THURSDAY MAY 4     MARONG TO BOORT     113kms

It was certainly a frosty night. The sheets covering the windscreens were quite stiff when removed.

Left the park at 10.10am, having slept later than intended. So easy on these cold mornings to snuggle under the doona and think “just a few more minutes.”

Today was the shared birthday of son and his wife, turning 43 today. I texted them birthday wishes as we drove along. We’d given them their present last Sunday – a two-person dining table they’d wanted John to make for them.

Travelled north west along the Calder Highway. Another advantage of the lovely Marong park was that, for north-west travellers, it was already beyond the Bendigo city traffic and maze of roads.

The day was sunny, with blue sky. Quite pleasant inside Bus.

A lot of the little towns in this region date from the gold rush days of over a century ago and usually have some remaining buildings typical of the consolidation era that followed the immediate rushes. Some towns are doing better than others, these days, though. Clearly, some are capitalizing on tourism through the region.

The Loddon River at Bridgewater on Loddon was very full.

On that town’s outskirts was the array of curved mirrored parabolas of the solar farm. These collected and concentrated solar energy for feed in to the power grid. That, at least was the theory, when this experimental array opened in 2012. It was closed down in 2015, not because the technology was faulty, but because of politicking around issues like feed-in tariffs and renewable energy subsidies. Presumably, it would not take much to get the array working again, if governments and the power businesses could get their acts together. Not for the first time, I reflected that democracies are not the most efficient systems of government.

The array looked like something from outer space. Alien.

The main street of Inglewood had some of the old, two-storeyed buildings that date from the nineteenth century. A claim to fame of this town is being the birthplace of Sir Reginald Ansett, founder of Ansett Airlines, for a long time one of the two main domestic airlines in Australia.

Inglewood

The distilling of eucalyptus oil, from local blue mallee gums, began at Inglewood about a century ago and the area is still a major source of this product, with a museum about it in the town.

There were far too many trucks on the Calder Highway. We really should have a serious campaign to get goods moved by train again. So many roads are deteriorating so quickly. Temporary fixes do little to improve road quality or, indeed, safety. Surely, overall, the costs of our reliance on road transport are so much greater, when one factors in ongoing rates and taxes spent on roads, plus related road deaths and casualties?

On the subject of railways, I decided that I do not like the angled railway crossings of these parts. It is very hard for the driver of a car – let alone a vehicle like our Bus – to check the rail line when it comes in at an acute angle from behind, to the left. There are bells and lights on the crossings along this highway, but even so…

I was on a mission today. My family history research had finally unearthed some information about a rather mysterious great grandfather. He was the only ancestor of that generation about whom I’d been able to find nothing, for several years. He clearly existed, having fathered several children, amongst them my grandfather, but how and when he appeared in Tasmania, whether it was of his free will or otherwise, and ditto disappeared again, had no documentary trail at all, that I could find.

In recent months, I seemed to have found him, with a different surname, as a newly married assisted immigrant to SA, in 1848. The trail next revealed him in gold rush Melbourne, having apparently left wife and children behind in the new settlement of Adelaide, and marrying my grandmother in 1852. Apparently, he was rather flexible with his vital details of name and birthdate, using a couple of variants. Who knows to what extent this was deliberate, or the result of the literacy deficiencies common in those times. I suspect he was well endowed with cunning, though, if not principles.

This second family, now using his middle name as surname, relocated to Tasmania – the young Deloraine area – in the mid 1850’s. But then he disappeared from records there, seemingly in the late 1860’s. My imagination had him amongst the numbers of men who simply disappeared in the often harsh conditions of backwoods Tasmania of those times.

But now I had discovered him, dabbling with gold seeking, bigamy and marrying yet again – back under his original birth name – at Inglewood in the late 1870’s. He died near Wedderburn in 1896.

Mt Korong – mentioned in found records of ancestor

I wondered how many of his numerous descendants from the offspring of his three marriages, are aware of the existence of three family lines? I had never heard any talk that suggested the Tasmanian branch knew of same. In fact, no-one ever seemed to know anything much about him, at all.

Today, I wanted to visit the Wedderburn Cemetery, where he and his third “wife” are, according to death records, interred in Plot 160 of the Church of England section. I was hoping for a grave marker, and information, and to photograph the grave.

Wonder if my ancestor walked – or farmed – around here?

We drove straight to the cemetery, out on the Boort road. There was an area where John could park Bus, at the front, so we did that and walked in. In my naivety, assumed I had enough information to find the grave. Located the Church of England section, and we searched every headstone and grave marker in it. Couey free ranged and had a lovely time. There were signs that lots of rabbits roamed here, so she had lots of fascinating smells to follow.

Church of England section

The Wedderburn Cemetery was a lot bigger than I had anticipated!

Only part of Wedderburn Cemetery

I was put out to discover there are no plot numbers on the headstones and grave markers. Nor was there any apparent chronological sequence to sites. Not sure what the cemetery equivalent is of needle in a haystack.

A lot of headstones to read!

Spent about an hour, searching. No mention of Daniel or Annie anywhere that I could see. It got quite hot, and my back began to really hurt. So we did what I should have been smart enough to do, in the first place, and drove back into town, to the Information Centre. The two ladies there seemed a bit disconcerted when I asked if they had a map of the cemetery, but very helpfully phoned the Secretary of the Cemetery Trust, and reported that he would meet us out there. Wonderful service!

Drove back out, and the man arrived soon after. He had the same information as I’d found online, but in original copy format. He explained that Daniel was buried in the “public” section of that area – i.e. for poorer people. That figured! He also explained that his neat map of the layout bore no resemblance the reality on the ground. Really?

Back in 1896, such public section graves were allowed a three foot width and there were not to be any headstones, fences, markers or the like. However, in the intervening hundred plus years, the grave standard moved to a four foot width, and some people began to fence or edge their ancestors’ graves, and put in headstones, encroaching on the neighbouring graves as they did so. The multiplier effects of this account for present confusions.

Our helper knew there was no marker for the grave we sought, but by locating the “neighbours” was able to lead us to a mound of earth that was – probably and approximately  – Plot 160.

Great grandad in that central mound? Approximately?

A local historian also arrived, and came to talk to us, giving more information about the general burial practices of the time. There seemed to be a degree of competition between the two men. The Secretary checked his copies of the records and said that Plot 173 had originally been recorded as Daniel’s grave, but that had been crossed out and 160 put in. Who knows what really went on?

So we went to another mound of earth that was approximately 173, nearby. I took photos of both.

Or under this one?

It seemed there was no more information to be gained here – and no helpful headstones.

John arranged to meet the historian at his place, after we’d had some lunch. The man was going to check his files at home to see if he had any further information.

Back in town I walked to a bakery and bought a pie for John and a toasted Mediterranean focaccia for me, and coffees. $23. Very nice lunch, I thought.

The historian was waiting outside his place for us. He had nothing on Daniel, but had found an original death notice for Annie, and a local newspaper write-up of her funeral in 1912. He had records of the graves in the nearby Woosang cemetery, showing a number of people descended from the only child of that third marriage, a daughter.

So, it seemed that I had a number of distant part-cousins living around the Woosang and Charlton areas. With what I now knew about our ancestor-in-common, I doubt they would be interested in meeting me! Given that Daniel’s daughter from his first wife – the one abandoned in SA – had about ten children, there must also be any number of others in SA! All very interesting, but frustrating. Wish I could go back in time and talk with some of these people.

I was really grateful to the two Wedderburn men who gave up their time and tried so hard to help.

Wedderburn

2pm when we left Wedderburn to continue on to Boort. It was a pleasant drive, through sheep and grain growing country, some of it irrigated, which surprised me.

Booked into the Boort Lakes Caravan Park. $35 a night. Our site was excellent – on thick grass, backing on to the Little Boort Lake, and in the centre of a group of about ten such sites. It was not far to a small amenity block – older demountable style one. The main one was a bit further away. We had a shade tree next to us.

The park reminded me, for some reason, of the one at Copi Hollow, near Menindee, in that it mostly consisted of permanent holiday cabins and structures built around caravans, with just a couple of fairly small sections for travellers like ourselves. With a boat launching ramp next door, and a water ski club, the lake was obviously a summer holiday playground for the region. Like Copi Hollow, it was very pleasant in this “off” season, but I would not want to be here in the summer holidays, or at Easter.

Boort Lake

This was a great park for the dog! As the nearby cabins were not occupied, there were plenty of grassy places where we could throw the ball for her. There was a walking path from the park, through adjacent parkland and on around the lake. This was a 3.7km circuit, so the lake was bigger than our local Lilydale Lake. And, of course, there was the water for a splosh about in, whenever sneaky dog could manage it. I got out my supply of dog drying towels!

After set up, drove to the shopping centre, for milk and bananas. Can’t be without the latter, because dog expects at least half a one, each morning. John went of to the hardware store and bought a hair dryer – for use on said dog.

Boort seemed a pleasant little town. IGA supermarket. Newsagent. Hardware store. A couple of hotels, and so on. Their civic provisions were certainly excellent, with tennis courts and a bowls club part of the extensive parkland area.

We sat outside, enjoying the sunshine. Dog “persuaded” John to throw a stick in the water for her to retrieve. Then we had to tie her up in the sun to start to dry. There proved to be no way that hair dryer was going to get anywhere near her. Given her dislike of being air dried at the dog groomers’ I was not surprised. Looked like grand daughter would be receiving an unexpected gift – one hair dryer, surplus to requirements.

This will do very nicely…

A local teenager came past, walking a dog that proved to be a kelpie/koolie cross – beautiful creature and incredibly well trained. Her obedience put our girl to shame. The lass stayed and talked with us for a while – didn’t seem to want to go. When a van pulled on to the next site, she stayed talking with them, too.

After the late lunch, we only wanted soup for tea, so I heated up a tin of pea and ham variety.

The night was chilly, but not as cold as Marong had been.