Henry Hickmott in South Australia

(last updated 3 January 2008)

Henry Hickmott would have been working as a labourer and apprentice brick maker when his father and uncle were arrested in 1840 and transported to Van Diemen's Land for sheep stealing. He married his first wife, Sophia Goldsmith, in the Parish Church at Hackney in Middlesex on 18 June 1848. Their wedding certificate showed that Henry and Sophia both lived at Lea Bridge Terrace at the time. Henry's father, Samuel Hickmott, was said to be a labourer, while Sophia's father, John Goldsmith, was a carpenter. The marriage was witnessed by two of Sophia's siblings, James and Mary Ann Goldsmith, who, like Sophia, signed the certificate with a 'mark' (Mary Ann Goldsmith married Henry's older brother, Edward Hickmott, at Maidstone the following year. Click here to read about Edward and Mary Ann's lives and family).

Less than a year after their marriage, Henry and Sophia Hickmott emigrated to Australia. This momentous decision may have been motivated by Henry's desire to be reunited with his father or by a simple determination to escape the bustle and grime of London life. The incentive to go was probably heightened by advertisements appearing in the London newspapers at the time encouraging artisans of all kind, including brick makers and bricklayers, to take up offers of free passage to Australia. Perhaps because he had had news from people who were already there, Henry chose to emigrate to the newest of the colonies, South Australia. And so, at the age of 23 years, he and Sophia (21) and their daughters Emma (1) and Eliza (infant) boarded the sailing ship EMILY at the port of London on 4 May 1849. They departed the same day and arrived at Port Adelaide on 8 August 1849.

Henry and his family spent little time in Adelaide which then consisted of tents and other forms of temporary housing interspersed among a scattering of more substantial but only recently constructed buildings. They were destined for the town of Mount Barker which was situated some 21 miles inland and on the outskirts of which, at a place called Littlehampton, were a number of recently established brickworks. The journey, most likely by either horse and cart or bullock-drawn wagon, required them to negotiate the long slow climb from Adelaide to the top of the surrounding Mount Lofty ranges (pictured below). On reaching the top they were able to look back and see the whole of the Adelaide township, the creek and all the vessels lying at anchor, and the sea stretching beyond to the horizon. In front of them were waves of tree-covered valleys and ridges.

While tired from the climb, much of which had to be made on foot in order to reduce the stress on the animals, it is likely that they, like travellers before and since, would have been struck by the sheer beauty of the scene before them, and exhilarated by the thought that they were to be pioneers in this strange and silent land.

The township of Mount Barker (pictured below in the 1880s) had been proclaimed in 1836 and surveyed three years later. At the time of the family's arrival, it contained a local court and police barracks, a post-office, and two inns of which the Crown Hotel was thought the better establishment. Their initial impressions of the place were likely to have been quite favourable since the first settlers had sought, with some success, to adapt the local landscape to reflect that of rural England. The district at the time was thus 'a grassy park landscape with formal hedgerows of gorse and hawthorn...gardens abounded in British fruits and vegetables, and the avenues were lined with the loveliest forest trees and garden flowers' (cited in Bob Schmidt, Mount Barker: Mountain Upon the Plain, Mount Barker District Council, 1983, p. 55). The impression of rural England was enhanced by the fact that most of the existing dwellings were 'wattle and daub' constructions, with whitewashed walls and thatched roofs. The rich black soil was also perfect for growing potatoes whose deep green foliage covered large parts of the valley and were cultivated by the many German and Irish labourers who had come to South Australia. Not everyone was entranced by Mount Barker however. A visitor to the area in 1851 subsequently reported that the place was neither very populous nor attractive:

It contains about 250 inhabitants, perhaps rather less than more, occupying sixty tenements. The appearance of the township itself, embedded in the valley, is not favourable as contrasted with the scenery with which it is surrounded. The black soil of the flat (although admirably adapted for potatoes), some rubbishing fencing, and the piles of brushwood around the mill, together with the confusion of the blacksmiths and carpenters' yards [around Littlehampton] give it a factory-like effect, which the volumes of smoke heighten into dinginess. Matters seemed to us rather backward considering the early survey made of the district (cited in Martin, p. 19).

It is likely though that Sophia would have loved the small cottage they would have been able to rent, with its tranquil and bountiful garden. Henry, too, would have appreciated the shed for his tools and the brushwood and spare wire he could fashion into a run for their hens and other animals. As a 'London Brickmaker', Henry would have been employed at either Hombin's brickyard, which was located near the Great Eastern Hotel in Littlehampton, or McDonald's brickyard which was on the northeast corner of the site of the present Mount Barker showgrounds. These had both been established in 1847 and supplied the bricks for the houses that were beginning to replace the region's older wattle and daub establishments. While at Mount Barker, Henry and Sophia had two further children: Rebecca (born in April 1851) and Henry Edward who was born on 17 May 1852. As there was then no local church, these may have been baptised at the St James Anglican Church at Blakiston. It is possible that the couple's two older daughters also attended the St James School which had been established in 1847 and to which many children from Mount Barker made the daily trek across the hill to attend.

Sometime after Henry Edward's birth, Sophia died and Henry married Harriet Waters, in Adelaide on 24 July 1853. We don't know the circumstances of Sophia's death or where she is buried. There is no mention of either event among South Australia's (admittedly limited) records of the times. My guess is that she died in childbirth at Mount Barker and was buried either there or at Blakiston. It is also possible that she is buried near Echunga where, early in 1852, gold was discovered and to which hundreds of prospective miners and their families flocked from Mount Barker and other nearby towns and villages (by year's end Echunga's alluvial deposits had been worked out and most prospectors, including Henry, looked to the Victorian goldfields to make their fortunes).

Harriet Waters (pictured on the left with Henry and their two youngest sons) was born in either Bethesden or Tenterden in Kent in England in 1834. She emigrated to South Australia with her parents and five siblings sometime between 1838 and 1844. The family seemed initially to have lived at Mount Barker before moving to Green Hills sometime before 1848 (Henry and Sophia's youngest daughter, Rebecca Smith nee Hickmott, named her last residence in Victoria 'Green Hills'). They may have still been there when Harriet married Henry or they may have moved to the nearby township of Meadows. Henry and Harriet had two children while in South Australia: James John, who was born in Meadows on 24 December 1854, and Sophia who was born late in 1855 and probably died soon after. It is possible that Henry was then fossicking for gold in Victoria. According to his obituary, around this time he and some colleagues travelled overland from South Australia to the goldfields at Mount Alexander. He seems to have done well, returning to South Australia and bringing his family back to Victoria by sea. After a brief stay in the colony's capital, Melbourne, the family went to live at Clunes in central Victoria.

Click here to read about Henry's life and times in Victoria.

Forest Creek Diggings, Mount Alexander 1852

Last updated: 3 January 2008

Image sources:
Emigrant ship from Illustrated London News, 1849
'Port Adelaide 1847' by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-1880), Art Gallery of South Australia
'Mount Lofty from the Terrace, Adelaide c1840' by Martha Berkeley (1813-99), Art Gallery of South Australia 0.851
Forest Creek Diggings, Illustrated London News, 1852
Henry and Harriet Hickmott and their two sons, courtesy of Graeme Hickmott.