Note: This page is a constant work-in-progress, with new information and corrections being made all the time. To search on the “1870-1879 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.
1870
The population of the Beechworth township stands at 2,746 citizens and during the year 41 deaths and 127 births are recorded. The population of the greater Beechworth Shire is recorded as 9,581 and the annual income of the Beechworth Borough Council is just over £3,000. There are twenty hotels and the main manufacturers in town are the soap and candle factory, three breweries and soda water and cordial manufactory. On Saturday nights, shops are opened until 10.00pm. The places of public worship embrace the Church of England, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Independent churches, and chapels of the Wesleyan, Baptist and Cameronian (Scottish) denominations.
1870
39-year-old Richard Warren – owner and editor of ‘The Ovens and Murray Advertiser’ since 1855 – now begins printing Beechworth’s third newspaper – ‘The Ovens Spectator’. While ‘The Ovens and Murray Advertiser’ is published every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, ‘The Ovens Spectator’ is printed on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Beechworth’s second newspaper – George Henry Mott’s The Constitution and Ovens Mining Intelligencer – was first published in May 1856 but had ceased daily issues by March 28th, 1863.
1870 – Mar
The Beechworth Common School No.36 – renamed the Beechworth Academy in 1862 – holds its annual Prize Night, led by the school Principal James M. Conroy and his wife Bridget Conroy. The building on Loch Street has recently added a new wing, with the old portion of the building used as a large classroom capable of holding 150 students, while the new wing features three separate areas – an infant’s classroom, a regular classroom and a large assembly hall. While the Beechworth Academy currently has an enrolment of 130, the new wing will allow for up to 300 pupils. A rear playground is separated by a paling fence while ‘elementary gymnastics’ are provided for ‘the softer sex’ in the form of a swing, and the ‘sterner youth’ can stretch their muscles with a ‘fly’.
1870
A Gatehouse Lodge is completed at the entrance to the Mayday Hills Asylum. Echoing the design of the main asylum building, the two-storey ‘Lodge’ is built in the Italianate style, with arched windows, a tower and portico. Designed as the residence for the asylum’s Steward, it features three bedrooms, a living room and kitchen, with a shed and earth closet at the rear. The Steward (general manager) is responsible for overseeing all the non-medical aspects of the asylum, including maintenance, stores, employment of tradespeople, and the keeping of meticulous financial records. Daniel Charles O’Connor is the first Steward at the asylum, serving from 1867 to 1894. Two pairs of wrought iron gates are erected across the asylum’s Albert Road entrance, with a turnstile pedestrian entrance adjacent to the gatehouse. A dining room/sitting room will be added in the early 20th century, with further extensions and modifications in the 1970s by which time the building is being used to house patients. Following the decommissioning of the asylum, it it occasionally used as base for on-site security staff. Today it is privately owned and operates as an accommodation business (below).
| Born in Tasmania, Daniel Charles O’Connor is a senior clerk and storekeeper at ‘Yarra Bend Asylum’ in Melbourne before his appointment to the Beechworth asylum. A devout Catholic, O’Connor quickly becomes involved in many activities in the town. He is a bachelor and his sister, Charlotte, lives with him and runs the ‘Gatehouse Lodge’. He will remain in Beechworth after his retirement, living in ‘Craig House’ just three doors down Albert Road from the Gatehouse until his death in 1906. |
1870
Four separate brickyards are now operating in Beechworth as construction work on business, private and government projects are still creating a great demand. One of the biggest brickyards is located in Crawford Street, and is owned and operated by 40-year-old John Stevens (below) who is also a builder and undertaker.
| A carpenter by trade, John Stevens arrives in the Ovens district in his mid-20s in the 1850s and will become one of Beechworth’s busiest builders (and undertakers) and serve as a Justice of the Peace and Honorary Magistrate. He will win the contracts to construct many of the local schools and public buildings in the district, including the Beechworth Railway Station and Albury Railway Station, along with Beechworth’s ‘Post Office Hotel’ on Camp Street. As well as his Beechworth brick business, Stevens will also operate a brickyard in nearby Albury. He will serve as a Councillor of the Beechworth United Shire in 1872 and again in 1892-1896 and then 1900-1903 and will be President from 1894-1985. For many years John and his wife Mary Ann (Woodburn) and their five (surviving) children live in Finch Street and he will own other land holdings in Beechworth, Barnawartha and Gooramadda. When he dies at the age of 82, he is one of the oldest members of the Beechworth branch of the ‘Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows’. |
1870
25 km from Beechworth, George Anderson, the editor of the Federal Standard newspaper (established as the Chiltern Standard in 1859) takes over the newspaper from its founder George Henry Mott. Anderson and his sons will continue their association with the Federal Standard until 1938 when Ben Hicks will become the owner, editor and publisher. The Federal Standard will finally cease publication in 1969 after being in continuous operation for 110 years.
| In January 1876, Chiltern’s ‘Lake Anderson’ will be created on the site of the former ‘Alliance Gold Mine’ and named in honour of George Anderson. |
1870
An east wing and two new dormitories are completed at the Ovens Benevolent Asylum (above).
1870
An incredible 900 miles (1,448 km) of water races (channels) have now been cut throughout the Beechworth Mining District, creating considerable employment (above), and the extensive and intricate network of races and dams are two-thirds more than on any other Victorian goldfields! Large quantities of constant water are required for hydraulic sluicing, and the long water races and ‘deep tail races’ (below) constructed to divert water are considered great engineering feats. While this method of mining is extremely effective, it also causes significant environmental damage and impacts other waterways and agricultural operations. Beechworth’s ‘water barons’ continue to hold more than half of all the water right licences on issue and undertake sluicing operations on a massive scale.
1870 – Mar
Having become a ‘bushranging protégé’ of Harry Power in May 1869, 15-year-old Ned Kelly now reconciles with Power (after being shot at by Dr John Pearson Rowe while trying to steal his horses in Mansfield a few months earlier) and, over the next month, the pair commit a series of armed robberies at Kilfera, Seymour and Lauriston. Police scramble to find them and identify Power’s young accomplice. By the end of April, the press name Ned Kelly as the young culprit, and on May 4th Ned is arrested by police at the Kelly family home in Greta (Harry Power is not captured at this time). The following day Kelly appears at the Benalla Courthouse on a charge of ‘Highway Robbery Under Arms’. Remanded for 7 days at Benalla for police to gather witnesses, he reappears at the Benalla Courthouse on May 12 on three separate robbery charges. The first is ‘Robbery in Company’ at Kilfera, but as the only witness, Mr McBean, cannot identify him, Ned is discharged. The second charge of ‘Highway Robbery Under Arms’ at Seymour is also discharged as, once again, none of the victims can positively identify Ned. However, the third charge – ‘Robbery Under Arms’ at Lauriston – is handled differently. While the victims are once again getting ready to “fail to identify Kelly”, they are refused the chance by Superintendent Charles Hope Nicolson and Superintendent Francis Augustus (Frank) Hare. Instead, Nicolson tells the Magistrate that Kelly fits the description and asks for him to be remanded for trial. The Magistrate agrees and Kelly is sent to Richmond in Melbourne where he spends the weekend in a lock-up before being transferred to Kyneton to face court. After appearing at the Kyneton Courthouse on May 20th and 27th, the case is adjourned while more evidence and witnesses are sought. The case is finally ready to begin on June 3rd, however, when no new evidence is produced, Kelly is released, without charge.
| While Kelly is being remanded for a month in Kyneton, Superintendent Nicolson takes a keen interest in him, believing that young Ned still has a chance to get back on the straight and narrow path and even tries to find him work, away from what he perceives as the negative influences of his family. His efforts are unsuccessful. |
1870
John Fletcher resigns from his position as the secretary of the Beechworth Hospital to start business on Ford Street as a newsagent and ‘Mudie Librarian’. A popular and energetic citizen, he will act as agent for ‘The Age’ and ‘The Leader’ newspapers, along with a range of English and American papers and periodicals. In 1875 Fletcher – along with Andrew Porritt and Reverend Robert Kirkwood Ewing – will establish The Ovens Register, another newspaper for Beechworth and, in 1898, he will purchase James Ingram’s highly regarded stationery and bookseller business on Camp Street from James Ingram Jnr (who had taken over the 1885-established business from his father in 1882).
| ‘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. |
1870
Under the provisions of the Victorian Goverment’s ‘Land Act 1869’ almost 6,000 applications for selections in the Beechworth Survey District will be approved between 1870 and 1886. The Beechworth Survey District is an area covering 96 parishes and towns as distant from Beechworth as Harrietville, Mitta Mitta and Barnawartha.
1870
The beautiful home Erindale is built at 1 Victoria Road, on the corner of Victoria Road and Junction Road. It still stands today.
1870
38-year-old photographer Thomas Jeston Washbourne, who has a photographic studio in nearby Yackandandah, takes portraits of local indigenous people including Neddy Wheeler (above), a respected local Dhudhuroa tribesman who still speaks the Dhudhuroa language. Born in the Mitta Mitta Valley, Neddy will spend most of his life between Wangaratta, Beechworth, Wahgunyah, Tangambalanga and Corryong.
| It is believed that the numerous indigenous subjects of the portraits received a “sitting fee” … or the portraits may have been commissioned by Thomas Mitchell, the ‘Honorary Protector of Tangambalanga’. |
1870 – Apr
49-year-old John Duncan Fisher sells his popular Commercial Hotel in Ford Street to 40-year-old Thomas Tanswell (former owner of the Empire Hotel in Bright). While Tanswell continues to run the popular hotel, he begins to make plans to demolish the double-storey wooden building and draws up his own design plans for a grand, stone and brick hotel building to replace it. Three years later, on October 1st 1873, the new hotel will be opened (and will remain in the Tanswell family until 1967). The newly built Commercial Hotel will feature French doors, a richly gilded crest on the front window and decorative iron lacework on its verandah (below). As well as buying the Commercial Hotel, Thomas Tanswell will also purchase the adjoining coaching offices, along with Fred Dreyer’s former Freemasons’ Arms hotel building at the rear – which fronts onto High Street – meaning that Tanswell now owns a square block of land in the centre of Beechworth – with frontages to both Ford and High Streets! The old Freemasons’ Arms building on High Street will later be converted into a school, run by Tanswell’s eldest son Thomas Jnr and his wife Margaret. (see entry in 1885)
| It would appear that Ned Kelly and members his family and his gang patronised the hotel. Thomas Tanswell was certainly a supporter and is known to have visited Ned Kelly in the ‘Melbourne Gaol’ whilst he awaits execution. ‘Tanswell’s Commercial Hotel’ still stands today and is one of Beechworth’s four remaining central hotels, along with the ‘Hibernian’, the ‘Empire’ and the ‘Nicholas’, as well as the ‘Grand Oaks Resort’, up the hill from central Beechworth at Mayday Hills. |
1870
The settlement of Bowmans Forest – 10km south of Beechworth – is now a thriving community, following the establishment of a school in 1865 and local shops along the ‘Ovens Track’ (now the Great Alpine Road). It is at a junction of the traditional track to ‘Fisher’s Crossing’ on the Ovens River (perhaps the same one Hovell and Hume used) since there is no bridge. The Bowmans Forest shops include the Hands and Morris Store, Maria Davis’ Dress Shop, John Balty’s Butcher Shop along with Charlie Williams Blacksmith Shop and the nearby Shannon’s Hotel and Mummery’s Hotel. By 1888 Bowmans Forest is listed in the North-East section of the “Victoria and Its Metropolis” book as one of the “small townships of the ordinary up-country type”.
| Sadly, the decline of school-aged children and the location of the railway line further along the ‘Ovens Track’ will eventually spell the end of the township. Today there is little evidence of the Bowmans Forest settlement because most of the buildings were located on road reserves and therefore had no title, making them impossible to sell as going concerns. And the advent of World War One creates a shortage of building materials and many existing structures are soon pulled apart for construction elsewhere. |
1870
43-year-old Peter Petersen Bohl and his wife Mary establish the All Nations Hotel on (what is now) the Old Stanley Road at Spring Creek. The fine two-storey building with an attractive verandah comprises a bar, two sitting rooms and three bedrooms (above).
| In March 1872 Peter Bohl is charged with “permitting dancing in a building within the same enclosure as a licenced house without the permission of the licensing bench”. Bohl is let off and the matter is not pursued further. Bohl will pass away at the age of 67 on New Year’s Eve 1893. |
1870 – May
The new Beechworth Post and Telegraph Office is open for business. The new building incorporates the original 1865 granite tower and other materials that are left standing following the ‘Great Beechworth Fire’ of 1867. The new, larger double-story Post Office, an Italianate structure designed by architect Peter Kerr, is unusual in that it consists of a new building being added to an existing tower, rather than the other way around. The new Beechworth Post Office features a private residence on the first floor. A cast iron verandah over the first floor balcony will be added in 1874.
| As well as the existing clock tower, the new Post Office now features a colonnade on the ground floor and a balcony above with slender columns facing Camp Street. In July 1926 a drinking fountain will be installed outside the Post Office in honour of leading Beechworth citizen James Warner. The unique iron drinking fountain (above) features four water spout outlets in the shape of lion’s heads, and is operated by a foot pedal. |
1870 – May
After sitting empty for almost three years following the ‘Great Beechworth Fire’ of 1867, the vacant land where the destroyed Empire Hotel had stood – between the Post Office and James Ingram’s Booksellers and Stationary store – is now taken up. Although plans had been announced in January 1870 that a new three-storey hotel would be built, a smaller single-storey hotel is now completed on the site instead. Three doors down from the Beechworth Post Office it is named The Post Office Hotel, with 40-year-old William Thompson Soulby in charge.
1870 – Jun 5
Bushranger Harry Power is captured in the King River Ranges by Superintendents Charles Nicolson and Francis Hare who, with Sergeant William Montford and a black tracker, surprise Power in his hide-out (now known as ‘Harry Power’s Lookout’ – below) whichoverlooks the Quinn property on the King River below. Power is brought to Beechworth where he is tried at the courthouse (see next entry).
| Harry Power claimed to have committed an astonishing 600 robberies during his life, and he is certainly thought to have been responsible for 80 more armed hold-ups in the area than all the Kelly’s put together! |
1870 – Jun 13
A big crowd gathers to watch as 51-year-old Harry Power goes on trial at Beechworth. The bushranger faces three charges – holding up the Buckland Coach near Porepunkah on May 7 the previous year; ‘Robbery Under Arms’ (on the person of Wangaratta storekeeper Thomas Thomas) on the Buckland Road on the same day; and ‘Highway Robbery Under Arms’ at the Buckland Gap on August 28 of the same year. He is found guilty and sentenced to 15 years ‘hard labour’ at Pentridge Prison in Melbourne. The cell in which Power is held in Beechworth is open for display to the public today.
| After accounts of his ill health behind bars are reported in ‘The Argus’ newspaper in 1877, several women, including Lady Janet Clarke, begin a petition for his early release. This is not to be, and Power will serve his full 15 year sentence before the now 66-year-old is released from Pentridge in February 1885. Lady Janet Clarke will then give Power a job working on the Clarke property ‘Rupertswood’ at Sunbury for a few years until, in early 1891, he becomes a ‘celebrity’ guide of the former prison hulk ‘Success’ (on which had served an earlier sentence in the 1850s) which has now become a ‘floating museum’. On October 11th 1891 his body is found in the Murray River at Swan Hill after apparently drowning while fishing. |
1870 – Jul
James M. Conroy, who has been the Headmaster of the Beechworth Academy for two years, resigns in order to open the Albury Grammar School at the start of August. An experienced teacher who graduated from the University of London, Conroy has been running the Beechworth Academy with his wife Bridget Conroy.
| Beechworth’s first ‘National School’ opened on November 1st 1858, becoming the ‘Beechworth Academy’ in 1862. The school will be taken over by the Education Department in 1873. |
1870
Burnbrae Homestead is built at 13 Pritchard Lane, Sitting on just under one acre of land, it has a clear view onto the Newtown Falls and Newtown Bridge.
1870 – Sep 15
Celebrated American ‘midget’ – ‘General’ Tom Thumb (made famous by P.T. Barnum) – arrives at the Commercial Hotel in Benalla after narrowly escaping flood waters, almost swept away by a flash flood in a swollen creek at Baddaginnie. A few weeks later, 38-year-old Tom (real name: Charles Sherwood Stratton) returns to North-East Victoria with his touring troupe as part of the Barnum & Bailey Circus “Round the World” tour, with St. George’s Hall in Beechworth hosting the circus for three evening shows and two matinees. The performances include sketches with Tom Thumb dressed as different famous historical characters including Napoleon (above) and Alexander the Great. The shows prove immensely popular, with one session performed to a crowd of over 600 people crammed into the theatre.
| By his 30s, Tom Thumb – real name Charles Sherwood Stratton – stands just 2 feet 9 inches tall (90cm). As a child, Stratton appears twice before Queen Victoria and the three-year-old Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. Stratton’s fame grows at an astonishing rate, and his popularity and celebrity surpass that of any actor within his lifetime. He amasses a fortune before his sudden death in 1875 at the age of 45. |
1870 – Oct 27-30
Beechworth – and the entire North-East of Victoria – experiences its heaviest rain and floods since 1867. The nearby towns of Benalla and Wangaratta are flooded with much damage and the destruction of bridges, while Mansfield, Seymour, Castlemaine and even Ballarat are affected. In Beechworth numerous creek claims are washed out but, as lots of tailing accumulations are washed away, the tail-races are therefore cleared.
1870 – Nov 11
Having escaped a prison sentence at the Kyneton Courthouse on June 3rd for ‘Highway Robbery Under Arms’, 15-year-old Ned Kelly is now incarcerated – for the first time – in Beechworth Gaol after being found guilty of “assault on the person of Jeremiah McCormick and insulting behavior and using obscene language to Jeremiah’s wife Margaret McCormick” that had taken place on the 30th of October. Ned is sentenced to three months gaol for the ‘offensive behavior’ charge and fined £10, in default three months gaol, for the ‘assault’ charge but, as Ned is unable to pay the fine, this means a full six-month gaol term in Beechworth. In addition, he is ‘bound over to keep the peace’. In a startling coincidence, Ned begins his gaol term in Beechworth the day after his November 10th trial in Wangaratta … and 10 years later, to the day, he will be executed on November 11th 1880.
| Released on March 27th 1871 – five weeks early on good behaviour – young Ned returns to the family home in Greta, but is again imprisoned in August that year for three years on a charge of receiving a stolen mare. He spends 18 months doing forced labour in the area before being sent to ‘Pentridge Prison’ after another fracas. |
1870 – Dec 26
‘William’ Tsze Hing passes away at the age of 35. He had run his popular store on Spring Creek for many years, selling beer, wine and Chinese spirits (which include cinnamon and citron). He is often called upon at various courthouses in the region – including the Beechworth Courthouse – to act as a go-between and interpreter for the local Chinese community. Much respected, he is invited to join the Beechworth Oddfellows and the Freemasons. Born in 1835, in Guangdong, China, he marries Kezia Elizabeth Wallis in Beechworth, and they have two sons and a daughter. He is buried at the Beechworth Cemetery (above).
1871
The national government census reveals that the greater Beechworth Shire has 2,192 Catholics, out of a total population of 9,581, just 23 per cent. The census, taken at 10-year intervals, will go on to show the slow and steady decline of Catholics in the district, until 60 years later when both the above figures have been exactly halved.
1871 – Feb 24
Following the distribution of school prizes by Edward S. Harris (above), the committee of the Beechworth Grammar School, No. 61 present their report for the year ending December 31st, 1870. While January began with an average daily attendance of 167 boys and 100 girls, by December 1870 the average was up to 217 boys and 155 girls, an increase of about 100 scholars in the daily attendance. With 248 new scholars entering during the year, the total number of students is 634 – made up of 339 boys and 295 girls. The school received Government grants of £550 and in addition to the subjects required by the Board of Education, a senior class of boys are also taught Latin, French, Book-keeping, Algebra, Euclid, and History. Girls are taught in separate classes, and a room is specially set apart for the infants. To provide for the management and proper instruction of such a large and important school – now one of the largest in the colony – the staff, in addition to Edward S. Harris (head teacher) and Mr Atkinson (assistant head teacher), consists of two lady assistants – Miss Foster and Miss Waite – twelve pupil teachers, trainers and monitors, as well as two teachers specially engaged for Singing, Drawing, and the Pianoforte. During the year the school has been examined by District Inspector Thomas Brodribb who rates the school very highly and expresses deep satisfaction with the manner in which the school is conducted. The school’s ‘Silver Medal’ is awarded to student Morton Clark who scores 380 marks out of 400, the highest of the year. Owing to the growing number of student enrolments (and having to rent the Wesleyan Schoolroom for the Infant Division) the committee have been contemplating the desirability of building new school premises. With this object in view, they have written to the Borough Council to assist them in granting an eligible site.
1871 – Feb
At a final cost of £489 and 7 shillings, construction is completed on the new brick Police Stables on the Police Reserve. Built by Beechworth contractor Lewis Griffiths, the solid building still stands on the reserve today.
| After the building is no longer required for the stabling of police horses, it is used by the Beechworth Police as a storage area. After eventually falling into disrepair, it is restored in 1975 – including the replacement of its slate roof with corrugated and galvanised steel sheeting – and continues being used as storage space for the Beechworth Police Station next door. |
1871
Mulberry Cottage is built at 74 High Street, directly opposite the newly completed Police Stables. The cottage’s terraced rear garden leads directly down to Spring Creek (below).
1871
40-year-old William Newson takes over the 1871-built The Post Office Hotel at 24 Camp Street. Located three doors down from the Beechworth Post Office, the site had been formerly the home of the Empire Hotel until it was destroyed in the ‘Great Beechworth Fire’ of Saturday March 23rd, 1867. Newson will run The Post Office Hotel until 1874.
| An unlucky but resilient man, William Newson – born in Suffolk in England in 1831 – had previously been the licensee of the ‘Empire Hotel’ from October 1865 until its destruction in the 1867 fire. In February 1868 Newson takes over the ‘Metropolitan Hotel’ on the corner of Camp and High Street and renames it the new ‘Empire Hotel’ … but on on March 3rd 1879 it too will be destroyed by a fire! It will be rebuilt and this ‘Empire Hotel’ still stands today. William Newson – who was married to Ellen Elizabeth Littlewood – passes away in 1899 at the age of 68. |
871
After the death of his father (Patrick ‘Paddy’ Byrne) at the age of 39 from heart disease, 15-year-old Joe Byrne has to spend more time helping to run the Byrne family’s dairy farm in the Woolshed Valley. However, to earn extra income, he also finds work as a ‘cart boy’ with the Ovens Tannery in Beechworth, as well as doing odd jobs for the Chinese in nearby Sebastopol. It is here that teenage Joe Byrne comes across a man called Ah Suey strung up outside a shop screaming for help. Days later, Ah Suey is found murdered due to debts he apparently owes to Chinese mobsters. Although young Joe appears as a witness in the trial of the two Chinese men charged with Ah Suey’s murder, he provides very little information, possibly due to fear of a reprisal, as the accused are apparently members of the ‘Triad’, a Chinese crime syndicate with branches all over the world.
| This will not be the only time Joe ends up in court thanks to his association with the Chinese (see 1873 entry). Joe spends much of his youth around the Chinese and learns Cantonese by ear and eventually speaks it almost fluently. He indulges in Chinese food and other cultural aspects including gambling and opium smoking … of which, for a time, he becomes addicted. |
1871 – Apr
A fire breaks out at Melrose’s Ovens Bedding Factory at 11 Loch Street, next to J.H. Gray’s Cattle Sale Yards and two doors down from the land where the Oddfellows Hall will be built a few months later. Beside the factory is the home of John and Jeanette Melrose and their family. Frantic efforts are made to put out the flames using “pint pots, dilapidated cans, buckets, etc.” Despite this setback, Jeanette Melrose will continue to run the business for some time, even placing an advertisement for Melrose’s famous ‘genuine horsehair’ mattresses.
1871
An ‘airing yard’ (exercise yard) is opened at Beechworth Gaol. It can be viewed from observation towers to enable prisoners in solitary confinement to exercise in complete silence. One guard is able to watch over 12 prisoners during their exercise period.
| In 1957, a swimming pool for prisoners will be built in the ‘airing yard’ in the gaol. (The blue arrow in the image above points to the location of the swimming pool.) |
1871 – Apr
Fiery Scotsman, 47-year-old John Scarlett – having recently married “a very young lady” in Beechworth – is accused of bigamy after an affidavit is produced by his first wife stating that she is alive and well in Scotland! The case goes before the Beechworth Court, but Mr. Bowman, who appears for the defendant, opposes the production of the affidavit evidence and contends that – as the new Mrs Scarlett, not being of age at the time, and as there was no consent to the marriage obtained from a guardian – John Scarlett’s second marriage is actually null and void. Without dealing with this point, the Bench decides to hear the evidence but, deciding it is insufficient to make out the charge, it is dismissed. John Scarlett – who is secretary of the Beechworth Shire Council – continues to live with the young woman, with many unhappy locals still believing the evidence points to him being guilty of bigamy.
| Always outspoken, John Scarlett regularly writes to newspapers, calls meetings, and voices his opinions. Originally a ‘dry miner’ known as “The Nine-Mile Warrior” and the “Water Squatter”, he regularly advocates rights for this type of operation, then – on acquiring access to water – he switches and becomes an advocate for ‘wet mining’ to the exclusion of dry operators! He stands for mining board elections and then Victorian parliament in 1859, eventually becoming secretary of the local council and the roads board. |
1871 – Jun 8
Another Earthquake! An earth tremor rumbles through Beechworth, where crockery and glassware are rattled. This follows short, violent quakes in Beechworth in 1858 and 1868. This tremor is also felt by citizens in Wodonga and Myrtleford, and even as far away as Deniliquin in NSW.
1871 – Jul 11
Another new hall for Beechworth! The Independent Order of Oddfellows open their new hall at 15 Loch Street (above), near the corner of Camp Street. An inaugural ‘Oddfellows Banquet’ will be held a few weeks later on the first day of August. Built of brick, theOddfellows Hall will eventually overtake the 1865-built wooden St. George’s Hall on Finch Street to become Beechworth’s centre of entertainment for the next 100 years, with live theatre and general entertainments of the day including Grand Balls and Dances. After Australia’s Federation in 1901 it will be renamed Federal Hall before further name changes in the 1950s and 1960s. The building still stands today (above).
| Established as the ‘Grand United Order of Oddfellows’ in England in the late 18th century, the ‘Australian Grand United Order of Oddfellows’ is established in Australia in 1848, with the first Grand Master of the Order being Brother James Reid (1794-1869). Following the 1851 separation of the Port Phillip District from New South Wales, the ‘Grand United Order of Oddfellows Victoria’ is created in 1854. |
1871
At the little settlement of Black Springs – 3 miles from Beechworth on the road to Wangaratta – 44-year-old James Price (above) purchases a large piece of land for £1 an acre, sinks a well and creates a thriving garden market to service the local inhabitants. James had married Harriet Dance in Worcestershire in England in 1846 and they will have seven children including William Price (born in 1857) who will go on to establish a bakery on the family property at Black Springs. James Price becomes a popular sight in Beechworth where, every Saturday, he travels to sell his fresh produce in town.
| The settlement of Black Springs had developed in the 1850s with its own school, hotels, blacksmith’s shop, and from 1875, a bakery established by 18-year-old William Price, James Price’s son. Sadly, the Black Springs settlement will be destroyed by a bushfire during the Christmas of 1899 – except for the bakery – which continues supplying bread to the region until 1942. The bakery and its assorted buildings remain to this day. |
1871
The Albert Ward is added to the Ovens District Hospital (above). The ‘Ovens’ is still the major medical centre between Melbourne and Sydney, drawing patients from a large area, but will soon face competition from the almost-completed Wangaratta District Base Hospital which will open on January 5th 1872 (below).
1871
Beechworth’s successful pioneer goldminer, 42-year-old Donald Fletcher, becomes a member of the Beechworth Borough Council and is among the first to represent it after its amalgamation as a United Shire.
| Deeply religious, Scottish-born Fletcher is a member of the Beechworth Presbyterian Church from its foundation and, in his earlier years, officiates as a lay preacher. He will later serve as a deacon of the church and a Sunday School Superintendent. |
1871
American George Judah Lyon sells his popular tobacconist and newsagency at 74 Ford Street to Alfred ‘Alf’ William Foster and his wife Sarah, daughter of a Jewish draper. In the 1850s Foster’s paternal grandfather, a Yorkshire man, had left his post as a police magistrate in Tasmania to bring his family to the Beechworth gold diggings.
| Foster’s Tobacconist Store stands on the corner of Ford Street and Criterion Lane, named after the ‘Criterion Hotel’ which stands at the other end of the lane on High Street. Later it will be renamed ‘Warren Lane’ after Richard ‘Little Dick’ Warren takes over Foster’s tobacconist store. Today the laneway is partly roofed and known as the ‘Marion Arcade’. |
1871
Ellen Cotterell, proprietor of Wangaratta’s Royal Hotel, opens the Theatre Royal next door on Reid Street. The theatre will be pulled down in 1963 some 30 years after it had ceased operating as a theatre, however the Royal Hotel is still in business, renamed the Pinsent Hotel in 1923 by new owner Anne Edith Pinsent.
1871
A single gum tree is planted on the corner outside the new Beechworth Post Office, just like the gum tree that had stood there on the corner in the 1850s and 60s.
| Note in the photo above, the gum tree stands alone as the only tree planted in the middle of town. But many more trees will be planted on the streets around town in the 1870s and most still flourish, giving Beechworth its reputation as a town admired for its beautiful trees, particularly in autumn when the golds and yellows of the leaves fill the streets with amazing colours. |
1871
With the opening of the new Beechworth Post and Telegraph Office in 1870, the Beechworth Telegraph Station moves its operations into the new building, and its former building at 92 Ford Street (above) is remodeled to become the District Survey Office of the Lands Department. The work is carried out by contractor James Kyle at a cost of £223. The building’s front verandah is added in 1900.
| In late 1999 the Lands Department relocates within Beechworth and the Telegraph Station will be refurbished to its original look and, in September 2001, is opened to the public as a place of historic significance with the building featuring exhibits of telegraph and surveying equipment. |
1871 – Aug 10
One of the first Hibernian Lodges in the North-East of Victoria is established in Beechworth as the St. Joseph’s Branch of the Hibernian Society. The ‘Ancient Order of Hibernians’, founded in New York in 1936, are a fraternal and church-based benefit society which promotes the welfare of people of Irish birth or descent. The Beechworth Hibernian Lodge is strictly for male Roman Catholics and its chief purpose is to create a pool of money to cover medical and hospital fees incurred by its members.
| The Australian branch of the ‘Hibernian Society’ is founded in 1868 by Mark Young who runs the ‘White Hart Hotel’ in Ballarat. Young is very active in local affairs and assists fellow Irishmen by creating the ‘Ballarat Hibernian Benefit Society’ which later amalgamates with the ‘Australian Catholic Benefit Society’ to form the ‘Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society’ Like Beechworth’s Hibernian ‘Lodge of St. John’ opposite the Burke Museum, the original ‘Hibernian Lodge’ in Camp Street – strictly for Roman Catholic men – provides fellowship for the Irish in Beechworth who are far from their homes and families. |
1871 – Dec
35-year-old John Connolly – who had been a barman at John Duncan Fisher’s Commercial Hotel – is running the renamed Shamrock Hotel on the corner of Camp and Finch Streets where he proudly promotes his patented ‘Mulled Ale’ and ‘Mulled Wine’ (below). Connolly will continue to hold the licence for the Shamrock Hotel until May 1876.
1871 – Dec 28
As it has a current population of 9,500, Beechworth does not surmount the population threshold (to continue its separate municipal status), the ‘Borough of Beechworth’ and the ‘Shire of Beechworth’ are united to become ‘The United Shire of Beechworth’.
| The ‘United Shire of Beechworth’ (or the ‘Beechworth United Shire’) originated as two separate entities: the ‘Municipal District of Beechworth’ – first created on 23 August 1856, becoming the ‘Borough of Beechworth’ on 11 September 1863 – and the ‘Shire of Beechworth’, created on 27 December 1865 as a union of the Stanley (10 December 1862) and Wooragee (30 March 1863) Road Districts. The two entities merge on 29 December 1871, to form the ‘United Shire of Beechworth’. At its dissolution, it is the only local government entity remaining in Victoria which is styled as a ‘United Shire’, although many others are also the result of amalgamations. |
1872 – Jan 9
Following the December merger of the ‘Borough of Beechworth’ and the ‘Shire of Beechworth’, the first meeting of the newly named United Shire of Beechworth is held on this day.
1872 – Jan
Having taken over George Briscoe Kerferd’s Ovens Brewery and Malthouse at 4 Last Street in Beechworth in 1865, George Billson Snr now takes on his eldest son, 28-year-old George Henry Billson as a business partner at the Billson’s Ovens Brewery. Together, G. Billson and Son expand operations, and will soon select a new site for their brewery at 29 Last Street because it sits above a “pure natural mountain spring of exceptional purity that flows all the way from Mount Buffalo”. George Snr and George Jnr employ Chinese gold miners to dig a large round well, from which they can draw the spring water. The well is 8 metres deep and 2 metres wide (below). The specific shape of the well comes from the Chinese superstition that evil spirits hide in the corners of square wells.
| This “Snowline” spring water has been used in Billson’s drinks ever since. The new site will soon feature a cordial factory, cooperage, and stables for the brewery’s horses. Most importantly, Billson and his son build a four-storey ‘tower brewery,’ a design which has only recently been adopted in Britain. The tower still stands today and is thought to the oldest surviving tower brewery building in Australia. |
1872 – Feb 24
Beechworth’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church at 9 Church Street is inaugurated, dedicated and blessed by James Alipius Goold, the Bishop of Melbourne, and the following morning Dean Tierney celebrates Mass for a crowded congregation while the Bishop preaches a sermon. A choir, under the direction of Herr Schluter, renders the choral parts of the Mass. After the Mass, Confirmation is administered to nearly 200 children, to whom Bishop Goold speaks at length. The collections for the day amount to £200.
| In 1871 the Beechworth Shire has 2,192 Catholics out of a total population of 9,581 – just 23 per cent. The census, taken at 10-year intervals, tells the story of the slow, steady decline until 60 years later when both these figures have been exactly halved. |
1872 – Mar 11
As the number of people digging for gold continues to dwindle, local businessmen realise that unless new discoveries of gold are made in the district, the future and growth of the town could be doomed. So on this day, the Beechworth Prospecting Association is established to promote Beechworth to potential gold seekers and encourage new gold prospectors to come to the district, believing that this will keep Beechworth a viable and profitable township.
1872
A ratepayers’ list of the Woolshed goldfields shows just 130 persons remaining at the diggings, of whom one third are Chinese.
1872 – Mar 30
Two years after the Telegraph Station relocated to the new Beechworth Post and Telegraph Office, they announce they are now able to receive news from overseas with the completion of international telegraph lines. This promises communication with Europe within a matter of hours and, with the prospect of more overseas news available quickly, the Ovens & Murray Advertiser responds by converting to a daily newspaper the following week.
| This rapid conversion by the newspaper is a bit premature as the overseas telegraph suffers a range of early problems and will not be fully operational until October 22nd. |
1872 – Apr 8
The first flogging at the Beechworth Gaol takes place when a Chinese man, convicted of indecent exposure, is secured to a large wooden triangle and seventeen lashes are applied to his exposed back by a fellow prisoner. The flogging is considered distasteful by all concerned and when the time comes for a second series of lashes in Beechworth, there are no local volunteers to carry out the task, so the victim is sent to Melbourne where Victoria’s official ‘Hangman’ and ‘Flagellator’ – William Bamford – will take the responsibility.
1872
John Clements, who had established his store on High Street in 1866, builds his new home at 10 Mellish Street in Beechworth. It still stands today.
1872 – Jun 1
Founded in 1861, the Beechworth Football Club finally plays its first ‘formally recognised’ match. The Saturday afternoon game is between ‘The Natives’ – native-born men – and ‘The World’ – men from anywhere else!
1872 – Jun 3
55-year-old George Billson Snr officially relaunches the Ovens Brewery and Malthouse business as Billson’s Brewery at its new home at 29 Last Street. In the presence of around 100 guests and visitors, Eliza Billson – the new wife of 28-year-old George Billson Jnr – stands back while the new steam engine at the brewery is started, before cracking open the traditional bottle of champagne, officially christening the newly renamed brewery.
| Alfred Arthur ‘Bosher’ Billson, who will take over his father’s brewing business in 1881, will commission a grand new two storey structure for the brewery in 1889 which will be completed by 1895. |
1872 – Jun
Beechworth pioneer 41-year-old George Briscoe Kerferd is appointed Solicitor-General in the newly-elected Victorian Government led by James Goodall Francis.
1872 – Jun 12
The famed English novelist Anthony Trollope pays a visit to Beechworth whilst travelling through the area with his wife and their cook on their way to visit the Trollope’s younger son, Frederick, who is a sheep farmer near Grenfell in NSW. Among the 57-year-olds best-known works are a series of novels collectively known as the “Chronicles of Barsetshire”, which revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also writes novels on political, social, and gender issues, and other topical matters. In 1851, Trollope had been employed to investigate and reorganise the entire rural British mail delivery system in south-western England and Wales. The two-year mission took him over much of Great Britain, often on horseback and he described the assignments as “two of the happiest years of my life”. Trollope is also famous for introducing the ubiquitous ‘Pillar Box’, the large red mail box that quickly becomes a fixture in towns all over England, and then throughout Australia, including Beechworth (below).
1872 – Jul 16
A new lodge known as The Unity Lodge of the Good Templars (Lodge Number 14) opens on Upper Ford Street in Beechworth. Forty members (of both sexes) are enrolled during the inauguration at The Oddfellows Hall. Although the Good Templars is modelled on Freemasonry – and uses similar rituals and regalia – it admits both men and women and makes no distinction by race. The Good Templars “strive to provide social facilities that serve non-alcoholic beverages, promote education and self-help, campaign for prohibition, and support decent working conditions for working people.”
1872 – Aug 6
One of Beechworth’s best known coach drivers, Henry ‘Harry’ Ray, passes away. He had been injured three years earlier in an accident at Tarrawingee – when a coach wheel ran over his head causing brain damage – and he had never fully recovered. As the railways begin spreading out into country areas, the great days of the coach and horses in the North-East are drawing to a close, and many Beechworth residents see the death of ‘Harry’ Ray as the passing of an era, as this follows the recent passing of two of the town’s other best-known drivers in the previous eighteen months – ‘Tommy’ Hoyle and J. Morten Kelly.
1872 – Aug 10
A Record Freeze! The lowest temperature ever recorded in Beechworth to that time occurs on a Saturday morning, with even large dams frozen over and two inches of snow covering the nearby township of Stanley. The temperature recorded at Beechworth between 6am and 7am is a teeth chattering 22 degrees Fahrenheit (or minus 10 degrees Celsius)!
1872 – Aug 22
A public meeting of Beechworth residents is held in the Beechworth Town Hall for the purpose of taking steps to organise a ‘Beechworth Exhibition’ to showcase the arts, manufactures, and natural products of the district, and to secure the proper representation of those districts at the Melbourne and London International Exhibitions. A committee is appointed – with Frederick Brown as President – which quickly realises that the Beechworth Town Hall, first intended to hold the exhibition, will be too small for the purpose, and the committee secures the new hall at 15 Loch Street belonging to the Oddfellows’ Society – “one of the most spacious rooms outside the metropolis” – for the purpose, the local branch of the order liberally placing it at their disposal, free of charge..
1872 – Sep 26
The opening of the six-day ‘Beechworth Exhibition’ at the Oddfellows Hall (above). The first day (a Thursday) is declared a holiday in Beechworth as hundreds turn out to view the locally made articles and exhibits of every description on display. By mid-morning sunny Beechworth is filled with “an unusually gay and festive appearance, owing to the crowds of well-dressed visitors that throng the principal streets with bunting displayed in considerable quantities”.
1872
Reef mining has now basically replaced alluvial gold mining in the Beechworth District. Some of the principle reefs in the area are the ‘Wallaby Reef Mine’ at Hurdle Flat (above), ‘Rocky Point’ and ‘Kerry Eagle‘ (both at Hurdle Flat); ‘Perfect Cure’, ‘Perseverance’, ‘Shakespeare’, ‘Carnival‘, ‘Mudlark’, ‘Magpie’ and ‘Tubl-Cain’ (all at Stanley); ‘Sir Wilfred Lawson’ and ‘Mopoke’ (both at Silver Creek); ‘Lady Newtown’, ‘Sunday’ and ‘Two Mile’ (all at Baarmutha) and ‘Homeward Bound’ at Hillsborough.
1872 – Oct 15
9 km from Beechworth, armed bushrangers hold up Mrs Gale at Wooragee Post Office/Store & Bakery, then go to the Wooragee Hotel (above) where they bail up and shoot the landlord, 39-year-old John Watt and a hotel patron, Mr. Kennedy (a pound keeper visiting from Albury). While Kennedy survives, John Watt – with a gaping wound in his side from the shotgun blast – clings to life for the next ten days, before finally succumbing to his severe injuries in hospital on Friday October 25th. He is buried in the Beechworth Cemetery (below).
| John Watt became the landlord of the Wooragee Hotel in April 1871. Eighteen month later, before he dies, Watt identifies one of the bushrangers who shot him, and it is not long before four men are arrested – James Smith, Thomas Brady, William Hauppenstein and John Lewis – and charged with murder. An inquest into his death is held at the ‘Wooragee Hotel’ where the four men arrested will appear – with two of them – James Smith and Thomas Brady later found guilty of the shocking crime. Both men are hanged – side by side – at Beechworth Gaol for the murder on 12 May 1873. Bullet holes from the shooting at ‘Wooragee Hotel’ (above) remain in the front door of the building for the next hundred years! |
1872 – Oct 28
As work gets underway on the new iron railway bridge over the Ovens River in Wangaratta, a worker named Neil McDonald falls from the bridge, hits a snag in the water, and fails to surface. Not long afterwards, ‘Cranky Jimmy’ a local aboriginal man, also drowns while volunteering to search for McDonald’s body.
| Designed by Thomas Higinbotham, Chief Engineer of the Victorian Railways, Wangaratta’s new rail bridge features cast-iron piers and locally fabricated structural ironwork and will be completed and opened in November 1874. Locals try to persuade Victorian Railways to allow the original wooden bridge to remain, to be used for stock and pedestrians, but it is removed. |
1872 – Oct 28
In the nearby town of Yackandandah, 150 children march through the streets carrying banners to celebrate the imminent opening of the new Yackandandah School building. Officially opening on November 1st, it consists of three rooms and is designed by architect James E Murphy.
| The school at Yackandandah had first opened on July 1st 1855 and, when the school numbering system is introduced in 1864, had been given the full title ‘Yackandandah School, Number 694‘. |
1872
George Billson Snr and George Billson Jnr proudly announce that Billson’s Ovens Brewery’s popular ‘Best Ale’ – brewed with cherries – has been awarded a Silver Medal at a beer competition in New York. They will then enter the same beer – now renamed ‘Prize Ale’ – in the Victorian International Exhibition held in Melbourne from November 6th 1872 to January 16th 1873 where it will win a medal for First Place in the ‘Best Ale’ section of Exhibition (below).
| In 1879, the now 35-year-old George Henry Billson will leave the brewery partnership with his father (George Billson Snr) to pursue his own brewing career in Albury. Another of George Billson Snr’s sons, Walter Joseph Billson, will start his own brewing business at 674 Dean Street, Albury in 1894 and serve as Mayor of Albury from 1899–1900 and again in 1902. |
1872 – Dec 7
Successful Beechworth stagecoach ‘magnate’ Hiram Allen Crawford becomes the toast of the town when, along with his business partner Mr. S. Packham, he officially opens his mammoth Eastern Arcade in Melbourne. Running from Bourke Street through to Little Collins Street, it has been built on the site of the former Haymarket Theatre (destroyed by a fire in 1871) which is adjacent to the Eastern Market, established in 1847 as one the city’s major fruit and vegetable markets. Designed by architect George Raymond Johnson , the vast enclosed shopping arcade features 65 shops, with walkway areas in the centre which is covered by a roof of glass, with hotels at both the Bourke Street and Little Collins Street ends, as well as the ‘Apollo Hall’ entertainment venue which sits above the main entrance. The roof features three domes, the highest of which has an enclosed viewing area from where people can gain a spectacular view of ‘Marvelous Melbourne’. In 1877 Hiram’s younger brother, 25-year-old Alfred ‘Fred’ Galen Crawford, is appointed manager of the Eastern Arcade, having arrived from America in 1875. By the late 1800s the Eastern Arcade will become the heart of Melbourne’s Saturday nightlife.
| Just hours after Ned Kelly’s execution in Melbourne on 11 November 1880, the bushranger’s brother and sister – 21-year-old James (Jim) Kelly and 17-year-old Kate Kelly – are ‘exhibited’ at the ‘Apollo Hall’ – which seats up to 1,000 people – within the Eastern Arcade. 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). |
1873 – Jan 1
Following the Victorian Government passing the Education Act of 1872, the Department of Education is created. The Education Act will provide free, compulsory and secular primary school education for children aged from 6 to 15 throughout the state and it means that hundreds of new schools will be required. 34-year-old Henry Robert Bastow (below) is appointed Architect and Surveyor of the newly formed Department of Education, responsible for the design and construction of the new schools, including Beechworth State School No. 1560.
| By the early 1880s, the department has built over 600 schools across Victoria. Most of these are still functioning as schools today and at least 25 of the schools designed under Bastow are listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. |
1873
Under the guidance of 45-year-old James Ingram, the building of a new stone Baptist Church is completed at 14 Ford Street (above) – the same site where Ingram and his wife Margaret had first pitched their tent upon their arrival in Beechworth 19 years earlier in 1854. It is on this land that James Ingram holds the town’s first Baptist Church services (then known as the ‘Disciples of Christ’), initially in a tent and later in a modest weatherboard home that Ingram builds.
| Later becoming an ‘Assembles of God’ church, it will also serve followers of the ‘Church of Christ’. The interior of the church will be renovated around 2001 to become a private home, known as ‘The Old Church House’ (above). |
1873
A Watch Tower is added to the perimeter wall of the Beechworth Gaol behind the North-Eastern cell block.
1873
The Beechworth United Council is approached by the newly created Department of Education and asked to transfer half of the Town Hall Reserve to the Minister of Public Instruction with a view to creating a new Beechworth State School on the site. The President of the Council, Frederick Brown, rejects the application on the grounds that the space is too small and that, as the Victorian Government has so many schools to erect during the year, that the school “would be be of the cheapest possible description, in fact a barn-like building”. Eleven months will pass before a suitable, alternative site is finally gazetted by the Minister of Public Instruction. It is on a section of the Botanical Reserve (now Victoria Park) on the corner of Sydney Road and Junction Road. The new school will be completed by mid-1875.
1873
Ned Kelly’s younger brother, 15-year-old James ‘Jim’ Kelly, is sentenced to five years at Beechworth Gaol for cattle duffing. While at the gaol, James meets future Kelly gang member 17 year-old Joe Byrne from the Woolshed who is serving time for assaulting a Chinese man. Byrne’s accomplice in the Chinese man’s beating is Aaron Sherritt whom Byrne will shoot in 1880 as an informer of the Kelly Gang.
| After his release from Beechworth Gaol in 1877, young Jim Kelly heads to Wagga Wagga in NSW where he steals some horses and is sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. After his release he lives respectably (and crime free) for the remainder of his long life. His ten year sentence in NSW means that Jim is (fortunately) not around to become part of his older brother’s ‘Kelly Gang’ in the 1880s. Jim will pass away in Greta on December 16th, 1946, aged 87. |
1873 – Apr
Beechworth Council decide to fence-in and plant a row of trees around the ‘Market Reserve’ next to the Town Hall. When completed, the area will be known as the ‘Town Hall Gardens’.
1873
Scottish-born John Alston Wallace, the ‘Mining Colossus of the North-East’, is elected to the Victorian Legislative Council where he will serve until his death in 1901 aged 73. Upon his death, he leaves an estate valued at £121,350.
1873
56-year-old George Billson is so proud of the natural spring water he is using at his Beechworth brewery that he commissions a government analysis of the water’s quality and publishes the results. The Billson’s Brewery continues to produce their popular range of cordials, with their original five flavours – Peppermint, Raspberry Vinegar, Brew Ginger, Lime Juice, and Cloves – all based on recipes developed by George Billson and a local pharmacist.
1873 – Jul 22
John Sitch Clark dies of gout and kidney disease at the age of just 45. Printer, publisher (The Ovens and Murray Advertiser) and publican (Beechworth’s Star Hotel), he invested heavily in property in the area after successful mining speculation. Clark is also a Beechworth Shire Councillor and a member of the local school board. He is buried at Beechworth Cemetery alongside his young wife and their son John Soulby Wells Clark who dies in 1875 aged 15, and their infant son Walter Clark who had died in 1858. John Sitch Clark leaves an estate valued at £5,656.
1873 – Oct 1
The newly rebuilt two-storey Commercial Hotel on Ford Street – with cast iron lace on the balcony of the upper storey (above) and other elegant touches – is officially opened by a proud Thomas Tanswell. The occasion is celebrated with a free lunch and drinks and, as this day is also ‘Cattle Sale Day’ in Beechworth, Tanswell (a former butcher, like his father before him) provides an exclusive lunch for all the butchers in the region in the hotel’s upstairs Ballroom. Tanswell’s rebuilt hotel is quickly compared to the top hotels in Melbourne of the time and is certainly the grandest hotel in Beechworth … so much so that the Governor of Victoria Major-General The Hon. Sir Reginald Arthur James Talbot will stay at the Commercial Hotel during his visit to the region in 1906. (It will not be until April 28, 1908 that the name of the hotel is officially changed to ‘Tanswell’s Commercial Hotel’.) Crawford and Connolly are now occupying the premises at the rear of the hotel. They specialise in coach building and stabling as well as running mail and passengers around the north-east of Victoria, at a time when a trip from Melbourne to Beechworth takes over 24 hours by coach.
| The current stables date from 1892, rebuilt after a fire and renowned as one of the largest outside Melbourne. The Victorian ‘National Trust’ will lease the stables and coach house building between 1969 and 1988, to run their ‘Carriage and Harness Museum‘. |
1873 – Oct 27
Construction is completed on the latest section of the ‘North-Eastern Rail Line‘ – from Melbourne to Wangaratta – and a major celebration is held at Wangaratta in the presence of the Governor, Sir George Bowen who arrives on a special train. The newly completed Goods Shed is fitted up as a Ballroom with lights and decorations giving it a “gorgeous brilliancy” to the 800 invited guests. The new line incorporates three substantial iron bridges over rivers and floodplains at Seymour, Benalla and Wangaratta and is initially built as a single track only. The railway brings new life to towns along the line, like Benalla, but the small settlements it bypasses, like Greta, decline. The tiny settlement of Glenrowan is basically created by a railway stop being included on the line to Wangaratta. By the end of the year the line will be continued from Wangaratta, through Chiltern and Barnawartha, and on to Wodonga at the end of the line. Because the North-Eastern railway does not extend to Beechworth, the town suffers a decline in its influence in the region.
| From the mid-1850s, the main road between Melbourne and Sydney has always passed through both Wangaratta and Beechworth, before heading to Wodonga and Albury. Stagecoaches run daily from Beechworth to Melbourne, Albury and Yackandandah. |
1873
Contracts are finally signed to cut a water race from Lake Kerferd into Beechworth, as well as contracts for the filter beds and settling dam. By Labour Day 1873, pipes have been laid from Lake Kerferd to the town, with Ford Street, Camp Street and High Street being the first to be connected. This work is completed in 1874.
1873 – Nov 11-12
‘The Carnival of 1873’ – Following the success of the Beechworth Carnival in November 1872, Beechworth holds an even more spectacular and elaborate two-day carnival to celebrate to celebrate the 32nd birthday of the Prince of Wales, Edward VII, Queen Victoria’s eldest son. It is described as “the biggest and most extravagant and lavish pageant ever seen on any of Australia’s goldfields” and over 10,000 people pour into the town from all parts of Victoria and New South Wales, including some even travelling from Melbourne and Sydney, with businesses in the nearby towns of Yackandandah, Eldorado and Stanley closing during the two days of the carnival. A huge procession of over 3,000 people begins at midday from the Market Reserve (now the Town Hall Gardens) including gaily dressed people, horses, carriages, and four marching bands. At the head of the parade are members of Beechworth’s Chinese community (see next entry). By the time the procession has reached the Public Recreation Reserve (now Baarmutha Park) over 10,000 people are there to attend a Charity Carnival and ‘Grand Fancy Dress Ball’ on a specially constructed ball room with a canvas dance floor – with music provided by the Beechworth Amateur Brass Band led by 37-year-old August Gottfried Borschmann – along with sideshows, food stalls, theatre performances and concluding at nightfall with a spectacular Chinese fireworks display.
| A number of German immigrants in the street parade wear armour that has been specially sent to Beechworth by the Crown Prince of Prussia. |
1873 – Nov 11-12
Although the carnival is held to celebrate the birthday of an English Prince, the local Chinese community – who have little to be thankful to England for – rally to the occasion and provide the event with some of its most unusual and delightful aspects. Over 250 Chinese lead the ‘Prince of Wales Birthday Carnival Procession’ down Ford Street. Dressed in the finest silks and Chinese decorations, they wave beautifully hand-painted Chinese flags and banners, play musical instruments and carry traditional military weapons. Yung Ah Jack – popular local Chinese interpreter – is the Parade Marshall.
| Born in Canton in 1844, Yung Ah Jack emmigtates to Australia at the height of the goldrush. On April 2nd 1872 he marries Charlotte Laster in at the Christ Church of England in Beechworth. They have four children – Frederick Walter, Alfred Edward, Louise Amy and Sydney Ernest. A fifth child, William, dies not long after being born in 1877. |
1873 – Nov 19
Victorian Railways complete the final section of the ‘North-Eastern Rail Line‘ – from Wangaratta to Wodonga – and to celebrate, a gala luncheon is held in a large marquee (a permanent Wodonga Railway Station building will not be completed until 1874 – above) followed by a Civic Ball in the evening. Four special trains are required to carry all the visitors and dignitaries from Melbourne for the official opening. (Some say that Wodonga’s Railway festivities fail to reach the standard of excellence set by the occasion of the railway reaching Wangaratta a month earlier!)
1873 – Nov 21
The first regular passenger trains begin to travel from Melbourne to Wodonga. However, if passengers wish to travel further north by rail, they must make the trip between Wodonga and Albury by horse-drawn coach and catch a separate train from Albury. It will be another ten years before a railway line will link Wodonga and Albury.
1874
Beechworth Grammar School is opened on a property adjacent to the Public Recreation Reserve (renamed Baarmutha Park in 1880), a site formerly selected for a potential Beechworth Sanatorium. The private boarding school is led by Principal E. Savile Bell, who is assisted by James Goldsworthy. In 1895 Beechworth Grammar will be purchased by 21-year-old Andrew Rule Osborn, a former pupil, and in 1896 he will rename it Beechworth College, before it is taken over by Edward Poynton. In 1906 it will be taken over by new principal 27-year-old Parker John Moloney.
| Borders live with the Principal at his private residence, where they have “all the comforts and refining influence of a home as the boys are carefully prepared for a commercial life”. The private school will finally close its doors in 1910 when the Principal at the time, Parker John Moloney, leaves Beechworth to become a federal politician with the Labor Party. |
1874 – Feb
Four acres of the ‘Botanical Reserve’ are gazetted as a new school site. Described by the Ovens and Murray Advertiser as “a wilderness with a granite out-crop at the back, and a swamp at each side covered with dwarf wattle and ti-tree”, the new school’s headmaster – with the assistance of a gang of prisoners from the gaol – set about draining the swamps and blasting the rock. After raising a small amount of money from a concert, he then plants pines, cypresses, cedars and sequioas. Later, sections of the ‘Botanical Reserve’ to the south-east and north-east of the school are added to the school grounds, giving frontages to High Street and Sydney Road. The school’s sports oval is created in 1951.
1874
Sweeping ‘Hospital Gardens’ are laid out by Richard H. Jenkyns on the sloping grounds of Beechworth’s Ovens Goldfields Hospital. Planted with over 200 species of trees, including fruit trees, and shrubs, as well as colourful flower beds and orchards and kitchen gardens for food production. Cedars and Bunya pines flourish, which patients can view from the shelter of a new rotunda, with fences added around the large property to complete the beautification process. The following year Jenkyns will be commissioned to lay out the Beechworth Town Hall Gardens (see 1875 entry).
1874
One of Beechworth’s most notable (and notorious) locals at this time is John Phelan. A former Livery Stable owner, he has become the ‘Dog Pound Officer’ and ‘Shire Revenue Officer’. Phelan is a continual litigant, and regularly corresponds and complains to the local newspapers, where his official and officious escapades are often mockingly reported.
1874
Aaron Sherritt has a newly acquired selection near Sheep Station Creek at Sebastopol. Sherritt and his friend, 18-year-old Joseph ‘Joe’ Byrne, mark the boundary of the farm with a combination of post and rail, and wire fencing, and build a rough slab hut where young Joe Byrne will come to spend the majority of his time. Born at the Woolshed in 1856, Joe is the eldest son of Patrick (Paddy) and Margret Byrne (nee White).
| Aaron Sherritt is once engaged to wed Joe Byrne’s sister Katie. However, on the 26th of December 1879, Sherritt will marry another girl, 15-year-old Ellen Barry. |
| In the early 1870s, the teenaged Joe Byrne makes regular trips into Beechworth, becoming a regular visitor to James Ingram’s bookshop and newsagency, spending his time chatting with the Scotsman in the back room of his shop. Appreciating books and good conversation, Ingram finds him to be ‘a nice, well-behaved lad.’ The boy also likes to visit the Burke Museum and Public Library, where he wanders through the arched rooms of taxidermy and array of worldly artifacts, paying particular attention to the newly acquired Chinese items from a recent carnival. |
1874
42-year-old Frederick Allen purchases the Star Hotel on Ford Street in Beechworth from the estate of the late John Sitch Clark for £2,800.
| Born in Kent in England, Frederick Allen travelled by ship to Victoria in 1852 and, after several years of chasing gold at various locations including Bendigo, moves to Allans Flat where he opens a store, followed by taking over Yackandandah’s ‘Southern Cross Hotel’ in the 1860s, before relocating to Beechworth in 1872. He will run the ‘Star Hotel’ until 1890. In 1886 he and a Mr Clements will become owners and proprietors of the ‘Spring Creek Brewery’. He is elected to the ‘Beechworth Shire Council’ in 1879 and remains there until 1888. He is married three times. He passes away in Beechworth on August 13, 1906 at the age of 73. |
1874 – Apr 2
Now Victoria’s Solicitor-General, George Briscoe Kerferd returns to Beechworth to officially open the valve and release the water from Lake Kerferd – recently completed in the hills above the town – that will be Beechworth’s new permanent water supply. The huge crowd – who have gathered to watch this momentous occasion – cheer as a hose held by Councillor Frederick Brown shoots water from the town’s new water supply high into the air … “as high as the top of the Post Office tower”! It is said that Councillor Brown also takes the opportunity to spray some water over those in the crowd who had criticised him over his infamous ‘Brown’s Folly’! (see 1857 entry)
| Over the next two years the water is reticulated to the more remote areas of the town at an additional cost of £5,000. This is a great outcome for Beechworth but by the end of 1876 the Council is in debt by a staggering £30,489! |
1874 – Apr 2
After Beechworth’s water supply is officially turned on in the centre of town, the official party moves down to Newtown Falls where the Foundation Stone for the newly announced granite Newtown Bridge is laid by George Verney Smith MLA (below). The original cost estimate is £3,897, but the government insists Beechworth Council reduce it – leading to construction being held up several times due to disputes over the costs – and it will not be completed until 1875, at a final cost of just £2,450.
1874 – Apr 3
The contract to build the Newtown Bridge is awarded to Beechworth Quarry owners Donald Fiddes and Co (Donald and his brother William) and construction officially commences after the Foundation Stone is laid. The Fiddess brothers quickly hire a number of fellow Scottish stonemasons, including John Morrison, who walks to the construction site at Beechworthevery day up the “Zig Zag Track” from his home in the Basin at Murmungee and then home again – a distance of 16 kms!
| Donald Fiddes and his Scottish stonemasons construct the bridge “like a pyramid” with no mortar used. Instead, they “key” the stones together perfectly, with one large “key stone” in the centre holding the bridge up. “It will be in service for 200 years!” the council proudly states. And yes, it still stands proudly today! |
1874
65km from Beechworth, a high level wooden bridge is built over the flood-prone Broken River at Benalla. It features a ‘Toll Gate’ at the western end. The ‘toll’ is abolished in 1878.
1874
From a design originally submitted ten years earlier by John H. Cuzner, secretary of the Beechworth Athenæum, the museum finally gains a unique stained-glass window. Made to Cuzner’s 1864 design by Ferguson and Urie of Melbourne for a reported £30 (roughly $8,000 today), the window features the Colonial Flag of Australia, the red Cross of St George, the White Rose of England, the emblem of New South Wales in gold within the red cross, the Thistle of Scotland, the Shamrock of Ireland and the Southern Cross in gold stars with the wording “Burke Memorial”. It contains a total of 24 stained panels held together with lead.
1874 – Jul 21
Beechworth pioneer George Briscoe Kerferd becomes the 10th Premier of Victoria and will serve in the role until August 1875.
| Kerferd had been elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Ovens in November 1864, and will represent the area continuously until February 1886. He begins studying law in 1864 and becomes Minister of Mines and Vice-President of the Board of Land and Works in the government of James McCulloch 1868, and Solicitor-General from 1872–1874, and Attorney-General in 1874 in the government of James Goodall Francis. When the Francis government is defeated in July 1874, Kerferd succeeds Francis as the head of a new conservative ministry which is elected 31 July 1874. Kerferd will serve as the Premier of Victoria until 7 August 1875 when his government is defeated. Kerferd is again appointed Attorney-General in later conservative governments – from 1875 to 1877, 1880 and again from 1883 to 1886 at which time he quits politics and on 1 January 1886 is appointed to the Supreme Court of Victoria. Kerferd serves as a judge until his death in 1889, aged 58. |
1874
The Poyntz family take over the Wooragee Hotel, a key ‘watering hole’ on the road between Beechworth and Yackandandah and the business soon becomes known simply as the Poyntz Hotel. Henry Poyntz – also known as ‘Shove-along Poyntz’ – and his wife Rebecca had arrived in Wooragee in 1861 with their four children. Henry also runs a local dairy and is famous for his ‘Wooragee Butter’ and grows Algerian oats. The Poyntz family remain licensees of the Wooragee Hotel until 1911 and it is then continued by his daughter Jane Goodger (nee Poyntz).
1874
A cast iron verandah is added over the Beechworth Post Office first floor balcony. In 1902 another upstairs room will be added, the roof gabled to match the existing temporary gable, and the exterior is faced with cement.
1874
Beechworth’s new and controversial Presbyterian Minister Robert Kirkwood Ewing is accused of living with his new wife even though he knows she’s a bigamist. Having been told by her minister in England that her first husband has died, 28-year-old Frances Sanden had proceeded to marry the 51-year-old Reverend Ewing in Beechworth (just 11 days days after his first wife Letitia Blakemore had died back in Tasmania), before being informed that the minister back in England had made a mistake and that her first husband has not died and is very much alive! According to law – and the standards of the Presbyterian Church – this means that Scottish-born Ewing should ‘spring apart’ from his wife Frances immediately. He refuses and it becomes a big issue, as Ewing is such a popular – although often outspoken – minister, and his many Beechworth parishioners at St. Andrew’s Church don’t want him dismissed. In fact, they say they are prepared to join him in a new church rather than lose him! He retains his position (by the skin of his teeth) but in 1877 he becomes embroiled in yet another controversy, when he’s accused of acting as a mining company manager and speculating in Beechworth mining shares. Although, once again, his congregation supports him, the charges are found to be true, and he is dismissed from the Presbyterian Church of Victoria and forced to leave Beechworth.
| Before arriving in Beechworth, the Reverend Robert Kirkwood Ewing had already been a controversial figure in Tasmania, marked by charges of immorality, frequent unrest and clashes of opinion and being the topic of many scandals, quarrels and public gossip in the small emerging township of Launceston. He had been the minister at St. Andrew’s Church in Launceston as well as being a teacher, lecturer, president of the ‘Launceston Mechanics Institute’, president of the ‘Launceston Philharmonic Society’, the ‘St. Andrew’s Teetotal Society’ and, as a committed Freemason, served as the ‘First Provincial Grand Master of the English Constitution Lodge’ from 1857 to 1859 during which time he is accused of abandoning his wife Letitia Blakemore. After leaving Beechworth and the Presbyterian Church, Ewing joins the Church of England and serves at Inverell for 17 years before being appointed to Lismore in 1895. In 1896 he becomes a canon and rural dean but will die in Lismore 1899 at the age of 76 after contracting influenza. He is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters. |
1874
Local teacher Isaac Isaacs starts his legal career by suing the headmaster of the ‘Beechworth Common School’ – at which he has been an assistant teacher since 1873 – for fees that he claims are owed to him for teaching extra subjects. The claim is dismissed.
| Following his failure in court, Isaacs quits the Education Department in favour of law. In February 1875, Isaacs secures employment as a clerk in the Prothonotary’s Office of the Crown Law Department in Melbourne. He enrols in the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne, combining part-time studies with full-time work, and graduates Bachelor of Laws with first class honours in 1880, followed by a Master of Laws degree in 1883. |
| After a successful legal career, Isaac Isaacs is elected to the Federal House of Representatives as the member for Indi (held in 2023 by Independent, Dr Helen Haines). A champion of Federation, Isaacs is a polymath who speaks six languages including Chinese; is for a time acting Premier of Victoria, a Federal Attorney General, High Court Judge and finally becomes the first Australian-born Governor General in 1931. |
1874 – Aug 7
Although the township of Belvoir (38 km from Beechworth) has been commonly referred to as ‘Wodonga’ by many people since the 1860s, the name of the town of Belvoir is now officially changed to Wodonga.
| The township – standing at the point where the Wodonga Creek and the ‘Sydney Road’ intersect with the Murray River – is originally surveyed in 1852 and named ‘Belvoir’ after Charles Huon’s nearby homestead. ‘Wodonga’ is the name of the pastoral run taken up in 1836 by Paul Huon, brother of Charles Huon. The aboriginal word ‘Wodonga’ (or Wordonga or Woodoongaa) is thought to mean bullrushes. |
1874 – Aug 8
In an infamous bare-knuckle boxing match, Ned Kelly fights Isaiah “Wild” Wright beside Spring Creek at the rear of the ‘Imperial Hotel’. The 19-year-old Ned defeats 25-year-old Wright in the fight which lasts for a brutal 20 rounds and Kelly becomes the unofficial boxing champion of the district.
| The ‘Imperial Hotel’ is demolished in 1966, with just the one-bedroom, one-bathroom ‘Pickett Cottage’ remaining in High Street. It still stands today. |
1874 – Oct 22
Alexander Greig lays the first stone of Beechworth’s new ‘State School No. 1560’ after the £7,259 building contract is awarded to his Beechworth building firm Greig & Wilson. It will constructed on four acres on part of the Botanical Reserve on the corner of Sydney and Junction Roads (below). The new building – designed in the Gothic style by 35-year-old Henry Robert Bastow, Chief of the Government Architectural Department, is described as one of the “most handsome and most complete of its kind to be found in the colony”. A solid brick ‘u-shaped’ building with granite foundations, a slate roof, and 16 rooms, the main building has a total length of 227 feet (69 metres) with the central front to be dominated by a 66-foot high (20 metre) tower.
1874 – Nov 6
A contract is signed for the construction of a new branch line of the North-Eastern Railway from Wangaratta to Everton, and then on to Beechworth. The contract has been awarded to Messrs A & J Overend for £33,000 and work begins early in 1875 when the North Wangaratta Junction Stop will be created at a spot known as Burkes Waterholes (where natural springs are located) 6km beyond the Wangaratta Railway Station. This junction stop will facilitate the operation of contractor’s trains during the construction of the new branch line. In mid-1875 the North Wangaratta Junction Stop will be renamed Beechworth Junction.
| The branch line from Beechworth Junction to Beechworth will be built in two sections – Wangaratta-Beechworth Junction-Londrigan-Tarrawingee-Everton, then (a year later) Everton-Lee’s Crossing-Beechworth. |
| The Beechworth line will be built using the “Broad Gauge” system (5 ft 3 in / 1,600 mm) as opposed to the “Narrow Gauge” system (2 ft 6 in / 762 mm). A “Narrow Gauge” system will eventually be built on a branch line between Wangaratta and Whitfield in the 1890s. |
1875 – Jan
Jacob Van Den Berg’s Vine Hotel – which he and his family had taken over in 1863 – is the closest hotel to the Beechworth Racecourse (renamed Baarmutha Park on December 26th 1880). Established by Robert Quirk in 1858, the Vine Hotel stands at the junction of the Woolshed, Chiltern and Yackandandah Roads – on the way out of Beechworth towards Wodonga – and, because of its proximity to the racecourse, has become a popular venue for racegoers to enjoy drinks before and after horse races and for owners to stable their valuable racehorses (see advertisement above).
1875
The Rocky Mountain Gold Sluicing Company Ltd is created, on part of the site of the previous 1856 Rocky Mountain Claim at Pennyweight Flat (above). The gold is removed utilising ‘hydraulic sluicing’, a process by which water under high pressure is used to break down large amounts of rock and earth to expose the gold within them. From 1876 until its closure in 1921, the mine produces an astounding 47,926 ozs of gold!
| With ‘hydraulic sluicing’ becoming a popular method of mining gold, an estimated 1,400 km of water races will be built throughout Beechworth. |
1875
The ‘Sons of Freedom’ gold mine (above) is established in the valley of the ‘Ullina’ pastoral run near Chiltern. From 1877 it will be worked by John Alston Wallace’s ‘Chiltern Valley Gold Mining Company’ which will also take over the lease of the ‘Doma Mungi’ gold mine, a significant alluvial claim in the Chiltern Valley. Operations at both mines will cease in 1920.
| During their 45 years of operation, the mines in Chiltern Valley produce gold to the value of over £1 million. Mining brings employment and business to Chiltern Valley with market gardens established along the Black Dog Creek and schools being built at Doma Mungi and later Chiltern Valley No. 2. There are a number of shops and a Post Office, a Chinese settlement, along with hotels including ‘The Doma Mungi’, the ‘Chiltern Valley’, ‘The Miners’ and “The Endeavour’. Chiltern Valley will have a Wesleyan Church and a Catholic Church, with a large hall built at Doma Mungi. The Doma Mungi school is later moved to Chiltern Valley and operates until its removal in the 1950s. The last hotel building will be removed in the 1980s. |
1875
At the entrance to Beechworth, the impressive Newtown Bridge is completed over Spring Creek (above), constructed of local granite by skilled Scottish stonemasons under the supervision of Donald Fiddes at a cost of £2,450. Unlike the earlier timber bridge (which had been built in line with High Street on 1856), the new stone bridge lines up with Upper Ford Street (or New Ford Street), which has replaced High Street, after five years, as the main road through Beechworth.
| The completed granite ‘Newtown Bridge’ has a deck 80 feet long by 26 feet, 26 inches wide, including 6 feet of footway. The arch span is 50 feet and the rise 11 feet, while the masonry parapets stand 5 feet high. |
1875
Miss Budgett is now running the Beechworth Ladies’ College. She will later move to Melbourne and establish Victoria College in Essendon that will promote itself as a “small day school and boarding school four miles from Melbourne” in 1878.
1875
Beechworth’s grandest Victorian-era residence Myrla is built by Donald Fletcher (at what is now) 2 Fletcher Road. Set on a hill (which becomes known as ‘Fletcher’s Hill’) with an elevated aspect over Beechworth, the bi-chrome brick residence features wide timber verandahs and stands in a magnificent Victorian-style garden of just under a hectare, designed by leading German botanist Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, director of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens. The property includes two water features – a classic tiered fountain in the front and a modern reflection pond in the courtyard hemmed by a Beechworth granite retaining wall. There is also a small granite dairy/smoke house in the courtyard and an evergreen oak tree. The entire property is eventually surrounded by massive, manicured box hedges.
| Donald Fletcher, originally from Scotland, arrived in Beechworth in 1855, became a father of 10, and had great success mining gold. ‘Myrla’ will be purchased by the government in 1953 for use as ‘Mayday Hills Mental Asylum’ senior staff accommodation. At that time, they will remove part of the interior upper level. It is now, once again, a magnificent and fully restored private home. |
1875
Now that the new Bridge is open, the settlement of ‘New Town’ grows rapidly. A new building is constructed at 24 Bridge Road, that will be a residence but also serve as the New Town Butcher Shop.
1875
New public baths are erected by the Beechworth Bath Company on Loch Street. The Beechworth Baths will be acquired by the Shire Council in 1878.
1875
Music continues to be a very important part of life in Beechworth. A number of piano teachers and singing teachers offer private classes including Henri William Ruxton and Miss Van Den Berg (below).
1875
Three miles from Beechworth, on the road to Wangaratta, 18-year-old William Price opens the Black Springs Bakery on land his father James Price, a market gardener, had selected in 1871. William had come to Beechworth from England with his parents and had entered into the employ of William Trim at his Ovens Bakery on Albert Road before setting up his own bakery at Black Springs. Starting his new business in a tent, he then builds a simple wooden structure in 1877, before enlarging the successful Black Springs Bakery, adding a stone and brick building around it.
| The ‘Black Springs Bakery’ becomes the centrepiece of the small goldrush town of Black Springs, established in the 1850s. At its peak, the township of Black Springs includes a State School, three hotels, a butcher, three blacksmiths, a racecourse, a rifle range, three sawmills, several vineyards and orchards, a collection of dairies, with the ‘Black Springs Bakery’ also becoming the settlement’s official Post Office. Ned Kelly is reputed to have bought bread at the ‘Black Springs Bakery’. Sadly, the Black Springs settlement will be destroyed by a bushfire during the Christmas of 1899 – except for the bakery – which continues supplying bread to the region until 1942 when the Bakery finally closes and becomes the last remnant of a once thriving little community. Gifted to the National Trust in 1968, the old bakery buildings now operate as a guest house. |
1875
40-year-old Andrew Porritt – in partnership with newsagent John Fletcher and the Reverend Robert Kirkwood Ewing – establishes The Ovens Register, a fourth newspaper for Beechworth. Starting as a ‘Saturday weekly’ newspaper, the first issue is printed in the office behind John Fletcher’s booksellers shop on Ford Street, before a purpose-built office and printing works at 37 Camp Street is finally completed in 1891 (above). When his two partners leave the business, Porritt continues on his own. The Ovens Register will be in direct competition with Beechworth’s two other newspapers – The Ovens and Murray Advertiser (first printed in 1855) and The Ovens Spectator (first printed in 1870). George Henry Mott’s The Constitution and Ovens Mining Intelligencer, first published in May 1856, had ceased daily issues by March 28, 1863. Of these four papers, The Ovens and Murray Advertiser is the biggest and strongest (and is still published today) and will incorporate The Ovens Register from 1918.
| Born in Peckham in 1834, Andrew Porritt – son of a London bookseller – learns the printing trade in London before arriving in Melbourne in July 1852 and goes straight to work at the ‘Melbourne Morning Herald’ where he meets fellow newspapermen King William Thompson Soulby and Richard Warren and, when he arrives in Beechworth in 1855, they appoint him foreman at ‘The Ovens and Murray Advertiser’. He later works for ‘The Constitution and Ovens Mining Intelligencer’ before going into partnership with John Fletcher and the Reverend Ewing to establish the ‘Ovens Register’ |
| First published in 1870, ‘The Ovens Spectator’ will cease publication in 1885, while another newspaper – ‘Beechworth and District News’ – will be established in 1930 but by 1933 it will be incorporated into ‘The Ovens and Murray Advertiser’ which will become one of the longest continuously running newspapers in Australia. |
1875 – Jun
With the first section of the Beechworth branch line completed from North Wangaratta to Everton, the contract to construct the second – and more difficult – section of the railway line from Everton to the town of Beechworth is awarded to Messers Fishburn & Moreton for £70,018. A small ‘railway town’ will be created at Everton to house the 500 workers needed to construct this ‘up hill’ section of the railway – the steepest broad gauge line in Victoria – complete with stores, hotels, workshops, contractor’s offices and stables while simple canvas and bark dwellings are erected to house the men. The workers use horses, bullocks and mules to manoeuvre the earth scoops and to pull the drays and wagons. Bricks are made in kilns to create 33 bridges and 45 brick culverts.
| Work on the second section of the rail line – from Everton to Beechworth – will begin a year later on June 23rd, 1876 and will completed by September 1876. |
1875 – Jun 29
The Ovens and Murray Advertiser advertise a ‘Grand Demonstration Ball and Banquet’ at Thomas Tanswell’s Commercial Hotel to celebrate the imminent opening of the new Beechworth State School. Although the whole Victorian Ministry are to attend, when the special train from Melbourne to Everton arrives on July 1st, it is discovered that, incredibly, Angus McKay (Minister of Education) and Duncan Gillies (Minister of Railways) have missed getting on special the train in Melbourne! (see next entry)
1875 – Jul 1
Beechworth pioneer George Briscoe Kerferd, now the Premier of Victoria, is one of the first train passengers as the first section of the rail line – from North Wangaratta to Everton – is completed. Councillor Frederick Brown, President of Beechworth Shire, meets The Honourable Mr Kerferd when he arrives at Everton, halfway between Wangaratta and Beechworth, then they travel by horse-drawn coach to Beechworth to celebrate the completion of the new Beechworth State School (see next entry). The “official opening” of the rail line will be held a week later on July 7th.
1875 – Jul 2
The new Beechworth State School opens! Having travelled to Everton on the new rail line, Victorian Premier George Briscoe Kerferd now makes his way to Beechworth by horse-drawn coach to officially open the magnificent red-brick Gothic-style Beechworth State School No. 1560 at the Sydney Road end of the Botanical Reserve. A public holiday has been declared on this Friday in town as hundreds of children march behind the Forester’s Brass Band from their old Common School No. 36 in Loch Street to their new, much bigger school. Also present at the school’s opening ceremony are the new school’s head teacher Edward S. Harris, teacher Arthur E. Scott, five female teachers and five ‘pupil’ teachers, along with John Alston Wallace and six members of parliament … and a tremendous crowd of local citizens. The new school has the capacity of accommodating 1,000 pupils!
| The architect for the new school is Henry Robert Bastow and his design will be the prototype for five other schools in Victoria. An imposing 20-metre slate-roofed tower dominates the original school building but, after gracing the school for 65 years, some of the slates fall from the tower and it is deemed unsafe and removed in the late 1940s.and replaced by a smaller, more modest tower. However, in June 1995 the tower will return in its original form. |
1875 – Jul 5
With trains now running regularly on the the railway line – completed in late 1873 – between Wangaratta and Wodonga, a permanent brick Railway Station building is constructed in Chiltern (above) by builder James Lever, complemented by a large brick Railway Goods Shed on the opposite side of the tracks. The Chiltern Goods Shed is constructed by 49-year-old Beechworth builder James Kyle. Located 25 km from Beechworth, both buildings still stand today with trains regularly stopping on a daily basis.
| Chiltern Railway Station is built by James Lever in the ‘Creswick’ style. This type of railway building design – one of the typological groups of the ‘light lines’ – is more restrained than previous lavish structures and will be adopted as standard by the Victorian Railways Department who seek to minimise costs following the financial depression of the 1860s. |
1875 – Jul 7
The new siding/stop at North Wangaratta on the North-Eastern Railway line between Wangaratta and Wodonga is officially opened. It is soon renamed Beechworth Junction, as it will be from this point that that new branch line Beechworth begins. In 1885 a low grain platform is completed and ready for use and a passenger platform is completed by August 1890 along with a Signal Box. A Booking Office is built in November 1890 and by January 1891 the Beechworth Junction Station opens for passenger traffic with a full passenger platform, booking office, staff accommodation, and shelter sheds all completed, with a siding for heavy loads added in 1901. Beechworth Junction will be re-named Bowser in 1922 after Sir John Bowser, state politician, former Premier of Victoria, and owner and editor of the Wangaratta Chronicle newspaper (established by George Maxwell in 1884).
| The interchange of goods traffic between the main line and the Beechworth branch line is handled at Wangaratta, six kilometres to the south. In 1927, the ‘Bowser Railway Station’ becomes a three-way junction, when a new branch line to Peechelba East is opened. Freight facilities include bulk grain storage, livestock loading ramps, and a fertiliser store. Passenger traffic to the ‘Bowser Railway Station’ ceases on 1 October 1972 and the station closes entirely on 13 April 1987, when the line to Everton (the last section of the Beechworth line) closes. The Peechelba East branch line had closed a year earlier, in 1986. |
1875 – Aug 17
The Beechworth Lotus Club stages a performance at St. George’s Hall on Finch Street. The evening features two pieces – the Thomas John Williams 1868 two-act drama “The Peep Show Man” followed by the one-act 1864 farce “The Area Belle” by William Brough and Andrew Halliday.
1875
Successful Beechworth jeweller, 60-year-old William Jameson Turner, builds ‘Elm Tree Lodge’ at the large triangular junction of Loch Street, Kars Street and Sydney Road almost opposite Beechworth Gaol. The original 5 room double brick home is expanded in 1890 to include a large lounge room, master bedroom and an internal bathroom. Sitting on two thirds of an acre, the house has an adjoining carriage shed that is dated pre-1875. It is now luxury holiday accommodation.
1875 – Oct 1
The Baarmutha Post Office opens at Lee’s Crossing on Fighting Gully Road. It will close in 1968.
1875
The beautiful Town Hall Gardens are finally opened next to the Beechworth Town Hall. Formerly known as the ‘Market Reserve’ – and in use as a popular public space since 1857 – the new gardens are designed and laid out by Richard H. Jenkyns. He plants a range of exotic species including giant Californian sequoias (above) donated by noted 19th century botanist Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne at the time.
| In May 1876, a cast iron Rotunda is added. All the detailed cast iron work, as well as the pillars, are created and built at the local ‘Straughair and Duncan Foundry’. A fountain and two large urns will be added in 1877. |
1876 – Jan
25km from Beechworth, the former site of the ‘Alliance Gold Mine’ in Chiltern is officially opened as Lake Anderson (above), with the boat ‘Ballaghue’ the first to sail on its waters. The man-made lake is named in honour of George Anderson, editor of the ‘Federal Standard’ newspaper who had long fought to have the former gold mine site transformed into a lake.
| George Anderson will die at the age of 65 on August 22nd 1890. |
1876
25-year-old photographer Charles Bayliss arrives in Beechworth and takes a series of panoramic ‘plate’ images of the town, including the photograph above, looking north up Ford Street.
| In 1866 16-year-old Bayliss meets the travelling photographer Beaufoy Merlin – who operates the ‘American and Australasian Photographic Company’ (‘A & A Photographic Company’) – and quickly becomes Merlin’s assistant. They travel extensively throughout Victoria and New South Wales. At the goldfields at Hill End in NSW they meet Bernhardt Otto Holtermann, who has become wealthy as the result of successful gold mining. Holtermann employs the ‘A & A Photographic Company’ to produce a series of photographs of the settled areas of Victoria and New South Wales, which are sent abroad to advertise the colony and encourage migrants. Although Beaufoy Merlin passes away, Bayliss continues to work with Holtermann who gifts the young photographer a mammoth ‘Plate Camera’ and the first images taken with it are of Holtermann’s recently purchased ‘Post Office Hotel’ in Sydney followed by an 1875 a panorama of Sydney, taken from the tower attached to Holtermann’s house in North Sydney, now part of ‘Sydney Church of England Grammar School’ (‘Shore School’). In the 1870s Bayliss begins to work alongside another photographer named Henshaw Clarke. Bayliss dies in 1897 (aged just 46) and in 1951 approximately 3,500 glass plate photographic negatives are found in the possession of Bernhardt Holtermann’s descendants. They are subsequently donated to the Mitchell Library (within the NSW State Library) in Sydney and now form the basis of the “Holtermann Collection“, although Bayliss, Clarke and Merlin are the actual photographers. |
1876
Three cottages are built in Beechworth by the Victorian Railways as permanent homes for the ‘Gang Plate Layers’ and their families – many of whom had previously been living in tents along the railway line to Beechworth as they laid plates for the railway tracks. Only one of the cottages remains today, sitting on Crown Land at 1b Harper Avenue and, in mid-2024, it will be fully restored by the Lions Club of Beechworth for use by the community.
| This ‘Gang Plate Layers’ cottage is believed to be just one of four surviving in Australia. The other three known to be in existence are in Menzies, Western Australia, 131km north of Kalgoorlie, also in the process of being restored. |
1876
The small, original wooden Oriental Bank building is demolished at 97 Ford Street, and a bigger and much more impressive two-storey Oriental Bank building is completed on the same site (above). It is designed in the ‘Renaissance Palazzo’ style by prominent Melbourne architect Leonard Terry, who also designs Beechworth’s Anglican Christ Church, along with Melbourne University’s Trinity Chapel, The Melbourne Club on Collins Street, and the Blight’s bluestone warehouse (now known as Lazars) on King Street. The Oriental Bank – a British Imperial bank founded in India in 1842 – is favoured by Beechworth’s substantial Chinese gold-mining population.
1876
The area now known as Lake Sambell is a vast open-cut mine (and reportedly still contains a commercial quantity of gold in its base!). The Rocky Mountain Gold Sluicing Company Ltd removes gold from this mine using ‘hydraulic sluicing’ (above), a process by which water under high pressure is used to break down large amounts of rock and earth to expose the gold within them. Unfortunately, this process leaves a great deal of water and sludge at the base of the mine, so a new company – the Rocky Mountain Extended Mining Company – is formed to try and solve the problem (see next entry).
1876 – May
Work on the Rocky Mountain Gold Sluicing Company site continues, using the ‘hydraulic sluicing’ process. Unfortunately, this process leaves a great deal of water and sludge at the base of the mine, so the Rocky Mountain Extended Mining Company is formed – with Beechworth businessman William Telford (above) as Chairman – with the aim of cutting vast a tunnel under the town of Beechworth to an area below the Newtown Bridge at the gorge, to drain this waste away. Employing A.L Martin to survey the best area for a tunnel underneath the township and out into the Spring Creek Gorge, work on the tunnel will commence on June 10th.
| For almost 25 years Archibald Macnaught Morrison serves as the legal manager of the ‘Rocky Mountain Extended Gold Sluicing Company’, a position he is forced to relinquish at the age of 77 in 1907 on account of his failing eyesight. Upon his forced retirement, Morrison is presented with a purse of sovereigns by the ‘Rocky Mountain Extended Gold Sluicing Company’ shareholders in recognition of his long and faithful service with the company. |
1876
A larger two-bedroom Manse is built at 22 Ford Street (above) for the pastor of the Wesleyan Church. It replaces the one-bedroom Manse built in the 1850s at 24a Ford Street (below) next to the Wesleyan Church.
1876
George Judah Lyon adds a dwelling, stables and fowl house to his Spring Creek Brewery. His business interests extend to the Rocky Mountain Gold Sluicing Company Ltd, and he will be one of the promoters of the Beechworth Gas Company which results in the streets of Beechworth being lit with gas in 1881.
1876
The beautiful Rose Cottage is completed at 42 Camp Street, next door to Beechworth’s 1869-built Congregational Church.
| A cast iron Rotunda is constructed in the garden and then a fountain and two large urns are added in 1877. In 1984 the beautiful Victorian-style ‘Rose Cottage’ will be purchased, renovated and turned into a 4-bedroom ‘Bed & Breakfast’ (below). |
1876 – Jun 9
Crowds travel from around the district and gather at the water’s edge on both side of the Murray River – between Corowa and Wahgunyah – to watch 15-year-old William Henry Freeman walk across the river on a wire. Not only does he cross the water but, to entertain the excited spectators, he also skips across the long piece of fencing wire, walks backwards, lays down on the wire mid-river, sits on a chair balanced on the wire, and even offers to “carry any lad from the crowd upon his back across the wire”. There are no volunteers!
1876 – Jun 10
Under the chairmanship of Beechworth businessman William Telford, The Rocky Mountain Extended Mining Company recommence work on their ambitious 2,600-foot-long tunnel under Beechworth, which will enable mining to continue to a greater depth. Initially using hand drills, holes are bored using ‘Ford’s Patent Rock Drills’ and explosives blast out a 6-foot-high tunnel. However, the lack of water to operate the air pumps hinders productivity and working times are reduced to 10 hours a day. Following the call for new tenders, Johnson Stevens wins the new contract at a price of £4 per foot and works resume on February 8th 1877 utilising advances in technology, including the use of compressed air to create pneumatic pressure to drill holes, a steam engine to drive the compressor, and an air extractor – all to cut through the solid granite directly under the town.
1876 – Jul
36-year-old Alfred William Ladson – younger brother of Thomas Taylor Ladson – takes over the lease of the building on the corner of Camp and High Streets (where the ‘Beechworth Ice Creamery’ operates today) and opens his store A. Ladson General Dealer, specialising in his trademarked Ladson’s Ink, along with blacking, vinegar, baking powder, and horse feed. A year later he will close the store and concentrate on his Ladson’s Ink business. But he will return to running shops in Beechworth five years later.
1876
The 1859-built London Tavern (above) is purchased by 44-year-old former Beechworth police sergeant Felix O’Connor (below) who, over the next 10 years, will fully refurbish the various buildings on the quarter-acre block on Camp Street.
| In January 1902, when the licensee of the ‘London Tavern’ is Ellen Barry, a youth named Archibald Scott appears in court charged with offensive behaviour at the Tavern on Christmas Eve. Although the case is dismissed, Scott is soon re-arrested on a charge of committing perjury. The fascinating case involves an identical twin brother and a missing finger! |
1876 – Jul
6-year-old Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (above) moves into Lake View House in Chiltern (below) with her parents (Dr Walter Lindesay Richardson and Mary Bailey) and her younger sister Lillian. Growing up to become a celebrated Australian author – under the pen name Henry Handel Richardson – she will write a number of classic books including ‘Maurice Guest’ (1908), ‘The Getting of Wisdom’ (1910), ‘Australia Felix’ (1917) ‘The Way Home’ (1925), ‘Ultima Thule’ (1929) and ‘The Fortunes of Richard Mahony’ (1930). The Richardson family will live at Lake View House (25 km from Beechworth) until September 1877.
| ‘Lake View House’ and little Ethel’s life in Chiltern are depicted in her novel “The Fortunes of Richard Mahony” where the house has the fictional name of ‘Barambogie’. The house in Chiltern – with its unusual French windows – is now owned by the National Trust and has been preserved in its period style. |
1876 – Jul 13
After two years of construction of the Beechworth branch line – at a total cost of £103,018 for the two rail sections – the first train arrives at Beechworth (although the Beechworth Railway Station building won’t be completed until the end of the year). The relatively short branch line from Beechworth Junction (Bowser) to Beechworth is one of the earliest in country Victoria. Between Beechworth Junction and Beechworth, there are four stops – Londrigan, Tarrawingee (below), Everton and Lee’s Crossing (renamed Baarmutha in 1904).
| A further extension of the branch line from Beechworth to Wooragee and Yackandandah will open on 23 July 1891. The line is running at a loss just six months after it opens. Despite this, the Yackandandah extension is in operation until 1954 when a bushfire damages a bridge, resulting in the line closing permanently. |
1876 – Sep 29
After a long and steep haul up the escarpment to Beechworth, 13 carriages hauled by two steam locomotives (above) finally arrive in town for the official opening ceremony of the completed second section of the railway line from Wangaratta (via Beechworth Junction). The branch line represents the faith of the then Premier of Victoria, George Briscoe Kerferd, and the leading citizens of Beechworth in the future of the district. The opening ceremony is the biggest event to take place in the Ovens District since the gold rush of the 1850’s, with celebrations taking place in and around the Goods Shed and a large circus tent erected for the occasion (as the station building is not yet complete). The ceremony is led by the Governor of Victoria, Sir George Bowen (below), along with the Premier, the Mayor and Town Council. Over 6,000 people gather for the event, including a large contingent of the Chinese community, all turned out in their finery (below).
| The Beechworth Railway Station will officially close on December 30th 1976, one hundred years after it opened. The short branch line between Everton and Bowser (part of the branch line to Myrtleford and Bright) remains open until 1987. In the 1990s the line between Bowser and Beechworth becomes part of the ‘Murray to the Mountains Rail Trail’. |
1876
A new booking office for Hiram Crawford’s stagecoach line is opened in Ford Street. Stagecoaches depart for the regular journey to Melbourne from the large ‘Livery & Bait Stables’, still located at the rear of the building. The shopfront is altered in 1861 to the way it looks now. Unable to compete with the expanding railway network, Crawford & Connolly Coaches will close in 1906.
| The stagecoach trip to Melbourne from Beechworth costs £7 per person and takes three days, with overnight stops at Euroa and Seymour. |
1876
41-year-old Matthew Dodd and his brother 40-year-old Thomas Dodd – who have successfully run the Ovens Tannery since 1859 -now open a leather goods shop – Dodd’s Leather Merchants – in Ford Street to run in conjunction with their Tannery on Malakoff Road, which continues to be overseen by their older brother 44-year-old John Dodd.
1876
Beechworth Brewers 59-year-old George Billson and his 18-year-old son Alfred Arthur ‘Bosher’ Billson sail to Philadelphia in America to exhibit a range of their beverages at the Centennial International Exhibition, the first official “World’s Fair” (May 10 – November 10, 1876) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Billson’s win first prize for their Soda Water, made from the same pure alpine spring water – drawn from the same red brick well – that Billson’s continue to use in their drinks today.
| The 1876 World’s Fair in Philadelphia includes over 14,000 businesses from 37 countries and attracts almost 10 million visitors. Inventions seen for the very first time include Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone & Thomas Edison’s automatic telegraph system. Some of the new food products being exhibited include popcorn, ketchup & root beer. |
1877
A large coach is built at the Crawford and Connolly factory in Beechworth, for the Wodonga-Albury run. Painted in bright colours, it is built to accommodate 15 passengers and weighs 15.75cwt. This is soon followed by another omnibus, the ‘Ballarat’. Designed to carry 18 passengers inside and 18 outside, it too is built expressly for the run between Wodonga and Albury at a cost of 150 guineas. The coaches run every half hour from 2.30 am as well as at times to suit the arrivals and departures of the trains.
1877 – Mar
A ‘Fire Brigade Competition’ is held in Beechworth during Easter with one of the most popular events being the ‘Double-Hose Competition’ It carries a prize of £10, with an entry fee of ten shillings. Eight firemen must run 200 yards with a reel, fix it to a hydrant, run out not less than 100 feet of hose, fix branch, and then throw water over rope 10 feet high. Once this is done, they must complete the same process again. Competing against teams from Wangaratta and Chiltern, the Beechworth Volunteer Fire Brigade wins the event with a time of just 70 seconds, while Wangaratta is disqualified on a technicality.
1877
After beginning construction in 1858, work is finally completed on ‘Baird’s Cottage’ – a logging company house – at 26 Mellish Street. The Tudor-style cottage is built for David and Catherine Baird by David’s father George Baird. Standing on a granite foundation, it features 60cm thick granite walls, a river redgum frame, filled in with brick rubble rendered with ‘wattle & daub’ (made with lime, manure and straw) and has a shingle roof and door locks imported from London in 1850. Weatherboards are added in 1880 and a corrugated iron roof later replaces the wooden shingles. It still stands today (on the corner of Mellish and Crawford Streets).
1877
Business is booming at the Black Springs Bakery so William Price contracts Messrs. Rose and Sherry to create a larger granite building over the top, and around, his original wooden bakery, then remove the wooden frame. (This accounts for the very high ceiling in the present bakery and the fact it is not completely square.) The large granite blocks used in construction are hewn from a quarry about 100 yards away, with some of the blocks measuring 8 feet long, 1 and a half feet thick, and a foot in width. Stables and a barn (for storing grain), along with a men’s hut (built on the western end) and a flour room (on the eastern end) – all constructed from granite – are added in 1890. The stables are removed after a typhoid outbreak caused by drainage into the well sunk at the eastern end of the Bakery.
1877 – Sep
Works ramps up at The Rocky Mountain Extended Mining Company on their massive tunnel under Beechworth when new equipment finally arrives from New Zealand, including the first boring machines in Victoria. The tunnel – which sometimes drops to a depth of 150 feet below the earth’s surface – is now being built at a rate of 44 feet a month. It will eventually measure half a mile (2,6400 feet or almost 800 metres) long! This is an engineering marvel for the time and is notable as one of the first applications of rock boring machines in Victoria. The massive tunnel – and an associated surface channel at the top end – allows tail water from the deeper wash to be discharged into the Spring Creek Gorge at a point below the discharge of the original 1856 open tailrace.
1877 – Oct 19
After standing trial in Benalla, Ned Kelly’s younger brother Dan (aged 16) is sentenced to three months in Beechworth Gaol on a charge of damaging property at Winton. Soon after his release, a warrant for his arrest will be issued for horse stealing.
1877
A beautiful fountain is added to the Town Hall Gardens to compliment the 1876 cast iron Rotunda.
1877 – Dec 27
51-year-old Philip Le Couteur, and his second wife 28-year-old Ann Maria Kelly give birth to their first child, Frederick Le Couteur.
| Frederick Le Couteur becomes a Beechworth Councillor in 1935 and is elected Beechworth Shire President in 1940. He will donate (for a ‘nominal sum’) part of his substantial Le Couteur land holdings along Sydney Road for the building of the new Ovens District Hospital at 52 Sydney Road in 1939. Frederick will die at the age of 71 in Beechworth on 18 November 1949 and be buried in the Beechworth Cemetery. |
1878 – Feb
Annie Goodman establishes the Rocklyn House private school and boarding school at 23 William Street “for the children of gentlemen”. Mrs Goodman also teaches separate French, German and Art classes after normal school hours to serve as a supplement for students at Beechworth State School. She will run her school for the next 5 years. Rocklyn House (below) had been built of honey coloured granite in the mid-1860s by Mr. W.U. Grigg.
| Over 100 years later, ‘Rocklyn House’ will be known as ‘Lilac Cottage’ and serve as popular bed and breakfast accommodation for a number of years.. |
1878
A delightful brick cottage is built at 53 Last Street, on a large block of land on the corner of Last and Frederick Streets.
1878 – May 20
In the nearby town of Stanley, 23-year-old Beechworth blacksmith Charles Frederick Phillips marries 21-year-old Fanny Florence Hollister. They will begin their married life by moving into a small cottage at 31 Camp Street which had been built in 1861. It will be their home for many years and become known as Fanny Phillips Cottage as Fanny’s fame grows as one of Beechworth’s leading suffragettes – women who fight for the rights of women to vote.
| Charles Phillips is a heavy-set young man and will gain much weight during his life – peaking at 30 stone (approx. 191 kg). His work as a Beechworth blacksmith has to stop once his ever-increasing weight interferes with his movements. Newspapers pose the question “Australia’s Heaviest Man?” when he dies from a heart attack at the age of 57 in 1909. |
1878
Charles Morrison is now running his Fish & Oyster Bar on Camp Street (where The Beechworth Bakery now stands). Born in London in 1830, Morrison arrives in Victoria in 1854 as a 24-year-old and soon becomes a familiar figure in Beechworth as a vendor of ‘tripe and trotters’. In 1866 he will become the licensee of The Butchers’ Arms Hotel (later renamed the Town View Hotel) before running a hotel at Three Mile, and then his Fish & Oyster Bar in the centre of Beechworth. In the 1890s Morrison moves to Melbourne but, having unfortunately lost his eyesight, he returns to Beechworth and is admitted to the Ovens Benevolent Asylum, where he remains for 12 years until his death at the asylum in November 1907 at the age of 77.
1878
The granite and weatherboard ‘Gannell’s Cottage’ is completed on the Buckland Gap Road (now 12a Kerferd Road) in Beechworth. It will go on to be enlarged and improved over the years. London-born Edwin Gannell arrives in Beechworth in the 1850s as a 25-year-old and, after trying his luck digging for gold, goes on to spend many years as a butcher and storekeeper at Reid’s Creek and also runs the Reid’s Creek Post Office. Gannell acts as Beechworth’s Electoral Registrar for almost 50 years. He and his wife Charlotte will have four sons and two daughters in Beechworth. Edwin Gannell will pass away, aged 82, in 1913.
1878 – Sep 18
After briefly being disbanded due to lack of funds in 1877, the Beechworth Volunteer Fire Brigade is reformed. Led by Beechworth school teacher Edward S. Harris as Captain and William Duncan as Secretary, the volunteer brigade will have 30 members with the men issued with uniforms that include red shirts and brass helmets.
| By 1885, as fires continue in the Beechworth district, insurance companies approach the council and offer to contribute to the cost of new equipment and the running of a full-time brigade, not just volunteers. It is reformed and named the ‘Beechworth Fire Brigade Board’. |
1878 – Oct 12
Ned Kelly’s mother Ellen, her neighbour William Williamson and her son-in-law William Skillion, are found guilty at the Beechworth Courthouse and sentenced for aiding and abetting in the ‘attempted murder’ of Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick (a trooper of dubious character, based in Greta) who visited the Kelly house in April 1878, ostensibly to arrest Dan Kelly. Ellen Kelly is sentenced to three years and the men to six years each, with 46-year-old Ellen entering Beechworth Gaol with her four-day-old daughter, Alice. Subsequently, rewards are posted for the arrest of Dan and Ned, causing them to go into hiding in the Wombat Ranges where they are joined by Byrne and Hart, thus precipitating the formation of the ‘Kelly Gang’ which will lead to the shooting murders of three policemen two weeks later at Stringbark Creek (see entry below).
| Redmond Barry, the presiding judge in Ellen Kelly’s trial, allegedly remarks that if Ned Kelly were present, he would have “received 15 years for his part in the Fitzpatrick affair”. |
1878 – Oct 28
After Ned Kelly and his gang ambush a party of police and murder Sergeant Michael Kennedy and constables Michael Scanlan and Thomas Lonigan at Stringybark Creek on October 25th, news of the murders leads to widespread fear of the “rampage of the bushrangers”. So, on this date, the Victorian Government announce a reward of £800 (£200 per head) for the arrest of Ned Kelly, his brother Dan, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart. This is soon increased to £2,500 (see above). On 31 October 1878, the Victorian Parliament passes the Felons Apprehension Act, which comes into effect on 1 November. Three days later, notices are published throughout the colony giving the bushrangers until 12 November to surrender themselves. By 15 November the four members of the ‘Kelly Gang’ – having not surrendered themselves – are declared “Outlaws”. As a result, members of the gang could be killed without challenge by anyone finding them armed, or who had a reasonable suspicion that they are armed. The act also penalises anyone who gives “any aid, shelter or sustenance” to the outlaws or withholds information, or gives false information, to the authorities. Punishment is “imprisonment with or without hard labour for such period not exceeding fifteen years”.
1878 – Nov 6
“The Sebastopol Charge”. The outlawed Kelly Gang are being hunted in North-East Victoria and, after meeting two parties of police at Taylor’s Gap who inform them of a sighting of the Kelly Gang at Sheep Station Creek at nearby Sebastopol, Superintendent John Sadleir and Senior Constable Frank James arrive in Beechworth at 10.30pm to find a search party being organised by Constables Keating and Keen and the town “overrun with armed men” – citizens armed with guns and weapons of various sorts ready to take on Ned Kelly and his gang. Sadleir sends an urgent despatch about the situation to Captain Frederick Charles Standish and Assistant Commissioner Charles Hope Nicolson in nearby Benalla. Standish immediately orders a special train, and proceeds to Beechworth with Nicolson, nine mounted constables, one black tracker, and two or three gentlemen of the Melbourne press, arriving in Beechworth just after 3 am. Before sunrise, they are joined by Sergeant Arthur Steele leading another 13 police officers and the “Charge of Sebastopol” begins!
1878 – Nov 7
Having selected a large number of men, 45-year-old Superintendent John Sadleir departs Beechworth, leading up to 30 mounted police and other armed civilians, before being joined by Captain Standish and Assistant Commissioner Nicolson and their men at a spot about 3 miles out of town at “The Springs’. Then the noisy “Sebastopol Charge” heads off along the track to the Sebastopol area to hunt for the ‘Kelly Gang’. They visit Aaron Sherritt at his house and then Joe Byrne’s mother at the Byrne family home but have no luck in finding the ‘Kelly Gang’. The police later drop into the popular Reidford Hotel at Sebastopol for refreshments, at which point Aaron Sherritt does “a bargain deal” with Captain Standish – in return for information about the ‘Kelly Gang’, Standish agrees to save Joe Byrne and guarantee his life. This “bargain deal” – and others that Sherritt negotiates – will lead to 25-year-old Sherritt being murdered by Joe Byrne on June 26th 1880.
| “Utter Fiasco!” A Royal Commission will later find that “One of the earliest combined movements of the police in pursuit of the outlaws was not calculated to favourably impress the mind of the public as regards the capacity of the officers. The “Sebastopol Charge” as it has been designated, proved an utter fiasco, calculated simply to excite ridicule, and for this, Superintendent Sadleir must be held directly responsible”, with an observer adding that “the rumbling noise that the cavalcade of men and horses made was just like thunder, and any people being searched for could hear the cavalcade a mile off!”. |
1879 – Feb 19
In Melbourne, the foundation stone for the city’s new ‘Exhibition Building’ is laid (above) as work begins on redeveloping the 26 hectare (64 acre) somewhat unkempt and rambling ‘Carlton Gardens’ in Melbourne as an ornamental ‘Pleasure Garden’ with grand avenues, decorative fountains and ‘Parterre Garden Beds’ where the building, designed by Joseph Reed, will be built (below) by David Mitchell, ready for the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition.
1879 – Mar 1
Another fire in Camp Street! A fire breaks out at Mr Bain’s mattress-making shop in Camp Street and spreads to Hille’s Butcher Shop next door (both built of wood) and then the flames leap to the two-storey brick-built Empire Hotel on the corner of Camp and High Streets before being extinguished by the local fire brigade. The hotel’s lodgers lose all of their possessions, and the hotel is badly damaged, but the licensee Robert Bolam is able to save some furniture, stock and accounting books. The owner of the hotel – originally opened as the Metropolitan Hotel in August 1864 – is Alexander Robinson, who will sell what is left of the building to Robert Bolam for £260. Bolam will promptly appoint Alexander Greig and his Beechworth construction firm ‘Greig & Wilson’ to build a new hotel on the site, and by July 1879 a new Empire Hotel has literally ‘risen from the ashes’.
| This fire occurs 12 years after the previous ‘Empire Hotel’ at 24 Camp Street had been destroyed in the ‘Great Beechworth Fire’ of March 23rd 1867. Newspapers reports a local wag as saying that “Beechworth has seen the downfall of two Empires!”. |
1879
At the Black Springs Bakery, William Price marries Elizabeth Stollard from Beechworth and together Mr and Mrs Price build a four-roomed cottage next door to the popular bakery. Elizabeth christens their new home “Buffalo View”. The Price’s will have 11 children (two of their sons will go on become bakers) but tragically lose their youngest son Albert ‘Bertie’ Edward Price on March 16th 1894 when he is just 16 months old. Elizabeth plants a vine which gradually spreads over the granite bakery building, covering it with a glorious mantle of green. Even in the depths of winter, “sprays are coaxed into exuberance by the warmth exuding from the bakery’s oven”.
| In 1894 the original deep well (built on the land in 1871 by William’s father James Price) is covered by stonemason Thomas Fluke by a slab of granite, which has the initials “WP”, “TF” and the year “1894” carved into it. It can still be seen today. |
1879 – Jun 5
A meeting is held in Beechworth of the lapsed Beechworth Philharmonic Orchestra and the orchestra is reformed. The chief originator and conductor is James Cunningham Snr and the society will soon comprise forty-five ladies and gentlemen – thirty-two of whom are singing members. They will begin giving concerts in Beechworth quarterly and occasionally entertain patients at the Ovens Benevolent Asylum. The self-dependant Beechworth Philharmonic Society is now under the experienced management of Richard Finch, the honorary secretary. Organist, James Cunningham Jnr, plays the harmonium with the orchestra, but is keen to upgrade to a proper organ. (see entry in Dec 20, 1886)
1879 – Jun 9
At 9.00am at the Beechworth Gaol, 34-year-old Irish-born Thomas Hogan is hanged for the murder of his brother the previous year. On his final morning, Hogan is attended by Catholic priest Father Michael O’Connor. After being walked to the gallows Hogan is asked if he has anything to say. His reply is a simple “No”. The execution is carried out by Michael Gately – Victoria’s ‘official hangman’ from 1875 to 1879 – who has been brought by train from Melbourne for the execution. A small crowd gathers at Beechworth Railway Station to catch a glimpse of the notorious hangman when he arrives.
| On February 15th 1878, after Thomas and his brother James had argued after overseeing a raffle the previous evening, they meet in Bundalong (at the junction of the Ovens and Murray Rivers) where Thomas, still seething from the night before, shoots and kills his brother. Thomas is said have been standing so close to James that the fatal shot causes his clothes to catch alight and James’s body is badly charred. |
1879
Beechworth’s water supply is further augmented when the Beechworth United Shire council purchases Trahair’s Race from 55-year-old John Trahair, one of Beechworth’s earliest miners. Trahair initially began mining for gold at Long Gully at the Nine Mile, before taking a claim on the Lower Nine Mile and then forming a syndicate to mine at the Three Mile. Cutting and building a number of important water races throughout the district, he is fairly successful in most of his investments, eventually selling his mining claims to John Pund then selling his valuable water rights – and ‘Tahair’s Race’ – to the council. John Trahair retires and spends the next 29 years happily living and comfortably in Beechworth, passing away in 1908 at the age of 84.
| In 1900, Tahair’s open water race into Beechworth is replaced with iron pipes at a cost of £3,500. This is followed by the construction of the ‘Europa Gully Tunnel’ in 1908, at a cost of £1,030. Following a drought in 1917, Council will purchase ‘Lorimer’s Race’ at a cost of £1,030. |
1879
Renowned clairvoyant, mesmerist and phrenologist Madame Marie Sibley performs in Beechworth, causing both offence and consternation, and excitement and sensation! Memorably, she has publicity portraits taken at James Edward Bray’s photographic studio on Camp Street.
| Purportedly French-born, Silbey arrives in Sydney around 1867 and works as a clairvoyant, making her first stage appearances in 1868. By 1871 she is in Melbourne ‘manipulating heads’ for packed houses at Weston’s Opera House on Bourke Street. She tours throughout Australia where her shows incorporate séances, phrenological readings, hypnotism. Later she adds ‘baby exhibitions’ to her repertoire, in which prizes are awarded to the specimens with the best mental and physical capacity. By the mid-1880s she is performing with her daughter, ‘Zel the Magnetic Lady’, and advertising her range of remedies for conditions such as gout, rheumatism, and neuralgia. Having ‘retired from the platform’ she runs a store at Drake, near Tenterfield, where she dies in April 1894. |
1879
After Ellen Kelly’s three-year sentence of imprisonment with hard labour – for the attempted murder of Police Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick – her friends and supporters gather outside the gates of Beechworth Gaol and, in violent protest, set fire to the gaol’s large timber front gates (above). They will be replaced with iron gates that are still in use today. Upon her eventual release from Beechworth Gaol, 49-year-old Ellen returns to her home in Greta, celebrated with the (colourised) photograph below, taken at ‘The Kelly homestead’ in 1881.
35-year-old George Henry Billson leaves the brewery partnership with his 62-year-old father, George Billson Snr in Beechworth and moves to Albury, where he has purchased the former Colonial Porter Brewery near the Union Bridge from Richard O’Keeffe & Co. George Billson Jnr immediately spends more than £3,000 on improvements.
| The ‘G.H. Billson Albury Brewery’ will merge with the ‘Hume Brewery’ in 1888 to become the ‘Albury Brewing and Malting Company’ with George Billson Jnr chairman of directors. It will close in 1920. |
1879
The Beechworth Gas Works are established on the corner of Albert Road and (what is now) Harper Avenue. It will provide citizens of the town with lighting, heating, cooking and other purposes for the next 70 years.
| 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. |
1879
In an attempt to limit the support for Ned Kelly and his gang, twenty-three suspected ‘Kelly sympathisers’ are rounded up and held in the Beechworth Gaol – without trial or evidence – for over three months. This tactic by the Victorian Government and their authorities will alienate many law-abiding citizens of North-Eastern Victoria. Three of the men held in Beechworth Gaol are John Quinn, John Stewart, and Joseph Ryan (above).
1879 – Dec 26
A Fire Brigade ‘Hose and Reel’ competition between Beechworth and Chiltern is held on Ford Street in Beechworth with a large crowd lining the street to watch the two teams battle it out. The winner is (sadly) unknown.
1879 – Dec
The half-mile long (800-metre) tunnel under Beechworth – which is big enough for a man to stand up in – finally breaks through the last of the solid granite. Workers now begin to fit the length of the tunnel with sluice boxes and construct an 1,000-foot open cut race to the mine. The final cost of the years long project will be just over £13,500. The official opening the the tunnel will take place six months later on June 3rd 1880.
THE STORY CONTINUES IN THE 1880-1899 TIMELINE