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. However, he did have some knowledge of his father’s family. He knew some of his father’s relatives in the Koroit district but really had very little to do with them. He was aware that his mother, Eily Schefferle, had married Henry-Allan in 1929 and that the marriage had not lasted more than a few years. He was also well aware that Eily was not well disposed to discussing her husband. The couple separated in 1932, so the partnership endured three years at most.
Samuel Jones’s parents were Thomas Jones and Sarah Campbell. Thomas was born in the English Midlands and certainly lived in Tasmania for some years in the early 1840s prior to arriving at Port Fairy in the mid-1840s. He was likely transported to Van Diemen’s Land as a convict although this has not been conclusively established.
Sarah was born on the remote Hebridean island of Mull and came to Port Fairy as a young women in 1853, together with her family. Thomas seems to have followed non-conformist Protestant faith traditions and Sarah was Presbyterian and so there was some compatibility in matters of religion. On Mull in the 1840s and 1850s the influence of the Free Church of Scotland was strong and perhaps her Campbell family were part of that breakaway Presbyterian religious movement. In the Southwest Sarah and Thomas were associated with Presbyterian or non-conformist Protestant churches in the district, as evidenced by the records of birth, death and marriage on which their names appear.
Henry-Allan Jones was the son of Samuel Jones and Bertha Weppner, both of whom were born in Victoria in the early 1860s. Bertha Weppner’s parents were Johannes Weppner and Anna Fick, both of German Lutheran background. They came to Bendigo in the gold rushes of the 1850s, although not together. They met and married at Bendigo. Anna was originally from Fehmarn Island in the Baltic Sea, which was then part of Denmark, and Johannes was from the Kingdom of Hanover in northern Germany.
Lionel and his brother Bill were born during the brief period when Eily and Henry-Allan were together. Lionel was born when the couple still lived at Kirkstall, several months after his parents’ marriage. Bill was born in Cobden, the locality where the couple lived for a brief period before they separated, never to meet again it seems.
Exactly what transpired in the marriage that led to such an outcome remains unclear, but it is evident that Henry-Allan struggled with debilitating personal issues. Throughout his adulthood, he appears to have been unable to forge enduring relationships, and seems to have led a transient life after he moved on from Cobden. He was evidently something of a lost soul, a nomad who drifted through life, a man plagued with personal demons likely arising from the disfunction of his childhood.
A couple of years into the marriage, Eily left Cobden and returned to her mother’s farm in Kirkstall with her two young children. In the author’s family in the 1960s, the subject of Henry-Allan arose on rare occasions. He was recalled as someone who could not meet his responsibilities as husband and father. There were few mentions of him and his name was surrounded by mystery.
In the early 1990s, Lionel and Bill had some research done into their genealogy, conducted by professionals in the field. Perhaps Lionel and Bill were looking for answers as to why they were the people they turned out to be. By that stage they had the money to spend on such a project. The research uncovered relatives of theirs in New South Wales, who Lionel and Bill visited hoping that additional light might be shed on their father’s story.
The search undertaken by the researchers in the 1990s and then by Lionel and Bill themselves reveals that Henry-Allan’s childhood was replete with loss, likely leaving psychological scars that marked his later life. The impact of intergenerational trauma, though rarely discussed, is a silent thread weaving through many rural families, leaving traces that are difficult to follow and to assess.
The author had the opportunity to observe life on the farm at Kirkstall. Their lives were marked by gaps and absences. At times they had difficulty in articulating their thoughts and controlling emotions. Conversations rarely ventured beyond practical matters, although they liked humorous stories with a dark twist. They were talented individuals but they were limited in what they knew, or in what they allowed themselves to know. The Southern Gothic tradition in American literature, the works of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor in particular, is useful in understanding the culture on the farm and in some parts of the wider community.
The Oxford Research Encyclopedia characterises Southern Gothic as “a mode or genre prevalent in literature from the early 19th century to this day. Characteristics of Southern Gothic include the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation. … The Southern Gothic brings to light the extent to which the idyllic vision of the pastoral, agrarian South rests on massive repressions of the region’s historical realities: slavery, racism, and patriarchy.” That about sums it up, though in the Southwest legacies of convictism, coerced migration, and squatter-manorialism were at play rather than slavery and plantation estates as the primary shapers of the social environment.
The Kirkstall family were typical of a more widespread Koroit outlook in some ways but in other ways not so much. They did not drink excessively and they mostly maintained an outward sense of order and discipline. They were very competitive and could appear abrupt and disengaged in their manners. Unlike some other people who indulged heavily in cultural drinking and overtly “bogan” behaviour, the Kirkstall household was both more restrained and more removed from that element of the community.
On the sectarian spectrum, the family at Kirkstall was neither markedly Presbyterian nor particularly Catholic, but somewhat in between. Even though they were identified as Catholic, and Lionel and Bill attended the local Catholic schools, they did not identify as Irish, although Anastasia’s mother was a woman from rural Kilkenny. Around Koroit to be Catholic was to be Irish, and so it was difficult to conceive of Catholics who were not Irish. Usually, those who were not Irish were Protestants of one kind or another, even if their families were originally from Ireland.
Annastasia and her family settled on the Kirkstall farm in the 1920s, so they were new to the district. They were rural Australians, defined through the white nationalist lens of the Western District. Although the family was not particularly religious, in this environment an urban middle-class term such as “secular” made little sense. Hamilton’s lane was a world of dogs, cattle and chooks, dairies, haystacks and small weatherboard houses.
In a vernacular tradition, literacy plays a limited role. People in the district did not read much but they liked a good story. There was no fear of censure from progressive gatekeepers, who were not in evidence, but people feared God and conservative voices set the social tone. Schooling typically ended with junior high school. Formal education was not much valued. From their mid-teens, many boys and girls left school and commenced working on farms, or took domestic service and laboring jobs, or started an apprenticeship.
Despite the Church’s penchant for self-examination, private life was opaque. Too much was out-of-bounds to serious thought. Men, in particular, were reluctant to expose their interior lives, lest they be labelled soft or effeminate. It could be positively dangerous to have ones masculinity doubted unless one was obviously destined for the religious orders. At social gatherings men mostly mixed with men and women mostly mingled with other women.
Positive male role models were largely absent in Lionel’s family. Lionel had not known either his maternal or paternal grandfathers, nor his own father. The only grandparent Lionel knew was Anastasia. The family relied heavily on Anastasia, who Lionel described as the rock of the family. This explains why he choose to have his ashes interred in his grandmother’s grave upon his passing in 2021. She seems to have been the most functional adult model during his childhood.
Patricia’s family in Southern Cross stood in contrast to Lionel’s family at Kirkstall, her family being part of a strongly bonded community of Irish Catholic heritage. Her immediate family was somewhat better-off by local standards. Her father had successfully managed a productive farm which generated a reasonable income. Nevertheless, Patricia’s extended family included many relatives from less affluent households. Most of her relatives owned considerably less farmland and some struggled to make ends meet. In her family too were unaddressed phycological issues, although you would not know this by looking at the surface, where everything seemed fine.
Ownership of productive farmland was a key marker of social status around Koroit, as was the prestige of living in a solid house. Some families in the district continued to live in makeshift dwellings, often little more than glorified wooden shacks. Large family sizes were generally viewed as an advantage, seen as potentially providing more labor to the family. Outward expression of religious faith played a significant role in daily life, with strong adherence to prescribed religious beliefs and values that did not necessarily welcome modern concepts like medicalized birth control. While certain aspects of modernity were cautiously embraced, traditional lifestyles were dominant.
When investigating the circumstances of Lionel’s birth in 1930, the influence of Lionel’s paternal grandfather, Samuel Jones, is apparent, although largely marked by his absence. Samuel returned to the Southwest in the mid-1920s after many years away. Although Samuel had been born and raised in the Koroit district, he had moved to northern Victoria and the Riverina as a young man. He fatefully returned to the district with his adult son, Lionel’s father, the unreliable Henry-Allan Jones.
By the time Samuel returned to the Southwest he was in his sixties. He was getting old. The physical demands of rural labor were becoming increasingly arduous for him. Additionally, Samuel’s mother, Sarah Jones, had recently passed away. At the time of Sarah’s death in 1924, Samuel had three sisters living in the Southwest. The division of inheritance among the siblings may have been a factor in Samuel’s return. The prodigal son possibly returned to the Koroit district in the wake of the distribution of assets from his mother’s remaining property in Woolsthorpe.
Sometime before Samuel’s reappearance in the mid-1920s, Janet Porter, the eldest of Samuel’s sisters, relocated to Kirkstall from her home at Woolsthorpe. The Jones family had lived at Woolsthorpe for many decades, moving there in the early 1870s after originally farming at Belfast, as Port Fairy was known in its early days. Samuel had been born at Belfast in 1861 when Thomas and Sarah lived there before they moved permanently to Woolsthorpe.
Electoral records for the Wannon electorate during this period indicate that both Samuel Jones and Henry-Allan Jones lived at Kirkstall in the late 1920s and into 1930. Samuel was listed as a laborer whereas Henry-Allan was noted as being a mechanic. Father and son likely lived together, possibly with Janet Porter, then living in Kirkstall with her son and his family. Both Bill Jones and Patricia told the author that when Henry-Allan Jones first met Eily Schefferle he was employed as a local motor mechanic in Kirkstall, and they mentioned that he was considered to be pretty good at this job.
When they met at Kirkstall, Eily was living on the farm not far from where Henry-Allan Jones worked as a motor mechanic. Eily became pregnant in 1929 at the age of nineteen. Henry-Allan subsequently married Eily in July, and Lionel was born early February the following year.
It remains unclear why Samuel Jones returned to the district with his son Henry-Allan Jones. Samuel may have hoped that Henry-Allan might be useful in some way and might benefit from a change of scene.
Henry-Allan and Eily separated several months after Bill Jones was born in 1932. The family had been living in Cobden, which was where Bill was born. Cobden is a small town to the east of Warrnambool and due west of the Otway ranges. Eily and Henry-Allan lived in Cobden for a relatively short period before they split up. Eily then returned to her mother’s farm at Kirkstall with her two young children. She apparently never saw Henry-Allan Jones again. Bill was a toddler when Eily moved back to Kirkstall and Lionel was about three years of age.
At the Kirkstall farm at the time when Lionel and Bill were growing up, the rest of the household consisted of Anastasia and her three children, Eily, Orry and Gerry. In the year Lionel was born, Gerry was fifteen and Orry was almost eighteen. Eily was nineteen when Lionel was born. Ernst Schefferle died not long prior to Lionel’s birth.
Henry-Allan and Eily moved to Cobden in 1931. Their relocation coincided with Samuel Jones getting married for the third time. Samuel had renewed his relationship with his cousin, Lucy Pappin, when he returned to the Southwest, which was perhaps one factor in his deciding to return. They married in Cobden in 1932, at a time when Henry-Allan and Eily were also living there. When Samuel married Lucy, he was seventy-two years old and she was about the same age. Samuel and Lucy shortly thereafter moved from Cobden to Kennedy’s Creek in the foothills of the Otways, where they remained for the rest of their lives.
Lucy Pappin had relatives in the wider Cobden district. At least one of her adult sons lived there, close to Kennedy’s Creek. This secluded rural district is to the east of Cobden, tucked away in the foothills of the western Otway Ranges. At Kennedy’s Creek, Samuel Jones and Lucy lived on a small block in the hills. Isolated small farms were scattered in the valleys, set amidst dense forests. It was a place where people could live independently on out-of-the-way blocks. Due to the forested and hilly terrain, this location was never developed through squatter pastoralism.
Samuel and Lucy had known each other since childhood and early adulthood. Samuel grew up in Woolsthorpe during the 1870s at a time when Lucy’s family lived at nearby Woodford. Their mothers, Sarah and Jane, were sisters who remained close to each other for most of their lives. The sister’s maiden name was Campbell. Sarah and Jane’s brother, Archibald Campbell, also lived in Woolsthorpe. Archibald married Emma Glendinning in 1870, and they raised a family of eight children there.
Samuel Jones remained in contact with his Woolsthorpe relatives during his sojourn further afield. He returned to Woolsthorpe for a time on at least one occasion after his initial relocation to the Riverina.
Archibald, Sarah, and Jane Campbell were born into an impoverished crofting family on the remote Hebridean island of Mull, located in northwest Scotland. Their father, Duncan Campbell, was a struggling widower with several daughters and a son. The family were ideal candidates for mass emigration at a time when Mull was being cleared of its crofting families. In 1853, the entire family was sent to Portland aboard the “New Zealander”. In other words they were uprooted from their island home and planted in the Southwest.
On Mull, the Campbell family had lived as landless tenants, the group most vulnerable to destitution when famine struck the island. This was at a time when famine was judged to be widespread in the Hebrides and schemes were devised to partly depopulate the islands by sending the poorest of its people to Australia. One might argue that the Campbell family was part of a native group there, no longer wanted. Like all immigrants, they brought something of their own values and culture with them. Before their departure from Mull, the siblings spoke to each other in Gaelic, a language they likely continued to speak amongst themselves in Australia. At that time, there were many Scottish highlanders in the Southwest who could speak this language, although the great majority had some English when they arrived.
Similar to many immigrants who initially landed in Portland, the Campbell family was quickly taken to Port Fairy. Upon their arrival in the Southwest, Sarah and Jane Campbell were assigned to local employers and settled into existing local communities, where they subsequently married and raised families. The demand for young women as domestic servants and wives was particularly high during this period. Throughout their lives, the Campbell siblings lived on the fringes of society, in remote rural hamlets far from mainstream currents.
Sarah Campbell married Thomas Jones exactly twelve months after her arrival in Port Fairy. In December 1853 she arrived as an assisted emigrant from Mull under the program of the Scottish Highland and Island Emigration Society. Thomas arrived in the Southwest six or seven years before Sarah. He was a tenant farmer who first came to the Southwest in the 1840s while working on Bass Strait trading vessels operated by the Henty family. He had likely been transported to Van Diemen’s Land some years previously. By the time of their marriage in December 1854, Thomas was farming near Rosebrook, and he supplemented his agricultural income by working teams of bullocks to transport heavy loads along the rough tracks of the district. Thomas married his bride in Belfast just prior to the New Year.
Sarah left Mull in 1853 at the age of eighteen at a time when famine was said to have stalked her community. Her family were impoverished cotters on the island and they were removed due to a perception that overpopulation on Mull was a problem that might be solved through mass emigration. Clearances had a long tradition in Scotland by that stage. One specific incentive for this clearance of a segment of the population on Mull was that the new owners of a certain estate on the island wished to establish a fake castle on the land inhabited by its traditional people, now considered surplus. The new owners had made a lot of money out of slavery and wished to invest in a fancy trophy home to show off to their friends. The Campbell family landed at Portland and were soon all transferred to Port Fairy.
Upon her arrival in the Southwest, Sarah served as a maid to the Lindsay family, who were prominent squatters on runs in the vicinity of Woolsthorpe. William and Grace Lindsay maintained a house in Belfast in addition to their homestead at Woolsthorpe on Union Station. Sarah worked initially as a maid to William Lindsay’s elderly mother at the Lindsay’s place near the river in Port Fairy.
After her marriage to Thomas Jones, Sarah lived on Thomas’s small tenancy near Rosebrook, a hamlet just east of Belfast. In the following decade they had several children. They permanently relocated to Woolsthorpe in 1871. The family already had an association with Woolsthorpe well before the move from Rosebrook.
Woolsthorpe is a small hamlet fourteen kilometers north of Koroit. Sarah served as the local midwife there and was noted for her skill as a needlewoman and maker of quilts, while Thomas worked as a carrier. By 1873, the Jones family had freehold ownership of a small farm of around six acres at Woolsthorpe.
It is likely that Thomas’s farm at Rosebrook was located on the river flats near the confluence of the Moyne River and the Belfast Lough. For most of the 1850s and 1860s, prior to relocating to Woolsthorpe, Thomas was a tenant farmer on land somewhere along these river flats. The farm was likely northwest of Woodbine House, owned by the locally prominent Mills/Glare family. This well-known family lived close to the Lough in their fine house, not far from Killarney Beach, on the way to Tower Hill.
In addition to farming, Thomas had a team of bullocks and carted loads to supplement his livelihood. This combination of farming and hauling was a livelihood followed by many working men. Thomas worked the roads between Rosebrook and Woolsthorpe, going through Koroit and Woodford, driving teams of bullocks pulling drays over rough tracks.
Thomas Jones and Sarah Campbell at Belfast
Thomas Jones likely first crossed to Belfast in the mid-1840s. Evidence suggests he had earlier been transported to Van Diemen’s Land from the English Midlands, arriving on the island perhaps towards the end of the 1830s or the early years of the 1840s.
Many convicts by the name of Thomas Jones were transported to Tasmania, which is the main difficulty with regard to identifying Thomas’s life in Van Diemen’s Land prior to his coming to the mainland. While some of the transported men named Thomas Jones fit Thomas’s age profile and match the likely period he spent in Van Diemen’s Land, identifying the correct man remains challenging. Additionally, some convicts and emancipists went by assumed names, in an effort to deliberately obscure their previous identities. Determining Thomas’s history prior to his arrival in Port Fairy is a difficult exercise.
From the mid-1840s to the middle of the 1880s Port Fairy was widely and officially known as Belfast. In 1887 the township of Belfast was renamed “Port Fairy” as a result of an Act of the Victorian Parliament, although the name of the municipality in its hinterland remained the Shire of Belfast. The harbor on the shallow bay was generally referred to as Port Fairy but the private town, surveyed and developed on the west side of the Moyne River by James Atkinson, its proprietor, was called Belfast from 1843. Port Fairy and Warrnambool are about twenty-five kilometers apart.
Although the exact date of Thomas Jones’s arrival in the Southwest remains uncertain, an early record of his presence at Port Fairy dates to 16 August 1851, when Thomas Jones’s name appears in the Belfast Gazette, a local newspaper. Victoria formally separated from New South Wales on 1 July 1851 and the new colony required its own lists of voters. Thomas Jones is listed in the Gazette as an eligible voter on the inaugural electoral roll for “Belfast and Warrnambool and the Counties of Villiers and Heytesbury.” Thomas Jones’s name is included in the County of Villiers list, an electoral district with a small number of voters which covered the rural land between the coastal towns of Belfast and Warrnambool, and extended north to some isolated rural settlements and stations inland.
In 1849 when it was still part of New South Wales, the County of Villiers was proclaimed and named for George Villiers, the 4th Earl of Clarendon. George Villiers was an English diplomat and statesman from the aristocratic Villiers family. Ironically in 1849 when the new County of Villiers was proclaimed, George Villiers was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. This was the time of the great famine there. In the wake of the great hunger, which Villiers did little to alleviate, thousands of impoverished people subsequently fled Ireland and embarked on a long journey to Belfast in the Western District.
In the Victorian Legislative Council elections of September 1851, Villiers and Heytesbury elected one representative, and Belfast and Warrnambool elected another. There were around two hundred eligible electors on the combined lists for these districts, including Thomas Jones.
The inclusion of Thomas Jones on the 1851 electoral list implies his presence in the district some time prior to that year. To qualify as an enrolled voter, Thomas was required to meet specific eligibility criteria. Voting was restricted to males who owned property or held a lease on property exceeding ten pounds annually. Thomas’s eligibility as a voter in 1851 indicates that he had become a leasehold farmer on land with a lease costing more than ten ponds annually. Such a sum was considerable for a working man of the day, and indicates that Thomas was already well established on his leasehold farm prior to voter registration.
There are some indications of Thomas’s earlier presence in the Southwest, mostly in the form of seven shipping records from the mid-1840s. These shipping records document a Thomas Jones aboard trading vessels sailing between Launceston and Portland Bay. Most of these vessels were linked to Stephen Henty’s trading operations. Given the repeat nature of the voyages, the Thomas Jones in question was likely working aboard these vessels, perhaps handling the cargo. At that stage, a large segment of the European population at Belfast were Vandemonians who had come across from Launceston.
The Tasmanian shipping records show that a Thomas Jones was a passenger on the Brig “Lady Mary Pelham,” which departed George Town, Tasmania, on 28 May 1846, bound for Portland Bay. George Town is a small historic port in northern Tasmania at the mouth of the Tamar Estuary, situated downstream from Launceston. Vessels sailing from there frequently stopped over in Port Fairy on the way to Portland, and in the context of Bass Strait shipping the term “Portland Bay” could refer to either Port Fairy or Portland. Throughout the 1840s the “Portland Bay District” was an official designation encompassing much of the Western District. Foster Fyans was the Commissioner for Crown Lands for the Portland Bay District throughout this period.
The “Lady Mary Pelham” was wrecked at Port Fairy in 1849. Prior to that unhappy ending she had carried passengers and cargo from Tasmania to Portland Bay on many voyages in the mid-1840s. The now notorious whaler, Captain William Dutton, commanded the vessel at various times during this period. For several years she operated as a bay whaling supply ship out of Portland during the whaling season, and in the off season she was mainly employed in carrying general cargo. At Portland she was owned and operated by Stephen Henty and was commanded by Captain John Mills and several other sea captains in addition to Dutton.
The “Lady Mary Pelham” had an interesting history dating to an earlier period. In the mid-1830s, she was chartered by George Fife Angus as part of the so called “First Fleet of South Australia” which offloaded the first free settlers at Adelaide in 1836. The Henty family purchased the vessel in the late 1830s and fitted her out in Tasmania for bay whaling.
When bay whaling started to decline in the mid-1840s, Stephen Henty and his trading company utilized the “Lady Mary Pelham” mostly as a coastal trader, generally sailing between George Town and Portland Bay, and often anchoring at both Portland and Port Fairy, depending on weather conditions and commercial demand.
Several departure records reveal that a man named Thomas Jones embarked on ships bound for Portland Bay during the mid-1840s. In addition to the record dated 28 May 1846, which indicates Thomas Jones traveled on the “Lady Mary Pelham,” there is another record showing his departure from George Town aboard the same vessel on 17 November 1845. A Thomas Jones is recorded as having departed George Town aboard the “Minerva” for Portland on 5 April 1845, and a Thomas Jones departed Launceston for Portland aboard the “John” on 12 November 1848. The Launceston Examiner of 15 April 1846 reports that a Thomas Jones arrived in Launceston from Portland Bay aboard the “Minerva” on 13 April 1846. Additionally, a Thomas Jones is listed as being on the “Minerva” when it docked at Launceston on 3 March 1847 after coming from Portland Bay.
The available records suggest that a man named Thomas Jones undertook multiple voyages across Bass Strait, perhaps in the capacity of stevedore or lighterman. There is a notable correlation between the name Thomas Jones and coastal trading vessels such as the “Minerva”, the “John” and the “Lady Mary Pelham”. All of these vessels were part of the mainstay of cross strait trade between the Tamar Estuary and Portland Bay during the mid-1840s. It is to be expected that the trade between northern Tasmania and Portland Bay would regularly employ a small pool of skilled men who handled maritime cargo.
The mid-1840s were the peak years for sponsored migration from Tasmania to the Port Phillip District. The “Geelong and Portland Bay Immigration Society” that recruited James Lowndes to Geelong during this period was also active in recruiting Tasmanian immigrant workers to the more distant ports of Portland and Port Fairy. Schemes to hire workers from Tasmania attracted many men to these ports in the 1840s. Some worked on squatter stations inland and others worked nearer the coast.
Laborers played a crucial role in enabling the enterprise of the proprietors, performing the physical labor essential to their ventures. Laboring men could leverage their service with one gentleman to assist in gaining employment with another. Skilled and dependable workers were in short supply, and personal connections between the employers and workers were crucial to both. Not all men could safely load and unload ships, handle lighters, or command bullock teams. Less skilled workers earnt a modest living through timber splitting, ditch digging, general construction work, and clearing scrub.
The marriage certificate of Thomas Jones and Sarah Campbell is significant for a number of reasons. It is dated 28 December 1854, and no doubt there was an eye set to the New Year celebrations fast approaching. The Scots at Port Fairy had a great tradition of enthusiastically ringing in the New Year. The gold rushes had pushed the prices for commodities to record levels and labor was in short supply. It might have seemed that the good times for small farmers would continue well into the future, but this was not to be the case.
According to his marriage certificate, Thomas Jones was born in England. He is described as a laborer, aged twenty-eight, and residing at Tower Hill in the Parish of Koroit. Sarah Campbell was noted as having been born on the Isle of Mull, Scotland. She was eighteen years old when she married. At that time she lived in Rosebrook, a hamlet just to the east of Belfast, on the way to Tower Hill.
On the marriage certificate Sarah’s father, Duncan Campbell, is described as a shepherd living in Rosebrook. At the time of his daughter’s marriage to Thomas Jones, Rosebrook was an important part of James Atkinson’s Belfast Survey. Duncan Campbell, together with Sarah and the rest of the Campbell family, had emigrated from Mull and had arrived in Portland in 1853 aboard the “New Zealander” before transferring to Port Fairy and gaining employment at Rosebrook.
The wedding took place at the residence of William Lindsay, a gentleman who was fast establishing himself as a prominent squatter with extensive pastoral interests in the Southwest. Lindsay was part of an extended family of Scottish free settlers who took up squatting in the district in the early 1840s. William Lindsay’s wife, Grace, was the sister of three Carmichael brothers who all held runs in the Port Fairy hinterland.
By 1854, Lindsay and Grace Carmichael held two large squatter stations situated just north of Koroit. One was called Union Station and the other was called Quamby. These stations were located on the Spring Creek near Woolsthorpe, which was a hamlet strategically positioned on the creek and which was developed as a way stop on the track that linked the ports of Belfast and Warrnambool with the squatter runs of the inland. From Woolsthorpe the track went further inland towards Hamilton, and sidetracks lead to Ararat and to other Central Victorian towns then associated with the goldfields.
It is likely that the marriage ceremony occurred at the Lindsay family’s residence in Port Fairy rather than at the family’s new homestead at Union Station. The 1854 list of ratepayers at Belfast indicates that the Lindsays owned a townhouse in Belfast in addition to the country house at Union Station.
Together with her family, Sarah Campbell came to Australia under the program of the “Scotish Highland and Island Emigration Society.” This scheme was devised specifically as an assisted emigration scheme for allegedly destitute people from the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Those transmigrated under the scheme were deemed at risk of starvation and so needed to be removed for their survival. A feature of this scheme was that it specifically targeted families in which there was a preponderance of young women. As a condition of her assisted emigration, Sarah Campbell was assigned to work as a maid for William Lindsay’s elderly mother.
It is likely that an elderly gentlewoman such Mrs. Lindsay resided for the most part in Belfast township rather than at remote Union Station, which was still predominantly bushland at that stage, although it was progressively being cleared and drained during these years. Sarah Campbell likely served as Mrs. Lindsay’s personal maid at the Belfast residence where the wedding took place, although she may have gone to Union Station whenever Mrs. Lindsay visited there.
From the time Sarah started having children it is likely that she would have been preoccupied in looking after her own family, and Mrs Lindsay doubtless found a new maid from among the impoverished assisted immigrants who continued to arrive. Thomas and Sarah lived near Belfast for many years before finally relocating permanently to Woolsthorpe in the early 1870s.
Shadows of the Western District 