Gilbert McCallum, son of Jessie Hughan and Alexander McCallum

Gilbert McCallum was born on Saturday, June 29, 1854, at Youngera Station in Victoria’s Wimmera district. He was the second child and only son born to Scotsman Alexander McCallum and his wife Jessie Hughan.
When only six and a half months old, in February of 1855, baby Gilbert accompanied his parents and 2 year old sister Margaret on the ship ‘John Bell’ on a trip to Britain. They were away only eleven months, returning in January of 1856. In October of 1856, the McCallum family boarded the paddle steamer "Gundagai", with the children's grandmother Hannah Hughan acting as their nurse, and sailed down the Murray to Adelaide.
In the autumn of 1858 the family again sailed for England, this time on board the ship ‘Royal Charter’ and accompanied by Gilbert’s young aunt, Bertha Hughan. This time they stayed away for two and a half years, returning in January 1861 on the ship ‘Themis’.
Gilbert had gained a sister, Ivy Jessie McCallum, who was born on the voyage to England, but lost access to his father Alexander, who had not returned to Australia with his family.
It was Gilbert’s mother Jessie who raised her three young children and managed the station, with the help of her sister Bertha and brothers Fergus and Allan. In March of 1865 Bertha married Henry Bishop, whom she had met several years previously when he was living and working with Peter Beveridge on neighbouring ‘Tyntynder Station’.
A mere seven months later Bertha found herself leaving her new home in Ballarat and heading back to ‘Youngera’ on a devastating mission- to comfort three motherless children and become their surrogate carer.
Jessie McCallum had died of pneumonia on October 31, 1865, after getting wet while visiting a sick neighbour. Gilbert was only eleven years old, and his sisters Margaret and Ivy were 13 and 7 respectively.

Gilbert remained with his aunt Bertha Bishop and her husband for almost two years until his maternal uncle, Allan Hughan, purchased a schooner named ‘Pilot’ and decided to set sail from Melbourne to navigate the west coast of Australia as far as the islands of the Dampier Archipelago. His mission was to dive for pearls (or rather mother-of-pearl, which was far more valuable than the pearl itself in that period) , and also to collect plant specimens along the way for good friend Professor Ferdinand Von Mueller who from 1853 had been appointed Victorian Government botanist.

Apart from a small crew, also on board the ‘Pilot’ was Allan and his wife, Phoebe Hughan, their two small daughters Ruth and Marion, and 14 year old Gilbert McCallum ready for the adventure of a life time.
A letter still exists from November 1868 which was written by Gilbert to his sister Ivy back in Ballarat. It was in the possession of Ivy’s granddaughter, Judith Laging, who kindly shared it with me. The ending of the letter has unfortunately been misplaced by me, but it is such a wonderful piece of history that I will copy what remains to me as follows:

Fremantle,
November 23, 1868.

My Dear Ivy,
I was very delighted to receive your nice long letter but very sorry you and Roland have been so ill and I trust you both will get strong again. I need not say that I hope Roland is a good boy for I never knew him to be otherwise and such a contrast between his size and little Marion’s but I wish you could hear her sing nearly any tune if you once commence it and she will beat time with her hands. I am very glad to hear that Roland talks so nicely.

I suppose you will not have Miss Hodgkinson with you anymore. I expect she was very angry with me when she heard that her woolwork accompanied us to Western Australia. I expect that you will have a large flock of pigeon before I return and also plenty of fowls.

The ship we have is only a small one but it is a splendid sea boat that is it rides upon the large waves just like a cork and very seldom a wave washes the deck. We have such a nice cabin though it is only a small one with small beds let in at the sides and curtains to draw close. On opposite side of the stairs is a good sized cabin which Uncle and Aunt use for a bedroom.

The ship looked very bad at first for she had not been painted for a long time but we have painted her white inside and the bottom rail of the bulwarks and every place near the deck is blue and the hull is black so that she is quite nice. We are building a storeroom to put the ship’s stores into. Some of the sailors proved very dishonest for they stole a lot of the spirits.

We were very unfortunate for having such bad weather to King George’s Sound but very fortunate to have such fine weather from there to here as Cape Leuwin is a very bad place to pass in stormy weather, but we have passed the bad coast and will have fine weather though it will be in one of the hottest places which are called the tropics.

I am really very sorry that old Ivey is so near death but more so to hear he carries on such bad ways when so near the grave.

But I forgot to tell you what Fremantle was like. It appears to be a very poor place all covered with sand. The glare of the sun in Summer must affect the eyes of the inhabitants very much. I cannot walk down the street without putting something over my eyes for the glare of the white road with the sun shining on it.
King George’s Sound is but a small township but has one of the finest harbours you could wish for. In the scrub surrounding the township grow some of the most beautiful flowers. Some are like scarlet bottle brush and other sorts of which are really lovely.
The pier here is not very large and vessels anchor at some little distance off. There are large sailing boats called lighters that carry about 30 tons which come close to the ship and carry their cargo to shore.
We are going to take several passengers and some cargo to Nichol Bay but I only know the name of two gentlemen- Dr. Mayhue and his wife and Mr. Broadhurst,( rest missing)”.

This Mr. Broadhurst was Charles Edward Broadhurst (1826-1905), who with his wife Eliza (1839-1899) arrived in Fremantle in 1865 bound for the North-West. He became involved in the pastoral industry, pearling, fish canning (at Mandurah), and had guano interests in the Abrolhos Islands. Charles Edward Broadhurst was also member of the Western Australian Parliament, and is considered by many to be one of Australia’s first true entrepreneurs.
In 1872 Broadhurst brought to Western Australia the S.S Xantho, a former Scottish paddlesteamer which had been fitted with the engine from a Crimean war gunboat. For several months it powered its way up and down the coast with its loads of whaling equipment, lead ore, pearl shell, general goods and passengers, including convicts from Rottnest island and Malays who worked as divers. A short time after its arrival the Xantho sank, having been overloaded with lead ore coming down to Fremantle from Geraldton. The ship made headlines again in 1985 when her engine was recovered after 114 years under the sea.
It seems that prior to embarking on this big and expensive venture, Charles Broadhurst joined Gilbert McCallum and the Hughans on their little ship to test the very first diving suit to be tried in the North west pearling industry.
While Gilbert’s life aboard the ‘Pilot’ would have been very exciting, it would have also had its moments of danger. Apart from the wild weather experienced when living at sea, there were also reports of the ‘Pilot’ being threatened by the aboriginal natives of Enderby Island who were furious over past pearlers kidnapping their women. There was also trouble amongst the crew, with a report in April 1869 of a drunken row aboard the ‘Pilot’.

By May 8 1869, the ‘Pilot’ was back in Fremantle with 15 bags of pearl shells, and she sailed for Melbourne on May 29. On Tuesday June 29, Gilbert McCallum sailed back into Port Phillip, and presumably returned to the welcoming home of the Bishop family and his sisters.
Nothing is known of Gilbert’s life for the next five years. He most probably received a good education, since the Hughan family set such importance on schooling. He next appears in documentation in the form of another letter written to his sister Ivy in 1874. This letter was sent from Balnagowan, Queensland, on September 5, 1874. Balnagowan was a 44 square mile Station that had been settled by John Cook in 1862.
The first permanent settler on the Mackay (Pioneer) River was John Cook who came to the district with Lewis Ross and James Muggleton. In October 1862 Ross and Muggleton built a homestead and formed the second station on the river. Although the area was originally known as ‘Shamrock Vale’, Ross named the run ‘Balnagowan' as it reminded him of his native home in northern Scotland. In 1874 Cook also purchased the unstocked Wandoo station from A.T. Bell. Following Ross’s death in 1870, Cook assumed responsibility for Balnagowan despite a legal dispute between the two families that was not settled for some decades, and although local properties experimented in sugar production, Balnagowan remained a cattle grazing property.

It will probably never be known just how 20 year old Gilbert McCallum found himself on a big cattle station in northern Queensland in the 1870s, although it must be remembered that his maternal uncle, Robert Hughan, had lived and worked in the region since his arrival as a convict exile in 1849.He worked on cattle stations and was involved in droving big mobs of cattle for his employers. Robert didn’t move down to Victoria to live until about 1879-80, so he was definitely in Queensland at the time of his nephew’s arrival at Balnagowan. Another Uncle, Allan Hughan, also had contacts in Queensland after spending time there in the 1860s droving sheep.

Whatever the case, Gilbert found himself living and working at Balnagowan Station for the Cook family, and from the contents of his letter to his sister it is very apparent that he had a wonderful experience:

“ Balnagowan,
September 5, 1874.

My Dear Sister,
I daresay you are waiting anxiously for your letter, but I met with an accident just after I wrote to Aunt Bertha. I was run into a fence by a colt I was riding and broke my arm. It was the right one- of course I could not write sooner. I can only send a brief note for if I use my fingers too much they get painful and I cannot hold a pen.
Mrs. Black is going to Melbourne shortly and will call to see you. I have given her all sorts of news to tell you. I have got a number of alligator eggs I will send down as soon as the schooners run direct to Melbourne.
I must tell you the great chase we had a little time ago after a great old alligator. He was seen some time before at what we call the Upper Crossing, about a mile above the house, but he took up his abode in a deep part of the river. I expect he knew we wanted him for he never came to light till the morning we captured him.
The blackboy first saw him near the boat landing just at the bottom of the garden. We all went out armed with rifles. I fired at him and hit him in the head, and then we got the boat and gave chase. He came up to the surface with his great mouth open and one of the men threw a rope over his under-jaw. When we got the end of the rope to the bank we all caught hold of it and pulled him up on the land and then tied him fast.
We fired a regular battery into his head, and then left him till the next morning, intending to skin him.
When we went to him next day he was half in the water and had a tremendous strain on the rope, but he was too far gone to hurt anybody so we proceeded to skin him. When we had the skin half off he turned right over on his back. I never saw anything so hard to kill. I believe if we had skinned him carefully, he would have gone back into the river and never mist his hide.
We measured him and found him 16 feet long, about 7 feet round his body, his head was 3 feet 4 inches long and his mouth 2 feet 10 inches long.

I must leave off now dear, write to me at once.
Give my love to all.
And dear believe me ever your affectionate brother,
Gilbert.”

The 1874 Post Office Directory of Queensland shows that H.Murray was the manager of Balnagowan Station, and most likely would have been Gilbert’s boss under the direction of John Cook.Gilbert next surfaces in NSW, as manager of a big station near Broken Hill called ‘Mulculca Station’. He wrote a letter to his cousin, my great grandmother Olive Bishop, from Mulculca in February 1897, and was named as ‘Gilbert McCallum, Mulcula” in the Yewen’s Directory of Landholders for 1900.

To follow is a sketch of Mulculca Station as it was when Gilbert managed the property. He drew it for Olive, and notes on the bottom “Ask Guy if he can improve on this. The proportions may be a bit out, but this is about how the places are situated where your most amiable cousin reignes as boss.” ‘Guy’ is Olive’s brother, Guy Bishop, who must have visited Gilbert.(NOTE: Guy may not have neccessarily visited Gilbert..he was a draughtsman, and Gilbert may simply have been suggesting that Guy may have been able to better draw a plan of the station based on Gilbert's sketch)

It was while Gilbert was up north that he met and fell in love with a girl from Broken Hill. Caroline Gibson Kitchen was born on October 30, 1874, so she was about twenty years younger than her husband. Known as ‘Carrie’, she married Gilbert McCallum in 1910 at Broken Hill. Gilbert was aged 56, and his wife Carrie Kitchen was 36.

Gilbert and Carrie did not have any children. They moved to South Australia, and both died there- Gilbert first in 1936, and Carrie some twenty five years later on August 31, 1961. Gilbert was buried at Woodville, South Australia.

Photographs of the St. John Clarke children

Cyril Wilberforce St. John Clarke

May De La Pryme St. John Clarke

Horatio St. John Clarke

Ethel Stowe Clarke

Children of Margaret McCallum & Horatio St. John Clarke

Above: Cyril Wilberforce St. John Clarke, elder son of Margaret McCallum
and Dr. Horatio St. John Clarke

1. KATHERINE MURIEL IRENE ST JOHN CLARKE.
Katherine Clarke was the first child born to Dr. Horatio St John Clarke and his wife Margaret MacCallum. She arrived in September of 1874, and was born in the Clarke home in Victoria Street, Richmond.
Her first sibling, a brother named Cyril, was born when Katherine was 17 months old, in February of 1876. Just a few months later, in late July, toddler Katherine fell ill with bronchitis. Despite being doctored by her surgeon father, 21 month old Katherine died on Saturday, July 29, 1876. She was laid to rest five days later in the Boroondara Cemetery at Kew.

2. CYRIL WILBERFORCE ST. JOHN CLARKE.
Cyril Wilberforce St. John Clarke was the second child and first son born to his parents, Horatio Clarke and Margaret McCallum, on Thursday, February 24, 1876.
As a young man he served his country in the Boer war and later also joined the A.I.F to fight overseas in World War 1.Records show that at the time of his joining the 4th Australian Commonwealth Horse, Cyril was a 25 year old law student from Upper Ferntree Gully, Victoria. His next of kin was given as his mother, Margaret Clarke, from Hawthorn. It was stated that on completion of his service in 1902 he sailed to England from South Africa aboard the ship ‘Custodian’ on July 15, 1902.
Cyril’s military career in the A.I.F was dogged by ill health, and his war record as found on the Australian National Archives website runs to over 170 pages, many of which deal with medical board findings. A brief summary of Cyril’s war service was given by his wife Elsie in a letter dated June 11, 1967, in which she was applying for the new Anzac medal on behalf of her deceased husband. It reads in part:

“ My husband, Lieutenant-Colonel C.W St John Clarke died December 8, 1965. His military record is as follows:
Major Cyril Wilberforce St John Clarke enlisted August 20, 1914. Embarked October 19, 1914. Major of 4th Light Horse, served Egypt, Gallipoli and later 29th battalion in France. My husband, being in a Mounted Regiment, was not at the Gallipoli Landing but, having discarded the horses, he went to Gallipoli one week later.
Incidently, my Husband also served in the Boer war- which, of course, does not concern Gallipoli!! Yours truly, Elsie G. Clarke (Mrs C.W St John Clarke).”

Cyril Wilberforce St John Clarke married Elsie Gwendoline Vagg at Cobden, Victoria, in 1912, when he was aged about 36 years of age. They had two children:
Douglas Hughan MacCallum Clarke born October 26, 1918. Served WW2, service no. VX121590.
Gwendolen Clarke born 1922.

Cyril Clarke worked as a solicitor throughout his adult life. He died of bronchio-pneumonia on December 8, 1965, at Newtown, Geelong, at the age of 89 years. He was buried in the Boroondara Cemetery, Kew, on 10 December, 1965. His wife Elsie Gwendolen Vagg Clarke died on November 21, 1978, aged 88 years.

3. MAY DE LA PRYME CLARKE.
May De La Pryme Clarke was born on May 26, 1877. Her elder sister Kate having died the year before May’s birth, she became the eldest surviving daughter of Margaret MacCallum and Horatio St. John Clarke.
Not much is known by this researcher about the life of May Clarke. She never married, and died on October 30, 1955, at the age of 77 years. Electoral rolls from 1903,1924 & 1931show her living with her mother and sometimes siblings, and her occupation as ‘home duties’.

4. HORATIO ST. JOHN CLARKE.
Horatio St. John Clarke was the second son and fourth child born to Horatio and Margaret Clarke. He was born on November 23, 1879, in Richmond, Victoria.
Like his elder brother Cyril, Horatio served his country in both the Boer War and WW1. He was twenty years old when he joined the 3rd Victorian Bushmen, regimental number 724. His occupation was given as ‘farmer’, and his address 72 Victoria Street, Richmond. There was a comment on his record in the Oz-Boer Database Project that Horatio had been a member of Cameron’s Scouts, one of alleged Boer sympathisers within the 3rd Victorian Bushmen and also served in the Cyclist Corps.
The main duty of the Cyclist Corps was despatch riding, but they were also used for a variety of jobs as needed. One of their more obscure tasks was the transporting of carrier pigeons, as travel by horseback tended to unsettle the birds!
When World War 1 broke out in 1914, Horatio and his brother Cyril signed up for service abroad. Horatio joined the 8th Reinforcements of the 4th Light Horse on July 1, 1915, but later transferred to the 1st Anzac Cyclist Corp. He was 35 years old at the time, and a farmer from Richmond.
Horatio embarked from Melbourne on board the “Kyarra” on August 20, 1915, and by December 1915 was in Alexandria. In March of 1916 he transferred to the Cyclist Corps, 1st Australian Division, then in July 1916 listed as being with the reorganised 1st Army Corps Cyclist Battalion. Between May 1916 and February 1917 Horatio was serving in France, then on February 20 found himself in Hospital with inflammation of the left knee joint. The same condition flared again several times over the next two years during Horatio’s service in France, but he always rejoined his unit after responding to rest and treatment.
Horatio never married after his return to Australia, and he lived a long life before dying in 1961 at the age of 82 years. He died at the Dunbar Private Hospital, Emerald, Victoria, on July 31, and until then had been living at 1 Yarra Grove, Hawthorn, with his spinster sister, Ethel Clarke.


5. ETHEL STOWE ST. JOHN CLARKE.
Ethel Clarke was the final child born to Dr. Horatio St. John Clarke and his wife Margaret McCallum. She was born on October 23, 1880, and like her sister May and brother Horatio, never married.
Ethel had an excellent education when young, and led a very full life. She was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies College in Melbourne, and then attended Trinity College at Melbourne University where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts.
Prior to World War 1, she took up secretarial and teaching work. Whilst travelling in India in 1915 she enrolled as a V.A.D (Voluntary Aid Detachments) and volunteered to work at St. Johns Hospital until 1916, and then in the same capacity at Somerville College Hospital in Oxford, England, for six months. Somerville College was a women’s college that had been temporarily converted into a hospital during WW1.
From 1917 to 1920 Ethel served as Unit Administrator in the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary (Q.M.A.A.C). She joined the Q.M.A.A.C on December 3, 1917, and worked as a high ranking administrator in various hospitals and hostels. An extensive file exists for Ethel St. John Clarke on the National Archives Documentsonline site. In it are several glowing references from people as diverse as Bishop Montagu Stone-Wigg, the Bishop of New Guinea; to Captain James Florence of the A.I.F who was related to Ethel through their Hughan grandmothers being sisters; to Owen Thomas Lloyd Crossley, vicar at All saints, St. Kilda, from 1905 to 1910, and later Bishop of Auckland.

Montagu Stone-Wigg wrote of Ethel:
“ Miss Ethel St. John Clarke, B.A., has acted for several years as Organizing Secretary to the New Guinea Mission in Victoria. I gladly testify to the thoroughness with which her work has been carried out and am sorry that a rearrangement of the organization for Missions in Victoria is likely to lead to her work coming to an end. If so, I can freely recommend her as capable and conscientious.”

H.J Melbourne of Bishopscourt, Melbourne East, wrote:
“ Miss Ethel St. John Clarke, B.A., has acted as Secretary for the New Guinea Mission in the Province of Victoria for some years, and has done work with diligence, courtesy and success. It would be difficult to speak too highly of her services, whilst her manners and good sense have commended her to everyone connected with the Mission.”

Ethel Clarke returned home to Australia in 1920.

In March of 1942, Ethel wrote to the A.I.F Base Records Office in Canberra to enquire about her eligibility to receive Service and Victory medals for service during the period 1914-1919. She detailed her service as follows:

“I left Australia in 1915, served as a nursing V.A.D at St. Johns Hospital in India till 1916.At Somerville College Hospital, Oxford, then served as Unit Administrator in Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary from 1916-1920 when I was repatriated to Australia as our Corps was finally disbanded in that year.”

Ethel Clarke spent her later years living with brother Horatio in Hawthorn. She died on August 29, 1964, at the age of 83 years.

Photograph of Margaret McCallum St. John Clarke

Above: A beautiful portrait of Margaret McCallum Clarke.

Children of Jessie Hughan and Alexander McCallum

1. MARGARET McCALLUM: Margaret McCallum’s start to life was a tumultuous one. Her nineteen year old mother Jessie Hughan McCallum had arrived in the colony of Victoria only two years previously, and in that short time had married a Scots squatter some 28 years her senior, moved to a very sparsely settled region of the Lower Murray and learnt how to help manage a 90 square mile sheep station.
Towards the very later stages of Jessie’s pregnancy the Spring rains came, and with them came a rise in the waters of the Murray River. They continued to rise, until the very safety of the homestead, ‘Wirlong’, was in jeopardy. At the point of evacuation becoming necessary, Jessie went into labour, and it became a race against time to find her a safe place to give birth. And so, in a tent hastily pitched to provide crude shelter, on a sand hill near a stockman’s grave, Margaret McCallum made her entrance into the world, on Sunday, September 19, 1852.
Although Margaret’s early life was spent on an isolated sheep station, she travelled quite extensively for one so young. In February of 1855 she travelled with her parents and baby brother Gilbert to London on the ship ‘John Bell’, returning the following January. Two years later, aged almost six, Margaret and her family returned to England for a more prolonged visit of 2 ½ years which also included Scotland and France.
Alexander McCallum, Margaret’s father, did not return with his family to Australia, and was not reunited with his wife and children again. Jessie McCallum both raised her children and managed her ‘Youngera’ station up until her tragic death at the age of 31. She had become soaked during a visit to a neighbour, and the resulting chill developed into pneumonia. After an illness of 12 days, the local Swan Hill doctor Benjamin Gummow could do no more for her, and on Tuesday, October 31, 1865, Jessie McCallum died of disease of the lungs in her ‘Wirlong’ home.
Margaret was not yet 13, and had lost her mother and access to her father. She was taken into the home of her newly married aunt, Bertha Hughan, who had been a frequent visitor at ‘Youngera’ throughout Margaret’s life. Bertha and her husband Henry Bishop were living at Ballarat, and remained there until about 1870 when they moved to Melbourne. Margaret’s siblings Ivy and Gilbert also stayed with the Bishops, although Ivy also spent time with the Beveridge family at Swan Hill and Gilbert joined his uncle Allan Hughan on a pearling expedition to Western Australia in the late 1860s.
Margaret was living with the Bishops in Fitzroy in 1873 when she married a much-older doctor with the grand name of Horatio St.John Clarke. She surpassed even the 28 year age difference between her parents, as her husband had been born in Tickhill, Yorkshire, in 1819...thirty three years before Margaret’s birth!
Horatio was the son of William Stowe Clarke, also a surgeon, and his wife Jane Maria Blackborn, who had married in 1809. Other children born to the couple were Sophia in 1813, John in 1814, Robert Stow in 1816 and Caroline in 1817. Various directories for the town of Tickhill in the 1820s and 30s show that William Stow Clarke was a surgeon there until his death in early 1838. Just two years before, William had arranged for his son Horatio to become indentured to William Overend of Sheffield, surgeon and apothecary. The document was signed on May 21, 1836, and in it Horatio promised to “learn the profession, Art and Mystery of a Surgeon, Apothecary and accoucher in all its ways and means whatsoever” for a period of five years.
In the 1851 census Horatio was living at 39 Cursitor Street, ‘Liberty of the Rolls Extraparochial, St. Thomas, Finsbury’, with his 36 year old brother, John Clarke. Both were the only lodgers at their address, and John’s occupation was given as ‘landed proprietor’. Horatio’s occupation was given as “Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Licenced accoucher , Lying In Hospital, Dublin. Practicing as a surgeon to Accoucherer.”
An accoucher was a doctor who specifically assisted women in childbirth.

At some time during the period 1851-1855, Horatio St. John Clarke immigrated to the colony of Victoria. He was definitely in Melbourne by 1856, as the electoral roll for St. Stephen’s division, Richmond, for that year shows an entry for “Horatio St. John Clarke, surgeon, 132 Simpson’s Road, Richmond, legally qualified, surgeon.”

Margaret McCallum married Horatio St. John Clarke on September 22, 1873, at St. Peters, Church, Melbourne. Margaret’s age was given as 21 and her husband’s as 54, and the minister who officiated at the ceremony was Rev. Bean.
A newspaper cutting held by Judith Laging, Margaret’s great-niece, revealed the following information:

“ CLARKE-MacCallum- On the 22nd ult., at St. Peter’s, east Melbourne, by the Rev.Bean, H. St. John Clarke F.R.C.S., J.P, to Margaret, eldest daughter of the late Alexander MacCallum, Esq, Youngera, Lower Murray.”
Their first child was a daughter named Katherine Muriel Irene Clarke. She was born in September of 1874, and sadly died 21 months later of bronchitis. She died at Victoria Street, Richmond, on July 29, 1876, having been ill for 48 hours. Her father acted as her physician, but to no avail, and his baby daughter was buried on July 3, five days after her death.

The notice in a Melbourne paper read:

“ CLARKE- On the 29th ult., at Yarraville, Richmond, Katherine Muriel Irene, daughter of H. St. John Clarke, F.R.C.S. Eng., aged one year and nine months.”

The Clarke’s second child was a son named Cyril Wilberforce St. John Clarke (pictured on the following page). He was born on February 24, 1876, at Richmond, and so would have been just five months old when his sister Katherine passed away.
The following year the Clarke’s second daughter was born. Named May De La Prime, she arrived on May 26, 1877.
Another two years were to pass before the next child was born- a second son who was named Horatio St. John Clarke after his father. Horatio was born on November 23, 1879, at his family’s Richmond home.
Finally, the last of the five children born to Margaret McCallum and Horatio St. John Clarke made her appearance into the world on October 23, 1881. She was named Ethel Stowe Clarke, and like her siblings was also born in Richmond.
Dr. Horatio St. John Clarke died on June 30, 1895, at the age of 76 years. His wife Margaret was almost 43, and their children were aged 19(Cyril), 18 (May), 15 ½ (Horatio) and 12 (Ethel). Horatio had been suffering ill health for two years, and the eventual cause of his death was given as “Cardiac dilation & failure; bronchitis & general dropsy”. His death certificate states that he had been in Victoria for about 44 years, which puts his year of arrival as c. 1851-2.
The following declaration was published in the London Gazette on January 19, 1897, almost 18 months after Horatio’s death:

“HORATIO ST. JOHN CLARKE Deceased.
Pursuant to the Statute 22nd and 23rd Victoria, chapter 35, entitled " An Act to further amend the Law of Property, and to relieve Trustees."
NOTICE is hereby given, that all creditors and other persons having any debts, claims or demands against the estate of Horatio St. John Clarke late of Victoria-street Richmond in the Colony of Victoria Surgeon who died on the 30th day of June 1895 and of whose personal estate in England letters of administration (with his will annexed) were granted to Henry Edward Burgess of No. 1 New-square, Lincoln's-inn London England Esquire(the lawful Attorney of Margaret Clarke Widow the sole executrix of the said will residing in the said
colony) by the Principal Registry of the Probate Division of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice in England on the 8th day. of January 1897 are hereby required to send particulars in writing of their debts, claims or demands to the said Henry Edward Burgess at No. 1 New-square, Lincoln's-inn, London aforesaid on or before the 15th day of July 1897; and notice is hereby given that at the expiration of that time the said administrator will proceed to distribute the assets of the said testator among the parties entitled thereto, having regard only to the debts, claims and demands of which he shall then have notice; and that he will not be liable for the assets or any part thereof so distributed to any person or persons of whose
debt, claim or demand he shall not then have had notice.
—Dated this 15th day of January 1897.
WOODROOFFE and BURGESS 1 New-square,
Lincoln's-inn London Solicitors for the said
Administrator.”
- From the London Gazette, 19 Jan 1897.
Electoral rolls have helped to trace Margaret McCallum Clarke’s movements after her husband’s death. In the earliest online roll of 1903, Margaret Clarke is living in Tough Street, Hawthorn, with her two daughters, May and Ethel, and son Cyril. The women’s occupations were given as ‘home duties’, while Cyril’s was ‘independent means’.
In 1909, Margaret and her girls were still at Tough Street, Hawthorn, and were recorded there for the last time in 1919.When sons Horatio and Cyril joined the A.I.F in 1915, their mother’s address was given as “Youngera”, Yarra Street, Hawthorn. This was Horatio’s address in the 1919 electoral roll.
Margaret Clarke spent the latter years of her life at Black Rock, at 3 Karakatta Street, in another house named ‘Youngera’ after her childhood home. She appears at this address on the electoral rolls from 1924 until 1931, living with her daughter May.
Margaret McCallum Clarke died in her Black Rock home on Wednesday, January 1st, 1936, at the age of 83 years. She was buried the following day at Boroondara Cemetery, Kew, in the same grave as her husband Horatio.

Jessie's story continued

The photo above, entitled ‘ Wirlong on the Murray’, was taken by Burnell and Cole in early February, 1862, and was number 22 in the series ‘Stereoscopic Views of the Murray River’. Another tiny, battered copy of this photo (next page) was passed down to Jessie McCallum’s descendants, and numbered left to right 1, 2, 3 and 4 with the following identifying remarks:1. Uncle Allan 2. Black boy 3. P. Beveridge 4. H. Bishop

In a clearer version of the photograph, it apparently becomes obvious that a further two people are in view- Allan Hughan is holding his young niece Ivy McCallum, and Jessie McCallum is standing shaded in the doorway leading on to the verandah.
The ‘black boy’ in question is young Wirlong, who was born on the ‘Youngera’ property c. 1843.
‘P.Beveridge’ is neighbour, Peter Beveridge, and ‘H.Bishop’ is my great-great grandfather, Henry Bishop, a recent arrival at Beveridge’s ‘Tyntynder Station’ to learn how to run a pastoral enterprise. Henry met Bertha Hughan whilst at ‘Tyntynder’, and in July of 1862 they became engaged, marrying in March 1865.Henry had just turned 21 years old at the time of the Burnell and Cole photograph, and Bertha was two years older (although she always adjusted her age to appear to have been born in 1841- the same as Henry- rather than the correct 1839!)
Allan Hughan, Jessie’s brother, had married music teacher Phoebe Berry Hall in 1859 whilst the McCallums were still in England. Their first child Ruth was born c. 1860 (her birth was apparently not registered), and then there was a period of five years before their second child arrived in 1865. Phoebe Hughan did not enjoy the best of health, and it is doubtful whether she lived at ‘Youngera’ during the period in which her husband was managing the property. She and daughter Ruth more likely resided in Melbourne, and were visited by Allan Hughan when he could take leave or station business necessitated a trip to Melbourne. Allan still had charge of ‘Youngera’ in 1866, but the birth certificate of daughter Marion in October of 1865 records him as a “Gentleman” of High Street, St. Kilda.

The residents of ‘Youngera’ homestead in the period 1861-1865 are thus revealed to be as follows: Jessie McCallum, aged in her early thirties; her three children Margaret, Gilbert and Ivy; her siblings Allan and Bertha Hughan, and various employees managed by Allan in his capacity as ‘superintendant’. Following paragraphs have been copied from government reports from the period 1865-66 which deal with the aboriginal populations of various large pastoral stations in Victoria, including ‘Youngera’ and ‘Tyntynder’.


“ Mr. Allan Hughan, when he resided at Youngera station, Swan Hill district, had charge of the Aborigines, and in September, 1866, he wrote as follows :—
‘I consider that the condition of the blacks here has very much improved during the past year. The young men continue most useful and faithful servants. I have not known of one instance of intoxication during the past nine months.
The habits of the young people, especially with regard to the young women, seem much improved. Most of them hunt and fish during the respective seasons when not otherwise engaged, i.e., in regular work.
I have observed some distress amongst the Aborigines when sick or disabled at other places. Many apply to me for " physic." Only to-day, when at an adjoining station, one fine old fellow pleaded sadly the want of medicine, wishing he was here. He was suffering from a severe cold. I wished he was well enough to come up here and receive some attention.
A few weeks since I had a poor blackfellow suffering from paralysis brought up here from a camp eight miles away. I had no hope of him, but I made him as comfortable as possible, and provided him with suitable food, soup, maizena, rice, &c, and I wrote to Melbourne for medical advice , but he gradually sank and died a fortnight since. With their usual care,
they burled him and his clothes, and erected a neat structure of bark over him. During his illness, it was most pleasing to observe the real kindly care exhibited to him by the other blacks, the more especially so as none were related to him.
The shearing season has now commenced, and many of the blacks are excellent shearers. I saw four engaged to-day, and soon hope to have a larger number shearing for myself. One of the four said to me to-day, " Please keep me a place in your shed, Mr. Hughan," which I willingly promised. I much fear that many of the blacks will, after shearing, follow only
too faithfully the example of other shearers ; but I will exert my utmost to deter those under my more immediate control from going to the public-house. On giving a £1 note to the chief this morning for cutting me some canoes and bark, he was much pleased and said : " By-and-bye mine buy em flour along (with) a this one, bael mine want em grog." This was
spontaneous and sincere.
Of the clothing last furnished I still possess a large share, owing to so many of the blacks working for me upon wages, which I induce them to spend in clothing rather than to reserve it for the publican.’ ”

“In July, 1866, Mr. Peter Beveridge reported upon the blacks at Swan Hill as follows:—
‘The state of the blacks this season is, I think, better than it usually is at this time of the year; this is, in a great measure, attributable to the good supply of clothing they have had during the last year, as ailments of a pulmonary nature seem to be what they are prone to, and good food and plenty of clothing is the best preventive of that insidious disease.
The mortality amongst the blacks during the past year has been seemingly large; but then it must be taken into consideration that all who have died during that time were either long-confirmed invalids or old men who had seen their three-score-and-ten. I think that altogether there may have been six or seven.’ ”

“In September, 1867, Mr. B. W. Grummow reported as follows upon the condition of the Aborigines at Swan Hill :—
‘The general condition of the Aborigines is better than for some years past, there being less disease and mortality.
The stores forwarded by the Central Board have been of a very excellent quality. The mode of distribution has been by requisition, giving the names of adults and children, but supplied only to those in whom I could place the confidence that they would be properly distributed without exactions.
The blacks at Swan Hill receive their rations on Monday, weekly, unless some sick ones arrive ; then according to their requirements. On the various stations the stores are forwarded and issued, I believe, with proper discretion, in quantities in proportion to their numbers.
They hunt native game extensively, and fish likewise, of which there is abundance continually. They indulge in intoxicating liquors to a fearful extent. They have been arrested and imprisoned, their supply of rations temporarily stopped, and the greatest displeasure
shown as to their misconduct.
In conclusion, with regard to their propensity for swallowing strong drinks, I think it is their chief vice, and I am disposed strongly to believe that the indulgence of the Central Board tends strongly to assist this evil. Blacks are very fond of tea, sugar, and tobacco, which we may class among the luxuries of their existence, but so long as they are supplied
with such articles they will not spend the money they earn otherwise than in strong drinks. Alluding to the money they earn, let me inform the Board that each able-bodied black could receive four or five shillings a day on this township for his fish or game. I have frequently offered, and been refused, to purchase ducks at one shilling each. No, they prefer the
publican's market, where they obtain adulterated spirits and spend the night to the annoyance of the neighborhood with their drunken orgies, the poor gins hiding their spears and waddies to avoid bloodshed, often having to seek the protection of my premises from their fury and madness.
Gins, with their heads cut by blows from waddies, fingers knocked off, are not infrequent, perhaps more since they are afraid of making known such brutality for fear perhaps of some worse calamity befalling them.
This unhappy state of things does not apply to every individual amongst them; there are some who would not touch spirits, but they suffer and are coerced. It is sometimes attended with danger to interfere with them, as their savage nature is then fully shown.
Police have done what they could, but they escaped over the river in their canoes and set them at defiance. Nothing will ever put a stop to this evil until Parliament pass a clause in the Publican's Act making it punishable to any individual supplying them with intoxicating drinks, in a summary way, to the extent of a £50 penalty or six months' imprisonment, and that the evidence of Aborigines should be considered as prima facie.
Under the present state of things it is worth the publican's while to risk conviction for the remuneration he obtains by selling adulterated and diluted spirits.
At the present time I am writing this, every able-bodied blackfellow is now engaged either washing sheep or shearing, for which they get the wages of a white man—the old men, the gins, and children getting rations from the squatters. The sums spent in drink are something considerable. As matters rest things will become worse.
Constables or magistrates will not incur the odium and revenge necessarily following an attempt to bring the parties offending to justice, where the penalty is so small.
Adequate imprisonment or fine should be inflicted, and that should be optional with the bench. Blankets and flour, I think, would form the best stores that could be sent. Soap is an article that I have reason to believe is disposed of and not used’ .”
Life at ‘Youngera’ in the early 1860s was seemingly idyllic for the young McCallum family and associated Hughans. Bertha was falling in love with Henry Bishop, who was a constant visitor from ‘Tyntynder’, and the three McCallum children were growing up strong and healthy in the Mallee country surrounding ‘Youngera’. The actual homestead at ‘Youngera’ was named ‘Wirlong’, presumably after their Aboriginal friend. Letters from Joseph Bishop, Henry’s uncle in Melbourne, mention visiting Bertha and the McCallums at ‘Wirlong’, and a letter to Bertha dated May 20, 1862, ends with:
“ I do hope you will write me particulars of the passing events at Wirlong.”
Joseph also mentions the social activities of Bertha and ‘Harry’, as Joe was wont to call his nephew: “ I notice how nicely you describe the amusements of Harry and yourself, viz- cribbage, ride, walk, fish etc- this is all very well and right he should indulge in such pastime occasionally but please young lady to bear in mind that I want and beg you will encourage all you possibly can his soon obtaining a thorough knowledge of sheep and their management- he has his living to get, his way to make in the world, beside which I may want him to be of use or render some service to this “nasty old buffer” who is sometime seized with the notion that he will require some such aid in his old days.”
Allan Hughan also resided at ‘Youngera’, and as previously mentioned his wife and daughter lived in St.Kilda during this period. Phoebe Hughan was a “professor of music” and piano teacher, and most likely earned a secondary income by teaching music in Melbourne. This separation for convenience probably explains why no more children were born to Allan and Phoebe between 1861 and 1865!
Jessie continued to manage her sheep station until October of 1865, at which time catastrophe struck the McCallums in a cruel and savage way that left her three children deprived of a mother and with a father ill and inaccessible on the other side of the world.
A newspaper of the time described the events that resulted in Jessie McCallum’s death at the age of only 31 years (although her death certificate stated that she was 30, Jessie was actually only two months off turning 32):

" Our Swan Hill correspondent sends us the following:- "Lower Murray. 3rd November- In Memoriam.- Mrs. Alexander McCallum died at her station (Youngera) on the 31st ultimo. Her illness was caused by her getting wet and neglecting to change her clothes, whilst visiting a lady neighbour. She left three children to lament her untimely end. It is sad enough when a person leaves this life who has not been of any general service in society; but when one like the said lady passes from amongst us, it is doubly so. She was one of the oldest residents on the Lower Murray, and was famous for her charity to the sick and poor bundlemen who travelled along the river. She was hospitality personified, and was esteemed by everyone. She were (sic) buried at Swan Hill yesterday, and her remains was followed to the grave by all the inhabitants of the township. All places of business were closed, and there were many ladies and gentlemen from distant stations in attendance, and it is questionable whether there ever was such an assemblage at any such interment before."

A newspaper article published in 1985 in the ‘Swan Hill Guardian’ newspaper tells a slightly different tale. Written by local historian Arthur Feldtmann, it stated:

“While the children were at school on October 9, 1865, Jessie McCallum went to the aid of a sick shepherd on the Lette Station in NSW. She swan her horse across the Murray River to attend him, remaining in her wet clothes for some time. As a result she contracted pneumonia and, although attended by Dr. Gummow, she died 12 days later at the age of 30 years. She is buried in the Swan Hill Cemetery where a marble tombstone is erected on her grave.”

Bertha Hughan had only been married for seven months when she lost her much-loved sister. It was she and Henry who found themselves helping to take care of Jessie’s children before they even had started a family of their own. Eldest McCallum child was Margaret, who had turned thirteen the month before her mother’s death. Only son Gilbert was 11, and the baby of the family, Ivy Jessie, was just seven.
Initially I had been told that Ivy went directly to her aunt Bertha’s to live, but recently it has been suggested that she spent some time after Jessie’s death with the neighbouring Beveridge family. Gilbert spent a period later with his uncle, Allan Hughan, in a boy’s own adventure trip sailing the west coast of Australia in Allan’s schooner, Pilot, diving for pearl shells, amongst other things.
Margaret, Gilbert and Ivy McCallum spent from 1865 until 1870 with the Bishops in Mount Rowan, near Ballarat, as their uncle, Henry Bishop, was a store keeper there. Two Bishop cousins were born in this period-Roland in 1866 and Olive in 1868.
By the time Bertha’s third child Guy had arrived in 1870, the Bishop family with Margaret and Ivy had moved to Trinity Cottage, Hotham (known these days as North Melbourne). By 1873, at the time of Margaret McCallum’s marriage, the family had moved to Victoria Parade, Fitzroy. With her sister married to a surgeon and moved away, 15 year old Ivy would have been like an older sister to her little cousins, who by 1874 numbered five, with two more to come.
Ivy remained with the Bishops until her own marriage in 1885 at the age of 27.
Alexander McCallum supposedly spent his last years in a convalescent home in England or Scotland, where he died in 1870. The fact is, however, that at the time of his death he was a patient in the Leavesden Asylum near Watford in Hertfordshire, one of about 1,600 patients who were considered by authorities to be “chronically and harmlessly insane”.
He certainly may have been in a convalescent home in the decade prior to this, as the Leavesden Asylum did not open until 1870. On the afternoon of 9 October, 1870, the Leavesden Asylum opened its doors to admit its first patients. The Metropolitan Asylums Board, which had been established by the government of Queen Victoria in 1867, spent £7,600 for 80 acres in Hertfordshire on which to build its hospital for “quiet and harmless imbeciles.” Over the course of its 125-year existence, the purview of the institution would expand to cover victims of lunacy, psychosis, and epilepsy.
Patients at Leavesden were segregated into male and female wards and watched over by a staff that numbered nearly 100 by the 1881 census.

Alexander McCallum appeared in the 1871 census as:
“Alexander McCallan, patient, 64 years, not at present occupied, not known where born, and of unsound mind.” All twenty five patients on Alexander’s census page were of ‘unknown’ birth and ‘unsound mind’.
Various articles online refer to Leavesden as being an asylum for paupers. Certainly, the assets referred to in Alexander McCallum’s will of 1856, including ‘Youngera Station’, were not in his possession by the time of his death in May of 1871.Alfred S. Kenyon’s book “the Story Of The Mallee” states:
“ Youngera- A. Mccallum occupied ‘Yangorah’ in September of 1846, and obtained a licence. ‘Youngera’ was the spelling in 1848. No change in ownership occurred until the Oriental bank acquired the run in1870.”
At the time of their father’s death, the McCallum children were aged 18, 16 and 12. I had wondered if they had ever seen their father again after farewelling him in England in 1861- the circumstances of his death suggest contact was limited, if any.

Jessie Hannah Hughan

Jessie Hannah Hughan was born in Colchester, Essex, England, on Wednesday, December 18, 1833.She was the seventh child and fourth daughter born to 37 year old Scotsman Robert Alexander Hughan and his 31 year old English wife Hannah Oakley. Her baptism can be seen above at the bottom of the page of the register of All Saints Church, Colchester.

Jessie’s first five years were spent in rural Essex, and then in 1838 her family relocated to London for her tea merchant father to attempt to find work. This endeavour was largely unsuccessful, and for the next decade it was Jessie’s mother and elder sisters who supplied an income to keep the family surviving, assisted by Jessie herself when she was old enough to help take in needlework.
In September of 1844, when Jessie was ten years old, her father died in their London home. Emotionally this event would have devastated the family, but financially they would not have noticed much change, as Robert had not been supporting the family with an income. They remained at the same address, 96 Westbourne Street, for at least the next few years
After the death of Robert Alexander Hughan great change was to overcome the Hughan family, and by 1850 its members were spread all over the globe, from Canada to Australia.
Malvina, Jessie’s eldest sister, had died in Solonica aged only in her twenties, but the remainder of Jessie’s siblings also had adventure in their souls and left England far behind.
Oscar Hughan chose to seek his fortune and fame in Canada and the United States before finding his way to Australia to reunite with the rest of his family. Middle child Robert had no choice in the matter over emigration-he was exported as a convict exile to Moreton Bay in 1849. Eldest remaining sister Laura, newly married, left London on board the ship ‘Tasman’ in 1849, and her husband sailed the following year on the ship ‘Culloden’ with Laura’s mother, Hannah Hughan, and sisters Marion, Jessie and Bertha. Brothers Fergus and Allan also came out to Victoria, but have proved elusive as to their ship and date of arrival.
The Culloden discharged her passengers under the guise of night on Friday, July 5, 1850, to avoid trouble that had been brewing between captain and crew. This supports the family story of the newly-arrived Hughans having to camp by the sea until their accommodation could be organised.
It is not known where the Hughans settled immediately after their arrival in Victoria, or if indeed they remained together or were separated as each found employment. The first appearance of Jessie in official records comes from her marriage 12 months after her arrival in the colony, and it states that she had been residing in Kyneton, a town approximately 58 miles north west of Melbourne. Other Hughan siblings also had ties with Kyneton-elder sister Marion Agnes Hughan and her husband Henry Aulert Edmiston had both been living at Kyneton at the time of their marriage in January of 1852, and brother Fergus had been employed as Clerk of the Bench at Kyneton in the 1850s.
Kyneton itself was officially born in the same year that Jessie Hughan arrived in Victoria. It was gazetted as a township on January 4, 1850, and quickly developed into a township of slab huts and tents. At first the population was made up of labourers and stockmen and their families. The population quickly grew after the discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 and by March of 1852 there were 300 inhabitants. By the end of the year Kyneton’s population had risen to 2,000, as the town was a perfect stopping place for diggers on their way to the gold fields at Campbell’s Creek, McIvor , Castlemaine and Sandhurst Town ( Bendigo).
Jessie’s time at Kyneton was only brief, however, as after her marriage in July 1851 to squatter Alexander McCallum, she left for the isolation of her husband’s Wimmera property. Named ‘Youngera’, the station was located on the banks of the Murray River in the sparsely populated Lower Murray region of Victoria. Alexander McCallum was much older than his young bride, who was aged 17 years and 7 months at the time of her marriage. Alexander was a Scotsman from Inishail, in Argyll, and although he tended to trim years off his age on occasion, on his wedding day he was about 47 years old.
Alexander McCallum was the youngest of eight children born to farmer Gilbert McCallum and his wife Margaret Campbell. Gilbert and Margaret had married at Glenorchy, Argyll, on January 12, 1790, and their family consisted of the following children:
Mary McCallum born December 20,1790.
Anne McCallum born January 20, 1793.
Catherine McCallum born February 18, 1794.
Alexandrina McCallum born April 24, 1797.
Jean McCallum baptised August 27, 1799.
Kenneth McCallum baptised November 25, 1801.
Margaret McCallum baptised December 12, 1802.
Alexander McCallum baptised September 4, 1805.



Brothers Kenneth and Alexander both immigrated to Sydney on the ship ‘Formosa’ in 1839 and arrived in Port Phillip later the same year. (Recently a fellow passenger named Gilbert McCallum has been discovered on the ‘Formosa’-as yet a relationship between the brothers and this Gilbert has not been researched). Details of Kenneth’s life are very scarce. A McCallum descendant, Judith Laging, suggested that family legend has Kenneth meeting a tragic ending at the hands of Aboriginals during the early days of their arrival in the colonies. I have found no trace of this event, and wonder if over the years the story has become confused with the well-documented murder of the McCallum’s neighbour, Andrew Beveridge, by a spear-throwing Aboriginal in 1846.
All the same, I cannot find any trace of a death or marriage for Kenneth McCallum, so there may be an element of truth to this story. There is an entry for the death of a Kenneth McCallum, aged 46, in 1850. The person who noted this information recorded “place of event N.S (not sure) and the number V1850113436A”-this needs to be researched further.

At the time of Jessie Hughan McCallum’s arrival in the Swan Hill district, the area was still populated more by Aboriginals than white settlers, and companionship for a girl in her teens would have been severely lacking. For this reason Jessie’s youngest sibling Bertha Hughan spent a great deal of time staying at ‘Youngera’. Just over five years younger than Jessie, Bertha was only 12 ½ years old when her sister married Alexander McCallum. It is hard to imagine that her mother Hannah, living at Geelong, would permit a child this age to live away from her in such primitive conditions, but when Jessie fell pregnant in December of 1851, five months after her marriage, and then again in October of 1853, Bertha’s presence would have been a most welcome addition to the young mother.
The first European woman in the Swan Hill region had arrived in 1847, only four years before Jessie. She was Mrs Margaret Spratt Beveridge, the mother of Peter and Andrew Beveridge who in 1845 had arrived in Swan Hill with nine hundred head of cattle and two bullock drays loaded with enough supplies for a year. They named their first property ‘Tyntynder’, which in the local Aboriginal language meant ‘Song of Birds’.
Andrew Beveridge Snr and family had arrived in Australia in 1839 on the sailing ship ‘Superb’ from Dunfermline, Scotland and settled near Kilmore, Victoria.
Andrew Jnr and Peter settled on the land at Tyntynder and erected a log cabin. This became the centre of the three hundred square mile Station that extended from Swan Hill to Piangil, thirty miles down the river, and approximately ten miles out into the Mallee scrub from the Murray.
Misunderstandings arose amongst the aborigines about killing of sheep and Andrew was speared to death. He was buried at Tyntynder and his grave has been well tended over the years and is still visible at the Homestead.
In 1846 the brothers added ‘Piangil’, a further 16km beyond ‘Tyntynder’, to their acquisitions, and it was here in September of 1846 that Andrew, aged only 24 years, was killed by natives. The Beveridge family were to become very close friends of the McCallums and Hughans. Peter and two brothers remained on ‘Tyntynder’ and ‘Piangil’ until 1868, although his mother and the rest of the family returned to the Kilmore district.
The first lessee of another Swan Hill property, Burra Burra Station, was William Coghill from 1846. In June 1860, the Beveridge family took over Burra Burra, and then sold it to the Macredie family in 1865.As well as photos of several of the Beveridge brothers, there is a photograph of “Macredie of Burra” in an 1860s photograph album passed down by Bertha Hughan.
The birth of Jessie McCallum’s first child was surrounded by drama of the highest order. The events unfolded on Sunday, September 19, 1852, at a time in which the Murray River was raging in high flood. The decision was made to evacuate the homestead as the waters grew higher, and Jessie took refuge on a ‘Youngera’ sandbank which offered a more elevated position. She must have been terrified when her labour pains began, but finally gave birth to a healthy baby daughter named Margaret, in a makeshift tent close by to a stockman’s grave.


Margaret’s father did not register his daughter’s birth until March 29, 1854, 18 months after she arrived. He registered the event in Melbourne- perhaps the 210 mile journey from Swan Hill to Melbourne was not one frequently made by the McCallums.



The extreme Australian conditions in which Jessie found herself less than two years after her arrival from England are highlighted in a brief article published in the South Australian Register on February 9, 1852:



"News had reached Melbourne of the melancholy death of Mr. McDonald, late Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Lower Darling District, and brother of Mr. McDonald of Port Phillip. It seems the unfortunate gentleman was on his way to Melbourne and stopped at Mr. McCallum's station on the Lower Murray on Saturday the 17th January. He strayed that day about a quarter of a mile from the hut into the Mallee Scrub, and was lost. The body was found by the blacks on the following Monday in a fearful state of decomposition, and immediately buried on the spot."


In September of 1853 the McCallums would have witnessed the glorious sight of the steamer ‘Lady Augusta’, piloted by Captain Cadell, churning her way down the Murray from Adelaide. A passenger on board, James Allen Junior, wrote an account of the trip, and made note of the day they passed ‘Youngera Station’:-
“ Wednesday, September 14, 1853: After accomplishing the shipment of our wood at Ross’s station, we left our moorings about ½ past eight o’clock a.m, and proceeded our course up the river. Passed McCallum’s Station about midday, at which there are 13,000 sheep, and reached the junction of the Murrumbidgee by ten o’clock.”
He also added shortly after:
“ The natives seem generally to attach themselves to the settlements along the Murray, making themselves very useful in assisting the settlers in their various occupations.”

On the return trip, James Allen wrote:
“Saturday, October 1.–Started at four o'clock this morning, and arrived at Youngera, McCallum's Station, at eleven o'clock, where we remained for a couple of hours, and reached
Ross's at half-past four o'clock. Here 50 bales of wool were taken on board, as also a supply of fuel.”



The South Australian Register newspaper also had a 'special correspondent' on board the Lady Augusta, and published his accounts of their journey down the river. I will include his reports as they made their way through the Swan Hill district as they give a marvellous portrayal of the social circumstances that Jessie McCallum, a young bride not yet 20 years of age, was immersed in:


Jessie's sisters Laura and Marion had both married and settled in Geelong by 1853, but her brothers’ movements are not known for this period. Robert was still in exile in Queensland, and Fergus and Oscar supposedly worked for a time for opposing Geelong newspapers. Allan definitely had ties with ‘Youngera’, working on the station in the 1860s and most probably even sooner. Like his neighbour Peter Beveridge (albeit to a far lesser extent), Allan became very knowledgeable about the Swan Hill aboriginals, and was in charge of their welfare at ‘Youngera’ in the early 1860s.Allan may have even gone to ‘Youngera’ with Jessie from the very beginning to learn how to manage a sheep station- he was 14 years old at the time of her marriage to Alexander McCallum and certainly of an age to be helpful in the management of so large a number of sheep.

When her daughter Margaret was only eleven months old, in October of 1853, Jessie McCallum again fell pregnant. Her son Gilbert, named for his paternal grandfather back in Scotland, was born at ‘Youngera’ on June 29, 1854.Again, some time passed before his father travelled to Melbourne to register the baby’s birth- Gilbert was six months old when registered on January 3, 1855.
In February of 1855 the McCallums made the first of two visits back to Britain. On February 13, 1855, the young McCallum family boarded the ship ‘John Bell’ and set sail for what was going to be a relatively short visit to England and presumably Scotland. They returned to Victoria only eleven months later on the ship ‘Forest Queen’. It would not have been easy for Jessie with two young children aged only eight months and almost 2 ½, although the McCallums did travel with a servant. She is named only as ‘servant’ on the passenger list of the ‘John Bell’, but named as 20 year old Isabella McInnis on the return passenger list of the ‘Forest Queen’.

Soon after arriving back in the colony, Alexander McCallum visited a solicitor in Melbourne and wrote this last will and testament. Found elsewhere in the following pages, he left everything to his wife Jessie and infant children, and a bequest to his sisters Margaret and Catherine. The will was witnessed on February 16, 1856, by his brother-in-law, Henry Aulert Edmiston, store keeper, of Mercer Street, Geelong, and William Garlick, clerk to Messrs Ross & Clarke, Solicitors, Melbourne.

Alexander McCallum had engaged a fellow Scotsman, Archibald McIntyre, to be the 'superintendent', or manager of 'Youngera'. On March 1, 1856, Archibald met a tragic end in the Murray River where it flowed past the Youngera homestead, which was named 'Wirlong' after a local Aboriginal boy. The Argus newspaper of March 22, 1856, carried a death notice for him:
"DIED:- On the first instance, at Youngera Station, Lower Murray, Mr Archibald McIntyre, drowned whilst crossing the river at the home station. Friends and relatives will please accept this intimation."

Archibald's death certificate revealed the following about him:
Archibald McIntyre, superintendant of Mr McCallum's Station.
Died: Wirlong, Lower Murray, on March 1, 1856.
Male, about 39 years.
Drowned in the River Murray
Parents' names not known.
Informant: Edmund ______, Euston, Lower Darling district.
Registrar: Robert McPherson, March 13, at Swan Hill
Burial details: Not registered.
Born in Scotland, 18 years in Victoria.
Not married; no issue.

In October of the following year, 1857, Jessie conceived her final child, despite plans being afoot to make another trip to Britain. On Saturday April 10, 1858, six months pregnant Jessie McCallum boarded the ship ‘Royal Charter’ with her husband Alexander and their two children, 5 ½ year old Margaret and Gilbert aged just over 3 ½. With them was Jessie’s sister Bertha Hughan who by now was almost nineteen years old, and well able to help with the children. The shipping report of the Port Phillip Herald for April 11, 1858, records a “Mr Hughan” as accompanying “Miss Hughan” on board the ‘Royal Charter’, but there is no other reference to him in the official Royal Charter passenger list. It had been assumed that Allan Hughan, and perhaps brother Fergus, resided at ‘Youngera’ during the McCallums’ absence to manage the property. Certainly Allan was manager during the 1860s, and since Fergus was once described by Robert Brough-Smyth in his 1878 book ‘The Aboriginals of Victoria’ as “Mr F.M Hughan, who has had much intercourse with the Aborigines”, it was most likely at ‘Youngera’ where he gained his knowledge.
A Supreme Court case from May of 1860 in which Allan Hughan tried successfully to retrieve wages from a recalcitrant boss reveals that he was not in fact at ‘Youngera’ from 1858 when the McMallums left for England. He had started employment as an overseer at one of the sheep properties belonging to the pioneer Chirnside family in November of 1859, and prior to that had been a superintendent at ‘Glenloth Station’ near Avoca.

There are two family stories that have been passed down over the generations about the McCallums’ excursion to England. The first has been substantiated by other sources, and concerns a young Aboriginal boy named Billy Wirlong (or ‘Werlong’, ‘Wurlong’ or ‘Whoorlong’) who lived and worked at ‘Youngera’.

My great uncle, Gordon Oakley, was told by his mother Olive Bishop (eldest daughter of Bertha Hughan) that when the Hughan sisters, Jessie and Bertha, returned to England they took with them Wirlong, an Aboriginal boy, who dressed in a possum skin rug and performed boomerang throwing for Queen Victoria at an international Exhibition at the Crystal palace.
The first Great Exhibition was held in the Crystal Palace, London from May 1 to October 15, 1851, which was far too early to be the exhibition featured in the Wirlong story. There was another Great Exhibition staged in 1862 after the Crystal Palace had been removed and reassembled in South London, but the McCallums had returned home by this stage. Exhibitions were continually being held in the Crystal Palace, and presumably it was one of these lesser affairs that saw Wirlong throwing the boomerang for Queen Victoria.

In 1921 the ‘Sunraysia Daily’ newspaper published a series of articles about the Aboriginals of Mildura, and mentioned Wirlong as follows:-

“ When Wurlong was fifteen years of age, Mrs. McCallum went to England...she took the black boy with her, to show her friends what manner of native was to be found in Australia. Young Wurlong was a smart, well mannered, well set up youth, a good horseman, and clever with the stockwhip and with the boomerang- a lad to be proud of. He was presented to Queen Victoria, and gave an exhibition of boomerang-throwing before her. A visit to Paris was among Wurlong’s most cherished memories. For a “t’chillin” he would discourse on his doings and sight seeing by the hour, and when in later years, he had any argument with a white man, and felt that he was getting the worse end of it, he always closed the discussion tellingly by saying: “you say what you like: but I bin there, an’ you haven’t. And I done something you have not done- if you are a white man and I’m a black one- I bin shake hands with Queen Victoria in England!”
Alfred Kenyon in his 1912 book “The Story Of The Mallee” wrote on page 110:

“ Still lingers at Euston, Whorlong, who, taken to England by Mrs. McCallum, of Youngera, threw the boomerang before the old Queen in 1859, saw Paris and London and marvelled not.”

The other story involving the McCallums’ trip to England concerns the sisters purchasing a headstone for their mother back in Geelong. Hannah Hughan died in 1860 whilst her daughters were still away, and since the family legend states that she kept the stone in her bedroom until it was needed, it may be supposed that perhaps Jessie acquired the marble headstone from stone mason on her first trip to England in 1855. The story is definitely true- the name of the English stonemason, “C. Wilkins, 90 Euston Place” is very clearly engraved on the bottom of the stone in Brighton Cemetery.

The passage to England on board the ship ‘Royal Charter’ passed smoothly except for one rather monumental event- whilst crossing the Irish Sea, Jessie McCallum went in to labour, and on Sunday, July 11, 1858, she gave birth to daughter Ivy Jessie McCallum.
Whilst overseas, the McCallums and Bertha travelled throughout England, France and Scotland, presumably visiting family and friends as well as taking in the sights. Bertha bought back beautiful crystal scent bottles embellished with ormolu filigree and decorated with eglomised Grand Tour miniature portraits of Paris. They were passed down to her eldest daughter Olive and then to Olive’s granddaughter Margaret Oakley, and now I have them for the moment in my proud possession, over 148 years later.

When the McCallums boarded the ship ‘Themis’ at Liverpool at the end of 1860 for their return voyage home, there was one big change in their family dynamic...Jessie’s husband Alexander did not board with them. He and Jessie separated, and in fact never saw each other again. I am not descended from this branch of the family, and so am not familiar with the reasons behind their parting. There have been whispers of Alexander’s drinking and ill health, and then there was the huge age difference of 28 years- most likely there were numerous difficulties which we will never know about.


Whatever the case, Alexander returned to Scotland, and he died in England on May 30, 1871. It is an unusual situation indeed that finds a woman of that period separating from her husband and returning to her adopted home land with three small children to run a huge pastoral run, but Jessie Hughan McCallum was certainly a woman to accept the challenge and succeed. With the help of her family, particularly sister Bertha and brother Allan, and the support of neighbours such as Peter Beveridge, Jessie kept ‘Youngera’ going.


Peter Beveridge’s relationship and strong friendship with Jessie McCallum is an interesting one. There was only four years age difference between the couple, and they would have had a great deal more in common than Jessie’s much older husband. Jessie was still in her teens when they first met, and Peter was only 21years old. There are several photographs of Peter Beveridge in collections belonging to Bertha Hughan- in fact, before I had seen a photo of Peter Beveridge I had assumed that the man who faced Jessie McCallum on opposing pages in Bertha’s album from the 1860s was her husband, Alexander. There was also a large portrait in a gilded oval frame of this man, and assuming it to be Alexander McCallum I passed it on to Alexander’s great-granddaughter, Judith Laging. The subject of these photos has since been identified on various internet sites as Peter Beveridge. These photographs are reproduced in the following pages.


Peter Beveridge did not marry until well after Jessie McCallum’s death - at the age of 42 he married Annie Dalgleish Forrest. An internet biography describes him thus : “A Presbyterian, Beveridge was described as a 'conversationalist of no mean order', and was liked as a 'frank, genial and companionable man'.
In the early 1860s, Bertha’s future husband, Henry Bishop, was sent to ‘Tyntynder’ as a young man fresh from England to learn the ropes of ‘squattocracy’ under the Beveridges’ guidance. Henry and Peter Beveridge became very good friends, and Peter stood as a witness to the marriage of Henry and Bertha Hughan in Melbourne in 1865. Many years later, in 1890, Bertha was given by Annie Beveridge a copy of Peter Beveridge’s book on Aboriginals.


Although Ivy McCallum was born overseas, she was 2 ½ years old when she returned, and spent the next four years living at ‘Youngera’. As an old lady in the 1940s, she sat down and recalled some of her earliest memories, and following is a written account of life at ‘Youngera’as a child in the 1860s, as transcribed by her granddaughter Judith Laging:-

“ Now that so many people are taking such a great interest in everything connected with the early life of our state, I thought I would write down what I can remember of my own life passed in the bush more than seventy years ago.
The first few years of my life were spent on a large sheep station where of course sheep took the first place in our lives. From the time the big mobs were bought in, shorn, the wool pressed into bales and loaded onto great wagons drawn by patient-looking bullocks ready for that long journey south, little else was thought of.
We had our own small tribe of blacks, ruled over by King Jacky and Queen El_, a very portly pair. Several of the young blacks were very clever with stock, helping to break in the young horses (and with no great cruelty).
We always had a number of cows in use, and as Dickens was then at the height of his fame, the cows used to be named after his heroines. There was a big red ugly brute named Sally Brass and another little strawberry, always breaking into the garden, was Susan Nipper, and so on.
We even had a pair of pet sheep named Napoleon and Eugenie, in honour of the French Empire! Once I went for a ride on Eugenie who tipped me into a pool of muddy water!
Many dogs, of course, all colours and sizes. Also many cats, adored by me but not so favourably regarded by my elders, for they used to course over the thin calico ceilings of those days and make unsightly dents, so a long pole with a needle at the end was kept and whenever a cat curled itself up for a sleep it was firmly instructed to “Move on”.
Another joy I had was to go with my Mother when she went to the store to weigh out provisions, some for home use and some to go miles out to the Country Shepherd’s hut. This store was a big, dark, dusty place full of everything likely to be needed when supplies came up but seldom. Machinery, harness, tools, drapery, crockery, and food of all things- great bags of flour and sugar, tobacco on planks or in stacks in round boxes, drums I think they were called, and casks of dried apples from America. These were dark, leathery, often gritty and not over pleasant to eat, but all we could get then, and when I contrast them with the dried apples of today done up in clean white cartons I feel glad that things have so much improved. Those were very happy days, over all too soon.”
In 1861, two photographers decided to take a voyage down the Murray River from Echuca to Adelaide, photographing everything from Murray River scenery to homesteads and their occupants. George Burnell and Edward William Cole ventured forth on January 1, 1862, and we are fortunate that along the way they stopped at McCallum’s ‘Youngera Station’ and captured a wonderful moment in time.