Exploring the Macvean Heritage: A Journey to Rooksdale. Part Four

The Next Chapter in the History of the Macveans, at Rooksdale.

If you read my previous post, thank you—I hope you found it interesting. You might also remember that I shared that when I started researching my great-grandparents, Annie and Alex, the information I was digging up on Trove seemed to follow a bit of a pattern.

The Pastoral Agricultural and Horticultural Society meeting notices, which begin early in the year; Rooksdale work notices; family notices throughout the year; and then the show and show results in mid to late September. Some years have examples from all these categories, and some don’t. I’m going to present the rest of the information in that general layout for consistency.

Before we get to that, though, I just wanted to share a couple of amazing photos I found in an issue of “The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser” from September 1902 about Germanton. They give us a direct look into Annie and Alex’s world. These are the sights they would have known so well.

This photograph is also a great example of why you need to question everything you find on Trove. The journalist who captioned this photo got it very wrong. This view looks north-east along Albury Road, with the Catholic Church, Our Lady of the Sorrows, on the left.

They did, however, correctly identify it as having been taken from the Riverina Hotel. I used the next photo as the banner for Part Three. This view looks south towards the Riverina Hotel, and you can make out the balcony from which the photographer took the shot in (Figure 1).

Here is a view similar to Figure 1, looking north along Albury Road in 2013. It clearly shows that the church building matches the one shown above.

And here is the view looking south. You can just make out the balcony of the Riverina next to the overhead traffic light on the right.

And one more view of Germanton, this one looking North East again, but from further down Albury Road.

And here is the current version, well, 2013 at least.

One other incident to share with you from 1901, before we move on to the new year. It’s a death in the family and one that I’m sure Annie and Alex would have been aware of.

Alexander Cameron was the son of Alex’s father’s (my 2x great-grandfather, Alexander Macvean) cousin, John Hugh Cameron, and his wife, Margaret Hill. John was the son of my 3x great-grand aunt, Margaret Macvean.

Alexander, as you can see from the notice, passed away in the same private hospital where Annie and Alex’s two daughters were born, Burnley. Annie and Alex were the closest to Albury in the family. I wonder if they got into town to visit Alexander whilst he was admitted in Burnley?

Unfortunately, there is no photo of Alexander, but I did manage to find his headstone at the Albury Pioneer Cemetery when we visited in 2018. He is buried right next to my great-grandfather, Alex, and his grandparents—Alexander’s aunt and uncle, John Hugh Macvean and Hannah Hill.

Amazingly, I do have photos of Alexander’s parents.

And how lucky for us, I even have a photograph of John’s mother, Margaret Cameron, nee Macvean, our Alex’s grandaunt.

Now back to Annie, Alex and life at Rooksdale.

Wait, I lie. One thing I have been meaning to clear up for ages. My cousin Anne asked me a while back how I knew that my great-grandmother, Agnes Brookman Macvean née Cox, was called Annie. Good question, and I was stumped. I knew I had seen it several times in different sources, but of course couldn’t find any of these when Anne asked.

I eventually found two, and they are good sources. Alex’s death notice and a death notice for Annie’s father, George Fairbairn Cox.

Now on to the new year:

1902:

And it sees Alex back on the P. A. & H. Society committee.

And here is the first of the personal notices.

I wonder how far the ladies had to walk and just how bad their discomfort was?

I’m sure Annie would have read this and rolled her eyes. These were women who lived and raised families on the land with limited resources; I’m sure walking a few miles would not have fazed them one bit.

Here is a map to show where the lane was, just down from the homestead.

No photos online of the roads in the area, but here are a couple that show what it might have looked like at the time.

Now we come to the 20th Germanton P.A. & H. Society annual show. Annie and Alex’s fifth, where they were only exhibiting in one category this year.

“Pony Stallion over 14 hands”. This is the only example that I have found so far that they exhibited in this category. There is no photo of their 2nd place stallion, but amazingly, there was one of Mair and Learmonth’s 1st place.

Full disclosure: I ran this image through the new WordPress AI enhancer to clarify what it might have looked like.

And with some amazing luck, I found a few printed photos of the actual second day of the show, the 18th of September, 1902. I will present them here and do the same as above with the AI enhancer magic.

We have this treasure trove of images of the day, I suspect, because the new railway line between Culcairn and Germanton was opened on that same day by the NSW Governor at the time, Sir Harry Rawson, and his wife. They also opened the station at Germanton upon their arrival.

We know that Alex was on the show committee this year, so I’m confident that he and Annie would have been here for this momentous occasion in Germanton’s history.

The paper even had a photo of the Vice-Regal Party on the steps of the grandstand. The same spot as where Alex had his photo taken in 1900 and 1901 as part of the show committee.

With that level of degradation in the image quality, I know this one is just an interpretation, but it still gives us an idea of what they might have looked like.

This is the Vice-Regal party getting ready to depart for the station. I’m sure again, Annie and Alex would be here somewhere.

How incredible to find these photos buried in Trove, when absolutely nothing comes up about the event in a Google search.

After 72 years of service, the rail line was closed down in 1974. This is the only photo I could find of Holbrook/Germanton station after it closed; it is from 2005.

Obviously, the new rail line made it a bit easier for people to visit the area. Here is an article about one of Germanton’s previous Presbyterian Ministers returning for a visit just a month after the opening of the new rail line.

Tiled Gallery 7: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

The Rev. Alexander M’Kinlay was the current Presbyterian Minister at the time of Rev. John’s visit.

Here is the local church, where the Rev. Walker preached on Sunday, the 5th of October 1905. It is the building on the right.

Rev. John Walker was the first full-time minister of the Germanton congregation, appointed in 1882. (At that time, he would have preached in the smaller church building on the left; this was the original church built in the 1870s). He moved on to Bathurst in 1884 but continued a long association with the Riverina over the years, returning on many occasions. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/walker-john-8958

In particular, he had quite a bit to do with the congregations of Albury and Howlong, as well as with Alex’s parents, Jessie and Alexander.

Tiled Gallery 8: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

Rev. John also officiated at the wedding of Alex’s sister, Amy Davina Ballantyne Macvean, to Mr Leonard M’Kechnie in October, 1909. Once again, I’m sure Annie and Alex would have attended this wedding in Melbourne.

This is what the Scots Church on Collins Street, Melbourne, most probably looked like on the day of Amy and Leonard’s wedding.

This was the Grand Hotel where the reception was held.

The Grand still stands today, but it was renamed The Windsor in 1920 following a change of ownership, in honour of the Prince of Wales, who visited in 1923. The Hotel Windsor – About

The most moving discovery for me came about when I began searching for information about Rev. John. I discovered that he was also the minister who led Alex’s funeral in February 1922.

Tiled Gallery 10: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

Remember the Rev. Alexander M’Kinlay mentioned and shown above? He was the Presbyterian minister of Germanton and Little Billabong from 1888 to 1906. Annie and Alex would have known him very well. Rev. Alexander preached regularly at the Little Billabong Church once it was opened.

I found articles showing that the Rev. Alex and Alex worked together on the Congregational Committee of the Church over several years. One example below.

I also found another image of Rev. Alex. It was shared on an Ancestry.com.au family tree. I contacted the owner of the tree, Maggie, who generously shared with me that the image was from the “Centenary History of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales“. I ran this image through the AI enhancer again.

Tiled Gallery 11: Courtesy of Ancestry.com.au,

Generously shared by Maggie C

I realised I actually had the book in my collection. I bought it from an online bookstore a few years back. It is over 125 years old.

Gingerly, I found Rev. Alexander’s photo, photographed it myself and ran this new copy through the AI program. The results are phenomenal.

Tiled Gallery 11a: Courtesy of the Macvean Family Archives, taken from

“Centenary History of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales“, James Cameron, 1905

This man was part of my great-grandparents’ world and knew them well.

Now, the contents of this next article would be bad at any time, as far as I’m concerned, but in 1901, they would have been particularly alarming.

Antivenom was not available at the time; it would take 31 years before it became available, and then it would only be the Tiger Snake version.https://australianprescriber.tg.org.au/articles/antivenom-update-1.html

At the time of the incident, standard first aid for snake bites included applying a ligature, sucking the wound, or making an incision and flushing the wound with potassium permanganate. These methods aimed to inactivate the venom. https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2017/02/07/hissstory–how-the-science-of-snake-bite-treatments-has-changed.html

It is a wonder that the young woman recovered so quickly.

What a way to finish the year off, and from what I have found so far, 1903 was starting the same way for Annie and Alex, with a bang.

1903:

This is the birth notice for my grandfather’s elder brother, Alexander Douglas Macvean. Born at the same private hospital as their two older sisters.

The other big news in February of 1903 was the passing of Mrs Bridget Magdalen Crowe, née Keane, the last link to one of the first colonial custodians of the Wiradjri land on which Rooksdale sat.

Just a reminder, Bridget and her late husband, James Crowe, sold the estate to Alex’s father in 1895, as discussed in part one of this series.

Next, we have the array of committee meetings that Alex attended, including the P. A. & H. Society, the Germanton Presbyterian Church and the Sporting Club.

Tiled Gallery 12: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

Here are Annie and Alex advertising the services of their Arabian Stallion, Mahomet, for the third year in a row.

Tiled Gallery 12a: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

This brings us up to show time, and Annie and Alex had two results listed. A win for best Ram 2 years and over, and they also took out the prize for Champion Merino Ram for the year.

These results, when examined more closely, are highly significant. A win in the 2 years and over category means your animal is considered an outstanding, physically prime and structurally sound example of its breed. https://www.nextgenagri.com/articles/what-makes-a-good-ram-buying-decision

According to several online sources, a win here also indicates longevity and vigour. It demonstrates ideal breed characteristics, muscle distribution, and wool quality. It increases the breeder’s commercial value and can be a pathway to taking the overall champion prize, as was the case for Alex in the 1903 show. Ram Selection Principles – Penn State Extension

I did an AI rendering of what the School of Arts building most likely looked like. It is taken from that blacked-out original I shared in Part One.

I next found Alex listed in the Sands Directory for 1903 with his cousin, Peter Macvean, who was living and working at Glenlogie at Jingellic. Their listings included the number of livestock they had at the time of printing. The three figures relate to the number of: Horses, Cattle and Sheep.

8950 sheep! That seemed like a huge number to me. I ran it through Google, and it confirmed that, for the time, it would have been considered a very large flock, making it a major commercial operation and placing Annie and Alex among the prominent graziers of the district. https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/station-life

Now, to finish the year off, a bit of drama. A huge fire at Little Billabong.

According to several sources online, the exact site of the Hotel and Post Office actually sat astride the Sydney Highway at what is now known as 8349 Hume Highway. https://www.realestate.com.au/sold/property-mixed+farming-nsw-little+billabong-700272916

Here is the site, highlighted in yellow on the 1892 Land Registry Map.

If you read Part Two of the Rooksdale posts, you might recall that I shared an article describing a day at the races at Little Billabong, where my great-grandfather was watching the races from the Cross’s Hotel. I think this site above is the site he would have watched them from, just north of the Little Billabong Rest Area, as shown below, and not the site down near the Hall on Little Billabong Road, which I incorrectly identified in Part Two.

I’m thinking this site near Little Billabong Road is where the new hotel and post office were built, after the loss of the buildings at the Cross site, and I’m pretty sure this next hand-drawn map confirms this theory.

The Public Hall, shown above, is still standing today.

This next article is interesting because it shows that Alex was in Albury the week before Christmas. I wonder whether Annie and the children were with him as well, or whether this visit was just about the estate’s business?

The Globe still stands today, well, I think it does, but it looks like it was art decoed at some time in the past.

You can still see the outline of the buildings to the left of the hotel, which match those above from 1910.

You might have noticed there were no sales figures or stock movement notices from Rooksdale for this year; in fact, this mention below was the only one I could find.

I believe this was because 1903 marked the end of a devastating eight-year drought known as the Federation Drought. Lasting from 1895 to 1903, it is widely considered the worst drought in Australia’s recorded history. https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/federation-drought

The Albury Express is littered with letters from the public describing the severity of the drought at the time. Here is one specifically about the Riverina area, which Rooksdale was part of.

What I find fascinating here is that, when you think about how devastating this drought was and then take into account the number of sheep Annie and Alex were running on Rooksdale at the time, you realise just how skilled they were as graziers.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics holds records for the drought showing that, by the turn of the century, Australia’s sheep numbers totalled more than 100 million. By the end of 1903, nearly half had perished due to the effects of the drought. https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/featurearticlesbyCatalogue/068F13BCCD03F27BCA2569DE001F1072?OpenDocument

I then stumbled upon this little gem below. Imagine this happening today—no separation of Church and State. Although when you think about what is happening in the USA at the moment, maybe it is not as unimaginable as I think.

Article 2: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

1904:

No birth to start this year off, but rather a death and a near miss.

William Brookman, highlighted in the article above, is Annie’s uncle. He is the brother of her mother, Agnes Cox née Brookman. I have this amazing photo of him taken in 1874 on his release from gaol after serving 6.5 years of a 15-year sentence for bushranging.

No such luck for David Williams, the man who lost his life in the Joker Mine shaft, no photo of him anywhere. He was 35 years of age and left a wife and three children to mourn his death.

I did manage to find a photo of the setup that David and William were probably working with on that day. This photo below shows the whim, which is the horse-powered device, that winds the bucket or “kibble” as it is known, full of mullock (waste rock) from the shaft, ready to be disposed of.

Depending on the size of the shaft, the amount of mullock that the kibble could have been transporting at the time it fell on David could have been anywhere from half a tonne to one and a half tonnes. https://share.google/hReMdd5qmdeFOkwld

Another newspaper report of the incident in The Wyalong Advocate explained that William was also injured, sustaining injuries to one of his hands and an arm. The report further speculated that he would probably suffer more from the significant mental shock of witnessing his colleague being crushed than from any physical injury. This observation is notable given that it was 1904. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/108533454?searchTerm=%22david%20williams%22%22wyalong%22

Before we leave William, one other find that just appeared, a new photo. Admittedly, it is rough, but still, it is of William and was taken just four months before the accident above.

That is a 52-year-old William, 2nd from the right in the back row. I enlarged and put it through the AI enhancer to see what it would make of the image.

Not too bad considering what it had to work with.

Back to Annie and Alex, we move on to the first of the P. A. and H. Society meetings of the year, and you might notice something here of significance.

Yes, Alex was voted in as President of the society for this year, and the committee just happened to have a group photo taken. They are shown here, assembled on the steps of the showgrounds grandstand.

I shared the story of how I found this photo in my 2019 post titled “A Family History Road Trip”.

I noticed the digital record above was missing one name, J. S. Stewart (Sec.) So I have included the list of names from the original photo below. It confirms exactly where everyone was positioned in the photo.

Here is the AI-enhanced version of my great-grandfather, Alex.

We now come to the first big family gathering of the year for Annie and Alex: the wedding of his sister, Margaret, who married John Smith Burnet. It was held at the family home where Alex and Margaret grew up, Etheldene, at Howlong.

My cousin Tony, who is the great-grandson of Margaret and John, had a copy of their wedding invitation and very generously shared it with me.

The church opened on 11th March 1900, and it is still standing today.

Alex’s father, Alexander, was instrumental in getting the church built, Jessie, his wife, as well, even though she is not mentioned directly in this snippet below about the funding of the church.

This amazing little piece of family history above had another surprise hiding within its pages. Check out who was the first minister at Howlong.

Back to Margaret and John’s wedding. This map below shows the possible journey that Annie, Alex and the family took from Rooksdale to Howlong to attend the big day.

I haven’t been able to confirm it as yet, but I’m pretty sure that “Brightonville” marked as “recently viewed” on the map below is actually Etheldene.

According to the “internet”, this hour-and-a-quarter trip today would have been roughly a three-day journey for the family back in 1904. Apparently, horses pulling a carriage with passengers could average about 4-6 miles an hour (6.4 to 9.7km). This tallies out to about 35 km a day. Also, horses, at the time, had work shift limits of about 5-6 hours a day, which limited the travel time. https://shopus.parelli.com/blogs/savvystation/how-far-can-a-horse-travel-in-a-day

We are so lucky that the Albury Banner printed an article describing the wedding, along with a full list of the guests and the presents they gave to Margaret and John. What an insight!

Tiled Gallery 14a: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

That is a veritable who’s who of my family. There are my 2x great-grandparents, Alex and Jessie, Father and Mother of the bride, Annie and Alex, of course, Mr and Mrs A.B.S. Macvean, my 3x great-grandmother, Mrs Ballantyne, Alex and Margaret’s grandmother. All of their brothers and sisters, and the Camerons, Smiths, Beggs and Walfords, are an assortment of aunts, uncles and cousins.

Mr and Mrs J. M. Ballantyne are Alex’s uncle and aunt. James MacMillan Ballantyne is his mother Jessie’s brother. What a family catch-up this would have been.

Tony also shared a photo from his collection of the actual bridal party. It was taken in the grounds of Etheldene at Howlong Station.

L-R: Edith/Amy Macvean, (sister) J C McPhee, (best man) Jessie Davina Macvean, Jessie Macvean (niece), John Smith Burnet, (Groom), Margaret Ann Macvean, (bride), David Macvean, (brother), Colin Cameron, (nephew), Alexander Macvean, Amy/Edith Macvean, (sister)

It is not the best quality, so I ran it through AI. It can’t quite get the faces right.

So, how is this for a tangled web of relationships: Margaret’s grandmother, Margaret Kennedy Ballantyne née Smith and John’s mother, Helen Joan Burnet née Smith, are sisters. Making John (the Groom) and Margaret’s mother, Jessie Davina, first cousins. This means that Margaret was marrying her first cousin once removed, and John was doing the same, marrying his first cousin once removed.

The little flower girl is Annie and Alex’s daughter, Jessie; my grandfather’s sister, and Colin, the page boy, is the son of Alex’s father’s cousin, Margaret Cameron née Hill (Figure 9).

And one final interesting fact, the best man, John Claude McPhee, actually worked at Howlong station for several years, as the children’s tutor from around 1898. In that time, he met his future wife, Isobel Molly Macvean, daughter of Alex’s uncle, John Zielger Huie Macvean.

Article 3: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

Here is the church where Molly and John were married.

How lucky, once again, this church still stands today and the original school building too, by the looks of it.

Next for Annie and Alex, it was show time again. Their seventh!

Class A- Blood Horses: refers to Thoroughbreds or Blood Horses, as they were often termed. A win here for Annie and Alex signified that the horse was a premium exhibit. It also signified high-breeding standards, that Annie and Alex were exhibiting at a premium judging level, and a win here could bring in some good prize money and, more importantly, cement the bloodline’s quality and value. https://www.rasnsw.com.au/globalassets/document-library/legal/ras—general-regulations-2025_09_30.pdf

The win in Class D- Merino Sheep meant that Annie and Alex were producing an animal that ranked highly in commercial production value and structural correctness. https://www.wool.com/globalassets/wool/about-awi/media-resources/publications/sheep-selection-tools/sheep-selection-tools.pdf

I’m sure wins in these classes, such as the Blood Horses, would have helped when it came to advertising the services of Mahomet.

I couldn’t find a record of a show ball being held in 1904, but I did find this article below about a Bazaar to raise funds to help pay for the cost of an extension to the School of Arts building. And look at who was running the produce and flower stall.

That is Annie and her aunt, Jean Smith Ross, née Strachan, her mother’s half-sister.

Once again, there are very few notices of sales or business happenings from Rooksdale appearing in Trove in this period. These are the few I came across.

I think this might have been because, even though the Federation Drought was officially over, its effects were still being felt in the district. As highlighted in these few articles below.

Tiled Gallery 16: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

It wasn’t until early May that there was any real relief from the effects of the drought, and luckily, this continued on into the winter months.

The colder weather, in turn, had its own effects on the stock.

Setting up the district for the return of the heat to finish the year off.

Not only did Annie and Alex have to contend with the rising heat and all that would have entailed while running a property of 6000 odd sheep and raising three children under the age of six, but they also had to deal with losing two elder members of the family in the last four weeks of the year.

The first would have been devastating: Alex’s grandmother, his mum’s mum, who had been living with Jessie and Alexander at Howlong since Alex’s grandfather, the Rev. David, had passed.

Figure 52: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

This bereavement notice below would have been placed by my 2x great-grandparents, Jessie and Alexander.

The next death was just two days after Margaret’s, and it was my 2x great-grandfather, Alexander’s uncle, Allan Macvean.

Tiled Gallery 19: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

Allan was the father of Peter Macvean, who owned Glenlogie at Jingellic, just south of Rooksdale. I mentioned Peter in Part Three of these posts.

The family link is with Peter’s mother, Annie Macvean, who was Alex’s grandfather, John Hugh Macvean’s sister.

Well, we thought that was the only link and that Annie had just married another random Macvean. But then I found this article, and it turns out that Allan was a cousin—if we believe what is written in his obituary.

Well, we have come to that time again, the end of the post. Still heaps more amazing information to share with you about Annie and Alex and their story at Rooksdale. Look out for the imaginatively named: Part Five!, out soon.