Note: This page is a constant work-in-progress, with new information and corrections being made all the time. To search on the “1880-1899 Timeline” for any particular year, person, event, business, shop etc, simply press CTRL+F and type in the thing you are looking for in the small box that will appear on the screen.
1880
49-year-old William Frederick Andrews takes over the furnishing business of Forman and Co. (established in Beechworth in 1856) and rapidly grows the business – with his 22-year-old son William Andrews Jnr – as W. Andrews & Son on Ford Street. Supplying the districts of Beechworth, Rutherglen, Yackandandah, Bright, Harrietville, and even as far as Omeo, their travelling salesmen are always out, and their teams may be seen daily leaving their yards with goods for all parts of the North-eastern district.
| After arriving in Queensland in 1855 from Suffolk in England, qualified pharmacist 24-year-old William Frederick Andrews subsequently moves to Victoria and goes into business in Geelong as a chemist and druggist. He then obtains the position of warder at the ‘Beechworth Gaol’ and, while there, his teenage son William Jnr is apprenticed to the long-established Beechworth firm of ‘Forman & Co. Ironmongers’. Leaving his position at the ‘Beechworth Gaol’, William Andrews Snr will purchase the business from the Forman brothers and grow the company – which expands greatly during the dredging boom – in partnership with his son. William Andrews Snr, who dies in 1905 at the age of 75, is an esteemed member of the Beechworth lodge of the ’Oddfellows’. William Andrews Jnr will become a foundation member of both the ‘Beechworth Bowling Club’ and the ‘Beechworth Golf Club’ and will be a regular judge at the ‘Beechworth Racing Club” before passing away at the age of 66 in December 1924. |
1880 – Jun 3
One of the world’s greatest engineering feats in completed in Beechworth! At exactly 3.00pm, the directors of The Rocky Mountain Extended Gold Sluicing Company gather at one end of their newly completed tunnel and then commence the 25-minute walk through the engineering marvel, inspecting the sluice boxes which have been assembled along the entire length, emerging at the Albert Road end of the tunnel in time for the official “turning on of the water” at 3.30pm. The half-mile long (800-metre) tunnel – which is big enough for a man to stand up in – extends under the township, to run water and sludge from the open-cut mining site into Reid’s Creek in the Gorge. The Rocky Mountain Tunnel has taken three years to complete, with 98,280 drills and 18 miles of fuse to fire the 32,760 dynamite blasts to bore holes. A total of 8,628 tons of stone has been removed, no mean feat, as un-weathered granite is a very hard and difficult to mine. The tunnel ends up costing £13,600 and succeeds in draining the centre of Beechworth, which enables mining to continue. The tunnel is regarded as one of the greatest engineering feats in Australia and is reputed to have established world records for tunnelling in hard rock. It is claimed that mining would not have continued at Beechworth if it had not been for construction of the tunnel. (The tunnel is later used by Zwar Brothers Tannery.) Today the tunnel provides drainage for Lake Sambell and for the town.
| The construction of the tunnel also proves to be a rich source of gold itself, with some 9,500 ounces (255 kilograms) unearthed between 1876 and 1880. This can be compared to other contemporary gold mines yielding between 3,000 – 5,000 ounces (85 – 142 kilograms). By the late 1800s, one ounce of gold was worth the equivalent of a week’s wages! |
1880 – Jun
Mrs Williamson announces in the press that she will be carrying on the business of her late husband William Williamson at the Star Lane Shoeing Forge in Beechworth, under the supervision of blacksmith Charles ‘Big Charlie’ Phillips.
1880 – Jun
Highbrow entertainment! At the Oddfellows Hall at 15 Loch Street, the Beechworth Literary and Debating Association present renowned 59-year-old English scientist and inventor ‘Professor’ John Pepper, who will fascinate Beechworth locals with his lectures on series of subjects including “Light and Optics” and the “Wonders of the Oxy-Hydrogen Microscope”. This is followed a few weeks later by Henry W. Mitchell’s lecture on Napoleon III, presenting “a graphic and faithful portrait of Napoleon III, tracing the romantic adventures of the ex-Emperor from his insane attempt at Strasburg to his death at Chislehurst. To be portrayed in vivid colours and delivered in a pleasing and graceful manner”.
| John Henry “Professor” Pepper is a British scientist and inventor who tours the English-speaking world with his scientific demonstrations. He entertains the public, royalty, and fellow scientists with a wide range of technological innovations. He is primarily remembered for developing the projection technique known as ‘Pepper’s Ghost’, building a large-scale version of the concept by Henry Dircks. He also writes eleven important science education books, one of which is regarded as a significant step towards the understanding of continental drift. In Australia, Pepper also tries his hand as a playwright, producer and actor, staging a romantic drama called “Hermes and the Alchymist”. |
1880 – Jun 26
Aaron Sherritt is at home in the Woolshed Valley near Beechworth with his pregnant wife Ellen (better known as Belle), mother-in-law and four policemen (Constables Robert Alexander, Henry Armstrong, Thomas Dowling and William Duross) when he is shot dead by Joe Byrne.
| Sherritt’s pregnant wife Belle will miscarry her baby and all four constables will later be dishonourably discharged from the police force for cowardice. |
1880 – Jun 27
Ned Kelly and his gang bail up the town of Glenrowan.
1880 – Jun 28
(Photo by J.W. Lindt)
A hastily arranged police train arrives at Glenrowan and a shoot out takes place. Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart are killed, and Ned Kelly is captured – injured but alive.
1880
After graduating from Melbourne University with a Bachelor of Laws (with first class honours), 25-year-old Isaac Isaacs gifts a beautiful pen to his friend 34-year-old Henry Vandenberg, who will become a member of the United Shire of Beechworth Council from 1897-1923 and President from 1912-13. The hotel-owner-turned-dentist will create the popular Beechworth Brass Band in 1887, he also acts a justice of the peace, and receives the dubious honour of being voted the winner of the ‘Ugly Man Competition’ at the ‘Back to Beechworth’ celebrations in 1922! In his later years, Henry lives in the de-licensed Vine Hotel which had been run by his parents Jacob and Christina for many years.
| While Australia is at war with Germany in 1916, Henry Vandenberg (or van den Berg – below) will be accused by the ‘Mirror’ newspaper of being a ‘Hun’ and therefore unfit to hold municipal office. But when it is confirmed that Henry’s family is actually from the Netherlands, he will receive (undisclosed) damages. |
1880
A small cottage is built at 16 Bridge Road in Newtown next door to the two-storey home Richmond House built in 1869 for Mark Straughair and John Laidley Duncan, the blacksmiths and farriers and owners of the Beechworth Foundry directly across the road.
1880
A Health Inspector finds the Beechworth Hospital for the Insane “much in want of extensive repairs” finding the sculleries and bathrooms in a “deplorable state” rendering them unusable. But he praises the Matron, Mrs Sharpe and her nurses for giving the female patients “an air of comfort by introducing curtains and antimacassars” (protective coverings for the backs of chairs and sofas) and finds the extensive 27-acre grounds in excellent order, full of well cultivated fruit trees and vegetable gardens.
1880 – Aug 6
Ned Kelly is taken from the Beechworth Gaol, where he is being held, to the packed Beechworth Courthouse for the first day of his committal hearing, to determine what specific charges he should be committed to stand trial for. Appearing before Beechworth-born Judge William Henry Foster, Ned is represented by lawyer David Gauson. Ladies are given seats in the gallery to watch the proceedings while others pack into every corner of the public area of the Courthouse with members of the police in attendance to make sure that ‘nothing goes awry’. Also in court offering their support are Ned’s sister Maggie, along with Tom Lloyd, Dick Hart and other friends and supporters. Ned is charged by Constable McIntyre – the lone survivor of the Stringy Bark Creek shootings – with the “wilful murder of Thomas Lonigan at Stringybark Creek in the Northern Bailiwick of the Colony of Victoria on the 26th day of October 1878.” As the Victorian Government fears “a likelihood of intimidation of Beechworth jurors” before a murder trial (and, if found guilty, for reprisals), on September 14th the Crown applies for an order to transfer Ned Kelly’s murder trial from the Beechworth Circuit Court to the Central Criminal Court in Melbourne. The application is successful and Ned is transferred to the Melbourne Gaol to stand trial for murder.
| During his committal, Ned Kelly dictates a letter to his lawyer David Gausim in which he says (in part): ‘I do not pretend that I have led a blameless life or that one fault justifies another; but the public, judging a case like mine, should remember that the darkest life may have a bright side, and after the worst has been said against a man, he may, if he is beard, tell a story in his own rough way that will lead them to soften the harshness of their thoughts against him and find as many excuses for him as he would plead for himself.’ |
Billson’s Brewery add a range of wines and spirits to their expanding business.
1880
Hopton Nolan, owner of ‘The Plough Inn’ at Tarrawingee, adds a single-storey building adjoining the two-storey hotel to trade as a General Store.
1880
20 km from Beechworth, Hopton Nolan purchases Thomas Taylor Ladson’s grand two-storey brick residence (built between 1862-67) across the laneway from The Plough Inn and renames the building Hopton Nolan Hall. It will, for a time, serve as Tarrawingee’s Town Hall. Nolan will later name the grand home Carinya (above). All the buildings still stand today.
1880
Railway traffic – both passenger and freight – between Melbourne and Wodonga continues to thrive. Just 25 km from Beechworth, the Chiltern Railway Station is a popular stop, with goods being unloaded into the large Chiltern Railway Goods Shed (above) built in 1875 by Beechworth’s James Kyle.
1880
A red brick home is built at 40 Mellish Street. A big red Post Box stands outside the property today (below).
1880s
Despite the decline of the gold industry, Beechworth is sustained by the presence of the two main government institutions founded in the 1850s and 1860s – the Asylum and the Gaol. And as tourism slowly begins, the town’s new reputation as a health resort and picturesque beauty spot grows.
| The declining prosperity of the town has an upside – the post-World War II development that leads to the destruction of so much of Victoria’s nineteenth century fabric during the 1950s-70s is avoided. |
1880 – Oct 11
Following an earlier attempt (some years previously) to float a gas company in Beechworth (the capital required being 2,000 shares of £5 each) a meeting is held at the Beechworth Council Chambers to once again discuss the formation of the Beechworth Gas Company. Hiram Allen Crawford states that Beechworth has natural advantages for building a gas supply, in that the town is fairly compact, and the length of required gas mains would be very small when compared with most other places in the colony. If the Government were to take the gas supply at the lunatic asylum, and mains could also be connected to the other large institutions and hotels in the town, the proposed company would pay (at the very least) dividends of 10 per cent, and he would not be astonished to see it pay considerably more. And a company being formed in 1880 could be floated at far less cost and to greater advantage than those already in existence, as a new patent has been taken out in the colony for manufacturing gas from oil. New burners and other patents would also reduce the cost of the undertaking by at least one-third; and the Beechworth company could obtain the services of the best engineers and the latest improvements. Within months, the privately-owned Beechworth Gas Company will finally be established on vacant land on Beechworth’s ‘Railway Reserve’ and the laying of gas pipes will commence.
1880 – Nov 11
Just 13 days after being found guilty of (one charge of) murder in Melbourne (on October 29th) and sentenced to death by Judge Redmond Barry, 25-year-old Ned Kelly is hanged at the Old Melbourne Gaol in Russell Street. Overseeing the execution is Gaol Governor John Buckley Castieau, formerly the Governor of Beechworth Gaol (from March 1856 to December 1868). The sentencing judge, Redmond Barry (below), will die just 12 days later, on November 23rd, at the age of 67.
| Just hours after Ned Kelly’s execution, the bushranger’s brother and sister – 21-year-old James (Jim) Kelly and 17-year-old Kate Kelly – are ‘exhibited’ at Hiram Allen Crawford’s ‘Apollo Hall’ – which seats up to 1,000 people – within the Eastern Arcade in Melbourne. Appearing before an excited, curious and fascinated crowd (who have each paid the one shilling entry fee), Ned’s siblings – along with Ettie Hart, sister of Kelly Gang member Steve Hart – speak about the infamous bushranger’s exploits. There is a story that suggests Hiram Crawford’s daughter Emma (born in 1857) was good friends with Kate Kelly (born in 1863). |
1880 – Dec 26
The Public Recreation Reserve is officially named Baarmutha Park and granite entrance gates pillars are installed (below). Baarmutha is the local aboriginal name for the area – “land of many creeks”.
| When official names are being discussed ahead of the 1880 Boxing Day Sports Carnival, the Editor of the ‘Ovens and Murray Advertiser’ writes, ‘What better, prettier or more appropriate title could it have than that of ‘Baarmutha Park’? The area had been noted as a popular place for Aboriginal corrobborees in the early years of Beechworth’s white settlement. It had a creek running nearby (no longer there, although large rocks and boulders and a small ravine remain) with a pretty spot nicknamed the “Emerald Cascades”. |
1881 – Feb 3
With the completion of a railway line extension from Gerogery to Albury – which marks the finish of the ‘Great Southern Line’ from Sydney to Albury – the opening of the (almost completed) Albury Railway Station is held on a temporary platform. Sir Henry Parkes, the Premier of New South Wales, arrives by special train from Sydney to officiate at the ceremony attended by over 1,000 invited guests. A ‘grand banquet’ is held in the Railway Goods Shed with dancing from 9pm until sunrise. A year later, when the station is fully completed, the Premiers of both New South Wales and Victoria will arrive in Albury to attend the official ‘Grand Opening’.
| The first train from Sydney had arrived in Albury a few weeks earlier on December 28th 1880. |
1881
The privately-owned Beechworth Gas Company begins construction of the Beechworth Gas Works on the Railway Reserve on the corner of Albert Road and John Street (now Harper Avenue – below) from where gas pipes are laid throughout the town. Once completed, the oil-based gasworks will operate 40 streetlights and 150 ‘service points’ providing lighting, heating and power to Beechworth businesses, institutions and hotels. Private residents (that can afford the new service) will also be connected. In 1912 the Beechworth Gas Works will change from oil-based to coal-based gas and in 1913 it will be taken over by the Beechworth Shire. It will provide citizens of the town with lighting, heating, cooking and other purposes for the next 68 years, finally closing on August 30th 1949.
| Harper Avenue is named for Joseph Pearce Harper, Beechworth Councillor from 1914 to 1923 and again from 1929 to 1945. During this time he is twice Shire President. Born in Cornwall in 1861, Harper arrives in Beechworth in 1877 at the age of 16 where he is apprenticed to bootmaker William Darson. By 1905 he has established his own successful bootmaking business in town. Living for a number of years with his wife Johanna in Mellish Street – where they become well known for breeding poultry and winning numerous prizes at shows in the district as well as the Royal Melbourne Show – he will pass away on April 25th 1945 aged 83. |
1881 – Dec
64-year-old George Billson Snr retires from Billson’s Brewery and appoints his 23-year-old son Alfred Arthur ‘Bosher’ Billson as his successor. Once he has taken over the popular Beechworth brewery – established by his father in 1865 – he steadily improves it under the new name of A. A. Billson & Co., and also trades as a wine and spirit merchant. The Billson soft-drinks and cordial factory also prospers and will open a branch at Tallangatta in 1885 where it manufactres ‘Sparkling Dandelion Ale‘ (see image below). In 1888, ‘Bosher’ will introduce his new specialty – Anglo-Australian Ale, which sells well throughout Victoria and New South Wales.
| Young Alfred ‘Bosher’ Billson takes advantage of the high quality of its water to produce aerated mineral waters, including soda water, potass water, and ‘Lithia Water’ which is laced with lithium salts. Billson’s ‘Lithia Water’ as advertised as “the most healthful mineral water produced in Australia.” Lithium is later demonstrated to have clinical efficacy in treating mood disorders in trials run by D John Cade, former superintendent of Beechworth’s May Day Hills Asylum. Billson also creates a distinctive and popular ‘herbal beer’ which he names ‘Ecks’. |
| The socially and politically oriented Alfred Arthur ‘Bosher’ Billson is educated at the ‘Beechworth Grammar School’ and then at ‘Scotch College’ in Melbourne. Alfred’s father, George Billson Snr will die of heart failure in Beechworth at the age of 69 on February 9th, 1886. He is survived by three sons – George Jnr, Walter and Alfred, and two daughters Clara and Emily. |
1881 – Dec
With much excitement, gaslight is officially trialled in Beechworth. The Christmas Eve ‘test run’ sees 150 burners lit with spectacular results, including a large ‘crown’ of gas lights decorating the front balcony of the Empire Hotel. More decorative lights are added over the next two days so that on Boxing Day night the town takes on a carnival atmosphere, with some of the other hotels decorated with gaslit ‘Maltese’ and ‘Brunswick’ crosses. Festive Christmas crowds gather to enjoy these displays which have been provided by the gas company to garner the interest of the local community. Gas meters will be turned on by New Years Eve, with the use of gas lighting now being charged. The Beechworth Gas Company is unusual in that its ‘gas works’ burn oil instead of (the more common) coal to create gas.
1882 – Jan
Gas lighting is turned on at the Beechworth Post and Telegraph Offices with the installation carried out by Mr J. S. Riddell of Melbourne. When the sixteen jets – cleverly placed in chandeliers and other fixtures – are lit, the effect is a fine one and the new illumination, owing to its brilliancy and convenience, has the effect of facilitating the work of the officers engaged in the building. A couple of handsome gas pendant lamps are also suspended in the portico in front of the Post Office, which “present a good appearance and will prove a benefit to persons having occasion to post letters at night”. In connection with the office, “we would urge the desirability of the extension of the existing accommodation, which is found to be inadequate to requirements in the transaction of public business, by the addition of a new wing facing Ford-street, provision for the erection of which was made in the original specifications, as is evidenced by the unfinished appearance presented by the building in that street”.
1882 – Feb 1
3km east of Beechworth on the road to Stanley, the Silver Creek School No. 2438 opens near the tiny Silver Creek Post Office.
1882 – Feb 26
The Albury Railway Station is finally completed, and a celebration is held with the Premiers of both Victoria (Sir Bryan O’Loghlen) and New South Wales (Sir Henry Parkes) attending, making it the first time in Australia’s history that two colonial Premiers have appeared together publicly. Designed in the Italianate style under the direction of John Whitton, the builders are 56-year-old James Kyle and 51-year-old John Stevens – both from Beechworth. Because passengers need to change trains at Albury – due to the two different railway gauges (Victoria ‘broad gauge’ and NSW ‘standard gauge’) – the platform at Albury Railway Station stretches for 1,493 feet (455 metres) – then the longest in Australia – to accommodate the switch of two trains.
| After the completion and opening of Albury Railway Station, additions will be made in 1883 including the construction of larger Refreshment Rooms, a Goods Shed and a (temporary) Customs Office. This will be followed by an Engine Shed, a second Covered Platform and a second Goods Shed in 1884. Incredibly, the station’s prominent Clock Tower will stand proudly – without an actual clock – for almost 100 years! A clock will finally be installed into the top of the tower when the ‘Albury Rotary Club’ donate and install the four electric clocks in 1981! |
1882 – Mar
The Beechworth Pottery Company is established, with James Plumridge from Ballarat appointed as the pottery’s working Manager. Based at Hurdle Flat, the first full kiln is fired in December 1882, and the teapots, flowerpots, ornamental vases, milk pans, jugs and drainpipes, all turn out satisfactorily. However, when the second firing in February 1883 results in the larger items breaking and cracking in the process, Plumridge blames the problem on moisture in the kiln walls and leaves the company in June 1883, moving to the Albury Pottery Works. The Beechworth Pottery Company ceases operation in December 1883 but is re-established in 1886 by John Hambleton, George Lindop and Benjamin Eastwood. Lindop and Eastwood are experienced Staffordshire Potters. The revived H.L. & E. Pottery Beechworth Company is successful and demand for their wares increases but, limited resources, staff and capital prevents any expansion. In 1888 Beechworth businessmen Alfred ‘Alf’ William Foster and Joseph Wilson buy out H.L. & E. Pottery Beechworth and rename it the Ovens Pottery Company Ltd.
| Background information – After a large source of clay is discovered during the gold rush at Hurdle Flat south-east of Beechworth, it is found to be suitable for earthenware and stoneware pottery so, in 1876, several samples of clay are sent to James Plumridge of the ‘Pioneer Pottery Works’ in Ballarat. Plumridge completes a course of trials and is satisfied it could produce quality pottery. In January 1877 Plumridge travels to Beechworth to present lectures about ‘Ancient & Modern Pottery’ in Beechworth and Stanley, bringing examples of completed pottery from the Hurdle Flat samples he’d been sent. |
1882
Now aged 50, Hiram Allen Crawford relinquishes the active management of his highly successful Beechworth coaching business and purchases a 200-acre property on the Ovens River, near Everton, that he names ‘Brookfield’. In this new sphere, his predominant characteristics assert themselves, as he soon becomes one of the largest growers of hops in the Victoria and will eventually possess the largest lemon orchard in Australia! After holding ‘Brookfield’ for 20 years, 70-year-old Crawford sells out to Mr. D. J Whitteker, J.P, and retires to Elsternwick, near Melbourne. The majority of men, who had attained the allotted span of life, would be content to pass the remainder of their existence in leisured ease, but Hiram Crawford is not one of them … he purchases a growing number of large properties in and around Elsternwick and, in their enthusiastic management and development, finds an outlet for his activities. Hiram Allen Crawford will pass away in 1916 aged 84 and, in accordance with his wishes, his remains are brought to Beechworth for interment where a large number of townspeople attend the funeral as a last tribute of respect to one who had done so much for Beechworth. Four employees of ‘Crawford and Co’. will act as pallbearers.
| On several occasions Hiram Crawford fills the Mayoral and Presidential chairs of Beechworth, is a member of the ‘Beechworth Municipal Council’ soon after its formation, twice Mayor Chiltern, Superintendent of the ‘Beechworth Fire Brigade’, a member of the ‘Country Fire Brigades’ Board’ since its inception, and a prominent member of the ‘Masonic Order’. He is appointed a Justice of the Peace in the 1860s by the Bindon Government; is a director of the ‘Sons of Freedom’ mine in Chiltern (the first limited company in the district); and is, for 20 years, both Chairman and Director of the ‘Beechworth Gas Company’. He is also a member of the committee of the ‘Ovens District Hospital’. Crawford returns home to the United States several times and, using his acquired wealth, will visit many other countries. |
1882 – May
42-year-old Alfred William Ladson opens his new purpose-built grocery store at 30 High Street, right opposite the beautiful Ladson family home ‘Magnolia’. Ladson’s Cash Grocery Store will become quite a landmark on High Street where the locals call the shop simply ‘Ladsons’. It will later become known as ‘Ennals’.
| ‘Ladson’s Grocery Store’ will remain in the family for over 100 years. Alfred’s son Arthur Ladson takes over, then Beatrice Ennals (mother-in-law of Dick Galbraith, Alfred’s grandson), then Dick Galbraith after his mother-in-law relinquishes the business before Dick passes it to his son Bob Galbraith. It is finally sold and becomes the ‘Beechworth Machinery’ store, which still operates today as ‘Beechworth Machinery & Mowers’. |
1883 – Jan 25
Edward S. Harris, the former head teacher at Beechworth State School who had disappeared in mysterious circumstances, is discovered drowned in the Yarra River in Melbourne. Originally a teacher at Chilwell (near Geelong), Harris then teaches in Ballarat before being appointed Head Teacher at the new Beechworth State School when it opens in 1875. While he is (initially) highly regarded, rumours will begin to circulate about his improper behaviour towards certain female students. Following investigations by Beechworth Police, Thomas Bolam, the Inspector-General of the Education Department, announces that an inquiry will be held in Beechworth where he will put three charges to Edward Harris – “Using a Schoolroom for Immoral Conduct”; “Having Aided to Procure an Abortion”; and “Conduct Causing Scandal”. On receiving this information, Harris refuses to attend the inquiry and departs Beechworth with his wife and young family and heads to Melbourne where he takes out a £1,300 life insurance policy before going missing. After his naked body is found in the Yarra River (see newspaper story below) no charges are ever laid against Harris.
1883
Norman Lawrence (above) – the manager of the Beechworth branch of the Oriental Bank at 97 Ford Street – marries Emma Blanche Debby (below). Lawrence will remain as the Beechworth branch manager until the worldwide collapse of the Oriental Bank the following year (1884) and the Beechworth branch closes in May.
1883 – Mar 21
The Reverend John Gordon Mackie (below) lays the Foundation Stone for a new ‘Sabbath School’, to be constructed of exposed brick at the rear of the 1857-built St. Andrews Presbyterian Church on the corner of Ford and William Streets. The two-storey addition to the church will be completed by July 17th the same year.
| A regular Sunday School has been held inside at St. Andrews Church since it opened at the start of 1858, with 177 children enrolled by 1869. As the numbers continue to grow, it motivates the need for the new two-storey building. The ‘Beechworth Toy Library’ now occupies most of the downstairs part of the building while the upstarirs section is now used as the church’s hall. |
1883
A ‘Chinese Ward’ is added to the Ovens Goldfields Hospital on Church Street. The local Chinese community made generous donations to the original appeal to build the hospital in 1856 and, since opening in 1857, the hospital has treated many of Beechworth’s Chinese population and, in return, continue to receive numerous donations and gifts from them.
| The ‘Beechworth Carnival Committee’ gifts five banners to Beechworth’s Chinese community in recognition of their support of the ‘Oven Goldfields Hospital’ and the ‘Benevolent Asylum’. The banners have been purchased in China by a social envoy from Beechworth, then presented to the Chinese community during the ‘Beechworth Fine Arts Exhibition’ in May 1875 by Donald Fiddes, President of the ‘Ovens Goldfields Hospital’. |
1883 – May 7
13 miles from Beechworth at the small settlement of Bruarong, a miner named James Magill is awoken by children calling his name just before 2am on a quiet Sunday morning. Lighting a candle, he goes to the door to find two children – 8-year-old Albert Coupin and 7-year-old Louisa Coupin – burnt and terrified. They have run a quarter of a mile to Magill’s house to tell him about a terrible fire that has destroyed their four-roomed weatherboard home. Their 45-year-old father, French-born miner Jean Baptiste Coupin, had rescued them before heading back into the inferno to save their 28-year-old mother Rosina and their younger siblings Mary Rose, aged 3, and Frances Joseph, aged 1. But the roof of the house collapsed and their father did not reappear with his wife or the younger children. They had perished in the flames, with their charred remains discovered in the debris of the house. Sadly, within a few hours, young Albert and Louisa will also die from their severe injuries. A magisterial inquiry is held at Mr. Magill’s residence on Monday afternoon – conducted by Beechworth’s Police Magistrate William Henry Foster – who finds that the sad event is a tragic accident and nobody is held to account.
| Jean Baptiste Coupin supported his young family working as a miner at the nearby ‘Caledonia Reef’ for proprietor Antoine Chambeyron, a fellow Frenchman. Coupin was also a shareholder in the Caledonia Reef venture, which is valued at £1,065. |
1883
Mr. R. Hall joins Henry Thomas Littlewood in running the successful drapery business Manchester House which has been operating on Camp Street since 1869 next door to a popular pastry shop.
| The building stills stands on Camp Street today (below left), now one of the buildings of the popular ‘Beechworth Bakery’. |
1883 – Jun 14
The railway line which links Wodonga to Albury is finally completed. It is the culmination of the Victorian Railway’s ‘North-Eastern Rail Line’ and the link is celebrated with a grand event at Albury Railway Station (above). Made with construction of a (temporary) railway bridge across the Murray River, it means that passengers can now travel by rail between Melbourne (on Victoria’s ‘broad gauge’ system) and Sydney (on the New South Wales ‘standard gauge’ railway system). NSW ‘standard gauge’ trains arrive on the eastern side of Albury Railway Station, while Victorian ‘broad gauge’ trains arrive on the western side of the main platform, with passengers simply swapping platform sides to continue their journey. The much-heralded railway connection between Sydney and Melbourne gives a dramatic boost to the cause of Australia’s Federation.
| Between 1889 and 1891 a Victorian Railways branch line will be completed between Wodonga and Tallangatta, then Shelley in 1916, Beetoomba in 1919 and Cudgewa in 1921. |
1883 – Dec 13
After 15 months of construction, Victorian Railways completes a new 16-mile branch line – over 36 bridges through the Ovens Valley – from Everton to Myrtleford (with rail stops at Murmungee and Palmerston) and celebrations mark the opening of the new Myrtleford Railway Station. The first train arrives at 2.15pm to the cheers of 1,000 people and the music of the newly formed Myrtleford Brass Band. After a banquet at the Athenæum Hall – attended by the likes of George Briscoe Kerferd and George Billson Snr – the crowd march back to the station to watch the train depart at 5pm. The line will be extended to Bright in 1890 with the Bright Railway Station opening on October 17th (below). This line becomes popular with tourists visiting Mount Buffalo where Victorian Railways operate the Mount Buffalo Chalet.
| The branch line between Myrtleford and Bright closes on 30 November 1983 and back to the junction with the North-East Railway Line at Bowser on 13 April 1987. In the 1990s the line becomes part of the ‘Murray to Mountain Rail Trail’ and Bright Railway Station is maintained as a railway museum. |
1883 – Dec 31
A fire breaks out at the Beechworth Foundry on Main Street, Newtown. Owners John Laidley Duncan and Mark Straughair will suffer £1,000 damage.
1884
Just four years after the officially recognised start of the Salvation Army in Australia (in Adelaide on September 5th 1880), the Salvation Army holds their first (open-air) meetings in Beechworth, led by Captain Phillips and Captain John Dean, with hundreds gathering to hear the Captain’s preach. A year later, the first Salvation Army Hall (a solid brick ‘Citadel’) opens on the present site at 35 Ford Street (above) on September 28th 1885 with separate barracks built the following year. Beechworth’s Salvation Army Officers in 1885 are Captain Reuben Edwards and Captain Samuel Fraser, before Captain Twyford takes over in 1886.
| The Salvation Army’s “exuberance” in the late 1880s is curbed after receiving complaints from nearby residents and the shire council bans marches Sundays and after 9pm on weeknights! |
| After the original ‘Salvation Army’ brick ‘Citadel’ is destroyed by fire, the current Citadel is erected in 1920. |
1884 – Apr 24
Eleanor Griggs Hollaway, licensee of the recently opened The Gap Hotel, transfers the licence to Frederick Hahn. The hotel sits at the top of the Buckland Gap – the road between Beechworth and Myrtleford – almost opposite Fighting Gully Road and services the nearby goldminers of the Three Mile District (below) which had included Eleanor’s recently deceased husband, the popular ‘Three Mile’ goldminer John Hollaway.
| In December 1886 Frederick Hahn will rename ‘The Gap Hotel’ to ‘The Royal Oak Hotel’ and the name and hotel remain until it is destroyed by fire in 1958. |
1884 – May
The once lucrative Oriental Bank – which opened its Beechworth branch in 1857 – closes on Ford Street after the entire London-based bank faces a financial collapse worldwide.
| Originally established in Bombay, India in 1842 as the ‘Bank of Western India’, it moves its headquarters to London in 1845. After opening branches in Colombo, Calcutta, Shanghai, Canton, Singapore and Hong Kong, it acquires the failing ‘Bank of Ceylon’ in 1850 and obtains a Royal Charter for the merged institution under the name ‘Oriental Bank Corporation’. By the 1860s it has opened branches in Australia and holds a dominant position, particularly in India and China and is considered the “most powerful, oldest, and most prestigious Eastern exchange bank” and “the doyen of Eastern exchange banking.” However, from the 1870s, the bank’s finances suffer from bad loans to coffee plantations in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and to sugar plantations in Mauritius, and on May 4th 1884 the ‘Oriental Bank’ – including the branch in Beechworth – suspends all payments and is subsequently liquidated. |
1884 – Jul 15
57-year-old Sir Henry Brougham Loch arrives in Melbourne with his wife Elizabeth to take up his appointment as the new Governor of Victoria. He will quickly become one of Victoria’s most popular and respected governors and will visit Beechworth for a holiday in March 1885 (see entry below). Loch had been to Victoria before – for a few months between 1852 and 1853 – when he was a decorated army captain, and Loch Street in Beechworth had been named in his honour at the time.
| Loch has a long and distinguished career in the British military, serving in the Crimean War and in China. In 1863, after marrying the well-connected Elizabeth Villiers, he is appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Man, a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. He will hold this position for the next 19 years, before being appointed Governor of Victoria. |
1884
Successful Beechworth butcher 60-year-old George Newton purchases the property known as ‘Beaumaris’ at 11 Weir Lane from American miner and blacksmith Partrick Ring. In 1890 Newton will add a bullnose verandah and timber fretwork to the cottage and will go on to live at the house until his death, aged almost 80, in 1903.
| Patrick’s brother James Ring had died as result of being burned in a fire at the house at Christmas 1867. |
1884
John Clements Snr dies, and his 29-year-old Beechworth-born son John Nichols Clements takes over his father’s popular store on High Street, having previously been running the Newtown Hotel. John Nichols Clements, who builds a large family home on the corner of Loch and Kars Streets, continues running (and enlarging and improving) the Clements Store until his death in 1907, aged just 51.
| In the early 1900s, John Nichols Clements eldest son, 30-year-old John James Alfred Arthur Clements Jnr, establishes his own ‘Cash Grocery’ store on Ford Street. Upon his father’s death in 1907 he merges the ‘Cash Grocery’ business with his late father’s High Street ‘Clements Store’. In his early teens, John James Alfred Arthur Clements (known as J.A. Clements) had worked at ‘W. Andrews and Son Merchants’ on Ford Street and will eventually purchase the large ‘Andrew and Son’ store (above) and move all the ‘Clements Store’ business there and run the store (below) until his death in 1943. |
32-year-old Thomas Tanswell Jnr and his new 20-year-old wife Margaret Ann (McGowan) Tanswell establish a new school for girls in Beechworth, operating from the former Freemasons’ Arms Hotel building on High Street (which had been purchased by Thomas Tanswell Snr in 1870). It will operate successfully in Beechworth for 14 years as ‘Mrs Tanswell’s Seminary and Kindergarten’. But tragedy lies ahead for Margaret Ann Tanswell … (see below).
| At the turn of the century, with his eyesight failing badly, Thomas Jnr will move to Williamstown near Melbourne with Margaret and their surviving son Thomas Morrin Tanswell. Margaret will establish a Private High School for Girls in Williamstown but then her mental health starts to deteriorate. In September 1910, Margaret unaccountably disappears from the Tanswell home and, due to her mental condition, fears are entertained for her safety. The police will find her body while searching the waters at Williamstown’s Back Beach. She has taken her own life at the age of 45, leaving her now almost completely blind husband and her son Thomas Morrin Tanswell who has just started studying at university. |
Billson’s Brewery employee (and American Civil War veteran) 37-year-old Jacob Hoffmann marries 23-year-old Sophie Esther at the Alliance Hotel, which is run by Sophie’s father, 53-year-old German-born Carl Esther. Jacob and Esther will go on to have seven children, including Carl, Friedrich (killed in WW1), Anna, Hilda, Cyril and Alfred Francis Hoffmann, who will be one of the founders of the Beechworth RSL in 1921. Sophie Hoffmann dies in 1902, and Jacob Hoffmann (who had been born in Bavaria before moving to America as a small child) passes away on October 12, 1920. Both are buried at the Beechworth Cemetery.
| Just a year after Sophie Esther’s wedding to Jacob Hoffmann, her father Carl Esther will die suddenly at the ‘Alliance Hotel’ (in September 1886 aged just 54). The hotel’s licence is taken up by Miss Elizabth Williams, its first female licensee. She will soon marry Edward Ryan and on March 7, 1887 she’ll transfer the hotel’s licence to him and successfully apply to have the name of the hotel changed to the ‘Railway Hotel’ as it is the closest hotel to the ‘Beechworth Railway Station’ since trains first arrived in town on July 13, 1876. |
1885
The Reverend George Frederick Cross is appointed the new minister of Beechworth’s Anglican Christ Church. He will stay in the role until 1893. His wife is writer Ada Cross although, because of her position as a vicar’s wife, she is forced to keep her literary activities a secret, having her work published under her maiden name of Ada Cambridge.
| Ada Cambridge will write more than twenty-five fictional works (many of them serialised in newspapers), three volumes of poetry, and two volumes of her autobiography – “Thirty Years in Australia” and “The Retrospect”. She experiences her share of tragedy, including a near-fatal miscarriage and a serious carriage accident, as well as the loss of children to whooping cough and scarlet fever. |
1885 – Mar 4
His Excellency Sir Henry Brougham Loch becomes the first Governor of Victoria to honour Beechworth with a purely personal visit to “take in the renowned mountain air”. The 58-year-old Governor is accompanied on his trip by Beechworth stalwarts – 54-year-old George Briscoe Kerferd, 68-year-old George Billson and 57-year-old John Alston Wallace – all now members of Victorian parliament. Although past Governors have made ‘official’ or ‘State Visits”, Lord Loch arrives – by train – for an ‘unofficial holiday’ with his wife Elizabeth but agrees, during his stay, to attend the Beechworth Show, organised by the Beechworth and North-Eastern Agricultural and Horticultural Society. Loch also travels from Beechworth to Stanley in a six-horse drag owned by Crawford & Co, driven by Mick Dougherty. Stanley’s young Agnes Mathieson is chosen to present Lady Elizabeth Loch with a basket of White Heart Cherries from James Muter’s garden. There is speculation that Beechworth might be the place chosen for the Governor’s Summer Residence, and a site is offered to him, free of charge, to build a summer home. However, not long after Loch’s Beechworth visit, a site at Mount Macedon is selected for the official Governor’s Summer Residence.
| At the time Beechworth’s streets are laid out and named by George Douglas Smythe in July 1853, he chooses to name one of them Loch Street. Captain Loch, then a hero of the British army, is in Victoria at the time and is feted around Melbourne by Charles La Trobe and William Lonsdale, brother-in-law of Government Surveyor George Smythe who is clearly impressed by Captain Loch and his achievements. |
1885
Alex McLean Snr, Ford Street coachbuilder, becomes the manager of D.M. O’Connor’s American Coach Factory on Church Street (above), with McLean’s former coachbuilding business – next to the Crawford & Co. Coach Office on Ford Street (below) – taken over by his son, 37-year-old Alex McLean Jnr, along with W.H. Thompson.
1885
Dr Samuel William Brierley – Deputy-Superintendent of the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum – tells an official inquiry (a ‘Royal Commission on Asylums for the Insane and Inebriate’) that much of the clothing patients wear at his institution should be condemned, as they are “so filthy”. He also notes that there is such a shortage of towels on the weekly bath-day that several patients at a time are dried with the same bed sheet which had been used as bedding during the week. The inquiry responds that this ‘scandalous and reprehensible’ practice had been condemned years earlier but is still tolerated in some institutions and is decidedly ‘unwholesome’ as there are strict rules for the bathing of patients, covering frequency and temperature of baths, bathing supplies including towels, and supervision. Dr Brierley also reports on the total absence of toilet paper in the latrine blocks. The Beechworth Asylum is not alone among Victorian mental health facilities to be criticised for its poor hygiene and dubious bathing practices. As early as 1864, reports circulated that there was ‘only a single latrine provided with water in the whole three-quarters of a mile over which the buildings of the Yarra Bend asylum are scattered’.
| Dr Samuel William Brierly will leave the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum shortly thereafter to become a partner in the private Beechworth medical practice of Dr Martin Francis Cleary. (see next entry) |
1885 – May
Physician and surgeon Dr. Samuel William Brierly – who had been Deputy-Superintendent of the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum (see entry above) – joins Dr Martin Francis Cleary at his large Beechworth medical practice. Known for his ‘heavy drinking’ at times – which sometimes causes patients to be left waiting – Dr Cleary appears to stay sober once Dr Brierly joins the practice. However, the partnership only lasts as few months with Dr Brierly leaving and joining with Edward Hurst in taking over Beechworth’s Spring Creek Brewery (see further entry below).
1885
A new cottage is built at 72 High Street directly opposite Beechworth’s Police Paddocks. The gardens behind the house are planted with numerous Silver Birch trees giving the property its name – Birch Cottage – with Spring Creek running directly behind the garden.
1885 – Sep 19
The St. Leon’s Circus arrives in Beechworth for a performance at Baarmutha Park (above). The popular Australian circus is run by 62-year-old equestrian Matthew St. Leon (real name – John Connelly), his 53-year-old wife Margaret and three of their sons – 34-year-old Gus, 29-year-old Walter and 26-year-old Alfred – performing on horseback and displaying acrobatic skills, with Gus dazzling crowds with his ‘astounding feats’ 30 feet in the air on a flying trapeze slung from the top of the St. Leon’s Circus tent.
| Established in 1875, by the 1880s ‘St. Leon’s Circus’ is travelling Australia with a half-mile long cavalcade of “150 men and horses, brightly painted wagons, and a menagerie of wild animals, led by a glittering band carriage”. It will soon grow so large that at the end of 1885 it is divided in two, with sons Gus and Alfred establishing ‘St Leon’s Royal Palace Circus’ to tour throughout New Zealand with great success. |
1885
American George Judah Lyon, now aged 52, sells his Spring Creek Brewery and aerated water business to Dr. Samuel William Brierly andEdward Hurst(who create Hurst & Co) for £2,000 and moves to Windsor in Melbourne with his wife and 10-year-old daughter, with plans to continue bottling his famous hot and spicy ‘Bogong Sauce’ in the city.
| In 1890, George Lyon and his wife Wilhelmina establish a boarding house, ‘Idthorpe’ in Marlton Crescent, St. Kilda close to the popular St. Kilda Pier. Sadly, just over a year later – on 9th October 1891 – George passes away aged 57, from an apoplectic fit, to which he is prone. |
1885
Having served as an alderman with the Albury Council since 1881, 41-year-old George Henry Billson is elected the Mayor of Albury (1885-1886) and will be elected to the position again in 1893. Billson will relocate to Melbourne in 1896, setting up a cordial and aerated water factory in Elsternwick. He will be elected to the St Kilda City Council (1901-1911) and serve as St Kilda Mayor in 1909.
1885 – Nov
Because there have been so many fires in the Beechworth area, insurance companies approach the council and offer to contribute towards the cost of equipment and running of a new fire brigade. The council agrees and it is re-formed, now called the Beechworth Volunteer Fire Brigade Board.
1885 – Nov
55-year-old Beechworth tailor Richard Finch – who has been running his successful men’s outfitter shop at 68 Ford Street (above left and below) for many years – wins the tender to create special heavy jackets and thick protective clothing items for the Beechworth Volunteer Fire Brigade (see next entry).
1885 – Dec
The Beechworth Volunteer Fire Service and the Volunteer Fire Brigade Board are reformed. Pictured above are 19 members of the service, along with a small boy, all wearing their new fire service uniforms.
1886 – Apr 1
A fire breaks out at the 1857-built Oriental Hotel on the corner of Bridge Road and Mellish Street. Although the Beechworth Fire Brigade rushes to scene, the old wooden building cannot be saved, with the firemen turning their attention to preventing the fire from spreading to nearby premises. The owner of the hotel, William Andrews, his wife and children all manage to escape but sadly lose all their possessions in the fire.
| In 1863, the ‘Oriental Hotel’ is described as having “a Capacious Bar, Bagatelle Room, Large Ball Room, Two Parlours, Eight Bedrooms, a Detached Kitchen, a Six Stall Stable and a Hay Loft”. |
1886 – Jun 29
A new bridge for Wangaratta. As the original 1855-built wooden bridge – the first ever built over the Ovens River – has come to end of its useful life (and has become so dangerous it is feared it might collapse under the weight of a heavily loaded wagon), a new timber bridge is officially opened in Wangaratta. A public holiday is declared on this Monday, and the opening of the new bridge is combined with the inaugural Wangaratta Regatta, held on the stretch of the Ovens River between the bridge and Painter’s Island, which had been cleared of snags the previous year. The new bridge – located slightly downstream from 1855 bridge – is 450 feet long, with about half of it spanning the Ovens River with the rest crossing the river flat on the northern side (above).
| The 1855 bridge is removed, and the 1866 bridge will serve for many years before the river spans are strengthened by extra trusses in 1922. |
1886
Former Beechworth police sergeant, 54-year-old Irish-born Felix O’Connor, takes over the licence for the 1870-built Post Office Hotel (above). In 1869 he had taken over the Dublin Hotel on Camp Street – opposite the London Tavern – before taking over the London Tavern itself in 1876. In 1892, after leaving the Post Office Hotel, Felix will become the licensee of the Railway Hotel (formerly the Alliance Hotel), by which time he is the oldest hotel-keeper in Beechworth. While still running the Railway Hotel, he dies of heart disease in 1898 at the age of 66.
1886
After less than a year of ownership, Edward Hurst & Co sell Beechworth’s Spring Creek Brewery to Frederick Allen and his partner Mr Clements. Allen is also the owner of the Star Hotel. ‘Fred Allen’ beer bottles, with a distinctive ‘Lion’ trademark, are valuable collectors’ items today.
| Allen Street in Beechworth is named after Frederick Allen who will sit on the Beechworth Council between 1874 and 1901 and be Shire President on three occasions. |
1886
Alfred William Foster Jnr is born in Beechworth. His father, Alfred ‘Alf’ William Foster Snr and his wife Sarah run a Beechworth tobacconist and newsagency on Ford Street (which they had taken over from George Judah Lyon in 1871). As a youth he becomes interested in spiritualism and rejects Christian beliefs, claiming they reveal no scientific evidence. Educated at Beechworth College and Melbourne University, Foster will go on to be appointed a judge of the Victorian County Court at the age of 41 – the youngest judge ever appointed in Victoria.
| In 1944, Foster is appointed to the Australian Arbitration Court Bench, and in 1947 he will deliver the Arbitration Court judgement granting a 40-hour working week. In 1950 he will be responsible for granting an additional £1 per week to the basic wage, at a time when the wage was just £7. |
1886 – Nov
The beautiful but now empty Oriental Bank is purchased for £1,000 by Reverend Dean Tierney of Beechworth’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church for use as a convent and school by the Brigidine nuns who are soon to arrive. The four nuns from Abbeyleix in Ireland arrive in Beechworth by train on Saturday November 27, 1886, to a very enthusiastic public welcome, although Reverend Mother, Mary Vincent Cummins, quickly realises she is expected to repay £1,000 pounds. The nuns convert the bank into a convent and school, improvising an altar out of a luggage case. By January 1887 the bank chamber (the front lower part of the building facing Ford Street) is fitted with desks and benches, while three of the upstairs rooms are furnished as dormitories and by February the boarding and day school for girls is opened.
1886 – Dec 20
Ordered by conductor James Cunningham Snr and his son, organist James Cunningham Jnr, and the members of the Beechworth Philharmonic Society, a beautiful mid-19th century single-manual chamber organ is finally installed in the Beechworth Town Hall and is played for the first time – at a special ‘welcome concert’ – on this day. The organ is made of pine and leather, and has 256 leaden tin pipes, 66 keys and five stops.
| Originally built in London in 1852 by ‘William Hill & Son’ for a stately English private home, the second-hand organ is installed in the Town Hall by William Anderson, who will return to Beechworth a few weeks later to install another organ – this time at the Christ Church. The Beechworth Town Hall organ remains in place until June 1907 when it is bought back by William Anderson for £20. The organ is finally sold back – again – to the Beechworth Organ Society for $6,000 in 2018 and returned to its place in the Beechworth Town Hall. It is one of the four oldest organs in Victoria. |
| ‘William Hill & Son’ also build organs for Westminter Abbey in London in 1848, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (1834), St. Andrews Cathedral, Sydney (1866), Adelaide Town Hall (1877), Melbourne Town Hall (1872 – destroyed by fire in 1925) and the Sydney Town Hall Grand Organ (1886), the largest organ in the world at the time of its construction, with an outer case designed by Arthur George Hill, grandson of the late William Hill (who had died in 1870). |
1887 – Jan
Another organ for Beechworth! The Reverend George Cross, rector of Beechworth’s Christ Church, oversees the installation of a fine (but already used) pipe organ in the church. It had been built by colonial organ builder William Anderson of Little Flinders Street in Melbourne for St George’s Catholic Church in Carlton in 1882.
| Restoration of the Christ Church organ in 2008 reveals some of the pipework to be of early European origin. |
1887 – Jan 17
Having been staffed by lay teachers since it opened in a wooden building built in 1857, the four Sisters who have arrived from the Brigidine Convent at Abbeyleix in Ireland take over permanent charge of St. Joseph’s Primary School on Church Street.
1887
A decision is made by the Beechworth Council to demolish the original single-storey Council Chambers (built in 1858-59 – above) to be replaced with a new, larger two-storey building, while still retaining the beautiful Formal Hall at the rear (below). A state-wide competition is held for a new design which is won by Melbourne architect George Jobbins and construction commences under local builder Thomas Sandham. It will be completed by July 1888.
1887 – Mar 8
The 1858-built Alliance Hotel – on the corner of Camp and High Streets – is renamed the ‘Railway Hotel’ by it’s new licencsee’s Edward and Elizabeth Ryan as it is the nearest hotel to Beechworth Railway Station.
1887
A small house, now known as Waterfall Cottage, is erected above the Beechworth Gorge, next to Newtown Bridge, at 1 Ford Street. The house features solid granite foundations and opens out onto a south facing front verandah, and a north facing rear verandah with spectacular views over the Gorge.
1887
40-year-old Henry Vandenberg establishes the Beechworth Brass Band. Also known as Vandenberg’s Brass Band, it quickly becomes popular and is in constant demand for local dances and official events.
| Henry Vandenberg is one of Beechworth’s most well-known characters. The son of Dutch-born Jacob and Christina Vandenberg (or Van Den Berg) who run the popular ‘Vine Hotel’ for many years, he leaves Beechworth as a youngster and walks all the way to Melbourne with just 3/6 in his pocket! Henry finds employment in the city as a gardener, before becoming a fully-fledged landscape gardener. Returning to Beechworth with his new bride, Mary Syme, he carries on the business of a general Beechworth dealer with much success, and when the Wangaratta to Beechworth railway is being constructed, he sees an opportunity and opens the ‘Victoria Hotel’ and entertainment hall near the newly built Everton Railway Station. |
1887
After the death of his brother-in-law David Dunlop, 52-year-old baker James McMaster takes over Dunlop’s thriving Scotch Pie Shop on Camp Street. It stands next door to Manchester House and opposite the Beechworth Post Office in one of the three buildings now occupied by the Beechworth Bakery (above and below).
1887
After quickly outgrowing space at the former Oriental Bank building on Ford Street, the Mother Superior and the nuns from the Brigidine Convent & Boarding School successfully appeal for funds from Beechworth’s Catholic parishioners, allowing them to move, taking charge of St. Joseph’s School in Church Street as well as purchasing 10 acres of land adjacent to the school. Construction soon begins on a grand building to serve as both a convent and secondary school and the first section will be ready by December 1888. Building will continue and expand until it is fully completed in 1904. The Brigidine Convent of Mt Saint Joseph becomes known as ‘The Priory’.
| The last surviving member of the four original founding nuns who arrived from Ireland in 1886, will pass away in Beechworth in 1952. |
A.A. Billson’s Brewery begin producing their new ‘Anglo-Australian Ale’ (above) which quickly becomes popular throughout Victoria and New South Wales. A ‘pure malt ale’ styled after a light English ale, it is a traditional beer that does not use sugar in its fermentation, therefore requiring a comparatively long and cool maturation in-the-bottle and is brewed in winter. In 2019 Billson’s will recreate the same product, now named simply ‘Australian Ale’ (below).
1888 – Jul
The G.H. Billson Brewery in Albury combines with the Hume Brewery (run by Mr Headly and Mr Langhammer) to form the Albury Brewing and Malting Co Ltd (below). 44-year-old George Henry Billson becomes chairman, with Headley as general manager.
1888 – Jul
The impressive new two-storey Beechworth Council Chambers at 103 Ford Street are officially opened, with a ‘Grand Ball’ held in the 1859-built Town Hall which stands behind the Council Chambers. Designed by Melbourne architect George Jobbins in a classical style, the front of the new Council Chambers features five bays intersected by pilasters.
1888 – Jul
Beechworth now boasts two roller-skating rinks, as the new “fad” becomes increasingly popular. The first is at the Oddfellows Hall after Mr Young of Melbourne negotiates a lease of the building at 15 Loch Street from the trustees. He engages 62-year-old Scotsman James Kyle to lay down a new smooth floor of the best Kauri pine (above) and the venture is known as The Columbia Elite Rink. Mr Bailey and Mr Chalk are proprietors of the second rink – the Beechworth Skating Rink – operating from a “commodious brick building” on the corner of Camp and Last Streets. It opens with a performance from Henry Vandenberg’s Beechworth Brass Band, established a year earlier.
| The opening night of ‘The Columbia Elite Rink’ is hosted by Beechworth’s Honourable Frederick Brown, M.L.C. who, after declaring the rink officially open, introduces popular Melbourne roller skater Mr Stevens. Stevens then treats the 150 invited guests to some remarkably clever fancy ‘rinking’, showing that he is thoroughly ‘at home’ on the skates, making the admiring spectators envious of his cool self-possession which is accomplished without accident or mistake. The highlight is Mr Stevens taking a ‘running jump’ over four chairs placed together in the middle of the hall! |
1888 – Sep 1
After being run by the Dodd brothers since 1858, the Ovens Tannery business and freehold is purchased by 27-year-old William Zwar (who has the production expertise), his brother 25-year-old Albert Michael Zwar (who is the ‘figures man’), and friend Leonard Lloyd (the ‘money man’) for £500 and their partnership is registered as Zwar Bros and Co. (Matthew Dodd passes away in Beechworth in 1904, aged 67.) At the time of the purchase, the business employs 15 men and processes 30 hides a week. Younger brother, 16-year-old Henry Zwar joins a year later as an apprentice, with the tannery eventually becoming known as the Zwar Bros Beechworth Tannery. The following year they also take over the Dodds Leather Merchants store in Ford Street. The Zwars continue to expand the business and by 1896 are employing 30 men, with the weekly output of hides at the tannery increasing to 210, becoming well known for their sole leather. 200 tons of wattle bark, sourced from Euroa, is required annually for the tanning process (below).
| By 1896 the ‘Zwar Bros Beechworth Tannery’ is thriving, exporting 9 tons of products per month to England, China, Japan and India. Production is mainly in saddlery and sole leathers, with the company also trading in calf, goat, horse, kangaroo, wallaby, possum, rabbit and even kangaroo and wallaby skins! Leonard Lloyd dissolves his partnership with the Zwar brothers in 1914 for £9,000. |
| Albert Michael Zwar is the driving force behind the success of the tannery and eventually becomes its sole controller. While he is considered autocratic and forceful with an astute business mind, he also has a strong sense of community. |
1888
Fiddes & Co (who built Beechworth’s granite Newtown Bridge) now oversee the addition of impressive granite entrance pillars and iron gates to the front of the Beechworth Cemetery.
| The cemetery’s rotunda and headstones, as well as its distinctive and unusual features such as a Turkish fountain and the rare twin Chinese ‘Burning Towers’ and Shrine make it one of the finest examples of a historical garden cemetery in Victoria, and of botanical significance for its large collection of landscaped plantings. |
1888 – Oct
Having taken over H.L. & E. Pottery Beechworth at Hurdle Flat, Beechworth businessmen Alfred Foster and Joseph Wilson rename the business the Ovens Pottery Company Ltd. They will manufacture a range of pottery products including stoneware, garden urns, vases, cheese dishes, ginger beer bottles, butter coolers, water filters, wine and spirit barrels, bread plates, jugs, teapots, storage jars, pots, tiles, flower pots, spittoons, basins, bowls, demijohns, lidded crocks, pipes and bricks. Ovens Pottery will struggle financially until John Alston Wallace injects £10,000 into the business and it carries on, until finally going into liquidation in 1892.
1888 – Dec 16
The Reverend Father O’Farrell arrives in Beechworth to consecrate the new Brigidine Convent that has been completed by Beechworth builders Alexander Kyle and his father James Kyle. The imposing brick structure – which adjoins the St. Joseph’s Church grounds – is three stories and divided into three large rooms (or halls) with each being 15 feet from floor to ceiling. Each room is fitted with an electric bell and lighted with gas, all windows have Venetian blinds and the floors are of kauri pine. The staircases are of very handsome design, and the bathroom contains every convenience, including a gas water-heater and a cast-iron enameled bath. There is a kitchen as part of an adjoining brick cottage and a kitchen garden has been planted. The outlook from the upper windows is a grand one, with a view of the surrounding country for miles. The work of furnishing will be undertaken by the Brigidine community during the Christmas holidays so that the new convent will be ready for occupation at the beginning of the first term of 1889.
| During the convent’s history, it averages 80 pupils (including 30 boarders), increasing to 150 pupils during its peak in the 1960s, but by 1978, declining student numbers lead to the closure of the school and convent and the property passes to private enterprise. It is now known as ‘The Old Priory’. |
1889 – Jan
A new building is erected at 51-53 Ford Street, next door to Gammon’s Medical Hall. James and Robert Cunningham’s Hardware & Ironmongery Store and John Armstrong’s drapery store Cheapside House will be the first businesses to occupy the building’s two shops, with Cheapside House eventually taking over both shops.
1889
After increasing ill health, Edwin ‘Teddy’ Warden – who had built and opened the Midland Counties Hotel on the corner of Ford and Church Street in December 1868 – decides to pass the licence of his popular pub to his two sons Edwin Jnr and Frederick Oscar Warden. Nine years later ‘Teddy’ will pass away at the age of 60, in April 1898.
| A native of Coventry in England, where he served his apprenticeship as a tailor, 27-year-old Edwin ‘Teddy’ Warden and his 24-year-old wife Sarah Jane Guttridge arrive in Melbourne in 1856 aboard the ‘Saldanha’ to seek their fortune on the Beechworth goldfields. He has a good amount of success and uses his winnings to purchase the ‘Australian Arms Hotel’ at Silver Creek in 1858 before selling up and building the ‘Midland Counties Hotel’ in Beechworth in 1868. Warden has a fondness for sport and is a permanent fixture at all of Beechworth’s race meetings, becoming a highly successful gambler. After an investment of just £1 in a lottery ticket, he wins a substantial amount in the sweep, allowing him to become the owner of a valuable property known as ‘Bentley’s Paradise’ on which he builds a handsome private residence. His wife Sarah will die at the age of 60 in 1892. |
1889 – Apr
Typhoid fever is still taking lives in Beechworth and Robert Pyle and three of his adult children of the Three Mile will all die of the water-borne disease within 18 days of each other. On February 20 his eldest son, Robert Jnr, dies, followed on March 25 and April 7 by Emma and Annie – the second and third eldest daughters – who succumb to the same disease, from polluted water in the family tank. Finally, 55-year-old Robert Pyle Snr passes away in late April after a fortnight’s illness. (Two more children – Alfred and Charles Pyle – will die of the same disease three months later). The death of the respected and esteemed patriarch of the Pyle family results in shutters being put up in all the businesses in Beechworth as a large number of mourners come from various parts of the district for his funeral. The cortege comprises thirty vehicles and twenty horsemen. He is buried alongside the three fresh mounds of earth which mark the resting places of his recently buried children.
| Arriving in the Beechworth in the 1850s, Robert Pyle Snr works for some time on a farm belonging to Melmoth Hall (receiver and paymaster at Beechworth) on the Three Mile Creek before entering into partnership with Bernard Holloway as dairymen and gardeners on the allotment of land where his house stood. Pyle and Holloway will subsequently purchase the dairying business of Marshall and Ward at Black Springs, as well as the market gardens of the Hall Brothers. In 1866 Pyle marries Catherine, the eldest daughter of Richard Rowe of Bowman’s Forest and they will have a total of 14 children. Through perseverance, industry and thrift, Robert Pyle Snr acquires considerable property and eventually becomes a respected butcher in the district. Sadly, not long before his death, his family home and other buildings are destroyed by fire. The loss, including the building’s valuable contents, is estimated at £1,000 over and above the amount of the Pyle’s £1,100 insurance policy. |
1889
With ever-increasing patient numbers, work begins on the construction of 8 new ‘cottage wards’ within the grounds of the Beechworth Insane Asylum, behind the main, existing buildings. They will be completed by 1890. Four are built on the ‘male side’ and four of the ‘female side’, with each cottage housing 20 patients. Initially named ‘Female 6-9’ and ‘Male 7-10’, the cottages are given names in the 1980s, including ‘Kiama’, ‘Carinya’, ‘Myrtle’ and ‘Grevillia’ (female side) and ‘Olivene’ and ‘Kurrajong’ (male side).
1889
After working for Beechworth butcher William Hyem for many years, 38-year-old James Rodgers Newey opens his own butcher shop at 62 Ford Street (above). Newey will make a large percentage of his profits by supplying meat to the main government institutions in Beechworth including the Mayday Hills Asylum and The Ovens Benevolent Asylum.
| Newey’s parents William and Ann Newey and his 2-year-old brother George Newey had perished in a fire at Daniel Smith’s ‘Welcome Inn’ hotel at Reid’s Creek on January 4th 1858. At the age of 24, James Newey marries Harriet Chatfield in Beechworth, and they have a son James Jnr, and three daughters – Annie, Ada and Ethel. James Rodgers Newey will die in Beechworth at the age of 82 in 1933. |
1889
To improve water supply at the Zwar Bros Tannery, William Zwar builds a dam and then, in 1916, connects a 3” pipe to Beechworth’s water supply, but by the 1920s, this water supply is still not enough for the growing business.
1889 – Dec
John Armstrong’s new Cheapside House drapery store at 53 Ford Street quickly proves popular and he will soon take over the Cunningham brother’s hardware and ironmongery store next door. Today Beechworth Toys and Collectables (number 51) and Rebus (number 53) operate from the restored building (see photo below).
| Born in England, Armstrong moves with his family to Australia where his father settles them in Wooragee, 9km from Beechworth, becoming a farmer and orchardist, assisted by his sons. Young John serves an apprenticeship at the drapery store of Sidney Henry Rundle of ‘London House’ in Beechworth before establishing his drapery business – ‘Cheapside House’ – at 53 Ford Street. He will go on to build up the business that becomes known far and wide simply as “Armstrong’s”. He becomes a Justice of the Peace and a member of the ‘Ovens District Hospital’ Board of Management, ‘School Board of Advice’, and a member of ‘Beechworth Boxing Day Sports’. He is the president of the ‘Beechworth Progress Association’ and Treasurer of the ‘Beechworth Racing Club’. Residing for many years with his wife Margaret at their home ‘Wongrabel’ on Finch Street, John Armstrong will pass away aged 63 on March 22, 1920. |
1889 – Dec 31
New Year’s Eve ‘Salute to the Beechworth Pioneers’. Scottish-born Beechworth pioneer John Alston Wallace invites 150 of the town’s greatest pioneers to a special celebration, timed to coincide with ‘Hogmanay’ – the last day of the year and Scotland’s most important holiday. Starting in the afternoon with a range of spectacular Highland Games – which attract a crowd of 3,000 – a banquet begins in the early evening inside a huge marquee set up in the grounds of the Vandenburg’s Vine Hotel. The invited ‘greats’ of Beechworth relive past triumphs and tragedies at the event and, as midnight approaches, fireworks light up the sky, and the bells of Beechworth blend with the sound of bagpipes to farewell the old year and welcome the new.
| The one important Beechworth pioneer – invited but missing – at Wallace’s New Year’s Eve banquet is 58-year-old George Briscoe Kerferd, former Mayor of Beechworth, ex-Premier of Victoria and Supreme Court judge. He died while on a holiday at Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula on the very morning of the ‘Salute to the Beechworth Pioneers’. |
1890 – Jan 1
The celebrations continue the following day with the ‘Wallace Festival’ being held to celebrate John Alston Wallace’s outstanding contribution to Beechworth.
1890 – Jan 1
The Foundation Stone for a new wing of the Ovens Benevolent Asylum at 12 Warner Road is laid by Elizabeth Keogh, sister-in-law of John Alston Wallace, in honour of Alston’s wife Theresa Ellen Wallace who had recently died in childbirth. It will be named the Wallace Memorial Ward.
| Just before the Foundation Stone is lowered into place, George Fiddes, the new building’s architect, places a bottle containing ‘Jubilee Coins’ and copies of local newspapers in the cavity below the stone. |
1890 – Jan 1
After 12 years as his assistant, Pharmacist George Gammon makes George B. Taylor his equal partner in the business, renaming it Gammon & Taylor’s Medical Hall.
| ‘Gammon & Taylor’ continues until 1896 when the ‘Medical Hall’ is sold to William Johnston Bowen, the son of well-known Melbourne pharmacist William Bowen. After the sale of his business, George Gammon retires to the Melbourne suburb of Kew. William Johnston Bowen had been the dispenser at the ‘Ovens Hospital’ in Beechworth so is already well known in the district and he successfully runs the business until his retirement in 1916. |
1890
A beautiful home is built at on a large property 42 Dingle Road. It sells for $35,000 in February 1994 and is next offered for sale by Bonnici and Associates in 2024, valued at over $2 million.
1890
Enrolments at Beechworth State School (number 1560) have dropped to 304. At its height, the school had over 1,000 children gaining their education at the school.
1890
A fine new Victorian home with a wide verandah is completed at 39 Loch Street. Located on 2 blocks of land totalling 2,024 square metres, it still stands today as a 4 bedroom, three bathroom home and is sold in September 2018 for $1,270,000.
1890
An ‘Isolation Ward’ – designed in the Gothic style by Donald Fiddes – is completed at the Ovens Goldfields Hospital. Constructedto the west of the main building, the contractors are Beechworth builder 64-year-old James Kyle and his 23-year-old son Alfred Kyle. Costing £2,000, the new ward will become known as ‘Little Canada’ after a Canadian miner – who likenes the pine-clad slopes of the adjacent Beechworth Gorge to his native country – builds a log cabin close to where the ‘Isolation Ward’ is constructed.
| Scottish-born builder James Kyle is President of the Board of Management of the ‘Ovens Goldfields Hospital’. When Sir William Clarke travels to Beechworth to lay the foundation stone for the new ‘Isolation Ward’, another procession is held in Beechworth, complete with band, lodges and the Chinese miners displaying their famous dragon. |
1890
A beautiful cottage is built at 49 Last Street between Kars and Frederick Streets. The Beechworth property – which features rich Jarrah floors and high ceilings with a bullnose veranda – is sold in October 2024 for $935,000.
1890
The Star Hotel on Ford Street is sold to William Carroll for £3,000. Irish-born Carroll has been a wards-man at the Ovens District Hospital since 1867. His wife Mary Ann Carroll will manage the accommodation and meals at the hotel. Carroll will run the Star Hotel until his death in February 1903, at the age of 63, at which time his brother John Carroll takes over the hotel, and then ownership is taken by John Carroll’s widow Margaret Carroll following his death.
1890
1890
On land that had been the home of Melrose’s Ovens Bedding Factory (destroyed by fire in April 1871) the unassuming weatherboard Charnwood Cottage is built at 11 Loch Street. Set on over quarter of an acre of land, it features 12 foot high ceilings, 4 fireplaces, hardwood floors and sash windows, and stands two doors from the Oddfellows Hall (built in mid-1871). Named after the historic ‘Charnwood Forest’ which covers approximately 67 square miles (170 km2) in Leicestershire in England, Charnwood Cottage will be sold for $400,000 in January 2020 and then fully renovated and updated, with work completed in July 2023.
1890
54-year-old Scottish-born Alexander ‘Alex’ Cribbes draws big crowds as he tours North-East Victoria with his steam-driven “Riding Gallery” and other amusements. The “splendid steam riding gallery” is a boiler-powered ‘Merry-Go-Round’ featuring concentric rings of horses and carriages. The centre of the rings features a space where a band performs, entertaining the ‘riders’ with music as an engineer feeds fuel into the boiler and pulls a range of levers through the escaping steam to operate the popular ride. Cribbes always returns to his home in Beechworth during the winter months where his numerous workers are employed in improving his various properties, before he sets out with his merry-go-round on tour for the next season, regularly offering free tickets and rides for the benefit of local charities. Alex and his (second) wife Margaret Beatson will have six children, all born in Beechworth between 1871 and 1883. After Margaret’s death in 1883, Alex will marry Marion Johnston in 1887 and they will have four more children, all born in Beechworth. Alex (below) – who resides at his home on Sydney Road in Beechworth for over 50 years – will die in Beechworth on March 17th 1915 at the age of 78.
| Two of Alexander Cribbes’ sons – Robert and Alexander ‘Alec’ Jnr – play in the band in the centre of the ‘Merry-Go-Round’. The Cribbes family are involved in the Beechworth music scene and take part in many local concerts and performances. Alec (pictured below) will live to the age of 74, dying in Ringwood in 1957, while his older brother Robert (1876-1897 – who dies aged just 21) and his father Alexander Cribbes (1836-1915) are both buried in the Beechworth Cemetery. |
1890 – Oct 15
After 10 months of construction, the extension of the Ovens Benevolent Asylum, the 12-bed Wallace Memorial Ward, opens at 19 Warner Road, the first ward built solely for female residents, mainly destitute miner’s wives. Designed by Beechworth architect Donald Fiddes, it is constructed by Thomas Sandham and John Lyell at a cost of £1,176. It is financed almost entirely by a donation of £1,100 from local mining entrepreneur and parliamentarian John Altson Wallace as a memorial to his wife who had died in childbirth some years before.
| The ‘Wallace Memorial Ward’ will used as a female-only ward until 1973 when it is converted for use as a ‘Day Hospital’. After a new, modern ‘Day Hospital’ in constructed in the mid-1980s, the ‘Wallace Memorial Ward’ will be refurbished for use as the administration building. It has since been fully renovated and is now a private home. |
1891 – Mar 10
When the promotors of the ‘Cyclorama of the Battle of Waterloo’ in Melbourne discover that a patient at the Beechworth Benevolent Home was a soldier in the historic battle in June 1815, they send for him. 98-year-old Jeremiah Brown is transported to Melbourne where an old uniform is found and he is given a place of honour in the show where he proceeds to recount his adventures as a 22-year-old at Waterloo to fascinated, wide-eyed members of the Melbourne public!
| Introduced to Australia by American promoters Howard H. Gross and Isaac Newton Reed, the Melbourne ‘Cyclorama’ – a large hexagonal building designed by George Johnson – is situated on Victoria Parade at Eastern Hill (Fitzroy). Before silent movies were shown to the public, the 19th century ‘Cyclorama’ hosts viewings of massive 360-degrees paintings of the battle that wrap around the circumference of the building’s interior. Sounds of the battle including cannons, thanks the recently introduced gramophone record, are played, and artificial smoke waft through the building for added effect. On hand are people – like Jeremiah Brown – who are either historians or were there at Waterloo to tell the story. The ‘Cyclorama’ is quite a phenomenon in its heyday but, with the advent of ‘moving picture shows’, it will close in the early 1990s with the building repurposed as an athletics and boxing pavilion, before being demolished in the 1920s to make way for extensions to St. Vincent’s Hospital. |
1891 – Jun 4
Bushranger Harry Power (born in Ireland as Henry Johnson) reappears in the small town of Moyhu, 31 miles (51km) from Beechworth, to search for a small pot of gold he had alledgedly buried there some years before. In the intervening years Harry has been a prisoner at Pentridge Prison in Melbourne before being released due to ill health at the age of 70. He then gets a job on the 1840-built ship ‘Success’ moored in Sydney Harbour, refitted to show what life was like in prison hulks. Power is employed to be the “official greeter” of guests and is billed as a “real life bushranger”. 71-year-old Power will leave Moyhu (with or without his ‘buried gold’ – nobody knows!) and decamp to Swan Hill where tragically, a few months later, his body will be found in the Murray River after apparently drowning while fishing onOctober 11th 1891.
1891 – Jul 23
The railway line from Beechworth finally reaches Yackandandah with an official opening overseen by the Postmaster General, the Honourable John Gavan Duffy (below). Costing a staggering £8,000 per mile – because of the difficult and rugged nature of the terrain – the maximum grade permitted by Victorian Railways has to be used for one third of its length. The building of the Beechworth to Yackandandah line – one of the earliest ‘branch lines’ ever constructed in Victoria – may be a political triumph for those who had championed its construction but will be a financial disaster for Victoria. In its first year of operation, it will lose £5,500 and will continue to lose money every year thereafter.
1891 – Jul 23
The railway line from Beechworth to Yackandandah is completed. It is one of the earliest ‘branch lines’ ever constructed in Victoria. To mark the occasion, a special train sets out from Beechworth to celebrate the opening of the newly built Yackandandah Railway Station (below). The menu includes Ox Tongue, Roast Duck, Saddles of Lamb, York Hams and Pigeon Pie.
1891
Andrew Porritt moves his Ovens Register newspaper printing press into a new purpose-built printery at 37 Camp Street.
| Although Andrew Porritt dies in 1908 at the age of 74, his son Thomas Frederick Powden Porritt continues to run the newspaper before purchasing rival Beechworth paper ‘The Ovens and Murray Advertiser’ in April 1918 from the estate of Mary Ann Warren – widow of Richard Albert Warren. ‘The Ovens Register’ will then be absorbed into ‘The Ovens and Murray Advertiser’. The ‘Ovens Register’ had also been published as the ‘Chiltern and Howling Times’ and the ‘Mining, Commercial & Agricultural Directory’ (1886-1889) and ‘The Chiltern and Howling Times and Ovens Register’ (1889-1918). |
22-year-old Charles Ernest Kipling joins his stepfather, long-time Beechworth jeweller and watchmaker, 76-year-old William Jameson Turner, as a partner in his business at 52 Ford Street. Considered the ‘Tiffanys’ of Beechworth, Turner and Kipling carries one of the largest stocks of jewellery, gems and watches in the North-Eastern district, and all kinds of repairs are done on the premises. When Turner retires, his stepson Kipling takes over the business, but the name of the company remains Turner and Kipling.
| Irish-born William Jameson Turner establishes his first gem, gold and jewellery business in Beechworth in 1856 when he is 41 years old. He is awarded a medal for the precious stones he sends to the ‘London Exhibition of 1862’. With Beechworth’s other notable watchmaker and jeweller, Charles Frederick Falck, Turner prepares a dazzling display of gems and jewellery from Beechworth for the ‘Royal Society’s Exhibition’ in Melbourne in 1865. In 1882 – at the age of 67 – Turner will marry 42-year-old widow Julia Searle Withers. He will pass away in Beechworth in 1897, aged 82. |
Councilor Alfred Arthur ‘Bosher’ Billson organizes a group of volunteers to further develop and beautify the ‘Botanical Reserve’ (established in 1858) on Sydney Road. After a majestic stand of European trees are planted, Billson will begin negotiations with the Victorian Government to purchase two naval cannons from the 1814-built British warship H.M.S. Nelson. These will finally arrive in 1901 and be mounted on top of the large rockface in the reserve, known locally as the ‘Giant’s Grave’. The ‘Botanical Reserve’ will be officially renamed Queen Victoria Park on May 7th 1902 in commemoration of the late Queen Victoria.
1891 – Oct
Renowned and respected Beechworth photographer James Edward Bray dies after suffering a bout of influenza. He is 59 years old. After establishing his popular studio in Camp Street in 1868, he has just opened another branch of his photographic business at Yarrawonga which is where he passes away. His funeral is held in Beechworth and his widow, Elizabeth, will continue operating the Camp Street photographic studio with the help of their son, until she dies on 20 November 1895.
| When he is 48-years old, James Edward Bray is one of four men who photograph the Kelly gang after the siege of Glenrowan in 1880. In the early 1880s Bray starts specialising in printing varnished photographs on tin. |
1892 – Jan
The Beechworth Gymnasium and Athletic Club is formed and opens rooms on the corner of Church and Finch Streets.
1892 – Feb 12
Thomas Tanswell Snr dies in Beechworth at the age of 62. He has successfully run Beechworth’s Commercial Hotel since 1871 and built a beautiful home in Newtown called ‘Loughborough Villa’ – named after the town of Loughborough in Leicestershire, England where he had been born. For a few months before his death he had been suffering from heart disease, and had been cautioned by Beechworth’s Dr. Skinner to avoid undue excitement. The day before his death he had been at his Commercial Hotel in Beechworth transacting business as usual, conversing freely with those whom he meets, before returning to ‘Loughborough Villa’ in Newtown shortly after 10pm. But at around 3am, a ‘gurgling noise’ is heard from him and, upon assistance being summoned by his wife Ann Tanswell, it is apparent that his end is at hand … and within a few minutes Thomas Tanswell has expired. Upon his death becoming known, most of the leading places of business in Beechworth will close as a mark of respect.
| 19-year-old Tanswell left England in 1849, traveling to Yass in New South Wales with twelve members of his family to join his father John, who had been sent to Australia as a convict in 1833. At the end of 1852 he left his father’s butcher shop in Yass and excitedly trekked overland in the first goldrush to Beechworth, first settling at Reid’s Creek and digging for gold – with a degree of success – before moving to Spring Creek where he opens a butcher shop. At the end of 1853 he joins the new goldrush to the Buckland and quickly becomes involved in business in the district – Morse’s Creek (now Bright), Myrtle Creek and elsewhere, working as a butcher and taking an active interest in mining and in local public matters before building the ‘Empire Hotel‘ in Bright. Married – and with 13 children in tow and financially successful – he returned to Beechworth in 1869 and purchased and completely rebuilt the ‘Commercial Hotel’. |
1892 – Feb 13
On the day of Thomas Tanswell’s burial, the vast funeral cortege leaves the Tanswell home ‘Loughborough Villa’ at Newtown and makes its way into the centre of town, passing the Tanswell’s Commercial Hotel on Ford Street, then Thomas Tanswell’s beloved Masonic Lodge on Loch Street, before arriving at the Beechworth Cemetery. One of Thomas and Ann’s sons, George Tanswell – who has been suffering from tuberculosis for a number of years – manages to rise from his sick bed as the procession passes the Commercial Hotel to stand on the hotel’s balcony for a final farewell to his father. The effect of doing this and “the chill experienced by sudden exposure to the air” quickly exacerbates his condition and he dies the next day at the age of just 31, leaving a widow Georgina and a son, Reginald Tanswell. Edward Tanswell, the second eldest son of Thomas Tanswell, takes over the Commercial Hotel. Edward – who had married Jane McGowan in 1881 – will run the hotel succesfully, until 1895 – three years after his father and brother had died – when Edward too passes away at the age of 38, leaving his widow Jane to run the hotel for the next nine years, until financial difficulties force her to transfer the hotel’s licence to their daughter, 22-year-old Ethel Jane Tanswell in 1905. On April 28, 1908, Jane and Ethel will successfully apply to have the name of the hotel officially changed from the Commercial Hotel to Tanswell’s Commercial Hotel, the name that remains to this day.
1892
The Beechworth Shire Council reserves a large area of disused mining wasteland near the railway station (along Spring Creek to Mellish Street) for future development.
1892
Billson’s Brewery introduce another new beer, Billson’s Matured Stout, which is still being brewed into the mid-20th century when the company is known as Murray Breweries (above). It will be revived and brewed again by Billson’s in 2019 (below).
1892
A pretty cottage is built at 39 High Street – between Camp Street and Church Street – and it still stands proudly today.
1892
Reid’s Creek School closes. The Woolshed’s last hotel closes in the 1900s and the Woolshed school closes in 1922, although gold mining is revived by bucket dredging of the creek and continues until 1922.
1892 – Apr
Following a meeting between officials of the two Beechworth football clubs – the Beechworth Football Club and the Wanderers Football Club – they agree to merge under the new name, the “Beechworth District Wanderers Football Club” adopting a red and black striped guernsey (and nicknamed ‘The Bombers’) before becoming an inaugural member of the Ovens and Murray Football Association (OMFA) in 1893.
| The merged club is initially quite powerful, claiming the OMFA’s first two premierships, and adding a third in 1897. The 1897 flag is won by means of a play-off after Rutherglen and Beechworth (who have now dropped the ‘District Wanderers’ part of their name) finish level at the head of the premiership ladder. There are no finals series, as such, in 1897, so to all intents and purposes this play-off will be the fledgling association’s first ever OMFA Grand Final, with Beechworth edging home by 9 points, 3.4 (22) to 1.7 (13). |
1892
Billson’s begin trading under the new name of Billson’s Anglo-Australian Brewery Company (the name it will keep until 1911). By 1895, its Beechworth cellars are capable of holding 7,000 dozen bottles and, at its manufacturing peak in the early 20th century, the brewery can treat 20 hogsheads of liquor (about 5000 litres) per day.
1892 – May
The Report of the Secretary of Agriculture lists 32 separate winegrowers and vineyards in the Beechworth district with 124 acres under vine. With gold discoveries in the region all but coming to an end, the local wine industry is at its peak … but it will not last.
| By 1901 the region’s plantings have shown a contraction to 103 acres and wine production is at 10,416 gallons. By 1910 this has been reduced to just 33 acres. In 1916 the region records just 6 acres of vines and production of just 30 gallons. The probable invasion of phylloxera – first discovered in Rutherglen in 1899 and spread through the north-east of the state probably had some effect – although Beechworth’s area under grape cultivation has been in decline since 1893. The outbreak of ‘The Great War’ all but finishes it off, the region’s once promising enterprise as a wine region is at an end … but it will return! |
1892
Small syndicates of miners continue to work old or abandoned quartz reefs, often without the assistance of heavy machinery to remove the large amounts of rock, in order to obtain yields at ever greater depths. Three miles from Beechworth, Roger Williams & Sons revive operations at the old Williams Good Luck Mine on the Mopoke Reef (also called Morepork Gully) in the Dingle Ranges. (The Dingle Ranges are part of the eastern flanks of the Murmungee Basin.) Roger Williams & Sons will continue to work the mine for more than two decades, digging an 800-foot long tunnel, digging down as far down as 200 feet to connect and provide better working access to the mass of reefs and veins in the vicinity. Progress is hampered by poor air quality charged with fumes from dynamite. Vast quantities of rock have to be crushed to obtain payable yields.
| An emigrant from Cornwall with experience in the tin mining industry, 19-year-old Roger Williams Snr sails to New Zealand in 1840, then to Australia where he spends time on the Bendigo Gold Fields before settling in Beechworth in the early 1860s. He works on various mining activities in the district, including the ‘Rocky Mountain Tunnel’ project. |
1892
With the decline of gold mining as Beechworth’s main drawcard, the Beechworth Progress Association sees the growing interest in tourism as a way to bring people to the town and issues ‘The Illustrated Guide to Beechworth and Vicinity’. Published by popular Beechworth newsagent James Ingram, the book comprises 54 pages of text and advertising, and 12 photo-printed plates. It describes the attractions, landscapes and peacefulness of Beechworth – and the railway that comes right into town – pointing out that “a busy Melbourne merchant could depart the city on the 4.55 p.m. train to arrive in Wangaratta at 9.16 p.m. take the connecting train to Beechworth and be in bed by midnight”! In the book, Beechworth’s potential as a sanitorium is praised by the highly regarded novelist Ada Cambridge (below) – who happens to be the wife of Beechworth’s Anglican Dean, Reverend George Frederick Cross.
1892 – Nov
An athletic carnival, followed by a large ball, is held in Beechworth to celebrate the 51st birthday of the Prince of Wales, the future King of the British Empire. He will serve as King from 1901 until his death in 1910.
1892
37-year-old Dr David Skinner builds a new home and medical practice – ‘Balgownie’ – on the corner of Camp Street and Loch Street, the same site used by many local doctors since 1856. It still stands (as a private home) today.
| Born in Inverurie, Scotland, on April 28th 1855, David Skinner is educated in Aberdeen and obtains both ‘Master of Arts’ and ‘Master of Surgery’ degrees. After arriving in Melbourne, Skinner becomes the resident medical officer at the ‘Alfred Hospital’ before moving to Beechworth in 1882 to take up the same position at the ‘Ovens District Hospital’. He goes on to establish his own private medical practice – on land that will become the ‘Brigidine Convent’ property – before purchasing the old doctor’s house at 41 Camp Street (corner of Camp and Loch Streets) where he builds his new house and surgery. He continues to practice medicine at 41 Camp Street until his death from influenza in Beechworth in August 1918, aged 63. |
1893
Richard Warren moves the printing office of his newspaper The Ovens and Murray Advertiser from Ford Street to new premises at 17 Loch Street – the 1861 building that had been the home of the ‘Common School No. 36’ (later known as the Beechworth Academy) before it moved to its new larger site in 1875 and became Beechworth State School.
| As well as running ‘The Ovens and Murray Advertiser’, Richard Warren owns or manages a number of other businesses in Beechworth. He is also one of the founders of the ‘Ovens Goldfields Hospital’ and the ‘Benevolent Asylum’, invests in local companies, and participates in a range of local religious brotherhoods and societies and is well known as a philanthropist. He had married Mary Ann Mitchell when he was 26-years-old and, while the couple are unable to have children, they adopt a boy. Their adopted son –Richard Rowe Warren (nicknamed ‘Little Dick’) – will begin managing ‘The Ovens and Murray Advertiser’ in the late 1890s. |
1893
German businessman Frederic Haumann purchases Alexander Pritchard’s 9-acre vineyard at 59 Havelock Road and builds a fine brick residence on the site. He names the house ‘Haldon’, describing it as a ‘Gentlemen’s Retirement Home’. The house still stands today and is now part of the Haldon Wine Estate (below).
1893 – Jul
Three hundred invited guests attend a special theatrical evening at the Bijou Theatre within the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum. The night’s entertainment features two pieces – the 1880 one-act play “In Honour Bound” by Sydney Grundy (based on the French play “Un Chaine” by Eugène Scribe) – followed, after interval by the farce “The Steeplechase”. During interval the audience is entertained by Louis Dyring on the piano, performing popular pieces including “Home, Sweet Home” and “The Bells of the Monastery”. The Bijou Theatre – which is also used as the Asylum patient’s Assembly Room – is full on the night, with the “larger portion of the sitting accommodation filled to capacity” and the gallery also well patronised, while at the rear of the theatre, a number of ‘carefully selected asylum patients’ have been allowed to attend the show. The patients “displayed eager signs of expectation for the amusement so considerately provided for them by the genial Superintendent and his amiable wife”.
1893 – Jul 27
A three-day season with the new mechanical contrivance called Edison’s Loud Speaking Phonograph begins in Beechworth. A thrilled and amazed public are given a practical demonstration of the contraption by Dr D.W. Lane Ph.D. from New York, who also gives a lecture on “The Life and Work of Thomas Edison”. The astounding machine can record sound and play it back and had been patented by Edison in New York in February 1878.
1893
Having been successful in business and made good investments, 45-year-old Henry James Jarvis retires from his blacksmith and wheelwright business opposite the Shaw Brothers Store on Albert Road and acquires William Turner’s 1870’s-built house ‘Nithsdale’ in Newtown from Andrew Love Galbraith, the home’s most recent owner. Henry James Jarvis has invested in many other properties and land in the area and is, at one time, the largest individual ratepayer in all of Beechworth! He has served as president of the Beechworth Building Society, holds a large interest in the Rocky Mountain Gold Sluicing Co., of which he is also a director, is a prominent member of the Beechworth Congregational Church, a member of the Loyal Beechworth Lodge of Oddfellows and, for over 40 years, a member of the Independent Order of Rechabites as well as becoming a respected Justice of the Peace. In his retirement, Jarvis serves as a Beechworth Councillor between 1909 and 1917 and is named Beechworth’s Shire President 1916 but dies, still in office, the following year at the age of 70. He leaves a widow, a daughter and three sons, including popular Beechworth storekeeper Frank Jarvis.
| ‘Nithsdale’ had been built by William Turner in 1870. William Turner (not to be confused with Beechworth’s celebrated jeweller and watchmaker William Jameson Turner) had, for a time, been Beechworth’s Post-Master and names his newly built Beechworth home ‘Nithsdale’ after his birthplace in Scotland. Turner and his family eventually move to Melbourne where Turner joins the ‘Commercial Bank of Australia’ and builds another grand house – at 316 St. Kilda Street in Brighton – that he also names ‘Nithsdale‘. This house still stands today (above). |
1893
Beechworth pioneer John Alston Wallace moves with his children to Melbourne and builds a gracious mansion in Ripponlea that he names ‘Quat Quatta’ and two years later, 67-year-old Wallace marries his third wife, 25-year-old Ada Rona Reid. ‘Quat Quatta’ still stands today.
1894 – Mar 14
At the London Tavern in Camp Street, Alfred Arthur Billson and a visiting conductor, Mr. H. Fielder hold the inaugural ‘Beechworth Liedertafel’. A ‘Liedertafel’ is a German tradition – a friendly society of men united by an enthusiasm for singing.
1894 – Jul 16
Snow blankets Beechworth and surrounds as a mass of cold air descends on the area.
1895
The ‘new’ Billson’s is completed. In response to the need for more cellar space and to expand his operations, in 1889 Alfred Arthur ‘Bosher’ Billson had commissioned a new, bigger two-storey brick building at his brewery site at 29 Last Street. To allow for this expansion, the chimney tower is moved, brick by brick, from one side of the old building to the other side of the new building. The new cellar allows for the storage of a up to 84,000 bottles.
1895
Oliver Gilpin, born at Seven Creeks near Euroa, uses an inheritance to open his first drapery store in Korumburra, followed by a second store in Rutherglen in 1899. Many more stores follow, including Wagga Wagga in 1915 (above). He will go on to run a vast chain of stores throughout Australia, including a long running O. Gilpin Store on Ford Street in Beechworth. He is often credited as creating the first major drapery chain store business in Australia. Although known to be somewhat bigoted and eccentric, Gilpin is undoubtedly successful and has some modern ideas including the employment of women, an employee incentive scheme, mail order business, and recycling.
| In 1910 the wealthy and successful Mr Gilpin will build a magnificent home – ‘Kia Ora’ – in Finch Street, East Malvern. The spacious grounds include a tennis court, artificial lake, fernery, summer houses and a croquet and bowling green. By the 1930s Gilpin’s chain of Drapery stores has grown to 94 branches and Gilpin is living extravagantly, including the purchase of two Rolls-Royce cars. He builds a new two-storey luxury mansion – ‘Idylwylde’- in Balwyn, with plans to extend it to eight storeys! The house features a huge ballroom and luxury indoor pool and spa and the 20-acre garden which includes an artificial lake, vast aviaries and a zoo of Australian animals. Oliver Gilpin dies in 1942 and his Beechworth store will be purchased in 1945 by Frank Jarvis and incorporated into his existing shop next door. The remaining chain of ‘O. Gilpin’ stores will be purchased by ‘G J Coles & Co’ in 1951 for £1,250,000. |
1895 – May 22
Walter Carleton Crawford – son of Hiram and Martha Crawford, the successful and wealthy owners of Crawford and Connolly coaches – marries Wooragee-born Jessie Haeffner in a beautiful ceremony conducted by Church of England pastor Reverend Thomas W. Sarjeant, followed by a lavish reception at the Star Hotel presided by the groom’s father Hiram Allen Crawford.
1895
A two-bedroom ‘miner’s cottage’ is built at 7 Williams Street in Beechworth. It still stands today and operates as luxury self-contained accommodation ‘Belmont at Beechworth’ (below) owned and operated by Lisa Cartledge.
1895 – Jul 20
Mining disaster. At 3.45am, six of the eighteen men working underground at the McEvoy Gold Mine at Eldorado – 30km from Beechworth – are killed when a huge in-rush of mud and sludge enters the main workings. The mine will remain open, although the bottom workings are closed. After further problems – as well as the loss of another life – the McEvoy Gold Mine closes permanently in 1901 due to poor returns. In the lead up, there had been a strike which failed to be resolved by management and workers. The demise of the McEvoy will signal the end of deep mining at Eldorado.
| Five of the victims will later be buried together in the Eldorado Cemetery. The grave is marked by a special memorial, unveiled on 4 November 1961. |
1896
Edward Poynton is appointed as the new principal of Beechworth College. Although the number of students at the private boys’ school is small, under the leadership of Principal Poynton and his assistant Lieutenant S.G. Coad (above), there will an increase of enrolments of 50% by 1902. The boarding school – which includes a number of boys from Melbourne and South Gippsland – operates from a spacious building adjacent to Baarmutha Park, on land formerly selected for a potential Beechworth sanatorium. Beechworth College (formerly known as Beechworth Grammar) provides plenty of space for all outdoor sports and games, including cricket, football, golf and lawn tennis, and, within half a mile, are the ‘rifle butts’, at which the school cadets, under Lieutenant McMenemin, have ample practice in shooting.
1896 – Oct 4
Popular baker 64-year-old Richard Jones passes away after serving the Beechworth community for over 30 years. At 10.30pm on Thursday October 1st he had been preparing a batch of bread for the oven at his bakery on Camp Street when he collapses from a paralytic stroke and dies the following Sunday October 4th. Born in Kent in England in 1831, he had arrived in Australia as a young man in the late 1840s, marrying South Australia-born Sarah Elizabeth Clisby in 1851. Moving to Beechworth, he first gains employment with William Trim at his renowned Oven’s Bakery on Albert Road followed by work at Mr Faulkner’s bakery, before establishing his own successful business. A popular and highly regarded member of the Beechworth community, Jones will raise three children – Oliver, Gladys and Gwendoline – with his second wife Harriet Jarvis whom he had married in 1876.
1896 – Dec 17
Joseph Brock, a patient at the Beechworth Asylum, passes away. Brock is rumoured to be one of the gang of convicts who had participated in the infamous murder of John Giles Price – the hated ex-commandant of Norfolk Island – at Williamstown on March 25th 1852. A number of the ringleaders of the violent death will be hanged for the crime, with Brock apparently escaping, later ending up at the Asylum in Beechworth.
| Fifteen convicts are committed for trial for Price’s murder with seven of the men sentenced to death and hanged in 1857. Later, it is suggested that some of the executed men had been wrongly convicted. |
1896 – Dec 19
‘William’ Nam Shing, one of Beechworth’s longest serving and most respected Chinese businessmen, dies of blood poisoning following a severe foot infection, at the age of 63 and later buried in the ‘Church of England’ section of the Beechworth Cemetery.Born in Hong Kong, Shing has been a Beechworth merchant for over 40 years – running his Sun Quong Goon General Store – after arriving at the diggings along Spring Creek as an 18-year-old. The wealth that Shing accumulates over the years is devoted to the advancement of the district, with his quiet generosity becoming well known, both to the Chinese community and Europeans alike. A big supporter of local charities, Shing sits on the Committee of Management of the Ovens District Hospital and will later be appointed a Life Governor of the Oven’s Benelovent Asylum. He is also prominent in the introduction of the tobacco industry to the area. He and his wife Annie Cohen have two sons – Percy and Frederick, and three daughters – Ada, Amanada and Annie Jnr (who dies not long after being born). Today, Nam Shing Lane near Lake Sambell is named after him (see above).
1896 – Dec 28
After three days of searing heat – including Christmas Day when the mercury tops 100 degrees and Boxing Day when it reaches 110 – the Beechworth heatwave finally comes to an end. After restless nights when the temperature often fails to drop below 96 degrees, rain begins to fall and things begin to cool down.
1897
After the death of his business partner George B. Taylor in 1896, George Gammon retires, and sells his popular ‘Gammon & Taylor Medical Hall’ pharmacy at 55 Ford Street to William Johnston Bowen, the son of well-known Melbourne pharmacist William Bowen of Collins Street. As William Johnston Bowen has been the secretary and dispenser of the Ovens District Hospital for a number of years, he is already well known in the district, and he successfully runs the W.J. Bowen Chemist shop until his retirement in 1916. The building still stands today (below) with the famous Gammon’s name re-written on the top of the old chemist shop.
Beechworth Coin Laundromatt, with seperate accomodation on the first floor. The first floor balconey is added in 2005 by the building’s owner Peter Rue.
1897 – Jun 22
To celebrate Queen Victoria’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee, the large area of disused wasteland near the railway station the council acquired in 1892 is cleared, levelled and improved to create Wallace Park. On opening day, a procession of several thousand citizens march down Ford Street to the new park where the local member of Parliament plants the first tree. A picnic, sports events and fireworks display follow. Wallace Park will be officially dedicated in 1907, six years after Wallace’s death in 1901.
| Named after flamboyant Scottish entrepreneur and wealthy miner John Alston Wallace, it is now known as the ‘Wallace Park Reserve’ which today includes the ‘Beechworth Bowling Club’ (moved there from Queen Victoria Park in 1921), a running track constructed by the Beechworth Fire Brigade in 1953 and the ‘Beechworth Public Swimming Pool’ constructed in 1978. |
1898 – Jan
John Fletcher purchases James Ingrams’s stationery and bookseller business at 26 Camp Street from James Ingram Jnr (who had taken over the 1885-established business from his father in 1882). In 1870 Fletcher had resigned from his position as the secretary of the Beechworth Hospital to start business as a ‘Mudie Librarian’ and bookseller and newsagent. A popular and energetic citizen, he has acted as agent for “The Leader” and “The Age” throughout his business career in Beechworth.
| ‘Mudie Librarian’ – Between 1842 and 1852 English publisher Charles Edward Mudie develops his ‘Mudie’s Lending Library’ and ‘Mudie’s Subscription Library’ concept in London. Mudie’s efficient distribution system and vast supply of texts revolutionises the circulating library movement and it spreads to Australia. |
1898
At Baarmutha Park, the shire council demolishes the wooden grandstand, replacing it with a new two-storey brick grandstand with a curved metal roof and a light ornamental railing at cost of £800, and new stone gate pillars are added. Both still stand today.
1898
27-year-old Ernest Constantine Tarrant acquires the popular bakery and confectionary business of William Trim (below) on Ford Street. Tarrant – who was born in Clunes in 1871 and had been running a similar business in Bairnsdale with his father – announces that he has made important alterations to the business when he opens his Confectionary and Fruit Café, offering a range of light refreshments, along with fresh fruit and confectionary.
1898
William James McFeeters marries Anastasia Brown. Their son David McFeeters will become the postmaster at Reid’s Creek and their daughter Beatrice May McFeeters will live to the ripe old age of 101! McFeeters Road is named in honour of the family.
| The council also commemorate other pioneers through new street names in the area – Billson, Tanswell, Crawford, Allen and Ferguson Streets, and Fletcher Lane. |
1898 – Jun 10
Beechworth doctor and coroner William Augustus Dobbyn (above) passes away at the age of 68. A well-known and respected resident of the community for over 40 years – and a prominent member of the Beechworth’s Masonic Order – Dr. Dobbyn holds the position of resident surgeon of the Ovens District Hospital for 18 years, retiring just six weeks before his death. He is buried in Beechworth Cemetery after a large funeral procession through the town. He leaves a widow and six children, including 28-year-old twins William Edwin Stanhope Dobbyn and Dr. George Henry Sawtell ‘Harry’ Dobbyn.
| Born in Dublin in Ireland (where he received his medical education), Dobbyn arrives in Victoria in 1854 as the medical officer of the ship he sails out on. Soon after his arrival he proceeds to the small settlement of Wangaratta where he establishes a practice which he successfully carries on for a number of years. During his time in Wangaratta, he will also hold the positions of Territorial Magistrate and Coroner. He subsequently comes to Beechworth as ‘locum tenens’ for Dr. Dempster and then goes into practice in Beechworth for himself. Dr. Dobbyn is present at the death of bushranger Daniel Morgan on April 9th 1865 and asks Morgan if he can do anything for him, but the dying man merely replies, “I am choking.” Dobbyn will go on to carry out the autopsy on Morgan’s body in the woolshed at ‘Peechelba Station’. In May 1865 the Attorney General of Victoria will suspend Dr. Dobbyn – “for removing the head of Daniel Morgan without authority” – however the suspension will only be temporary. |
1898 – Aug 12
66-year-old Thomas Robert Donaldson takes over Beechworth’s popular 1870-built Post Office Hotel at 24 Camp Street from William Henry Rendall. Donaldson will hold the hotel’s licence until his death on Christmas Eve 1902 at the age of 70. Well known in the district, Donaldson had been in business running Miller’s General Store at Corryong on the Upper Murray for many years. Donaldson Street in Corryong is named in his honour.
| After being run by a number of further owners and licensees, ‘The Post Office Hotel’ will finally close its doors for good on May 31, 1941. The single-storey building will later become the home of the ‘Beechworth Hardware Store’ for many years before being transformed into ‘The Beechworth Emporium’ in September 1991 and still trades from the same 1870s building today. |
58-year-old Alfred William Ladson opens his third store in Beechworth, this time at 19 Camp Street called Ladson’s Branch Stores. It is managed by his son Charlie Ladson and stands next door to Frederick O’Brien’s drapery store.
| 19 Camp Street will be the home of numerous businesses over the ensuing years, eventually being torn down with the vacant land becoming a Used Car Yard in the 1950s and 60s (below), a Pinball Parlour in the 1970s and is now the site of the WAW Bank. |
1898
A lovely cottage is built at 11 William Street. It will go on to become the home of Gordon Osborn Doig and his wife Lorna Maud Doig (née Hume) and their children Lillian and Grace Doig for many years.
| Gordon Osborn Doig (1903-1982) will serve as Beechworth’s Postmaster for a number of years. Gordon also runs the popular ‘Beechworth Rifle Club’. |
1898
40-year-old Alfred Arthur ‘Bosher’ Billson (above) takes over as chair of the Beechworth branch of the Australian Natives’ Association. He takes an indefatigable interest in town affairs and foresees tourism as a means of stemming Beechworth’s decline. He is a Beechworth United Shire councillor for 24 years and serves four terms as president. At various times he is also president of the local Progress Association, hospital board, Liedertafel, choral society, and sporting clubs.
1898 – Nov
Prominent Chinese citizen 69-year-old Bartholomew Wong Poo – a missionary to the Chinese population – gives a well-received address about the dangers of opium, explaining that young Chinese males are often as much addicted to opium as European youths are to alcohol. One of the catechists involved in the baptism of Chinese into Beechworth’s Presbyterian Church, Bartholomew Wong Poo and his family are much admired and respected around town. He had married Emma Jane Richards on December 2, 1877, in Echuca. They have six children together – Elizabeth May, Arthur Bartholomew, James Albert, Emma Jocelyn, Richard Wesley and William Thomas. The ‘Poo’ is dropped from their surnames and reduced to ‘Wong’ and the children attend Beechworth State School. Although Bartholomew’s English is not strong, and Emma is of English descent, the children’s upbringing proudly centres the Chinese community.
1899
Bridget Murdoch of Wangaratta’s Commercial Hotel decides North-East Victoria needs a venue big enough for large-scale theatrical productions and concerts (which, at the time, are unable to find a suitable theatre between Melbourne and Sydney) and builds Her Majesty’s Theatre next to her hotel on Murphy Street. Said to be the “largest theatre built in Victoria outside the metropolis” it will soon feature some stunning live performances including the famous Polish pianist, Ignacy Jan Paderewski (later Poland’s Prime Minister) who plays his sole country town performance at the theatre on 25 October 1904, Australian contralto Ada Crossley with her accompanist, Percy Grainger in 1909, and Nellie Melba sings at the theatre to a capacity crowd of 1,400 on 29 January 1908. A massive and impressive venue, Her Majesty’s Theatre features a stage door high enough and wide enough for a coach-and-four, an auditorium which seats 1,400 and a sliding roof which opens to the gasps of audience amazements and exclamations of ‘heavens above!’
| After the death of her husband William Murdoch, his widow Bridget Murdoch runs Wangaratta’s ‘Commercial Hotel’ for many years. As well as building ‘Her Majesty’s Theatre’ next door in Murphy Street, she also leases the hotel stables to the Beechworth coach line ‘Crawford & Connelly’ whose coaches run between Beechworth and Melbourne for almost 100 years. The theatre will later be configured to screen motion pictures and become the ‘Plaza Picture Theatre’. It will cease showing films in February 1963 and both the ‘Commercial Hotel’ and ‘Her Majesty’s Theatre’ will sadly be demolished in 1969. |
1899
Beechworth photographer Henry Hansen places advertisements in the local press calling for locals ‘instrumental in developing the Ovens district’ to come forward with their photographic portraits. 470 citizens (all male) respond, and Hansen compiles the images onto a large board, naming the display ‘Pioneers of the Ovens and Townsmen of Beechworth’. A copy of the large picture is donated to the Beechworth’s Burke Museum. After registering the copyright on the picture, Hansen will go on to add a further 25 portraits.
| In 1990 author M. Rosalyn Shennan will research and publish the book ‘A Biographical Dictionary of the Pioneers of Ovens and Townsmen of Beechworth’. The limited-edition publication (just 500 copies) includes all 495 of Henry Hansen’s photographic portraits – with biographical details for each name, culled from the local press and informants. |
1899 – Mar
26-year-old watchmaker and jeweller Saad Shahein Farhood is running his Beechworth Watch Depot on Ford Street.
| Farhood will marry 20-year-old Rhoda Robina Coade at Beechworth’s Wesleyan Church on July 25th 1900. After her death in 1933, he will go on to marry Margaret Wilhelmina before his death at the age of 76 on August 16th 1949. |
1899 – Apr 1
Jean Macnamara is born at 62 Last Street in Beechworth. She will go on to become a doctor and scientist, known for her contributions to children’s health and welfare. She becomes a pioneer in the treatment of polio and an advocate of myxomatosis for the control of Australia’s huge rabbit population. In 1935 she is honoured as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Passing away in in 1968, Dame Jean is buried in the Beechworth Cemetery.
| In August 1999 a plaque in her honour is unveiled outside Macnamara’s former family home at 62 Last Street by Dr. Jack Best of the ‘Tall Poppy Society’ and the ‘Institute of Australian Political Science’. |
1899
The Beechworth Golf Club is established when the club’s secretary seeks permission from the Beechworth Shire Council to form golf links at Baarmutha Park. However, it is not until 1914 that the links are formerly opened. The Baarmutha Park Racecourse Grandstand serves as the clubhouse until immediately prior to World War Two when the Le Couteur family donate land where various clubhouses are built. Some of the land opposite the 6th green is sold in 2014.
1899 – Dec 22
Under heatwave conditions and gale force winds, a series of bushfires start around Beechworth just before Christmas. The first begins at Everton and, after burning its way through the hills to Sebastopol, it crosses the Woolshed Range and then sweeps up and over the hill behind Zwar’s Tannery, finally reaching the Gorge right opposite the Ovens District Hospital. Most of the houses near the tannery and opposite the hospital are destroyed. A man named White, living near Zwar’s Tannery, is seriously burned while endeavouring to rescue his deeds and other property. Just below Zwar’s Tannery on Malakoff Road an elderly couple are burnt to death.
1899 – Dec 22
As the bushfire roars across the Woolshed Range to Sheep Station Creek, the Reidford Hotel succumbs to the flames. Located at ‘Wick’s Crossing’ near Sebastopol, the Reidford Hotel – operated by Jim and Jack Chappell – had been the last remaining hotel of the eight hotels that once operated in the 1870s in the rugged Woolshed Valley. It became a popular drinking spot and famous for its ‘public swimming baths’ in the nearby Reedy Creek, the remains of which can still be seen today.
1899 – Dec 22
The ferocious north wind continues to blow, and another arm of the same bushfire reaches the Melbourne Road at the settlement of Black Springs wreaking terrible damage – eight houses are destroyed, along with the Black Springs School and a Mr Thompson is severely burned. William Robinson’s property on Sheep Station Creek Road at Black Springs – where he makes honey- is also wiped out. The north wind continues unabated and the fire begins to spread to the outskirts of Newtown and right towards the Beechworth township.
1899 – Dec 22
As Beechworth is enveloped in thick, choking smoke – and red hot embers, burning leaves and other debris fall over the centre of town – all business is suspended, and citizens rush out to help fight the flames. The fire sweeps through the slaughter-yard of John Blackwell, destroying all his buildings and stores of hides and tallow. The Ramadens, a couple employed as workers by Blackwell and living in one of the outbuildings at the yard, are consumed by the fire and the dead bodies of both are found in the afternoon not far from the hut and burned almost beyond recognition. John Blackwell will pass away eight months later at the age of 49, leaving his widow Henrietta with their 9 children.
1899 – Dec 22
Another bushfire breaks out near the Chiltern Road and crosses to Wooragee where four farmhouses are rapidly consumed, and 15-year-old William Elliot perishes in the maelstrom after running to a paddock near his Wooragee home to let cattle out, and nothing further is seen of him until Sunday morning (Christmas Eve) when his charred body is found alongside the burnt remains of a bullock. The fire races up both sides of the Wooragee Road, quickly reaching, and destroying Worragee’s Rising Sun Hotel. All the land between the Wooragee Road and the Yackandandah Railway Line is burnt out, along with a number of dwellings that had been occupied Chinese miners. Two homestead leases, those of John Brewer and David Murray, are also destroyed, with a massive loss of grass, cattle and sheep. In the afternoon, the gale veers around to the West, bringing with it flames from the direction of Everton, and travelling at the rate of 15 miles an hour. Eventually, this branch of the fire is stopped on the outskirts of the Beechworth Racecourse.
1899 – Dec 23
After burning through the night, the threat continues as another branch of the bushfire crosses Spring Creek, then Holmes Creek at the Gorge, near Beechworth’s Powder Magazine, and destroys the home of John ‘Jack’ Skidmore at the bottom of Camp Street. The fire then sweeps towards One Tree Hill, endangering all the houses on the hill above Barnard Street and some are damaged before the fire is stopped – by a wind change from the west and firefighters – at the Old Chiltern Road.
| At its height – when the wind is at hurricane force – Beechworth is ringed by fires from the Lower Three Mile to the Yackandandah Railway Line beyond Red Hill. ‘Billson’s Brewery’ even catches fire, but prompt action by the brewery employees prevents any serious damage. A company of men from the Navy (who have arrived to take part in Beechworth’s Boxing Day Sports) also help in putting out the fires. But the biggest help comes in the form of a cool change, and a change of wind direction, on Christmas Eve which halts the further spread of fire. During the three days of the fire emergency, there are six deaths, and 26 homes are destroyed along with outhouses, sheds, huts and hundreds of animals and stock … and there are scarcely any fences left standing between Wooragee and Beechworth. |
THE STORY CONTINUES IN THE 1900-1929 TIMELINE