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 the early 1860s, the railway station was constructed just east of Bannockburn township, close to Russell’s Bridge. The construction of the railway brought with it a considerable number of local jobs working on infrastructure such as bridges, culverts, sidings and embankments.
Lowndes family members would have been familiar with Bannockburn through their carting work, even prior to permanently settling there. A bullock track from Ceres Bridge ran north to Batesford and from there to Bannockburn. The construction of the massive Moorabool railway viaduct just north of Batesford was an infrastructure project of great significance locally. Built between 1858 and 1862, its construction involved a massive temporary township of nearly 1,000 stonemasons and other workers, many living on site together with their families.
Harriet was the last of the children born at Ceres Bridge. After her birth there in 1869, the next child, Thomas, is listed on his birth certificate as born at Moorabool, in Corio Parish. This likely indicates that around 1873 the family was at Moorabool, on the west side of the Moorabool River opposite Batesford. They shortly moved further upriver to Russell’s Bridge.
By 1874 the Lowndes family were living on their new farm along the Moorabool River at Russell’s Bridge, around four kilometers from Bannockburn. Martin was born there in 1874 and Anastasia was born there in 1878. The farm on the Moorabool was strategically located close to the main road between Geelong and Ballarat and also near the railway station at Leigh Road, as Bannockburn was then known.
The circumstances surrounding the move to the Russell’s Bridge farm are unclear, although it seems to have had something to do with the carting of limestone extracted from a quarry on the new Lowndes family farm. The limestone was carted to the Leigh Road railway station, put on a carriage, and then unloaded at the siding at Lal Lal. It was then taken by bullock dray to the Lal Lal iron mine, which commenced operation in 1874.
The Lowndes family lived on the farm in a wooden house bordering the river. This was the base from which they conducted their farming, carrying and heavy haulage business. When Lionel visited Bannockburn in 1946 as a teenager he visited this property on the river, which was then occupied by his great uncle Joseph Lowndes, the younger brother of his grandmother Anastasia. An indication of the size of the farm is available from a Rate Notice recorded in a Rate Book for the Bannockburn Shire. In 1900, James Junior’s property was recorded as being one hundred and sixteen acres of farmland plus a residential dwelling.
Several generations of the Lowndes family lived at Bannockburn and they became a well-known local family of the district. Today, visitors will find the Lowndes Bridge over the Moorabool River on Parkers Road and Lowndes Road in the east of the town, along with numerous Lowndes graves in the local Bannockburn cemetery.
The country around Bannockburn had been a so called “settled district” for many years before the Lowndes family moved to Russell’s Bridge. The Bannockburn Roads District was established in 1862 and was designated a shire in 1864. The arrival of the Geelong to Ballarat railway line boosted the population of all the towns along the line. Leigh Road was known by multiple names in the nineteenth century, including Wabdallah and Leigh Road, before officially becoming Bannockburn in 1892, well after the Lowndes family started living in the vicinity. The main towns further up the line towards Ballarat are Lethbridge and then Meredith.
Russell’s Bridge is about twenty kilometers from Corio Bay. Its proximity to Geelong meant that by the start of the 1850s it was not considered remote. Immediately west of Bannockburn, the squatter country of the Western District extended for hundreds of kilometers towards the South Australian border. The squatters who took up runs along the Moorabool and its tributaries in the 1830s had mostly moved on well prior to 1870. Due to its proximity to Geelong, much of the land around Russell’s Bridge was surveyed and subsequently sold by the end of the 1840s. Wealthy British investors, including the three Hope brothers, purchased a great deal of the land along the lower Moorabool during the mid-1840s.
The details of the Lowndes family’s carting business and how they balanced farming with carting are unclear. What is clear is that carting was difficult and dangerous. After rain, the tracks would become quagmires and in summer it was hot and dusty with the risk of bushfire. Loads could slip and items were often heavy and cumbersome. If a carter had a serious accident or injury, their working days might well be over. Carting was an almost entirely male occupation. Leading teams along lonely bush tracks required considerable physical endurance and great skill in managing heavy loads.
Journeys were limited by the distance bullocks could travel in a day and by the availability of water and forage. Artistic depictions of carting from the late nineteenth century provide some insights into the trade, albeit often highly romanticized, occasionally to the point of implausibility. There are many photos from the late nineteenth century of teams with their drivers.
The “Lal Lal Iron Mine and Smelting Works” were situated near the Moorabool River, close to the hamlet of Lal Lal, about nineteen kilometers south of Ballarat. There was a siding here along the line. The Lowndes men seem to have been quite entrepreneurial. For years they carted the limestone needed for the operation of the iron mine and foundry at Lal Lal.
Limestone from the deposit on the Lowndes property was used as a flux material for the ironmaking, and was carted to the Leigh Road station by the family. From 1874 to 1884, pig iron was produced at the ironworks using iron ore extracted from the mine. The quarrying seems to have started in the mid-1870s, at the time the family moved to Russell’s Bridge. The Lal Lal Iron Company used the Geelong to Ballarat Railway to transport the limestone from the Leigh Road railway station to the Lal Lal siding.
The Lal Lal mine opened in 1874 and the transport of the limestone from the quarry on the Lowndes property to the railway station likely commenced that year, at the time the family took up residence on the farm. It is likely that the limestone dug out of the deposit was a primary reason the family came to live on the farm there in the first place. By the time this heavy work commenced, James Junior was likely assisted by his older sons.
Wikipedia has an interesting entry concerning the Lal Lal mine. It is reported that the company operating the mine from 1874 to 1884 used bullock teams to cart ore and supplies over unsealed tracks to and from the mine site, and from the railway siding. The roads were so poor that the iron-making operation at Lal Lal was forced to close down during the winter months. Winter also prevented charcoal burning and storage, presumably due to the wet weather. It may well be that the Lowndes family only carted limestone for the mine over the driest periods of the year, during those months when the furnace was in operation.
The Lowndes family moved to the farm at Russell’s Bridge around 1874, some four years prior to Anastasia Junior’s birth. Anastasia Senior would have been around thirty-six when they first settled at Russell’s Bridge and James Lowndes Junior would have been around forty-seven. James Senior was still alive but quite elderly by that stage.
The property was within the boundaries of Bannockburn Shire, in the Parish Of Darriwil. The Lowndes farm at Ceres Bridge had also been in Bannockburn Shire. Letters written by James Junior to the Bannockburn Council in 1867 indicate that the family were still living at Ceres Bridge in that year and Harriet’s birth certificate from 1869 indicates that the family was still there two years later.
In all, Anastasia Donnelly and James Lowndes Junior had ten children after they married in 1858. The list of their children and the respective birth years is as follows: James (1859), John (1860), Mary (1862), William (1864), Andrew (1866), Harriet (1869), Thomas (1873), Martin (1874), Anastasia (1878), and Joseph (1883). All were born in Western Victoria in the hinterlands of Geelong. Notably, all these children survived to reach adulthood, which would likely have been unusual for the period.
The first six children were born when the family lived at the property at Ceres Bridge, Parish of Gheringhap, and the last three were born at Russell’s Bridge, parish of Darriwil. Both of these locations were in the Shire of Bannockburn. The discrepancy among the birth certificates is that for Thomas. This indicates that he was born at Moorabool, in the Shire of Corio, perhaps indicating a time of transition for the family.
Anastasia Senior’s days were undoubtedly filled with child-rearing and managing the farms. Remarkably, there was a twenty-four-year span from the birth of the first child in 1859 to the last. The youngest child, Joseph, was born in 1883, five years after Anastasia Junior, Lionel’s grandmother. Anastasia Senior was twenty-two years of age when the first child was born and forty-six when Joseph was born. Anastasia Junior, the second last child, was born when her mother was forty years of age. By that stage, the two eldest boys, James and John, were adult men of working age, being nineteen and eighteen respectively.
Lionel’s grandmother Anastasia was born in 1878 and died in 1963. The author has vague memories of granny Anastasia. She died when the author was six, and is dimly remembered as a very old lady dressed in black and mostly confined to her chair. Lionel was eternally grateful to his grandmother. He always said that she held the family together when he was growing up on the farm at Kirkstall, despite the very difficult circumstances of being a single women running a farm during the depression years. When he died, Lionel had his ashes interred in his grandmother’s plot at Tower Hill cemetery.
The birth certificates for the last three children all suggest that the family lived at Russell’s Bridge from 1874. Births commencing with Martin in 1874 were all registered at Leigh Road, with the family’s place of residence listed as Darriwil Parish, Bannockburn Shire. In every instance where Anastasia Senior is included on official certificates she signs with her X mark and she is consistent in noting Kilkenny as her birthplace. While Anastasia’s maiden name is most often written as Donnelly, the birth certificates of the various Lowndes children show that her maiden name was variously spelt Donnelly, Donelly, or Donley. Several of the Lowndes children were registered with Loundes as the surname rather than Lowndes.
James Senior died at his family’s Russell’s Bridge property on 24 July 1880, two years after the birth of his granddaughter Anastasia Junior and many years after the death of his wife, Ann Higgins. A newspaper report notes that James Lowndes Senior died when eighty-five years old at the Russell’s Bridge residence of his son, James Junior. The old lag had lived a remarkable life. Born in England at the end of the eighteenth century, James Senior arrived in Australia as a young man in August 1823 aboard a convict transport vessel after being incarcerated for a period on a hulk in the Thames River. He then endured sixteen years as a convict in Van Diemen’s Land before being granted a pardon. Concurrent with serving his sentence in Tasmania he married and raised a family.
James Senior, together with his family, crossed Bass Strait in 1846 to live out the remainder of his life in the Western District. He was likely attracted to the mainland by the prospect of employment and the promise of a better life for his children away from Van Diemen’s Land. For two decades he lived and worked in a rural community near Fyansford, west of Geelong, helping with the family’s farming and carting trade.
In his later years James Senior lived near Bannockburn with his son, his daughter-in-law, and his numerous grandchildren. His longevity is a reflection of his remarkable resilience. He lived through tough times, the likes of which are difficult for us to imagine. More than two hundred years since his arrival at Hobart in 1823, his legacy endures through his many descendants scattered across Australia.
The Geelong Advertiser of 24 July 1880 includes a death notice for James Lowndes Senior, as follows: “Mr. James Lowndes died on the 23rd July at the residence of his son (Mr. James Lowndes), Sherman’s Ford, near Clyde flour Mill. The funeral will leave this day, Saturday, at half-past 10 o’clock a.m., for the New General Cemetery. Friends, please accept this invitation. W. B. King & Sons, Undertakers, 97, Moorabool Street, Geelong”. The New General Cemetery refers to the cemetery at Geelong West where James’ wife, Ann, and their daughter, Harriet, are also buried.
Following the death of James Lowndes Senior in 1880, James Junior and Anastasia continued their lives at Russell’s Bridge with their ten children. The family plied their trade as carters and farmers, the men often contracting haulage for the Bannockburn Shire Council. By this time, the oldest children were young adults or teenagers, likely working in the trades of their parents. The younger children attended the Russell’s Bridge State School. All of the children would have been expected to contribute to the daily chores essential to running the farm.
The Lowndes offspring were active participants in the social and sporting life of their community. Sporting clubs were developing in small rural communities, and from the late 1880s the name Lowndes appears prominently in local sporting activities in the Bannockburn district. An example of this is from the Geelong Advertiser of 12 August 1889, which reports: “During a game of football at Lethbridge on Saturday afternoon, one of the Bannockburn players, a young man named William Lowndes was thrown down and sustained a fracture of his right leg. The limb was broken in two places between the ankle and knee. Lowndes was brought to Geelong and admitted to the hospital during the evening.”
William was the fourth child, born in 1864, so he would have been no more than sixteen years of age when he played this game of footy and sustained this painful injury. Australian rules football was a developing sport in 1889, and the Geelong region and the Western District generally was a real center in its evolution. For the following two decades, the Lowndes name regularly appeared in the team lists of Bannockburn football clubs.
From the 1890s onwards, James Junior’s sons engaged in various organised sports, particularly in shooting clubs. Interestingly, two of the younger sons, Thomas and Martin, also participated in early cycling competitions around Bannockburn. The safety bicycle was a relatively recent invention, but cycling as a sport boomed in the 1890s, leading to the establishment of numerous cycling clubs throughout the country.
The Geelong Advertiser of 14 January 1903 reported on an upcoming summer cycling race at Bannockburn, stating, “The following handicaps have been declared for the Charleston Road race, on January 17th, 1903, starting at 3.30.” The newspaper lists the handicaps of about fifty riders, with Thomas and Martin Lowndes in the middle range. Born in 1873 and 1874 respectively, Thomas and Martin would have been about thirty and twenty-nine years old in 1903.
The Lowndes children would have had to walk to Russell’s Bridge Primary School from their home by the Moorabool River. Their residence, situated at Sherman’s Ford, was adjacent to a bridge over the river on Parkers Road, which is still known as Lowndes Bridge. The state of the road, especially during winter, could be quite poor. This was notably the case in August 1890, when Anastasia Junior and her younger brother, the two youngest children, were still attending the Russell’s Bridge primary school.
A report published in the Geelong Advertiser of 13 August 1890 on the activities of the Bannockburn Shire Council notes that “Xavier Muhleback, James Lowndes, E. Junod, and Walter Bolger, ratepayers of the north riding, complained of the bad state of the road leading from the Russell’s Bridge State school to Sherman’s Ford. It was, they stated, impossible for children to cross the road at present. Repairs were required for a distance of only three or four chains. On the motion of Cr. Thompson, seconded by Cr. Slattery the request was granted, and it was agreed to invite tenders for the work.”
This brief article from 1890 highlights the condition of the road from Russell’s Bridge to Sherman’s Ford. It is significant in that it connects the Lowndes and Muhlebach families as neighbors within the district. Ernst Schefferle, Xavier Muhlebach’s son, attended the Russell’s Bridge school in 1890 alongside Anastasia Junior. The two would eventually marry in 1907. Ernst Schefferle and Anastasia Lowndes Junior are Lionel’s grandparents. Ernst Schefferle was born in 1881, three years after Anastasia Junior, but his brother Peter, who was around the same age as Anastasia, was likely to have been in the same grade as she was.
Xavier Muhlebach, a Swiss immigrant, arrived in Geelong around 1855. Members of the Muhlebach and Lowndes families were well-acquainted with each other, living in the same close-knit rural community. Their children played football together and attended the same school. The families participated in shared social activities and they had a common bond through the Catholic Church, probably attending mass together. Both families have members interred in the Catholic section of the Bannockburn Cemetery, with burials spanning many decades.
James Lowndes Junior was himself laid to rest in Bannockburn Cemetery. On 15 April 1900, about twenty years after his father’s death, James Junior passed away at his Russell’s Bridge property at the age of seventy-three. James was born in Van Diemen’s Land in 1827, five years after the arrival of James Senior and one year after the arrival of his mother, Ann Higgins. Both James Senior and Ann had been sentenced to penal servitude for life and transported halfway around the world on convict ships. Shortly before James Junior’s birth, his parents had been granted permission by the penal authorities to marry, indicating the family’s subordinate status at that time.
James Lowndes Junior was born into a convict household and grew up in a society sharply divided between those of convict background and those who were not. James Lowndes Junior was never convicted of a crime in Van Diemen’s Land, yet he was labeled as part of convict society. He was considered socially inferior by those in Van Diemen’s Land who were not of convict background, especially by the worthy middle class of monied free settlers. The impact of the Australian penal system on James Junior’s life was profound and enduring, despite not being transported himself.
During the nineteenth century, the legacy of transportation had a considerable influence on Australian society, creating a deep social divide between those of convict heritage and those who were free settlers. Additionally, many of the government’s immigrants, who came via various schemes of assisted passage, were also not generally considered free settlers. They brought no capital with them and had to serve as laborers and servants upon their arrival. Even at the turn of the century, at the time of James Junior’s passing, the social divides of an entrenched class system remained deep and wide. Nevertheless, upon his death James was clearly respected by many in his community.
The Geelong Advertiser of 19 April 1900 includes a short notice of James Junior’s passing and funeral service, as follows: “The remains of the late Mr. James Lowndes, a very old resident of the Leigh Road district, were interred in the Bannockburn cemetery yesterday afternoon. The esteem in which the deceased was held was evidenced by the large number who attended to pay the last tribute of respect, the hearse and mourning coaches being followed by 83 conveyances and several horse-men. The coffin-bearers were Messrs. H. Masterson, J. M. Phillips, W. Russell and X. Muhleback, and the pall-bearers J. Dillon, J. Pattinson, T. Kirwan, W. Kelly, J. Saunders, W. Hannan, J. Callery and E. Dillon. Messrs. Wellington Bros, carried out the funeral arrangements.”
It is noteworthy that one of the coffin bearers was Xavier Muhlebach, the father of the man who would eventually marry Anastasia Lowndes, James Junior’s youngest daughter. At the time of her father’s funeral, Anastasia Lowndes Junior was twenty-two years old and would not marry Ernst for another seven years.
Less than two months after James Junior’s funeral, the Geelong Advertiser reported on 29 May 1900 that probate had been granted for his will, valuing the estate at £1942. According to the 1900 Rate Notice Book for the Bannockburn Shire, James Junior’s property included one hundred and sixteen acres of land and a single residential house, with a council rate of one pound and sixteen shillings. From this modest farm along the Moorabool River, and no doubt a great deal of hard work, James Junior and Anastasia Senior raised ten children to adulthood.
There are subsequently a number of reports in the newspapers of the early twentieth century attesting to the success of the Lowndes children in farming and other activities around the Geelong district. There are the records of births, deaths and marriages typically associated with large rural families. In the Bannockburn cemetery, there are over twenty-four descendants of James Lowndes Junior and Anastasia with the surname Lowndes. There would be further graves of descendants through the female line, listed under other surnames.
Anastasia Lowndes Senior, nee Donnelly, was laid to rest alongside her husband in the cemetery at Bannockburn in 1911. The headstone reads: “Sacred to the memory of James Lowndes, beloved husband of Anastasia Lowndes, who died 15 April 1900, aged 73 years. At rest also his beloved wife Anastasia Lowndes who died 26th August 1911 aged 75 years. May their dear souls rest in peace.” So little is known of Anastasia Senior beyond the fact of her large Australian family. There are records of her marriage, the birth certificates of her children, of her death, and very little else.
Even the official records punctuating Anastasia Donnelly’s life are not entirely consistent. Her death certificate states that she was eighty two when she died. This is at odds with what the family had chiseled on her gravestone, where it is stated that when Anastasia died she was seventy-five. Another discrepancy is that Anastasia’s mother on the death certificate is noted as Mary Cummins, whereas on Anastasia’s marriage certificate her mother was identified as Ellen, with the surname unclear. Her father was noted as James Donnelly on both her marriage and her death certificate.
The death certificate notes that Anastasia had been in the colony for fifty-four years. It is most likely she arrived in the colony from Ireland sometime in the mid-1850s, one of many thousands of young single women from Kilkenny. Her home in Kilkenny is likely to have been near the hamlet of John’s Well.
Remarkably, there was an obituary for Anastasia published in the Geelong Advertiser on 4 September 1911, as follows: “Obituary. Mrs. A. Lowndes – The funeral of the late Mrs. Lowndes, of ‘Sherman’s Farm’, Darriwell, took place on Monday last, when her remains were laid to rest in the Roman Catholic portion of the Bannockburn Cemetery.
The deceased lady was one of the oldest residents of the district, and the popularity and esteem in which she was held was fully testified by the large number who attended, friends driving from Geelong, Meredith, Elaine and all the surrounding districts to pay their last tribute of respect. The cortege comprised the hearse, two landau carriages and 85 conveyances, and was the longest seen in the district for some time. The coffin bearers were Messrs. W. Lowndes, A. Lowndes, T. Lowndes, M Lowndes (all sons of the deceased). … The Rev. Father O’Grady officiated at the late residence and also at the graveside, being assisted by the Rev. Father Collins, of Meredith. The funeral arrangements were carried out by Mr. William Wellington, of Ryrie Street, Geelong.”
As can be seen from the obituary, one legacy of Anastasia Donnelly is that the Lowndes family came to identify as Catholics, rather than being nominally Church of England as seems to have been the situation with the Lowndes family while in Van Diemen’s Land. Apart from that, the obituary says very little about Anastasia herself. She is defined by her family and by her place in the local community.
Skip forward fifty years to 1950 and there is an account worth quoting from one of Melbourne’s newspapers. An overview of the Lowndes family and their association with old Bannockburn is provided by the obituary of James Lowndes the third, published in the “Melbourne Advocate” of 5 October 1950. James the third was born in 1859 on the farm at Ceres Bridge at Fyansford.
James the third was the first child of James Junior and his wife Anastasia Donnelly. He was also the eldest brother of Anastasia Junior, Lionel’s grandmother. The “Melbourne Advocate” was a weekly newspaper published for the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and published from 1919 to 1990. It was quite popular in Koroit in the 1960s. The obituary provides some interesting background information regarding the Lowndes family from their arrival in the Geelong district in 1846. Prior to James the third’s funeral, the Lowndes family had been in the Geelong district for over one hundred years and three generations of the family had lived there.
James the third died when aged ninety-one, and was evidently held in high esteem by the Bannockburn community just as his father and mother had been. The obituary is as follows:
“Obituary of MR. JAMES LOWNDES
Mr. James Lowndes, who died recently at Bannockburn, was the eldest of a pioneer family of the district. Before a railway service existed between Geelong and Ballarat, his father (the late Mr. James Lowndes) spent many years as a carrier with horse drawn wagons between these two centres, after which he purchased a property near Ceres Bridge and later transferred to a property alongside the Moorabool River at Russell’s Bridge. At present a bridge in the vicinity of the property is known as Lowndes Bridge.
There was a limestone quarry on the property, and Mr. Lowndes supplied this limestone to the Lal Lal ironworks. It used to be trucked at the local railway siding, known in those days as Leigh-road railway station.
There were seven sons and three daughters in the family. Now there is only one daughter (Mrs. Schefferle, of Koroit) and one son (Mr. Joseph Lowndes) living. Three of the sons died during the past five months (Messrs. James Lowndes, 91; Thomas Lowndes, 76, and Martin Lowndes, 75).
In the early days of Mr. Lowndes’ family there were in Bannockburn three blacksmiths’ shops – now there are none – and three hotels in the township.
A large number of relatives and district residents attended his funeral, which took place at the Bannockburn Cemetery, following Requiem Mass at St. John’s Church, Bannockburn. The coffin was carried to the graveside by his six sons, Messrs. James, Thomas, Joseph, Bernard, John and Anthony Lowndes. The services were conducted by Rev. A. Hunter, of Winchelsea.”
Like his father and grandfather, James Lowndes the third worked in carting. He was reported as being an expert at driving a team in harness. In his early years he worked for the Manifold family at Camperdown breaking in horses. The Manifold family were prominent squatters and had been in the Western District from the start of the European usurpation of the country. Three Manifold brothers arrived from Van Diemen’s Land in 1836 and their exploits at Geelong, Camperdown and Warrnambool are well recorded.
After James the third married, he was employed for thirty-four years as Shire Foreman at the Bannockburn Shire and he was associated with the council for over sixty years. He married Margaret Wiley in Bannockburn in 1901 and they had twelve children. The family of James the third lived in a weatherboard house in town, on High Street, and it was here that Lionel stayed when he visited his Lowndes relatives as a teenager in 1946.
It remains uncertain whether James Lowndes the third was aware of his family’s earlier convict connections with Van Diemen’s Land, although he probably must have known something of the family’s past in Tasmania. After all, his father had been born there and his grandfather had spent many years serving a life sentence on the island. James the third was born in 1859 and his grandfather lived until 1880, so he must have heard something of those days.
Lionel once mentioned to the author that he was aware of some association between the Lowndes family and early Tasmania. When Lionel later found out in the 1990s that his Lowndes family forebears had actually been transported convicts, he seemed genuinely surprised. When Lionel discovered this, he was working as a prison officer at Pentridge, much to his pride and to the author’s embarrassment. Such is the lurking irony in our individual aspirations.
Increasingly, Australians seem largely sanguine about having convict forebears, but this was generally not the case for previous generations. When we look at the Australian convict experience of the early nineteenth century, it seems an absolutely reprehensible practice. The convict legacy of this nation should be a matter of great shame for Britain, although there seems little awareness in that country as to just how shameful this wretched episode is to their nation.
The British state had no right to dump hundreds of thousands of its people on a distant shore with such scant regard for their welfare, not to mention the callous indifference toward the Indigenous people of the lands to which these convicts were so cruelly exiled. Britain had no right whatsoever to do this. Still, the British only get the silver medal for such cruelty. The imperial Russian government exiled almost two million European convicts to Siberia over roughly the same period in which imperial Britian exiled 170,000 convicts to Australia.
It is interesting that James Lowndes the third’s obituary refers to him as “the eldest of a pioneer family of the district.” The term “pioneer” is a historically revisionist label used since the late nineteenth century. It is central to the “free settler ideological framework,” whereby an Australian national mythology was created based on a conception of glorious free settler progress. This concept, as embedded in such ideology, is based on extensive fabrications of Australian history, rooted in class and social prejudice. It seeks to gloss over the divisions that existed. We were not one people then and we are not one people now.
In the mid twentieth century, the term “pioneer” was often used generally to refer to early European settlers in rural districts, regardless of their class, nationality, or mode of arrival. There were pioneer museums and pioneer commemorative boards and associated regalia to do with “the pioneers”. However, the Lowndes family should not be labelled pioneers as their experience was far removed from the ideology of glorious British free settler progress. Such shibboleths should be avoided when discussing families whose initial experience in Australia was less than glorious and less than free. While the descendants of squatters might well claim to have pioneer forebears, the indentured servants and the laborers for such gentlemen certainly were not of that company.
Until the late 1940s, Anastasia Junior, along with her children Eily, Orry, and Gerry, and her grandchildren Lionel and Bill, maintained a connection with the Lowndes family at Bannockburn despite living in the Koroit district from the 1920s. The two locations are quite some distance apart.
On several occasions, Lionel spoke of his visit to Bannockburn as a teenager at the end of the Second World War, when he stayed with the Lowndes family. He recalled riding his bike from the Geelong railway station to Bannockburn and then to Russell’s Bridge. It must have been quite an adventure for a young lad. Joseph Lowndes, the youngest son of James Junior and Anastasia Senior, was still living on the old family property by the Moorabool River, and there were other relatives living in Bannockburn town. At that time James Lowndes the third was still living in High Street, in the modest weatherboard home where he and his wife had raised their large family.
It is likely Lionel visited Bannockburn and Geelong in 1946 because it had become known that Harriet Lowndes was unwell. Harriet Lowndes was Anastasia Junior’s older sister. She was nine years older than Anastasia, and the sisters had lived apart for many years, but it seems they remained close. Harriet Lowndes passed away in Geelong on 20 May 1946, when Lionel was sixteen.
Lionel always maintained that Anastasia managed the Kirkstall farm on her own, more or less, without a husband and facing great hardships and adversity. Anastasia’s three children, Gerry, Orry, and Eily, also worked on the farm, but she ran it. Anastasia had earlier married Ernst Schefferle while living near Bannockburn, and the children were all born there, but the family moved to Kirkstall after Ernst was released from prison. Lionel was never clear whether Ernst was ever at the Kirkstall farm after the family moved there in the mid-1920s, but he thought that Ernst might have visited once or twice prior to his death in 1929. Lionel was born in 1930 and so had no personal recollection of his grandfather.
The background story to Ernst and Anastasia’s married life at Bannockburn is quite tragic. During an episode of insanity, Ernst killed a youth working on the family farm. He was found not guilty due to insanity and confined to a prison for several years. He was subsequently released and lived for a couple more years before committing suicide while living at an institution for the mentally unwell.
Anastasia Lowndes and Ernst Schefferle married in 1907. Ernst and Anastasia knew each other from the time they were both children. He lived on a neighboring farm as part of a large and complicated blended family. His family lived just a decent walk down river from Anastasia’s family farm, at Sutherlands Creek. Although he went by the Schefferle surname, Ernst was part of the extended Muhlebach family, widely known for being successful orchardists northwest of Geelong.
The Shadows of the Gentlemen 