Chuck’s Mosaic and where some of the Pioneers Lie

A member of The Friends of the St. Kilda Cemetery, Elizabeth Hore, enjoys taking people on tours of the Cemetery which was set out by Robert Hoddle in 1851. The first interment was on 1 May 1855, with the burial of a young girl named Charlotte Green. Over time there have been approximately 53,000 burials with some 700 being of heritage interest. At present there are about twenty burials a year.

Elizabeth’s address concentrated on some of the people buried at the St. Kilda Cemetery who appear in Thomas Foster Chuck’s photo mosaic titled “The Explorers and Early Colonists of Victoria.” The 713 portraits were of men who arrived between 1835 and 1842. They had all responded to Lieutenant-Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe’s request for pioneers to write to him with their experiences.

Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Anderson (1790-1877) joined the army when he was 15. In 1826 he was appointed Major in the 50th Regiment and arrived in Sydney in 1834. He was sent to Norfolk Island as Commandant and following his investigation into a convict revolt, thirteen men were executed. Under his rule the lash was the most common means of punishment. He later took up land at Mangalore, in Victoria, then after a short stint with the army in India, he retired to Melbourne. In 1856 he was a nominated member of the 1st Victorian Legislative Council. He supported the Convicts Prevention Act and opposed the influx of Chinese gold miners. He died in South Yarra.

Many of the early settlers were sheep graziers; Simon Staughton for example, who arrived with 40,000 gold sovereigns in his possession. He acquired the ‘Brisbane Ranges’ and ‘Exford’ runs and only stocked high quality animals. In the 1850s he was said to have shorn 60,000 sheep on his properties.

John Forlong sent his wife, Eliza and his sons to study sheep husbandry in Leipzig, Germany. Eliza selected 98 Saxon Merino sheep which were transported to Australia, under her son William’s care in 1829. The same year William’s widowed aunt, Janet Templeton decided to emigrate. She purchased some more Merino sheep, chartered the “Czar” and accompanied by her nine children, and the remainder of the Forlong family, migrated to Australia. They were enormously successful as graziers. Janet Templeton died in Melbourne in 1857 and was buried in St. Kilda Cemetery. William Forlong, whose portrait is in Chuck’s mosaic became a member of the Victorian Parliament and supported the squatters. He later represented Orange in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and died in Dubbo, N.S.W.

John Lang Curry was regarded as the father of the merino wool industry. His ‘Lara Lustre’ wool was long, fine and glossy and made him very wealthy. He farmed near Camperdown bt in retirement, lived at ‘Eildon’ in Grey Street, St. Kilda.

Thomas Manifold was buried at St. Kilda Cemetery. He and his two brothers arrived in Tasmania in 1831 but later moved to Port Phillip and were the first to land sheep at Port Henry. They settled in Purrumbete where they were active in their local community. Although there were many conflicts with local aborigines, they employed black stockmen.

An historical collection of photographs of Aboriginal people of the Loddon and Murray tribes were taken by John Hunter Kerr who arrived in the Port Phillip District in 1839 on the “Midlothian.” He worked ‘Edgars Plains’ pastoral run, north-west of Bendigo, earning a gold medal for the best Colonial thoroughbred. Painting and photography were his passion however, and his wonderful photographs are held at the State Library of Victoria and the British Museum.

James Maxwell Clow, was the son of the Reverend James Clow, Presbyterian Minister, who for a time lived in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne and grazed cattle on Eastern Hill. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his son became a cattle drover and was in the land rush to the Mallee in 1847. His property ‘Balerook’ was to the west of Lake Hindmarsh and in his letter to Governor La Trobe he described both the heartbreaking conditions in the Wimmera District and the local aborigines. He became a magistrate and Assistant Commissioner of Crown Lands, a senior Gold Fields Commissioner on the Ovens field and was popular, just, and humane.

Thomas Monahan, was the purchaser of many hotels. He had arrived in Sydney on the “North Briton,” a ship which was quarantined on arrival as twenty passengers had died of typhus. He moved to Melbourne where his first purchase was the Flinders Street building where the Port Phillip Club met. He became one of Melbourne’s largest property owners and when he died at ‘Erindale’ in St. Kilda, his estate was worth £960,000.

Henry Field Gurner, born in Sydney in 1819, became a solicitor and was appointed Deputy-Registrar and Clerk of the Supreme Court of New South Wales for the Port Phillip District in February 1841. He was the first attorney admitted in Melbourne, the first Crown Solicitor of Victoria, and he acted as the first Town Clerk of Melbourne. Gurner died at the Melbourne Club in 1883.

Author of the “History of New Zealand” and the “History of Australia,” George William Rusden, born in England in 1819, arrived in N.S.W. in 1834 and initially managed a property near Gundagai. He then worked as a clerk for his brother-in-law in China and visited his brother, who was a tea-taster in Shanghai. In 1849 he was appointed agent for the National Schools, first at Port Phillip and later at Moreton Bay. In October 1851, La Trobe appointed him clerk in the Victorian Colonial Secretary’s office, and thereafter he held many responsible positions. His books received scathing reviews and he was actually sued for libel. He retired to England but returned to Melbourne and lived in South Yarra. Described as having a pleasant crab-apple face and long legs, his writings were a cultural achievement of the colonial period and he was an advocate for the Australian natives.

The St Kilda Cemetery is closed at present for renovations, but I am sure that a tour of it at a later stage would be very interesting.

The above is a report on Elizabeth Hore’s address at the General Meeting on 8 May 2021 

 Contributed by Jan Hanslow, PPPG member No 1057