact. He could not understand it. He shouted, but only a hollow echo came back.
Frightened and convinced he would never be found, the poor fellow took a good swig from one of the Muscat bottles and started to climb out. This was a tough proposition. But one that an old sailor could manage.
He braced his back on one side and knees on the other and began to work his way, like a crab, up the straight sides. It was a slow and thirsty business but he made progress. After a long time he reached the top. He grasped the edge and heaved himself into the blessed night air.
Joe was picked up in daylight with a broken arm. He could not understand the wild laughter all around him. He was outside his own home among side-splitting neighbours.
Joe began muttering about mineshafts and tried to tell the story of his epic climb but his neighbours only laughed more.
What had happened was that Joe, far from falling down a mine shaft, had arrived home and fallen down in front of his own fire place.
He went to sleep with his head in the cold ashes.
When he woke, he could see the sky - assuming he was in a mine shaft he began to climb - his own chimney!
The last heave up the chimney sent him toppling on to the ground outside, breaking his arm.
(Acknowledgement to Louis Cranfield "The Warrandyte Story.")
078 ByWays Doncaster Mirror A
Byways of local history
By Joan Seppings Webster
DoncasterMirror February 2 1982
Golden glimpses (6) Aborigines
THE Yarra Yarra tribe who roamed this district were on the whole, very peaceful and co- operative.
A reserve of 1103 acres was established for them at Pound Bend in 1841. Their chief, Bill Bolary, helped the government to form a native constabulary. When he died in 1842 he was succeeded by Yarran Yarran. The last chief of the Yarra Yarra tribe was Barak, who died at Cooranderk Mission at Healesville in 1903.
In 1852, there was somewhat wild outbreak when some Westernport natives brought 10 Warrigal natives with them to the Pound Bend reserve. The Protector of Aboriginals, W. Thomas, tried to send them off but they stayed on and on.
Meantime word was passed to other members of the Yarra Yarra and Westernport tribes and within a few days, three camps had been established near Pound Bend. They begged to be allowed to stay and have a corroboree together.
Mr Thomas succeeded in getting all the Aborigines onto the Pound Bend reserve and for a fortnight relationships were very happy.
Celebrations were probably very similar to a corroboree between the Plenty and Templestowe Aborigines described by Mrs J. Hodgson from a story handed down to her by her forebears.
"With much whooping and yelling they swam the river and joined a celebration around a campfire in a circle swept clean with gum tree branches. The menu consisted of roast possum and after the feast the lubras and children, who had been sent away, were allowed to pick the bones.
For hours the people from the little settlement heard the thud of hundreds of stamping feet and the cries of the natives as they tossed spears and boomerangs."
The Warrandyte get together ended differently. Natives began to infiltrate the white settlement. Scenes of degradation are said to have followed, with drunkeness day after day.
At the end, three natives were found dead and two others were known to have been murdered.
Eventually, with police aid, Thomas sorted out the Yarra Yarra, Goulburn, Warrigal and Gippsland tribes and packed the visitors off.
It had all taken almost six months.
The Yarra Yarra tribe was transferred to the Cooranderk Mission Station at Healesville in 1860 and then in 1934 to the Lake country East Gippsland.
Byways of local history
Golden glimpses (7)
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
Doncaster Mirror FEB. 9. 1982
Milking the past (1)
THE South East corner of the Shoppingtown intersection (Doncaster/Tram Road corner) was until recently, a vivid and endearing reminder of the hill top corner's story.
Now a furniture store straddles the land.
For years before, 18 solid milk cart horses grazed, and rolled unconcernedly in the dust of what must have been the most valuable piece of agistment in Melbourne.
In 1973 the "horse corner" was valued at $500,000. Lease money was only $1 a week
a carry over from arrangement generations ago.
The horses - Red, Mick, Blossom, Jimmy, Sammy, Reg, Pride, Darby, Bluey, Arthur, Dave, Freda Hudson, Lanky, Cactus, Ernie, Midnight and Jim - had been a friendly landmark for more than 25 years.
Fred, a handsome hunk of horse flesh with three white legs and one black, aged 15, was the leader.
A call of "Fred" from stall-man Arthur Trewin and the whole mob came running.
The Stirlings and Clydesdales were bred at the Kew Model Dairies' large farm at Laverton which was the only breeding farm for milk cart horses in Australia.
The history of that corner and dairying goes back to the 1890's.
It's first commercial venture was in 1860.
At that time it boasted Christie Tuckerbaud's tiny shingle roofed cottage/store.
Christie gave the corner and its store to his wife Charlotte and then left her. Charlotte Tuckerbaud's store for many years was known for white strawberries which she grew and sold.
As Charlotte aged she was helped in the store by August Lauer's young bride Ida who had been a Whittig.
The Lauers ran Tuckerbaud's store for some years in the 1880's. It was popular át half-time for the Doncaster Heights Cricket Club members who dropped in for drinks.
Before she died, Mrs Tuckerbaud had sold her land to Edward Gallus, who gave his name to the site for many years as Gallus' Dairy.
In 1888 a shire pound was constructed on the corner by Gallus, who was pound- keeper.
When the Doncaster / Box Hill tramway was running, lines ran right down Edward Gallus' land. His land originally stretched across to Elgar Road. Now Tram Road was formed, cutting the land in two.
Continued next week.
079 ByWays DoncasterMirror
ByWays of Local History
by JOAN SEPPINGS WEBSTER
DoncasterMirror February 23 1982
Milking the past (2)
DONCASTER'S first dairy was Gallus' dairy.
There were no horses then.
Ted and Minnie Gallus would deliver milk in billies left out for them along their way to school each morning.
Ted and Minnie went in different directions to school so as to serve all their customers, each carting a can of milk.
By 1918 the milk was being delivered by horse and cart.
A milk-cart horse needed to be more than a plodding plough horse. Milk-cart horses in 1980 were probably not much different from 1918.
Horses became like household pets to the milkie. Each horse worked six nights a week with his milkie and had a night off when the milkie did.
Their work day started between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. when the milkie collected the horse from his stall and finished 4 1/2 to 5 hours later.
The milkie would hose his horse down and squeegie the water off on returning from the round. The horse was then fed and bedded down.
A horse was old enough to train for milk cart work at three years and almost never too old to train. It could take up to two weeks of training by two men to get a horse used to traffic, dustbins and road signs.
The horse became an extension of the man and so good at knowing when to turn left or right, when to stop and start, that it could train a new milk man.
Some horses had special talents and learnt rounds quickly. These could become what was
known as a "spare driver horse" and do six different rounds a week on the other horse's nights off.
In the early dairy days of the Doncaster-Tram Rd. corner, crowds of cows would be bustling along Doncaster Rd. through the corner to get to the dairy to be milked.
Gallus' dairy was sold to Kew Model Dairy in the 1950's. "The Horse Paddock" was sold in the 1970's.
Local people missed the friendly face of the milk horses. Children and old women used to come to curry the horses on Saturdays. At times they pulled carts at fetes. People often wondered where the horses had gone when the land was sold for development.
They then had to stay in their stable for most of the time, and it was said they missed the sun and the wind and the people who used to talk to them when passing by.
080 ByWays DoncasterMirror
BYWAYS OF LOCAL HISTORY March
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
Murder
WARRANDYTE has a link with a bushranging con- troversy which created more discussion at the time than any other in early Victorian history. Echos were heard in legal circles around the world.
Many thought the hanging of Robert Burke for the shooting of Henry Hurst was a breach of justice.
(Hurstbridge is named for
Hurst).
"On the wet October night, Mrs Russell of Thompson Gully Warrandyte, answered a knock on her door to a well spoken young man wearing a poncho or riding cloak."
Mrs Russell did not
"suspect that her young visitor was the notorious New South Wales bush ranger Burke, believed at the time to be near Murrumbidgee..."
Mrs Russell gave her visitor food and a bed in a hut belonging to her husband's partner.
"Before sun up next morning, Burke was on his way to Hurstbridge across the river, rowed by Harry Haughton of Warrandyte. (Haughton"
Warrandyte).
"Rd,"
The day before Hurst's
"murder (October 4, 1866), Burke had fired a shot through a door which had been shut in his face near the Anderson Creek diggings."
"When Burke walked into Hurst's Diamond Creek station on the morning of October 4, neither Miss Emily Hurst nor her sister Ellen had any reason to suspect that before lunch their brother"
Henry would
Golden glimpses
be dead and Emily almost killed by her own gun.
"The polite, well-spoken breakfast and they gave it to"
young man asked for
him.
Throughout the con
"troversial inquest and trial, Burke maintained that he came to the station with no evil intention, only to"
satisfy this a appetite.
His plea was self defence. He claimed he had no design on
"Hurst's life (“through life it has been an attribute of mine to observe civility, if civility"
"ity be shown to me"". he declared)."
Ellen Hurst began to serve breakfast and then noticed
fire-arms under the coat which Burke had thrown- onto the floor of the kitchen. She went quietly to the next room where Henry happened to be loading her shotgun. He told Ellen to go for help then came into the kitchen.
Henry had a hasty temper and was not noted for
diplomacy. Burke was easily
offended.
Hurst asked Burke where he had come from and where he was going.
When Burke replied that he was travelling from Cape Schanck to
"said, ""Then you,"
Hurst
are a long way off your course.
Burke jumped to his feet shouting: “Do you doubt my
"word?"" He thumped the table and melodramatically declared himself. to be a bushranger and pulled a revolver ""to stick up Hurst."""
"Ellen tried to pacify her brother ""For goodness"
sake let the man have his
"breakfast."""
At an anti-
"ti-hanging meeting, a Mr Kyte declared of Hurst: 'Had he not exhibited so strong a desire to capture a bushranger all"
"to himself, he might still have been alive."""
(9)
$1
"Instead of letting the man have his breakfast, Henry. Hurst picked up Ellen's loaded gun and"
fired it
1982
towards Burke just as she ran out
"of the door to bring help, narrowly missing her."
"By the time Ellen. returned with a farmhand, both men were lying wounded on the floor, her brother dying"
081 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Byways of local history
MURDER (Part II)
THE Hurst inquest was held at the
"Hurst home- stead because of wounded Burke's ""precarious con- dition."""
Evidence was contradic- tory. There was never any
doubt as to Burke's implication in the shooting.
The argument of whether he should hang
centred on the failure of the prosecution to produce the fatal bullet and prove it came from Burke's gun.
The hanging debate centred also on the 18-
"man jury's ""recommendation to mercy on account of the deceased having fired the first shot."""
The doctor who assisted with the autopsy said the
"bullet could only be found in Hurst's body ""by cutting it up piecemeal or boiling it down."""
It could not be established who fired the first shot.
Seven
thousand
signatures were collected on a
petition to save Burke from hanging which was presented to the Governor. Even this caused con- troversy.
One newspaper corre- spondent questioned its validity. He said he had
found petitioners in the streets surrounded by small boys attaching their signatures to it.
"The ""Herald"" pointed out that: Mr Dunne, as Minister, had ordered this highly"
"popular prosecution. As barrister, he has conducted it; as Attorney General, he had led the jury to believe the prisoner's life. saved by recommending mercy; as Executive Counsellor, has he not"
"doomed him to death?"""
"""Every one of these functions he may have fulfilled faithfully but are"
"thev not incompatible?"""
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
"MARCH 16, 821"
"The verdict ""Guilty of wilful"
"urder with a recommendation to mercy on account of the deceased having fired the first shot"" was said to have"
been made because Burke's
"""Wilful murder"" and ""mercy"" were anomalous."
Public feeling ran high at the time against bush rangers.
jurists did not realise their
"recommendation, and its reason, could have brought a verdict of manslaughter."
"Letters to the editors of the day remarked: ""Burke thought that because the settlers of New South"
Wales didn't dare fight a bushranger that he could do what he liked in Victoria.'
"""If we believe those who would save Burke, all people who interfered with bush- ranging may be justly"
"shot and all murderers tenderly treated if their victims show. signs of resistence."""
Burke was executed privately on November 29 at the Old Melbourne Goal.
"What would have been the outcome, had either Mrs. Russell of Warrandyte who gave Burke an evening meal,"
"or Harry Haughton, who rowed him across the river to Hurstbridge, been first to notice the fire-arms under Burke's coat?"
082 ByWays DoncasterMirror
"MARCH 23, 1982"
BYWAYS OF
LOCAL HISTORY
CUREALLS (1)
WILL the medical gadgets and gimmicks required to-
day be as quaint in one hundred years time as the articles
of the colonial way of life?
The faith of our grand- fathers in the powers of a patent
Magneto Electric Machine to cure all manner of nervous diseases is not so far removed from today's trust in tranquilisers.
"Made of brass, the small portable machine consisted mainly of two hollow cylinders connected by wires to a wheel. By rapidly turning the handle, a current of electricity was generated and sent through the cylinders which the patient clutched and pressed to the"
"affected part be it brain, aching tooth or gouty toe."
And if some unrestricted
"drugs are causing touble to- day, what ""trips"" the bored housewives of yesteryear could have had when they rolled their own."
A pestle and mortar used for crushing and mixing home
medications was standard in most well run homes.
One such is in the possession of the Collyer family
"descendants of the Thieles, dated 1747. It could be seen in"
"their historic home, Friedensruhe."
"Drugs such as calomel, mercurial compound, an-"
"timonial wine (a powdered metallic drug which is useful but highly poisonous if misused), laudanum or opium and powdered opium were freely available at the dispensary, and are listed in"
her Book of Household
Management by Mrs.
Isabella Beaton. Here is a recipe for one of her cures.
Mix five grains of calomel and a small quantity of an- timonial powder with a little breadcrumbs and make them into two pills. Dose two pills for a full gorwn
person.
"Mixture is Mix a grain of powdered nitre, two grains of"
"carbonate of potash, two teaspoonful of antimonial wine and a"
tablespoon full of proof spirits of nitre in half a pint
of water.
Her treatment for concussion or brain stunning includes this
"fever pill: ""Place the patient quietly on a warm bed, call for a surgeon and do nothing else for the first four or six hours. ""After this time the skin will become hot, the pulse full and the patient feverish altogether. If the surgeon has not arrived"
"by the time these symptoms have appeared, shave the"
A
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
Golden
glimpses (II)
patient's head and apply the following lotion.
"""Mix half oz. of sal am- moniac, two tablespoonsful of"
"vinegar, and the same quantity of gin or whiskey in half a pint of water."""
"Then give this pill. ""Mix five grains of calomel and the same quantity of an- timonial powder with a few breadcrumbs and make into two pills. A black draught three hours after the pill and two tablespoonsful of the above mentioned fever"
"mixture every four hours. Leeches sometimes to be applied to the head."""
(Cont'd next week)
Part 11 - 38
083 ByWays DoncasterMirror
BYWAYS OF MARCH 30
LOCAL HISTORY
Curealls (Part II)
LACK of Pygiene
brought
1982.
to Don- caster. Diptheria was prevalent in fruit growing areas and
the cause was put down to the habit of city people dumping their night- soil here in the early hours of
the morning.
Several rows of tiny graves in the Doncaster Lutheran cemetery came there
through the diptheria
outbreak of 1889.
Seventy to 80 graves there were the result of diptheria alone.
Whole families died. Parents would return from burying one child to find another dead in her bed.
"One Templestowe family lost all eight children through diptheria. One child died each week,"
"A re-enactment of a typical Templestowe Roads Board meeting played by councillors and members of Doncaster and Templestowe Historical Society on July 1, 1975, as part of the municipal centenary celebrations, put municipal health problems in the perspective of the past."
"A character called ""Mrs Venables"", played by the laté Cr Muriel Green, blamed deadly diseases on the state of the gutters."
"The ""Surveyor"", played by then city engineer Fred Andrew, gave a typical rep- ly: The state of the gut- ters,"" he"
"replied, ""is entirely satisfactory."""
"Ex-councillor Faith Fitzgerald played ""Mrs Pankhurst."" She had brought her ""poor sick child"" to display to the"
gentlemen and complained that she had caught whooping cough through
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
"having to walk to school along muddy roads and gut- ters. Mrs Pankhurst"" the board by disclosing"
the shocked the gentlemen of
possible cause of a typhoid epidemic. epidemic.
"""A lady living opposite this very hall has been seen emptying a bedroom receptacle every morning in the gutters."
"Epidemics did actually close at least one school. East Doncaster Primary was closed many times because of diptheria, scarlet fever and typhoid epidemics and become known as an ""unhealthy"" school."
"In 1891, one new head teacher, Thomas Rutter, died of typhoid only six weeks after he had come there from Warragul.."
"Mrs Isabella Beaton was an advocate of hygiene and quotes from ""Florence Nightingale's admirable notes on nursing.'"
084 ByWays DoncasterMirror
April 6
1982
BYWAYS OF LOCAL
HISTORY
---
"IF ""ifs and - ands"" had been town plans, today's portrait of Doncaster"
and its development would have been vastly different.
The Doncaster Church of Christ in Doncaster might have been a railway
station.
The story of public transport to Doncaster is not one of automatic
transition. It has moved jerkily along since the first motor service was
"introduced in 1912 with promising starts, sudden brakings and"
plenty of stalling.
The first bus service ran for only two years before the 1914 War stopped it
"tem- porarily. It was run by Don- caster Progress Association in conjunction with Mr A. C... Withers (for many years a Doncaster councillor) who, after the war, continued to provide the only"
public transport until 1961.
In the 1920s competition between bus companies was fierce and the
area enjoyed better service pro rata population than it has ever had since. Five different bus operators were on the road at the one time.
The first rumblings of a railway to Doncaster was heard in 1888. This was
a supposed extension of the Box Hill line.
Next time the mythical railway reared its head from the alley
"Doncasterwards was 1927 when the extension was to run from Kew. There were to be eight stations, including one at Balwyn Rd., Greythorn Rd. and one"
Train of thought
"opposite the golf links. The terminus was to be ""opposite the Shire"
"Hall."""
A land speculator's hand- bill about this time showed a railway
terminating on the site of the present East Don- caster Primary
School at the corner of Blackburn Rd. and George St.
"It would have been a cramped corner, as the school already stood"
there. This is about half a mile south of the present King St./Blackburn proposal.
Planning the Doncaster railway whiled away many
an hour for the Railway Standing Committee.
One plan showed the line extending to Warrandyte.
was
"To help meet estimated early losses of the Doncaster railway,"
it recommended to levy a betterment rate. This was to be paid by Doncaster residents for seven years.
In 1945 the committee abandoned its decision to build a railway line to
Don- caster. Opposition had come from country areas as well as
"from those who said, like one politician, ""If people intend"
"to use motor transport they should not expect to build a railway."""
Politicians have been saying this when discussing improvements to
bus services for years.
"In 1965 the then Minister of Transport, Mr Meagher, told me a mono rail"
would run down the centre of the freeway which followed the Koonung
Creek. Silently and efficiently it was to drive all our
transport worries away.
Detailed planning for this rail line was supposed to have started
"in 1969, but that is modern history. Since then those ideas have already gone off the rails, and the railway line is to steer clear of the creek and pass from Bulleen to East Doncaster North at King"
St.
It is hard to follow of- ficialdom's train of thought.
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
Golden glimpses 13
085 ByWays DoncasterMirror
APRIL 20 19 82
BYWAYS OF
LOCAL HISTORY
Sawmill (Part I)
A SAWMILL once operated where the Doncaster Shoppingtown
Hotel now tands. It cut nearby pine es for the making of
fruit es for use by the Lawford
Fruit Exchange Pty. Ltd. and Cool Stores.
In 1903 Mr Edwin his Lawford erected on orchard a cool store to hold
one thousand cases of fruit. Later (1912) it became the first co-
"operative cool store in Australia. (See article, June 9, 1981)."
"The slate roofed house just north of the Shoppingtown Hotel, at"
"the northern set of lights into Shoppingtown, was built by Mr Edwin Lawford around this time. The magazine,"
"The Fruit World of Australasia"" July 1, 1915 refers to this house as Mr Lawford's ""new residence""."
"The gravel for the grey cement bricks used in the ""new"" Lawford home in"
1913 was excavated from a gravel pit in an area now
encompassed Rathmullen Quadrant.
by
"Edwin Lawford's daughter Elizabeth, who married August"
"Johann. Zerbe of East Doncaster, still lives today in that house. (Her mother was Florence Serpell from over the road in Williamsons Road"
where Shoppingtown now is).
on
Lawford St. runs west from Williamsons Rd. the south boundary of
Shoppingtown Hotel. Rathmullen Quadrant runs north in a
square off Lawford St.
"Edwin Lawford's parents emigrated from Yorkshire, England, in"
"1840. The fami- ly settled first in Richmond where they opened a general store, the first shop of any kind established"
in Richmond.
In 1851 the elder Lawford and two mates packed all their gear on
an iron wheelbarrow and set off for Castlemaine (then known as Forest
"Creek), looking for a fortune by digging for gold."
Horses or vehicles were not to be had for love nor money. Taking turn
"about the men took the shafts or handles of the wheelbarrow, another became the leader"
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
Golden glimpses 14
by means of pulling a rope while the third acted as a scout. In this
way they reached their destination without serious
adventure but had no luck with gold.
They came home the same way. The barrow used on that trip was in
"daily use as an ordinary wheelbarrow"" by the family for many years"
and is in the possession of the Doncaster Historical Society.
Lawford tried sheep farming at Diamond Creek but was forced
"off by blacks, dingoes, bushfires and the extreme loneliness of the life for"
a mother with five young children.
This was before they took up land just over the Koonung Creek
"in Box Hill, then called Nunawading."
"The young Edwin Lawford, who was to become one of the leaders in the Australian fruit industry, was not physically strong and his parents decided that fruit growing, as they had experienced it, was too laborious an occupation for him, so at 15 he was sent to Scotch College to fit him for lighter employment and at 17 he became a"
teacher in the Melbourne Deaf and Dumb Institution.
"When Mr Lawford senior died six years later, Edwin joined forces"
"with his brother John Birkby, and with the assistance of their"
mother they bought 20 acres at Doncaster and started an orchard and nursery business.
"Later, Edwin took over this orchard himself. There he developed one"
of the largest pear orchards.
Continued next week.
086 ByWays DoncasterMirror
APRIL 2711982
BYWAYS OF
LOCAL HISTORY
Sawmill
"FROM boyhood, Edwin Lawford always had a leaning towards pear growing. He studied the pear from stock to fruit and the marketing of the fruit. He improved upon the stock previously in general use from large pear"
trees called Marie Louise.
"Of these, the previous owner had declared they ""were white as my shirt with blossoms every year"" but bore no pears."
Edwin cut nine-tenths of the bloom off those trees and he made them
bear good crops regularly. He also induced other shy bearing
varieties to increase their productiveness
to a remarkable extent. This was in about the 1890's when pear growing
on commercial lines was laughed out of
court.
An innocent looking little beetle was proving itself the most
destructive of orchard pests. This was the root borer. Action was the root against it by using zinc bands which had been introduced by Mr A. F. Thiele of Doncaster.
of
The daily task gathering the beetles from under the band at
length proved too irksome.
Edwin Lawford set to work and invented a trap which gathered them and held them to suit his convenience for killing and by this means saved his trees and reduced the pests to a
"minimum. In the meantime he was the first to discover the fact that the borer beetle could be killed by arsenical poisoning. (Co-incidentally,"
Part 2
"on the estate of the Lawford orchards, Bordeaux St. the name"
of an bears insecticide bordeaux mixture made of copper
sulphate and slaked lime.)
"of World ""Fruit Australasia"" pays tribute to Lawford's Edwin contribution: ""First and foremost his energy has ever been directed towards the bettering of the fruit growing industry thus at the local association and the state conferences his presence"
has always been of the highest value.
"""Such excellent service as Mr Lawford has rendered to district in which"
"he the resides is also of value to the state and to the nation."""
a
Edwin Lawford was municipal councillor as were
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
"his sons and grandsons, making three generations of shire"
councillors.
The name Lawford is connected by marriage with other
"well known pioneering Whitten, Serpell,"
names
"Zerbes and Hummel, commemorated by Whittens Lane, Serpells Rd, and the East Doncaster Zerbes Reserve. (Acknowledgement for information in this and the foregoing"
"article to Mr E. L. Zerbe and the ""Fruit World of Australasia"")."
087 ByWays DoncasterMirror
BYWAYS OF
MAY 4
1982
LOCAL HISTORY
Yarra Bight and
Deep Creek
THESE were names given to the area north of Blackburn Rd. near
the junction of the Yarra River and the Mullum Mullum Creek. Here the first homestead in Templestowe was built by Major Charles Newman.
He gave these names to the area in the early 1840's before
"Templestowe, Don- caster and Warrandyte were thought of."
His home 'Pontville' built of local stone covered with white plaster.
Major Newman had served in India with the 51st Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry and retired on a pension of a guinea a to day. He emigrated Tasmania with his family and
supervised convict labour.
Soon after Port Phillip was founded he came to the new colony looking for land on which to settle. He followed the Yarra on the north side from Heidelberg often hacking his way through
dense scrub. Across the river fertile flats along a creek attracted him.
to
"In this area he was build two houses, 'Pontville' and 'Monckton'. (The of original homestead Monckton is no longer stan- ding.) It was demolished in 1968, but the stones from which the building was made were quarried locally and were used as a"
feature wall in the new home built on the site.
Major
"Eventually Newman owned 640 acres freehold and leased 10,000 acres through Warrandyte, Templestowe and East Don- caster. At these homesteads Major Newman and his sons grazed cattle and sheep and their horses, principally Welsh ponies."
He also bred and raced thoroughbred horses in surrounding districts and on his own race track at the river flats by Homestead Rd.
He owned Mecromancy which won many of the earlier horse races in
Melbourne.
"The gold found in 1851 at Andersons Creek, Warrandyte, the"
"first of- ficial gold field in Victoria, was on Major Newman's run. There was such a rush to the gold diggings that he found himself deserted of servants and farm hands and by the group who were building a malt house and brewery on his station."
A story is told of how Mrs Newman saved the Major from the blacks. He was said to have earned their enmity by his hardness. Mrs Newman saw a war-like group approaching and got the Major to climb into the large chimney. She lit some green gum branches under him and when the aboriginals could not find him in the house they went away. The Major then came down the the chimney half choked and with his
whiskers singed.
In 1855 Major Newman left Templestowe to live in the city in
Lonsdale St. By this time he was blind. After he died at his Hawthorn
"property in 1866 at 80 years of age, he was buried in the family"
"crypt at Monckton. This area, at the end of Homestead Rd., was cut up into orchard lots in 1908."
Major Newman's grave was moved to the Templestowe
Cemetery. It is said that the grave diggers made their job easy
"by just shifting the headstone, and that the Major's bones are really still lying near the gates to Monckton at the end of Homestead Rd."
The story was put about that the ghost of Major Newman rode a
white horse around the property at night.
(Acknowledgement to Mrs Hazel Poulter of Templestowe).
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
088 ByWays DoncasterMirror
BYWAYS OF
Rifle club May 25
LOCAL HISTORY
keber 5.
"THE north side of Warrandyte Rd.. Templestowe, west of"
the end of Blackburn Rd. was once a rifle club.
A pet park and animal farm now occupies this site which is just
to the west and opposite the SEC terminal station at Templestowe Doncaster and Templestowe City Council
depot. It is not far from the Deep Creek Reserve.
The declaration of war in 1914 gave the citizens of
Templestowe the idea to form a rifle club. The aim was to encourage those on the home front to take an active part in the war effort should the need arise. Members had to take the oath of allegiance and promise to assist in the war effort
on the local sphere if called upon.
The land for the site of the rifle club was then an estate of a Mr A. Andrews and it
was rented for the Club. There were no houses in that region then.
In 1915 work started on constructing a target pit and firing
"mound. Intending members attended working bees and with axes cleared the scrub. With horses, scoops, picks and shovels they soon had the site in readiness. A telephone line erected for communication between the firing mound and the markers in the target trench. Trench timbers were cut from"
local red box
was
timber and were sawn by Charles Rouch's timber mill at Heidelberg.
In the late Spring of 1915 a trial run was held. The club was issued
with 10 Lee Enfield single shot bolt action .303 service
"rifles, plus 1000 rounds of .303 Mark 6 (blunt nose) ammunition."
"Early in 1916 the wife of the rifle club captain, Mrs Ross, fired"
"the first shot, a blank cartridge from the 200 yard mound. Interest in the club increased and around 1925 the Templestowe club became affiliated with the Evelyn District Rifle Association which incorporated clubs from Kinglake, Lilydale,"
Christmas Hills and Yarra Junction. The club then extended its range capacity so an extra set of targets was added to enable four
men to shoot at the one time.
Club contests were held and visits to the various ranges entailed a lot of
travelling which was done on fruit growers trucks and
private cars. The Templestowe club also travelled
to the Williamstown range to shoot with them.
The annual Cup Day shoot with the visiting
"Fairfield club was held in a picnic atmosphere. Visitors would bring a large battery radio, toss a length of wire up a tree and at the appointed hour would"
gather round and listen through a horn speaker
to the Melbourne Cup.
During the depression the club activities waned a lot. There was a
club at Don- caster which lost its range due to closer settlement at Donvale and their members transferred to Templestowe. Combined Templestowe and Doncaster
club carried on till just before the start of World War II.
"On January 13, 1939, (Black Friday) a disastrous bushfire, which"
"had started only two miles from the rifle club, swept through the district. In doing so it destroyed the rifle range and dealt the final blow to the"
1982
A
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
club which had been in existence for 23 years.
(Acknowledgement to Mr. Bill Ross and Mrs Hazel Poulter.)
089 ByWays DoncasterMirror
BYWAYS OF
JUNE 2
1982
LOCAL HISTORY
Bushrangers
TEMPLESTOWE'S
leading bushranger was named Howie. Educated
as a minister did not stop him becoming a from
bloodthirsty bushranger. Howie terrorised the district for some time at the head of a band of unkempt men.
A grim attempt was made to hunt down the robbers led by Major Newman who had a sheep and cattle station on the Yarra about two miles east of the township. A man named Arundel Wright who in 1838 had pioneered a sheep station at which is now Box Hill and with them was a constable.
The story was told to Mrs
"of Hazel Poulter, Templestowe, by her grand-"
father Mr Thomas Rutter Chivers.
Mr Chivers was born in a bark hut at Templestowe in 1844. The bushrangers halted at the Chivers' bark hut near what is now Serpells Rd. and demanded food and drink.
"""My mother gave them tea and something to eat"""
said Mr Chivers and then they went on their way. Soon afterwards another small party of horsemen rode up. Thinking that this was Major Newman's
"party, gave them more tea and asked them"
anxiously whether they had caught the bushrangers.
"Father, who had just come out of the hut, shook his head and made signs. At last, as mother still rattled on about the bloodthirsty bushrangers, father said: 'My dear, you are talking to the bushrangers.' Mother nearly dropped. It was the other part of the gang."" The search for the bushrangers led to a dramatic encounter. In this the devotion of a pioneer woman shone"
clearly amid the perils of that rough age.
Out of the bush which surrounded
"Major Newman's homestead, there rode one day the bushranger band, resolved to shoot the man who had harassed them."
"to the They came homestead, demanded horses"
and ordered Major Newman to go with them to
by JOAN SEPPINGS
WEBSTER
the horse paddock. As soon as these words were
spoken Mrs Newman realised that the bushrangers were
taking her husband away to shoot him.
95
"""I am going with him,'"
"out. The she burst bushrangers ordered her back. ""I am not going back, she cried, ""you are going to shoot him."
99
Mrs Newman followed by her husband's side as the ruffians
"led him to the horse paddock and then, with relief, watched them ride away with the best horses."
The wife saved the husband's life that day.
"Some time later, the bushrangers returned and forced Major Newman to stand with his head in the chimney"
while they ransacked the homestead.
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