The Junction Hotel

During my childhood we lived on a property about half way between Geelong and Ballarat. A drive to town meant a trip to Geelong via the Midland Hwy, however our entry to Geelong was always via Fyansford rather than via Batesford. At the corner of the Hamilton Hwy and the Fyansford-Gheringhap Rd as we approached Fyansford, we would pass a small, derelict, bluestone building. I always wondered about it.
Somewhere along the line I heard that it was once a hotel. Recently, whilst doing some Fyansford research, I came across an article about the Junction Hotel near Fyansford. Finally! Some information! Time to do a little digging.

Derelict bluestone building at the junction of the Fyansford-Gheringhap Rd and
Hamilton Hwy. The latter can be seen to the left of the building

The earliest newspaper references I found to the Junction Hotel under that name were from 1872. By contrast, several later accounts of the property indicated that the hotel dated back to the gold rush era of the 1850s, however I'm not sure that this is really true. In the first years after European settlement, the land on which the hotel was to be built formed part of the holdings of the Port Phillip Association and according to The Stepping Stone: a History of the Shire of Bannockburn (Beaurepaire, 1995) Section 6 on which the hotel was later built, was owned by Captain Charles Swanston. The intersection at which the hotel was built is an old one, but possibly not as old as the gold rush. The Great Western Rd (now Hamilton Hwy) is one of the earliest roads in the colony and appears on most early maps. The road connecting it to the track to Buninyong (today's Fyansford-Gheringhap Rd) does not appear on any of the maps I have seen prior to the 1861 geological survey series of maps. It may however have been under construction by November, 1856, when I found a notice in The Age awarding a contract for the construction of over a mile of the "Ballaarat road near Fyansford".  It does seem likely however, that an informal track may well have existed - as was usually the case - before the formal road was constructed.
Perhaps it is also telling that I can find no mention of the junction itself or of a building there during the 1850s or most of the 1860s. The earliest mention I did find was the following excerpt from the Geelong Advertiser of 26th September, 1869 which indicates that the premises first operated as a hotel in that year, well after the initial gold rush years of the 1850s:

Samuel Hasell applied for a certificate authorising the issue of a beer license and colonial wine license for a house at the junction of Lower Western and Geelong and Ballarat roads, near Fyansford. Mr Martyr supported the application. Mr Charles Wyatt of Frogmore, lodged an objection to the opening of the house, against which Mr Hasell placed a memorial signed by a large majority of the inhabitants in favor of the license. Application granted.

I can find no further mention of Samuel Has(s)all in connection with the Junction Hotel, however it appears that some time earlier, in 1862 he was the proprietor of the Swan Hotel - also on Mercer land - on the banks of the Moorabool River at Fyansford (Victorian Government Gazette, 88, 25th July, 1862, p1291).
The hotel itself, was a single-storey, weatherboard structure built on stone footings, although whether built by Hassall or another I do not know. Regardless, Hassall did not remain long and by 1871, the Junction Hotel had a new owner; Mrs Elizabeth Wensor (nee Hooton), a widow whose husband had died some two years earlier. Elizabeth and her husband Joseph had arrived from England some time prior to 1854 with their sons Joseph and Eliada. Four more children were born to the couple in the Barrabool/Modewarre area. Two boys - both named Charles - do not appear to have survived infancy. The two youngest children - daughters named Elizabeth and Christiana - would not have been more than 9 and 7 years old at the time of their father's death.
Within a year of moving to the Junction Hotel, Elizabeth married again. Her second husband was Charles Keen, a widower whose wife of only four years - Charlotte - had died the previous year. Between them, Charles and Elizabeth ran the Junction Hotel for the next twenty-six years, however from this time forward it was Charles whose name appeared as the licensee for the hotel.

The Junction Hotel, Fyansford-Gheringhap Rd. Image held by the Geelong
Historical Records Centre

I can find little detail about Charles' life prior to his marriage to Elizabeth, although his obituary indicated that he served with the Royal Navy and he may have been the Charles Keen - occupation stated as 'groom' - at Duck Ponds (Lara) during the latter half of the 1860s. In 1872, soon after becoming the licensee for the Junction Hotel, he was advertised as the contact point for details of a local stallion being put up for stud.
From 1883-1894 Charles served on the Bannockburn Shire Council, often concerning himself with the state of the bridges in his immediate neighbourhood at Fyansford, Pollocksford and Baker's Bridge along with other issues pertaining to Fyansford and surrounds.
Finally, in November, 1898 after twenty-six years, the Keens called it a day. The following month, a clearing sale was held on the property and the license - but not the ownership of the hotel - passed to the Tyers family who held the lease until 1910. At this time, the hotel was situated on 250 acres of land.
After retiring,  Charles and Elizabeth lived at 79 Lloyd St (now Clarence St), Geelong West in a house known as 'Brighton Cottage', however Charles did not have long to enjoy his retirement. He died at his Lloyd St home on 19th March, 1899 and was buried in the "new general cemetery" (Western Cemetery) with his first wife. He was 69. His will, made out only five days before his death, appointed Elizabeth his executrix and with the exception of two bequests of £100 to be made to his brother and sister in England, his sole beneficiary.

The Keen family graves, Geelong Western Public Cemetery, Church of
England section, Row 1, Graves 0908 and 0909. August, 2016

Elizabeth lived a further fourteen years, deriving income from the rent on the various properties she owned outright or in consequence of her inheritance from her husband. She died on 15th August, 1913 at the age of 90. Under the terms of her own will, her sons Joseph and Eliada and daughter Elizabeth were to inherit the Junction Hotel, whilst her grand daughter Elizabeth Eaton was to maintain her grandmother's grave and in return would inherit 'Brighton Cottage'. Her remaining daughter Christiana was to inherit one shilling.
Elizabeth was buried on the 18th August, in a plot adjoining that of Charles and his first wife Charlotte. Not long after her death, the hotel itself was lucky to survive a grass fire which burnt out much of the surrounding land. The hotel and a cottage on the neighbouring Frogmore Estate were only saved from burning after a significant effort by locals.
Following the expiration of the Tyers' lease on the property, it was next leased by members of the Gugger family. The Gugger name has a long association with the Fyansford district. The family were amongst the earliest of the Swiss vignerons to arrive in the area from the Canton of Neuchatel, encouraged to settle in the district by Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe whose wife was Swiss. Their tenure as licensees however lasted only until 31st December, 1917 when the Junction Hotel was was de-licensed after a decision of the licensing board to reduce the number of hotels in the district (Public Records Office of Victoria, Index to Defunct Hotel Licenses (1847 - 1932)).

Entry for the Junction Hotel, PROV, Index to Defunct Hotel Licenses (1847-1932)

As a result of the closure, Joseph Wensor as trustee to his mother's estate was awarded £250 and Frederick Gugger as licensee was awarded £65. After the hotel's closure, it became a private residence known as 'Junction House' and at some point the Guggers took ownership of the property where they remained until 1922. At this time, the property was advertised for sale as the Gugger brothers were leaving the farming game.
The Geelong Historical Records Centre holds a letter written about the Junction Hotel by Norm Gugger, a descendant of the Gugger family who occupied the hotel. In it he indicates that the hotel was built c1850, that it closed in 1922 and that Charles Keen was a councillor in Geelong however I suspect that the passage of time has somewhat blurred the truth.

The Junction Hotel, Fyansford-Gheringhap Rd. Early 1900s with various
members of the Gugger family standing in front of the hotel. Image held by
the Geelong Historical Records Centre

Of Mrs Wensor he said that she was the first person in Fyansford to have conducted Sunday School classes, which she took in her parlour and attributed to her the following words of wisdom "Land lords advice to his customers. Drink moderately, act wisely, be good company, use good language, go home quietly."
She is also claimed to have lived by these words of advice:

When some people ask for credit

To refuse them gives me pain

But when they owe a sixpence

They never come in again

So the rule I have adopted

And enforce this rule I must

for cash I give good measure

But find I cannot trust.

From the 1920s onward, I can find no further mention of 'Junction House', other than noting that it remained in private hands until 1980 when the main hotel building was demolished by order of the Bannockburn Shire Council following a ruling by the Housing Commission. There was some objection at the time, however the then Shire Engineer Ken Middleton indicated that the building was in such bad condition, it was not worth saving.
Following the 1980 demolition of the original hotel building, a new house was built on the premises and all that remains today is the little bluestone outbuilding about which I had always wondered and some of the stone foundations of the main building.

Derelict bluestone outbuilding at the site of the former Junction Hotel, August 2016

I still do not know what the function of the building was, however it was not part of the main hotel building and may instead have been a stable or other outbuilding. The four pairs of large horseshoes still attached to the outer walls making a miss-aligned "S" shape may also be an indication of function and perhaps may also give an indication of Charles Keen's interest in horses.

Four bridges and a ford: the first bridge

In August, 1851, the Victorian gold rush began in earnest. Thousands flocked from the ports of Melbourne and Geelong to the goldfields of Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Creswick and beyond. By 1852, the newly-independent Colony of Victoria boasted 6.5 million sheep and the drays loaded with their wool trundled their way to markets in the major port towns of Geelong and Melbourne.
Many of those drays crossed the vast, open plains of the Western District to bring their wool to Geelong. In the opposite direction, thousands of hopeful diggers lined the tracks to Ballarat, which until 1851 was only a squatting run, not the teeming town of 20,000 it had become by 1854. In the few years since the discovery of gold, Geelong had also experienced a rapid population increase from a town of just over 8,000 in 1851 its population had more than doubled to over 20,000 by 1854.
And along with the floods of people coming and going, there were those who provided the supplies they needed to live on. Carters like the young Henry Mundy (Henry Mundy: a young Australian pioneer, Les Hughes, 2003) could do quite well for themselves carrying supplies. For those who were willing to risk a stint in the lockup - see Mundy's description - there was also money to be made by slipping an extra barrel or two on the wagon to supply the sly-grog shanties which proliferated on the goldfields.
All of this meant of course, that the traffic flow across the ford at Fyansford increased substantially. Not only was it a key crossing point on the Great Western Road leading from Geelong to the Western District and Portland Bay, but the ford also provided an alternative route for those heading to the goldfields. They could join the Geelong-Buninyong Track at the Eureka Hotel (at the modern day intersection near Gheringhap) or travel via Inverleigh and Shelford, following the track to the west of the Leigh River to Buninyong.
By November, 1853, according to the Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer it was rumoured that the ford at Fyansford was to be replaced by a bridge. The rumours, as it turned out, were true and in January, 1854 tenders were called for the construction of a timber bridge on stone abutments over the Moorabool River.

Original timber bridge across the Moorabool River at Fyansford, c1866-1880.
Image held by the State Library of Victoria

Surprisingly however, the advent of a bridge at Fyansford, was not as far as I can tell, accompanied by the usual degree of community outrage over the degraded state of the existing facility - in this case, the ford and the roads leading to it. Nor, unlike the building of the Batesford Bridge, can I find any call for tenders for the Fyansford Bridge in the Victorian Government Gazette of the day.
Regardless, the bridge was built during 1854 and officially opened on the 1st September that year by the Mayor William Baylie with Captain Foster Fyans in attendance as guest of honour. The ceremony began with mounted troopers leading a procession of local notables to the bridge which was decorated with a floral arch at each end. Once at the bridge, the company halted and Mayor Baylie christened the "Fyans Ford Bridge" in deference to Captain Fyans with a bottle of champagne. Those present then crossed the bridge before returning to attended an outdoor banquet which was accompanied by the usual toasts and speeches.
As can be seen from a number of contemporary photos, as per the specifications outlined, the bridge was a timber structure supported at each end by bluestone abutments and in between by timber piers. In a significant change from the past, the new bridge was located around 350m downstream from the site of the original ford, however looking at various websites as well as the information board located near the bridge site, there appears to be some confusion as to the location of the timber bridge. The board along with the websites claim that this first bridge was located on the site of the current bridge.
Having looked at the existing bridges, this claim stuck an odd not as I had previously noted that the the north east corner of the Monier bridge (more of which later) contained several rows of bluestone blocks which did not seem to fit with the rest of its construction.

Bluestone blocks next to the Monier bridge

Furthermore, a quick search of the undergrowth on the west bank immediately upstream of the Monier bridge, revealed two piles of cut stone situated close by the Monier bridge - surely the remains of the bluestone abutment belonging to the original bridge. This was effectively confirmed when after a little more research I located an entry on the Victorian Heritage Database titled "Fyansford timber bridge ruin". There was no further information other than a place marker located - as I expected - slightly upstream of the existing bridges.

Pile of cut stone on the western bank of the Moorabool

So, based on the above details and having looked at the few available photographs and sketches, I believe that the original timber bridge was located slightly upstream of the two present bridges, in such close proximity to the Monier bridge that perhaps (I have not seen plans for the Monier bridge) the abutment of the timber bridge on the east bank was later used in the construction of the second bridge. The alignment of the first bridge however, was at a more acute angle which left the abutment on the west bank further upstream than that on the east.
No doubt the site of the new crossing was not appreciated by William Bohn, owner of the Swan Inn on the west bank of the Moorabool who now found his business at a distance from the main road and on the opposite side of the river to the growing township. On the east bank however and in prime position on the new line of road, Charles B. Dawson took advantage of the realignment to establish a new public house - the Fyansford Hotel. By July, 1854 he was calling for tenders for the erection of a two-storey brick building which remains in operation to the present day.

The Fyansford Hotel

On the opposite side of the new road and at about the same time, a second hotel - designed by Walter Ferrier for James Roger Miller - was also under construction. In addition to its role as a public house, the Balmoral also did duty as the post office, a polling station and was even used to accomodate the proceedings of an inquest in 1882, into the death of George Webb, a local farmer who was found drowned in the river. Unlike the Fyansford, the Balmoral Hotel operated only until 1895 when it was sold to Mr Henry Wilks who operated the premises as a boarding house.
During the 20th century, the old Balmoral Hotel underwent significant renovation and was for a time converted into two flats before being purchased in 1972 by John Heard who in turn converted the former hotel into an art gallery. Since 1988, the building has been home to reception centre, Truffleduck at Balmoral.

The former Balmoral Hotel, now Truffleduck at Balmoral

In addition to the new hotels and the bridge, the surrounding roadway was also upgraded. In the weeks prior to the opening of the bridge, the "hills...on each side of the river" were "cut and improved and the road metalled" (Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer, 18th August, 1854) whilst an additional, 71 chains of road was constructed near the new bridge.
A look at the few early maps to which I currently have access and the length of road indicated (almost 1.5km), shows that this wasn't just a minor diversion to redirect the track from the ford. The distance indicated corresponds to the distance via Hyland Street from the top of The Deviation - or Fyansford Hill as it was then called - to the cutting on the opposite side of the river.
Looking at an 1850 map of Geelong and surrounds published by James Harrison however, I was surprised to see that it marked the original road to the ford as following a curved path from the western end of Autumn Street, south past the future site of the cement works, before descending directly down the hill to the ford, which at its steepest included a drop of some 55m over a distance of only some 330m amounting to an average gradient of around 17%. This seems rather unlikely, so perhaps the the line was a general one rather than the line of the surveyed road.

Fyansford, 1859 showing the new line of road with the bridge in the distance.
Image held by the State Library of Victoria

The new road, which I gather from maps and photos followed the current alignment, included a descent of 51m, but extended over a distance of around 610m, yielding a gradient of only around 8%, but still more than steep enough for a bullock dray to negotiate.
Work on the new road appears to have continued well after the bridge was opened to traffic. In April, 1855, the lack of fencing along the steep road led to a serious accident as reported by The Argus on 27th April, 1855:

A serious accident occurred on last Saturday night to a dray, at the Fyans Ford Hill. The new road, which is not fenced in on either side, and is very narrow, runs close past a precipice of some twenty feet deep. Being rather dark, and there being no fence to save or direct the cart, the driver had allowed the wheel to go too close to the edge of the cliff, when suddenly the cart overturned and fell to the bottom, being smashed to pieces among the broken stones. Strange to say, the horse was not much injured, otherwise than with wounds only skin deep; the driver escaped also with very slight injury.

Which section of the new road this was I cannot tell, however the following month, a contract was announced in the Victorian Government Gazette (18th May, 1855) for the "erection of about 400 lineal yards of stone wall, along the side cutting west of Fyansford" whilst in March the following year tenders were called for "450 yards of fencing along an embankment at Fyansford".

A pencil drawing by Samuel Thomas Gill overlooking the timber bridge at
Fyansford, soon after its construction and showing the realigned road. The
Swan Inn can be seen upstream to the right whilst the Fyansford Hotel is
 yet to be built. Image held by the State Library of Victoria

Nor was the new road the only safety concern as by 1859, the new bridge - still a mere five years old - was deemed unsafe. On 19th October, 1859 The Argus reported that:

...some of the pier piles having given  way, it was deemed advisable to send for chains to bind the four centre piers together. The longitudinal beams of the roadway present anything but a straight line to the eye, and the hand-rails correspond in their curves to the lines of the aforesaid beams, showing unmistakably that something has given way. The bridge is only a wooden one, built upon a rather insecure construction...

By early December £133 8s 6d had been allocated by the government for repairs to the bridge, but barely twelve months later it was reported in the Geelong Advertiser that flooding had washed away a temporary bridge installed for use whilst timber bridge was (once again) repaired.
And so it continued. The timber bridge across the Moorabool at Fyansford served the town and those travelling between Geelong and the Western District for 45 years until 1899 when the decision was finally made to replace it.

Four bridges and a ford: the ford

Over recent weeks I have spent a bit of time looking at and for photos and paintings of Fyansford and the area around the confluence of the Moorabool and the Barwon Rivers. Some shots were taken from The Deviation looking west, others were taken from the cutting on the Hamilton Highway looking east towards The Deviation. Often they showed the Moorabool River crossing - whatever it was at that time - so I thought I would take a look at the history of the various crossings. Some details will be familiar to most, but perhaps not all...

First things first. As the name suggests, the Moorabool River crossing at Fyansford was originally a ford. Long before the arrival of white settlers however, the people of the Wathaurong tribe inhabited the area. It was they who first used this shallow point on the Moorabool as a ford. Their name for the area was Bukar Bulac; "the place between two rivers".
In the earliest days of European settlement, the new arrivals often made use of the tracks and fords used by the indigenous population so it is not surprising that Captain Foster Fyans - recognising it as a key location - chose this place to make camp upon his arrival in the district in 1837 to take up the role of police magistrate. As I mentioned previously, Fyansford did become an important location, providing access for the wool-growers of the Western District, to the ports and wool markets of Geelong.

Then, as European settlement spread out across the Moorabool to the west, traffic on the Great Western Road (later the Lower Western Road and now the Hamilton Highway), increased. As the squatters expanded their flocks, dray-loads of wool needed to be carted to the port at Geelong. To aid the passage of these drays and the path of other travellers, the ford was reinforced with earth and rocks.

1847 sketch by Charles Norton, looking upriver across Fyans' Ford. Image held
by the State Library of Victoria

To this end, in 1842 Mr John Atkins with his business partner Robert Nalder Clarke built an inn on the west bank of the Moorabool and was offering to make a substantial contribution towards upgrading the ford if other locals were prepared to contribute as well. Atkins' inn - originally known as the Fyanstown or Fyans Ford Inn and later as the Swan Inn/Hotel - was well situated to take advantage of the passing trade crossing the ford before following the track south to the current line of road as the sketch below shows:

1847 sketch of Fyansford and the Moorabool River, showing both the ford and
the Swan Inn. Image held by the State Library of Victoria

It also gives a good idea of where the ford was actually located, namely around 350m upstream of the current bridge. This is confirmed by the 1861 geological survey map - Quarter Sheet 24SE Geelong - produced by surveyor Richard Daintree. Looking at the minutes from a City of Greater Geelong council meeting from 24th September, 2014, I am not revealing any long lost secret here. The  minutes mention a plan "To promote the original track to the ford through appropriate interpretation", indicating that the site of the ford is well-documented. When we will see the interpretive signage however, is probably anyone's guess.
Rather than wait for council, for my own benefit, I recently went for a wander along this section of the river to get an idea of where the ford was and what it looks like today. There is no obvious sign of where it was located and whilst it is quite shallow along this stretch, it is worth remembering that in the 1840s, the upper reaches of the Moorabool had not been dammed as they have today, so water levels may have been different.

General vicinity of the ford at Fyansford, May, 2016

Whilst all trace of the ford may long-since have gone, on the west bank of the river, until a few short weeks ago, John Atkins' Swan Inn still stood; derelict but intact, until the evening of 22nd April, 2016 when a fire - believed to be a deliberate act of arson - gutted the main building. What remains of the Swan Inn can still be seen from various points around the town.

The Swan Inn, February, 2015

In 1842 when Atkins and Clarke selected the site for their inn, they chose a prime position on the track to the ford. The flats nearby were used to hold some of the region's earliest horse races as well as other sporting matches. After only a handful of years however, the original owners, were forced to sell up having overstretched themselves financially. According to The Stepping Stone: A History of the Shire of Bannockburn by Derek Beaurepaire (1995) the early 1850s saw the property used by the Mercer family as the base from which to administer their property which extended to the west. They used the name 'Fyansford House'.
 In 1856, the inn passed to William Bohn who undertook repairs and opened the property as the Swan Inn. It was during this time that Bohn was suspected of being complicit in the 1858 death of his wife. After Bohn, the property was owned by Mr Hopeton, owner of the Fyansford flour mill at which time it went by the name of 'Swanville'. Next the property passed to the Synot family who used the name 'Riverside'. In general the hotel had a successful history, by the 1860s, boasting what were said to be "charming gardens" stocked with fruit trees, ornamental plants and a generous kitchen garden.

The Swan Hotel 1860, drawn by Samuel Calvert. Image taken
from the State Library of Victoria

Changing times during the 1950s however, saw the inn finally close its doors for the last time, being converted instead into a farmhouse. By this time of course, the ford near which the Swan was built was long gone, replaced in 1854 by a bridge which would be located around 350m downstream of the ford, leaving the hotel at some distance from the new road which was formed to carry traffic from the bridge to the Western District.