Born on June 9, 1844, Bailey arrived in Tasmania in March 1860 on board “The Hope” with his parents from the village of Worthing in Sussex.
The sixteen-year old Bailey originally worked as a baker in Launceston at 7/6 per week and saved enough money after three years to move to Melbourne where he worked briefly for a doctor and later with a miner at Chesterfield, near Heathcote.
The local baker soon after left town and Bailey took up the business but more attractive climes beckoned when his elder brother Richard who was serving in the Royal Navy visited Edward with tales of his adventures on the high seas, especially around the islands of Fiji.
The brothers established a trading company on the island, but Edward soon returned to Australia, operating as a wine and spirit merchant for around 12 years and opening a mineral springs near Ballan. He married Jessie McKillop in 1867.
Bailey eventually turned to building and moved to Northcote in the mid-1890s, Australia and Melbourne in particular at the time in the grip of the worst depression in history. With the construction industry at a virtual standstill, Bailey again diversified his interests, establishing a strawberry farm and becoming the first exporter of frozen rabbits and poultry to London.
When the depression lifted in the late 1890s, Bailey built an estimated 300 houses and shops in Northcote including his own property, “Worthing” at 155 Clarke Street.
As part of his construction works, Bailey established a gravel pit on Rucker’s Hill where a chance finding of a gold specimen led to formation of the Rucker’s Hill Gold Mine, forty local residents contributing a sovereign apiece to sink three shafts, predictably to no avail.
As well as providing many years of service to the Northcote community as a Justice of the Peace, Bailey represented the South Ward in Northcote Council for many years. Bailey was also a foundation member of Northcote Bowling Club.
Bailey remained highly active well into his later years, returned home to England with daughter Jessie not long after his 80th birthday, and some four years later completing perhaps his biggest development project, the original Preston Market on the eastern side of Plenty Road (corner of Brighton Avenue), some 100 yards south of Bell Street, the site encompassing around 65 stalls and an adjacent car park.
The Leader celebrated Bailey’s 90th birthday on June 9, 1934, calling him the G.O.M. (Grand Old Man) of Northcote.
His wife died at the family home in Northcote in 1917, and Bailey sadly watched his two children buried before he himself met his maker. Richard (also a Northcote Councillor) died at the family home in January 1927, aged 58 and Jessie (aged 63) just 12 months before Bailey himself died at home, a later “Worthing” in High Street, Thornbury in 1936, aged 91 years.
Northcote Leader December 21, 1934 (inter alia)
