After Peter Haydon became involved with Peter Brodie, in the management of Harben Vale and W. H. Warlands affairs, he was up and down quite frequently to Sydney. He became interested in buying land for himself and Peter Brodie. He decided he would like his young brother Thomas to join him in the colony. He also wanted Matilda his young sister. His idea was to send her to school for a while and then marry her to his friend Peter Brodie.
Peter wrote to his father suggesting that he let Thomas and Matilda come to him in N.S.W. At first Bernard, his father refused but after more persuasion from Peter, and Peter sending money for their cabins and needs, he relented.
Thomas and Matilda joined the ship Kinnear at Gravesend. It was the first time Thomas and Matilda had been out of their home county, Rosscommon, and the first time their father had been out of Ireland.
The ship sailed on September 16, 1836. It did not make any ports of call on the way, arriving in Sydney Harbour on February 7, 1837. Their fares were £90 each.
There was no one to meet the ship, but Thomas found transport to Rose Bay. In 1834 Peter Haydon had married a wealthy woman, Elizabeth Jenkins and she was installed at Tivoli Estate on Rose Bay. This was a substantial residence, with beautiful grounds and gardens, fruit trees and grape vines.
Elizabeth refused to go to the country. Later Tivoli was sold to Lt. Col. Dumaresq. Part of the original old Tivoli is incorporated in the Kambala girls’ school today.
Elizabeth welcomed Thomas and Matilda, the latter got on very well with Elizabeth. Thomas spent a few weeks there exploring Sydney and making contact with aborigines. He was to get on well with them when he had so much contact with them later on.
The time came for Thomas to go to Harben Vale. He went by steamer, to the Green Hills later called Morpeth and from there on he had to ride over 100 miles to Harben Vale.
When he arrived at Harben Vale, Peter Brodie was delighted to see him and to know that Matilda was in Sydney. He wanted to go straight away to meet her, leaving Thomas with Mr Street at Petwyn Vale to be instructed in station management and care of animals. Thomas’ father as well as owning an iron foundry had farms, so he would not have been entirely ignorant of the care of stock.
Thomas was there a few months. Peter Brodie went off to Sydney. Matilda refused to go to school and insisted she wanted to marry Peter Brodie. Brodie was Presbyterian and Matilda a Roman Catholic.
Before Matilda could come to Harben Vale she had to be taught to ride.
Peter Haydon, Matilda, and the Rev. I. H. Garven rode to Harben Vale.
The wedding took place in the drawing room at Harben Vale on July 23, 1837. It was the first wedding in the district and the first religious ceremony of any kind. The Rev. I. H. Garven was a Presbyterian minister. Celebrations went on for days. Both bond men and free were invited.
Matilda was 14. She and Peter Brodie lived at Harben Vale until W. H. Warland returned from overseas. Matilda was to have 12 children. Thomas moved out of Harben Vale and was to live in a hut on Glenalvon. Thomas began work for his brother Peter and Peter Brodie. He was sent over the Liverpool Range to select country. The term they used was, to take up country. This meant selecting an area taking it up under licence and paying a yearly levy so much per head of stock per year. The Government was beginning to lease the country over the range. The places selected were Big Jacks Creek out from Willow Tree: a property near Manilla on the Namoi River, Byron Plains near lnverell and Swamp Oak on the range above Tamworth and Wallabadah.
These places were so far apart and the only method of getting to them was to ride. On the Manilla property Thomas built a two roomed cottage. He even had a vegetable garden, and pigs.
He used aborigines whenever they were useful. He said local tribes were no good as guides outside their own tribal lands but were useful when contacting other tribes.
Thomas said the Aborigines had little regard for girl babies and would just throw them in a waterhole, likewise sickly or crippled children who could not keep up with the tribes.
Thomas came in to Glenalvon occasionally and he seems to have made it to Sydney each year for Christmas with his brother Peter.
Peter had purchased Bloomfield, from the Crown and by 1836 he had paid for it but no one lived on Bloomfield until Thomas came there six months before his wedding.
He had a “neat cottage built”, his own words, and the Bloomfield country of 680 acres was worked wIth Harben Vale which was only a mile away. The remuneration Thomas received was not in money. There was little money about, but in a percentage of the stock increase, usually ⅓rd. To me it always seems incredible how quickly stock numbers built up.
By the 1880’s there were big woolsheds scattered about the country side as far away as Dirrinbandi.
Wallabadah was managed for a time by Alexander Brodie, a brother of Peter’s. It was sold to Martyn and Coombe, Glass Manufacturers from Sydney, but Thomas was asked by them to look after it. Wallabadah could be reached by riding over the range at Warlands Creek. A Scottish family, the Macdonalds bought Wallabadah and the family are still there. They built a very fine home on it many years ago but none of the Macdonald men married and had no heirs. A nephew from England owns it now.
I went to dinner at Wallabadah when I was in my teens. We were waited on by a butler. Labour for the properties was assigned servants and ticket of leave men or old lags or ex-convicts.
Occasionally they would abscond and join up with outlaws who had become bush rangers.
Wages were about £25 a year and rations. The formula for rations was 10lbs of meat, 10lbs of flour, 2lbs of sugar and ¼lb of tea a week. Anything else they had to buy themselves.
All the stations had stores. They had to. Stores came by bullock wagon or horse teams from Maitland, a year’s supply at a time, so the stations had to supply the necessities of life.
Thomas returned to the Page before Christrnas 1840 and went on to Sydney to have Christmas with his brother, returning soon after to get Bloomfield organised.
Tenant farmers was the method used in England and Ireland to work country but our Australian climate was so very different and harsher that the same area here had nowhere near the producing capacity as the country they were used to at home.
Bloomfield had tenant farmers, Francis O’Neil, reputed to be a descendant of early Kings of Ireland, also O’Rourke, who looked after the horse breeding, Jesse and Tom Avard who later obtained their own country and descendants are still at Blandford, John Carmody, Thomas Filan, James Juchau, John Woolcott. Dennis Murphy, John and Jeremiah Carey, James Baker, George Lawrence, Philip Shanahan, and Dennis Lucy.
Needless to say they were not at Bloomfield all the time, They gradually obtained land of their own, after the Free Selection Act, put through Parliament by Sir John Robertson of Scone.
Amongst all these tenants there was plenty of labour, as they were all out to make extra money. Dennis Lucy referred to as the green man, because he could grow anything, was left a grace and favour farm on Bloomfield for as long as he wanted it. He had been a gardener at Tivoli and was Thomas Haydon’s groom, going everywhere with Thomas, especially after gold was found first at Bowling Alley Point and later at Oakenville near Nundle.
The gold was discovered by Thomas Laurie in 1852. Thomas Haydon used to buy the gold and take it to the Bank of Australasia in Maitland.
Thomas never carried firearms and was never molested.
Once an ex-convict who had been working on Bloomfield, Long Tom, absconded and joined up with another outlaw. Thomas and John Maunder Gill were riding together one day. They were accosted by these two outlaws. One was Long Tom who yelled out to his companion “Don’t shoot ~ it is Mr Haydon”. Later Long Tom was arrested on another charge. Thomas went to see him in gaol in Scone. He said “You have always been kind to me, but if you had not been with Mr Gill that day, he would have been a dead man.”
About 1974 my cousin John Haydon went for a trip overseas. He tried to contact Haydon relations and found only one, a girl named Moyra. She had been married to a man called Murphy and had one son called Haydon Murphy. Moyra was married again and is now Mrs Garloch.
She lent John eight letters that had been written by Thomas to his father and brothers. After having photostats made they were sent back to Ireland. They were written across and again across the pages. After a lot of patience and perseverance we were able to get the letters sorted out and typed up.
It is very interesting to us to have those letters as it tells us a lot about how things were developing in the colony ~ I will quote a few excerpts from these letters:
About the convicts Thomas writes:
“They must work with legs chained. They can only take short steps. With a soldier to each party to keep them working and working like horses, with three men to each car, two pulling and one pushing not without danger of being crushed and hardly allowed to stop, But they be taken and lashed and six months added to their time.”
When Thomas returned to Bloomfield after Christmas on the way back he called at Robert and Helenus Scott’s property at Glendon. He bought from them a thoroughbred stallion, Young Dover, the son of Dover who had been bred in England by a Mr Eli and was foaled in 1832.
Robert Scott imported him in 1835 for a total cost of £787.17.6. Dover was a son of Patron, himself a son of Proteus from Maid of Kent a daughter of Soothesayer and thus a long line of very successful horses to be bred at Bloomfield started and today in 1987, they have a beautiful mob of mares whose breeding goes back to the beginning.
By now economic conditions were worsening. Earlier Peter had made over to his brother Thomas, Bloomfield and the Commodore block. Tivoli was sold to Lt. Col. Durnaresq and Peter had made adequate settlement on his wife Elizabeth. To add to the problems of falling prices for all primary produce, there was a bad drought. The Brodies were in trouble and Peter Brodie owed Peter Haydon quite a large sum of money. They had to leave Glenalvon and Thomas asked them to stay with him at Bloomfield. Peter Haydon was also there. By the time of Thomas’ wedding the Brodies had been able to return to Glenalvon.
It was very important that homesteads were built near water, as there was no reticulated water, no running water in bathrooms, folk often went to the creek to wash. Water for the daily household use was stored in casks. Thomas sunk a well near the house; it was not long before a very inconsiderate bull fell down it, so another one had to be sunk.
It was at this time that Thomas decided to start a boiling down works. It was found that by boiling down carcases of sheep and cattle, mostly sheep, more money could be made of the sale of tallow and of course wool from the sheep skins. A factory was built on the Page River near the crossing between Bickham and Bloomfield. Two men were permanently employed at the factory, as well as boiling down his own stock, he also did it for others.
The trouble was the increase in stock numbers had outstripped the people to consume the products.
I mentioned before and I do so again, that the rapidity of stock build up was hard to believe. There were few fences and by the 1880’s there were hundreds of brumby horses and scrub cattle roaming the hills around Murrurundi.
Thomas and Margaret Wightman were married in the drawing room at Glengarry on 25th May 1841. I covered the wedding in my chapter on the Wightmans. Peter was ill and living at Bloomfield. Margaret looked after him and he got a lot of pleasure from Matilda’s children, by then there were two. Peter died at Bloomfield on March 4, 1842 and was buried near the door of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Haydonton. His tombstone and Thomas’ stand side by side, simple slabs of sandstone from the Haydon Sandstone Quarries.
Thomas spent his energies developing Bloomfield. There was no shortage of labour. Land was cleared for cultivation and fences built.
Thomas was up and down to Maitland. He had opened a banking account with the Bank of Australiasia, amongst their first customers.
Hay loading onto bullock waggon at Bloomfield, Blandford.
“Bloomtield about 1889 “ Original Sandstone Homestead built by Thomas.
A hundred years later, the Bank gave the Haydon men dinner in Sydney and presented them with a silver tray and the first ledger sheet entry of Thomas’ account.
It has been the family bank ever since then and the Haydons, the ANZ Banks longest continual clients.
I have derailed in another chapter, the activities or Thomas as a citizen how he achieved what he did is amazing. The money from the sale of the Haydonton blocks was a godsend.
By 1852 Thomas was in a fairly sound position financially and they decided to build a new house. A house was rented at Louth near Maitland for the family while it was being built. Thomas riding with his eldest son to Maitland, also Peter. The rest of the family in the buggy driven by Dennis Lucy Caroline went to school in Maitland for eight months. It was the only formal education she ever had. They had tutors and governesses at home. The sandstone house is still the centre of the Bloomfield home.
By 1854, the mortgage on Haydonton had been paid and finances were fairly healthy. He was not to enjoy his new home for long, as he became very ill in 1854 but made a good recovery. But it was not to last as he died quite suddenly on November 2 1855.
There were four sons and two daughter. Another son was born after Thomas’ death.
The children were all small, the eldest Peter Alexander was only 13 and Bernard, the one who was 10 continue at Bloomfield, was only eight years old when their father died.
Margaret was not unfamiliar with the running of the property, she must have been a very strong character to have achieved what she did, bringing all those children.
A testimony to the degree of respect in which Thomas was held may be gleaned from the following extract printed in newspapers of the time.
“His efforts for the welfare of the district and colony generally have been unwearied, enlightened and in character he was ever ready to organise or co-operate with others in any good work. Zealous and self effacing in promoting his views and opinions, party feeling never entered his mind. He was personally and practically benevolent to all.”
The Murrurundi lock up keeper. Stanley Bennett wrote: “Profound was the sorrow in hearts but it few.
As news or his death amongst colonists new
Proclaiming his spirit had taken Its flight
whom a world of cares to realms of light
His soul has departed to realms of peace
Where sorrow and trouble will forever cease
He has passed that dark river that separates time From eternities glories and blessing sublime
Ambitious of good arid exalted in mind
To the sick and poor he was bounteous kind
A friend of the friendless.
His loss we deplore
For his like Murrurundi will never be more.”
Margaret did a wonderful carrying on job. She had good staff and the only thing she altered was to close the boiling down works. The children were all small and my grandfather Bernard, the one with the aptitude for things rural, was only eight so it was many years before he was old enough to take over for the family.
Peter Alexander adored horses and animals and looked after the horses and stallions when he was old enough. He did shearing contracting and during the big shearers’ strike of the 1880s, he took a team of non-union shearers from Murrurundi out to Dirrimbandi There was a riot on the Murrurundi Railway Station.
Peter joined the ill-fated ship the “Maria”, a group of men chartered a ship to go to New Guinea to find gold. The expedition was a disaster. It was wrecked off the North Queensland Coast. Some lives were lost, but Peter survived after days and days on a raft.
When Peter’s brother Bernard was married, he left Bloomfield with his mother and two sisters to live at Haydonton, In grandmother Wightman’s Bridge house. He tried his luck at dairying and rented some land from the Teys family. After his mother died he returned to Bloomfield to live out his days there.
Adam Stuart had plenty of get up and go. By the time he was 20 he had land of his own, he had bought Greer’s property at the Big Flat. When gold was found out on the Palmer in the Gulf of Carpentaria there was a movement gaining favour that it would be a good idea to take cattle to the millers, beef was over-produced. There just was not enough population to consume it all.
Stuart went into partnership with Albert. Wright, the eldest son of P. W. Wright They bought a properly behind Rockharnpton in the Fitzroy River region. Albert went with his family to live there. They called it “Rio”. Stuart went on out to the Gulf and selected a lot of land, calling the main station “Vena Park”, another selection was “Wondoola ”
Stuart returned to Bloomfield to get cattle and horses together. There were plenty of brumby horses and scrubber cattle roaming the mountains around Murrurundi. This was in 1869. Stuart is home from Queensland during 1870, he goes to Sydney and then starts off with horses and cattle. The long droving trip would take months and a lonely trip as there were not many townships in the inland route they would take.
They established a depot at “Banana” and there is a township there today, while this was going on Stuart was only 24. Local men went out with these mobs of cattle and horses.
One drover was Billy Waldron, whose father worked at the Big Flat, another was Abraham Wilde who was killed by the blacks in Normanton.
Stuart leaves for Queensland in February with 200 horses all brumbies, by the time they were months on the road, they would be quiet on arrival. Stuart is back at the end of the year and during 1878 he takes up 7000 square miles of country.
Mr Waldron on the road again with Normanton cattle in 1890. These cattle were sold at Gunnedah in February. They sold for £4.2.6 a head. There were 800 approximately and a variety of owners and the droving costs were £10/21/2 per head.
Stuart marries in Normanton a tiny little Scottish woman. She had come out from Scotland to housekeep for her brother McRae who was managing the Bank of New South Wales.
Stuart became ill and they came to Bloomfield in 1890. He went on to Sydney and was operated on, it was found to be cancer. By this time they had a very young baby, Blanche Stuart, but always called Bubbie.
Stuart went back to Normanton to sort things out a bit, came back to Bloomfield and died there on November 6, 1893.
By this time there were real problems in the Normanton ventures.
Buffalo had been imported into the country from some of the Islands, They brought the cattle tick which in turn gave the cattle red water fever and they died like flies. Next high floods that washed cattle into the sea, some were able to scramble back but the salt water had taken the hair of their hides.
Vena Park and Wondoola were then sold for £2.10.0 a head for the cattle running on the property.
There was not much left for Stuart’s widow and my wonderful grandfather promised Stuart before he died, that he would look after them and they lived at Bloomfield the rest of their lives, except for odd times they were with McRae. When he retired he went home to Scotland. My grandfather asked him if he intended doing anything to provide for Bubbie and he said yes he would, but he married a widow and went to Monte Carlo, and there wasn’t much left for Bubbie.
Thomas John was born on 20.9.1848 at Bloomfield, and like the other members of the family, he was educated at home by tutors, with small snatches of school if there happened to be anyone conducting a private school. There was a few of these at times.
Thomas decided on a banking career and he joined the Joint-Stock Bank in Murrurundi when he was 21 years old. The Joint-Stock Bank went broke and was taken over by the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney. Tom went over to the Commercial and was with them for the rest of his working life.
He was sent from Murrurundi to Hill End, then to Wilcannia where he was married to a beautiful girl Eliza Fenton Palmer in 1884.
He was transferred to Gunnedah and then to Muswellbrook. His wife died in Muswellbrook leaving him with eight children. The eldest son was killed at Gallipoli. Gordon married Bessie Muddle, my grandmother’s niece, there were three children, Colin married Miss Jeffries ~ no children. Thomas three children, Charlie, 4 children and Ethel 2 sons, the other two girls never married.
Caroline married Dr Rufus Bell in 1884, she was a very colourful character and bright. She had journalistic leanings and was always scribbling things down on any odd scrap of paper. All sorts of information which has given us such a lot of material for our own archives.
After Rufus Bell died in 1902, Caroline went to live with Molly at Ethelstone. Molly developed cancer and died in 1919. She was a big woman but nice looking, very capable and a wonderful needle woman. She often hopped in the train at Temple Court to stay at the Bank in Muswellbrook. She would stay for a week sewing for the children. When she became ill she was taken to Bloomfield to be looked after and for the last few weeks of her life, she had a trained nurse.
Caroline was completely lost without her. She couldn’t do a thing for herself and refused to go to Bloomfield, some of the neighbours were very good to her, one in particular, the daughter of the tenant farmer, O’Neil, who was once on Bloomfield. Caroline died in 1921 after a few days in Murrurundi Hospital. Ethelstone was left to my father. He was her favourite nephew.
Bernard was the fourth child of Thomas and Margaret. The same as the other boys, he was educated at private school and with tutors. From a young age he took a great interest in all rural pursuits. When his brother Stuart went to the Gulf, Bernard bought his property Big Flat on the Scotts Creek.
It was not long before he followed Stuart to the Gulf. His property was called Glen Ore and Maggieville. Between he and Stuart they had a great lump of country.
When Bernard sold his country he got no money but cows, 1000 cows to be walked in the hundreds and hundreds of miles. He sold out to William Taffe on August 5, 1891. He had bought Warrah Ridge to put these cattle on when they arrived. Warrah Ridge was a splendid property.
Bernard’s story is too much for this book. He was a civic minded man like his father Thomas, active in church affairs. The whole family all became Anglicans and Bernard was a member of Synod, he was a I. P. and served on the Land Board till he was 84. The Government Department then woke up to the fact that he would really have to resign, he hardly ever missed a meeting.
By the time I remember my grandfather he used to sit about in squatters chairs on the verandah at Bloomfield. His horse was always saddled up and tied to a tree in the mornings and it was there ready when he wanted to go out, which he did about twice a day accompanied by kangaroo dogs and always a hoe over his shoulder. His hard working days were over and it was handed over to my father Frederick Bloomfield.
Frederick Bloomfield Haydon was the first child of Bernard and Blanche, born in 1880. His education was by governesses, a little while at Blandford School then on to Murrurundi, then to Scone Grammar School as a weekly boarder, then on to The Kings School at Parramatta.
From an early age Frederick Bloomfield was given a lot of responsibilities. far out of proportion to his age. He was a patient and persistent man and never neglected a duty, especially, if it was to do with stock.
Frederick Bloomfield worked all his life for his family and Bloomfield, he had no country of his own until after his father died and the properties were divided up amongst the three brothers. He did a lot of cattle buying and dealing and managed to give all seven of his children good educations.
His brothers Guy and Barney all worked well together. Guy went to Warrah Ridge about 1927, he had one son, John and two daughters. John had two sons and lost them both in very tragic circumstances. The Barney Haydons had no children, so the Haydon Dynasty has to be carried on by the descendants of Frederick Bloomfield.
His son Hilton had two sons, Michael and Bob. Michael has no sons, Bob has one son William. His other son Frederick Bloomfield always called Jim, had two sons. Peter has three delightful little boys and young Jim has one, Sam. Then through me and the fact that he married a cousin my son Jim had two sons, Bruce and Andrew.
My brother, Hilton, died four years ago in a car accident on the way to the Brisbane Exhibition, his wife also was killed. It was a dreadful blow to the family. Then last year brother Jim died very suddenly. It was a great blow to us all. He and I had been particularly close and I miss him very much.
So with some luck lets hope the Dynasty started by Thomas will continue and continue to produce people of substance like our forebears were.