The following article is partly based on an article in from “Banyule City Council Spring Outdoors Programme 2008, Greensborough & the Plenty River Pioneer Trail with Dennis Ward & Noel Withers, a ramble from the lower part of town and along the river bank learning about historic sites and the pioneering families that settled there from 1840 onward” and quoted here with permission.
In 1854 a family of settlers arrived in Melbourne after the long sea voyage from the United Kingdom. They travelled immediately to Greensborough to take up work at the local orchardist who provided them with a house on a hill side overlooking the Plenty River. One night an infant died and was subsequently buried outside the house. More members of the Whatmough and Partington families are buried on the and clumps of jonquils mark the spot each Spring. The house became a weekend guest house in the 1920s and is now gone. The back yards of new houses are above these graves, which also lie along the Plenty River walking track.
In 1985 following work by the Nillumbik Historical Society and the Rotary Club of Greensborough a plaque was erected. The plaque reads:
THIS MEMORIAL WAS ERECTED BY
THE ROTARY CLUB OF GREENSBOROUGH
AT THE REQUEST OF
THE DIAMOND VALLEY SHIRE COUNCIL AND THE NILLUMBIK
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
DURING THE YEAR OF THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF
THE STATE OF VICTORIA
THIS IS THE SITE OF THE PRIVATE CEMETERY
AND ADJACENT TO THE HOME OF SOME OF THE DISTRICT’S EARLIEST OINEERS
BURIED IN THE CEMETERY ARE
James Whatmough died 1.2.1848
Margaret Whatmough died 24.3.1850
Mary Ann Whatmough Died 11.11.1853
Benjamin Whatmough Died 2.1.1855
Robert Partington Died 1.2.1857 Aged 1 yr . 5 months
Jessie Whatmough Died 2.9.1858
James Partington Died 21.12.1860 Aged 9 yrs . 6 months
IN THE YEAR 1985 DESCENDANTS DOWN TO THE 5th GENERATION STILL LIVE IN THE DISTRICT.
It was since discovered that a child’s name was missing from the plaque and a child named to be buried there was in fact not. The plaque has also deteriorated since 1986. Greensborough Rotary funded a new revised plaque in co-operation with Greensborough Historical Society and this was installed in February 2016.
Image: Pixabay
