General News
13 January, 2025
Summer reading: Looking at causes of death
By KEN ARNOLD A MURDER, an animal attack and natural causes. Three very different causes for the deaths of those buried in the Pioneers Memorial Grave. Laid to rest in a place known by many names throughout history, Glengower, has a mysterious and...
By KEN ARNOLD
A MURDER, an animal attack and natural causes. Three very different causes for the deaths of those buried in the Pioneers Memorial Grave.
Laid to rest in a place known by many names throughout history, Glengower, has a mysterious and bloody past.
Memorialised by the plaque at the grave site, three unnamed men, a cook, a traveller and a young worker.
The history of Glengower begins with Dugald McLachlan, 1801 - January 31, 1855, a retired army captain, who emigrated with his nephew Donald Cameron, born 1819, to Campbelltown and purchased the Glengower station around 1838-1839. He built on the east side of the creek, known then as Joyce’s Creek or Deep Creek and it was here that what is thought to be the first hand made brick building in central Victoria was erected.
Dugald McLachlan sold his property to Hugh Glass in March 1854. Glass employed Donald Campbell, 1813 - 1868, to manage the property.
It was not long before gold was found in the area hence a small town soon sprung up. Joyces Creek was renamed Campbelltown, after Duncan Campbell, by surveyor Mackintosh in 1861.
At that time the Glengower - Donald Campbell, the Rock and the Caledonian hotels were operating. During April 1921 part of the original run was sold for soldier settlement, this area becoming known as Strathlea. Joyce’s creek emanates from the Blampied area.
The Joyces Creek cemetery, Rodborough Road, also recorded as Glengower Road, Strathlea is some distance from Campbelltown towards Newstead whilst the Glengower (Campbelltown) cemetery is about 2kms out, it being towards Smeaton.
The general area of Glengower is around 7kms out of Campbelltown, on the road to Clunes. At one stage Glengower had three hotels, a Bible Christian church, hall, post office and school No. 927, which operated from 1867 - 1936. A grass fire in 1969 destroyed the remaining timber buildings however some ruins of stone buildings can still be seen today.
George and Alfred Joyce purchased the Plaistow run and improvements, these being two very primitive huts, a log sheep yard, fifty hurdles and a watch-box for £50 in 1844. The Plaistow homestead is in Rodborough Road.
The Maryborough - Castlemaine railway line had to be realigned to the south of the old bridge over Joyces Creek whilst a new much higher bridge was built nearby for road traffic. Close by to the old low level timber bridge there was a mineral spring. Whilst the old bridge is under water when the reservoir is full, the steps down to the old spring can still be seen. The old mineral springs are upstream from the road bridge.
If you turn into Joyces Creek-Baringhup Road you pass by the old railway site. Continue for some distance until you reach Picnic Point Road where you turn right and travel down to a small picnic ground. No facilities except a ramp for unloading boats.
Donald Cameron settled on part of Alexander Irvine’s Seven Hills Run, renaming it Clunes. It was on this run that James Esmond, born 1822, Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland, found payable gold in what was then known as Port Phillip, now Victoria, on July 1, 1851.
It is thought that the cook at the station was killed by a group of Indigenous people, who were returning to the Grampians, after obtaining green stone from Mt. William, near Lancefield. Incidentally the Indigenous people used greenstone blanks to make stone axes.
Why was the cook murdered? Well, the answer died with the cook and the Indigenous People, but it has been suggested that the cook added Plaster of Paris to damper which would swell inside the stomach thus causing a horrible death but if this was the case the cook would have only been signing his own death warrant.
It would appear that the Indigenous Australians had called at the station requesting food whilst McLachlan and his stockmen were away mustering sheep for shearing during the winter of 1840. On returning the men found the murdered cook hanging on a meat hook in the kitchen. As the Indigenous people had camped in the area, they were suspected of the murder and an expedition comprising men from the Glengower station and stockmen from the neighbouring Smeaton Hill Run of Captain John Hepburn, with their dogs, set off after them finally sighting the tribe at Middle Creek, a small creek about five miles roughly west of the Glengower station.
On seeing the approaching men on horseback, with guns drawn, the Indigenous people jumped into the creek and tried to swim to the other side or hide under the water, some had hollow reeds to breathe through while submerged. The mounted men began to fire into the water, by the time the firing had stopped at least twelve men were dead, some floating in the red tinged water.
As a result, this place became known as ‘The Blood Hole’ or ‘Slaughter hole’. On returning to the Glengower, McLachlan buried the cook, a convict whose name is not known, about 800 yards north-east of the homestead.
In expectation of a reprisal raid, McLachlan kept savage dogs that he released onto the station grounds at nightfall. About a year later a visiting itinerant traveller, who may have been seeking food or shelter, was savaged to death by the dogs, and was buried alongside the cook.
The third grave is of George McDonnell (McDonald), the son of shepherd Donald McDonnell, who died of natural causes in 1841. No further graves were added.
The graves were originally enclosed with a post-and-rail and brush fence but as this rotted away it was replaced by the current fence, the initiative of Colonel Tom Anderson, of Ballarat, and Alec. Cumming, of Campbelltown.
To the fence is attached a plaque that reads:
HERE LIE THREE UNKNOWN PIONEERS OF THIS DISTRICT
A cook on Glengower station, killed by the Aborigines in 1840. A traveller killed by misadventure by the station dogs in 1841
and a young employee who died from natural causes in 1841 . May they rest in peace
Erected by T. Anderson & A. Cumming 1949.” This plaque was donated by a Captain Baldwin. This grave site, on private property, in Strathlea Road, about one km from the old Black Duck hotel at Campbelltown, on the east side of the road.