Life in Gippsland
Lizzie Wright with Gerty an Cecil ca 1888
With mining fading in the Ovens Valley and suffering from rheumatism Samuel Wright II and his family moved south over the Great Dividing Range to north Gippsland. An old friend wrote some years later congratulating him on the move.
‘I am truly glad to learn that you are fairly settled for life in a comfortable home and surrounded by a happy and contented family. You have acted wisely and well and my best wishes for you and those you love will attend you even to the confines of the grave. Although gold mining as a pursuit has always been an independent one is not the same now as in other days.’
In 1886 his mining partner John Boyd had taken up land along the road between the port of Sale and the Crooked River goldfields near Dargo. John and Margaret Boyd and their five children first lived in a bark hut set on a rise near a chain of occasional pools called Providence Ponds. The settlement of Stockdale (originally Stockyards) at Providence Ponds grew up at the edge of the coastal plain at the junction of the two rough roads leading to the goldfields. Boyd increased his holdings and improved his accommodation. By 1890 Boyd had a seven roomed weatherboard house with a galvanised iron roof and several outbuildings. He named the property Glengariff after the forest in County Antrim near the origin of the Boyd family in Ballycastle. (Sixty years Hard labour by Deirdre Slattery. Gipps. Her. Jour. No. 28 2004, p.16).
On September 9 1889 Samuel Wright signed a contract with Duncan McDonald to initially lease at £15 per year and then buy for £200 a 60 acre grazing property including all houses and appurtenances. This block (marked H below) was on the eastern boundary of the Boyd’s land. In March 1890 he selected the heavily timbered 220 acres on the other side of Beverley’s Road. This undeveloped Block 19 had been previously held by Henry Gibbs. In his application Samuel stated that he had lived in Stockdale for the past 8 months and before that in Melbourne. (Where and for how long unknown). By about 1900 in addition to the original purchase the Wrights had leased the four blocks on the northern side of the road that totalled about 1500 acres and stretched for some six miles along Beverleys Road up to the junction with Stony Road.
Samuel’s second block is shown in yellow, the blue block was first issued to Sam jnr then transferred to Joe, Cecil’s is in green, Jim’s in brown the Ruggles block is in pink.
Below is a satellite image of the area today
When the Wright family moved to Gippsland the older boys, Joe and Sam III were 20 and 18. Joe got his miner's licence on his 16th birthday and had mined with his father before they moved to Gippsland. James was 13, Cecil 10 and Gerty only six and they had to resume their schooling in the new environment. In June 1890 the second son, Samuel William Wright, applied for Block 18B. The other two blocks at the Stockdale end of Beverly’s Road were leased by Carl August Hempel and William Tetlow. In 1888 Hempel had married Charlotte Clothier and became the stepfather of six year old Eva. Tetlow’s wife Emily was Charlotte Clothier’s sister. Later the families were linked when Eva married Cecil Wright. Carl Hempel also had blocks on the south side of the road that adjoined the eastern boundary of the Wrights farm.
However the Wright’s relationships with neighbours was not always so cordial.
Gippsland Times 28 November 1895
The Stockdale Cattle Killing Case
Ruggles committed for trial
‘Frank Dundat Ruggles, said to be a Mexican, was charged by Samuel Wright with killing two of his horses on November 9 1895 and wounding a cow on November 11th.’
At the trial Mr Bushe who appeared for Wright began -
‘Some three or four months prior to the outrage complained of three pigs belonging to Wright had been shot; a month later a bay mare was shot at. Subsequently about 20 chains and 50 chains of fencing wire had been pulled out and a buggy damaged. On November 7th his paddock had been set on fire in several places. The prosecutor (Wright) lived in the parish of Marloo, with his sons owning between them about 1000 acres of land. The land of the accused adjoined theirs, and he blamed them for letting his two horses out of the paddocks. Altercations had ensued over the matter and the Wrights suspected Ruggles of damaging their property.’
Samuel Wright told the magistrates that he was a miner and selector at Stockdale and had two draught horses valued at £25 and heard they had been shot on the morning of the 10th. His son Samuel W Wright said the night before he went outside about 8.30 pm with his brother Cecil to ‘watch Ruggles house. They stood in Ruggles paddock, about 40 yards from his house. They waited about an hour, and the saw Ruggles close up the house, blow out the light, and come out by the back door with a gun.’
Ruggles set off towards the Wright’s paddock but the boys did not follow. After another hour they went home and talked before going to bed. An hour later they heard two shots. They got up ‘and went out up the road towards the gate across it.’ When about 45 yards from the gate ‘they saw a man going down the road from the direction in which the horses were shot. Witnesses saw the man wrench off the gate and throw it on the ground. The man then crossed the lane and in the direction of Ruggles house.’ They did not follow the man but they heard Ruggles’ horses ‘start’ and his door open. As the boys returned home they saw their bay horse shot dead and the gate lying on the ground.
In his evidence Cecil was certain it was Ruggles who left his house while they were watching but he took no notice of the first shot as he knew Ruggles ‘was in the habit of shooting at night. Sometimes their neighbour Hempel went possuming at night. James and Joseph arrived home about 1am or later.’
The next morning a trail of blood led the brothers to the other black horse, wounded. At daylight one of the Wright boys went to Briagolong to see Constable Noonan and Cecil went to Budgee to bring his father home.
Constable Noonan looked at the horses and concluded they had been shot by both barrels of a shotgun at close range. The shot contained ‘several bits on nails, an iron and brass washer and bits of ironstones.’ Noonan and two other constables went to Ruggles’ house and after examining his gun arrested him.
When the magistrates committed Ruggles for trial at the Sale Supreme Court his lawyer, Mr Wise, said he would reserve his defence and ‘would not trouble about bail’.
After his arrest Ruggles counter charged Joseph Wright with assault and this matter was dealt with at the same time. Two days after the horses were shot James Wright ‘went for the cows’. Joseph had earlier heard a shot and taking his gun went to investigate. Concealed near Ruggles’ house he saw his brother driving eight cows past the house. Ruggles was at this time on his verandah and Joseph saw him go down on one knee and ‘pointed his gun at James and the cows.’ Ruggles then went indoors and out the back door and then through his gate. One of the Wright cows was in Ruggles’ cultivated paddock and was shot at. The frightened animal then ran along the fence to the wagon shed and Ruggles fired again. Ruggles then drove the cow out with ‘welts’. Joseph took umbrage. “What did you shoot the cow for?” and then struck Ruggles with the butt of his gun. Ruggles the took the gun from Joseph and hit him three times on the head with it breaking the stock. Ruggles account was that ‘he was driving a cow out of his paddock when someone came up behind him and struck him on the head with a gun stock. He turned round and asked what he meant. Wright said “did you shoot that cow of mine?” and then “I will get even with you.’ Both combatants then retired from the field.
When James gave his evidence he said that he saw the cow in Ruggles paddock when he collected the others but did not want to ‘enter another man’s property’. He saw Ruggles on the verandah and later Joseph told him Ruggles had been waiting for him. On hearing the shot he turned round and saw Ruggles point his gun and fire the second shot at the cow. As he was about 60 yards away he could not see the struggle.
When Constable Noonan arrived he found the broken gun in Ruggles’ house ‘he had taken it from James Wright (sic) in a fight’. Ruggles said he had found the cow in his paddock and turned her out but denied shooting her. Mr Wise submitted that ‘the Wrights were not entitled to take the law into their own hands. The shooting was done and Wright himself said that Ruggles did not have a gun in his hands. The attack was unjustifiable.’
Joseph’s lawyer submitted that although an assault had been committed the provocation was great and the injury inflicted was not serious. The Magistrates seemed agree for they fined Joseph five shillings plus costs.
Jim strikes out alone
The above story is the best description of the Wright’s life in Gippsland before 1900. The younger boys tended the animals and worked on nearby properties collecting wattle bark. Sam and Joe mined below Mt Budgee Budgee at Black Snake Creek, but it seems that Joe also leased land at Stockdale for some years later his brother Cecil declared that from October 1903 to May 1905 he lived on Joe’s allotment of 200 acres at Marlooh. When the Boer War started James and his brother Sam attempted to enlist in the Army. Jim was then twenty-five and had no trouble with the medical and riding tests but failed the marksmanship. He had 10 shots at 400 yards and scored a bull and an outer, but the sergeant ruled that the bull must have been a stray shot from someone else.
Jim seemed to be closer to Sam and Gerty than to Joe and Cecil; he appeared to take a paternal interest in his ‘little sister’. James Wright inherited much of his father's outlook and interest and with his military ambitions thwarted he decided that to better himself and seek the path to a better life. But it was not his father that set Jim’s feet on another path but a new school teacher, Kate Sweetman who had come to the area in June 1899 to teach at nearby Fernbank . She knew that he needed further education and encouraged him to leave home to go to Melbourne for further qualifications. In 1901 Jim left ‘the bush’ for a better life ‘in town’ equipped with little more than a fierce determination to succeed.
A student described Kate her as ‘a prim little English lady’. Then twenty-nine she had begun teaching in Melbourne in 1892 and was already considered a fine teacher. She was four years older than Jim, the second daughter of a solidly middle class family in Richmond, small and very pretty. (Her brother Ted was also a teacher in that area.) Two years later she was transferred to the school at Hillside, a few miles further west towards Bairnsdale. Despite Kate’s family not welcoming the idea of their clever and pretty daughter (and sister) falling in love with the son of an ex-miner with few obvious prospects, the pair became very close. Kate sent him off to Melbourne with love and a loan of £20. Perhaps she viewed this as a prudent investment for if he too became a teacher he would surely then be more acceptable to her parents and brother.
On arriving in Melbourne Jim studied with a university tutor, Rev. Dr. R Williams MA at Claremont 104 Lennox Street, Richmond. Then he joined classes in English Literature and the History of the British Empire with Herbert Hewitt in Stawell Chambers and did some teaching. Hewitt found an intelligent and painstaking worker and as well qualified as any Certified Teacher in Latin, Geography, Arithmetic and Physics. Perhaps it was Hewitt who suggested the Tasmanian Education Department as a possible employer. At that time there was no formal process for recruiting teachers and when Jim wrote to the Director in August 1902 he discovered that prospective teachers ‘need to be known personally to a member of the Service.’ Although he had no promise of a position with his Junior Public Examination Certificate and glowing endorsements from Hewitt and Williams he travelled to Tasmanian early in 1902 in search of a career. Someone referred him to Frank Solomon the headmaster of the East Devonport State School and there, in spite of his age he joined Mr Solomon’s Grade VI class. [Go to next chapter.]
Life in Stockdale
While Jim struggled to launch a career in Tasmania his siblings also found life difficult. His brother Sam leased Block 18B at Stockdale in September 1892 and at the beginning of 1903 Cecil took up the lease on Block 19A for threepence an acre for 40 years but lived in Ruggles’ former house that was now owned by Henry Boyd. In January 1905 Cecil was the first to marry and to the ‘girl next door’. Eva Hempel was born in 1882 in Footscray, Victoria to Charlotte Clothier. When she was six her mother married the husband of her late sister Harriet, Carl August Hempel, the Wright’s neighbour at Stockdale. Cecil and Eva eloped to Melbourne and tied the knot in the Moor St. Church in Footscray.
Joe had been working in Dargo when he met Annie Cummins.
Joe’s marriage was the third in quick succession as on being promoted Jim married the Jessen’s younger daughter Clara. Their first child, Greta, was born in February 1907. Later Sam wrote -
‘I am glad that little Greta is already showing the hereditary instinct to throw things about so characteristic of our family. It is an amiable weakness but requires training. Now if she had thrown the rock with good aim at an Indian hawker or a Chinese retailer of vegetables the act would have been to a certain extent justifiable; even perhaps laudable. But to target a white person and a companion was reprehensible, and, I suppose you impressed this with her forcibly. A thin slipper in a case of this sort!’
At the beginning of 1905 Gerty had also left home to find work in the city, boarding with her aunt Mrs Sarah Russell in Park St. South Melbourne. She tried several jobs in factories and even a short period as a house maid before admitting failure. She was ready to return home when her Jim suggested she join him in Tasmania and seek a job as a teacher. She arrived in time to be at Jim and Clara’s wedding in April 1906. By the beginning of 1907 she was appointed as a teaching assistant at Franklin in the Huon. By 1909 she was a full teacher running a one person school at Crabtree and later in the year at Lucaston and earning £66 a year. At the beginning of 1911 she was moved to Upper Mountain River and ran that school until August 1915.
With Joe in Dargo and Jim and Gerty in Tasmania the Wright household in Stockdale consisted of Samuel and Elizabeth, Sam Jnr., Cecil, and his girls. Cecil had attempted to bury his sorrow in the development of his land, probably with money from his father in lieu of an inheritance. By December 1909 he enclosed it with fences, had dug three dams and a well and had a weatherboard dwelling house of 3 rooms, iron roof and stone chimney valued at £48 to live in. His outbuildings were worth a further £10. He valued his two cleared acres at £8 and the further 10 acres he was clearing at £15. He had ring barked the trees on a further 150 acres and all his improvements were valued at £207.19.3. It seems likely that the whole family moved into the new house and the original property was sold and the proceeds distributed. At about the same time Joe and Annie’s second child Marge was born in Stratford so it is likely that Samuel and Elizabeth shared their house with Cecil’s two daughters, Joe and Annie and their two daughters and their son Sam. The next year Joe’s only son and Samuel’s first grandson, Joseph Russell was born. (The Russell came from the husband of Lizzie’s youngest sister Sarah).
Samuel Wright III and James Edward
On Christmas Eve 1906 Samuel had gone to the home of his old friends John and Margaret Boyd where he wrote his will and had them witness it. He appointed his son Samuel William Wright as sole executor. As Samuel jnr was the sole beneficiary of the estate that was worth less than £200, we must assume that some provision had already been made for Joe, Jim, Cecil and Gerty although that must have been modest indeed.
In 1911 Jim’s brother Sam (Samuel William Wright II) married the short, stout and very jolly widow Kate Hamilton: he was 40 and she was 56, a sensible experienced woman who owned the local pub. Clive McDonald provides the details
Edward John (Teddy) Hamilton was a legendary figure in the timber industry; a sawyer whose fame was widespread. It was said of him that he could have made a tin dish stand up in a saw bench. He used to trim his nails on the saw. He came to Stockdale about 1900 and had a mill there at which my dad worked at one time. He married Kate (sic) Field in 1873 and they had children born at Blue Mt., Echuca, Kerang and Hawthorn before 1886. I found records for six girls and three boys (one of whom lived only ten years) including John Duncan whom I knew when I as very young. Rebecca, who was probably the youngest, was born in Briagolong in 1901.
Stockdale was, of course on the main road from Stratford to the Grant goldfield and of course there were many thirsty travellers to cater for. Teddy Hamilton had the Stockdale Hotel but no licence. There were at least two other shanties at Stockdale dispensing hospitality when the licensing police came through and caught them all. I don't remember how much the fine was, but Teddy Hamilton said that he had never earned that much in a fortnight in his life, so he served the fourteen days in prison rather than pay the fine. With that record he could not, of course get a licence, so Kate got one and continued to trade in the hotel. In the 1908 electoral roll and on his death registration he is described as a hotelkeeper nonetheless. He died on 11th. Jan. 1910 aged 74 years. In 1873 when he married, his birthplace is given as London; in his death registration as Victoria (I would believe London). Kate was born in Victoria according to the records but I could find no record of her birth. (We now know that Kate was born in Fryers Creek in August 1855, one of the 12 children Henry William Field and Catherine McSorley).
In the same year that Sam and Kate married Jim and Clara welcomed a second daughter, Jean Ogden. Jim was now a headmaster in the Huon valley in southern Tasmania and Gerty was teaching nearby at the very small school at Mountain River. In 1913 he took charge of a bigger school in the centre of the fruit growing district of Huonville.
When the 1912 electoral roll was prepared Sam and Lizzie, Samuel and Kate and Cecil were all included as living in Marlooh but Joe and Annie were not. Samuel senior and his two sons are listed as graziers. Joe had a contracting business and he and Annie had three children. He had a grazing lease but found it very difficult to earn enough to pay the annual rent. The lease required capital improvements such as fencing as well as rent. However he had built a four roomed house and on the basis of his improvements was excused part of the rent but the land was poor. A few years later after the birth of a fourth child, Mary, in Briagolong in 1912 another tragedy befell the Wright boys. Annie was struck down with post-natal depression and the family was left with no effective wife and mother. Lizzie and Sam now had two sets of grandchildren to care for. While Annie’s sister Eleanor Kingwill took care of Millie, Marge and Joseph at Crooked River on a farm she had inherited from her father, Lizzie insisted that the youngest girl Mary stay with her. Her son Robert Stephenson recalls that Mary found this the happiest time of her life. Mary and her cousin Beatrice grew up as sisters and remained very close friends.
With World War I well underway Sam Jnr succeeded in joining the army. In a letter to his father Jim says
‘I was glad to hear that Sam had enlisted - I am sorry that I can’t be with him. Last time we enlisted together and were both rejected. The great drawback to me is the fact that Clara and the family would have to exist on a private’s pay – a sacrifice they will not readily make. They could scarcely live on it now with prices of foodstuffs so high. If I could get a commission I would not hesitate. But though I know some drill and have an education I could not bet on getting one.
However I would welcome conscription … it is the only honest way of providing for the defence of the country.’
Last days of the cultured digger
In his latter years Sam had time to continue his interest in political affairs through writing to the newspapers. He was an early writer for the Bulletin using the pen name Marlook. (from the Parish of Marlooh.) His contributions reflected both his classical education and his politics. For example
Having "sat at the feet of Gamabel" for many years - in other words being an old subscriber to the "Age" and "Leader". I venture to rise and suggest, tho' with considerable diffidence some slight changes in our national school books, not, however in quite the same direction as the "Scripture League" wish to travel. If the bible must be read in our schools, why not use a few extracts from the Gospels such as the sermon on the mount, the parable of Lazarus and the Good Samaritan and some other of the ipsissima verbo of the great founder of the Christian religion instead of the Paulese version of the same mixed with crude excerpts from the traditional book of the Old Testament advocated by the league. But as, perhaps, the teaching conveyed in the pure gospel extracts indicated, might be deemed too communistic for this god worshipping community let us waive the point and stick to purely instruction.
Mr. Bowser MLA so fastidious a politician that he could not sit behind the Turner Ministry in the late Parliament as he yearned to do because of his dislike to rub shoulders with Labor members, remarked when speaking of religious teaching in schools "he thought it strange, so much space was devoted to Nelson and Wellington in our school books whilst there was no mention of Jesus Christ". I quite agree with the Honourable' gentleman tho' in repeating his remarks the moral I wish to deduce is not so much religious as national. Why indeed should we have so much Nelson, Wellington and "deeds that won the Empire" with so little of Australia?
I think Mr. Deakin must have had in his mind exactly the same idea as I wish to evolve, when he remarked recently in one of his election speeches that he thought our school books should be so compiled as to encourage a strong feeling of patriotism. Non patriotism as I understand it is a love and reverence for the country of one's birth naturally leading to a desire for all possible information as to its early history and that of its founders. The struggles of its pioneers physically, socially and politically, leading to the gradual upheaval and formation of a not inconsiderable nation from the chaos of gold rushes and the segregated atoms of pastoral occupation. Is there enough in our school books to fully satisfy this natural and national longing? I think not!
We have very slight sketches of the founding of the various Colonies and their Constituents but not one word explanatory of the way in which step by step, the people gained the liberties and privileges they now enjoy - no mention of those who led them to victory. There are chapters describing social life in the days of Elizabeth and the early Saxons, but no word of our picturesque life in the '50s and '60s. Gray, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo ad nauseam but shame faced silence about the Eureka Stockade, the original germ whence sprung all the democratic victories which have been achieved since. We have in fact, in our books a "high falutin" epitome of English history and literature, but little really Australian except the kangaroo and emu, the wombat and platypus. Sundry extracts from Gordon or Kendal, Brunton Stephens or Victor Daly, Lawson and Patterson would be more interesting and quite as instructive to our youngsters than "Burgess on the Rhine" or the "Boy stood on the burning deck". Fancy indeed that it would be a labour of love to a boy set to learn "How we beat the favourite" or "The Man from Snowy River" instead of the ponderous slab form "Marmion" or the "Lady of the Lake".
Of course I know that in advocating some slight knowledge of Australian literature for Australian boys I incite the contempt of the superior persons who compile our school books and also of our cultured classes, but, with all due reverence far English classics I still think some Australian literary work is good enough for Australian school books.
I also object to the methods of teaching which obtain in our schools generally. They are too mechanical - no teaching can be truly educational which is not more or less technical. Even the immortal "Squeers" had mastered that fact window! "W.i.n.d.e.r, winder" go and clean it.
In conclusion I can only hope that someone wiser than I may take up this matter of school books and school teaching as I am convinced after watching carefully the working of our "Education Act" since its inception and educating five children under its provisions, that its administration is not mobile enough to suit a progressive community. There is perhaps as strong a suspicion of. dry rot and stagnation in the department of education as in that of Post and Telegraph in making which remark, I hope I may not be deemed libellous.
Yours truly
Marlook
The final paragraph might be read as a prophetic text for the children, grand-children and great grandchild that later became teachers.
Towards the end of his life Samuel Wright II rejoiced in the sweeping victories of the Fisher led ALP in both houses of Federal Parliament in 1915. In a letter to his son James in Tasmania he opened with -
Gloria in excelsis Des!!!!!
Glory! Glory! Halleluiah!!!
Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace since he’s seen thy justice and mercy!!!!
The above expresses my feelings as regards the result of Saturday’s Voting. Also incidentally as regards the progress of the war………..
The results are before us now. The people rose in their might and almost annihilated the handful of Tories who have been ruling the country for something over a year in the interest of private enterprise, vested rights and capitalism generally.
For the election his friend H Boyd was scrutiniser and son Joe was a poll clerk at the school house. As it had to open at 7.30am ‘Joe had to make an early start on his bike Somewhat later I hitched Biddy in the buggy and drove my self and little Josie (Joe’s son) down. On reaching the booth I found two motor bikes standing at the gate much to my surprise. Fancy how we are advancing in up to date means of locomotion’
He died a few months later on 13 February 1916 from cardiac failure and asthma aged 82. His obituary ends:
"a keen politician, with advanced democratic ideas, he had great faith in the future of Australia and Australians. In a word, one of the grand old brand whose struggles and teachings were the genesis of Australian democracy and helped to win for us the rights of self government and political liberty which are our pride and heritage today".
Samuel Wright’s unmarked grave in Briagolong Cemetery (**)in the foreground is that of Teddy Hamilton first husband of Kate Mrs Samuel W Wright.
Epilogue
After his death his eldest son Joe reflected on his influence. ‘I regret I know little about our history not being given in my early years to veneration of the important’ he wrote to his brother Jim in 1942. ‘Neither did our Dad. But he had it and could prove it by education – ability in many many ways where poor old Sam and I realised too late. Dad was deficient in family pride and didn’t foresee the enormous influence it bears in this modern world.’
Jim had written to his father on 18 January to tell him of his son’s serious illness and of his plans for the new year. The reply that arrived on 9 February were his father’s last words. The news from Stockdale seems to have been of an exodus from Stockdale that included both Joe, to a contracting job and Sam to the Army. Jim’s last letter to his father was sent on the same day to report the recovery of his son Stanley from a serious illness that had sent the baby to hospital and his thoughts on the War.
‘I was glad to hear that Sam had enlisted - I am sorry that I can’t be with him. Last time we enlisted together and were both rejected. The great drawback to me is the fact that Clara and the family would have to exist on a private’s pay – a sacrifice they will not readily make. They could scarcely live on it now with prices of foodstuffs so high. If I could get a commission I would not hesitate. But though I know some drill and have an education I could not bet on getting one.
However I would welcome conscription … it is the only honest way of providing for the defence of the country. ‘
It is doubtful that his father lived long enough to read it.
We have no knowledge of how Jim coped with the loss of his father. The existing correspondence between them shows how much value he placed on his father’s views and how diligently he attempted to follow in his footsteps. (In September 1919 Jim was inducted into the Grand Lodge of Freemasons when a branch was opened in the Huon. It the same Lodge his father had joined in Beechworth in 1876.)
Sam was unable to fulfil his plan to come to Tasmania before he left for France. Although 45 years old and married he was determined to serve and was back in training soon after hid father died. He seemed much closer to Jim than to either Joe or Cecil and the two exchanged letters regularly. Jim wished him good luck and told him he was working to bring in conscription.
Gerty had had to return to Melbourne. She had greatly enjoyed her years in Tasmania and found no shortage of social interest. When this combined with her adventurous spirit trouble ensued in the form of an unplanned pregnancy apparently from an extended relationship with a married man from Crabtree. She had continued teaching at Mountain River until August 1915 when she was suddenly transferred to Alberton, another very small place in the mountains, but this time in the north of the State 9 miles south of Ringarooma. Founded when gold was discovered at Mt Victoria in 1890 it may well have been the Department’s most isolated school and about as far from Mountain River as it was possible to go. When she arrived there the village had 8 farmers, 12 miners, a mine manager and a saw miller. The transfer left the Mountain River children without a teacher for the remainder of the year. It seems more than likely that Gerty’s private life had got to the ears of the Education Department and exile was the prescribed punishment. She resigned two months later.
Elizabeth had moved to Melbourne after Samuel’s death in 1916 to stay with her youngest sister Sarah Russell and was still there in December. It seems likely that Gerty was also there about to provide Elizabeth with another grandchild. In July 1916 Sam told Jim that he had a couple of letters from Gerty and -
‘she seemed to be getting over her trouble although she had not had time to consider any future movements. It’s rotten luck, but I suppose things will sort themselves out by degrees. If the mater would accept the inevitable publicity and settle down with her it would simplify matters but she will not hear anything of the sort and is going back to Cecil shortly.
I wrote to Parsons some time ago giving my opinion of things in general and himself in particular but have had no reply - which I might say I do not expect.’
We now know that Elizabeth must have taken her grandchildren with her, two of Cecil's and four of Joe's. The Russells must have had a substantial house as they also had four children! Cecil believed that she would be better in the city but she did not settle and soon returned to live with Cecil at Iguana Creek Stockdale. (This explains the enrolments of Joe’s four older children at Stratford School in 1917.) Joe paid for his children’s upkeep and took over his brother Sam’s selection of almost 600 acres in 1916 after the death of their father. The family believes he paid a small fortune in medical bills in a vain attempt to return Annie to full health. Tragically she never recovered but lived on in hospitals until her death in Beechworth in 1963 aged 78. Both the brothers were scarred by the tragedies that had befallen their families and Joe exiled himself to his mine in the mountains at Black Snake Creek. Annie's sister Eleanor Kingwill probably moved to Stockdale in late 1915 when Sam became ill and resumed caring for Millie, Marj and Joe jnr. Lizzie lived with Cecil and cared for his two daughters Beatrice and Hilda, and Joe's daughter Mary. We know Mary never attended school but perhaps Beatrice (born 1906) and Hilda (born 1908) were also at Stratford School unless there was a school at Stockdale.
Jim attempted to maintain with his mother the same exchange of letters that he had enjoyed with his father but Elizabeth was not much of a correspondent. A letter at Christmas became the norm. Jim received another letter from Sam after he arrived in France to join a tunnelling unit but the next was from the Anglo-American Hospital in Boulogne. By late 1916 Sam was in France enduring the frost rain and snow with the tunnelling Regiment. In a letter to Jim he commented on the costs and shortages been experienced by both armies and civilians. But he was relatively warm in the huts and comforted by regularly letters from Kate and Jim. In the New Year he was in the front line and lucky not to be killed in a gas attack while building dugouts for the infantry. Around midnight he had been caught in a combined artillery and gas attack. Although caught on the surface without his gas mask he survived when a number of his mates were caught below when a gas shell landed in their trench. Nevertheless was badly affected after treatment in hospital he returned to duty.
When Sam returned from the War he and Kate ran the Stockdale Hotel that had been started by her first husband. “Kate Wright was short, very stout and very jolly. My mother told me so much about her that I felt that I knew her. I have a copy of a photo of people from Fernbank and Stockdale at a picnic in the 1900s in which she appears, and I recognised her as soon as I saw it. There is a story about Teddy, whom she had asked to buy her a corset in Stratford. When he came home he said to her "I could only get 46s" to which she replied "But Teddy, you know I take 48s". (Clive McDonald)
The hotel (shown above) was well situated at the junction of the two roads that ran inland to the gold fields. The minor road is still called the Insolvent Track as it was the route take by bankrupt miners fleeing their creditors on the fields. These small hotels were spaced a days walk apart between Sale and Crooked River. In 1921 Sam, as executor of his father’s estate formally took over the lease on Block 19. Clive McDonald remembers “my father bought the Stockdale Hotel from him in 1921 for £300. Dad was neither a business man nor a publican, and wanted nothing to do with the pub, but needed the building in which to live because he had bought the adjoining land: the total stock of liquor in the pub was one bottle of whisky. Had Dad kept the pub open for three months he would have got £350 compensation for surrendering the licence. I suppose Kate got it.”
After selling the hotel Kate and Sam moved to Elsternwick in Melbourne where she died on 11 July 1924 aged 68. Sam went back to Gippsland.and died in Sale on 9 May 1939 after a long illness. An obituary was published in the Gippsland Times nine days later.
One of the pioneer settlers of the Briagolong and Stockdale districts, Mr Samuel Wright, died at the Gippsland hospital on Tuesday. He was one of the best known and most respected men in the Black Snake and Dargo districts and knew almost every inch of the country. The late Mr Wright was licensee of the Stockdale Hotel (now de-licensed) for ten years and his house was a popular port of call with gold miners and others when gold mining was at its zenith in the Dargo district. Then for six years he was employed by the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, and in later years he was engaged in prospecting at Black Snake Creek where he was the Postmaster until the time of his death. Shortly after the outbreak of war, Mr Wright enlisted with the Second Tunnelling Company abroad. The internment took place in the Sale Cemetery on Thursday afternoon and was attended by relations and friends including many returned soldiers. Archdeacon Blundell conducted the burial service.
Joe retained the lease on his block but lived at Black Snake Creek mining and operating a post office and telephone exchange. Ormond (Kelly) McDonald remembers Joe coming in a T model Ford to take his mother to hospital in Sale around 1926. The canvas hood was down and Kelly clearly remembers Joe taking a bottle of whisky out of the folds of the hood for a swig. The 14 year-old Mary then went to Melbourne live in with her Aunty Gerty in Melbourne.
Elizabeth spent the last years of her life in a nursing home in Ballarat. She died there in May 1928 aged 80 and was buried at Fawkner Cemetery. When his mother entered the nursing home Cecil also left Stockdale for Melbourne died in Preston Melbourne six months before his mother. His brother-in-law Alf Hempel took over his selection and the house was abandoned. Cecil was buried with his mother.
‘Old” Joe Wright lived in his bark hut at the bridge. He mined up the Creek and we sat having a cup of tea and as we sat in front of his big open fire he would recall the hardships of those earlier days.’ (Ber Cliff Gipps Her J No.11 p22.)
'A man don't get much official thanks for opening up a new gold field & creating a new settlement and new money. We now have four families; Jones brought his wife along last week. There are about 20 more fully employed around here and within 12 months have produced about 200 oz. Of gold £1500 worth. - JWW May 1934'
In 1932 he was called before the Local Land Board and asked to show cause why his lease should not be revoked. He was £40.10s in arrears. He could have kept the land by paying half a years rent (£3.12.3) and making a plan to pay the balance, He declined and the lease was revoked that October. If he ever had a taste for farming it was now well and truly gone. By 1942 Joe reflected that ‘not by choice he lived a life of Spartan purity’ at Black Snake Creek. Joe worked until he was seventy eight living his simple life alone at Snake Gully and died in 1949.
Gerty outlived her daughter and all her siblings by many years. In April 1916 she registered the birth of her daughter Nellie Eugenie Parsons Wright in Prahran. She did not record the father’s name but he was clearly the Parsons referred to by her brother Sam. (There were two families of Parsons living in the area where Gerty taught.) Gerty’s ‘trouble’ was finally resolved by marrying Arthur Joseph Shipperlee in 1919. Arthur was 27 when they married and nine years younger than Gerty. He was born in London where his father was an engraver and emigrated around 1924 with his brother John who settled in Burnie, Tasmania and married there in December 1914. How Gerty and Arthur met is unknown but it is not inconceivable that she met John Shipperlee when she was visiting the northwest coast. Their son William (Bill) was born on their first anniversary of their wedding. Arthur and Gerty lived at 28 Town Hall Avenue, Preston in Melbourne for the remainder of their lives. Joe’s daughter Mary lived with them until 1934. Mary had never been to school but, despite the urging of her school teacher aunt, Mary was too embarrassed to start school at 14 and went to work in much the same way as Gerty had done 20 years earlier. Gerty died on 25 October 1971 aged 88 and Arthur followed a few months later.