Lower Wilmot - a rural landscape



My grandparents home was exactly five miles from Wilmot.



Other changes have occurred in Wilmot. I am standing outside the gate at my grandparent's house (Ivy and Roland Doe). It is the same gate, still there in 2012. The earlier picture below is from about 1952/53. The post on the left has  lost its metal cap and is now a bit shorter than the gate. The post and rail fence had been replaced by the much less picturesque barbed wire and the dirt driveway is a bit more overgrown. Just at my left shoulder, a dam can now be seen in the background. When the Doe family lived here, this was the site of the long drop toilet. Made from planks, it had seats for two, large and small and was covered with climbing roses. I was always aware of snakes and spiders. It was not a place to dally. The paddock at the back used to be forest and was then cleared completely. Young gum trees have been planted across the slope, ready for future harvest.



I was much smaller then. I am on the left, holding Bambi
 while Marilyn cuddles George, my pig



Changes many







Mick's house about 3 years ago

Mick's house has had some changes. If you compare the previous photp with the one above, you will notice that the end of the house has gone. The porch no longer existsand the chimney, now only a pile of bricks. The grass now is shorter and the place has lost its abandoned appearance. The same two trees flourish in the foreground. What will another three years bring?



Jack Ephraim James but call him Mick

I have just visited the Wilmot area where my mother grew up. Ephraim Doe the Younger moved his family into this area in the early to mid 1890s. He lived along the Narrawa Road where we found the dilapidated house of his daughter MaryAnn Bergan. I am told that the foundation stones of the cottage built for Amelia Doe (then Chiplin, later Elwin) after her separation from Charles Chiplin are still here. They later became the floor for a dairy when the cows were milked.



Mary Ann's house, last lived in by Mick Bergan



We always knew MaryAnn’s house as Mick’s house as he, the grandson of MaryAnn lived there when I was young. How he came to be Mick must be an interesting story as his name was Jack Ephraim James Bergan. Obviously that was not enough to choose from. We did not go into the house as it was raining, there were others waiting in the car, we were on our way to meet others for lunch and were short of time. Being a town girl, I am not all that confident about walking among cows, however friendly they might look. As I get closer, they seem to get bigger and their soft brown eyes are not enough to convince me that they are as friendly as the gentle bovines of nursery books and children’s stories. I am also not convinced that I can run as fast as a paddock full of cows, especially uphill in slippery conditions, avoiding cowpats and leaping gracefully over barbed wire fences to save myself when the breath has been expelled from my body.








Mick Bergan at Narrawa

 



A few more boards were gone from the end of the building and the paint was peeling but the windows and doors were intact. No more were the hordes of turkeys making their homes in the top of the walnut trees. If Mick’s blue telephone were still inside, it would have been spotted with dust and grit by now, years after making its last call. There were calendars lined up behind it, adding colour and keeping Mick in time with the rest of the world. I never saw any further into the building. Mick seemed only to live in the front, while the rest of the house settled a little and fell into disrepair each year. I notice the chimney has seen better times. No longer is it capable of sending thick smoke skywards on a winter’s night or cradling then dispersing the rich aromas of a meal cooked on the coals in the fireplace below.

The cows and horses keep guard.



Where it all happened



Mountain Vale - a new life

 The community at Mountain Vale consisted of some interesting characters and it seems that there were scoundrels among them. Nobody trusted anybody else and there was good reason for that. I found a newspaper notice announcing the death by murder of James Green at Bishopsbourne some years before Ephraim arrived there. Could this be the father of James Green who owned Mountain Vale?
This is the land taken as a grant by Ephraim Doe somewhere in the early 1860's. He had to pay it off but the transaction was never completed as he was sentenced to live at Port Arthur for 15 years. However, there were a few adventures in the intervening years to keep the Doe family busy.
The children were now of school age but education was not introduced to this area until 1874 by which time they were long gone. Formal learning was something these children had to undertake themselves in their adult years. Ploughing, housekeeping, cooking and farming the cool unsuitable country was their lot in life.

Help me Peter!

It was a long search, finding exactly where Ephraim lived at Bishopsbourne. After a few scrapes, he finally managed to get himself into real trouble again and killed John Harris when trying to steal a sheep. The newspaper reports gave some indication as to where the block of land was and mentioned that Ephraim owned it. I found that hard to believe but set off to the Deeds office with my newspaper report in my hand and that is where I met Peter. He was wonderful! I explained exactly what I wanted to know and between us we worked out roughly where this piece of land might be found. We had a clue that it was 50 acres and that seemed to Peter to be the best place to start. We isolated an area near James Green's land and found a block of the right size. Peter disappeared of to look at records stored away where folks like me might never find them. Every few minutes, he would appear at the back of the room, heading in a different direction but signalling to me that he was still focussed on the search. Back and forward he went until, after 20 minutes he approached the counter with a look of triumph. In his hand he held some papers, describing the piece of land we had chosen and a map showing its dimensions. In printed letters on the map was written E Doe. Each letter had been neatly crossed out and replaced with the name Thomas Jones. Eureka! Dates showed that the land was a grant, taken up by Ephraim and then transferred to Thomas Jones two weeks after Ephraim and Bridget were arrested.
A search nowadays would be much harder to do. After collecting a key to the room where all these deeds are stored, you are on your own. Peter's help was free as were the copies of the maps I carried away with me that day. It was explained that I could get a hand coloured map to frame for a fee but I have not done that at this stage. I guess it was a much more interesting search for Peter than checking the lie of somebody's drainage pipes, but he made my day

Going North

Maybe it was in Feruary 1860 that Ephraim and Bridget Doe decided it was time to move north. Elijah Hill, it seems was not happy that a horse he was missing at the time was last seen on February 14th in the care of Ephraim Doe at Bridgewater. If the horse was taken by illegal means, it would have been more noticeable than most as it was old and white, not the best transport for a long trip.
Longford area invited the family in and at some stage not long after their arrival, they settled at Bishopsbourne.


Undergrowth at Bullock Holes Rivulet



Twice I have been to look at the land chosen by the couple to construct their own farm. The first time, it was magical. Mossy logs, trickling streams, ferns and tall gum trees made this place look much more beautiful than it had seemed on the land map where it was described in places as scrubby and marshy. I pushed through the cutting grass where burrows of wombats were evident, balanced on fallen logs across Bullock Holes Rivulet and listened to the birds singing in the trees. The ground beneath my feet was soft and springy and the beauty of the bush was everywhere. I tried to imagine where their hut may have stood and how it may have looked when part of the land had been ploughed. No signs were evident of the horse or hens or any settlement of the area.

My next visit, a couple of years later left me feeling torn. Gone was all that I had found attractive. Now reverted to Forestry land, it had just been clear felled. It was just mud. Great gouge marks were evidence that heavy machinery had been used. Water pooled in slushy puddles as an occasional spear of grass tried to peek through the drowned degraded landscape. I could not get away fast enough. No exploring. No magic. No imagining a past.

Gum trees and bracken, but where did their house stand?

There are probably trees sprouting there again now, but planted in rows with no variety in the undergrowth. The cycle will repeat itself, the land may repair, but for me, the essence of my ancestors presence on that piece of land has been vaporised.

Out of the Drawer

Every now and then, something unexpected pops up. Tonight I found the following advertisement in the Advocate newspaper.

Two years later we stand next to our
 three roomed  house

SALE OF THREE-ROOMED
DWELLING
at the
BURNIE MART
The FARMERS' CO-OPERATIVE AUCTIONEERS LTD. will offer at their Burnie Mart, on FRIDAY, APRIL 20, at 3 o'clock,
A delightfully situated 3-roomed concrete dwelling, situate at No. 14 Mark street, Hillcrest, Burnie.
3-plate electric stove installed.
This dwelling would serve as a temporary abode while larger premises were being installed on the spacious block of land, which overlooks Bass Strait and central Burnie.
For further particulars and to arrange inspection,
The FARMERS' CO-OPERATIVE
AUCTIONEERS LTD.,
FRIDAY, APRIL 20.1951

A three roomed house might not sound very exciting to many people but my parents braved Mark Street and purchased this house, moving in about six weeks later. They had been living with my grandparents, where my sister and I each had a drawer as a bed. This was alright for me as I was only a few months old but at nearly two, she would have had to tuck her knees under her chin.
 Within a couple of weeks of the purchase, it was reported that road works had to cease as rain had made the thoroughfare into a quagmire and three cars were bogged so deep there was no hope of towing them out till the road dried out. That would have made Mum really happy.
Our house was made of grey brick and the stove really was its only selling point. Three rooms end to end was all there was - not even a kitchen sink. The four of us slept in one room which also housed a wardrobe and dressing table. A Peter's oven was removed to make way for a fireplace in the lounge which was also the dining room and kitchen. Somehow, this oven was transported to Lower Wilmot where it was welcomed in the Doe household. The final room of our house was the bathroom/laundry/front entrance. Not many houses have only one door which opens straight into the bathroom.
I still remember the green lino on the floor and the red painted rectangle of tin over the fireplace. Lace curtains and holland blinds covered the windows and dampness had caused the formation of huge bubbles in the layers of plywood on the internal walls. We sat at the homemade table on a wooden bench and the parents each had a bent wood chair.
There is a view of Bass Strait, as the advertisement says, but a couple of hills would need to be flattened to really get a view of central Burnie