Run of 3,200 acres (1300 hectares) taken up by James Bathe and T.J Perry in 1840
. The
property taken up in 1840 by the Ruffy Brothers - Thomas (1800 - 1882) William James (1802 - 1884) Frederick (1804 - 1872) Henry (1808 - 1847) and Arthur Wiggett (1817 - 1893)
Dr Niel Gunson explains the further development of these properties -
The realignments of Mayune and Garem Gam were also complicated. Dr Bathe's Garem Gam appears to have been subdivided in 1845 and the eastern station was known as Ravenhurst. In the same year, the lease for the reduced Mayune was transferred to Fred Ruffy. Ravenhurst was held by John Crewe until his death in 1850 shortly after acquiring the Ruffy station. From 1849, Crewe had also leased the original Garem Gam run, in conjunction with Sarah O'Shea and a non-resident partner named Brown. In October 1850, Ravenhurst was transferred to Benjamin Rossiter and Maurice Feehan who leased the whole of Garem Gam with Mrs O'Shea from 1851, thus restoring the original pattern. The lease for Mayune was transferred to Alexander Cameron in March 1851 by John Crewe's widow, Eliza (3). I have written about
Mayune,
here.
Benjamin Rossiter's death notice
Benjamin Rossiter (1786 - 1858) and his wife Zillah Baynton (1789 - 1871) had arrived in the Western Port area in 1842, having come out from Somersetshire in 1841. After Benjamin died in January 1858, his two sons took over the property. In the 1863 Cranbourne Shire Rate books (the first year we have available) the brothers are listed as owning the
Ravenhurst property, Lots 28 and 45 of 396 acres; and two other parcels of land of 232 acres and 323 acres. In 1873, Charles Rossiter and his wife Ellen (nee O'Shea) moved to Yallock to
Hawkesdale, and you can read about this
here. As a matter of interest, the aforementioned Eliza Crewe was the niece of Zillah Rossiter and I have also written about her, in the
Hawkesdale story,
here and about John Crewe in my
Mayune story,
here.
Thomas Rossiter sells Ravenshurst.
In December 1873, Thomas Rossiter put Ravenshurst up for auction. It was described as that beautiful property, near Berwick, containing 396 acres of rich black soil, permanently watered with springs (4). It may not have been sold straight away as the Rate Books have Thomas Rossiter owning Lots 28 and 45 until 1875, when the land was sold to William Palmer. In 1882, Palmer sold Lots 28 and 45 and they were purchased by Abraham Stratford Strettle, known as Stratford. (5). By 1885, Strettle also owned Lot 29, which adjoins Lot 28 to the south. It was Stratford Strettle who renamed the property Gladys Park. Strettle was an Auctioneer and it was his firm that handled the sale of Palmer's land in 1882, so it appears he purchased it for himself.
William Palmer sells Ravenhurst.
The Strettles were a social family and there is this report of a Christmas function at Gladys Park in 1883, where the invitations were on a most extensive scale. After the lunch a sports programme was held which included running races, pole vault, long jump and novelty races such as sack races.
Christmas at Gladys Park
A clearing sale was held at Gladys Park on December 2, 1886 (6) due to Stratford Strettle deciding to lease out the property. This may have been prompted by the death of Stratford’s brother, William, who accidentally shot himself dead at the house on July 15, 1885.William was described as a gentleman of independent means (7) , who had behaved normally at dinner that evening and whilst socialising with guests at the house. After they retired to bed, a single gun-shot was heard and -
when found Mr. Strettle was in a comatose state, and his case was manifestly hopeless. He, however, lingered on for 17 hours, and died at half-past 10 o'clock on Wednesday night. A report of the Inquest noted that the witnesses all concurred in the opinion that the act was not a suicidal one, and conjectured that he had staggered against the wall where the revolver was hung, and in trying to replace it on the nail accidentally discharged it. The jury found that the deceased died from a gunshot wound in the head, which was accidentally inflicted by the deceased himself with a revolver. (8).
After the 1886 clearing sale the Cranbourne Shire Rate Books list a number of short term
tenants or farm managers (I am unsure of their role) of the Gladys Park property. They are as follows: 1887-1891 - Edward Martin; 1892 - Wilson; 1893
- Stratford Strettle; 1894-1896 - George
Blythe; 1897 - Beevor Hall; 1898-1900 - Percy Carr; 1901-1903 - John Martin and then, as we will see below, the property was purchased by Mrs Gibb in 1904.
In January 1892
The Australasian published an article by their writer, who used the pen-name Bruni, about a visit to the Strettle properties –
Gladys Park and his orchard at
Sweet Hills, his Lysterfield property -
Leaving the Gippsland train at Berwick, one of the prettiest villages in all Australia, a drive of about three miles brought me to Gladys-park, the property of Mr. S. Strettle. The site of this house is a most delightful one, the aspect being towards the east. Close by are the gently-swelling hills around Berwick, dotted with numerous steadings, the monotony of the native forest being relieved with many plantations of foreign trees. Beyond these are the darkly wooded ranges, whose rugged outlines contrasted strongly with the park-like appearance of the fertile hills around Berwick. Gladys-park was very much out of order, so I merely took a run through the paddocks before starting for Mr. Strettle's newly planted and extensive orchard further in among the hills. Some years ago Mr. Strettle, finding from analysis of the soil of Gladys-park that there was a deficiency of lime, gave the whole property, consisting of about 1,200 acres, a good top-dressing with lime. The result was a considerable improvement in the pastures, which fatten both sheep and cattle well in summer. A marked peculiarity in this property is the large supply of water that is easily obtained at a short distance from the surface. Close to the house, which is situated on the top of a fair rise, a well has been sunk, from which an inexhaustible supply of water is obtained at about 18ft. from the surface. Water is raised from this well by a windmill pump, and distributed over the steading, the garden, and the adjoining paddocks. (9).In
February 1898, Gladys Park was impacted by the extensive fires in the Cranbourne area and The Argus reported
- both from the direction of Narre Warren and Berwick, Cranbourne is threatened
with fires, and Mr Beaver [sic] Hall, of Glady's-park, has already lost a
valuable extent of glass and fencing. (10). An interesting fact about Percy Carr, who was at Gladys Park after Beevor Hall, was that his father Charles Warburton Carr, was the source of the name of the town of Warburton. Mr Carr was a Police Magistrate and a Warden of the Gold Fields; gold had been found in the Upper Yarra area in February 1860 at Yankee Jim's Creek and in 1863, after a major lead had been discovered it was named Warburton. (11) Whilst living at Gladys Park, Percy's sister Cecil Garnett Carr was married on January 18, 1899 to John Mickle Lyall at St Paul's Church in Clyde. John Mickle (1869-1925) was the youngest child of William and Annabella Lyall, of Harewood at Tooradin. On a sadder note, Geraldine, Percy and Cecil's mother Geraldine, died at Gladys Park in June 1899. (12)
Death of Mrs Carr at Gladys Park
When Stratford Strettle died in December 1919, at the age of 74, The Herald described him as the oldest stock and station agent in the Commonwealth (13).
Obituary of Stratford Strettle
In 1904,as we mentioned before, Mrs James Gibb purchased Gladys Park from Stratford Strettle and at the time the property was reported to be of 860 acres. Mrs Gibb was born Mary Jane Paterson, who firstly married Thomas Esson in Scotland, and they had one son, the poet and playwright, Thomas Louis Buvelot Esson. When she was widowed she moved to Melbourne and married George Brown of Inveresk, Berwick. George Brown died in 1896 and Mary then married James Gibb in 1898. I have written about Mary and her family here.
Sale of Gladys Park to Mrs Gibb
By 1910 the Rate books list James Gibb as the owner. The Hon James Gibb (1843 - 1919) and his brother Robert were the sons of Alexander Gibb of Campbellfield. James was the M.L.A for Mornington from 1880 to 1886 and also owned Melville Park (now Edrington in Berwick, the former home of Lord and Lady Casey) Gibb was also a draught horse breeder and described as one of the most enterprising farmers in the State - a champion ploughman, gentleman and politician. He was a Shire of Berwick Councillor for 30 years and the Federal Member for Flinders from 1903 to 1906. His obituary in the South Bourke and Mornington Journal of March 6, 1919 said that he could claim the credit for tree planting which made Berwick one of the most charming townships in southern Victoria. Robert Gibb farmed for his brother, and was also involved with the Mornington Farmers Society and a local Magistrate. He and his wife, Dora, later moved to and he died in 1923. (14).
Sale of Gladys Park to the Halberts
In 1912, Mrs Gibb sold the property to Jessie Halbert. The newspaper report (above) noted that Mr Halbert was the new owner, however Jessie is the listed in the Cranbourne Shire Rate Books as the owner. Her husband, Joseph, also owned 416 acres, part of the St Germain's Estate at Clyde. I believe that Joseph and Jessie are the parents of Jessie Mary Vasey who was the founder of the War Widows Guild of Australia and was instrumental in obtaining an increase in the War Widows pension by linking it to the rate of the basic wage. It's an interesting connection, if this was the case, and you can read more about Jessie Vasey in the Australian Dictionary of Biography
here.
The Halberts held the property for only two years and in July 1914 (15) it was sold to Lieutenant George Anderson Mitchell and it was Mitchell who named the property Tulliallan. The Rate Books list George Mitchell owning the property from 1914 to 1919. George was the son of Captain James Mitchell and Elizabeth (nee Anderson) of Tulliallan, Williamstown and thus when he purchased his farm in 1914 he named it Tulliallan after his family home.
Captain James Mitchell was a Master Mariner, joined the Port Phillip Sea Pilots, was one of the founders of the Victorian Stevedoring Company and one obituary says that he was on the Committee which chose the design for the Commonwealth flag (16). Captain Mitchell died in 1927. As a matter of interest one of the pall bearers at his funeral was Rene Jules Commans who, from 1894 until the 1933 owned The Pines, 1330 acres on both the north and south side of Heatherton Road in what is now called Endeavour Hills and was then known as Dandenong. He was also involved with the Victorian Stevedoring Company (17). Tulliallan in Williamstown was put on the market after Captain Mitchell's death and was purchased by the Sisters of St Joseph Convent. The house is still standing.
The sale of Tulliallan, Williamstown, George Mitchell's family home.
Lieutenant Mitchell enlisted at the age of 24 on July 15, 1915. He was a 2nd Lieutenant and his next of kin was his wife, Mary Ione Mitchell. He was discharged in October 1916 as he had a ‘Commission in the Imperial Army’ and he later joined the Royal Air Force. He obviously sold the property on his return after the war, and is listed in the Electoral Roll as a broker and living in Melbourne. In the 1950s George and Mary were living at Ardleigh in Emerald. George Mitchell died in 1965, aged 75. (18).
Lieutenant Mitchell sold his most charming country home together with 743 acres of land to Frederick Charles Curtis in 1919. The house was described as a very nice homestead, in splendid order, of 12 rooms with large billiard room, large dining room, large reception room and four large bedrooms. Hot and cold water laid on with a splendid service and the homestead is sewered. The outbuildings consist of detached kitchen, 2 pantries, 2 maids rooms, servants quarters, mens rooms......there is a nice drive of English trees from the main road to the homestead and it is laid out with a very nice lawn and summer house and has one of the best gardens to be found in any country home of its size near Melbourne (19).
A description of Tulliallan homestead from the 1919 sale advertisement.
Frederick Curtis was Cranbourne Shire Councillor from 1925 to 1928. I don’t have much information about him, but his wife, whom he married in 1905, was Florence Maud Crabtree and his occupation in the Electoral Rolls was listed as a grazier. Some of the activities of the family were reported in the social columns of the Melbourne papers including, in 1927 a combined coming of age for their only daughter Gwennyth and a 21st birthday celebration of their eldest son Keith - the headline was a jolly evening at Berwick. Amongst the guests were local names such Greaves, Brunt, Whiteside and Loveridge. In 1932 it was reported in the Dandenong Journal that Mr Curtis had purchased Oakdene in Langhorne Street, Dandenong. According to the Electoral Rolls, Keith remained at Tulliallan until the property was sold in 1938 (20).
A jolly evening at Tulliallan
In 1938, Faris Addison Palfreyman purchased
Tulliallan; he was a English Leicester and Romney Marsh sheep breeder. When the property was sold by Palfreyman in November 1946, the purchase price included the entire stock of stud sheep and Aberdeen Angus cattle valued at £8000. Palfreyman then moved to Queensland and amongst other things collected Rolls Royce motor cars.
(21).
In May 1926, Faris Palfreyman was the best man at the wedding of Beatrice Fischer to Arthur Long - Beatrice was the granddaughter of Jules Commans
(22) who as we found out before, was a colleague and pall bearer at the funeral of Captain James Mitchell, whose son George was a previous owner of
Tulliallan. You can read all about this fashionable wedding at St Johns Church in Toorak in the
Table Talk newspaper
here. Is this a coincidence that Faris later became an owner of the
Tulliallan property or was he already familiar with
Tulliallan when he purchased the property as it appears he moved in the same social circles as the Mitchells? Faris Palfreyman died in 1983 at the age of 80.
Completely unrelated, but sort of interesting, is the fact that Beatrice's brother, Julius Ralph Fischer, was the father of the late Tim Fischer, the former leader of the National Party, and deputy Prime Minister and the former Australian Ambassador to the Holy See (23).
In 1946, James McKenzie Elder purchased Tulliallan. He had married Nancy Russell Barrett in 1929 and was the son of prominent business man, Sir James Alexander Elder and his wife Margaret Blyth Nicoll - you can read about Sir James in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, here. The family also had their social activities reported in the social columns of the Melbourne papers - in March 1953 there was a report of a dance at Tulliallan where guests sat on hay bales at open fires and danced in the sylvan setting at an outdoor party. Susan Elder, James’ daughter, hosted the party. Amongst the guests were some visitors from the Western District and some members of the socially prominent Chirnside family. Susan’s marriage at the Berwick Presbyterian Church, to Geoffrey Haggard, son of the late Commander Geoffrey Haggard, R.N was the subject of a report and photograph in both The Age and The Argus in November 1953. The wedding reception was held at Tulliallan. In December 1954 a dinner dance was held at Tulliallan for 150 guests in honour of Ian Elder, Susan’s brother (24).
Party at Tulliallan
In 1960, the Elders put the property up for sale - 600 acres in 4 lots including the homestead block of 190 acres. The homestead was described as a spacious weatherboard homestead, set in delightful surroundings, with all modern conveniences. (25) This original house was later demolished, it was still there in the early 1990s, but that's all I can say (26). As James and Nancy Elder were still at Tulliallan in 1972, according to the Electoral rolls, the property either did not sell or they changed their mind. Their daughter Susan operated a Cheviot sheep stud on the property. The Age reported in March 1972 that she had founded her stud flock in 1955 on Cheviots from Tasmania and New Zealand (27). James died in 1978 aged 76 and Nancy in 1974, aged 70.
The Cheviot flock belonging to Susan Haggard (nee Curtis) at Tulliallan in 1972.
Image: Cheviots are on way back, The Age March 3, 1972, p. 18.
We will leave this history of the Ravenhurst / Gladys Park /Tulliallan property with the Elders, but as you can see it has had many interesting and at times socially prominent and well connected owners. The property is now under a sea of houses. A 1860s shearer's cottage still remains as well as the avenue of elm trees or the nice drive of English trees from the main road to the homestead. (28) It would appear that the shearer's cottage was built during the occupancy of the Rossiter family. The City of Casey heritage citation notes this about the elms - A key landscape element is the driveway, which is lined with an avenue of 51 elms down each side; these are mature from the gates through to the 28th tree, and semi-mature after that indicating two stages of planting. The size of the more mature specimens suggests an original planting date of around 1900. About 10 of the trees are recent in-fill sapling plantings. (29) I believe that as James Gibb is credited with the tree planting in Berwick, that he actually planted the elms after he took over the property in 1904.
The Tulliallan Elms in November 2023
Footnotes
(1) Billis, R.V & Kenyon, A.S.
Pastoral Pioneers of Port Philip (Stockland Press, 1974)
(2) The sons of William Joseph Ruffy and Louisa Ann Kingham were married at St Martin in the Fields in Westminster in London on May 15 1799. Ruffy was a joint editor of the
Farmers Journal and Agricultural Advertizer, an English publication, from 1808-1832. The
Farmers Journal was one of the first Agricultural journals in England. They family migrated to Tasmania in the 1820s. They had nine children of which five sons lived at Western Port - Thomas (1800 - 1882) William James (1802 - 1884) Frederick (1804 - 1872) Henry (1808 - 1847) and Arthur Wiggett (1817 - 1893). William Joseph Ruffy died in Launceston in 1836 aged 61 and Louisa Ruffy died in Campbell Town in 1859 aged 79.
(3) Gunson, Niel
The Good Country: Cranbourne Shire (F. W. Cheshire, 1968), p. 36.
(4)
The Australasian, November 22, 1873, see here. (5) Sale advertisement for William Palmer in
The Australasian, November 12, 1881, see
here.
(6)
The Age, December 4, 1886, see
here.
(7)
The Argus, July 18, 1885, see
here.
(8)
The Weekly Times, July 25, 1885, see
here.
(9)
The Australasian, January 9 1892, see
here.
(10)
The Argus, Friday, February 4, 1898, see here.(11) Carroll, Brian The Upper Yarra: an illustrated history (Shire of Upper Yarra, 1988), pp.11-12.
(12) The Argus, February 4, 1899, see
here;
The Australasian, July 1, 1899, see here. (13)
The Herald, December 22, 1919, see
here; another obituary
South Bourke & Mornington Journal, December 25, 1919, see
here.
(14)
South Bourke & Mornington Journal, March 6, 1919, see
here;
Weekly Times, March 8, 1919, see
here; Robert Gibb - Electoral Rolls; his death notice
The Argus, September 28, 1923, see
here.
(15) The Cranbourne Shire Rate books list the date as July 16, 1914.
(16)
The Herald, May 14, 1927, see
here;
Williamstown Chronicle, May 21, 1927, see
here.
(17) Jules Commans - Shire of Berwick Rate Books; Obituary -
The Age, April 26, 1937, see
here; Sale of
The Pines,
Dandenong Journal, May 4, 1933, see
here.
(18) World War One Attestation file, National Archives of Australia, see
here; Electoral Rolls.
(19)
The Age, February 15, 1919, see
here.
(20) Shire Councillor information from
The Good Country, see citation footnote 3;
Table Talk March 31 1927, see
here;
Dandenong Journal, August 4, 1932, see
here;
(21) Shire of Cranbourne Rate Books;
Dandenong Journal, November 27, 1946, see
here ; Electoral Rolls. Faris Palfreyman sold 15 Rolls Royces in 1969 at an auction, and still had ten others - report in
The Bulletin, 29 March 29, 1969, page 5 see
here.
(22) Rene Jules Comman's death notice list his children and grandchildren -
The Age, April 27, 1937, see
here.
(24)
The Herald, February 26, 1929, see
here;
The Argus, November 30, 1953, see
here;
The Age, November 30, 1953, see
here;
The Age, December 13, 1954, see
here.
(25) The Age, February 25, 1960, p. 35 - advertisement below
(26) Ted Bould, remembers delivering fuel to the property in the 1970s when the Whites owned it and the original house was still there then. Ted said it also had an airstrip. Frank Rovers said it was there in the early 1990s, when he attended a workshop on soil improvements there.
(27) Cheviots are on way back, The Age March 3, 1972, p. 18.
(28)
The Age, February 15, 1919, see
here.
(29) Trees and Shearer's Cottage are Heritage listed with the City of Casey, see
here
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