FARMING ABOUT BROADMEADOWS 2

This article was discovered during a Corcoran search in connection with my HOCTOR journal and seems to confirm my long-held suspicion that Peter Corcoran who bought North Pole Farm on the west corner of Keilor and North Pole (Milleara)roads had been a member of the Broadmeadows Corcoran family.

Discussion of this article (P.7, Leader, 19-7-1873) will commence when the HOCTOR journal is finished. Hopefully the name and location of each farm mentioned will be specified.

Edmond Dunn's 1100 acres consisted of Viewpoint (c/a's 1 and 2,section 4, parish of Tullamarine, 323 acres between today's Camp Hill Park at Tullamarine Junction and the Mickleham Rd/Lackenheath Drive corner, which he purchased in 1849 after farming on Jamiesons's Special Survey between Dromana and Mt Martha with his brother Henry) and Stewarton (section 5, parish of Tullamarine, 785 acres north of Viewpoint to Forman St, the southern boundary of Broadmeadows Township.) Both farms went east to the Moonee Ponds Creek. Gutsy Edmond took on the might of the Melbourne Hunt Club at about this time, inspiring the formation of a league to prevent crops, fences and animals being damaged by hunters.

John Kerr's 3600 acres were not one piece of land but certainly included Pasture Hill (383 acres) and Bayview Farm (a tad under 345 acres) which he bought on 1-12-1874. It did not include Glenroy Farm which John Cochrane had been leasing at the time. (See the subdivision plan, P. 78, BROADMEADOWS A FORGOTTEN HISTORY.) John Kerr's Wheatlands Estate might account for some of the large number of acres unaccounted for.
JOHN KERR'S WHEATLANDS ESTATE

Alexander Gibb's 550 acres comprised all but 90 acres of section 5 parish of Will Will Rook. Meadowbank was the northern half of the grant, 320 acres, so he'd bought or was leasing 230 acres of his relative,James Robertson's* Gowrie Park, south to today's Hilton St where it adjoined Box Forest (Hadfield.)
*Robertson (not a Keilor farmer as stated by Andrew Lemon) and the Gibbs were related because Robertson and James Gibb, Alexander's brother, had married Coupar girls.

add crown allotments for these farms and provide links for parish maps
Cameron's farm, not discussed in the article, was Ruthvensfield, most of today's Roxburgh Park.

FAIRVIEW was across Somerton Rd from Glenarthur.

BROOK HILL was between Fairview and today's Meadow Heights.

GLENARTHUR lies under the western half of Greenvale Reservoir. John Bond owned Glenarthur by the time of his death in 1902. His widow sold Glenarthur in 1909.

THORNGROVE was granted to Big Clarke and became the property of James Hearn senior who'd married his sister. James Hearn was the last lessee of the Mount Martha run and bought the grants for much of the Mount Martha coastline, the pre-emptive right (Dalkeith)and land east to the Tubbarubba diggings.

FARMING ABOUT BROADMEADOWS 1 deals with the area's produce generally but specifically in regard to three farms. Confusingly the author refers to the Broadmeadows Township as straddling what locals call the the Deep Creek. the Dunhelen Estate fronted both the Deep Creek and Merri Creek with the MOONEE PONDS CREEK (the one running through the township) receiving tribute from the Yuroke Creek at today's Jacana. Two hotels in the township are mentioned. One was the Broadmeadows Hotel on its present location but in BROADMEADOWS: A FORGOTTEN HISTORY, Andrew Lemon confused the identity of the second one by stating, "The Victoria was burnt down in 1879 but since about 1870the town had a new hotel, the Franklin." The last reference on trove to the Victoria Hotel (up Ardlie St hill a block or two north of the Broady on what is now the pub's upper car park)was in April 1878 and the first mention of the Franklin Hotel was the death notice of Henry Franklin's widow, Mary, in February 1887.

Distances from Melbourne are far more precise than in advertisements for farms. The reporter seems to have travelled to the township via Bulla Rd to the northern boundary of "Camp Hill" and up today's Mickleham Rd to Fawkner St and across the historic 1869 bluestone bridge. Instead of going up Ardlie St to Mickleham Rd, he's headed east to the station at East Broadmeadows and up Pascoe Vale Rd to its original end at today's roundabout at the David Monroe Drive corner where the south west of Cliffords Rd originally was till the north eastern railway cut it off about a year before this article was written. Thus he had passed from the parish of Will Will Rook into the parish of Yuroke.

Google YUROKE, COUNTY OF BOURKE to get the parish map.

The first property was the Cameron brothers' farm of 600 acres. This was section 5,Yuroke and I thought I had discovered a new name for the farm, (Donald Cameron's Stoney Field in 1863, later called Ruthvenfield by the same family and renamed Roxburgh Park by Thomas Brunton.) The reporter managed to absorb much detail about the farm despite the Camerons' strong Scottish accents but the name he gave for the farm betrays the difficulty he had in understanding what they said. The closest he came to RUTHVENSFIELD was RAVENFIELD!

John Watt's farm "Oakfield", crown allotment 1 of section 5, is correctly named. As the parish map does not show the date on which grants were issued, the information of John's purchase in 1849 is valuable, as is the mention of his return home in 1857, resuming his occupancy of Oakfield in 1862.

WALTHAM, the southern and northern thirds of crown allotment 8M, was the farm of ROBERT SHANKLAND, whose name the reporter must have thought was classified information! Robert built the original section of Dean's Hotel at Moonee Ponds (now the Moonee Ponds Tavern across Dean St from the Moonee Valley Racecourse)in 1852 before settling on Waltham (which is now under the eastern half of the Greenvale Reservoir.)