I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land of the Wurundjeri people. My family come from the northwest of Victoria on the land of the Wergia.
As children growing up, we often discovered grinding dishes and pounding stones near old water holes on our farm. We lived amongst the Mallees, the grasses and birds and at times I felt the presence of people there before us.
Today I share the story of one woman who lived on the Wergia land and made it her home.
The woman is my aunt Ellen Moore and she lived on stolen land and so have all her descendants.
Living in the Mallee means that often on summer evenings the sky is on fire. The land is drenched in wild golds and red. I often think of Ellen on her farm near Birchip northwestern Victoria and wonder how she felt bathed in the warmth of this wild raw country.
Watching yachts and fishing vessels struggling in high seas, I think of Ellen and the sailing ship the Tudor in the wild Southern Ocean. Ellen travelled steerage so locked down for weeks with her friends swaying with the swell and praying for survival.
Visiting local fruit blocks near where I live, I hear another language, people working and laughing together, I think of Ellen and the Irish and the sharing with her friends. I realise at times how tough the language barriers were.
Gazing at the luminous spectacular stars on a cloudless night, I wonder if Ellen searched for the north star or was, she comforted by the new stars in all their glory.
The smell of cows and milk, the taste of mashed potato with butter and salt, fresh cream, fiddles played slowly —melancholy. The urgent discussions late at night about politics and injustices, and the very irishy things people I know still say.
All of this and more make me think of Ellen.
Ellen Moore was born in 1829 at a place called Cahirimane close to the town of Kilfenora, County Clare. Her parents were Michael Moore and Mary Considine.
Mary and Michael had a baby boy called Patrick who died at birth in 1827. Then they had Ellen in 1829 and Patrick in 1833, (my great great grandfather) yes, another Patrick, then Thaddeus 1835 and Joana 1837.
Joana died as a little girl in Ireland, and I have never found any records or her grave site. [1]Timothy O’Neill in his analysis of Clare and Irish Poverty (1815-1851). Of the population decrease of 63,966 in Clare between 1841-51 and estimated 45,520 died from famine and disease.[2]
If any of you here are familiar with County Clare and its main families you will know the Moores and the Considines are synonymous with the west of Ireland as are the Darcys, Walshs, Cannys and McMahons. These families are all found together in Australia on the early land maps, the town rates notices and the barricades at Eureka.
The family links are called ‘chain migration’ but that term somehow diminishes the care and loyalty the families had for each other in the new colony. Committed to one another’s survival they showed incredible generosity and care. I watched this tradition with my grandparents and their neighbours during my childhood. And as well this there was always a bit of fun and joke telling.
And as Dianne Hall has so comprehensively explained in her book ‘The new history of the Irish.’ They were plenty of others afraid of the Irish and all the problems they might bring with their squat skirted figures, thick waists clumsy ankles. These ignorant women who came from native hovels where they lived with pigs.
I am still a bit angry about this despite all my supposed understanding of othering.
Ellen was never mentioned as part of family folk lore until, and I found her name on a lease document for land at Massey (near Birchip) selected in 1875.
I started researching and the first place I found Ellen was on a warm January 25th, 1854, when the ship the Tudor docked in Melbourne. The ship had travelled from Southampton UK leaving on November 3rd, 1853, with three hundred and eighty-nine assisted migrants.[3]
Ellen worked for John Monaghan of Moonee Ponds as a domestic servant. The ship she sailed on seemed to have plenty of Clare people with five McMahon women of various ages all single, sharing the single women’s quarters on the ship. I am sure the women cared for one another especially the wild three weeks in the stormy Southern Ocean.
Once Ellen had finished her time in Moonee Ponds, I am sure she headed across the bay in a steamer to Geelong to meet up with her family.
What an extraordinary and wonderful reunion for the family to be together in Geelong!
The rest of the family Michael, Mary, Patrick and Thaddeus arrived on the ship ‘Sir Robert Sale’ in July 1852 and settled in Geelong where the family owned a home and stables on the corner of Johns place and Little Malop Street.[4]
The home remained in the family until the 1870s and perhaps later because when Ellen died in 1892 her funeral notice states that the cortege left her home at 207 Little Malop Street.[5]
Ellen was twenty-five years old in 1854 in Melbourne and she died in 1892 in Geelong aged sixty-five years.
Yes, the years are not adding up there are some big variations, sometimes purposeful and sometimes careless.
Ellen lived in Australia for nearly forty years and what an incredible forty years they were.
Nine months after Ellen arrived in Geelong the fortunes of our family changed dramatically. Thaddeus (nickname Teddy) Ellen’s little brother was shot in the thighs on the morning of December 3rd in Ballarat by a British soldier. His brother Patrick was in Ballarat but not at the stockade on this morning and I guess I owe my life to that decision.
Michael Canny another Clare man has written, ‘Teddy Moore,John Hynes, my brother, and I were standing behind a dray turned up on its heels, with the shafts in the air. It was bright moonlight, and we saw the redcoats blazing away at us… Teddy Moore and John Hynes fell dead beside us. ‘[6]
I am not sure how long Thaddeus lay there bleeding out, but another friend Rafalleo Carboni talks about delivering some water to him on the battlefield.
Carboni states that ‘my neighbour and mate Teddy More, stretched on the ground, both his thighs shot, asked me for a drop of water.’[7]
Later he says, ‘On my reaching the stockade with a pannikin of water for Teddy, I was amazed at the apathy showed by the diggers who now crowded from all directions around the dead and wounded.’[8]
Someone did help Thaddeus I am not sure who it was, but he was taken to Geelong later that day. A long ten hours in a horse and dray on a warm day.
According to Ian Mc Farlane Three men were buried at Geelong, two taken from the Stockade dead, the other dying on the way. Their names were Moor, Gittings and Hynes. The bodies were buried at night upon reaching Geelong.
I will never know whether Ellen was at Eureka or waiting with her mother and father in Geelong. I can’t imagine the deep shock and grief they all felt in Geelong that night as they buried the bodies of their loved ones. Neighbours and friends and numerous others involved in the funerals, sad songs on the fiddles, prayers, and keening.
Michael Canny states ‘we were in a great state of terror for days after the fight. All sorts of rumours were flying about that we were going to be shot and the tents burned.’[9]
My grandma Bridget’s story was that Thaddeus was getting ready to go to Mass and washing outside his tent, a soldier just came up and shot him. I never quite believed that story and when I asked Grandma more questions about being Irish, she always said her father Patrick wanted his daughters to be Australians and did not teach them to speak Irish.
Despite this there was a thread that fitted the notion that in Ireland the family were middle class, that owning land was an obsession, the Catholic Church was indisputable and a quiet commitment always to social justice.
I often wonder what it was like to be in Ballarat and Geelong in the heady period just before the stockade. To have mixed with people of many different backgrounds to talk about universal suffrage, parliamentary members being paid and importantly unlocking the lands. The call to arms and Lalor’s famous speech, “We stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties“. [10] I would have loved to be there.
Margaret Kiddle quotes a contemporary account of Ballarat at nighttime.
‘As the lanterns shone the mud and dirt could be forgotten, for then the sight was really beautiful.’
And later she says, ‘Accordions, flutes and fiddles, all had their performers and Erin go Bragh was sung at first with tears and then laughter as the volatile Irish forgot their sorrows and danced to the tune.’[11]
What became of the family after Eureka. Patrick’s eulogy states that he travelled to New Zealand twice as a carrier and the times fit with the New Zealand gold rushes. There is also police report of a Patrick Moore fined for drunkenness in Geelong in 1860[12]
What was Ellen doing during this time? Her mother died in 1861 only seven years after Eureka and nine years in Australia. Mary Moore’s death certificate lists the death as dropsy now known as congestive heart failure.
I believe Ellen cared for her mother and was there to organize another funeral. Mary Moore was interred with her beloved son Thaddeus.
At this time Ellen worked as a dressmaker in Geelong as I have found advertisements for a dressmaker known as Miss Moore.
The politics did not stop after Eureka, and I would like to think that Duffy and the new land acts gave the Moores and all the Irish hope for a new and fairer world in which they could prosper.
I imagine them attending a speech night at the British Hotel Geelong where Duffy spoke about his time in Ireland and his hopes for Australia. He says, ‘Look at Ireland today. We talk of squatters! Why the whole soil of Ireland was taken from its original owners and bestowed upon a few thousand soldiers and court parasites in fee forever.’[13]
Duffy’s speech then went on to talk about building a new nation of honest, enterprising people from all over the world with forward thinking politicians representing their electorates responsibly.
I love reading about Duffy, he was a dreamer and a visionary, for the Irish a beacon and yet so many of his plans were undone by greed, corruption and the determination by the squatters to hold onto their property and political dominance.
Patrick and Ellen have had lots of discussions with all their Irish friends. They would have attended the big land selection days at Camperdown, met with land agents like Thomas Asche[14], watched the ‘dummy’ selectors paid by the squatters and the money changing hands.
Patrick finally managed to lease some land in 1865.
I have images of the Irish families from Geelong standing together at the big land sales, speaking Irish, and doing their wiliest best to out manoeuvre the other buyers. I have no citations to support this just a feeling based on my grandparents and all the Irish people I know.
Patrick Moore’s three hundred and twenty acres was originally part of the Manifold station and an area called Stoney Rises. The holdings were small and away from Lake Purrumbete as the Manifolds – first settlers– had the best land and all the water access.
However, Patrick and Ellen must have made it work and ringbarked trees, built a house, created vegetable gardens, milked cows, and lived amongst the other Irish families, the Darcys, Walshs, McMahons and many others who formed a little community at Carpendeit.(a small settlement near Lake Purrumbete)
In March 1871 Patrick sold fifteen prime calves at the Camperdown market. Who walked the cows to Camperdown and which way did they go?
Much has been written about the difficulties faced by the small selectors in the Western District and Patrick and Ellen were another statistic as by 1875 they had decided to head north to the Mallee. This time Ellen selected land in her name.
An article in the paper describes the issues for small settlers in the Camperdown area, the size of holdings, the quality of the land and road access, ‘Manifold’s 45,000-acre fence in Camperdown up to the shop doors and encloses Mt. Leura.’ and later ‘The road to Geelong passes through Manifold’s property and throughout the whole extent there are very few intersecting roads.’[15]
In 1873 Ellen received a windfall with an Uncle Patrick Considine leaving her some money. I don’t know how much but I hope it really helped them on their way to manage the new property in the north. In that same year her father died in Geelong —Michael Moore.
The Massey (near Birchip) land had clear road access and no boggy winters but there were plenty of challenges. The rainfall had dropped from 681 mm in Camperdown to 279 mm in Massey.
How the Irish managed the new conditions of the climate, and the soils is truly wonderful and no doubt they really needed one another.
There are several letters from Ellen to the Lands Council asking for rent relief due to difficult circumstances. In 1877 Ellen wrote explaining her lack of rent as being due to the ‘the year 76 was harsh on me. I lost 12 cows and my horse which was a great loss to me by starvation. What little pleasure.’
Then in July 1879 she writes’ referring to your letter of the third of May last, I have the honor to inform you that I am not in a position to meet the rents due on my selection at present in consequence of the destruction the rabbits did to my crop last year.
I sowed sixty acres of wheat but did not get a return equal to the seed I had sown. If the rabbits had left me my grass to fatten the stock, I would have willingly sold them to pay the rent, but they did not leave me a blade of grass….’
Somehow despite the droughts and the rabbits Patrick and Ellen held on and in 1883 Ellen transferred the lease to Patrick and returned to Geelong. Patrick continued farming and received a receipt for the title to the three hundred and twenty acres on February 8, 1899.
The Moores were finally owners of a farm, thirty-seven years after arriving in Geelong.
My family fit neatly with the research done by Trevor McLaughlin in his piece titled ‘A Brief History of the Irish in Australia.’[16]
Trevor states that a survey of famine migrants, ‘suggests that the majority came not from a cottier class but from a middle class of small farming families holding between five and fifteen acres of land.
Did many of them bring capital with them, perhaps gold sovereigns under the mattress? How soon, if at all, did they become property-holders in Australia?’
Patrick Moore married Maryanne Connellan in 1888 and at the tender age of 59 years had his first child Mary and then Ellen, Bridget and Susan. The family lived on the farm until Patrick died in 1911.
Ellen spent her later years in Geelong and once again there are references to a Miss Moore owning a dressmaking shop. She never lost her political commitment as she signed the 1891 Petition for women’s suffrage. Ellen was one of the 30,000 women who voted to improve conditions for them and their children. They hoped to influence liquor laws, enable equal pay for women, a higher age of consent for girls, introduce playgrounds and schools, and afford themselves greater equality around issues of land ownership and divorce.[17]
Activists such as Isabella Goldstein and her daughter Vida spent six weeks traveling by train and foot collecting signatures. They demanded that ‘the Government of the People, by the People and for the People should mean all the People and not one half.’[18]
Ellen never lived to see Australia wide female suffrage declared on and she died on August 17, 1892, her funeral cortege left her old home at 207 Little Malop Street Geelong, and she was interred with her mother Mary and her little brother Thaddeus at the Geelong cemetery. There was no eulogy in the papers.
Michael and Mary Moore owned property in Geelong within two years of arriving in Victoria in 1854 and it is an understatement to say that property and land were the driving forces of my family and all the Irish people I knew growing up. Some of Ellen’s descendants still own original Massey land (near Birchip) and amongst this generation I would have to say our education levels certainly put us in the middleclass.
Trevor McLaughlin also writes about the Irish contribution to Australia.
‘Has their different way of looking at the world, their warmth, cheerfulness, innocence and Celtic melancholy outweighed their sectarianism, their tribal memory, their feuding, their drunkenness and political corruption?’[19]
McLaughlin’s words resonate with me as my family were warm and cheerful and loved a joke. They sang the old songs and cursed the British, they loved the Church and supported it with their last dollar, their fell out with each other and remembered grudges from years ago, some drank too much and seemed a bit mad at times. They all loved to dodge tax and would be as devious as possible with government regulations.
McLaughlin goes onto list many famous Irish people like the Duracks, Les Darcy, Daniel Mannix, James Scullin and more —names I grew up hearing about.
And then he says, ‘What was your ancestor’s contribution to the making of Australia?’
My answer is that we had Ellen.
[1] Mary Moore Death Certificate BDM 9285/1861
[2] P.24 Timothy O Neill Clare and Irish Poverty Studia Hibernia,1974, No 14 pp 7- 14, Liverpool University Press.
[3] SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE. (1854, January 26). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 4. Retrieved December 5, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4802468
[4] Bellarine Rates Notices, John’s Place, Geelong.Geelong History Resource Centre
[5] Family Notices (1892, August 17). Geelong Advertiser (Vic. : 1859 – 1929), p. 1. Retrieved November 28, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article150770472
[6] Michael Canny. (2019, February 24). eurekapedia, . Retrieved 22:35, November 28, 2023from http://www.eurekapedia.org/index.php?title=Michael_Canny&oldid=19936.
[7] p.101, Carboni R, (1855) The Eureka Rebellion (Melbourne paperback edition 1963) MUP
[8] P.102, Carboni R, (1855) The Eureka Rebellion (Melbourne paperback edition 1963) MUP
[9] Michael Canny. (2019, February 24). eurekapedia, . Retrieved 22:35, November 28, 2023from http://www.eurekapedia.org/index.php?title=Michael_Canny&oldid=19936
[10] Ian Turner, Peter Lalor 1827-1889 Australian Dictionary of biography https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lalor-peter-3980
[11] P.196 Kiddle M, Men of Yesterday, A social history of the Western District (1834-1890) MUP 1967
[13] CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY AT GEELONG. (1856, February 27). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 3. Retrieved December 8, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12981319
[14] P.248 Margaret Kiddle, Men of Yesterday, A Social History of the Western District of Victoria (1834-1890)
[15] LAND MONOPOLY. (1876, March 6). The Ballarat Courier (Vic. : 1869 – 1886; 1914 – 1918), p. 4. Retrieved December 2, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article210996684
[16] Mc Laughlin T, A Brief History of the Irish in Australia, Tintean April 2021 https://tintean.org.au/2021/04/
[17] 1891 Womens Suffrage Petition, https://prov.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-blog/1891-womens-suffrage-petition
[18] State Library of Victoria Monster Petition DECEMBER 17, 2014 AT 11:15, BY ADMIN, IN POLITICS, SUCH WAS LIFE
[19] Mc Laughlin T, A Brief History of the Irish in Australia, Tintean April 2021 https://tintean.org.au/2021/04/