Life in the 1500's
The wealthy had slate floors which would get slippery in the winter when wet. So they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the entry way, hence a "thresh hold". They cooked in the kitchen in a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They mostly ate vegetables and didn't get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been in there for a month. Hence the rhyme: "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old." Sometimes they could obtain pork and would feel really special when that happened. When company came over, they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man "could really bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat." Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This happened most often with tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes... for 400 years. Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers - a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trencher they would get "trench mouth." Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the "upper crust". Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake". England is old and small, and they started running out of places to bury people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house and re-use the grave. In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the "graveyard shift" they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".

iii. How the West Was Won

by Ruth Pihl

A personal view of the history and development of Penshurst and its environment.

Notes from an address given to the Port Fairy Historical Society (Pioneers Dinner)

28th April, 2007.

****

When we were kids history sat alongside arithmetic as a series of dull undisputed facts, lots of dates and tiresome monologues of journeys across the Blue Mountains. There was little or nothing controversial, questionable or worthy of debate.

In this light I believed ....

Australia was colonized by the British who dumped a lot of convicts here to get rid of excess bread thieves and other criminals.

Aborigines were primitive and given to spearing people when angry. Squatters were rich people who owned sheep and took a dim view of "swaggies" in billabongs stealing them in hard times.

Settlers like Dad and Dave selected land and built rudely furnished log huts in which to raise their families.

Cities grew around good ports where ships could drop off people and take back things of value.

Gold was discovered in Ballarat and other places in Victoria. This made some people very rich but caused a labor shortage and the call for more convicts to work the squatters' land. There was a rebellion when taxes became too high.

Governments were made up of lesser English nobility, bureaucrats, military personnel and rich squatters and their mates. Punishment was harsh for people who didn't fall into any of the above categories.

Ned Kelly and his mates took to bushranging because they were Irish and good with horses.

Growing older I discovered that the people who write history books for grown-ups had individual views of Australia and their books reflected such views. History can't be "value free". There's too much blood and guts in it. 'Facts' began to crumble into opinions and cracks began to arise in theories once firmly held. People much older and wiser than me were beginning to question the basis on which much of our history was written.

It seems that what you saw depended on where you sat. The view from the homestead dining-room isn't the same as that from the scullery. The convict whipped for insubordination may not feel like singing "All Things Bright and Beautiful." Appointed but not elected Politicians or businessmen in city offices would have little understanding of the plight of the lonely Drover's Wife.

It is clichéd to say that history belongs to the winners but this seems to be so, especially when, for so long, the losers had no voice.

Until recent decades few people bothered to understand the lives of Aboriginal people or concede their right to hang onto a very different history to that of the schoolbooks we grew up with. But today its hard to maintain an unwavering faith in the traditional, though not necessarily factual, view of things. Its human nature to give credit where no credit is due because it is more comfortable than exploring any options.

And if we are to look at the development of the Western District we have to look fairly at the process of settlement on the one hand, and dislodgement of native peoples on the other. Rather than just applauding "development" per se we need to explore the costs. History cannot be merely a celebration of conquest or a litany of "great men" (and few women) doing great deeds. With closer scrutiny we find people who were hard working, humanitarian, enlightened, scholarly and open minded. On the other hand there were many who were greedy, single-minded, bigoted, cruel and dishonest.

Those who fit the former category include, from the Western district, Aboriginal Protector, Robinson, Assistant Sievwright, his successor Dr. Watton, Ethnologist James Dawson, his daughter Isabella and pioneer Richmond Henty among many others.

Here in our little township of Penshurst 500 or so people are getting on with their lives and few, I imagine, show more than a passing interest in the town's history. I'm a newcomer, settling here in the mid l990's, and enjoy a rather late interest in this district's past. I joined the Historical Society some years ago and feel a sense of something almost mystic meeting in our dusty, unrestored, junk-laden, leaky-roofed former courthouse. Like those who have come along tonight, we are from different backgrounds and don't see everything in the same way. That's what makes it interesting. There's so much to learn from one another.

Sometimes the 'truths' we hear do not stand up to closer examination and require amendment. Historians who might call themselves revisionist are not as quick to applaud unquestioningly the actions of those who 'settled the land' as earlier scribes writing history. They may choose to linger a while over the very earliest settlers of our country.

We read that aboriginal people had inhabited the district for many thousands of years. Plenty of food and water meant that, far from being 'nomadic' in the wider sense they would not have moved far from tribal lands. Animal fossil, including those of the 'super' marsupials, have been found in local bogs. Such prehistoric animals were thought, by Tim Flannery, to have been finally hunted to extinction by aboriginal people thousands of years ago. A district well watered by springs, including the present "never-failing" spring, the aboriginal tribe named "Kolor" was believed to be local though, as previously stated, their nomadic habits were noted. The word 'kolor', according to James Dawson who was concerned to note and record aboriginal languages, means lava.

Our volcano, Mt. Rouse, once thought to be a "young" volcano - along with Mt. Eccles to the West - is now believed to be an "ancient" volcano. Its said to have erupted some 300,000 years ago spewing lava and ash down to the coast and beyond. This is well illustrated at Tower Hill in the museum there.

Mt. Rouse was first sighted, and named, by Major Mitchell (the man who had a cockatoo named after him), from the vantage point of Mt. Napier to the west, on September l836. Three years later the first settler, John Cox took up land around the mount, moving north from Port Fairy. The district was already occupied by about 33 clans of the above tribe, along with many neighbouring tribes dotted throughout the district. White settlements were Germantown (Tarrington), Dunkeld, Wickliffe, Lake Boloke, down to Salt Creek, Hexham and Caramut.

The land around Mt. Rouse was said to be particularly good, or lucky according to the term Australia Felix given it by Major Mitchell. Relinquishing it was the source of a lot of bickering and discontent when Cox was sent packing after Lieutenant Governor La Trobe announced that a square, each side 10 miles, around and encompassing Penshurst, would be set aside for an Aboriginal Protectorate.

From here the various versions of the story of the spearing by natives of Cox's overseer, Codd are still told and we can choose which one sounds the most credible. However Codd died (by one spear or ten) it took two years to find an aboriginal named "Roger" guilty of murder and subsequently hanged for the offense. This despite the fact that he did not fit the description of the murderer and nor was he able to speak a word of English in his defence.

Historian Jan Chritchett and one-time resident of Port Fairy, tells us that :

"European settlement was already well under way in late 1838. Under the dates 8 and 13 September l938 Captain Foster "Flogger" Fyans, Police Magistrate at Geelong, sent to Sydney two lists 'which together named thirty-two men who from l August to l2 September had paid five pounds each for six month licences..in the "Western situation" of the "Geelong district." In early l938, David Fisher and an exploring party travelled across the district visiting the Grampians and the Pyrenees. It was at this time they established a station at Mount Shadwell (Mortlake). One is reminded of Margaret Kiddle's statement in 'Men of Yesterday.' By the end of l938 the Western District was in tenuous occupation.' Frederick Taylor was already at Mt. Noorat in March l939, and Matthew Gibson occupied land near Mt. William during l939. By October l839 the Colac country was comparatively crowded with stations, settlement having expanded westward from the more densely settled area north and north-west of Geelong. There were already three or four runs between Lake Corangamite and the Hopkins River including those of the Manifold Brothers, of Frederick Taylor and Henry Gibb on land that was to become the township of Camperdown. By the summer of l939-40 Charles Gray was established, the Burchetts had occupied the Gums station and John Muston had taken up land on Muston's Creek." History doesn't start in the late l830's but for Europeans it may as well have done. By that time much of the land was taken up by well resourced squatters, who were troubled by a dwindling supply of convicts, natives, unreliable shepherds in the days before fences, the unpredictability of weather and, as one historian coined the phrase, the "Tyranny of Distance." In l839, Western Victorian squatter, Niel Black, gave the following advice ..

"The best way (to procure a run) is to go outside and take up a new run, provided the conscience of the party is sufficiently seared to enable him without remorse to slaughter natives right and left. It is universally and distinctly understood that the chances are very small indeed of a person taking up a new run being able to maintain possession of the place and property without having recourse to such means - sometimes by wholesale."

According to Ian Clark's "Scars in the Landscape" Black didn't practice what he preached and finally bought the established run, Glenormiston.

Lets imagine, from here on, were going to write the screenplay for a film entitled "How the West was Won." Into this scene comes the politician, Lieutenant Governor La Trobe, the bureaucrat (and Aboriginal Protector) George Augustus Robinson and the man appointed to oversee the newly ascribed Mt. Rouse Protectorate, Assistant Protector ex-naval man Captain Charles Sievwright - the humanitarian. Later, in l842, under a year into his tenure, he would be sacked by Robinson on “moral” charges and his place taken by Dr. Watton - the doctor. Later, in this story will come ethnologist and amateur linguist James Dawson and his daughter Isabella and finally pioneer diarist Redmond Henty.

Four "Fixed Stations "were to be erected throughout the State for containing/protecting/supporting/feeding aboriginal people although only the one Mt. Rouse protectorate was ever built. The instructions given to the State's four Assistant Protectors - William Thomas, James Dredge, Edward Parker and Charles Sievwright were ...

"it will be your duty .. to watch over the rights and interests of the natives and to endeavour to gain their respect and confidence. You will, as far as you are able by your personal exertions and influence, protect them from any encroachments on their property and from acts of cruelty, oppression and injustice."

The above statement, coming from Governor Gipps in Sydney and originating in the English Parliament, is of benevolent Christian charity in line with that supposedly bestowed on the native peoples of other parts of the colonies, such as India, China and Africa. It was strongly influenced by the successful push to abolish slavery – at least that of slaves on British soil. The staff to carry out this charter, recruited in England, no doubt set off with the best of intentions and an unswerving belief in the governing bodies of the day to provide support. They were soon to be disillusioned and their mission doomed to early failure.

Back in Australia, we can picture them setting off. Wagons loaded high with household requirements, portable building materials, provisions etc. Protector Robinson had already travelled extensively in Victoria, mapping and plotting the various aboriginal tribal boundaries. By the time his Assistants were to be placed in the field, he was familiar was with most of the tribes and where their lands began and ended. Long winded and rather 'holier than thou,' he was nonetheless unwavering in his view that cruelty and/or injustice were not to be tolerated. In this regard he was outraged by the belief among squatters that sheep stealing meant a bullet. "Sheep did not equal a human life," he railed.

Into the picture comes Assistant Portector Seivwright with his family and entourage. After a few abortive attempts to settle at Lake Keilambete and Lake Terang Assistant Protector, Captain Seivwright finally settled, with his wife and seven children and a few staff at Mt. Rouse, where the Protectorate was established against strong opposition from local squatters. It is thought to have been located somewhere near the Penshurst spring (perhaps where the Police Station is today) though no trace of it remains.

He took his work seriously and struggled hard to adhere to the charter of duty above. He was quickly frustrated by the lack of promised food and provisions, building materials, support and, in fact, anything at all that might assist in making the Protectorate work. Considerable correspondence went back and forth to his superior, Governor Gipps in Sydney, most of it falling upon very deaf ears.

Despite the noted delineation of tribal boundaries, aboriginal people were 'herded up' from different and sometimes warring tribes and taken to Mt. Rouse, where they were to receive shelter and food rations in return for work, a settled secure life and where their children would be educated and brought up as Christians.

Nothing like this happened. Of the several hundred odd aboriginal men, women and children 'gathered' into Mt. Rouse, most came and went seeking food elsewhere. Rations were scant and often non existent. Few were able or willing to 'work' digging crops and when they were rewarded for doing so shared out among the underserving as well as the deserving as there was little enough to fend off starvation. Aboriginal Protector Robinson had little of practical benefit to offer and the two men fell permanently out of favour with one another.

Meanwhile, the Mt. Rouse establishment, encompassing around 10 square miles around the area that later became Penshurst, flounders and its aboriginal population drift in and out, often hunting and returning (when threatened by squatters) to the Protectorate. The Portland “Mercury” of August l842 reported on the Mount Rouse settlement:

"At the central aboriginal station and homestead of this district near Mt. Rouse the passing traveller is greeted by the appearance of a neat collection of huts in number about sixty, and having the appearance of a regular village. Streets have been laid out and trees and all other obstructions removed solely by the labour of the natives. The discipline of the community is extremely regular; exactly at the hour of six o'clock a bell is rung at the quarters of the Assistant Protector (at this stage, Dr. Watton) There is also a routine which included daily prayers, as one aspect of the Protectorate was to bring Christianity to the aboriginal people."

What are we to believe? No doubt the representatives of the Crown, Gibbs and LaTrobe, were able to assure gentlefolk in England that the natives were safe and being well cared for, the bureaucrat reinforces this view, accentuating the positive and overlooking the negative and the folks on the ground are going mad with overwork, stress, hardship and lack of even the most rudimentary support from those above. Sievwright, who was loathed by Robinson, was sacked for immorality in the form of alleged incest with his l6 year old daughter, and spent the rest of his life, or so we are told, back in England fighting in vain to clear his name.

His place was taken by Dr. Watton, a kindly man from all accounts, who maintains the Protectorate for another 8 or so years until the last aboriginal to be contained therein, collects up his or her frugal belongings and takes to the bush. Dr. Watton is quick to remind his superiors that he is, in fact, undertaking two jobs – that of medical practitioner and Assistant Protector. His salary, he complains, is not as high as that of his predecessor and nor does he hold the title “Assistant Protector.”

Despite this, Dr. Watton's medical ministrations outlast the Protectorate and his reputation remains positive. On the other hand, this gentle caring doctor who has treated much of the medical needs of those in his charge, (largely venereal and respiratory diseases), has not learned a single word of their language or languages and is no longer a believer in benevolent Christianity. In frustration perhaps he suggests a tougher line be taken with aborigines. In an enquiry into the conditions of the Port Phillip Aborigines in l845, Watton stated:

“Their wandering habits, their natural indolence, their thievish propensities, their innate pugnacious disposition, being in my opinion only to be kept in check by force, I fear that nothing short of a system of absolute coercion can effect any change worthy of the name of civilization.”

In l848 La Trobe agrees and recommended that coersion would replace co-operation, the young and old be seperated, that all be put to work on reserves where they would be forbidden to leave. The gloves were really off and the aboriginal people, subject to so much suffering and loss would be finally a defeated race entirely subject to the laws and custody of the white man.

According to Robert Hughes in his book "The Fatal Shore” (pp. 272-273) ....The fate of the Australian blacks was intimately connected to the System. A frontier society based on slave labor, run by the threat of extreme violence and laced with rigid social divisions was not likely to treat the Aborigines compassionately or even fairly. Nor did it. There was a great gap between policy and practice. The Royal instructions to every governor of Australia, from Arthur Phillip in l988 to Thomas Brisbane in l822, always repeated the same themes. The aborigines must not be molested. Anyone who "wantonly" killed them (and he and others state that over 20,000 of them had been murdered) or gave them "any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, must be punished. The aim in racial relations was "amity and kindness." The idea of converting them to Christianity would not be embodied in official policy until Brisbane's successor as governor, Ralph Darling came in 1825. Yet, even though white settlement began with no policy of racist persecutions, the coming of the whites was an unmitigated disaster for everyone with a black skin."

Documentation of the sites of aboriginal slaughter in the South West of Victoria, clustered far more densely than anywhere else in the State, clearly show the worst years for this type of violence to be the years l836-l842.

Back in l877, one district voice stood out. James Dawson, who considered himself an ethnologist (and linguist) rather than an anthropologist, expressed deep concern for the direction of aboriginal policy in the colonies. With the skilled assistance of his daughter Isabella, he provided a scholarly understanding of aboriginal language and culture. He believed that their customs were right and natural for them and decried the tendency to burden them with prayers and christian observances far more onerous and time consuming than that for whites.

Outraged at the thoughtless burial of one of the aboriginal chiefs in a bog outside the cemetery at Camperdown, Dawson raised funds to provide a respectful burial and erect a monument to him and to aboriginal people. This monument still stands in the Camperdown cemetery.

In the l981 Journal of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (Facsimile Edition), we hear Dawson's views ...
"Like many others, including the managers of both Framlingham and Lake Condah stations, Dawson felt that the Aborigines' claim to be paid for the work they did was a fair one. He sympathised with their complaint of 'too much hard work and nothing for it." .....Others, government officials, station managers, the general population, saw the advantages offered to the Aborigines on the Aboriginal Stations. Dawson saw the reverse, he saw what they lost: their freedom of movement, their religion, their way of life, even their simple amusements."

The world of the aboriginal people was shrinking fast. A huge country, an enormous hunting ground, thousands of years of tribal tradition and culture and a free, nomadic lifestyle traded for a mess of pottage – and on half rations at that.

Meanwhile, back in Penshurst, the last crumbling remains of the Protectorate will disappear as will its inhabitants. Before too long the few survivors will end up in Framlingham in the East or Condor in the West where enlightened Missionaries from England and Germany were be somewhat more successful in subduing, educating, converting aboriginal people. Of course the concept of human rights were still a long way off. We are reminded that the great excuse for brutality "I'm doing this for your own good," would echo down the decades with the destruction of aboriginal families, the removal of children and the incarceration of adults who over-indulge in white man's liquor. It would take another l50 years or thereabouts before the voices of the survivors would be raised, along with those of many white people in support, demanding redress for the horrors of the stolen generations.

By the end of the 19th century the last of the Victorian full-bloods will die out and people of mixed race will inhabit the areas put aside for their containment. Within the period of sixty years a pure native race that roamed free in this country for thousands of years will finally die.

So, in our drama of How the West Was Won, the aboriginal extras can exit, stage right for around a century and a half. The scene now belongs to the victorious whites, well armed, mounted on their thoroughbreds and falling over one another to take over the land largely emptied of its former occupants.

In our own little black book, the celebratory "Centenary of the Shire of Mount Rouse" published in l966, the changeover is well documented.

"On the closing of the native protectorate in 1842 (a mistake as the Protectorate didn't close until l849) speculation on the future of Mount Rouse grew among squatters. The attitude of many was that this superlatively rich country, having been taken compulsorily from John Cox, should be given back to him; but the administration thought otherwise.
Grazing rights were thrown open to the highest bidder. At that time the average rental from a large station was at most between Two Hundred and Three Hundred Pounds a year.
But when the Government made the allocation it was to a squatting firm that had offered Four hundred and Twenty Pounds a year. The squatters gasped in astonishment and shook their heads. It would never pay, they said. No land in the world was worth that money, which purchased only grazing rights.
But the Twomeys, who had secured the property, went about their own business in their own way. They fenced the property and ran sheep on it. Later they purchased most of the freehold and gave lie to the men who had predicted their failure.
.....The Viscount Canterbury, when Governor of Victoria, made Kolor his home during a week's shooting on the property which was then given as covering l0,400 acres. A shearing average of 23,0000 crossbred sheep and a herd of 600 shorthorn cattle were run jointly on the two stations.” (Kolor and Langelac, to the south).

At this stage, lest we think it remains a two-horse battle between spear throwers and bullet firers, we have to consider all the ordinary folks, the settlers and selectors, the unsung pioneers who may never see their names in gold on Honor Boards in Shire Offices. From Protectorate to Roads Board to Shire, the process in Penshurst took little over a decade.

But weren't the squatters doing more than living the good life, building Como-like homesteads and sending their kids to Geelong Grammar? Not really, according to Manning Clark who tells us that ....

"The bourgeoisie (aspiring middle classes perhaps) began to upset squatterdom's domination when they changed the land laws of the colonies. In the cities, towns and country-side the cry went up to 'unlock the lands'. The bourgeoisie in the cities took their stand on the principle of equality of opportunity. They also argued that the squatter's use of the land had been wasteful. Out of the 31,467,816 acres in the hands of squatters as licensed runs in the colony of Victoria in l858, the annual yield for home consumption in the colony and for export had a net value of only l,997,469 pounds, or one shilling, three and one-half pence per acre. Besides, those who occupied the thirty odd million acres could not supply the people of Victoria with food. " (p.133)

Here come a new lot of extras onto the scene. Small holder, selectors, would-be farmers and pastoralists. Dad and Dave come into view as do the battlers who will lose all and take to the roads when depression strikes in the l890s. Manning Clark follows them ...."Within four years of the passing of the 'Grant Act of l865' in Victoria, over 30,000 persons had taken up selections. Swagmen who had tramped idly from one end of Victoria to the other and wandering miners settled down on their selections. To make the improvements on the land prescribed by law selectors often had to borrow from banks, money-lending agents, and storekeepers. When they failed to meet their commitments, the land fell into the hands of their creditors, who thus became the owners of large estates in a district."

Perhaps in New South Wales, although surely not in districts like Penshurst? Here virtue was being rewarded as the newly formed Shire of Mount Rouse began naming its streets after early pastoralists and pioneers, though I'm sure few reflect the likes of Dad and Dave. These include Martin (Mt. Sturgeon), Ritchie (Blackwood and Woodhouse), Watton (the good doctor, see earlier), Scales (after Sceales of Blackwood and Woodhouse), Bell (Greenhills, Burchett (Gums Estate), Hutton (Purdeet, Cox (Mount Rouse Stones.)

Penshurst was described in l865 as a town with a population of about 400, and in l875 the Australian Handbook sets the population at 600 ...

".....with a steam flour mill and a tannery in the town, stone churches belonging to the Presbyterians and Roman Catholics, a Wesleyan Chapel, a State School, five hotels, a shire hall, a temperance hall and a mechanics institute. There was later a butter factory in the Park area, but this closed in the l960s, and Penshurst's only remaining industry was the crushing and supply of scoria from the mountain. In l890 the population 55l and in the l960s about 680."

Today many of these old buildings are still standing, though their original function is long gone. Our little black book records Past and Present Councillors commenting with the Mount Rouse District Road Board Members. Here we read names such as O'Brien, Richie, Twomey, Hutton, Sharrock, McIntyre, Eddington, Earls, Alexander etc. etc. In a long list of names starting in l860 and ending a century later in l960 the names of the district's pioneering families is extensive. You can clearly see the Scottish names well represented, with a growing number of German/Prussian/Wendish names. But there are no women - that battle is still to be won in the decades to follow.

What else does the little black book tell us? In the Commemorative Meeting of January, 25th, 1964 Captain Cook gets a mention. So does Governor Phillip, the current queen, loyalty, democracy and even the ancient Greeks, along with the welcoming of an Italian migrant family. There isn't a word about the former, but not ancient, Aboriginal Protectorate or the vision that was lost. History really does belong to the victors.

While we're still in period costume and its l858, we'll have a last look around. It's getting dark and soon we'll have to close for the day. Could there be a drop or two of rain in those clouds overhead? Over towards the north-west there is a prosperous and hard-working Lutheran community and, closer to Penshurst, is a strange commune established by one Frederick Krummnow, an adherent to the Saxony Moravian Brethren, a man who left his native Germany following religious persecution, and is currently loathed and vilified by the Lutherans nearby. It will take around l30 years before local Historian, Betty Huf and academic, William Metcalf, will write their story and place a kinder slant on the vision and work of this strange, inspired man.

While the Irish will settle and till the black soils of coastal Western Victoria and the Scots will move inland and take up huge swathes of land around Penshurst, the Lutheran communities are moving solidly into the district to the West of Penshurst and Tabor and Hochkirch (Tarrington) will be home to pioneering families from the Slavonic and German regions of Europe. Many, finding the grape-growing Barossa Valley region in South Australia to be fully settled, will buy land (often sight unseen) among the stones of Penshurst.

Hardworking, stoic, honest, clannish, rather humourless, their families will retain the old Germanic names and lifestyle until the First World War brings them into the spotlight and the dominant culture, the English, will force changes.

The lights fade and the cast leave the set. Someone, somewhere is looking at where the writers have found their sources ....

Lindsay Arkley, an SBS writer and researcher will give us a different and more three dimensional look at the life of Captain Charles Sievwright. The man known as "The Hated Protector" by squatters will be commended for his unflinching (though unsuccessful) care for the aborigines.

Jan Critchett's courageous and disturbing book, "A Distant Field of Murder" will leave us all feeling a little shaky. Much of the bloodshed in those murderous fields took place very close to home.

Manning Clark and Robert Hughes will set the scene for wide screen impact. They know all about the establishment of white settlement and will remind us, in case we forget, that The West Was Won by bloodshed and displacement and not by reason.

James and Isabella Dawson can both take a bow for their detailed, groundbreaking work in deciphering aboriginal languages and their attempts to understand and value the culture and ways of aboriginal people.

By the opening years of the 21st century, aboriginal people themselves will have a voice and Ian Clark of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies will present his detailed and scholarly work - Scars in the Landscape, a Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria, l803-1859. It will give little pleasure to have our suspicions confirmed that some of the very worst and most prolonged attacks took place here in this community. We cannot right these wrongs in any other way than to remember them with sorrow and respect their memory. We need to also applaud the heroes.

(James) Dawson lived first in Gunditjmara, and then in Kirrae the territory. In championing the Aboriginal cause throughout the latter half of the l9th Century, he would advocate many ideas similar to those which his compatriot, Charles Sievwright, had tried to promote years earlier. Largely, he would come across the same opposition among his fellow whites. Dawson would even be named a Guardian of the local Aborigines by the Victorian government, and eventually the results of much of his research into the languages and customs of several tribes would be published in Melbourne. It would become a primary reference work for future generations." The Hated Protector", p. 466.

Now then, before we get too philosophical, there's someone here who wants to step forward and say a word or two. His name is Richmond Henty, a resident of the region in the l860's, and a thoughtful, educated man with an eye for adventure and a keen interest in many of the things his new country has to offer. He has a keen, enquiring mind, writes a good yard and this is a tiny excerpt. Here, in l886 he is talking, among other things, about aboriginal weapons ...

"The boomerang is a simple-looking but wonderful weapon, and I much fear that "Jacky Jacky" would be greatly puzzled if called upon to explain the cause of its flighty antics, although it has been in the family for centuries. They have, too, the light reed spear for practice, made from the swamp cane. With this the blacks would spear at each other, and it was marvellous how dexterous they were in eluding the coming spear; and very rarely did a spear reach its mark, although thrown only a few yards.
With this spear, too, they were very expert in picking off "black-money" (a penny or halfpenny) from the top of a short upright stick, stuck in the ground at twenty or thirty yards. The coin must be struck fairly with the point or the shot did not count. Mentioning 'blackmoney' reminds me that the native then looked with contempt upon a sixpence, preferring a penny any day, because of its size! Happy mortals ye simple-minded ones! Delicious ignorance! Man builds up around himself an artificial life called civilisation, which becomes from habit a necessity, by which he is rules by a god of gold, or - to quote our American cousins - the almighty dollar, and which is constantly developing new requirements, in order to attain which he is ever in a whirl of anxious activity, thought, and perplexity.
Faith! I don't enjoy my tea now half as well as when made on the bush fire in a tin-billy in the old time long ago."

Goodbye Richmond. We'll let you fade out like the others. I wonder if his ghost was floating somewhere around the successful Land Rights Hearing at Mt. Eccles in past weeks? Perhaps Sievwright, Robinson, Watton and others were there too, but we'll never know. Best to leave this to idle speculation because this is what happens when the facts grow dim. In the end you can put it down to History.

Thank you,

Ruth Pihl ... 15th April, 2007

REFERENCES

Arkley, L. The Hated Protector, Shannon Books (Orbit)
Australia, 2000

Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (Facsimile edition, l981)
regarding ethnologist, James Dawson

Clark M. A Short History of Australia, Heinemann, London l969.

Clark P. Scars in the Landscape, Australian Institute of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Studies, l995.

Corris P. Aborigines and Europeans in Western Victoria, Occasional
papers in Aboriginal Studies, No. l2, Canberra, l968
(Dr. John Edward Watton).

Coleraine Historical Society
The Story of Condah Mission by Mr. Wright, Newspaper
cuttings, Coleraine Albion, l957

Critchett J. A Distant Field of Murder Melbourne University Press

Hamilton College "Windows to Yesterday - A selection of Properties from
the Hamilton District," Hamilton Spectator Print, l988.
(a research project undertaken by Year 11 History students)

Henty R. Australiana or My Early Life, Ballantyne Press, London,
l886.

Hughes R. The Fatal Shore Pan Books, l987.

Metcalf W. & Huf E. Herrnhut Australia's First Utopian Commune,
Melbourne University Press, 2002

Moodie W. William Moodie A Pioneer of Western Victora, (edited
with notes by Joan Palmer), Hedges & Bell Pty. Ltd.
Maryborough, 1973.

Mount Rouse & District Historical Society .. various files and documents
including A History of Mount Rouse by Rev. Chris Baulch,
March l973, and Souvenir Calendar, First l50 years.

O'Brien B. Articles from Hamilton Spectator, 200l/2

Shire of Mount Rouse ..In the Centre of the Fertile Western District of
Victoria, Centenary Booklet, l966.

Watton Papers from the private family papers provided by
John A. Turnbull.

**************

Site contents:

1. Index

2. Penshurst 150 yrs

3. Serials & Stories

4. Historical

5. Aim Was Preservation

6. Tribes Shared

7. Explore Historical Penshurst

8. Museum

9. Events

10. Feature Articles (this page)

11. ARCHIVE

12.MEMBERS

Site contents:

1. Index

2. Penshurst 150 yrs

3. Serials & Stories

4. Historical

5. Aim Was Preservation

6. Tribes Shared

7. Explore Historical Penshurst

8. Museum

9. Events

10. Feature Articles (this page)

11. ARCHIVE

12.MEMBERS

Site contents:

1. Index

2. Penshurst 150 yrs

3. Serials & Stories

4. Historical

5. Aim Was Preservation

6. Tribes Shared

7. Explore Historical Penshurst

8. Museum

9. Events

10. Feature Articles (this page)

11. ARCHIVE

12.MEMBERS

Ed.: We are leaving the pictures below, since they are most relevant to the above topic, i.e. without Mt Rouse, no Penshurst.

Our oldest photographs show a virtually treeless Mt Rouse (left). The mountain shows many deep "scars" after "mining" (right).

A "belt" of wattle trees could until recently be seen below the pines.

The southern slope of Mount Rouse has no pine trees. The removal of the pines, as well as of the wattle trees has now been completed.

8/8/02: The walking track (above right) is well underway.

iv. "FRIGHTFUL RAILWAY ACCIDENT"*

The headline above appeared in The Western Agriculturist on March 8, 1890. A tombstone at Boram Boram cemetery a few kilometres outside Penshurst, is the only visible reminder of the accident, 109 years later. The news paper article lists the seven names John Dillon 24yrs, James O'Brien, 28yrs, John O'Donnell, 28yrs, John Dumphey, 25yrs, Patrick M' Gee, 33yrs, William Walters, 25yrs, James Stanley, alias Donelly, alias O'Callaghan, 23yrs. As can be seen from the tombstone, James O'Brien's name is not listed, and several of the names are spelt differently. We do not know why one of them was buried separately, but it is noted that James O'Brien.."supposed to have relatives in Melbourne and said to have been an ex-constable". All were Irish, and all were unmarried. Nine others were injured in the accident:

"A terrible catastrophe occurred on Saturday evening within about two miles of Penshurst. About 25 of the men employed by Messrs. N. McNeil and Co. in the construction of the railway from Penshurst to Koroit left the former township about a quarter past seven o'clock ...The truck in which the men travelled was pushed before the engine, the latter being in charge of Driver Simpson.

THE ENGINE DRIVER'S STATEMENT

James Edward Simpson said: ..Nearing the scene of the accident we were going about 20 miles an hour or so...The guard of the train was on front of the engine. He gave a signal "Steady" with his hand. I reversed the engine about 20 yards before the truck struck the bullock. It might have been more than 20 yards. I did not see the bullock on the line, and it was impossible for me in my position to to see it at all, as it was in the cutting on the left hand side. ...When I reversed I called to the fireman to put the brake on and he did so...If I had seen the bullock in the cutting I would have stopped as soon as possible...I did not hear anybody on the truck to sing out about the cow...The engine was going about 15 miles an hour....The whistle was blown.

STATEMENTS BY MEN WHO WERE IN THE TRUCK

...I heard the chaps singing out that there was was something in front, I gave a look, saw the bullock and in a second the truck upset to the right side...

SEVEN MEN KILLED - NINE OTHERS INJURED

...The truck left the rails and capsized to the right side. The engine rushed on top of the truck and the carnage was fearful. About ten of the men were fortunately thrown clear of both truck and engine and escaped with a few scratches.. Two of the unfortunate travellers, however, fell directly under the wheels of the engine, one of them being decapitated and the other cut in two, the wheels passing over his stomach...James Stanley....was caught under the truck, had his skull fractured, ribs and shoulders broken, and right arm severed from the body."...

DR. FRANK A. SWEETNAM

"My name is FRANK A. SWEETNAM and I declare under oath that I am a duly qualified Medical Practitioner residing at Penshurst.

I attended at the scene of the accident to the contractors’ train from Penshurst at about 8 p.m. or a little before that hour on Saturday night, and found life then extinct in the bodies of seven men.

On the Sunday morning, after I made a close examination of the bodies of the seven following men, I found the wounds on each as follows..

1. JOHN DUNPHY had a flesh wound on the right leg, contusions over the whole body, blood pouring from left ear, and a fracture on base of skull, which was the immediate cause of death.

2. JAMES O’BRIEN contused wounds on both legs, face livid, marked ecchymoses over body, chaff in mouth. No apparent wound sufficient to cause death, which, to the best of my belief was due to suffocation.

3. WILLIAM WALTERS had a contusion on chest, lacerations of upper lips, face livid, superficial wound on right hip, bloody froth issuing from mouth. None of his external wounds were sufficient to cause death, which, in my opinion, was due to suffocation.

4. PATRICK McGEE, I found had his left arm fractured in two places, his skull fractured, neck fractured, the skull being almost severed from the body.

5. JOHN DILLON had slight abrasions on both legs, contusions on right arm, and also on back of right shoulders, froth and chaff in mouth, face livid. None of his wounds were sufficient to cause death which, from the signs and general appearance of body was, to the best of my belief, due to suffocation.

6. JOHN O’DONNELL had slight wounds on both legs, severe scalp wounds, fractures of left arm, badly cut, almost in two through abdomen, fracture of spine through lumbar vertebrae.

7. JAMES CALLANAN had a fracture of left forearm, compound fracture of right shoulder, lacerated wound of axilla cutting through large vessels, fractures of skull and right ear torn off."

(SIGNED) F.A. SWEETNAM

Surgeon and Physician

March 4^th.

TAKEN AND SWORN at Penshurst the 20^th day of March l890 before me (Coroner; indecipherable name)

The above statement read by Eric Pihl at the Commemoration ceremony

On the 26^th March, 2000

HOW THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED

It is quite clear that the primary cause of the accident is to be found in the circumstance that the truck in which the unfortunate men were being conveyed was pushed before the engine instead of being drawn after it. Such a proceeding would not be permitted on a line working under the regulation of the Victorian Railways, but on a line in course of construction - still under the management of the contractors - it may, it appears, be done without transgressing any known rule.

AT THE PENSHURST HOTEL

...Dr. Sweetnam did all that medical skill could do to alleviate pain, and he was soon joined in his ministrations by Dr. Woodforde, of Penshurst, and Drs. Bennett and Robinson of Hamilton, who speedily responded to a telegraphic summons. It was found that three of the men were so badly hurt that skilled nursing was required for them, and they were removed to the Hamilton Hospital by special train on Sunday.

THE FEELING IN PENSHURST

..."Such an inhuman butchery is a disgrace to civilization, and if we may only have railways at such acost we would a thousand times prefer to be without them"...Had the engine gone before it the locomotive would possibly have had little difficulty in dealing with a stray animal.

THE UNFENCED LINE

The line is fenced nearly all the way to Hawkesdale, but there are still gaps here and there through which cattle may come without let or hindrance..."

The following song has been submitted by our correspondent:

Words On a Stone

Down where the grass covers words on a stone,

and old plastic flowers are withered and blown.

If you look very close, you will see without fail,

that here lie the men who died out on the rail.

"There's cattle a-straying" James O'Callahan said

"They're out on the line", so he said.

The rest of the story in history is read

how by evening the seven lay battered and dead.

Some miles out of Penshurst, out there in the stones

young bodies were scattered and torn

and the People of Penshurst all wept when they saw

the brave Irish lads who would travel no more.

Now more than a hundred long years have flown.

The railway is closed and the sleepers have gone,

but for sleepers whose spirits stayed there with the train

we'll sing them to rest back in Ireland again.

***

By Ruth Pihl, 28/4/1999.

*We thank Joe Ewing for providing the original newspaper article.