Remembering Caramut 

By Veronica Mary Hunt, 2004

The various strands that came together to form my family met and entwined in.the Western District of Victoria when the English Hunt family, the Irish McGinn family and the Scottish William Reid all chose to migrate to Australia and to settle in the small towns in that area.

The Catholic McGinn family came from County Tyrone in 1862 following the death in 1861 of Peter McGinn, husband of Grace and father of their five children, Peter, Maria (known as Mary), William, Isabella and John. Grace brought the five children on a 140-day voyage aboard "Mistress of the Seas" to settle in Victoria where her cousins Patrick and James Michael Conway were living, and it was there that her elder daughter Mary met and married the Presbyterian William Reid who had come from Stirling in Scotland. They married in 1872 at St Mary’s Church in Hamilton Victoria and settled in the town of Caramut.

William and Mary Reid had three children, Jane Christina, Mary Amelia and William.

Jane Christina in 1907 married William Henry Hunt, son of Cripps Hunt and grandson of Henry Hunt who had come from Isle of Wight England in 1855. They married at the Catholic Church in Mortlake Victoria and settled in Warrnambool where their four children were born. They were Joseph, Basil Henry, Veronica Mary (known as Vera) and Grace Amelia.

When World War 1 began William Hunt and his brother-in-law William Reid enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). William Hunt’s battalion (59th) was sent to France and it was there, in 1916, that he was killed in action when his youngest child was three years old.

William Hunt was my father and I will never forget the grief that overcame my mother when the Presbyterian minister knocked at our front door with the dreadful news.

My mother was devastated by my father’s death and her parents persuaded her to come with her children to live with them and their other daughter Amelia and their son William who had come home from the war.

And so it was that we went to live in Caramut, then a small town, north of Warrnambool and between Hamilton and Mortlake. The area was regarded as being very rich 

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country for agriculture and general mixed farming.

The land was for the most part owned by wealthy graziers. It was fortunate for the Hunt family that our Reid grandparents were reasonably well off, so that life in Caramut brought not only comfort in our grief but also financial security. 

In those days the town was very small. There was a Post Office, a Police Station, a butcher shop, a hotel and two churches. 

The store, owned by brothers Dave and Jim Rea, kept a great variety of goods, including groceries, fruit and vegetables, clothing etc. The newspapers were brought to the store every day from Mortlake by Alex Walker driving a horse-drawn coach. The papers were The Argus, The Age, The Weekly Times, Smith’s Weekly, Truth and the country newspapers. 

The storekeepers were not generally known for their generosity, but when the monthly accounts were paid they would roll a piece of white paper into a cone and fill it with boiled lollies for the children. Sadly I did not like boiled lollies. 

The Rea brothers had a housekeeper, Miss Aitken. She was a very prim and proper lady and even if she was walking only to the next street she always wore her hat and gloves. 

The mail was delivered to the Post Office by Alex Walker who brought it from Mortlake along with the newspapers and any passengers. The Post Office was the town’s meeting place as we all collected our mail there in the evening. The only telephone in the town was at the Post Office. 

The butcher shop was owned by Mr Farmer. He also sold bread and sometimes a baker would come from Penshurst and bring fruit loaves or buns or varieties of bread not usually available to us. These rare treats were much enjoyed. 

The Police Station was in the charge of Constable Bell. He and Mrs Bell had a daughter named Greta. Mr Bell was a very stern man, and once when he found I had removed my shoes and socks and was paddling in a drain he spoke very sharply to me and said he would tell my mother.

On another occasion he spoke very gruffly and I, in all 

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innocence,  said to him “Excuse me, are you speaking to me or to the dog?” The Bell family lived next door to us in Caramut and we remained friends long after both families had moved to live in Melbourne. 

The hotel was owned by the McPhee family. There were two children, Lillian and Mack. Lillian was a boarder at the Warrnambool Convent. Mrs McPhee and my mother and aunt were good friends and would travel together by horse and carriage to Warrnambool to buy their clothes. I remember they once bought two beautiful curly, black wool coats. Fletcher Jones sometimes came to Caramut with a selection of garments and he always borrowed my mother’s big mirrors for his fitting rooms. 

There was a small wooden Catholic Church and the priest, Father O’Brien, came once a month, travelling by horse and buggy. The Presbyterian minister also came once a month to the lovely bluestone Presbyterian Church. 

Every Sunday we attended Sunday School where our teacher was Mrs Dickson who lived next door to the Catholic Church. Her husband suffered badly with arthritis. They had two sons who were older than us and were very well behaved. Mrs Dickson was very strict with us at Sunday School, and when she told us the story of Jonah going into the whale’s belly we all laughed, and she was horrified at our behaviour. 

Although Caramut was a small town life was not dull. But our pleasures and entertainments were simple. On Saturday nights there would be a dance or a concert, on other nights perhaps card games. There were trips by drag for picnics by the river and buggy rides into the country. Church bazaars were held at the Mechanics Hall and were attended by the whole community. 

One of our great pleasures was going for a picnic. We travelled by drag or buggy. Food for picnics usually consisted of cold, cooked meats, salads, always bread and butter and hard boiled eggs and fruit. The children drank raspberry cordial, while for the adults the men would light a fire and boil the billy to make tea. There were no vacuum flasks in those days. 

For us Christmas Day was a day of celebration. Our cousins in Penshurst always sent us a dressed turkey or goose. The Christmas pudding was made and cooked in the copper, as was the Christmas ham. Threepenny 

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 pieces were cooked in the pudding and before it was served little trinkets were pushed into it, bringing great joy and excitement to the children when they found them. We children started our schooling at Caramut State School. This was a one-teacher school with about thirty children enrolled. The Hunt children were all together in the same classroom, and on one occasion when the teacher reprimanded Gracie, Basil jumped up from his desk, took her by the hand and ran home with her. He was always protective towards us. 

The school desks were very convenient. They had lift-up lids and plenty of space inside. When we commenced school we used slates and slate pencils and later moved on to using pens, which required ink and ink wells. The ink wells, which the teacher filled every week, fitted into a little hole cut into the top right hand corner of each desk. 

We had no library, but we were supplied with a monthly paper issued by the Government. It was an interesting little paper, containing tables and figures, drawings, information about nature, short anecdotes and little songs with music for us to follow.

Our teacher was Mr Barkley and I remember particularly that he always used a tuning fork for music lessons. He was a very good teacher and was well liked. 

Every morning before we entered the classroom we assembled in the courtyard where we saluted the ‘flag and sang the National Anthem. 

The teacher was responsible for running the Commonwealth Bank savings accounts of the students, and every week we would put two shillings into our accounts. This was intended to teach us the importance of saving our money. 

This was the only school in Caramut. In those days children started school at seven years of age. 

The sewing classes were conducted by Miss Shepherd, an unmarried lady who lived with her mother. 

I remember many of the families who lived in the district at that time, and some remained close friends of my family until they died.

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One such friend was Alice Capponi (nee Ewing). Her father was Dr Ewing  and Alice became a nurse. She was wonderfully kind and we loved her very much. She was the sister of Mrs Ruby Slattery. There were nine Slattery children, but I knew only Eileen, Nellie, Mary, Kathy, Jim and Jacky. They were very clever children.

Like many others, Mrs Ewing kept hens for their eggs, and on one occasion our dog broke into Mrs Ewing’s hen house and killed several of the hens. He brought them home and laid them at our front gate. Our poor mother was mortified.

The Walker family had four children, Francis, Alex, Victor and Leo. Mrs Walker was our mother’s dressmaker and they also owned a small butcher shop. It was Alex who drove the buggy to Mortlake each day to collect mail, papers and passengers, while Leo called every morning at each house to gather orders for meat which he would then deliver by pony in the afternoon. With no household refrigeration it was necessary to buy meat as it was required.

The Gardiner family had one daughter, Ethel. She wore her hair in a long plait and was a very pretty girl with a very fair complexion. Mrs Gardiner laundered the silk suits which our mother and aunt wore.

The Tichler family were of German background and had settled in the area long before World War 1. They owned a property out of Caramut and used to come to town in a jinker.

The Ernest de Little family lived at Caramut House. Their two children were always addressed as Miss Lena and Master Jack. They had a governess and a chauffeur as they owned one of the very few vehicles at that time.

Caramut House had a lovely driveway lined with freesias and daphne, and Gracie and I, with the other children, used to walk down this driveway after Sunday School, but we were always very quiet so that the de Little family did not hear us.

During the ball season Mrs de Little would seek permission from our mother to use our two large front rooms as dressing rooms for guests. We still have one of the large and splendid mirrors that used to hang in those rooms.

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On Christmas Eve Mrs de Little drove through the town in a little white buggy drawn by a white horse. She distributed presents to all the families in Caramut. She always wore a large hat tied under the chin with a gossamer scarf. Every year she held a Christmas party for her children and relatives. Gracie and I were always invited. I remember that once we wore pretty dresses with a wide ribbon tied round the waist, making a large bow at the back.

Several years after we had left Caramut we went back for a visit and a great party was arranged at the Mechanics Hall. Jack de Little was there, his parents by that time having died.

It was interesting that in due course the de Little children went away to school and the former governess, Lucy Barron married the chauffeur, Angus Campbell. They had one daughter, a very pretty girl they named Peggy. Lucy and Angus lived for some time in Melbourne and then moved to live in Sydney.

Mrs Grace McCully was a great friend of our mother. As Grace Farmer she married Denis McNamara of "Fair View" and they had one daughter, Kathleen. Following the death of Denis McNamara Grace married James McCully and continued to live at "Fair View". She died in 1971 aged 94 years.

Our grandfather William Reid was a coach builder, but he had a good knowledge of veterinary science and was often called upon to attend to sick animals.

The coach building business employed a farrier, Alf Horwood, whose job it was to shoe horses and to make wheel rims for the coaches and buggies which Grandfather built. Landowners of the Western District came long distances to have Mr Horwood shoe their horses.

He did most of his work at the anvil. This was a big iron block upon which he beat the metal he used in making the horseshoes and the wheel rims. The metal was softened in a huge forge which was covered by a large bellows. The forge was filled with hot coals and the bellows used to propel air over the coals to keep them hot. Metal heated in the forge became soft enough for the farrier or blacksmith to beat or mould it to the desired shape.

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Once Mr Horwood had made the rims my grandfather finished the wheels, attached them to the vehicle and completed the upholstery. Gold transfers were then placed on the sides of the coach or buggy. The finished vehicle was very beautiful.

My grandparent’s house was built partly of bluestone and partly of timber.

The timber part was where the family mostly lived, and the bluestone part at the front was kept for guests. The rooms in the bluestone part were very large. In the drawing room were the piano, the fireplace and the lovely cedar furniture which we still have. The piano was made of walnut and had brass candlestick holders in which to place candles to give the pianist extra light. My mother and aunt were given piano lessons by a teacher who came to the house. They were both good pianists and I remember well the lovely duets they used to play.

In the hallway was a cedar table upon which was kept, under a glass dome, the decoration from our parents’ wedding cake.

The timber section of the house consisted of living quarters, such as kitchen, pantry, dining room and bedrooms. The floor covering in this part of the house was linoleum, which was always highly polished. The floors in the bluestone part of the house were carpeted.

In the kitchen there was a large table with drawers where the cutlery and linen were kept. There was also a stove on which stood an iron kettle and a boiler which always had soup in it for old swagmen and hawkers when they called. They were never refused food.

In the kitchen too was a Coolgardie safe to keep the meat and milk cool, and also a safe for jams, sauces and pickles, all of which were home made1 using home grown fruit and vegetables from our lovely garden in which grew the beautiful white heart cherries. The pantry held large bins in which was stored sugar and flour.

Country people were mostly self-sufficient in regard to milk and butter, and I remember our separator room which was kept scrupulously clean as it was here the cream was made into lovely fresh butter. The milk came from our own cows. Our aunt made butter balls for the table and I still have the butter bats

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 which she used to make the balls. The bedrooms were furnished with a washstand, on top of which stood a lovely large basin with a large jug filled with clean water. On the shelf below was the chamber pot, a most necessary item in those days when the toilet was outside the house. On the side of the washstand was a bracket on which to hang towels.

We kept warm in the winter with stone bottles which were filled with hot water and covered with a rug or a sock.

Washing day in those days meant hard work. The clothes were first scrubbed on a corrugated scrubbing board, then boiled in the copper before being taken out of the hot water with a long wooden pole known as a copper stick and put into clean rinsing water. From there they went into water made blue with a blue bag. This was intended to whiten them. Table cloths, serviettes, pillow cases and collars were dipped into starch to stiffen them. Everything was hung on the line to dry and then the starched items were dampened with water and folded to make them easier to iron next day. Sheets, which had no synthetic fibres in them, were straightened by two people pulling them from opposite ends, on all four corners. My aunt always put a little butter in the starch to give a shine to the starched items when they were ironed.

The ironing was done with flat irons which were heated on the top of the stove. It was necessary to have at least two irons so that while one was in use the others could be heating on the stove.

The copper, which was heated by a wood fire burning under it, was used not only on washing day to boil the washing, but also at Christmas to boil the Christmas ham and the plum pudding.

Tradesmen came regularly to the house. The "bottleo" called every week. He paid about one penny per hundred bottles. The chimney sweep also called. He was an old man armed with a bag of brushes of different lengths. The iceman came with two bags, one on his shoulder and the other under his arm, with ice to fill the ice chest. The butcher’s boy came by pony to take the order and then again to deliver the meat.

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In due course Joseph, the eldest in the family, was sent away to boarding school, but he was very unhappy and homesick, so our mother decided the family should move to Melbourne and be reunited. By now our grandparents had died and our aunt and uncle decided they would come with us, so the house and business were sold.

We left Caramut by horse and buggy, heading for Mortlake, there to take the train to Melbourne where our mother bought a house in the suburb of Kew and our new life began.

But many fond memories of Caramut stayed with us over the years, as did the many close friendships forged there in our childhood.

Ed.: Here ends "Remembering Caramut", by Veronica Mary Hunt, 2000. Because of space limits (10MB) we can only include the thumbnail pictures here.

Plea: We do need more "old Mt Rouse & District" stories and pictures to keep the visitor's interest in our website alive. It is a "two-way street". Please help.