The area which now comprises the Shire of Doncaster and Templestow has elected Parliamentary representatives since the separation of Victoria from New South Wales in 1851. Prior to this the District of Port Phillip elected 5 representatives to the N.S.W. Legislative Council.
From 1851 to 1856 Victoria was governed by a Legislative Council, partly nominated by the Lieutenant Governor and partly elected by the people in 1856 Victoria was granted responsible Government and a two-chamber legislature was established with the formation of the Council and the Assem
Elections before the introduction of the Secret Ballot in 1858 were very colourful affairs, the contests were decided by a show of hands at the hustings which were usually erected at a hotel or inn. In the first election of 1851, the Shire of Doncaster was located in an electorate known as the "Electoral District of South Bourke and the United Counties of Evelyn and Mornington." As the name implies, the electorate extended from beyond Whittlesea to the southern tip of the Mornington Peninsula, and the situation of the polling booths gives us a reliable guide to the districts that were then settled; they were located at Bakers Old England Hotel - Heidelberg, the School House at Bulleen, the School House at Kangaroo Grounds, Mooneys Hotel - Brighton, and the Bridge Inn at Dandenong.
The three candidates were Henry Mill, better known as Mooneyed Miller; Patrick Turnbull, and J. B. Were, founder of the well-known stockbroking firm of that name and one of the principal founders of Dendy's Estate at Brighton. Miller won the contest easily, but was not popular with the peoples of the Upper Yarra. At Templestowe he polled only 4 votes compared to 40 by Turnbull and 1 by Were.
In the 1856 elections for the Legislative Assembly, the electorate was divided into "South Bourke" and "Evelyn and Mornington", Doncaster and Templestowe were located in the former and Warrandyte in the latter, the boundary being at Deep Creek. There were no fewer than 6 candidates for South Bourke and 4 for Evelyn and Mornington. Among those who stood for South Bourke was the popular Templestowe farmer - Sidney Ricardo.
It was then not customary for anyone to stand for Parliament unless he was first presented with a requisition requesting that he make himself available, and stating that they considered him a fit and proper person for the job. Among the 70 names that appeared on Ricardo's requisition were those of :- James Hewish, John Chivers, Benjamin Lawford, Joseph Aspinall, Robert Porteus, James McKinley, R. C. Balburnie-Vans, Robert Laidlaw and John O'Neil.
Ricardo in his policy address stated that he was all in favour of "State aid to religion" which was the burning political question of the day; he reasoned that the Clergy should be at least partially independent, so that their minds would not be drawn from their Holy calling by the fear of temporal want. Education, he said, should be liberally provided for, and the orphans, destitute, the sick and the aged needed the Government's care and attention. Ricardo was possibly the only member of the first Victorian Parliament to stress the case for the less fortunate members of society. He laid particular stress on the fact that he was the only farmer standing for Parliament and said he was not in favour of compensating the squatters when their properties were broken up as they held no title for the land and were thus not entitled to any more compensation that the value of the improvements.
The election was held at the Governor Hotham Hotel at Kew when about 200 citizens up for the purpose of electing their first Parliamentary representative under responsible Government. It is recorded that the day was particularly hot and dusty, and the conditions were very trying. Ricardo had just commenced to speak when a whirl-wind struck the congregation his hat went flying into the air and the meeting was thrown into confusion for some minutes. Ricardo was proposed by a Mr. Bruce and seconded by a Mr. O'Flaherty, who said that he was very pleased to see a Scotchman propose an Englishman and he as an Irishman to second him. Ricardo addressed the meeting for several minutes, stating that he would never support such a Government as the present one, as they spent all the money in Melbourne and carried out no public works in the country at all. He was not in favour of building railways to the country as you get a 1,000 miles of roads for the cost of 100 miles of railway, he added.
The other candidates who stood were Captain Pasley of the Royal Marines, Patrick O'Brien, Frank Stephens, a former Melbourne Town Clerk, and Robert Young who had stood on a number of occasions and was supported by the well known social reformer, Captain McConhecis, but was never successful. Stephens had been decisively rejected at the St. Kilda elections the previous week and the people regarded him as infringing their democratic rights by standing again so soon. On the show of hands Ricardo easily topped the poll with 68 votes. He and Capt. Pasley were declared elected but a secret ballot was called for and Ricardo had to wait 6 months before he took his seat in Parliament. The poll was held the following week when Ricardo was beaten by 10 votes into second place by Patrick O'Brien. Capt. Pasley, however, resigned his seat on the fall of the Haines Minstry in March, 1857, and as by-elections were not then held, and Ricardo being next in the vote, he was elected to fill the vacancy. Ricardo was not a good public speaker, on some occasions the Hansard Reporter noted that his voice was barely audible; he, however, made a good contribution to farming matters, specially in the establishment of the Richmond Experimental Farm. The Government was conscious of the need to encourage agriculture but had a poor idea of the best means of bringing it about; they proposed to establish a teaching farm to instruct farmers and to bring out a skilled director from England. Ricardo pointed out that there was a big difference in the farming methods of the two countries and such a director would be quite useless; the best plan, he said, would be to ask the local agricultural society to nominate a suitable man. He also pointed out that it would be better to look upon the farm as an experimental one rather than a teaching one for quite a number of years.
The Government accepted Ricardo's suggestions and the Richmond Experimental Farm was established in 1858 with the Secretary of the Victorian Agricultural Society as first director. Ricardo also criticised the Government proposal to pay the director a salary of £500 a year, stating that there was too big a discrepancy between that and the £80 a year proposed for the labourers.
The Evelyn elections were held at the pretty little rural village of Eltham which was decorated with streamers, flags and bunting of all descriptions; the candidates being:- Captain W. A. D. Anderson, a young military officer who later became commandant of the Victorian Military Forces; William Pender, a gentleman of St. Kilda who had Henry Frencham of Warrandyte as his campaign director; William Buss Burnley and J. Craig, a surveyor. The contest was marked by a bitter exchange between Pender and Anderson when the former accused Anderson of taking up arms against the diggers in the Eureka Stockade. Anderson denied that he had ever been to Ballarat in his life and challenged Pender to prove his assertion or otherwise make a public apology. Pender however, continued to insist that Anderson had fought against the diggers and for some time charges and counter charges were levelled at meetings in the various mining camps throughout the Upper Yarra.
On the day of the election Captain Anderson rode into Eltham escorted by a whole company of his regiment and made his headquarters at the Fountain of Friendship Hotel; he was soon followed by Pender and Frencham who took up their quarters at the Eltham Hotel opposite. Pender followed a similar cause to Ricardo, criticising the Government land settlement policy and urging the need for more social legislation; his followers, however, fought a hopeless campaign and before evening it was evident that Anderson would win by a sizeable majority. The final count was Anderson - , Pender - . The other two appear to have been completely lost sight of in the heat of the campaign and only polled about 50 votes between them.
Neither Ricardo nor Anderson sought re-election for the second Victorian Parliament in 1859; Ricardo's place was taken by Dr. Louis L. Smith, a leading Homseopathic Surgeon and father to Sir Henry Gengoult Smith, the former Lord Mayor of Melbourne. Dr. Smith had a brilliant career both in Parliament and Medicine, he is remembered as the first man to introduce the post card system that we know so well today. Smith held the South Bourke seat until 1866 and later represented Richmond until 1878; he was succeeded in South Bourke by another notable personality in John Branscombe Crews, the first Mayor of Prahran and proprietor of a well known baking establishment in that suburb. Crews took an active interest in Doncaster and Templestowe and was present at the opening of the Atheneum and other functions.
South Bourke was later held by James Furguson for a short time, and John Keys who held it from 1880 until the big against the Government in the depression of 1892; Keysborough, near Dandenong is named in his honour.
Evelyn was probably not so fortunate in the choice of candidates as South Bourke; the seat was held for a short time at the close of 1859 by John Charles King who was Commissioner of Land and Works in the Nichols Ministry and was a Town Clerk of Melbourne in the 1840s. King was an able administrator and was very well liked, but was compelled to resign his seat early in 1860 owing to financial embarrassment. He was succeeded by W. H. Gatty-Jones, an Eltham solicitor who was elected to the vacancy unopposed. Jones did not show a great interest in the district and left the colony after a comparatively short stay. J. Thomson held the public confidence for 2 years from 1862 to 1864, it then went to William Watkins who held it until he was decisively defeated by Ewen Hugh Cameron in 1874.
Cameron held the seat continuously from 1874 to 1914 and became widely known throughout his far flung electorate; he saw the Upper Yarra of struggling farmers and gold fossickers struggling without even as much as a railway to one of the richest agricultural and tourists' centres in Victoria. Cameron quickly established himself, his high personal qualities and untiring energy soon convinced the electors that he was the right man for the job. In 1876 we find the Warrandyte people calling a meeting in the Temperance Hall to thank him for his efforts on their behalf.
Speakers said that both the bridge and the school had been built through his efforts and it represented more progress than the town had made for many years.
Cameron entered Parliament in one of the stormiest times in Victorian Political history. The Hon. Graham Berry was having his fight to the death struggle with the Legislative Council over his payment to members' proposal which led to the celebrated Black Wednesday in which almost every public servant from County Court judges down were retrenched. Cameron found himself in a difficult situation and found it necessary to call several public meetings to explain his actions to his electors. The storm gradually subsided and Cameron became whip in the Gillies-Deaken Ministry in 1886, he was whip of the Patterson Ministry in 1893, Chairman of the Railways Standing Committee from 1894 to 1904, Minister for Mines and Water Supply from 1902 to 1904, Minister for Health, Commissioner for Public Works (without salary) and Vice President of the Board of Land and Works from 1904 to 1908 and again Chairman of the Railways Standing Committee from 1909 until his retirement in November, 1914. He died in June, 1915 aged 82 years.
Cameron was born in Inverness-shire, Scotland, and came to Melbourne as a young man of 20 in the "Hurricane" in 1853; his long association with the Upper Yarra commenced two years later when he purchased the Diamond Accommodation Store at Anderson Creek - he later purchased a store at Queenstown and did carrying to the Woods Point Gold Field, in 1860 he purchased 60 acres on the Kangaroo Ground Road and built the well-known homestead "Pidgeonbank" for which he won the prize given by the Agricultural Society for the best kept farm in the district. The year 1865 witnessed the beginning of his public life when he was elected a foundation member of the Eltham Roads Board and the same year he was elected to represent the St. Andrew's Division of the Castlemaine Mining Board.
The election that followed Cameron's retirement in 1914 was very keenly fought, among the candidates was William Sell of Doncaster, who received only about 300 of the 6,000 votes cast, though he polled practically the entire votes at Doncaster and Doncaster East; another candidate was George A. Maxwell, better known as the Blind Council, who later was a member of the Federal Parliament for several years. The successful candidate, James Rouget, did a good job for the district during the difficult years of the first world war; he was unfortunate to lose the seat to William Everard by only 33 votes in 1917. Rouget is remembered for his well written history of Lilydale which he published in 1923.
William Hugh Everard held the Evelyn seat for 33 years from 1917 until his death in 1950; his popularity with the electors was closely akin to that of Cameron's - he was of a genial disposition and his good natured banter endeared him to all sections of his electors. In politics he had an independent attitude and declined to toe the line to any particular party, this probably cost him his chances of attaining senior cabinet rank, though he was Chairman of the Committees from 1932 to 1934, Speaker of the House from 1934 to 1937 and a Minister of the Crown in the McFarlane Caretaker Government for 1 month in 1945. His death on the 12th April, 1950, came within 2 days of the demise of Sir Albert Dunstan.
A number of changes have taken place in the electorate in recent years. In 1947 Doncaster and Templestowe became part of the electoral division of Mernda and was represented by Dr. A. E. Ireland from 1947 to 1951 the section of the Shire was then attached to the Box Hill Electorate under the Hon. George Grey and since 1955 by the Hon. George Read, Minister for Labour and Electrical Undertakings. Warrandyte, which had been part of the Evelyn and Mornington and later the Evelyn electorate since 1856, severed its connections with the seat in 1955 and became part of Box Hill. The Evelyn seat was won for the first time for the Australian Labour Party by Mr. Phillip P. Connell in 1952; he held the seat until 1958 and was for some years Chairman of the State Development Commission.
In Federal politics the Shire has been variously situated in Mernda Kooyong, Flinders, Indi and Deaken Electorates, the first representative after the Federation was Robert Harper, founder of the well known retailing firm of Robert Harper and Co. He held the Mernda seat from 1901 to 1913, besides being a member of the State House for the Federation. He died in 1917.
Sir Robert Best, who held the Kooyong seat from 1910 to 1922, likewise had a brilliant career in politics, he was member for Fitzroy in the State Parliament from 1889 to 1901 and a member of the Senate from 1901 to 1910 and held the portfolios of Minister for Lands in 1894 - 1895, Leader of the Government in the Senate and Minister for Trade and Customs 1909 - 1910; he also took a keen interest in sport and was at different times President of the Victorian Cricket Association, Vice-President of the Victorian Football Association and President of the Victorian Amateur Athletic Association. He died in 1946.
Stanley Melbourne Bruce, now Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, represented the district for a time; he was member for Flinders from 1918 to 1929, and from 1931 to 1933, and Prime Minister of Australia from 1923 to 1929; he is too well known to need any introduction here.
The Shire later became part of the Indi Electorate which was held by Mr. William Joseph Hutchinson from 1931 to 1937 and on the formation of the Deaken electorate in October of that year he transferred to that seat which he held until 1949. The seat has since been held by Mr. Francis J. Davis who has also been Vice President of the Victorian Liberal & Country since 1949.
Source: We believe from handwritten notes in records that the following text is an unpublished manuscript in 2 volumes (Ch1-11 and Ch12-21) written by Louis Radnor Cranfield (1927- 14 Oct 1992) F.R.HIST.S. (Fellow of the Royal Historical Society). Find a Grave Record. National Library of Australia Record.
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