The Continuing History of the Macveans, the Family Property at Little Billabong, and So Much More.

 

Banner Image: Courtesy of Adventurebeatz Travel Australia, YouTube

Hello, thanks for joining me for part three of the Rooksdale story, and welcome to a new year. Yes, since I published part two, we have clicked over into 2026, and what a start to the new year it has been.

The aftermath of the Bondi Massacre, the Venezuela invasion, the capture of Maduro, the US’s threats against Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, the continuing war in the Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, the protests and mass killings in Iran, the murder of a young Mum, Renee Good in her car in Minneapolis by ICE Agents, the bush-fire tragedy in Victoria, the floods in northern Queensland and it is only the 13th of January as I type this.

Quick Update: (It has actually taken me two months to finish this post; it is now the 23rd of March, and OMG!, the world is imploding. In the last 8 weeks, the US and Israel have started a war with Iran, Iran started bombing a number of its neighbours in retaliation, Israel started bombing Lebanon, and heaps of people have lost their lives. Iran has closed the Straits of Hormuz and bombed oil tankers, the price of oil has skyrocketed, which means diesel has gone from $1.98 a litre 2 weeks ago to $2.99 a litre today, but it is all good. To quote the orange oracle, “nothing bad can happen; only good can happen”)

It really feels like the world is on a knife-edge at the moment, and it just hammers home to me how fortunate we are here in Australia to be living the life we are. And how lucky I am to be able to sit here, researching and creating, while all that chaos unfolds.

After that little intro into my world, back to Rooksdale and my great-grandparents, Annie and Alex Macvean, we left them at the end of Part Two, married and about to start their lives together on Rooksdale in 1898.

Our first mention of this new life is just three months after their wedding. It is a gazette notice of the planned resumption of a certain parcel of land on Rooksdale and the closure of an unnecessary road.

Here are the portions mentioned, 5 & 6, highlighted on the County Map below. I’ve also marked in yellow what I think is the road they are talking about that crosses both portions.

It looks like the resumption of land and the road closure didn’t go through, as the road is still in the same position today. It is now known as Westby Road, which joins the Hume Highway.

It looks like the road may have been one of those nagging long-term issues because here it is being discussed at a Shire Council meeting some 12 years later.

I know this is the minutia of life, and most probably wouldn’t have rated a second thought at the time, but when it is all we have 116 years later, it’s a small window into Annie and Alex’s life.

The next article is the first mention of Alex’s long-term association with the Germanton Pastoral Agricultural and Horticultural Society (Germanton P. A. and H. Society)

The P. A. and H. Societies were really the backbone of these small rural communities in N.S.W. They have been in existence since 1822. Historically, they have provided a hub for the community to gather and share ideas on produce, livestock and farming techniques. They really encouraged improvement in these skills through the awarding of trophies and awards at annual local shows. https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/2043

I managed to find a photo of the original Germanton School of Arts building in Trove from 1906, where the meeting above was held.

The shire hall that sits on the same site today is beautiful, but it is not the original building that Alex and the committee would have met in at this time. The building shown below was completed in 1915.

Wait, I just realised, look at the building to the right. I wonder if that is the remnants of the original building? It looks similar to me.

We were very fortunate that we got to visit the site back in 2018.

You will note in (Figure 4) that Alex is donating to the Germanton P. A. & H. Societies’ funds; he was not actually a member of the committee as yet, and when I checked the list of show prizes for 1898, his name didn’t appear. Of course, this doesn’t mean he didn’t exhibit any livestock; maybe he just wasn’t lucky enough in this first year to win a prize.

Someone else’s name does appear in the prize list, though.

How fantastic is that? Annie had the honour of being the first one in the family to win a prize exhibiting at the show. She and Alex had only been married for nine months at this time, and even though she had probably been visiting the area for years, she was only a new permanent resident.

I can sew, but I had no idea what a “Collection of Whitework” was referring to. Wikipedia provided the answer.

The term whitework encompasses a wide variety of specific forms of embroidery and can refer to freestyle, counted thread, and canvas-work techniques. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitework_embroidery

They even had some examples of the type of work that Annie might have done.

Examples of Whitework Embroidery

Tiled Gallery 1: Courtesy of Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitework_embroidery

Then a month on from the show and ten months to the day from their wedding this happened for Annie and Alex.

The birth of their first child, Jessie Agnes Macvean, my grandfather’s eldest sister. I have one photo of Jessie, thanks to my cousin, Greg. It is a bit blurry, so I ran it through the AI enhancer on Ancestry, and this is what she might have looked like.

Jessie Agnes Macvean, Circa: 1915-1920

Figure 7c: Courtesy of the Macvean Family Archives

“Burnley” was a private hospital established and run by Dr Cleaver Woods in 1888. I can’t find a photo of Burnley, but Dr Woods had his home built right next door to the hospital in 1898, called “Valetta”, and a photo was taken of it. Valetta was demolished in 1969, and the local Convention Centre now stands on the site, but somewhere in this area, Jessie was born. https://share.google/W3wUA5Dkykix4PV32

Next, we have a couple of mentions of the business that was happening at Rooksdale. In this instance, it was the purchase of some ewes and rams for the stock on the estate and the sale of some Rooksdale wool.

Tiled Gallery 2: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

The Presbyterian Church at Little Billabong, mentioned below, was first discussed in Part One. It is where Annie’s brother, my great uncle, Josiah Cox, married his fiancée, Miss Emily Grace Broadribb. That was on May 20th 1908. This next article is almost eight years earlier than that, and in it, Alex is calling for tenders for the construction of the church.

A month later, Alex and the rest of the Presbyterian Church Committee are actually meeting at Rooksdale to discuss the tenders.

Here is the amazing photo I shared in Part One of the actual church still standing 80 years later, just before it was demolished.

Here is the site of the church on the County Map and it shows that it was just down the road from Rooksdale on the other side of the Sydney Road. It is the yellow-highlighted number 8 below.

Unbeknownst to me, I actually took a photo of the site where the church sat on our visit back in 2018. This photo below is a panoramic, so Calan’s face is a bit squished, but right behind him in that clearing is where the church once sat.

You can see that the line of trees that runs from the top of the path to the left side of the photo follows the banks of the creek, which matches exactly with the map above.

Next is another example of Annie and Alex’s involvement in their local community.

Article 1: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

I scoured the internet for a photo of people from 1900 enjoying a dance in a woolshed in Australia, but I couldn’t find one. The closest I got was this fantastic photo from 1910 of people dancing outside the Lion’s Den Hotel in Northern Queensland.

My thinking is that the dance at Annie and Alex’s woolshed probably looked something similar to this.

I then went down a rabbit hole, this time trying to find a photo of the new wool shed. Of course, I couldn’t find one of Annie and Alex’s, but I did find a photo of one built at the same time in Lockhart, about 100km northwest of Rooksdale.

I then found this amazing photo below of a shed that is still standing in South Australia that looks like it followed the same building principles as the one in Lockhart.

Apparently, this design of woolshed was thought to be the most efficient at the time. It was designed in the shape of a T with the shearing stations and pens at one end and the wool sorting room at the other. https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5062354

I wonder if Annie and Alex’s woolshed looked anything like this?

You might have noticed, if you have been reading this series of posts on Rooksdale, that the same set of names appears in the different Trove articles over and over again. Lawson, Broadribb, Ross and McLaurin, to name a few.

Mrs Gordon McLaurin, who appears in (Article 1) above with Annie and her sister, Jean Ross, and who provided the music for the dance, was actually Miss Elizabeth Mary McLaurin.

The McLaurins were neighbours of Annie and Alex; you can see in (Map 2) that the McLaurins owned the land on the other side of Little Billabong Creek, adjacent to Annie and Alex.

Here they are appearing in the Pastoral Directories for 1913.

As you can see, from the number of McLaurins listed, they were a prolific family; they had been settled in the area since 1854, so the family had taken up a lot of land around the original selection, “Yarra Yarra” made by the family patriarch, James McLaurin. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/124224751

I found a pastoral run map of the Yarra Yarra run on the NSW Land Registry Service, which confirmed that it covered a large area to the south of Rooksdale and east of the main Sydney Road.

I’ve inserted an extract of the full run map below; interestingly, it shows Lot 6, the Rooksdale Homestead site on its outer edge with the previous owner’s name noted (James Crowe).

Like Annie, there is no photo of Mrs Gordon R. McLaurin online. She was actually Miss Elizabeth Mary McLaurin, and she and Gordon were cousins, hence the same last name.

I managed to find a photo of Gordon in the NSW Parliament archives, as it turns out, he was a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly for nearly 13 years.

This is a face that Annie and Alex would have known very well.

Just out of interest, Peter McVean, who appears above Alex’s listing (Figure 15), was actually Alex’s father’s cousin. Peter was the son of my 3x great-grand aunt, Annie Macvean, and Allan Macvean.

I’m sure Annie and Alex would have known Peter and the rest of the family well, as Jingellic is only 55 km southeast of Rooksdale, and they were in the same business together, sheep, and I’m sure they would have moved in the same professional circles.

Now we will just jump back to 1899 for a minute, for we get our first record of Alex sitting on the committee of the Germanton P. A. and H. Society. (Pastoral Agricultural and Horticultural Society)

Oh, my word. I checked out what they were referring to with “… passed last year…School of Arts and the show committee.“

There was a huge drama when the show committee went to book the School of Arts building for use during show week to hold their ball and other show social events. They found that the Catholic Church committee had gotten in first and booked it for the same dates for their church bazaar and social events, presumably to cash in on the extra people who would be around for the show.

Apparently, the issue was that the show committee were at the door of the School of Arts the first morning that bookings could be taken, only to find that the Catholics had nabbed it. It was deduced that the only way this could have happened was that a member of the Show Committee who was of the catholic persuasion must have taken that privileged knowledge they could only have gotten from attending the Show Committee meeting and used it for the Catholics’ benefit.

A war of words erupted in the press between the gentlemen of the show committee and those Catholic members who were thought to be the culprits. It ended with the resignation of Mr S. P. Bowler from the position of President of the P. A. & H. Society, as well as his membership of the society.

I have sat on a few committees in my time, and it is amazing to see that nothing has changed.

Next is the mention of the actual show results for 1899, where Alex scores his first win. We also find Annie’s brother, Josiah Cox, making an appearance.

Dog breeding, this is new information for me, but it makes sense, as Alex and Annie were working sheep on Rooksdale.

In regard to Josiah’s wins, I managed to find a photo of a prize-winning team of buggy horses from an agricultural show in Adelaide in 1912, just to give us an idea of what Josiah was exhibiting.

And a couple of Harness Trotters from just 8 years earlier who had won races in Bendigo.

I’m imagining that the 1899 show would have been a big deal for the small town of Germanton and the surrounding area, as they had a special guest to officially open the show that year. The newly minted Premier of New South Wales, Mr William John Lyne, who had only assumed the office the week before the show.

Next, we move forward once again to 1900, and thanks to Trove and the amazing slivers of information it has stored on Annie, Alex and the family, we find that life at Rooksdale starts to take on a recurring rhythm.

The new year starts with the annual general meeting of the Germanton P. A. & H. Society, where the new committee is voted in, and show dates are set. Next, we usually get an array of sale notices for stock produced on Rooksdale that Alex is selling, and if we are really lucky we get a mix of various notices on personal issues that have occurred to the family. This then culminates in notices of the Annual Germanton Show at the end of September with a listing of all the exhibitors who received a prize.

Life for Annie, Alex and the family follows this general rhythm for the next 20 years, as loosely set out below.

1900:

I’m sure more sales were happening from Rooksdale throughout the year than just these shown above; these just happen to be the ones lucky enough to be recorded.

This notice above refers to the Patriotic Fund set up to provide support to the families and servicemen who were fighting in South Africa in the Boer War. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-61827-2_2

Tiled Gallery 4: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

The war had been raging for five months at the time Annie and Alex were donating.

Next, a few more glimpses into life around Little Billabong and Germanton.

Tiled Gallery 6: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

Obviously, Annie and Alex were very satisfied with George Ayling’s work on their woolshed, as they were able to convince the Church committee to award him the tender on the new church at Little Billabong as well.

And as we have seen the Little Billabong Church (Figure 10), it is only right to share the original Germanton Church with you as well. This photo is from a visit that Alex and I made back in July 2023.

Just three weeks after Annie and Alex were holding the tenders meeting at Rooksdale, we have the notice for the eighteenth Germanton Show, Annie and Alex’s third since moving to Rooksdale, and this time, both have some success.

 

Alex wins the “Ewe, any age, with lamb at foot.” This classification has been commonly featured for over a century at NSW P. A. & H. Shows. It is used to “…evaluate the breeding capability, maternal qualities and the quality of the lamb, often requiring the lamb to be of the ewe’s own.” https://share.google/ycUUeEcgGKBEvGssZ

Annie won again for her sewing skills, and then she also tied for first place with Mrs Polson for best Hot Chutney. Now that is one recipe I wish I had.

And here is a bonus to finish off 1900, a photo of Alex with his fellow P. A. & H. Society committee members at the show.

It’s a bit battered, as it was over 115 years old when it was scanned into the matrix, but what a photo! This is a time portal straight back to either Wednesday the 26 or Thursday the 27th of September 1900, as it was taken at the actual show.

Alex is sitting on the very left of the top row, next to him is his neighbour, Gordon R. McLaurin. Immediately below Gordon is his brother Archibald, and at the very bottom of the row that Alex is at the head of, the other McLaurin brother, John.

1901:

Here is Alex starting the year on the P. A. & H. Society committee.

 Next our collection of business notices.

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

A little context to the sale notices above.

A 2-tooth Merino Wether is a castrated male sheep generally between 12- 18 months old. The 2-tooth description indicates that it has lost its baby teeth and has its first two permanent teeth, two adult incisors, which are in the centre of its lower jaw. https://baregamerino.com.au/low-fat-merino-table-lamb/

A Wether, in general, is a male sheep that has been castrated. Apparently, castration makes the sheep less aggressive and actually improves the quality of its meat and wool. https://www.sheep101.info/sheepandlambs.html#:~:text=A%20castrated%20male%20sheep%20is%20called%20a%20wether.%20Wethers%20are%20less%20aggressive%20than%20rams.

Castrating 820 sheep must have been a huge undertaking and fairly gory work back then as well!

And of course, a Merino Ewe is a female sheep of the Merino breed. They are renowned for producing some of the finest, softest and most valuable wool. https://share.google/iUaD2vVDykVFK6BIm

Next is our collection of personal notices, and this first notice is for the birth of Annie and Alex’s second child, Jean Isabel Macvean.

We are so lucky, we have a couple of photos of Aunty Jean in the archives. Ancestry AI has worked its magic again.

Three months after welcoming Jean to the family, they were farewelling one of the matriarchs of the family, Alex’s grandmother, Hannah Macvean née Hill, my 3x great-grandmother.

Tiled Gallery 9: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

And if having the photo of Hannah was fantastic enough, thanks to my 3x great-aunt by marriage, Helen Macvean née Griffith and finding her long-lost family photo album, we have a photograph of Hauteville, where Hannah passed away. (If you are interested, check out the full story of the album in my earlier post, “Long Lost Family Found” June 2024)

There are no funeral notices for Hannah, unfortunately. From what I can tell, none of the local papers went to press on a Monday, and as she passed away on a Sunday, there is no printed record of her funeral. So I can’t confirm that Annie and Alex actually attended. But I’m sure if they could have, they would have been there.

We were so lucky again on our trip back in 2018; we were able to visit Hannah’s burial spot. (Yes, it was a big family history tour.)

Hannah is buried with her husband, John Hugh Macvean, and also her grandson, Alexander Ballantyne Smith Macvean. Yes, spoilers, this is where Alex is buried, too.

But forget that for the minute, back to when Alex was still alive and kicking. The following notice confirms Alex’s 2nd year on the Germanton Church committee.

Big things were happening for the Germanton Presbyterian community in 1901, but before we get to that, here is the next big function for the whole Germanton community, the next P. A. & H. Society show. Annie and Alex’s fourth.

So, we know that Annie and Alex were involved in the show this year, but it is hard to say whether they exhibited any sheep, as they don’t appear in the official results. They did, however, appear in the results in the following category.

The dog category again. “…Secured a first for slut…” Wow, that is a title to be proud of. I wonder if that went “…straight to the poolroom!” (If you are reading this in a hundred years from now, that is, if we are still around, check out “The Castle”, an Australian movie from 1997.)

There was another function Annie and Alex attended in relation to the show this year: the annual show ball.

See you learn something new every day, and for me, it is a lesson from September 1901. I didn’t even know that “pleasantest” was even a word, but according to Google, it is. So it must have been a great night for Annie and Alex. They danced away the night on the balcony of the Riverina Hotel.

This is the style of dress Annie might have been wearing that night, an Edwardian ball gown.

Tiled Gallery 10: Courtesy of Pinterest

I can almost see Annie and Alex on the Riverina’s balcony.

I managed to find a couple of photos of the hotel from 1941, I know, forty years after that night, but I imagine it probably looked very similar at the time of the dance.

The hotel still stands today and is still operating as the Riverina Hotel.

It was great to see that Annie and Alex got some time to socialise, as 1901 was definitely a busy year for them.

This year would have seen them spinning many plates at the same time. The running of Rooksdale, its household and staff, the multiple committees Alex was on and the resulting community functions they were then involved in. Not to mention they had two children under the age of three at the time, and it was about to get even busier.

Here is a great little example of Annie trying to manage all those plates.

As I alluded to earlier, 1901 was a big year for the Germanton Presbyterian community, but it was also true for the Little Billabong Presbyterians, which we know Annie and Alex were part of, too.

Both churches had major events that were happening at the same time that definitely would have added a couple of extra spinning plates to the mix. The opening of new church buildings.

Tiled Gallery 11: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

This, of course, is the church pictured in (Figure 10) above.

I did a little bit of a dive on the Rev. James Henry, as I hadn’t heard of him before in my online wanderings. It turns out that he was the fourth minister appointed to the Albury Ministry after Alex’s maternal grandfather and my 3x great-grandfather, the Rev. David Hunter Ballantyne’s ministry ended in 1869. https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3416635810/view?partId=nla.obj-3448477919#page/n5/mode/1up

The Rev. Henry ministered in Albury for 12 years from 1878 to 1890, when he left for a ministry in Victoria. He did, however, return to the area frequently right up to his death in 1914 to preach at special occasions.

One of those occasions was the Jubilee celebration of the church in Albury, and there just happened to be another special guest at the celebration, someone I only discovered thanks to my research on James. Alex’s maternal grandmother, my 3x great-grandmother, Margaret Kennedy Ballantyne née Smith.

There was a full page expose published at the time on the Jubilee, which I have condensed into the three columns below.

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

What a fantastic find, and I had never seen this mention of Margaret before either. This is so special as in my experience, it is very rare to have female ancestors referred to in a social context like this.

Here are Alex’s grandparents, pictured below.

The Rev. David passed away in April 1889, twelve years before the Jubilee.

And here is the other big event that was happening at the same time as the opening of the church at Little Billabong, the opening of the new church at Germanton.

I think referring to the gathering as large in the above article was a bit of an understatement. Check out this excerpt from another article on the opening below.

500 people! Jesus, Mary and Joseph (I can say that because I’m a lapsed Catholic) and they all took their tea in the old church, shown in (Figure 23a). I’m sure Annie would have been one of those ladies who so generously and ably helped with serving.

This was the new Knox Presbyterian Church that opened on Wednesday, the 2nd of October 1901, right next to the old church in Germanton.

The church still stands today, and yes, Alex and I had the opportunity to visit it back in 2023.

And here is another fantastic find that I only just stumbled onto, a photo of both churches taken in August 1902. This is just 10 months after the opening, and a window straight into Annie and Alex’s time.

How is this for a comparison? The same spot, almost, 111 years apart, above and below.

And this is our version from 2023.

I know this next article is out of the loose timeline I’ve been following, but I just discovered it after one of the articles about the opening of the new church in Germanton, and it is another great example of the type of work that Alex was managing at Rooksdale.

Lamb Marking is the process of ear tagging, castration, vaccinating and drenching. It typically occurs between the ages of 2-12 weeks of age and is performed to enhance the sheep’s long-term health. https://www.nsw.gov.au/regional-and-primary-industries/livestock/sheep/lamb-marking#:~:text=Lamb%20marking%20refers%20to%20the%20procedures%20of,the%20potential%20to%20result%20in%20disease%20outbreaks.

Once again, I can only imagine that lamb marking must have been a very challenging process 124 years ago compared to today.

Our next find suggests that Annie was still spinning those plates by herself; obviously, filling that general servant position, first advertised in October, was proving challenging.

Just for some context, if we focus on the area around Little Billabong, according to the 1901 NSW Census, there were 393 women in Germanton at the time, 5447 in Albury, 425 in Howlong and 4596 in Wagga Wagga. https://hccda.ada.edu.au/Collated_Census_Tables/NSW-1901-census.html

That is one limited employee market to try and entice out to live and work on a small, isolated sheep station, in my opinion.

We finish off the year with Alex and Annie advertising another revenue stream for Rooksdale that I had no idea about until I found it on Trove.

First off, they owned an Arabian stallion racehorse? I mean, this certainly suggests that they were making ends meet. Of course, there will be more to the story, so I tried to find some information on how this came about, but there is absolutely nothing online about the sale of Mahomet.

I did manage to find an article from a few years later, advertising that Mahomet was again standing the season at Rooksdale, which gives a few more details.

I thought perhaps knowing that he was originally in India and how many races he won might have given us a bit more info or even access to a photo of Mahomet, but unfortunately, no. I did, however, find out that Annie and Alex did eventually sell Mahomet, but they kept it in the family.

Annie’s brother, Josiah, appears to be the new owner of Mahomet. And yes, spoilers again, we have jumped to 1906 and Josiah seems to have his own property named “Chudley” at Little Billabong. We will come back to that.

I did find another mention of Mahomet, would you believe in a thesis by a Carolyn Jean Mincham titled: “A Social and Cultural History of the New Zealand Horse” (2008).

I know this is a long way out of the Rooksdale sphere, but Mahomet was definitely part of its history, so I want to share this one last mention of him from the New Zealand version of Trove, Papers Past.

An advert mentioning the sire (father) of Mahomet, who just happens to be in New Zealand, providing the same service that Mahomet did at Rooksdale.

Figure 49: Courtesy of Papers Past,
The National Library of New Zealand
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19061006.2.43.21.6?end_date=31-12-1950&items_per_page=100&query=%22Mahomet%22%22arab%22&snippet=true&sort_by=byTY&start_date=01-01-1900

This brings us to the close of 1901 and the end of this post. I have another 20 years of discoveries on Annie and Alex’s life at Rooksdale to share with you, which will be the focus of Part Four.