(last updated 3 January 2008)

Victoria and the gold rushes

Clunes was named by the Scot Donald Campbell when he squatted there in 1839. The discovery of gold in the late 1840s led to an influx of people into the area and, in the same year Henry and Harriet left South Australia, the opening of a major underground mine (pictured below) which was jointly owned by the Port Phillip and the Quartz Gold Mining Companies. This saw the expansion of the earlier cluster of huts and tents into a sizable town at which there were considerable working opportunities not only for miners but a range of skilled artisans and craftsmen like Henry. By 1861 the population of Clunes had grown to 1080 and the town contained over 470 dwellings. It had its own council, a number of schools and churches and, in the fashion of the times, a range of lodges and societies including the Freemasons, Oddfellows, Rechabites, Good Templars and Hiberians

While at Clunes, Henry continued to style himself as a 'London brickmaker', advertising his wares in the 11 November 1859 edition of the Creswick and Clunes Advertiser as follows: 'Bricks for sale in any quantities. Superior sandstone bricks, three pounds per thousand. Contracts taken on most reasonable terms and executed at the shortist notice'. Although his obituary indicates that he, and possibly the family as well, may have spent some time during this period at both the Ballarat and Bendigo diggings, it seems that in the early days the family lived on the edge of town near the bridge on the Back Creek road. While there Harriet was called before an inquest, held on 24 September 1861, into the death of a 12-month old boy, Samuel Snell. The one year-old Samuel had accidentally drowned in a hole that had been dug at the rear of his parent's house. Living next door to the Snells, Harriet had heard the mother scream and had come to her assistance, placing the child into warm water and sending for the doctor but to no avail. Twelve months later, Henry was taken to court by Snell senior for illegally detaining five geese. In the court hearing, held on 24 October 1862, it transpired that the geese had been sold to Henry by Snell's wife without the complainant's knowledge and shortly before she separated from Snell (possibly over the circumstances leading to young Samuel Snell's death). The case was dismissed and Snell was ordered to pay ten shillings in costs.

The proceedings of the Clunes Police Court showed that Henry's brickmaking business, and his fortunes generally, waxed and waned over the ensuing years. Faced with mounting debts he was declared insolvent on 16 May 1862 and forced to start again. In 1863 he was brought before the court on three separate occasions for failing to pay for a range of goods and services. In spite of these problems he was able, on 8 June 1864, to pay £14 17s for another block of land at Clunes. On 18 November 1864 he successfully sued a John Edmonson for twelve shillings and sixpence for 'damage done by pigs trespassing' but was ordered, in August the following year, to pay nearly four times this amount to a James Greenhill for 'firewood sold and delivered'. All the while Henry continued to work as a labourer, miner and brick maker.

While at Clunes Henry and Harriet had nine further children: Samuel (1857-1877), William (1859-1938), Walter (1862-1862), Elizabeth Jane (1863-1875), Mary Ann (1865-1866), Emily Louisa (1868-1869), Alfred (1869-), Richard (1870-) and Joseph (1872-1928). During this time, Henry also saw his three eldest daughters marry: Eliza to Robert Osborne in 1863, Emma to Richard Mitchell in 1866 and Rebecca to a Cornish farmer, Joseph Colmer Smith, in 1869. After giving birth to two boys in Clunes in 1865 and 1867, Eliza moved to Amherst and then to Eganstown where she died in 1912. Emma and her family remained in Clunes before moving to East Charlton in 1878 where they settled on land at Buckrabanyule. Rebecca and Joseph lived initially on a farm at Waubra (located about 20 miles southwest of Clunes) before moving to Lalbert in around 1878. Henry's fourth child by Sophia, Henry Edward Hickmott, went with his father to Charlton before returning briefly to Kingower (located between Clunes and Bendigo) in 1877 to marry Elizabeth Ann Owen (the sister of a friend of his from Charlton). Click here to see known details of the families of Henry's children.

The Maryborough Rate Books show that on 21 November 1871, Henry paid eleven shillings and threepence in rates for a wooden house on Dundas Road (the house was owned by a D. Taylor). There was no mention of him in subsequent (or previous) records which suggests that he and his family stayed briefly in Maryborough prior to taking up land in Charlton. The Victorian Goldfields hospital records of admission show that a Samual [sic] Hickmott, a labourer aged 72 years, was admitted into the Maryborough and District Hospital on 18 January 1872. This suggests that Henry's father, Samuel may have been living with or near the family during this period at least (Samuel came to Victoria from either Tasmania or South Australia around the time Henry travelled to the gold fields). It is not clear, however, whether Samuel went to Charlton with Henry and his family or whether he remained in Maryborough. The hospital records don't provide a discharge date, indicating only that after treatment Samuel 'was released to his friends'.

East Charlton

On arrival in East Charlton in 1872, Henry established a brickyards across the road from his house in Olive Street, and bought a farm at Wooroonooke which was then known as Watson's Lakes. Although white people first moved into the Charlton area in around 1844, the numbers there remained quite small until after the Land Enactment Act of 1869 which enabled people like Henry and Harriet to settle on 320-acre blocks and pay them off over a period of twenty years. Other families who moved into the area at this time included that of James Jenkyn who had been a miner at Creswick and Ballarat and who settled on land at Buckrabanyule in April 1874. James' son Thomas would later marry Henry's granddaughter Mary Sophia Mitchell and have five children all in Charlton. A second pioneering family whose descendents would marry those of the Hickmotts was the Dews who lived on an adjoining property at Watson's Lakes.

As Grace Cadzow described in her book Charlton and the Vale of the Avoca, by 1874 most of the land that had been made available in 1869 had been taken up and the area was thriving. 'Huts and cottages were built, using local timber, paddocks were fenced and the roads were busy with wagons and bullock drays. The newcomers arriving during a period of good years, found abundant pastures and the country seemed a veritable paradise'. There were some 2000 people in the area with 300 living in the township itself. This contained four churches, a flour mill and a general store that described itself as 'the emporium of the north'. Following petitions from the locals, a school, State School No 1480, was opened at Charlton East on 14 January 1875. In an article published in the East Charlton Tribune a few years later, this was described as a 'pretty ordinary edifice' which 'the meanest Chinese hut in the colony surpassed, both in symmetry and comfort'. Nonetheless, within this initial timber and bark construction, which measured a mere 14 feet by 10 feet, some 42 children were taught, including a number of Hickmotts and their relatives.

But the good times did not last and the settlers around Charlton were soon confronted by the droughts, dust storms and rabbit plagues that were a feature of outback life and made it difficult for them to fulfil their licence requirements (the records of the local licence boards showed that, throughout this time, there was an enormous turnover in licence holdings). As the East Charlton Tribune complained on 27 July 1878, returning a profit was made more difficult still by the absence of any rail link to the area. This placed the farmer 'at a great disadvantage [since] when produce has to be carted fifty or sixty miles, it leaves a very small margin for profit after all expenses [such as] the wear and tear of wagons and other vehicles used for the conveyances' are paid for. The main problem that faced the early settlers of Charlton, however, was obtaining a reliable water supply. In the drought years, water had to be carted from surrounding rivers and lakes, and families would have to do their washing at communal washing points such as the 'Sheep Wash Dam'.

The hardships facing Henry and his family were compounded on 14 February 1877 when Harriet and her 19-year old son, Samuel, were struck by lightning on the front step of their home in East Charlton and killed instantly. The St Arnaud Mercury recorded the event as follows:

About 5pm on Wednesday a severe thunderstorm burst over East Charlton, and an hour later Mrs Hickmott and her son Samuel (a youth of 18 or 20) had just returned to their home in that township after a visit to a selection belonging to the family at Watson's Lakes, when a flash of lightning struck them both dead in the doorway of their house, at the same time killing a dog that stood near them. Mrs Hickmott was thrown several yards out of the building, the apparel around her chest and shoulders being set ablaze, and her face much disfigured by the electric current, which appears to have struck her on the head and travelled down her right side. Her son Samuel was smitten on the right shoulder the current passing diagonally across his body until it came to his heart, his clothing being burnt even to the undershirt. Another son, named James, who was indoors at the time, was struck on the left forearm and hip, and for a time was paralysed, but has since recovered. A man who was also in the house at the time was rendered insensible for several minutes, and when he returned to consciousness, found Mrs Hickmott and Samuel dead, and their clothes burning. The Hickmott family resided at Clunes and St Arnaud before they went to East Charlton, and were much respected in each of the places named.

In the following year, Henry's son-in-law, Richard Mitchell, had his hand caught in a stripping machine while helping harvest Henry's crop at Wooroonooke. He was taken to the St Arnaud Hospital where, unfortunately, he had to have the hand amputated. The East Charlton Tribune reported, on 30 November 1878, that, although very weak, Richard was improving slowly and 'no serious symptoms have presented themselves'.

It is likely that, on 27 November 1878, Henry attended the farewell for his friend and neighbour, the proprietor of the local sawmill William Nalder. This was held at Yates' Hotel at West Charlton where 'about 40 persons sat down to a sumptuous repast'. Following the speeches, 'the room was cleared for dancing which was kept up until an early hour in the morning'. It is possible that Henry was accompanied by the widow Margaret Ann Kaye, who he married three months later at a Mr Burton's at Wooroonooke. The wedding certificate showed that Henry was then aged 53 years and that he had had 15 children (eight living and seven dead). Margaret had two children (both living). Henry and Margaret had one son, Robert, who was born on 28 July 1879 in West Charlton. Margaret died in Junee in 1893. Their son Robert died there in 1899.

After his marriage, Henry continued to live on his farm at West Charlton. While normally helped by his sons, he often also took on casual labourers to do specific jobs. One such person was a John Cooper who was hired, in the second half of 1879, to grub mallee roots from Henry's land and who subsequently took Henry to court for not paying him his dues (even though he had not finished the work). The case attracted the attention of the editor of the East Charlton Tribune who reported on it with some glee:

The complainant [Cooper], who possessed only a sinister daylight, stated his case in grandiose language. He had engaged with the defendant to do certain grubbing, but claimed to have expressly stipulated that he was not to be required to work after the beginning of the harvest [and so was simply] to do all he could by 1 December. The bench which had occasionally to control the hyperbolic flights of the complainant, who, while he addressed the court, indulged in the lavatorial process of 'washing his hands with invisibles soap, in imperceptible water', decided on the complainant's own showing that they had no jurisdiction and dismissed the case.

Henry and Margaret, together with Henry's older children, may also have gone to see Madame Sibley, the 'renowned phrenologist and mesmerist', who visited East Charlton in January 1879 and greatly entertained her audiences in the Globe assembly rooms. They almost certainly would have joined the crowd of onlookers who applauded 'the antics of the lords of the soil' in a grand corroboree held in the square adjacent to the East Charlton Hotel on 22 March of the same year.

The 1899 referendum recorded Henry Hickmott as a 'gentleman' who lived at Barrakee. In 1913 he went to live with his youngest son Joseph and his family at Pine Grove near Rochester where he died of 'senility exhaustion' on 16 May 1914. He was buried the following day at the Pannoo Bamawm Cemetery. According to the Rochester Express, a number of friends attended the funeral including, as coffin bearers, a M. Dullard, G. Windridge, B. S. Whinfield and A. and O. Chappell. Henry's grave is not marked, a seemingly inadequate testimony to his long and eventful life.

Last updated: 3 January 2008

Image sources:
'Port Phillip Gold Mining Company's Claim and Township of Clunes 1869', engraving by Samuel Calvert (1828-1913), State Library of Victoria IAN19/06/69/129
'Henry and Harriet Hickmott, c1875 courtesy of Graeme Hickmott
East Charlton taken from 'Opening of East Charlton Railway, 1883', woodgraving State Library of Victoria IAN16/05/83/69
Wimmera duststorm
Pannoo Bamawm Cemetery, private collection