The following article appeared in “Friends of Westgarthtown, inc. News” April 2008 and is reproduced here with permission.
In January 2008, the Victorian Government called on descendants of Victoria’s first suffragists to come forward and be part of celebrations to mark 100 years since women won the right to vote in November 1908. Victoria’s decision to grant women votes was preceded by New Zealand (1893), South Australia (1894) and Western Australia (1899). Women gained the right to vote at a federal level in 1902, before England and America.
The right to vote for Victorian women came 17 years after a monster petition had been presented to the Victorian parliament. Johanna Caroline Wuchatsch (née Graff) of Epping was a signatory to this petition.
Victoria’s 1855 constitution did not give women the right to vote. In 1891, Premier James Munro said he would introduce a bill for women’s suffrage it was demonstrated that ordinary women wanted this right. During a six-week door knocking campaign, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Victorian Temperance Alliance, together with other women’s suffrage groups, collected signatures from women throughout Victoria. The Women’s Suffrage Petition, as it has become known, stated ‘that government of the People, by the People and for the People should mean all the People, not half’.
The now historic petition, which consists of 30,000 signatures pasted on a fabric backing rolled onto a cardboard spindle, was added to the Victorian Heritage Register in August 2007. It has also been nominated for a UNESCO Australian Section of Memory of the World. Notable signatories include Jane Munro, wife of the Premier; Margaret McLean (as Mrs William McLean), head of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; author Bessie Lee; and Margaret Higinbotham, wife of controversial politician and lawyer George Higinbotham.
Johanna Caroline Wuchatsch, the daughter of Johann and Johanna (née Hobrack) Graff, was born in Preske, near Bautzen, Saxony on 2 February 1841. She arrived in Australia with her parents, three sisters and two brothers aboard the Pribislaw on her ninth birthday – 2 February 1850. The Graff’s, like the Gruetzner, Rosel, Wuchatsch and Zimmer families who also settled at Westgarthtown, were Wends, a Slavic race which had lived in Germany for almost 1,500 years and had their own language and culture.
The Graff family’s first few weeks in Australia were spent at the Immigrant’s Home in King Street, Melbourne. They moved to Westgarthtown in March 1850 and settled on 50 acres on the corner of today’s High and Main Streets, Thomastown (see Friends of Westgarthtown News Vol. 2 No. 1, March 1998). The old bluestone house Johann and Johanna Graff built in 1873, the family’s third at Westgarthtown, still stands at 1 Thomas Street.
In 1853, when she was 12 years old, Johanna ‘was working for Mrs Neumann of where is now Mernda [Cooke’s Road]. The Yan Yean was being constructed and they used to carry milk and sell it to the navvies and masons who were engaged in the work’. On 1 November 1864, Johanna married Johann Wuchatsch Jr (1838-1892), in a double wedding ceremony at the Westgarthtown Lutheran Church. Also married that day were her husband’s sister Johanna Wuchatsch and Johann Seeber.
Johanna and John, as her husband was known, moved to 158 acres of land he owned in Cemetery (now Ahern’s) Road, Epping where they built a four-roomed bluestone house, milking sheds, stables, yards and fences. There Johanna bore a family of 10 and possibly more children, although several died in infancy.
John was active in community affairs. He served on the local Schools Board of Advice and was a member of the Westgarthtown Lutheran Church, Salvation Army, Thomastown Blue Ribbon Mission and the Independent Order of Rechabites’ Fidelity Tent No 75, a temperance movement. Johanna was also a member of the Salvation Army and it was through her temperance interests that she came to sign the 1891 suffrage petition.
Following John’s death in 1892, Johanna carried on the farm at Epping with the help of her eight surviving children, seven of whom were sons. One son, Albert Wuchatsch, was a councillor for the Shire of Epping from 1914-16 (see Friends of Westgarthtown News Vol. 7 No. 2, September 2003). During the 1890s, she also donated prizes for students at Caulfield Grammar School, which her son Frederick William (Bill) Wuchatsch had attended from 1889-92.
On her death in 1923, aged 82, the Preston Leader noted:
“A brother of Mrs Wuchatsch, Charles, was killed [while gold mining in 1852] at Forest Creek, near Castlemaine, by a burning tree falling on him. The late John Graff, of Doreen, was another brother, & Mrs Lehmann & Mrs Zimmer [of Epping], both long dead, sisters. Strange to say Mrs Wuchatsch was always the most delicate of the family, but lived to a ripe old age of 82 years, then succumbing to an attack of pneumonia…During her lifetime Mrs Wuchatsch was a woman of fine character, her hospitality and goodness of heart being a by-word throughout the whole district. Never a deserving case was turned away from her door, and her good works were known far and wide. She was laid to her long rest in the Westgarth[town] cemetery, a large cortege of friends following the remains to the place of interment.”
Robert Wuchatsch
