stuff 'n other stuff

When you own a wooden house, as we do, you rapidly realise that you don’t own a static dwelling, but a building that’s been subject to almost continual change – walls moved, indoor plumbing installed, external walls reboarded, extensions and the rest.

So much so, that we’re not exactly sure just how old it is. We say that the original miner’s cottage dates from the 1880’s but we’re not really sure. There’s an enormous lump of freestone masonry that may have been the base of the original hearth, that looks older than the 1880s, and when we found smoke stained bricks from the old chimney under the driveway they were characteristic soft fired handmade bricks, and probably from the nineteenth century.

What we do know is that the rather fine 1860’s front door and acid etched rose glass are not original to the house – our builder told us that he’d helped install them in a previous renovation and that they’d come from another house.

So to this week’s discovery …

The shower in the 1950’s main bathroom had started leaking, and as we’d always planned on a renovation, we decided to rip everything out and replace it with modern fixtures and fittings, rather than try and have it repaired.

So yesterday, the guys pulled all the old plasterboard sheeting and tiles off the walls, and pulled down the old and cracked 1950’s ceiling

and there we had it – the painted boards of the original nineteenth century ceiling. They’ve been so badly chopped about they can’t really be repaired, but it’s nice to know they’re still there …

One of the things which I found when researching the Catherine Morton story was that a lot of places had changed their names, and some places which existed didn’t exist anymore.

About what you’d expect. Sometimes it’s obvious where they were, Silver Creek is now a caravan park, and Stanley used to be Nine Mile, because it was guess what? nine miles from Beechworth.

Reids Creek, Reedy Creek and Woolshed creek are all the same creek, which was noted for alluvial gold. Along Reids creek were one the townships of Napoleon, Sebastopol and El Dorado. Well El Dorado is still there, but other names, such as Sebastapol and Napoleon are a bit more problematical, as these settlements simply don’t exist any more, but are easy to find, thanks to Ned Kelly.

Sebastapol was a large straggling settlement of pubs miners huts along the banks of Reid’s creek down from Woolshed falls. It’s famous in Ned Kelly lore for the ‘Charge of Sebastapol’ when a squad of troopers charged down the main street in pursuit of a member of the Kelly gang, making such a racket as to destroy any element of surprise.

The result of this connection with the Kelly gang is that while the town is gone, the Woolshed – El Dorado road is lined with markers showing the location of various places important to the Kelly story, which is useful as the town, and the accompanying settlements of Woolshed and Napoleon have gone to bush.

Mostly the original buildings would have been simple slab huts with shingle roofs and little in the way of tin or brick would have been used, with the exception perhaps of the bakers for their ovens.

The consequence is that even though there were over 20 pubs in town there is little or nothing left. The site of the Woolshed school is marked, as well as the sites of Sebastopol and Napoleon, the latter with some irrigation works still visible from the Chinese market gardens.

The bridge and pub at kangaroo crossing are also gone, with the crossing now a simple concrete ford on a dirt road, easy enough to cross when the river is low, but possibly not so easy after rain.

Everything else is gone to eucalypt scrub …
source: https://nedkellytouringroute.com.au/destinations/eldorado-woolshed-valley/

In a previous post, I recounted the story of the attempted rape of Catherine Morton. It’s an interesting story and I felt that I should document my sources

I found the story online at in the Tasmanian Daily News of 24 Feb 1858

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/199792557

A shorter version of the article originally appeared in The Age of 18 Feb 1858. Both articles were based on an article from the Ovens Constitution, a Beechworth newspaper, which was taken over by the Federal Standard in Chiltern in 1859.

Unfortunately the archives of the Ovens Constitution do not appear to be available.

The case went to trial pretty quickly, and both The Age and the Ballarat Star reported the outcome almost identically

with Mard being sentenced to five years forced labour on the colony’s roads.

One detail that might seem strange to us is that Mard was able to cross examine Catherine Morton. This is because trial for rape and assault were heard as if they were civil cases and the perpetrator was able to cross examine the victim.

Many women found the whole procedure terrifying, and did not want to confront the perpetrator. However Catherine Morton, like Rebecca Dickinson half a world away and twenty years later, seems to have been made of sterner stuff.

As was common in such cases, Mard seems to have tried to blacken Catherine’s name by claiming that he had previously been intimate with her – clearly the jury, who probably had some knowledge of both individuals knew the story to be rubbish and dismissed it.

A note on other sources:

In my original post I mention using the Ovens directory to trace individuals and their businesses.

The Ovens directory for 1857 can be viewed online and downloaded from the State Library of New South Wales via http://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?embedded=true&toolbar=false&dps_pid=IE4294807.

There is also an html transcription of the directory online at http://members.optushome.com.au/lenorefrost/ovensdir.html

Back at the end of 2016 I blogged about Mr Rochlitz, who was involved in the laying out of the Botanic gardens in Beechworth in 1861.

At the time I assumed that he had become involved through his scientific background a daguerreotypist, which involved some knowledge of chemistry, and also because he was the first person that we know of to plant vines in the Beechworth area.

However it’s a little more complex than that. I was researching the attempted abduction and rape of Catherine Morton by Michael Meard in February 1858.

Catherine Morton lived with her father and at least one brother in a tent in the gold diggings. One night in February 1858 it was alleged that Michael Meard, who lived in a tent about 200 yards away, cut the wall of the Morton’s tent, attempted to anaethesise Catherine with chloroform and presumably intended to then carry her off and have his way with her.

His plan didn’t work. Catherine woke up and screamed, and her father and brother seized Meard and called for the police – in itself surprising, one tends to assume that the miners would have set about him with spades and picks, but no, the police were called.

The investigation was quite scientific, as well as the usual depositions on oath they took Catherine to Mr JH Mathews, a druggist who had a shop next to the Bank of New South Wales in Ford Street and got her to smell the contents of three bottles, and thence confirm that chloroform was involved. (The Bank of New South Wales building is still there as a Beechworth Honey shop, and it’s within twenty metres of the old courthouse on the police reserve so that makes perfect sense.)

It then emerged that Meard had previously bought some chloroform from Mr Witt, who had a chemist’s shop in Ford Street. Remember that this is 1858 and the sale of chemicals, medicines and poisons is still more or less unregulated in Victoria.

I’ve traced Mr Mathews through the 1857 directory, which incidentally also lists Mr Rochlitz as a Daguerreotype artist in Ford Street, but not Mr Witt, so I started searching advertising material from the local paper, the Ovens and Murray Advertiser on Trove.

Mr Mathews again popped up as a druggist, but no sign of Mr Witt, which is strange. I’m working from a copy of the story in the Tasmanian Daily News of 25 February 1858, so my guess is that Mr Witt’s name has got garbled – my next task is to find a different account of the pre trial hearing.

But, in the course of this I came across an advert for Mr Rochlitz’s daguerrotype business, and next it an advert for a nursery business, run by no other than J A Rochlitz, supplying fruit trees. Further searches showed him also running a wholesale vegetable business – suggesting that as well as the daguerreotype business he also had a thriving market garden and nursery business, and this, rather than his scientific training was what led to his invovement with the laying out of the Botanic Gardens.

Incidentally he wasn’t the only person working two jobs, Mr Ingram, the bookseller in Camp street also had a nursery business on the side.

My guess, and it is only a guess, is that Mr Rochlitz ran his daguerreotyp business as a means to generate cash flow while he got his nursery and market gardening business up and running …