Christina Strachan and James Roy Strachan

Banner Image: Former Travellers Joy Inn, Courtesy of Jon Graham from Gdaypubs https://www.gdaypubs.com.au/NSW/kyeamba/52109/former-travellers-joy-inn.html

Christina is my 3x great-grandmother, and James is her second husband. They met when Christina took the position of housekeeper at the Inn James was managing for John Smith, in the early 1860s.

The Inn was known by a number of different names, the Kyamba Inn, the Travellers’ Rest Inn and the Travellers’ Home Hotel. The inn was situated at Kyeamba in the Riverina area of New South Wales.

The extract below is from a phenomenal letter that John Smith wrote explaining a little of Christina’s history when her son, William, was charged and sentenced to death for bush-ranging. Yes, it is a fascinating story and one for another post, but suffice to say how incredibly lucky we are to have this record of their personal history.

If you read my previous post, “Part Three: Rooksdale Estate”, you might have guessed why I highlighted Mr McLaurin’s name above. This is the same family who owned the “Yarra Yarra” run adjacent to Rooksdale, my great-grandparents’, Annie and Alex’s, property.

I think the “Mr Paterson” whom Christina found the position with for William was referring to Mr Myles Patterson, who owned part of the famous Boonoke Station, just north-east of Deniliquin.

Here is the Kyamba Inn marked on the New South Wales Land Registry Maps from 1883.

There is no photo of the Inn that I can find, but I do know that the building has survived. Alex and I found it on our last visit to the area back in November 2023.

How incredible is that? This is the building where my 3x great-grandmother, my 3x great-grand aunt, and uncle lived 161 years ago. Damn!

Here it is today on Google Maps.

While searching for information on the Inn, I came across another phenomenal family link to the building that I was unaware of.

Five years before Christina started working there, my 3x great-grandfather, Rev. David Hunter Ballantyne, married James Strachan’s sister, Jane, to George Smith, the son of John Smith, who owned the Inn.

No photos of Jane, or her husband, George, or her father, Peter, that I can find, but I do have one of John Smith, George’s father. This is the man who employed my 3x great-grandmother in 1863 and supported her through what I can only imagine was a horrendous time, when her son was sentenced to death.

And of course, I’m so lucky I have a photo of my 3x great-grandfather, Rev. David, which I have shared before but will share again.

From what I can discover, Christina and James were living at the Inn until the late 1860s.

By 1870, according to Trove, Christina and James had taken up land 23 km north of the Inn, on either side of the main Sydney road. This is confirmed in the next article, which describes the location of another lot of land adjacent to James and Christina’s.

With the parish information, I was able to find them actually named on the Land Registry Services maps.

Below, just a bit of a comparison as to where their land was in relation to the Inn.

Then in 1871, James and Christina were taking up more land, this time in the Tarcutta area, 25 km north, further up the main Sydney Road or the Hume Highway as it is now known.

Here it is mentioned in the Government Gazette for Jan 1871.

From a number of different articles I found on Trove, it looks like 1871 was a pretty traumatic year for the Strachan family. I came across an article discussing James’s brother John, who actually managed the Travellers’ Inn before James.

He left the Traveller’s Inn in 1861 and opened his own Inn in Maracket, about 90 km south of Kyeamba, right on the border of NSW and Victoria.

Then, nine years later, this happened. This is the article I initially found on John.

So bloody sad, and for one of his sons to see him do it. John had just turned 50 years old.

John’s wife, by the way, was Isabella Strachan née Copeland. She continues to manage the Inn for decades after losing John and passes away in 1919 at the grand age of 95.

I can only imagine the effect of losing John like that must have had on James and Christina. They, of course, were living on either their land holdings in (Map 2) or their 600 acres in Tarcutta (Figure 12) at the time.

Their property, I discovered, was called “Daisy Hill”. Unfortunately, I can find no mention of where it was actually situated in the Tarcutta area.

This is the map of the Tarcutta Parish, which sits just above the township of Tarcutta, which is actually in the next parish over from their land holdings, called Umutbee.

I scoured this map in detail for either their names or the name of the property, but nothing.

Christina and James lived at Daisy Hill for another nine years until James died in 1880. Interestingly, there is no death notice printed for James in the press at the time.

I did, however, find this copy of the index card from the NSW State Archives Indexes to Deceased Estates, which confirms the year James passed away. (This was also how I discovered the name of the property.)

Next, I found this listing from the NSW Government Gazette for letters of administration on James’ estate printed in July 1880, which means we can narrow his death date down to sometime between January and July of 1880.

There is one particular mention in this Gazette notice that might be a hint as to where Daisy Hill was located, “…near Tarcutta“.

When you go back and look at the Land Registry maps, Christina and James’s land, shown in (Map 2), is in the Parish of Keajura, which is the Parish just below Umutbee, the Parish where the town of Tarcutta is situated.

With the magic of Google Maps, I was able to trace back from Tarcutta to where Christina and James’s land was situated with some certainty, thanks to the incredible skills of those 19th-century surveyors and confirm that it was only 14 km to the south of the town of Tarcutta. (The bottom left of Map 4 below joins with the right top of Map 5.)

Below are roughly Maps 4 and 5 shown on Google Maps today.

So, I’m thinking that these Strachan Land Holdings from (Map 2) are actually the property of Daisy Hill. How good is that?

I am just stunned at the accuracy of those 19th-century maps when you compare them with the aerial maps of today. What skill these surveyors had.

I hope you have enjoyed this quick glimpse of this branch of my family tree. The Strachans have much more to share and will feature in future posts.