lifeatcorack

sheep station

Wimmera sheep station, c1851

The first white people moved into the area around Corack in the 1840s following the establishment of the Corack and Banjenong sheep stations there. The Corack station was around 100,000 acres in size and was owned by a series of people including, from 1870 to 1882, a Samuel Craig (who subsequently sold the property to Edward Perry and his two sons Frank and Henry). Working for Craig at the time was a boundary rider, John Shepherd, whose daughters would later marry William Free's sons Samuel and James. According to Jenni Campbell, one of the major tasks of the shepherds and boundary riders alike during this time was to prevent the sheep on the station being stolen by aborigines:

As elsewhere in Victoria, the 1869 Land Act broke up the squatter's holdings and opened the way for working people to select land for farming. According to R. P. Falla, 'the first land to attract attention' in the parish of Corack East was the 'area situated as close to Lake Buloke as possible and fronting onto the surveyed three chain road'. Falla continues that between 1873 and 1875 nearly half of all the land available for selection was taken by such pioneer settlers as William Boothman, John Louttit, Edward Perry and his sons and the aforementioned John Shepherd. 'After 1875', Falla continues, the rate of 'selection declined...as more attractive land could be found elsewhere'. As a consequence the parish was not fully settled until the late 1880s. Included among the later selectors was William Free, who was allocated two blocks of land totalling some 264 acres on 1 July 1878, and his son James who took possession of a 161-acre block on 16 June 1884.

Establishing farms in the area would prove no easy task. The Land Act required the selector to live on and fence his or her allotment and to cultivate at least a third of it within the first three years of occupation. The selector was also required to 'pay an annual rental of two shillings per acre which, after three years, entitled him to a lease, and at the end of a ten year period or full payment of £1 per acre, the issue of a Crown Grant' (Falla 1992). The task was compounded by the fact that much of the country being settled was heavily timbered and, as the Cornishman James Lander who settled on land near Mount Jeffcott recounted, 'infested with kangaroos [and] dingos and over-run by squatters' sheep'. These had to be driven off and the timber cleared by chopping down the smaller trees and ring-barking the remainder. Tree roots were dug out using picks and shovels although those settlers who had them used bullock teams or soil grubbers which were also known as 'forest devils' (Campbell, 1997: 9).

Once an area was cleared the settler would dig an earth dam (known colloquially as a 'tank') into which water after rain could run, erect fences to keep out the kangaroos and other marauders, and plant his or her first crops. In his first year Lander 'got in 20 acres of wheat...and after saving my seed for the next year and a bit of hay, had twenty bags to cart to Ballarat for sale'. He received the pleasing sum of four shillings per bushel and 'got a load of potatoes to sell on my way home' ('The Pioneering Life of James Lander', p.3). One of William Free's future neighbours at Corack, Richard Reilly who had selected land there in 1874, cleared seven acres in his first year and also sowed it with wheat. By the end of the following year he had cultivated another four and a half acres, and the year after that 'a further 19 acres sown to oats, barley and peas'. Reilly's and the other settlers' first crops were sown by hand, the seed 'covered by harrowing or in some cases dragging branches of trees'. The crops were also harvested by hand, using simple reaping hooks or scythes (Campbell, 1997: 11).

When these essential tasks were well advanced, the settler could begin constructing a more permanent home to replace the tents and makeshift shelters he and his family were living in. These were usually bark huts of the kind built by the squatters and their shepherds during Victoria's earlier pastoral age. In places where there was a scarcity of timber, the houses were made of mud bricks built over a frame of wooden poles. Their roofs were thatched with grass and, if more than one room were needed,

The success of the selectors depended on a range of factors that extended beyond their undoubted capacity to work hard. These included adequate rainfall, a familiarity with basic farming techniques and the ability to apply these to the local conditions, and access to capital and labour, where those like William Free who had children old enough to work enjoyed a decided advantage. Luck and timing also played their part. The relatively good seasons that occurred before 1876 enabled many of the early settlers to pay off their debts and purchase their land before the harder times arrived. This was certainly so in the case of John Shepherd who eventually expanded his holdings beyond his initial 320-acre allotment and died, in Corack in 1918, a relatively rich man, leaving his wife and daughters property worth over £63,700 as well as £61,475 in cash (Donald Times, 26 April 1918). Many of those who came later to the district, by contrast, found it harder to meet their commitments and were forced to borrow money at 10 per cent interest from storekeepers, merchants and other money-lenders. As the hard times continued, their debts mounted to the extent that by June 1878 'about one third of the selectors who had received their Crown grants had parted with their land' (Powell, 1970: 180-1).

Whether eventually successful or not, the lives of the early settlers were both hard and heartbreaking, rendered more difficult still by a range of natural and man-made hazards. These were well described by Margaret Kiddle as follows:

Such trials resulted in many of the original settlers being foreclosed on by storekeepers or money-lenders, or being forced to sell their land or leases either to neighbours or newcomers. Others hung on tenaciously managing to eke out a precarious, and often squalid, existence. Adults and children alike slaved long hours for little return. In their spare time they worked for the squatters or other landowners while simultaneously, in many cases, stealing or 'duffing' their sheep and cattle. Some, like Ned Kelly and his followers, turned to more violent pastimes which were followed with great interest and anticipation by their less adventurous counterparts. Altogether they formed an underclass of poor and tenanted farmers who, until the turn of the century, informed the settler stereotype that was held by squatters, townspeople and bushmen alike: 'ignorant of farming, lazy at their work, and, because they lived from hand to mouth, "the worst taskmasters and the poorest payers"' (Waterhouse, 2000: 217).

Before attending their school classes, the settlers' children would usually spend time collecting firewood, grubbing or fencing, or accompanying their fathers or older siblings as they checked and reset the string of rabbit traps laid at the entrances of the burrows that dotted the properties. In the evenings, their chores completed, they would hunt opossums, go bird-nesting or, as recounted by P. J. O'Donohue whose father selected land at Swanwater in 1873, join their parents in sitting

While many selectors failed many also, slowly but surely, succeeded. They were aided by the appearance of mechanical stripping, reaping and mowing machines, more suitable ploughs and fencing materials, and a torrent of farming advice propagated in the pages of the ever-expanding rural press. reaping hay

Over time their crop yields and living standards gradually improved. Tents and bark huts were replaced by weatherboard or brick houses with wooden floors and ceilings, glass windows and galvanised iron roofs. Windmills and corrugated iron water tanks stood nearby. Homes were encircled by fenced-in gardens filled with flowers, vegetables and fruit trees. Grape or passion-fruit vines trailed along covered verandas. Trees formed windbreaks or lined dusty driveways. And carts and drays were complemented by handsome buggies in which the settlers would drive fortnightly into town to meet up with friends and acquaintances and collect their mail and supplies. This had a dramatic effect on the landscape. As one observer of the area around Yawong Hill noted, the plains that a short time earlier 'had all the appearance of the wilderness' are 'now studded with neat and pretty cottages and prosperous farms. Roads where a few years ago you would occasionally meet a swagman toiling along under his bedding, or the lonely stockman, are now alive with vehicles of every description' (cited in Palmer, 1999: 234).

As life on the selections became more settled and predictable, following a regular cycle of ploughing, sowing, planting, top-dressing and harvesting, the people in the district began to look beyond their own needs to those of the local community. All across the region bush townships were constructed or rejuvenated with newly-built shops and churches, schools and parks, and to the regret of the evangelists among the selectors, hotels and billiard rooms. In accordance with the Victorian maxims of the time, women played a major role in such community-building; supporting, breeding and nurturing while the men laboured on their farms and ran the district's affairs through such assumed positions of authority as shire councillor, church and parish elder, and president of various lodges and agricultural and sporting associations. An idea of what these womanly duties involved, and how they were viewed by such rural chroniclers as the editor of the Donald Times, can be obtained from the obituary of William and Eliza Free's second daughter, Alice Martha Free. Alice was born in Raglan in Victoria in 1866. At the age of 20, she married Edward Angus McCallum, the son of another pioneering family, at Donald in 1886. Over the next fourteen years she gave birth to eight children while all the while helping her husband run the family farm, 'Balnekiel', at Corack East. Alice died and was buried in the adjoining township of Birchip in 1949. After providing a brief summary of her long life, the newspaper reported with evident approval that:

We can sense from this, too, that unless they contained large enclaves of miners or other non-agricultural labourers, most rural communities tended to be politically, socially and sexually conservative, provincially inclined, and generally respectful and respectable. Their denizens believed in salvation and God's will, could be very generous to those among them who had fallen on hard times, but were often disapproving of any who 'failed to help themselves', or displayed unwarranted frivolity, indulgence or independence of mind. Although they enjoyed family and church gatherings, watching and playing sport, and dancing under the right circumstances, they could also be priggish and perversely self-denying. The older generations also remained connected imaginatively as well as sentimentally to their places of origin and sought, through various ways and means, to replicate their English or Scottish 'homes' in Australia. In these ways they served generally to reinforce rather than challenge or alter the colony's prevailing pro-British and pro-imperial values and culture.

The settlers' children, by contrast, were tied less to the places of their parents' and grandparents' imaginations and more to the land on which they lived, played and worked. As Margaret Kiddle enthused, this resulted in them, when young, being generally less inhibited and more carefree and high-spirited than probably their parents were at the same age.

As they grew older and more confident, they became less deferential to the district's authority figures, more inclined to challenge their parents, and, as Norman Lindsay captured so nicely in his 1930 novel Redheap (which was banned for a time in Australia), were more disposed towards skylarking and mischief-making or what the more censorious in the community decried as larrikinism. They were, as a consequence, more likely than the older generation to identify with the radical (but still racialised) images and ethos of Australia and Australians then being advanced by the 'Bulletin school' and its urban intellectuals.

While at Corack, a number of other members of William and Eliza's family married and began their own lives and families. Their eldest son, John Free, married Mary King at Carchap in 1878. Mary was the daughter of William Wyman King and Ann Tarry. They went to live at Cohuna and had six children there including Thomas Merlin Olave Elnathan King who was born at Noradjuha in Victoria in 1902 and died at Bendigo 87 years later.

On 15 October 1881 their eldest daughter, Phoebe Ann Free married John Thomas Gilchrist. They lived on a farm at Watchem and had 13 children. One of these, Charles Bertie Gilchrist, enlisted in the First AIF on 16 June 1916 and was allocated to the 29th Battalion. He departed Australia on HMAT A73 COMMONWEALTH on 19 September 1916, served in France and Belgium where he was mentioned in despatches, and returned to Australia on 25 January 1919.

Like many others in Victoria at the time a number of William and Eliza's sons decided to try their luck in Western Australia. These were first William Free jnr, who married Margaret Barbour at Emerald Hill on 7 February 1883. According to information provided by Les Free, Margaret's father was William Barbour, a carpenter from Belfast in Ireland, and her mother Marion Harper from Ayreshire in Scotland. In 1886 the couple leased (in Margaret's name) a 250-acre block of land near that of William Free senior at Corack East. They lived at Corack until after the turn of the century, having eight children there including Eliza Ada Free who married John Edward Hickmott (the brother of William Henry Hickmott) at Lalbert in 1903. Eliza and John are pictured in the photo on the left. Some time between the birth of their last child, Alan Walter Free, in 1899 and 1909 William and Margaret Free travelled to Pingelly in Western Australia where they would farm near where Henry Edward Hickmott later lived. The photograph below is probably of William Free jnr and one of his sons. It was sent in 1909 to William's brother Samuel Free and his wife Fanny. William Free jnr died in Perth in 1951, aged 91 years.

greetings from pingelly wa

On the back of this photo is inscribed:
'To Sam and Fanny from Maggie and Will wish you a happy Xmas 1909'.

A second son to go to Western Australia was Alfred Free (pictured on the left). Born at Mount Cole in Victoria in 1868, Alfred left home when he was 15 to go horse breaking. In October 1888 he applied to lease a 155-acre block of land at Corack East but had his application refused by the local land board. On 11 February 1890 Alfred, then single and living at Emu, was admitted to the Dunolly Hospital. He married Emma Tissot, the daughter of Henry Tissot and Emma Sutherland, at Mount Cole in 1890. Five years later the couple and their eldest daughter, Emma Louise Free, travelled to the goldfields at Kalgoorlie where Emma was one of the first white children in the district.

According to one of his descendants, Helen Murphy, Alfred and Emma had four children: Emma Louise Free (1891-1986) who married Arthur Mervin Darcy in Geraldton in 1913; Alice Eliza Free (1899-1982) who married Joseph Harris Collett in Boulder in Western Australia in 1919; May Victoria Free (1901-1976) who married Syd Barrett in Fremantle in 1925; and Charles William Alfred Free (1905-1986) who married Kathleen Mary Annakin in Fremantle in 1926. Darryl Brady tells us that Alfred and his family later went farming on the Peel Estate on the Mandurah Road. 'Emma died in Perth on 10 March 1917. She was buried at Karrakatta with her brother Lewis Tissott, who died on 11 Oct 1899 (aged 29), and her mother Emma (Sutherland) Tissott who died 26 Jul 1920, aged 88'. Alfred later married Eunice Schmidtt and had three further children: Elsie Free, Arthur Donald ('Mick') Free (Darryl Brady's grandfather), and Violet Gertrude Free. Alfred Free died at Beverley in Western Australia on 26 February 1946, aged 77 years. Eunice died at Mandurah twelve years later.

Helen Murphy tells us that Alfred's eldest son, Charles William Alfred Free, met his wife, Kathleen Mary Annakin, on the Peel Estate at Mandurah. Kathleen's father, Arthur Dodsworth Annakin, came from Leeds in England. He 'spent a lot of his life in the Army. He was a bugler in the Boer War. Then at only 17 years of age he fought in the 1914-1918 war. In 1923 he and his wife Jessie Comstive came to Australia on the SS AUSTERLEY. Arthur worked first in the Group Settlement scheme at Augusta. Later he was transferred to the Peel Estate'. After their marriage in Fremantle in 1926, Charles and Kathleen Free lived first at Mandurah and then at Busselton. 'During the depression years they moved around until 1937 when they settled at Bassendean'. Helen adds that 'during the 1929-45 war Charles joined the Light Horse. Later he went to New Guinea. After the war he spent most of his life in the building trade. In 1960 Charles and Kathleen left Perth with their youngest son Graham Free to tour Australia. When they reached Whyalla in South Australia they decided to stay. They lived there until Charles retirement in 1971'. He and Kathleen then returned to Western Australia where Charles died in 1986.

A third son of William and Eliza, George Bruce Free was also lured by Western Australia's gold. On 29 June 1897 the Donald Times reported in its 'Westralian news' that a 'very painful accident happened to Mr Geo Free, of Corack, quite recently. It appears he was cleaning some engine boilers when his foot became entangled, and he fell heavily into a heap of hot ashes, burning his feet considerably. Assistance was quickly at hand and he is now progressing splendidly'. On 13 July the paper's editor informed his readers that 'Mr G. Free, whose accident was reported in my last, is improving and will be able to return to his duties in the course of a few days'. George also returned to Corack where, in 1899 he used the profits obtained from his western sojourn, to purchase John Casey's farm at Massey as well as a share in the farm of a Mrs S. Stubbs of Watchem.

By his sixty-first birthday, then, William Free could look back over his life with some reasonable satisfaction. The poor and uneducated man who had emigrated from Cambridgeshire to Victoria in 1853 and worked as a shepherd at Mount Hesse and Buangor now had sheep and a property of his own. He had survived the rigours and trials of the early settlement era and was now a successful farmer and well-respected member of the district's pioneering fraternity. A number of his children had their own farms and had provided he and Eliza with grandchildren who would, in time, extend his and his family's name and legacy. He still had eight children living at home, but the eldest of these now relieved their father of much of the daily grind of managing a Wimmera block. Probably for the first time in his life, William had time aplenty to tend his horses, meet up with old friends and acquaintances, and attend the local football or race meets. In spite of these achievements William felt dispirited and unsettled. He had been generally unwell for the past two years and had recently begun experiencing cramping pains that worried him but about which he declined to see a doctor. As his family later recalled, he had grown quiet and withdrawn and seemed to prefer to get out of the house and off by himself.

On the morning of 2 June 1890 he arose early as usual and put on a clean shirt that Eliza had left out for him. He walked about the kitchen, pulled on a coat to ward off the winter cold and then left the house. At breakfast Eliza said to her son Ernest how is it your father is not in and told him to go and call him. The boy returned saying he could not see him. A second son, James, said he is likely gone down to the stack for a sheaf of hay for his horse. After finishing his breakfast James 'went out and looked towards the stack and could not see him. I then went to the paddock and got my horse. I met my brother Alfred when I came back and asked him if father had gone up to my brother William's place'. Alfred replied 'no I have not seen him for the morning'. James then rode down to the sheep paddock as he

The family reported the drowning to the police and Mounted Constable Ryan rode out to the farm to investigate. His report, subsequently read out to the inquest held into William's death, read as follows:

Constable Ryans' view was supported by both the local newspaper and the investigating magistrate, a J. P. Meyer who, in the early days and to the consternation of the local squatters, had run a store and grog shanty at the Richardson River near the Banyenong run. As we would expect William's death was the talk of the neighbourhood, both mystifying and alarming its pious and church-going residents. His death certificate indicates he was buried at the Corack cemetery which lay in the wheat fields some four miles from the township (and where some believe William and Eliza's son Alexander was buried some twenty years before). There is no tombstone to mark his grave, however, suggesting he may have been laid to rest outside the boundaries of the consecrated area.

As the family sought to come to terms with William's suicide, life continued on. The year after their father's death, Samuel Free and James Free married Fanny Johanna Shepherd and Johanna Shepherd in a double wedding held on 6 April 1891 at the home of the girl's father, John Shepherd. The two couples lived initially on separate blocks of land at Corack East. Samuel had purchased his block from his mother while James had successfully applied for his through the local licence board. A few months later the Donald Express reported that Mrs J. Free had won the first prize for a knitted quilt at the Donald Show. In October 1895 the same paper informed its readers that James had transferred the lease to his 161-acre allotment to Arthur S. Madder of Corack East. Shortly afterwards he and his family moved onto land at Lalbert East (or Talgitcha) some 50 miles north of Corack. It was where they would live most of their lives and have the last nine of their twelve children (see the photo below). James' brother Samuel and his wife Fanny also moved to Lalbert. Click here to read of their life and times there.

family of james free

James and Johanna Free (nee Shepherd) and family

Around this time William Free's farm was sold to a neighbour and Eliza and the younger Free children went to live in the nearby township of Watchem where, on 7 November 1894, Eliza married William Bruce. mary ann free and john william donnan

In 1899 Eliza's youngest daughter, Mary Ann Free married John William Donnan at Watchem (the couple are pictured on the left). Margaret Donnan from Bunbury tells us that John was born at Yeo, near Colac in the Western District of Victoria, in 1868. He was the oldest son of Hugh and Susan Donnan nee Ardill. A carpenter by trade, Hugh Donnan was born in County Down in Ireland in 1832 and emigrated to Australia from Portaferry in around 1853. Susan was born at Roscommon in Ireland in 1840. Together with her sister Jane, she sailed to Australia on the Great Tasmanian in March 1863.

Margaret continues that Hugh and Susan were married in the Presbyterian Church at St Kilda in Melbourne on 20 May 1867. After their marriage they farmed at Yeo where their six children - John, Jane, Eliza Ann, Susan, James Robert and Margaret Ethel - were all born. In around 1881 the family moved onto a 320-acre block at Sammy's Lakes near Watchem. Hugh died there of pancreatic cancer in 1885. Susan lived for another 29 years, dying at Willangie near Woomelang (where she is buried) in 1914. The lives and times of the various family members are detailed in a book on the Donnans that was originally compiled by Mary Donnan of Highton in Melbourne in 1985 and was subsequently revised and reprinted in 2001 by Jean Russell of Woomelang.

The wedding of Mary Ann Free and John William Donnan was reported by the Donald Times as 'a pleasant gathering of relatives and friends' which took place at the residence of Eliza Bruce. 'The bride, who was given away by her brother, was prettily attired in a gown of pale heliotrope cashmere, trimmed with satin and baby ribbon, and relieved with a frill of white lisse. The bridesmaids were Miss Maggie Donnan and Miss Ruby Johnson, sister and neice of the bridegroom' At the breakfast, the report continued. 'the usual toast of "Bride and Bridegroom" was honored, and at its conclusion the party drove to the residence of the bridegroom's mother, where the wedding festivities were kept up during the evening'.

According to the Donnan family book, John and Mary Ann lived initially on a 250-acre block of land, known locally as Mooney's, at Sammy's Lake where John 'grew wheat and grazed sheep'. They had five boys there: Hugh William (1900-1986), Ernest John (1902-1965), James Samuel (1903-1979), Robert (1905-09) and Leonard Harold (1907-1971). 'In 1908 John bought a block of land ... [at Willangie which] he worked from Sammy's Lake, batching in a tent as the house [on the new block] was still occupied. Margaret his youngest sister used to go and cook for him at times'. The family moved to Willangie in 1910, travelling 'in an old double-seated horse-drawn buggy ... driven by Sam Collett [who was brought up by 'Granny Bruce']. Their new house

Over the ensuing decades John acquired a number of additional blocks of land in the area and, in 1919, built a new and more substantial family home on one of these (known as McClean's). In 1926 this was extended 'to include a verandah on three sides, a large kitchen, bathroom and outside spacious laundry'. John and Mary Ann's family also grew over this time to include Arthur Harold (1909-1981), George (1911-2000), Mary (1914-14) and Eliza Mary (born at Donald in 1919). The photo above shows John and Mary Ann and their boys leaving Willangie for the wedding of John's sister, Margaret, at Sammy's Lake in around 1915. The children went to school at Willangie and Willangie East where they also attended the local Presbyterian-Methodist Church (of which John was an elder). The running of the home farm was taken over by the couple's eldest son Hugh following his marriage to Dorothy Garrett at West Brunswick in 1930 and John and Mary Ann and their daughter Mary retired to Ballarat. John William Donnan died at Ballarat in 1941. Mary Ann Donnan nee Free died there seven years later. They are both buried at Watchem. The Donnan family history indicates that they had at least fifteen grandchildren many of whom continued to live in the Watchem-Woomelang area.

In February 1902 William and Eliza's son, George Bruce Free, married Martha Clara Vogel (pictured below in the buggy with her future mother-in-law Eliza Bruce) at Watchem. Martha was the eldest daughter of Carl Vogel and Clara Liersch who had overlanded to the district from South Australia. According to the Donald Times the ceremony was performed by the Reverend J. H. Shallberg of Donald, and was 'attentively followed' by a large number of guests and wellwishers.

Sometime before the onset of the First World War, George and Martha seemed to have gone to live on Melbourne's Mornington Peninsular. One of their sons, Herbert Edward Free, who was born at Somerville in 1911, subsequently enlisted in the Second AIF at Caulfield on 20 July 1940. He was then living at Mornington and his next of kin was recorded as Martha Free. He was discharged on 14 November 1945. By then he was a private soldier in the 2/22 Infantry Battalion. Less than three years later, Herbert's father, George Free, died and was buried at Linton in Victoria.

During the First World War Eliza (pictured in the buggy) seems to have had some sort of falling out with her son Benjamin Free. For the 14 May 1917 edition of the Donald Times reported that 'at the local police court last Friday a case was heard to determine the ownership of goods seized by Waddell & Co. from Benjamin Free, of Watchem. Miss Pomeroy appeared as the claimant. After a lengthy argument the bench found in favour of the defendants and allowed 6 pound 1 shilling costs against the claimant. In a second claim by Mrs Bruce (mother of Free) the claim for furniture was allowed, but with regard to a horse, the bench decided it was the property of Free and found in favour of defendants'.

Eliza Bruce (nee Free nee Flavell) died in Watchem on 1 Jan 1925, aged 86 years. She was said to have been buried alongside William Free at Corack. Like many who countenanced death in those days, she would probably have expected to join those members of her family who had already 'crossed the divide'. While less certain of its prospects, she would probably have hoped also again to see William in order, perhaps, to ask him why he had done what he did.

William Free in Australia Life and Death at Corack East

William Free in Australia
Life and Death at Corack East