Establishing New Roots
In 1854, the same year that Woodford was pronounced a township, Warrnambool was proclaimed a free port of entry and clearance. Prior to this Lady Bay had seen some larger Brigantines and Schooners drop anchor offshore from time to time, but it was not until later the same year when The Western Steam Navigation Company [1] proposed a weekly packet steamer service from Melbourne Port Phillip (Hobson Bay) to the western district ports including Warrnambool, did the fledgling settlement begin to develop. At the township jetty - erected adjacent to the mouth of the Merri River - goods sheds and mercantile stores began to appear, the most significant being owned by Thomas Manifold and George Bostock. These gentlemen were responsible for the settlement's first trading company [2] and general store. George managed the mercantile side of the partnership, whilst grazier and pastoralist Thomas spent much of his time [3] as the district’s magistrate.
Now known as Timor Street, the then potholed bullock track that constituted the main thoroughfare, was landmarked by three substantial buildings; a general store / drapery run by John Briggs and Robert Napthine (Briggs & Napthine Co.), The Warrnambool Hotel and an inn managed by George Chisholm. In his Reminiscences of the Early Days, James Chard remembers [4] Warrnambool when; ‘‘there were only three or four buildings in the place, and the only means of conveyance to be seen were bullock teams’’. As a carter, James, with his own team, would have done a lot of business with these merchants and traders. From its infancy the fledgling settlement being established on two miles of sandy beach between the mouths of the Merri and Hopkins Rivers was supported by the patronage of the earliest landowners George Sommerville, James Jellie, Gilbert Nichol and the Bostock Brothers whilst being intrinsically linked to the personnel working the runs at Henry Foster's St. Marys, Thomas Manifold's Grassmere, William and John Allan's Allandale, and Mark Nicholson's Talangatta. In the same way that the gold rush of 1851 caused havoc for Rutledge at Farnham, Manifold and Foster, with their labour pools devastated [5], had little choice but to relinquish their squatters claims on the Crown Land.
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| In this land sale most of the portions - of approximately 250 acres each - were purchased by Tasmanian grazier and land speculator William John Turner Clarke [6]. By 1854 he had resold all but one of these lots to Warrnambool land agents [7] John Alison and Andrew Halley Knight. The remaining lot in Purnim Spring Valley, managed by his eldest son William John, was kept in the family for the purpose of grazing sheep.
In 1856 Governor La Trobe commissioned the first official census of the Port Phillip Colony. The shire county of Villiers [8], which now included the township of Warrnambool and the surrounding agricultural district, registered 619 souls. A census is a misleading title, for it was in reality an Electoral Roll of landowners (freehold and leasehold). Women and children could not vote and were not counted. This head count was either not believed by the authorities or the district’s population was expanding at an incredible rate, for a second census was undertaken in June the following year and this time 1200 citizens were counted. |
| THE POPULATION EXPLOSION |
| Australia Felix In 1836, Major Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor General of the colony of New South Wales led a southern expedition into what is now known as western and central Victoria. Naming this new territory Australia Felix, Mitchell was clearly impressed with the opportunities this new land offered. The Unassisted By 1839, four years after John Batman had founded the settlement of Melbourne, there was a strong movement of land seekers with their sheep and cattle to the district. Sailing across the straits from Van Diemen’s Land, or tracking overland from Sydneyside through the riverine of the Murray and its tributaries came the hopeful intrepid pioneers, onto the richly grassed plains of Mitchell’s Australia Felix. It was these courageous few that first peopled the lands of the Portland Bay district in particular the rich volcanic plains watered by the Hopkins and Murai Rivers. Men like Edward Henty at Portland - the first permanent settler in the Port Phillip district; James Atkinson, founder of the Belfast Survey; William Rutledge, merchant / raconteur; and the large squatter / graziers Thomas Manifold (Grassmere), Foster and Strong (St Mary's), brothers William and John Allan (Allandale), Mark Nicholson (Talangatta, Blacks’ River / Hopkins Falls and Mount Garvock / Yallock), John Thomson (Keilambete and Lake Tarrang) and Neil Black (Glenormiston, The Sisters and Warreanga). These were men of unbridled ardour and significant resources but, upon arrival in the district, found the lack of labour, skilled or otherwise, a severe impediment to their endeavours. Those Assisted The labour pool in the Port Phillip district began to improve when the Colonial Government decided to promote the migration [9] of free settlers in the early 1840's. Called ‘‘Assisted Immigrants’’, their fare to Australia was paid by the Government and support was provided to set up farms and businesses alongside the so-called ‘‘wealthy’’ squatters – who of course were not very happy with such competition. In the beginning the immigrants from England chose passage that terminated in Sydney Cove or Hobart Town, preferring to settle in more civilized surroundings, whilst the Scottish and Irish were quite prepared for the hardships of the Port Phillip Colony. Whilst most of the ocean-going vessels bound for the southern outpost terminated in Melbourne port, some berthed at Indented Head (Geelong) or in the deep water harbour of Portland Bay. Disgorging up to 200 passengers at a time, Irish and Scottish families quickly discovered the bounty of Australia Felix. It was no coincidence that when Anderson named the port of ‘‘Fairy’’, Belfast - after his hometown birthplace, the surrounding farmland was largely taken up by his Irish countrymen. Predominantly potato croppers, the enclave became known as the ‘‘folk at Tower Hill’’ which today is the township of Koroit - the largest Irish community in Australia. The Scots, true to their upbringing, saw the land as pasture for their sheep and cattle herds. The English, fleeing extreme homeland poverty, also migrated in modest numbers bringing with them first hand knowledge of the most profound scientific, industrial and political changes sweeping the civilised world. ...and those with no other place to go When the Colonial Government decided to cease receiving transported convicts in 1852 some 160,000 souls from England, Scotland and Ireland had entered Australia. After serving their sentence each was pardoned - conditional upon their undertaking to never return to their homeland. Following the same pathways as the migrants, many of these constitutionally skilled labourers also carved out a future in the Australia Felix. |
| Sophia Callar (1856 – 1891) Sophia Callar was born at Wangoom sometime in March 1856. The baby’s birth registration [10] under the surname ‘‘Callar / Chard’’ shows the father to be 26 year old James Atkins Chard and the mother, 23 year old Maria Callar. The Callar family, hailing from Norfolk England, arrived in Portland in February 1855 [11] as part of the Government assisted migration plan. Whilst her parents paid for their own passage, Maria and her younger sisters Esther and Ellen, along with their oldest brother William, were contracted by short-term sponsorship. Accordingly, the family’s first obligation was to travel to Belfast / Port Fairy where Maria and Ellen had been guaranteed three months employment with the McWilliams family. As Ellen was younger it was agreed that she would take up housekeeping duties in the McWilliams Belfast lodge whilst Maria would travel on to Warrnambool where she would become a house servant at the family’s Wangoom farm on the Hopkins River. Travelling east from Belfast, the family's next stop was Mr Charles McCarthy's property at Yarpturk (near Tower Hill / Koroit) where daughter Esther and son William were to be employed. Finally, upon reaching the Hopkins River and the settlement of Warrnambool, the Callar elders spent £68 on two Warrnambool town allotments. Here, with wife Sarah and their two youngest children Thomas and Naomi, the Callars established a general store which the family ran for nearly twenty years.  Sophia's unexpected arrival certainly created a problem for her mother. At the time she and her sister Esther were in the employ of William and Thomas Stephens (aka Stevens), Cornish farming immigrants who had recently taken over the freehold of the McWilliams' Wangoom holding. William Stephens was a 30 year old bachelor whilst his older brother Thomas was husband to Jane and father to 7 year old daughter Catherine (Kitty). Thomas was burdened by the reality that his wife was suffering from severe mental stress; a situation that frequently required professional psychiatric attention in Melbourne. So while Esther tended the housekeeping duties, Maria was fully occupied ministering to the needs of Jane and Kitty - her own infant child left in the care of her Callar grandparents. In 1857 William Stephens married Esther Callar and in 1859, following the 1858 death of his wife Jane, Thomas married Maria. As time passed it was clear that Maria had distanced herself from her maternal obligation and Sophia's upbringing fell squarely upon the Callar elders - a situation forming such an emotional family division [12, 13] that it was never reconciled. Thomas and Maria Stevens remained farming in Wangoom for a further twelve years raising seven children - none of whom were recognised [13] by the Callar grandparents. When cheap Government land became available in the St Arnaud shire, Maria and her husband relocated their whole family to Mount Jeffcott, a farming reserve on the outskirts of a rapidly developing settlement at Richardson Bridge (aka Donald). Arriving in 1872, the Stevens family were one of the earliest land selectors [14] in the Donald district. Here the couple have two more children. Whilst she lacked her mother's loving care and attention from the beginning, Sophia (pictured above) never knew her father either. Certainly James Chard was named on the birth certificate but it is highly unlikely that the Callar grandparents would provide their ‘‘beloved’’ granddaughter with such information - even if they knew it to be correct. From a Chard ancestral viewpoint, no such child was mentioned through the subsequent generations. James Chard would have been suitably proud however when his first daughter married Wangoom farmer Archibald Duncan McDougall (1860 - 1897) in 1885 and even more joyful with the subsequently arrival of three grandchildren; Arthur (1887–1957). Beatrice (1889–1953) and Harold (1891–1978). |
References
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