'Ballark'

In November, 2016 the Meredith History Group held its monthly meeting at 'Ballark', home of the Molesworth family for more than a century. Today's 'Ballark' is the remnant of one of the original squatting runs established on the east branch of the Moorabool River in the earliest days of European settlement.
The original license for the property was taken up in 1838 by John Wallace. Wallace was born at Nairn in Scotland and as a boy, travelled to van Diemen's Land in the 1820s to live with his uncle. Like many during the late 1830s, he crossed Bass Strait from van Diemen's Land, bringing stock to graze the thousands of acres of grassland they found along the creeks and rivers of the region. Initially he camped near Anakie, but dry weather encouraged him to move north in search of some protection in the form of more heavily timbered country and he eventually settled upon a site on the east bank of the Moorabool East Branch.

Looking north up the Moorabool Valley with 'Ballark' land to the east

According to Victorian Squatters (Spreadborough & Anderson, 1983), the Ballark run was originally gazetted at 17,000 acres, however as was often the case, this was divided into two smaller properties in 1853. Wallace retained the lease for 'Ballark No. 1' whilst that for 'Ballark No. 2' was taken up by squatters by the name of  Cuthbert and Hammond . Their tenure however was short-lived and by 1861 this lease was also in Wallace's name. Both licenses were forfeited in 1872, by which time in addition to the pre-emptive right for the run, he had purchased the freehold to several thousand acres surrounding his homestead.
In 1843 John married Elizabeth Smith. With the exception of a few years during which he resided in Geelong at Rannoch House, the property remained the family home until John's death on 24th October, 1882 at the age of 71 suffering a bout of pneumonia. Accompanied by a substantial cortège, he was buried with Elizabeth (died 1862) in the family's private cemetery on the property, overlooking the Moorabool River.
Wallace is also remembered in his native Nairn where a bandstand was erected overlooking the coastline. A plaque at the site reads: "Erected to the memory of John Wallace a native of Nairn who died at Ballark Australia, 1882. A pioneer who became on of the most successful and respected pastoralists in the Colony of Victoria. Ballan Shire Historical Society 1991."

Memorial to John Wallace at Nairn, Scotland. Image taken by Allan Maciver,
23rd February, 2012

According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, volume 6, 1976, upon the death of his father, John's eldest son Donald Smith Wallace (1844-1900) inherited the pre-emptive right to 'Ballark' and later purchased the remainder of the estate. The year following Wallace's death, an auction notice appeared in the Ballarat Star of 13th September, 1883 announcing the sale of 'Ballark', the size of which at that time was estimated at 7743 acres. Presumably Donald was the purchaser.
Like his father, Donald was a grazier. Educated in Melbourne, he gained experience in the industry before taking up significant pastoral holdings in Queensland. In 1878 he returned to Victoria where he made an unsuccessful attempt to enter politics at the 1880 election before returning to Queensland where he held the Seat of Cleremont in the legislative assembly of that state from 1883 until 1888. Despite this, he spent little time in the state, instead returning to Victoria where he held a seat on the legislative council from 1889 to 1894.
Despite his involvement in politics, Donald's real interest was horse racing and during the period from 1881 to 1898 he was involved as a committee member of the Victorian Racing Club. Whilst he owned several thoroughbreds and achieved success in a number of high-profile races, without doubt his most successful horse was Carbine - winner of the 1890 Melbourne Cup. A New Zealand bred stallion, from 43 races run, Carbine won 33, ran second in six races and third in a further three, failing to place only once due to injury. His Melbourne Cup win saw him carry a weight of 66kg - 24kg more than his nearest rival.

Carbine prior to his departure for England, 1895. Image held by the
State Library of Victoria

Injury forced Carbine into retirement in 1891 and he was put out to stud, first at 'Ballark' before being sold in 1895 and taken to England. His success as a sire was as outstanding as his racing career with over half the Melbourne Cup winners between the years of 1914 and 1978 being descendants of Carbine. Amongst the most famous horses to trace their lineage back to Carbine are Phar Lap and Makybe Diva.
Despite his racing success and his vast business interests, falling wool prices and several poor seasons led to mounting debts which forced Wallace to sell off first his Queensland and then most of his Victorian interests. Donald died at 'Ballark' on 27th May, 1900. He was survived by his son John Vivian Wallace, born in 1880 in Victoria to Donald and his wife Ida Australia (nèe Thorn) who had married in Queensland in 1877. Like his parents and wife, he was buried in the little cemetery overlooking the Moorabool River.

The Wallace family cemetery at 'Ballark', November, 2016

Following Donald's death, the property remained in the hands of his trustees before finally in 1915 it was put on the market. The purchaser was a Mr Phil Lock who almost immediately placed the 2,500 acre estate back on the market. This time, the purchaser was Mr John Molesworth of St Kilda, formerly of Mount Napier (Ballarat Star, 28th September, 1915). The Molesworths undertook significant renovations to the original homestead in order to fit the property out as their family home.
The Molesworth family trace their origins to England and count amongst their descendants some members of the British Royal Family. John was the great-grandfather of the current occupant - also John - who continues to work the property, lives at the homestead to the present day and will be followed in due course by his own son - James.

Ballark homestead November, 2016

Like the Wallaces, the Molesworths bred sheep and also found success as horse breeders producing, according to John, 100 winners of their own. The original John was succeeded at 'Ballark' by his son John Robert Nassau 'Bob' Molesworth, born 30th April, 1910. Details of Bob's life including his training as a jackaroo in Outback Western Australia, a distinguished military career as a pilot and a lifelong involvement with the local community, serving on committees and as a member of the Ballan Hospital, Ballan Racing Club, Ballarat Show Society and the CFA at Morrison's, can be found in the obituary written by his son-in-law Barry Lazarus and published in The Age, 27th July, 2006. Bob died on the 1st July, 2006.
 Today as with many of the old properties in the district, the focus has moved to rehabilitating the land which has served the family for so many generations. To this end, over 100,000 trees have been planted at 'Ballark' in the last 13 years. Another initiative is fundraising in the form of shooting parties held on the property, with the money raised going to help local sporting clubs, continuing Ballark's ongoing interest in sport and the local community.

Let it flow, let it flow, let it flow!

As I was searching through TROVE hunting for maps suitable for my last blog post, I came across an interesting map which I had not seen before. It was dated 1st September, 1857 and showed the course of the Barwon including surrounding subdivisions and the holdings of major land owners/squatters in the area to a point several kilometres south of Winchelsea. This in itself was of interest, however, what caught my attention was the depiction of a "reservoir and aqueduct for supplying Geelong with water".
What had I found?
I should have remembered as I have read about it before, but had not seen it in map form.  This was one of several options put forward to supply the town of Geelong with a clean, reliable water supply - something which was desperately needed by the 1850s.
A full description of the woes of Geelong's early water supplies would require a significant amount of time and blog space and in any case, the whole story of Geelong's aqueous history is addressed in Leigh Edmonds' book Living by Water: a History of Barwon Water and its Predecessors, 2005 which can be downloaded from the above link. Here however, I will look briefly at not only what happened, but what might have happened.
As I have mentioned in the past, the first step in securing a water supply for Geelong was the breakwater built by Captain Foster Fyans with the aid of convict labour in 1841. This stopped the flow of salt water back upriver from Barwon Heads and dammed the flow of the river, resulting in higher water levels between Breakwater and Buckley Falls.
For several years, this was the extent of Geelong's water supply. The water from the river was either collected directly (free of charge) by the local citizens or was pumped from the river and distributed by private contractors. Joseph Griffen installed a pump near Moorabool St in 1841 and a little later, William Jewell erected a tank on the riverbank near Yarra St from where water-carriers could fill their casks.

William Jewell's pump by the Barwon River. Image taken from Sand, Fireworks
and Boxthorn: the History of Breakwater and Area (William Smith, )

In 1850, William Gray erected a reticulated system which pumped water from the river through metal pipes to the Market Square and to the Waterfront via a holding tank located near the north west corner of Moorabool and McKillop Streets. The system was not without its problems which were further complicated by wrangling with the council and a rapid population increase following the outbreak of the Victorian gold rush in 1851.
In 1852, the council established the Geelong Water Company whose brief was to secure a water supply for Geelong from some point above Buckley Falls. The engineer hired to undertake the study recommended a 4 foot high dam, located above the falls, however public subscription for the scheme was lacking and the company quietly folded.

Illustration of the Market Square by S.T. Gill (1857), clearly showing Gray's tank
and a water cart waiting to fill up. Image held by the State Library of Victoria

At about the same time, another public company - described in The Argus of 10th February, 1853 as the Geelong Junction Water Company - entered the arena. Backed by none other than William Gray, it was claimed that by October that year, the company would be ready to supply water from above Buckley Falls to the suburbs of Ashby, Kildare, Chilwell, Little Scotland and New Town (sic). The water, it was stated would be pumped from a reservoir on the hill "immediately over Levien's Punt", however by 1854 the scheme was still not up and running and council held concerns that the company would provide a virtual private monopoly over water supply in the town for Gray and a small number of associates. Once again, the plan was abandoned.
In 1852, the colonial government had allocated £800,000 for the construction of water supply schemes for Melbourne and Geelong. £600,000 was to be spent on a dam at Yan Yean to supply Melbourne, with the remainder to be spent on Geelong.  In 1855 it established the Geelong Water Commission to look into the state of the town's water and to recommend a more extensive supply scheme.
In his report submitted to the Commission in February, 1857, engineer Henry Millar came to the conclusion that water taken from below Inverleigh was unsuitable as sediment from mining activities along the Yarrowee/Leigh River near Ballarat had so polluted the water that it rendered the lower reaches of the Barwon unusable. Instead, his favoured option was the construction of a reservoir on Wormbete Creek - a tributary of the Barwon running through 'Wormbete Estate', established by Henry Hopkins in 1837. It was the map of this proposal which I had discovered on TROVE.

What could have been. An 1857 map showing a proposed reservoir located
on Wormbete Creek, designed to supply Geelong with water.
Image held by the National Library of Australia

This scheme which the Commission presented to the government was estimated to cost £362,430 and would run from the reservoir through pipes to Geelong, supplying a potential population of 50,000 with 190 (50 gallons) of water per day. The government however, immediately made it known that this expense was unacceptable and advised the Commission to consider a cheaper option. It was revealed not long after, that the £200,000 allocated for Geelong's water scheme had been spent instead on Yan Yean.
Reluctantly, the Commission suggested that water pumped from above Buckley Falls to a holding basin could be implemented for £64,848, but reinforced the unacceptable quality of the water. Next, claiming that the Commission had failed to act, the government appointed a select committee to again investigate Geelong's water woes. The Commissioners promptly resigned en masse.
In June, 1858, the select committee unsurprisingly recommended that a supply should be secured from above Buckley Falls, indicating that the Wormbete Creek option was too expensive. An alternative suggestion that Geelong be connected to the Yan Yean scheme was also rejected. And there things sat.
At the beginning of 1859 two government experts were sent to report on the findings of the Select Committee. Rather than support one of the existing alternatives however, they suggested a fourth option - a reservoir collecting water from the springs and creeks around Mt Buninyong and Mt Warrenheip, which would supply both Geelong and Ballarat. Water from the reservoir could be piped to Geelong along the same line as the Geelong-Ballarat Railway which was under construction at that time.
Again, nothing was done. As the colonial government floundered under pressure from the rapidly increasing population, Geelong council took matters into their own hands and established yet another committee to look into the water issue. In addition to considering the options recommended by the select committee and the government experts, they considered a fourth option; one which would see water collected, not from the Barwon catchment, but from the watershed above Stony Creek in the Brisbane Ranges - a tributary of the Little River.
The scheme would see a reservoir built north of Anakie which would store up to 1,000 million gallons (3,785 megalitres) behind an earthen wall. Water would then be carried via an open channel and a series of pipes to a reservoir at Anakie before being piped to a distribution reservoir at Lovely Banks from where it would be distributed to Geelong residents.

What might have been. An 1867 map outlining plans for the Stony Creek
reservoir, pipes and channel. Note also, the intended channel from Wallace's
Swamp as well as a proposal to divert water from the Werribee River into
the system and a proposed pipe to carry water to Steiglitz. Image held
by the National Library of Australia

Finally, after 14 years of wrangling, the £42,572 contract to build Geelong's water supply was signed in May, 1866 and work got under way. Before construction was even completed however, there were problems; first with money and then with design. Concerns that the capacity of the dam may not be adequate in 1870 saw work begin on a channel draining water from Wallace's Swamp north of the dam, however this work was later abandoned. Then, in 1871, the dam wall began to subside and it was discovered that the foundations upon which the wall had been built were unstable. Various measures were considered and it was decided to lower the dam wall and reinforce it.
This had the effect of reducing the capacity of the dam to a mere 168 million gallons. To compensate for this, a second reservoir was built further down the creek. The Lower Stony Creek Reservoir as it was known, was constructed in the space of 18 months between 1873 and 1874. This new reservoir had a capacity of 120 million gallons, however, with a larger catchment area, its annual capacity was estimated as closer to 232 million gallons. It cost £17,000 to build but because of differences in elevation, could not use the original channel and pipes. As a result, it therefore required a separate pipe costing a further £12,000 to carry its water to the basin at Anakie.

The dam wall of the Lower Stony Creek Reservoir, built 1873-1874 from a
combination of cement, sand and rock it was the first cement dam in Australia and
only the third of its type in the world

 Plagued by delays, cost blowouts and technical problems due to poor workmanship, corner cutting and the use of substandard materials, the system was not without its problems. In addition to the subsidence of the main dam wall, a tunnel under the embankment also leaked, there were fears that the spillway - built on soft clay - would erode as well as issues with leakage from the aqueduct and tunnels carrying water to Anakie which required remedial work. Then, as the system was at last ready to come on line and the service basin at Lovely Banks filled up, poor brickwork caused one of its embankments to develop leaks, requiring it to be drained in order to fix the problem.
Eventually however, despite all the setbacks and delays, on 11th September, 1873 the first water flowed to the Geelong Infirmary and Benevolent Society, with the rest of the town progressively coming on line in the following months. After more than twenty years of political wrangling, Geelong finally had its first reliable, reticulated water supply.
Today, the Stony Creek Reservoir - along with two additional reservoirs built in 1914 and 1918 - still form part of the Barwon Water supply system, also receiving water from the upper reaches of the East Moorabool River. The Lower Stony Creek Reservoir was decommissioned in 2001, with the water from the East Moorabool and the upper reservoirs instead channelled via a new pipe to the Sheoaks Diversion Weir.