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From: Marion Stainsby <>
Subject: Bottrell: Early Days of Highton
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:14:18 +1000


Recent correspondence has made me check my files, and I can find no
evidence that I posted a caution I'd fully believed I had! So this is
it.

THe booklet published by the Geelong Historical Society in 1982 with
the title 'The early days of Highton and Belmont" contains two articles
published in the Geelong Advertiser in 1919 and 1931. At least one of
them, the 1931 article by J. H. Bottrell, had previously been
reprinted, with illustrations, in 'Investigator' March 1982 (Vol 17
#1).

I have a cutting of the original article, and anyone trying to locate
ancestors who lived in Roslyn Road will be misled by the omission of a
few words from both reprints. The original, published in the Geelong
Advertiser, Saturday, January 10 1931, under the title 'Geelong
Reminiscences. Beautiful Highton: Its Early History. "The Village over
the River" 'runs:

Going west [along Roslyn Road] from Valley Road these has their homes
on the north side - Mr G.Allen, Mrs Parsons, Messrs Chapman,
W.Balding, H.Allen, Rankin, and W.BURRELL; AND ON THE SOUTH
SIDE MESSRS W.Higgins, Hughes, N.Heard, Hopkins, and Synnot.

My capitals show the words which are omitted, and although only
"Burrell" gets completely dropped out, a number of other houses are
shifted to the wrong side of the street!

And while I'm nit-picking, the GHS booklet also mislabels a sketch on
the next page, saying that 'Fernside', which it depicts, is referred to
in the text as 'Fernbank'. In fact the two houses were both in the
block between Thornhill Road and the corner of Scenic (once called
Boundary) Road. Lawrence Mountjoy's 'Fernbank', which was
single-storeyed, was the more easterly, and became the house for the
chaplain of St Catherine's Orphanage. 'Fernside', which was
two-storeyed, was actually incorporated into west side of the Orphanage
building itself. A local resident, Isabella Leigh nee White, who lived
on the block when the Orphanage was being built, remembered this
clearly.

I hope this may help someone at some stage.

Marion


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