Serial

1. Second World War Memories - Arthur B Cook

When the war started I was fifteen years old, going to the Warrnambool Technical school, I really wanted to be a soldier but as everybody was saying that it wouldn’t last long, I thought that I would never get a chance to go.

I used to go to the billiard room when I was at home, and gradually boys began to disappear as they joined the army.
There was three Smith brothers, Tom, Ossie, and Vin, their father was the local policeman; another three brothers, the Hilderbrandts, Bob, Jim and Gus who went into the army about the same time. They all ended up in the 2/23 battalion of the Ninth Division, or the Ninth Div as is commonly known. Jack Page, Syd Mirtschin, Edgar (Peg) Mirtschin also served in the Ninth Div.
Mr Smith would read letters to us in the billiard room from his sons when they were in the Middle East and mum would make cakes for me to send to Bob Hilderbrandt.
I joined the Navy in August 1942 at the age of seventeen. I was on the Westralia in 1943 and we took a load of Ninth Div blokes to Milne Bay.
When the Ninth Div returned to Australia from the Middle East, Gus Hildebrandt, Tom and Ossie Smith were discharged as medically unfit because of wounds. Jack Page had been transported to Germany as he had been taken a prisoner of war.
Bob Hildebrandt was amongst the soldiers and during the week they were on the Westralia I saw a lot more of Bob and met all his mates.
At this time I was a Naval Commando serving as beach party on the Westralia. We did a landing at a place called Arawee on the coast of New Britain and when we got back to Milne Bay several of us had to take passage to Cairns where the Navy had set up a training camp to practice invasion tactics and here we gave all of the Ninth Div and all of the Seventh Div experience in landing on enemy beaches from landing barges. I met all the Penshurst boys again as they came to do their training.
When this training was finished all of the Seventh Div, Ninth Div etc headed off to an island called Morati, here again I was able to visit Vin Smith and Jim and Bob Hilderbrandt.
When the Ninth Div invaded Tarakan, I went from Morati to Tarakan on the same invasion barge as Syd Mirtschin - I played cards with his mates for seven days.

In an article that I wrote about the Ninth Div I, referred to them as Bronze ANZACS. I shall explain why.

Whilst I was on the Westralia we took supplies and ammunition to the Ninth Div at Finchaven on the North Coast of New Guinea. As an old commanding officer of mine, Lieutenant Commander Jack Band was killed there during the invasion, some of us were given permission to go ashore and pay our respects. This was the first time I saw a Cat 12 Power Road Grader. The Yanks had two and were making roadways through the coral and bush to the beach. They were fantastic, unbelievable; they did the job in no time.

A little further along the beach were the Ninth Div soldiers naked to the waist. Wearing slouch hats, swinging picks, shovel, crowbars and axes; they were as brown as berries and their muscles ripped in their sweat. Tough hard men making their roadways. My mate said, "look at them", I said, "yes, Bronze ANZACS".

There is always a punch line so here it is:

When the Yanks finished their roadways they tore off along the beach leaving our blokes swinging their picks. In a couple of hours the Yanks could have done the job that it probably took our soldiers another two days of back breaking work. This is when I realised what great blokes the Yanks were and nothing I have seen since has changed my mind.

As this short story is about the 2/23 Ninth Div, I wish to state that Jim and Bob Hilderbrandt, Vin Smith and Syd Mirtschin served the whole of the life of the 2/23. - Middle East, New Guinea an finally Tarakan Borneo In this year of 2007, the day after the elections*, Syd Mirtchin is the only living member of this gang. Jack Page, after his action in the Middle East and prisoner of war experiences is also another living treasure.

Although you might think Syd Mirtschin a rather quiet sort of person, I can assure you he was not always so. When I was introduced to his mates as a mate from his home town, they could not sing Syd's praise loud enough. He was one of the most popular men in his mob.

I must say the same for the Smiths and the Hilderbrandt. Whenever I visited them, their mates went out of their way to tell me what great blokes they were.

All of the Ninth Div. and Seventh Div. soldiers went out of their way to be nice to sailors. They would talk about the Navy getting them off Crete and how they fed them and brought in ammunition to them in Tobruk.

I was hitchhiking along a road to the 2/23 on Morati to see the boys when this jeep pulled up. "Hop in sailor", the Brigadier said, "Where are you going?" "To see some mates of mine from my home town in the 2/23" I replied.

He took me back to his mess, thanked me a dozen times for what the navy had done for them in the Middle East, shouted me a couple of beers and sent me off in his private jeep with his batman to the 2/23. The Hilderbrandts and Smiths thought it a great joke. The story probably did the rounds of the camp.

Arthur B Cook

November 2007

*Footnote: Presumably the Federal election.

2. Twomey family and Kolor Station - Phillip Doherty

Penshurst

John Joseph Twomey, his wife Margaret and six children arrived aboard the Royal Consort in 1844. It seems another three children were still in Ireland. John Twomey was listed as a labourer on the ship records but this maybe so he could qualify for a free passage - labourers being in much demand. Little is known of the Twomey's first years on the Port Phillip district of NSW (as Victoria was known then).

The first record of the Twomey farming enterprises is in 1852 when John Twomey Jr took over the lease of the Old Stockyard run from William Buckley (later transferred to John Snr). John Twomey Jnr bid for £420 per annum for eight years was accepted for the vacated run known as Kolor which had been surveyed out of the Aboriginal Protectorate. John Snr's daughter Honara arrived aboard the Argyle in 1853. The eldest daughter Katherine stayed in Ireland.

In 1859 Denis Twomey, the 5th son of John and Margaret, died aged 24. Another son Timothy was with his father at the Old Stockyard and Daniel was in partnership with John Jnr at Kolor. Records show that they had both signed a petition for a Police Station in Penshurst in 1860. Edward, the youngest son was also now buying land with his brothers in the Parish of Yatchaw East and Langulac.

The 1862/3 Shire of Minhamite records show that Edward, John and Daniel had bought 4695 acres in the Parish of Langulac expanding Kolor south. The following year John Twomey Jnr was elected to the Mount Rouse Council.

The Shire of Mount Rouse first ratepayers' book 1864 records J & E Twomey owning land in Yatchaw East, John and Daniel Twomey owning Kolor 10837 acres valued at £1500 and timothy owning 1079 acres at Yatmerone.

Then tragedy struck in 1865 as John Jnr went missing form the ship Edina traveling from Warrnambool to Melbourne. John left a widow and four children. The children had all been born at Kolor Mount Rouse. It appears that John's widow Mary and the surviving partner in Kolor, Daniel couldn’t agree on a settlement so they ended up in court.

Ed., 24/6/2008: Thank you Phillip for researching the Twomey Family and Kolor Station Penshurst and for permitting us to upload your article to our website. Phillip also provided two photographic prints of Kolor and its surroundings. The one including Daniel Twomey is in much better condition than that in our Society's archives and is uploaded here (top left). We assume that they were taken in the early 1870's, since the homestead seems to have been built "recently". If any of our 'visitors' has any further information and or photographs, please let us know. Better still, please lend us related old photographs. We will scan them in within a day or two and hand back the original(s) immediately.

Two more installments to follow.

3. Dr. Tom Stephens' Address to the Historical Society, 3/8/2007

It was suggested I make this talk a life history but it is not to be a catalogue of meaningless events in an undistinguished life, nor is there is anything heroic about it. It is an account of a couple of individuals who have had more exposure to the process of globalisation than most and have tried usually to adapt to rather than confront a variety of cultures and environments. I propose doing a little bit of analysis, hopefully objectively, and paying attention to role models we have encountered, directly or indirectly, who have refused to adapt and have boldly maintained their own standards. My original culture was a small Welsh farming community. It was in the parish of Llanwrthwl in the county of Powys where we lived on a hill farm which had an area of 157 acres of land which was allegedly arable but was mostly peat bog or rock. The environment was cold, hard and wet, our fuel was peat from the bog and the amenities which we now take for granted were absent. The main asset was that we had grazing rights on two mountains and were able to run about 600 sheep. The breed was small and exceedingly tough and we said they would live when the crows would die. In winter they sometimes lasted for weeks buried in snow drifts and with nothing to eat but their own wool. Their lives were determined by the combination of their own physical nature with the environment of the treeless waste on which only they could survive but with minimal human interference. Their behaviour was similar to that of many territorial ungulates in the wild. They were strongly territorial and each female remained in the same small patch for the whole of her life in spite of the absence of fences and would return spontaneously if driven away for any reason. This pattern was maintained indefinitely in the female line. The dominant male would concern himself with his harem but young adult rams formed bachelor bands in early adult life and wandered more. They shed their wool every summer and it was so coarse and thick that they could not be shorn until it began to rise and permitted shears to get under it but if left too long it would fall off on the hillside. This meant we had to have a shearing day on the second Wednesday in June and a farmer’s cooperative. The neighbours would all come to help and on their appropriate days we would go to them in return.

Modern developments in biology invite appraisal of the human community by standards just used for the sheep and the results are salutary. We were indeed territorial, tribal and hostile to strangers and there was a feature common to rural communities the world over for 200 years, and as obvious in the Western District as anywhere else, the chronic wastage, predominantly of young males, by emigration. Sociologists attribute it to the attraction of the bright lights of the city but biologists call it genetic drift, an essential feature of human evolution. Whatever the explanation I departed for medical school at the appropriate age. At the time it felt like a free choice but there is a doubt and it may be significant that when my father died when I was 20 I dithered between the two cultures for several years, happy with neither and not applying myself effectively to either with the result that I only just survived. I did eventually qualify and escaped completely from the early environment but, at the same time made a half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt to escape from medicine by taking up psychiatry. This had the odd advantage that it was not just badly taught in medical school but not taught at all and I could do it independently.

It was interesting in this context to discover later the life history of Isaac Newton. He and I do not have much in common but he does provide a startling example of how difficult it can be to move from a simple if traumatic childhood culture to a complex alien one. He too was born on a farm but his childhood was considerably more uncomfortable than mine and the outcome was not happy. His relationship with his parents was so awful that he threatened to burn down the house with them in it. It is said that he was not even taught arithmetic properly at school but went off like a rocket when he got to university and, as genius does, educated himself, then going on to be the greatest mathematician and theoretical physicist there ever was. The reality is different. There is no particular reason to assume the teaching at his primary school was necessarily poor and more likely that failure to learn would have been due to boredom and inattention because of lack of stimulation of a giant intellect at home or at school. It is understandable that he would take off when he got the necessary stimulus but for all he might have had difficulty in finding a teacher who could keep up with him the fact was that for all his life if anybody tried to correct him he went berserk. It is unquestioned that he invented the calculus and proved the law of gravity and the laws of motion but he had some peculiar interests too and was much involved in alchemy. Shortly before he died he was asked by his biographer if the story that he discovered the law of gravity because an apple fell on his head when he was sitting under a tree instead of minding the cattle was true and he said it was. The fact is the law was first suggested to him by Robert Hooke, the curator of the Royal Society and he discussed it with both Wren of the cathedral and Halley of the comet before he proved it. His proof had nothing whatsoever to do with apple trees. That bit of history is bunk.

After medical school I joined my own version of the bachelor band by entering the army and got some more surprises. This was more than 50 years ago at a time when Britain was still completely dominated by class and I found that by becoming an army officer I was entering a social class which I had scarcely known to exist. Incidentally, our daughter Kate has recently been earning her living reporting the doings of the Royal family and it is obvious that fascination persists though perhaps not with the same fawning subservience now and with more resentful envy. The army itself was also a surprise and there were many who could not cope with it. Some think all soldiers are stupid and rigid but they are only half right. However, once you have accepted and contented yourself with the rules, which are there for good reason, it becomes protective and comfortable. In compensation it provides an interesting life. My first really alien experience was Singapore and that was a shock which started on the way from the airport. I asked the driver the incredibly stupid question that, seeing none of the houses had chimneys, how did they do their cooking? More was to follow. Norma worked for a very successful criminal lawyer who had a large staff of people who admitted us to the local community. Her best friend was a lovely Eurasian woman named Coral da Cruz who was married to the general secretary of the Worker’s party. He played a large part in my education. He told me repeatedly that I was a racist, fascist, bourgeois colonialist with a fixed belief that I was superior to him. Eventually, given some uncertainties about definitions, I came to understand that he might well have been right on all counts but the prejudices being expressed were his not mine. We also met mirror image snobbery in the army culture. We had a house warming party and one of the army wives congratulated Norma on her courage in inviting “those people” to her house. The lady was unaware that one of those people was the chief minister of Singapore and Norma left her in her ignorance. Of course we often got it wrong ourselves. Sometimes on Sundays we would go to the Tanglin club for a reistafel or curry lunch. One of the splendours of that was the ceremony when waiters would come in bearing a highly polished half barrel with brass rings and containing rice so beautifully cooked it lay there wriggling like maggots. Other times we would go instead to Koek lane which was symbolically at the bottom of the hill below the club and there we would eat excellent food from concrete tables in the street and when we were finished a waiter would come with a bucket of water and throw it over the table top to wash the leavings into the gutter. One evening when we were there we had the pleasure of seeing waiters from the Tanglin club complete with songkoks and cummerbunds carrying the famous barrel and buying rice from a street trader’s wheel barrow to be delivered up the hill. We dearly loved Singapore and wept when we had to leave.

Next came Germany. It was a great contrast but we got on well with the Germans who make good friends even if they do make implacable enemies. We had been taught in Singapore that people in a foreign country love it if you take the trouble to learn their language and we tried to learn German. Of course it is a sophisticated language but very logical and once you master the grammatical rules not all that difficult. In any case we found that you can get by with three primary phrases Noch ein bier bitte, Ich liebe dich and Mein freund bezalt, which translate respectively as Another beer please, I love you and my friend will pay. Norma became involved in running what she called the opera fiddle. Each month she would hire a bus, pack in about 50 people and go to the opera at Dusseldorf. Opera is an important part of German culture and they can afford to take it casually. The first opera I heard in German was Carmen. In the third act there is a moment when Carmen has rejected Don Jose and he sings “Do you no longer love me?” and she replies “No I do not love you any more” which translate into “Liebst du mich nicht mer” and “Ich liebe dich nicht mer”. It was a bit of a joke that we enjoyed ourselves as we sat solemnly listening to unpronounceable German in a Spanish opera written by a couple of Frenchmen and sung by a prima donna who was actually Australian. At that point Carmen hurls his sword back at him and on that occasion it landed on the tip of the scabbard with the result that the weight of the sword dragged it out of the scabbard and it flew into the orchestra pit, threatening to decapitate the conductor. It stopped the show and made my day.

On one occasion we visited Trier which is a beautiful ancient city in South West Germany. At one end of the main street is a ruined castle which was once the home of a governor of Gaul who subsequently became the Roman emperor Constantine 1st, a ruthless brutal man who could be more appreciated than he is for being the true author of the Nicene creed and the founder, for political reasons, of the form of Christianity which prevailed during the dark ages and lasted a thousand years. Few people would care to admit taking him as a role model but he was, nevertheless, one who changed the course of history. Just along the street in a row of elegant houses we came across another important one. It had a brass plate which led us to a very different but equally momentous history. Apparently it was once owned by a wealthy Jewish family but the father, who was a lawyer and active politically and socially, evidently decided it would be politic to become a Christian and converted to Lutheranism. He had a very bright son who was only six at the time and might well have been affected by the social tensions. He too later went off to university, first in Bonn and later, at the insistence of his father, in Berlin. At the age of 23 he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy for a dissertation on atheism in ancient Greek philosophers and by then had also become involved in what was called higher criticism and rejected Christianity so violently that he was unable to remain at the university. He became a journalist but continued to be aggressively abrasive and must have been a sore trial to his father who disapproved of everything he did. His ultimate indiscretion was to marry a Prussian aristocrat. Her family would not welcome a Jew and his family were no better pleased either so they packed up and went to France. They were in Paris in 1871 at the time of the Parisian commune when the common people rose in defence of their city against the Prussians and their own inadequate government. They would have been ambivalent but were supportive though not directly involved. He also tried Belgium and was in and out of Germany before settling in England. While there he seems to have become less combative and wrote regularly for an American magazine but he never really worked for a living and spent much time in the reading room of the British Museum engaged in literary research. He was fortunate that he, his wife, six children and, according to one account, a couple of domestic servants, were maintained in fair comfort if not luxury by a German industrialist, a friend and fellow author, who was running his own father’s textile factory in Manchester. He was passionately interested in the plight of the factory workers of the industrial revolution and spent time trying to teach them his philosophy but had little success because they did not understand him and were not much interested. He lived well but was almost certainly an unhappy man, a Jew who was no more fond of Judaism than he was of Christianity, unable to live in his home country, estranged from both his in-laws and his own family and unable to relate to those people of his new country who were most important to him. He spent the rest of his life in London, deprived during his lifetime of the attention he deserved, and is now buried in Highgate cemetery. In case you have not worked it out already his name was Karl Marx, the industrialist friend and co-author was Friedrich Engels and their most important publication was the Communist manifesto. Those who know about Marx might say my account is inaccurate and might be right because he lived an exciting life and many reports about him are conflicting, even about bald facts, and almost certainly untrue but what I have said is at least consistent with his biography by Engels.

For me four great years in Germany were followed by return to England and confrontation by the phenomenon of the Peter principle. This states that those employed in a hierarchical organisation like the army who do a good job are promoted whereas those who do not are not. The result is that inevitably all reach their level of incompetence and that becomes their life’s work until retirement. I reached mine and had no intention of continuing to work for the incompetent British government which was at the time my only possible employer. The result was the happy one of migration to Australia and another culture shock. I arrived in Melbourne on a Friday morning and was told there would be a staff meeting in my office at nine on Monday. Like a good soldier at 8.55 I was there and found myself alone. I investigated and was reassured with the words. “Don’t worry about it mate. They’ll be right”. Indeed they were and most of them within half an hour of the appointed time. This was in the Victorian drug and alcohol service and their behaviour was characteristic of the way they put their special brand of egalitarianism above all, including efficiency. I have probably said enough about that job but do want to pass on three important facts I learned. The first is that tobacco is more addictive and far more dangerous than heroin, the second is that alcohol does more damage than all the other drugs and the third is that nobody will believe or even wants to hear the first two.

The next move was into forensic psychiatry and some interesting experiences in the prisons and most excitingly in the notorious J Ward. When I went there it was generally thought to be a snake pit but it would have been better termed a cess pit because it was used to deposit those who were too offensive for other institutions and were put in there to rot. On my first visit I was taken out into the yard and was approached by one of the inmates. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by staff who cried “Look out this is George”. Apparently he enjoyed killing people and was good at it. He wanted to know whether I was married to Princess Margaret so my accent was for once an advantage. Years later, after J Ward was closed, I went to Mont Park hospital in Melbourne and as I walked in George came flying through the air and I thought my time had come. In fact he kissed me warmly and wetly for coming back to see my old friend after our long separation. Another inmate had been in hospital continuously for over thirty years, a J Ward prototype. He frequently complained that a brontosaurus was peering at him over the wall. He was a highly intelligent man with a lovely schizophrenic wit. One day we were talking to a male nurse who was a little on the tubby side and he said to me “He is pregnant you know, by the charge nurse, and is carrying twin brontosauri.” There is no question here of poking fun at the handicapped because it was he who was doing the laughing. It takes a schizophrenic to tell a schizophrenic joke like it is best that only the Irish should tell Irish jokes and only Jews should tell Jewish ones because only they can get quite the right mixture of irony and sadness. While in the army I had made a friend of an elderly Jewish gentleman who had been born in Hamburg. He had a fund of Jewish jokes but the best was that he had spent WW1 in the German army fighting the British and WW11 in the British army fighting the Germans and doubted whether military service was of much value. Incidentally, he said he much preferred the German army because the wine the women and the song were all better.

Finally I made the fortunate final choice of the western district to live and work and felt obliged to combine farming and medicine again, a choice which had been abandoned many years before. The reason is obscure but it could be that I had found the trick of getting Norma to do most of the work in both occupations. Lessons I had learned the hard way seemed to provide benefit and the new culture was probably the most friendly we had met so I did a little better the second time round. I did not expect to be the world’s best farmer but thought I did know a little bit about it and would get away with cattle farming on a small scale. Wrong again. What I did know was inappropriate and worse than useless but life experience was protective. We planned to ask the neighbours when we had problems but were well aware of the rural sense of humour which sometimes led to disinformation and no doubt a private giggle or two and were prepared for the possibility that in any case the advisers were not necessarily quite as knowing as they thought they were. In the end we adopted the rule that we would ask for advice and then think hard about it on the principle if you have a 25 % chance of being right and do the opposite then you should average 75%. I shall not presume to tell you more about your own environment but there is one thing that those who have always lived here may not have noticed as forcibly as a blow in like myself would do. You may have heard of a recent incident that might warn of coming changes. A young woman was shopping in Safeway and when she returned to her car etc.

Ed.: This concludes Dr Tom Stephens' article.

4. Hopkins Hill and Chatsworth House - by Phillip Doherty

1. "Hopkins Hill" Station

Hopkins Hill; former property at Hopkins River near Chatsworth; Port Phillip pastoral license No. 91; 98,640 acres, 30,000 sheep.

1836 - The Clyde Company started with 10 partners to develop sheep stations in the Port Phillip district; head station "Golfhill" managed by George Russell (partner).

1840 - Clyde Company; (Henry Gibb manager; Bell & Buchanan agents).

1842 - Dr Officer & captain Wood (Captain Patrick Wood was a Clyde Co, partner).

1842 - Capt. Wood's affairs put into the hands of Bells and Buchanan, local agents for the Clyde Co.

1843 - Capt. Wood in financial trouble. Alex Russell to manage Hopkins Hill.

1844 - Nov; - George Russell (Clyde Co. partner) recommended Clyde Co. to buy Hopkins Hill.

1844 - June; J&A Dennistoun take for themselves, the "Hopkins Hill" establishment, paying Capt. Wood 7,500 pounds; also the "Green Hills"* at cost (John Dennistoun was a Clyde Co. partner).

Sometime after 1844 the Clyde Company bought Hopkins Hill as George Russell in his annual report (June 1849) valued the property at 11, 000 pounds. This valuation consisted of 25,000 sheep, 1000 cattle, 30 horses, plus run and improvements.

1854 - John & Alexander Dennistoun, Clyde Company partners, paid the Clyde Company 618 pounds for the lease of both Hopkins Hill and Green Hills in 1854. Perhaps when Captain Woods affairs were sorted out the Clyde Company bought the runs and leased them back to the Dennistouns.

1855 - John Rutherford, Manager for Dennistoun Bros. & Co. Rutherford was later credited with finding the cure for the sheep scab disease.

1858 - "Hopkins Hill" station sold to John Moffat.

1859 - "Chatsworth House" was begun by architect James Fox, for John Moffat.

1860 - 8,000 acres of Moffat's run (freehold) being sold in Warrnambool and Belfast, Moffat hoping to buy it back later.

1864 "Shire of Mount Rouse", first rate payers - Moffat, John, 11,000 acres; "Gums" station, Mt Rouse, 1,255 pounds; "Hopkins Hill"" station, Caramut, 1,000 pounds.

1871 - John Moffat died at sea - all Moffat stations, except "Hopkins Hill", to be sold

2. John Moffat

1839 - June 20th; - letter from Philip Russell to George Russell. "The William Mitchell" has arrived with six men ... Moffat, whom Capt. Wood wished to keep as an overseer at Dennistoun.

1839 " June 24th" - The Colonial Record, Launceston.- Hobart Town; arrived barque William Mitchell, June 17th, 400tons - passengers ...John Moffat.

1840 - John Moffat listed as working for the Clyde Co., Geelong. Subsequently employed by the Clyde Company on "Hopkins Hill" station until 1843; also at "Breakfast Ck" with his brother Robert.

1842 - January; - Moffat, shearer; his tally 2406 sheep shorn.

1842 - June; - Moffat bros. , shearers (R&J Moffat).

1844 - 1846 John Moffat overseer and subsequently managing the "Grange Station" for Capt. Lonsdale.

We have little information about the years between 1844 – 54, although it would seem that John Moffat was busy with the Grange Station plus wheeling and dealing in land and stock (mainly sheep). It appears that the managers and owners who were successful were the ones who bred or bought superior lines of sheep, and looked after the animals to ensure heavier cuts of wool per head. When John Rutherford found a cure for sheep scab (a mite) this would have been a great boost for anyone connected to the Clyde Company – better sheep better profits.

1858-1871; purchased Hopkins Hill estate from the Clyde Company; built Chatsworth House 1859-60 at a cost of 20,000 pounds. In 1860, John Moffat sold "Grange Station" for 26,500 pounds to William McKellar, his partner in the "Grange" from 1854. John Moffat at Chatsworth House was host to Prince Alfred in 1867. He also owned other property and imported stud horses.

1871 - John Moffat died at sea, on return journey from England. His estate was valued at 350,000 pounds.

Foot notes: i. It seems that John Moffat arrived in Hobart in June 1839, to work for the Clyde Company; by 1840 he was listed as a worker for the company at Geelong, and as a shearer, along with his brother Robert. By 1844 he had worked his way up to be managing the "Grange Station" (Hamilton), a station he later (1854) owned with his partner William McKellar. John Moffat bought "Tall Tree Station"from the Clyde Co. in 1857, and quickly sold it to Mr Percy Champion in May 1859.

ii. "Green Hills took in what is now Brie Brie and Nareeb Nareeb Stations.

Phillip Doherty, February 2008.

Index page

Tuesday, 24 June 2008