A U S T R A L I A
MELBOURNE / CAMPERDOWN / WEST CLOVEN HILLS SHEEP STATION
Written from first-hand research and illustrated with first generation copies from Photograph Album VII - Australia by George W. Randall, co-founder in July 1996 and former Vice Chairman Kinloch Castle Friends’ Association.
Album VII is one of twenty recording the three year long world tour in the Library at Kinloch Castle, Isle of Rum, Scotland, Sir George Bullough’s former Highland home.
Main text is a word for word copy of Article 14 (of 28) written by Bullough’s
travelling companion, Robert Mitchell, and published in the
Accrington Division Gazette, August 1896.
Time of visit: March /April 1893.
George Bullough, 1879-1939, celebrated his 23rd birthday three weeks prior to his arrival at Port Phillip, Melbourne, on 23 March 1893.
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GEORGE BULLOUGH
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THE STATE OF VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA. (The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Family Atlas 1875 * George W. Randall Research Archive)  
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Extract below from:
“Victoria and Its Metropolis Past and Present - The Colony and Its
People - 1888”
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AT QUEEN'S WHARF, PORT MELBOURNE
Album VII * Image 1 * Edited from full size: 8 x 6 inches ©
George W. Randall Research Archive
George W. Randall Research Archive
The ship is the SS Courier, moored at the berth of its owners,
Huddart, Parker & Co., Ltd., the sign on their quay-side wood office, bears the names of three of their vessels, Alert, Courier and Excelsior, above the door.
The standing figure is almost certainly George Bullough.
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PLEASE NOTE:
SOME REFERENCES IN MR. MITCHELL'S ARTICLE
ARE CONSIDERED UNACCEPTABLE TODAY.
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See Note 8.
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Clarke & Bradley were a leading firm of Auctioneers and Estate Agents located at Salisbury Buildings, Queen Street, Melbourne. In 1885 Mr. James Clarke withdrew from the business, the firm continuing under the same name with
Mr. Robert John Curtain and
Mr. Bernard Bradley, the latter
previously being a silent partner.
Clarke is described in The Land Boomers by Michael Cannon as “a Machiavellian,
an estate agent of wide and devious experience who had previously gone bankrupt in 1867.”
The Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, reported on 2 October 1893 James Clarke had been declared insolvent, with a liability/asset deficiency of £34,102, adding the other partners of said the estate agency, Bradley and Curtain,“having previously gone insolvent.”
SEE NOTE 8.
L. C. SHAKESPEARE, SADDLER, BOURKE STREET, MELBOURNE
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In 1885 Mr. Ekman built the factory, warehouse and shop depicted in Mr. Bullough's
Solidly constructed of brick, with Victoria Street frontage of 132 feet,
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PORT MELBOURNE - QUEEN'S WHARF
Today the Port
of Melbourne is the largest maritime centre for containerised and other cargo
in Australasia. The city was named by General Sir Richard Bourke, K.C.B., Governor of New South Wales, 1831-1837, in honour of British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, P.C., F.R.S., Queen Victoria’s first prime minister and guiding light.  SS Courier, official number 95231,
belonging to Huddart, Parker & Co., Ltd.,
625 Collins Street, Melbourne.
Courier spent her entire career as an excursion steamer plying the seventy
or so coastal miles between Melbourne, Geelong and Portarlington, within
the 745 square miles of Port Phillip Bay.
MAP OF PORT PHILLIP BAY
Wikipedia Map Adam Carr
Steel built as a
passenger / transport vessel by (Charles Sheridan) Swan & Hunter, Wallsend, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England
in 1887, the ship was launched the same year
by Lady Rebecca Berry, wife of Sir Graham Berry, K.C.M.G., Agent-General for the state of Victoria of which he was formerly the Premier. 
Courier, Alert, Excelsior and Despatch were all built specifically for trading between Melbourne, Geelong and Portarlington.
Alert sank off Port Phillip Heads in 1893 with the loss of fifteen lives.
Excelsior was dismantled in 1919 the ship's hull sold and used as a lighter.
Despatch built 1869 transferred to Huddart, Parker in 1876, wrecked Gippsland 1911.
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SS Courier’s statistics: 728 gross registered tons, passenger capacity 1,107, single screw,
length 220 feet,
beam 30 feet, draft 11 feet. Trial average speed 17.458 knots
at
124 revolutions per minute. Twin boilers drive a single 3 cylinder triple
expansion
engine fitted with Marshall’s patent valve gear, developing 3000
i.h.p.
by
R. & W. Hawthorne, Leslie & Co., Ltd., Hebburn-on-Tyne,
(Newcastle), England.
Built
under Special Licence, Courier was designed to meet the
requirements for use
by the Australian Navy in time of war. Her deck
was capable of being fitted
with
up to four 14-lb. Maxim Nordenfeldt naval guns should such a need arise.
The
vessels high speed, over seventeen knots, exceptional for the period,
meant
should hostilities arise she was well suited for coastal defence.
In
November 1927, after forty uneventful years carrying passengers the vessel was
sold to ship breakers, stripped of its fittings and scuttled on the 29th of March 1928,
in the Port Phillip Heads Area, i.e. the official Ship’s
Graveyard,
off Point Lonsdale in the Bass Strait.
Lying
at a depth of 138 feet, what remains of SS Courier is
today designated
a protected wreck, accessible to deep-trained
recreational divers.
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Born in 1841, Charles Rudd’s photographic premises were at 257 Bourke Street, Melbourne.
Sadly, on the 16th October 1901, after suffering inscrutable pain from rheumatoid arthritis,
he poisoned himself and was found dead on his office floor by his office boy shortly
after 1pm. He left behind his wife and seven children.
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| PORT MELBOURNE (South Shore) |
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GOVERNMENT HOUSE MELBOURNE
Album VII * Image 10
* Edited from full size: 8 x 6 inches George W. Randall Research Archive ©
Designed by
William Wardell, Inspector General of Public Works for the Colony of Victoria
1861 - 1878, in the Italianate style of the Victorian Era, construction began in 1871 and was completed in 1876. Its extravagant style, no different to many buildings of the time, reflects a booming economy due to the Victorian gold rush; a period of extreme prosperity
which proved to
be all too brief.
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| CORNER OF COLLINS AND SWANSTON STREET, MELBOURNE Album VII * Image 1 * Edited from full size: 8 x 6 inches George W. Randall Research Archive ©. The corner shop is Chambers & Seymour Ironmongers, Established 1850, next door, the Premier Deposit Bank, at the time the tallest building in Melbourne, and opposite, Melbourne Town Hall.  |
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| BOURKE STREET FROM SPRING STREET (FULL LENGTH) (Original photograph by Charles Rudd - photo No. 1)
Album VII * Image 6 * Edited from full size: 7½ x 5 inches
George W. Randall Research Archive © |
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| THE FLINDERS STREET VIADUCT LOOKING WEST Album VII * Image 7 * Edited from full size: 7½ x 5 inches (Photograph No. 496 A) George W. Randall Research Archive The sign on the roof of the ferry terminus building reads:
GEELONG
& PT.
ARLINGTON Port Arlington is 17 miles from Geelong on the Bellarine Peninsula.
The long sign upper right reads:
EXCURSION STEAMERS ALERT, COURIER, COOGEE & EXCELSIOR
PORTARLINGTON & GEELONG STEAMERS  
The Flinders
Street Railway Station Complex has been one of the central points of
Melbourne's rail system since the 1850s. The first train line was constructed
in 1854 and further lines and platforms were incorporated both before and after
construction of the main station building.
The station was the
terminus for the Melbourne & Hobson’s Bay Railway Company, which in 1854 was the first steam locomotive hauled passenger railway operation in Australia.
In 1865 operations
from adjacent Princes Bridge Station were linked up under Swanston Street
to Flinders
Street Station by the expanded Melbourne & Hobson’s Bay United Railway Co.
which was taken
over by the Victorian Railways in 1878.
In 1891 the
Victorian Railways connected Flinders Street to its existing major station
at Spencer
Street with a viaduct. By the 1880s the original buildings at Flinders Street
were considered
inadequate. James Fawcett and H. P. C. Ashworth of the
Railways Department won a competition to
redesign the station.
Demolition of
the original station and other buildings commenced in 1900, with the
foundations for the new complex laid two years
later and completed in 1910.
(Text abridged from:
Victorian Heritage Database Report – Heritage Council, Victoria)
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AUSTRALIAN NATIVES
Album XIII * Image 1 * Size: 8 x 6½ inches * Original by Charles Baylis George W. Randall Research and Photographic Archive.
Album XIII is
titled and devoted to “Natives South Africa, Australia &c.”
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Collins Street is named after Captain David Collins who founded the first settlement in 1788 at Sorrento Port Phillip, which only lasted a few months. Several business names can be identified on the hoardings: Thomas Lang & Co., Seedsmen, Nurserymen, Florists and Produce Merchants.
their
1886 Catalogue gives their premises at:
Main
Road, Ballarat and 52 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne.
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Clarke & Bradley, Estate Agents, Melbourne.
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| From: Australian Building Societies Gazette No. 1 Vol. II - 2 May 1887. |
Mr. Robert John Curtain and
Mr. Bernard Bradley, the latter
previously being a silent partner.
Clarke is described in The Land Boomers by Michael Cannon as “a Machiavellian,
an estate agent of wide and devious experience who had previously gone bankrupt in 1867.”
The Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, reported on 2 October 1893 James Clarke had been declared insolvent, with a liability/asset deficiency of £34,102, adding the other partners of said the estate agency, Bradley and Curtain,“having previously gone insolvent.”
SEE NOTE 8.
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| The Australasian Saddler and Harness Maker 1 October 1908. |
The business of
L. C. Shakespeare, Saddler,
was run by Mr.
Charles Hetherington.
The 1908 article
says “he went out of the saddlery business 30 or 40 years ago” which indicates
1870 or 1880 “when trade was in a very bad state” and subsequently engaged in
“various land companies.”
“various land companies.”
Land speculation
in the early 1890’s fueled the financial crisis with land going at
unsustainable rates leading to borrowers being unable to meet their
obligations.
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| STREET MELBOURNE Album VII * Image 12 * Size: 8 x 6 inches George W. Randall Research Archive |
Identified from
the name over the shop, “Street Melbourne” is 100, Victoria Street, Melbourne,
the business
of R. A. Ekman & Sons, Established 1860. To its right the drapery
store of
Kennedy &
Sons and the West Melbourne Coffee Palace.
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Reinhold
Alexander Ekman was born near Stockholm, Sweden, and came to Victoria in
1854, spending his first year as a miner at Mount Blackwood Diggings.
Unsuccessful,
he
spent the next two years at Beechworth Rush, described as "a fabulous
gold area",
with its links
to the outlaw, Ned Kelly. Experiencing a similar result he returned to
Melbourne
in 1857 and
obtained work in his profession as a cabinet maker as a journeyman.
In June 1860 he
decided to start business in his own account at 78 Little Collins Street,
Melbourne, as a cabinet maker and furniture dealer.
Success gave him
the confidence to stay in Melbourne and the following year he married
Bridget Mary
Hogan. In 1862 he purchased the business of the late Mr. W. H. Rocke
at 18 Lonsdale
Street and transferred his Collins Street business to his new
premises.
By 1875 he
needed more space and acquired property in Victoria Street, West Melbourne,
where he opened
a branch establishment the following year. Business grew, and in 1878
he moved all his
stock to Victoria Street and closed the Lonsdale Street warehouse.
Ever increasing
trade soon made it necessary for even more spacious premises.
In 1885 Mr. Ekman built the factory, warehouse and shop depicted in Mr. Bullough's
photograph
and the engraving above from Victoria and its Metropolis, published
in 1888.
Solidly constructed of brick, with Victoria Street frontage of 132 feet,
the new premises
were four stories high including a basement,
the
corner surmounted by a 75 foot high, four square tower.
Adjacent in the
new building was the drapery store of Messrs (John) Kennedy & Sons
and the West
Melbourne Coffee Palace. It would appear Mr. Ekman was originally
proprietor of
the drapery store when it was a “drapery warehouse” but later sold or
leased that part
of his business to Mr. Kennedy, retaining his interest in the Coffee Palace.
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R. A. Ekman & Sons, 100, Victoria Street, Melbourne,
cabinet makers, upholsterers and furniture warehousemen
as it appears in Victoria and its Metropolis published in 1888.
Text below from the North Melbourne Advertiser - Friday 10 January 1890
The West Melbourne Coffee Palace - A Comfortable Hostelry |
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| From: Centennial International Exhibition Melbourne 1888-1889 |
Ekman’s North
and West Melbourne Coffee Palace, Victoria Street, under the entirely new management
of Mr. W. H. Hancock, is now transferred into one of the most comfortable
residences and cafes in the city or suburbs, and will well repay inspection.
The building has been renovated and supplied with new furniture of a
substantial, and at the same time elegant style, and both sitting and bed-rooms
are clean, comfortable, cheerful, and thoroughly ventilated. Every bed in the
thirty bedrooms is supplied with a spring mattress, so that the weary arrival by
train or steamer runs no risk of passing the night on a couch which feels like
a rabbit warren underneath him. There are public and private sitting rooms for
ladies and gentlemen, and also a smoking room for the latter. A reading room is
also provided, with a piano, so that residents have every facility for
amusement, while a billiard room, situated under the ground floor to ensure a
cool temperature, and lighted by night with twenty six burners, will afford
ample amusement to lovers of the game, and there is also a second billiard table
for the use of boarders. An unusual luxury is found in the bedrooms in the
shape of a sofa and commodious wardrobes are also provided, while both hot and
cold baths are obtainable. Precaution against fire is shown by the presence of
buckets of water on all the landings, ready for instant use, while the
staircase is broad and roomy, anything “poky” about the premises being conspicuous
by its absence. There are spacious club rooms on the ground floor, so that any local
society or association need not plead the necessity of meeting at an hotel, as they
will find themselves well looked after at the coffee palace. The manager feels confident
that if it were known that such a complete transformation had taken place in
the arrangements of the building many visitors from the country would accord it
their patronage and the number of resident boarders be increased. The midday
lunch, which is practically a substantial dinner, for the modest sum of one
shilling, is a specialty and equal to anything in the City-indeed, as regards
fresh vegetables and good bread it surpasses many places in Melbourne. The
culinary arrangements are characterised by scrupulous attention to cleanliness
both as regards the “pots and pans” and the cook and its attendants. Mr. Hancock
is ready at all times to show visitors over the premises, and the Coffee Palace is now
under the management of a gentleman who has any amount of energy and enterprise
and who deserves to attain success in his efforts to meet a long felt want.
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VICTORIA STREET MELBOURNE
Album VII * Image 12 * Edited from full size: 8 x 6 inches |
Sign reads: NORTH & WEST MELBOURNE COFFEE PALACE
George W. Randall Research Archive ©
“Ekman’s North
and West Melbourne Coffee Palace, Victoria Street,
under
the entirely new management of Mr. W. H. Hancock,
is
now transferred into one of the most comfortable residences and cafes
in the city or
suburbs, and will well repay inspection.”
RESEARCH REFERENCES:
Australia
Revisited in 1890 ... ... ...
Grace's Guide to
British Industrial History - Engineering Volume XLV 1888
Official Record
of the Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne, 1888-1889
The Bankers'
Magazine of Australasia Volume X 1896
Victorian
Year-Book 1893 by Henry Helyn Haytor 1894
Victorian
Heritage Database Report – Heritage Council, Victoria - March 2018
The Land Boomers
by Michael Cannon 1966
Agricultural Journal of
Victoria - 18 July 1905
The History of
Australia and New Zealand from 1606-1890 by A & G Sutherland 1894
Catalogue of
Plants: Cultivated for sale by Thomas Lang & Co. 1868
The Australasian
Saddler and Harness Maker Volumes 8-9 July 1908
Victoria and its
Metropolis - Past and Present - The Colony and its People in 1888
Centennial
International Exhibition - Melbourne 1888 -1889
North Melbourne
Advertiser - Friday 10 January 1890
Huddart, Parker
& Company - The Ships List
Butler & Brooke's National Directory of Victoria - 1866/1867
Victoria and Its Metropolis Past and Present - The Colony and Its People - 1888
British Genealogy and Family History Archive - Martha Hodgson
George W.
Randall Research and Photographic Archive - Kinloch Castle - 1992-2022Butler & Brooke's National Directory of Victoria - 1866/1867
Victoria and Its Metropolis Past and Present - The Colony and Its People - 1888
British Genealogy and Family History Archive - Martha Hodgson
Reviewed with new material 22 September 2022 by author.
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Great articles! I am in Melbourne Australia, researching the old image makers of the early days and came across your article about the photographer Charles Rudd 1841-1901 and his death from rheumatoid arthritis (which I wasn't able to find in any local archives). I am putting together a storyline using panoramic views of the city from 1841 up to now. It must have ben extremely painful for him to climb towers in the city in the 1890s.
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