Mooroopna

Robert heard that a farm was available in the Mooroopna area so he, in the winter of 1881, walked to Mooroopna from his home at Gunbower only to find that it had been sold. This farm, owned by Thomas McCaig and situated on the west side of Echuca Road is now owned by the Twite family.

He was told, probably by the bank, that a farm recently purchased by Michael Gaffy in the NW Mooroopna area, was available and so he walked out to inspect it.

Robert was to find a farm heavily timbered with grey box and many different varieties of wattle. While there were no great mobs of kangaroos and emus to contend with there was plenty of smaller wildlife, even koalas in the area. The 320 acre block, known as Allotment 54, was originally selected in 1873 by John Connelly and by 1876 he had built a house 30' x 14', a dam and garden and the block was all enclosed with a chock and log fence except for 25 chains. In 1877 John Connelly applied to transfer his lease to Michael Connelly to -enable payment of liabilities and to purchase a smaller property in the same parish".

It appears Michael Connelly wasn't able to meet hi commitments either and he, or the bank, had to sell the far to Michael Gaffy for P-2-7-6 per acre. Michael Connelly appeared to have been badly done by at this stage however, as he wrote to the Land Board saying that the land had been surveyed second time, and finding 16 chains (presumably square chain over the 320 acres, the surveyor had taken it off the S.E. corner and not the N. E. corner where he states his house is situated. H also says that because Michael Gaffy promised to lend him some money to get his harvest in, and then says he can't afford to "h is trying to put me and wife and ten children off the farm". It is hard to work out the sequence of events at this stage, but Michael Connelly succeeded in acquiring a separate title for his house i the N.E. corner and the C.B.A. Bank in Mooroopna applied to have the lease transferred to Michael Gaffy's wife, Ellen subject to an unregistered mortgage from her back to the C.B.A. Ban This had just occurred in 1881 when Robert arrived on the seen and by March 1882 Michael Gaffy (representing Ellen) had transferred it over to Robert for an unknown price. The bank must have had an important double roll to play in these early days settlement being both that of Land Agent and Financier.

It is said that Robert then walked to Seymour (for what purpose I am not sure as the Land Board was situated in Echuca before heading back to Gunbower where his family would anxiously waiting to hear news of his travels.

George Starritt, who was to be the longest surviving child of Robert's family, was born in June 1881 presumably just prior to Robert leaving, this giving him a family of six children to move down to N. W. Mooroopna.

By October 1881 he had arranged to transfer his leasehold on the Gunbower property to Salatial Booth who was one of the bigger land holders in the area. There is no record either of when he sold his other holdings there or for what price, but we know he stayed long enough to strip his crops before he headed for his new farm.

On arrival back at Mooroopna with his family of 6 children he was met with disastrous news. The house on the property, presumably the one in the N. E. corner, (referred to earlier) and lived in by Michael Connelly, had been burnt down. This meant that they had to make a canvas lean to on the side of the wagon and there the seven of them were to camp for six months. George, who was to be the longest surviving of the children, was only ten months old at this stage and it must have been a mammoth task for Catherine to manage the children and still play her part in helping Robert with their new farm. Water had to be carted from a well over a mile away in the adjoining block to the west and that summer was a particularly bad one with record temperatures and severe drought conditions in Victoria.

Their first task was to build a new house and well, so they selected a site in the S. E. corner, probably because of the proximity of clay suitable for making bricks. There they set

about making a kiln for firing bricks for the chimney and well. The hole this clay was dug from and some of the bricks are still visible today. The house on this site was to be home for only about four years before they decided it should be moved to its present site, probably because the well wasn't a very productive one and the centre of the block was a better position from a farming point of view. Also at some stage in 1881 or 1882 he had purchased 140 acres, known as Powers, on the block to the west and so this new house position would be a more convenient one.

Robert and Catherine had six children (as mentioned earlier) by 1882 when they moved from Gunbower. Margaret was eleven, Sarah nine, Robert seven, Ellenor five, Martha two and George a baby not yet one year old. The eldest four went to school at North Mooroopna, which was a walk, no doubt across the paddocks, of about three miles.

Although the NW Mooroopna school was opened in 1878 they were to attend the North Mooroopna School until they moved the house into the centre of the block which meant the new school, called Ram Dam was nearer and more convenient.

It may seem strange that they went to the North Mooroopna school for so long when the new school was a little closer, however at this stage N. Mooroopna was quite a busy village and Robert was known to sell stock to C. W. Norton, the butcher, there. It is likely that they attended the Presbyterian Church services there too. These services were at first held in Baxter's barn and then later in the school house as N. Mooroopna was known in those days to be an area where most of the settlers had originated from the North of Ireland as Robert and Catherine had done. In fact it has been said that the northern end of the N. Mooroopna/Ardmona Road was known as Donegal Street because of the settlers who came from Donegal County and I lived there.

1882 was to be a tragic year for the family however, as on 4th April 1882 little Martha was to die of Bronchitis asphyxia at the age of 2 years and 9 months. This must have been a sad loss for the family but one that was a lot more common for the early settler's families living under these harsh conditions.

After 1882 we have very little knowledge of how Robert and Catherine developed their farm and raised a family at Kelso Park but they must have been fairly good years because within ten years he had increased his holdings to over 1,000 acres.

In 1884 Robert bought 120 acres across the road to the south (see map) which had been settled by James McQuillan a labourer from Mooroopna, but this was now in the hands of his trustees. The plight of this man is a good indication of the hard times the settlers faced with bush fires. His trustees wrote the following letter to the Land Board in 1877:

"The land was fenced in by the said licensee James Mc Quillan during his lifetime and a dwelling house erected thereon but in consequence of severe bushfire such fence and house together with a valuable stack of grain were consumed and the said licensee lost his life in trying to extinguish the flames. We apply as executors under his will Michael Kavanagh and David Murray."

The trustees transferred this land to Michael Connelly and Michael Gaffy and the then to Margaret Gaffy before selling it to Robert in 1884. It is thought that the house this man McQuillan died trying to save was on the S.W corner of the Starritt and Manly Road intersection.

In 1885 Catherine or Cassie as she was to become known was born bringing their family to six children. It was in this year also that they decided to move the house to the centre of the block but before doing so a barn was built there and trees were planted around the site, in preparation, for the move. 1886 was a busy year for Robert's family. The house was moved from its site in the SE corner to the present day site and with the help of Mr Telford, the builder, a kitchen with a sawn red gum floor was constructed away from the main part of the house. The stables (which are still on the site) were also built at this time because to the early settler the draught horses were probably the most important asset he could own and so they had to be looked after. The 100-acre block at the back of their home, known as Gearys, was also purchased in this year for f-4 per acre so the early 1880's must have been good farming years for them. All wasn't good news though as apparently in 1886 Catherine lost a baby while giving birth but the exact details are unclear. (This was generally unknown to the family and only recently are discovered in the Mooroopna cemetery records).

In 1889 the 220 acres at the back of Robert's farm (known as Ryans) came up for sale. This was too good an opportunity to miss so finance was arranged and the property purchased this now giving him the whole block. There was a well-constructed log cabin on this farm and seeing its potential as a dairy Robert moved this by numbering all the logs and reconstructing it on the present site next to the house where it still stands today. Here the milk was left in shallow trays and the cream skimmed off to make butter, not only for the family, but also to sell probably in Mooroopna. The children, who were quickly growing up, were all expected to help hand milk the cows before and after school. The three eldest; Margaret, Sarah and Robert would have left school at this stage and would be considered a big help to their parents on their growing farm.

Income was also obtained from running merino sheep on the property and breeding draught horses from which Robert must have gained particular satisfaction. Many years later, in a newspaper article, his son George was to say that his father didn't know much about judging sheep but he was an excellent judge of Clydesdale horses.

In 1890 a property, known as Cobbledicks and now owned by Norman G. Starritt, consisting of 160 acres was purchased for £6 per acre. This shows that in ten years land prices had tripled as people saw the potential of the area for farming, particularly now that the weir at Nagambie was being built to irrigate the Ardmona area.

Mr Ray Starritt of Kelso Park thinks that this is where Robert obtained the name of the farm. The block known as Cobbledicks was owned by the Claxton family at the time and it is thought that the name of their house or farm was Kelso Park and so when Robert bought the block he used the name for his own farm. The name Kelso probably originally referred to the township of Kelso in Scotland.

By 1892 Robert and Catherine must have been able to look back on their first ten years at NW Mooroopna with satisfaction. They had increased their land holdings to 1060 acres, had a comfortable house to live in, a garden, a barn and stables for the horses. Their family, consisting of four girls and two boys was growing up quickly. Margaret was 21, Sarah 19, Robert 17, Ellenor 15, George 11 and Catherine 7. The immediate years to follow were not as successful because of the depressed farm prices of the 1890's, however, with the help of his two sons, Robert's farm was later to expand more and the children to marry and branch out to new areas.