Shadows of the Western District

Lionel Jones, eighteen, and Patricia Reilly, sixteen, at the Koroit Showgrounds in 1948 Continue reading

Australia was just one migratory destination among many others in the nineteenth century, all operating within vast networks of global migration. It was not only Europeans who were being relocated. Many individuals from India, for instance, were moved to other British colonies throughout the nineteenth century. Millions of impoverished Chinese also left their homeland through… Continue reading

Colonial Van Diemen’s Land in the 1820s and 1830s is a precursor society to that planted in Southern Victoria in the 1830s and 1840s. People of varied social backgrounds began crossing Bass Strait to settle permanently on the southern mainland from 1834. Melbourne was founded in 1835. Until 1850, when it was renamed in honour… Continue reading

Two years after James Lowndes arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, Ann Higgins was tried at Warwick Assizes, charged with stealing money and watches. Warwick is in the West Midlands of England, close to Birmingham. More than two hundred years after the trial of this young woman, the court records for Ann’s trial still exist. On… Continue reading

Georgetown is the port in northern Tasmania at the entrance of the Tamar Estuary. James Lowndes Junior left there on 24 August 1846 aboard the “Shamrock”, bound for Port Phillip Bay. The “Shamrock” was one of the first steamships in the country and for a time had an incredibly busy schedule transporting sheep, immigrants and… Continue reading

Upon their arrival in Port Phillip in 1846, it is likely that both James Senior and Junior worked for a time as laborers under the employment conditions governed by the Masters and Servants Acts. These Acts were devised in England and then modified for conditions in Australia. Workers hired from Van Diemen’s Land to work… Continue reading

Russell’s Bridge is just a few kilometers east of Bannockburn, a town founded in the early 1850s as a stop on one of the early routes to the goldfields. After the decline of alluvial goldmining, this route became the main road from Geelong to Ballarat. When the railway between Geelong and Ballarat was built in… Continue reading

Colonial historians, writing in the late nineteenth century, established a standard ideological narrative. For them, Australia was a British society, part of the British Empire, ruled by wise men who understood the world better than the poorly educated masses. Free settlers of respectable middle-class backgrounds were the primary agents of progress and civilization. Aboriginal people… Continue reading

In late 1837 Captain Foster Fyans established a police camp in a paddock where the Moorabool River merges with the Barwon. The police camp was where the Moorabool River could be forded at its lowest reach, hence the name Fyans’ Ford. Crossing here gave the Europeans access to the country immediately west of Geelong on… Continue reading

The fortunes of Phillip and George Russell are closely tied to the Clyde Company. Russell’s Bridge is so named because the Russell’s had a bridge constructed over the Moorabool River to provide access to the Clyde Company’s flour mill established on the river during the 1850s. George Russell had first come to this location in… Continue reading

The Geelong story of the Schefferle and Muhlebach families begins with the relationships between three Swiss immigrants. Catherine Schefferle came to Geelong as a young Swiss women, Kilian Schefferle was her first husband and Xavier Muhlebach was her second. Catherine and Kilian arrived in Victoria in 1869, traveling together from northwest Switzerland to Geelong as… Continue reading

The First World War, which raged in Europe from 1914 to 1918, had a profound impact in the Geelong district. Many local men enlisted in the army, but unfortunately the casualty rate was very high and numerous servicemen never returned home, leaving families bereaved. There was intense pressure put on young unmarried men to enlist… Continue reading

Lionel’s birth in 1930 marks the start of a new chapter in this story. There is a marked shift of focus to Southwest Victoria, particularly to the Tower Hill and Koroit districts, but there is also a detour to the Riverina and North Central Victoria. Lionel grew up without ever knowing his father, Henry-Allan Jones.… Continue reading

Sarah Campbell came to Australia under the program of the “Scottish Highland and Island Emigration Society.” When Sarah arrived in Belfast at the start of 1854, her role was to provide care to an elderly free settler lady, Mrs Lindsay, whose son, William Lindsay, was rapidly establishing a pastoral empire on land usurped from its… Continue reading

Thomas Jones died at Woolsthorpe in 1897. Thomas’s death certificate notes that he had lived in Victoria for about fifty years at the time of his death. On Thomas’s death certificate under the heading “Where born and how long in the Australian Colonies,” it states: “England, district unknown – some time in Tasmania – in… Continue reading

When James Atkinson’s team of private surveyors laid out the boundaries of the Belfast Special Survey, Charles Mills farmland around the lagoon remained outside the Special Survey. The Mills farm on the Lough was originally known as Lagoon Farm and abutted the eastern border of the Survey. Charles Mills and his associates were at the… Continue reading

The Jones family purchased their town blocks at Woolsthorpe in 1873. A survey map shows that the blocks were along Kennedy Street where it intersects with Porter Street as it runs down to the Spring Creek. The largest block is labelled with the name of T. Jones, indicating Thomas Jones’s ownership. This block backs onto… Continue reading

Samuel Jones left Woolsthorpe around 1880 when he was nineteen. He evidently had had enough of the Southwest and who could blame him. By 1883 he had reached Narrandera. The first train to arrive in Narrandera came in 1881 so he may have travelled part of the way by rail. The Riverina was a focus… Continue reading

Samuel and Henry-Allan Jones took the journey from the Riverina to the Koroit district in the mid-1920s, very likely by rail as this was when the railways reached their fullest extent and their greatest popularity. The railways were an affordable and reliable mode of transport in an era well before people had private motor transport.… Continue reading

In the standard histories of the nineteenth century, Victoria was depicted as a community of pioneer settlers, portrayed as enterprising free immigrants from Britain untainted by the convict stain. Waves of British settlers forged a new nation based upon the hard work of this superior founding race. Stereotypically, a virgin wilderness was transformed into a… Continue reading

Daniel Bowman was the first of the Bowmans to arrive in the Southwest. He came to Portland as an assisted emigrant in 1855 aboard the “Constant” and was around eighteen years of age when he arrived. He hailed from Portglenone in County Antrim in the north of Ireland. As was usual with assisted immigrants, Daniel… Continue reading

Patricia’s grandmother on her paternal side is Bridget McNamara. Born in County Clare around 1842, Bridget was twelve years of age when she arrived at Portland Bay in 1854 as an assisted emigrant. Bridget and her family came aboard the “Almora”. Bridget was the fourth child of Edward and Mary McNamara, her parents. The eldest… Continue reading

Patricia’s paternal grandfather is Hugh Reilly, who was born in County Cavan, Ireland, around 1833. Hugh Reilly’s initial voyage to Australia in 1856 was aboard the “General Hewitt”. The “General Hewitt” is an interesting vessel. By the time she reached Portland in 1856 she had seen better days. On this particular voyage, one of many… Continue reading

Official attitudes regarding Irish migration to Tower Hill and other parts of Victoria: an analysis of the “Report of the Immigration Agent into Colonial Emigration and Immigration for the Year 1854” In the twentieth century, the Irish migration to Tower Hill in the previous century was a source of pride to the Reilly family and… Continue reading

The collective history of Patricia’s forebears is representative of the Koroit Irish generally. Like so many other immigrants, Bridget McNamara, Daniel Bowman, and Hugh Reilly all arrived in the district during the mid-1850s. Bridget Dwyer most likely also arrived in these years. The migrants shared the experience of leaving home and enduring months at sea… Continue reading

The natural beauty of original landscapes in Australia is not always well appreciated. In the nineteenth century, there was an understandable desire to recreate landscapes in the image of the old world. In the Southwest conceptions of the natural world were embedded in the minds of Europeans when they first came to Tower Hill. There… Continue reading

It is perhaps ironic that the Tower Hill Natural History Centre was designed by Robin Boyd. At the time he drafted his design for the Centre, Robin Boyd was one of Australia’s leading architects and a public intellectual. In 1960 Boyd authored an influential book called “The Australian Ugliness”, which was a critique of Australian… Continue reading

While it is not clear what financial backing the Lindsay and Carmichael families had when establishing the Union and Quamby runs at Woolsthorpe, the financial links that Neil Black had can easily be ascertained. Neil Black held the Glenormiston run at Noorat from 1840, and shortly afterwards acquired an adjoining station called The Sisters, an… Continue reading

The initial European settlement at Port Fairy is closely connected with Launceston, the Tamer River Estuary, and the northern part of the Tasmanian Midlands. During the early nineteenth century, whalers and sealers seasonally visited the Southwest coast in pursuit of their quarry. Crews would establish temporary camps along the beaches of the mainland, remaining for… Continue reading

The publication in 1963 of Margaret Kiddle’s book, “Men of Yesterday. A social history of the Western District of Victoria, 1834-1890” was at the time considered a significant milestone in the histography of Victoria. In a laudatory review, the Robert Menzies Institute asserted that the book was “a classic of Australian historiography.” In the last… Continue reading

In “Blood Meridian,” Cormac McCarthy’s great gothic novel, the character named the Judge asks his audience of killers the following question: “If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind, would he not have done so by now?” Cormac McCarthy constantly has the “Kid,” the central character, question what the Judge says. For the… Continue reading

The forebears of Lionel Jones and Patricia Reilly. Family Tree from first generation to arrive in Australia 1. Lionel Jones – Maternal Side A: James Lowndes Senior (Lionel’s great-great-grandfather) – Ann Higgins (Lionel’s great-great-grandmother, also known as Ann Lowndes upon her marriage to James in Hobart in 1827). James Senior was born England 1795, arrived… Continue reading