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Free Copy In This Edition: Page Page Port Phillip is Best! 2 The Blue Lake 21 Geelong’s Wool Stores 3 The American Civil War 22 Terra Nullius 6 Scotland—Fast Facts 24 Clarke Brothers—Bushrangers 8 Ebola 25 Ferrets 10 Little River Band 26 Mining Around Geelong 12 Recipe—Sweet Tooth? 28 Geelong Gem & Mineral Club 15 Word Search— Desserts 29 Corio-The Early Days Part 12 16 Banknotes: David Unaipon 30 The Temple of Artemis 18 150 Years Ago 31 Mount Gambier 20 Then… & Now 32 Just how good was life in early Port Phillip Bay—at Melbourne and Geelong? No doubt it was a struggle to establish the two fledgling towns, but self-promotion dominated newspaper articles sent to other settlements around Australia, and overseas, as the following article suggests: “Whalers— The disadvantages which the port of Sydney presents from the irresistible temptation it holds out to sailors for drunkenness and desertion, have long been felt and acknowledged. To obviate (make unnecessary) this evil so annoying to masters of whalers and so opposite to the interests of their owners generally, we wish to point out that Port Phillip is the only other place open on this coast to supply the necessities requisite, attended with but little expense, perfect safety, and no risk of losing the crews. There is no pilotage fees, no harbour-master’s dues; in fact, the only charge is upon entry and clearance. On the other hand, stores are in Whaling and the export of whale by-products abundance; goods at but a small became one of Australia's first primary industries. advance on the Sydney prices; fresh Whale blubber was melted down to be used as oil for meat and vegetables will be found lamp fuel, lubricants and candles and as a base for good, cheap, and abundant; water is perfumes and soaps. Baleen (whalebone) was used easy and accessible; and before long for items such as corsets, whips and umbrellas. there will be, if it do not exist now, a The photo above shows whalers about to harpoon a decided superiority over every other killer whale near Eden, in southern New South Wales. part of Australia. If it should become desirable to discharge the cargoes here, vessels are frequently going direct to England; or various craft to Van Diemen’s Land returning in ballast, would be glad to take it ‘without any charge of store rent or freight,’ as they are now doing with the wool.” Port Phillip gazette. February 1839. Melbourne town in 1839. The Yarra Yarra River and Port Phillip Bay are in the background. 2 By the early 1900’s nearly all of Geelong’s waterfront was devoted to the wool trade. Huge wool stores lined the foreshore and Brougham Streets, waiting for vessels to arrive at Cunningham or Yarra Street Piers, to export thousands of bales of wool each year, mainly to Europe. The massive wool stores now form part of the Deakin University– Waterfront Campus, and Westfield Shopping Centre. In 1836, the year after European settlers arrived at Port Phillip Bay, 26,500 sheep were counted in the district. The wool clip from this ever-growing flock, fed on bountiful fields of local grass, soon became prodigious! As early as 1839, the year after the town of Geelong was established, wool storage was offered to local farmers and shipping agents (likely inside rough slab timber huts), until ships arrived to take the bales to Sydney or Europe. The following year (1840), James Strachan became the first man in Geelong to construct a stone building, a house and bond store on the corner of Moorabool and Brougham Streets. The bond store was expanded to include a wool store, and his property was soon surrounded by up to 6 other businessmen offering storage for wool. During the highs and lows of the wool industry in Australia, Strachan entered into various partnerships with other men, but his business finally became known as Strachan & Co., and expanded throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. The wool stores he built still stand prominently along Brougham Street. Charles John Dennys, migrated to Melbourne in 1842 but soon moved to Geelong and farmed land on the Barwon and Moorabool Rivers. After running a number of successful businesses, on November 6, 1857 Dennys conducted the first wool sale in Geelong, comprising 160 wool bales. In September 1858 Dennys advertised his intention to establish a 'Local Wool Mart', to avoid the cost of shipping wool to Melbourne. James Strachan The house and wool store owned by James Strachan on the corner of Moorabool and Brougham Streets. The house was the first stone building erected in Geelong in 1840. Rebuilt and expanded in 1906 and again in the early 1950s, the old wool store now forms part of the Westfield Shopping Centre. James Strachan’s story appears in the December 2012 issue of the Jillong Pocket. 3 C J Dennys The business prospered, and by the 1867-68 selling season, along with partner Edward Lascelles, they catalogued 10,500 bales. In December 1870, to provide larger wool storage they bought an old coal yard on the opposite corner to Strachan & Co., and constructed an imposing basalt wool-store and offices, which were opened on August 1, 1872. (See back page of The Dennys Lascelles warehouse, on the corner of Ghering- this magazine) hap and Brougham Streets was a major edition to their main wool store up on the next corner at Moorabool Street. The In the 1877-78 season the company building served as a furniture store, but is currently for sale. sold 21,000 bales. Further growth necessitated the construction of another wool store on the next corner to the west on Gheringhap Street (above). Frederick Dalgety arrived at Sydney in 1834 at the age of 16, but by December 1842 he had moved to Melbourne and become manager of a new wool trading firm. Dalgety soon secured a partnership in the business and, when his partners left the firm in 1846, he formed his own company, Dalgety & Co. By 1848 he was an independent and well-to-do merchant, concentrating on providing merchandise for squatters and buying their produce in return. Between the gold rush years of 1851-55 he made about £150,000 from his gold speculations alone. Dalgety never lived in Geelong, but upon returning to England in 1855 he appoint- ed C. Ibbotson as a colonial manager-partner of his company in Geelong. Apart from a brief return to Australia in 1857 and again in 1881, Dalgety lived the rest of his life in England. The last load of wool bales brought to the Frederick Dalgety Dalgety & Co. wool store by bullock waggon in 1910. The load is from the property of Mr. Venters of Stonehaven, and the driver (standing in front of the waggon) is Mr. Galloway, originally from Lake Bolac. The rebuilt wool store is now part of the Deakin University Waterfront Campus. 4 George Synnot By 1880 Dalgety & Co was handling over 70,000 bales of wool each year, most of it out of Geelong. For a time, this made him Australia’s largest exporter of wool. To cater for such huge quantities of wool, in 1892 a new 2-storey wool store was constructed at 98 Western Beach Road (pictured below-left). The building was dramatically expanded in 1934, Established in 1854, the George Synnot & Co wool store and turning it into the 6-storey grain house, fronted Clare Street, Geelong. The picture above brick building we see today as was drawn in 1885 after reconstruction took place, including part of the Deakin University the installation of a hydraulic lift. 7,000 bales of wool were Campus. stored in the 3-storey building. George Synnot was son of prominent Australian Colonial, Captain Walter Synnot. His Brother Monckton Synnot was also a well known squatter and wool broker. George travelled to the Port Phillip District and established the firm, George Synnot & Co., in 1854, operating hide and skin stores, as well as wool and grain warehouses in Clare Street Geelong. Synnot quickly learned from Charles Dennys, and started holding auction sales of wool in Geelong in November 1858. Today, the office block has been enlarged and converted into the Nireeda Apartments. Australia currently has about 75 million sheep, producing 340 million kilograms of wool annually. Modern storage facilities make the early Geelong wool stores appear tiny by comparison, but the prominent buildings on Geelong’s waterfront continue to define our history, and remind us of the importance of wool! Today, Australian Wool Handlers PTY LTD handles about two-thirds of Australia’s wool clip. While it receives wool at 15 locations throughout the country, one of its largest warehouses is in Forest Road, Lara. 5 When the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay in 1788, the British simply took over the land, despite clear evidence the Aborigines had been living in the area for hundreds of years. To justify their claimed ownership of Australia the British applied the International Law of ‘terra nullius.’ The term ‘terra nullius’ comes from Latin, and is used to describe land that nobody owns. Simply put, the first nation to discover a land it wishes to occupy is entitled to take it as “finders keepers.” Any disputes over unoccupied land were settled once a party could prove that they “found it first” (or by war). However, Australia was NOT unoccupied. Thousands of Aborigines had settled vast areas of the continent, as well as Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). In the area around Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula, and the Surf Coast, about 400 Aborigines were counted when Europeans first arrived to settle in 1835.