Tuesday 23 September 2014

Berwick Grammar School 1882-1928 and the Vieusseux family

Berwick Grammar School began in 1882 as a private school owned by the Head Master, Edward Vieusseux (1854-1917). Edward was the third son of Louis and Julie Vieusseux who had arrived in Melbourne in 1852. Louis was a Civil Engineer, but in 1857 opened a private school for girls, Valetta House Ladies College, in Clarendon Street, East Melbourne, where the Freemasons Hospital now stands. Edward had two older brothers, Stephen who died at 15 months and Lewis, the eldest boy, who disappeared on a family picnic in January 1858. Lewis, aged seven. was riding behind the family buggy on a stock horse, went off the track to look at something and his riderless pony returned but Lewis did not.  His body was found two years later, by a wood cutter, about ten miles from where he had disappeared.

Edward had worked at Jacob Hessel's boarding school in Harkaway, at the property Ratharnay, from 1880 and previous to this he had taught at Geelong Grammar. His father, who as we know had operated  his own school for many years, financed the purchase of a house in Berwick for his son to operate a school  and so Berwick Grammar school began.

The property they purchased was on the corner of Brisbane Street and Church Street and had been used by Miss Adelaide Robinson as a girls school from when it was built in 1877. It was on 1.5 acres of land.


The Berwick Grammar School, now  a private house.

It is  not known how many boys were enrolled in the early years of Berwick Grammar, there are apparently no school rolls in existence and it is thought that around 400 students were educated there over the life of the school. The South Bourke and Mornington Journal has a report of the first prize night and Mr Vieusseux is reported to have said that attendance has  not been as numerous as it might have been, still there has been an increase during each succeeding quarter; and the many inquiries and promises of pupils for the coming year, lead me to anticipate and excellent commencement for 1884.


South Bourke and Mornington Journal December 26, 1883

The same article also has  a list of  the honour recipients, which gives us some idea of the subjects on offer and also some of the pupils names.

South Bourke and Mornington Journal December 26, 1883

The subjects included English, Geography, French, Writing, Latin, Conduct, Mathematics. Gymnastics and  Music. Students in the first year inlcluded F. A'Beckett, R. A'Beckett, F. Britten, A. Brunet, G. Brunet, D. Clark, G. Clark, F. Coppin, G. Coppin,  T. Dwyer, F. Elmes, J. Hennings, A. Kent,  D. MacKinnon and G. Warry, 

Edward Vieusseux unexpectedly died on November 6, 1917, aged 63. the School then became affiliated with the Church of England, who acquired the buildings. The School then went through a succession of Head Masters, eight in eleven years until it closed in 1928 - The Reverend P.P McLaren became Head Master at the start of 1918, he was replaced by the Reverend Charles Zercho in 1920; in 1922 Mr Hancock took over, then the Reverend Douglas Howard, Mr Charles Kenrick, Mr Paul Polan, Mr J. H Morgan and lastly the  Reverend Hubert Brooksbank. The building became the short lived Winchester House Grammar school, then a guest house. From 1949 until 1972 it was used by the Anglican Church  to train teachers and for a holiday camp for 'Christian Holidays' for children. The Building was then called Mary Blackwood house, after a staff member at the Diocesan Office in St Pauls Cathedral. It then became a Community school, until 1977 when it was used as a place of instruction into the Jewish faith. The Church of England (or Anglican church) finally sold the building in  1990.

There is an Avenue of Honour in Church Street and a memorial plaque to the nine past students of Berwick Grammar School who were killed in World War One. You can read more about this here.

Here's some family information about Edward Vieusseux.  He was married in 1877 to Emily Ross. They had four children -  Lewis John (1879-1890) Edward Telford (1881-1887) Dorothy Jean (1888-1921) and Nellie Phyllis (1889-1914). It was a sad situation that three of the children pre deceased their father and the four of them pre deceased their mother, Emily, who died in 1940, aged 83. All the family are buried in the Berwick cemetery.


John Bellair has written an interesting history of the Berwick Grammar School, which is where I obtained some of the information for this post.  John was sent to board at the School in 1918 when he was eight years old. We have a Reference copy of the book at Narre Warren and you can purchase a copy at the Berwick Mechanics' Institute 15 High Street Berwick www.berwickmilibrary.org.au

I have created a  list of newspaper articles about the Berwick Grammar School and the Vieusseux family on Trove, click here to access the list. 

Monday 15 September 2014

Guest Houses : Rose Series post cards

Staying at a Guest House in the hills was once a popular holiday activity. The Rose Stereograph Co. produced many post cards of Guest Houses, here are some from our region, taken from the 1920s to around 1954. These post cards are part of  the State Library of Victoria collection and are available on their website www.slv.vic.gov.au.


Beaconsfield Upper - Salisbury House  Guest House
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2099



Beaconsfield Upper - Runnymede Guest House
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/6081


Cockatoo - Eastgate Guest House
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/422

  Emerald - Avonsleigh House
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/4108


Emerald - Emerald House
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/4612


Emerald - Fernlee Guest House
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/1403


Emerald - La Belle Guest House
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2547

Emerald - Silver Springs Lodge
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/3775


This advertisement for Silver Springs Lodge comes from The Advocate of May 4, 1950.

Monday 8 September 2014

Views from the hills: Rose Series post cards.

The Rose Stereograph Co. produced a series of post cards of views of Victoria - they are a great source of historical images  for the local historian and many are available on the State Library of Victoria website www.slv.vic.gov.au In this post we will look at some of these post cards that show views from the hills. They were taken between circa 1920 and 1954.


Beaconsfield Upper - The outlook from Kyogle (a guest house) 
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2098

Beaconsfield Upper - The magnificent view
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2091

Beaconsfield Upper - Outlook over Western Port
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2113

Cockatoo - View from Lovely Valley
State Library of Image H32492/2328

Cockatoo - From Pheasant Hill:  a birdseye view of of Cockatoo
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2166

Emerald - A magnificent panorama of hill and dale.
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2122

Emerald - A glorious panorama
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2130
 
Emerald - View from the new road
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2320

Emerald  - West Gembrook Road
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2119

Gembrook - Panorama of Gembrook
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/6117

Gembrook - View showing Beenak Ranges
State Library of Victoria Image H32492/4108

Monday 1 September 2014

North of the Line: a pictorial record and a short history of Officer and Garfield

The Berwick Pakenham Historical Society published North of the Line:  a pictorial record in 1996 and it still provides us today with a great source of photographs of the area in Cardinia which is 'north of the line' i.e the Gippsland Railway line. The photographs cover Beaconsfield and Beaconsfield Upper, Guys Hill, Officer, Pakenham and Pakenham Upper, Cockatoo, Gembrook, Nar Nar Goon North, Tynong and North Tynong, Garfield and Bunyip.


The Gippsland Railway line was the seminal event in establishment of  many of these towns - Beaconsfield, Officer, Pakenham, Nar Nar Goon, Tynong, Garfield and Bunyip. The line had opened in stages -  Sale to Morwell June 1877, Oakleigh to Bunyip October 1877, Moe to Morwell December 1877, Moe to Bunyip March 1878 and the last stretch from South Yarra to Oakleigh in 1879. As well, the Puffing Billy Railway line contributed to the development of Cockatoo and Gembrook. We will now look at Officer and  Garfield as they both developed in similar ways around a timber sliding and then both towns became a centre for the brick making trade.


Marriage of Robert Officer and Jamina Patterson
Hobart Town Gazette October 25, 1823  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article1089987


Officer began as Officer's Wood Siding, as a siding was constructed to take timber from land owned by the Officer family to Melbourne. The Officer family had a fairly illustrious background - Sir Robert Officer (1800-1879) a medical doctor, had arrived in Tasmania in 1822. He married Jamima Patterson  in 1823 and she bore him a large number of children. In spite of this Jamima lived to be 77 years old and died in 1881. Here are the children (there may be more that I have missed) - Robert (1825), Eliza Hunter (1826), Charles Myles (1827), Catherine (1828), Seutonius Henry (1830), Frederick (1831), Isabella (1832), William (1835), Margaret (1837), Jane Wood (1838), Mary Reid (1844).  Sir Robert was at one time the Health Officer for Hobart and a member of the Legislative Council. He was Knighted in 1869.  In the early 1840s he moved some of his interests to the Port Phillip District (Victoria), with the Mount Talbot, Lingmer and Yat Nat Runs in  the Western District, with  his sons Charles Myles and Seutonious Henry. Another son, William, had acquired the Zara Station, near Deniliquin in New South Wales in 1860. The Zara Run was 68, 000 acres and was a sheep stud and remained with the Officer family until it was sold for 250,000 pounds in 1927,  fourteen years after the death of William Officer in 1913. You can read about Sir Robert Officer in The Australian Dictionary of Biography here.


Pakenham Parish Plan, dated 1926 - showing location of land owned by the Officer family at Officer.
Click on the map to enlarge it.

 In the Wake of the Pack Tracks  implies that is was William Officer who acquired the Mount Misery run, near Beaconsfield, and after the railway line was opened he used to rail his sheep from Deniliquin to Officer in times of drought. However, the  Pakenham Parish Plan  (see above) which covers Officer, lists an M. Officer as owning 314 acres and 313 acres, north of Browns Road and in between Starling Road and Whiteside Roads ( if we imagine they extended northwards over Browns Road) and south of Payne Road, thus covering where the G.W.S. Anderson Scout Camp is today. Another edition of the Parish Plan has both an M. Officer and an R. Officer as owning the land.
Looking at the Rate Books - M. Officer is actually Miss Margaret Officer and R. Officer would be  Robert Officer - not sure if it is Robert Senior or Junior.

 Entry from the 1876/77 Shire of Berwick Rate Books - showing land owned by Robert Officer and Miss Margaret Officer. 


Regardless of which member of the Officer family owned the land,  it would be interesting to know whether they actually lived in Officer, but I don't believe they did. For instance, when William died he was was living at Zara, and his son Ernest, who managed Zara after his father's death, was living at Toorak when he died. In the Wake of the Pack Tracks says that there was a wattle and daub house on the property, to accomodate the men in charge of the sheep and this stood for some seventy to eighty years at Officer. 


Tivendale's Store at Officer
Source: North of the Line: a  pictorial record


Notification about the removal of 'the man in charge' at Officer from June 1, 1882.

The Railway also opened up another business in Officer - brick works. At one time there were five brick yards in Officer.  In the Wake of the Pack Tracks lists them as Fry's in Starling Road; Holt's near the Railway Station; Reece's on Whiteside Road; Tivendale's near Hick's pipes work (I presume this is north side of Highway)  and Morey's where the Tile Works are (I presume this is on the south side of the Highway).  Both the timber and brick industry were no doubt boosted by the 1880s boom period in Melbourne and the growth of new suburbs. Garfield had  a similar history to Officer as the Railway lead to the establishment of two early industries, Jefferson’s Saw Mill and brick works and the Cannibal Creek Saw Mill Company.

Joseph Jefferson established a saw mill in 1877 on the site of what was to become his clay pit, off Railway Avenue. He sent this timber out via Bunyip Station until a local siding, the Cannibal Creek Siding, was built in 1885 to accommodate the timber tramline which was constructed by William Brisbane, a contractor on behalf of Francis Stewart.  This tramline run for about 8 kilometres, to the Two Mile Creek,  the Garfield North road basically follows this tramway.  In the same year, Cannibal Creek Saw Mill Company Limited was registered in October by the Stewart family, with William Brisbane being a minority shareholder. Stewart had already obtained the saw milling rights to 2,000 acres of forest in 1883. Both Stewart and Brisbane had been involved separately and jointly in other mills and tramlines at Berwick, Beaconsfield and Nar Nar Goon.  The Cannibal Creek Saw Mill Company sounds like a very grand enterprise but apparently the Company was in trouble by December 1885, the tramline was disbanded in 1887 and the Company was placed in liquidation in 1888, however it deserves it’s place in Garfield’s history as the Cannibal Creek Siding, became the Garfield Railway Station.


Garfield Railway Station, c.1910
Source: North of the line: a pictorial record

Getting back to Joseph Jefferson, his was a very successful business, as well as producing timber products such as fence posts and rails and firewood, he also mined the sand on his property to be used in the building industry in Melbourne and when he discovered clay on his property he began making clay bricks. Like the Officer brick works,  Jefferson benefited from the 1880s  boom time as he could produce over 50,000 bricks per week and fire 75,000 at a time in his kiln. The Depression of the 1890s saw a decline in the building industry which flowed onto his business and the brickworks eventually shut down in 1929.

This is a companion volume to Oak Trees and Hedges: a pictorial history of Narre Warren, Narre Warren North and Harkaway and Berwick Nostalgia:  a pictorial history of BerwickIt is published by the Berwick Pakenham Historical Society, https://bphs.com.au/