My Mother Viola Josephine Mann (maiden name McLaughlin) was born in Traralgon, Victoria on the 16th January, 1904. She was the daughter of Thomas Joseph McLaughlin and Elizabeth Therese Bushby. Her father, Thomas, was a shoemaker who had a shop in the small town of Trafalgar, in Gippsland, Victoria. In 1906, when Viola was two […]
Tag: Yan Yean
Heather Jane Mann of Yan Yean
At She Oak Hill we lived a very basic life. There was no electricity in those days, but kerosene lamps. In the kitchen a big black urn sat on the stove with hot water for cups of tea or washing dishes. The water had to be carried by bucket from the corrugated iron tank in […]
Portrait of Harriet
Harriet Wright was a pioneer and settler in the Plenty District. It is often difficult to find records of women at this time but for Harriet a hint of her pedigree is given on her headstone in Yan Yean Cemetery (Whittlesea): Sacred To the memory of HARRIET WRIGHT Second daughter of JOSEPH WRIGHT ESQ. Artist […]
WW1 Casualty : Leslie Grierson, aka Vipont, aka Vipont-Birkett (Yan Yean)
In short, we can reveal Leslie Vipont, born in Doreen and raised in Yan Yean was killed in action while serving as S/9868, Private, with the Seaforth Highlanders Regiment of the British Expeditionary Force in France on 10 July, 1916. That seems a simple summary, but his background is undoubtedly right up there as one of the most […]
James and John Mann: a brief history
James Mann was born on 25 October 1831 at “Bensil Farm,” in the Parish of Carseburn, near Forfar, Scotland, the oldest child of John Mann and Christina née Constable. John was a tenant farmer on 25 acres (part of the Bensil Estate)[i]. In 1857 James, aged 26, and his brother, John (jnr), 21—born 25 January […]
Growling Frog Golf Course
The Growling Frog Golf Course at 1910 Donnybrook Rd, Yan Yean was opened in September 2004. It is designed by golfing legend and internationally renowned golf course architect Graham Marsh and is is nestled amongst stately 300 year old River Red Gums on more than 300 acres of Victorian countryside. The Growling Frog name is […]
Wise Family of Yan Yean
Our Wise Family, in all, now numbering over 2,500, had a huge gathering in Wangaratta on the 19th of July 2008 to celebrate my great great grandfather and great great grandmother’s arrival at Port Phillip, on the 19th of July 1848, some 160 years ago. Joseph Wise and his wife Matilda settled for 10 years […]
John Bear on the Plenty
John Bear with his wife Ann (nee Hutchins), sons John Pinney and Thomas Hutchins and daughter Ellen Ann arrived at Williamstown in the 550-ton ship “Brothers”, ‘with their good friend’ Captain Dunsford of Tiverton, Devon, on 20 October 1841. Soon after his arrival John Bear purchased from the Crown for one pound per acre, the freehold of […]
Bear’s Castle
Sphinx-like, its story it would hide as anchored fast in time’s own tide, it stands above the northern shore of Melbourne’s oldest reservoir. Is it a folly born of a chance remark, an ornament in a rich man’s park a flippant thing, its history insignificant, at best an egotistic monument? Or, could it be, a […]