SHIELDS William Maria. SHIELDS William Maria. SHIELDS William Maria. SHIELDS William Maria. SHIELDS William Maria. SHIELDS William Maria. SHIELDS William Maria. SHIELDS William Maria.
1907-1952 “Durranook”
Compiled by Grace Green in 1983-4 (additional notes by her daughter Violet Wilson)
James Shields was the son of George Shields (born 1823) who lived at Richmond, New South Wales. So far, I do not know much about the first 18 years of James’ life except that he was one of twelve children.
The next information is in 1842 in Sydney where, at the age of 18, he and his older brother William were arrested for stealing a horse belonging to a Charles Dight, taking it from Richmond Common. Both were convicted in Sydney Supreme court and sent to Tasmania for ten years, transported on the “Marian Watson”.
Conditions, as we have all learned over the years, were very hard and the least offence could bring severe punishment from the officers in charge. From a photostat co of his record of offences, the following was recorded:
January 1843 – for being insolent
June 1843 – two months added for working on Sunday
June 1846 – Gross misconduct. Admonished
August 1846 – Gross Misconduct in ill treating – use of improper language to Mr Jackson’s daughter – nine lashes, hard labour in chains, recommended he be sent to Point Puer, a place for male juvenile offenders. For possessing a pipe, fourteen days added. Maybe because of being so young, he appears to have got himself into many kinds of trouble.
In 1849 James applied for a conditional pardon, and in December of the same year, married Mary Ann Jenkins who was a free settler. Prior to her marriage, she had a son, William (my grandfather) who was born in July 1846. The family moved to Victoria when James got his pardon on 15th October 1850, and appeared to have settled in the Geelong area at a place called Jan Juc, later called Bellbrae which is near Torquay. There were eleven children, three girls and eight boys.
William Shields (James’ Brother) appears to have come to Victoria with James as records show them as joint ratepayers. Later, William had a store in Geelong and John Shields was a baker. James must have been a good farmer as a report in an old Geelong newspaper had stated that he had grown a good crop of maize – 50 bushels to the acre.
Just when James moved to Sale, Victoria, I do not know, but that he did is certain, as death certificates show that he and his wife Mary Ann are buried in the Sale cemetery. Charles, fourth son of James, is also buried there. People have said that a certain area around Sale was known as Shields Country. Eventually, it seems that James and his brother William, did go their separate ways.
The school records at Jan Juc (Bellbrae) show the seven younger boys as being pupils at the Jan Juc School. The third daughter is not listed as a pupil. The two older daughters died young and so far I have not been able to obtain any birth registrations, the causes of death, or when and where they were born. A search has also been made for the death certificates without success. I also do not know what happened to Maria, James Jnr, Isaac and Henry. Information from the Sale Cemetery Board states that they are all buried there. These four children married into families who were around the Jan Juc (Bellbrae) area as the names appear in old records. We have recently (probably 1983-84-VW) learned that Maria’s daughter is in a home in or near Sale.
Edward and Frederick came to Western Australia in the 1890’s and went to the Geraldton area looking for gold. They later married two sisters who were the daughters of a Senor Porejuan, a Spaniard. He travelled to Australia with a Catholic Priest who was part of the community at the New Norcia Mission. Senor Porejuan only stayed at the mission long enough to work out the price of his ticket. When he left he moved to Dongara where he settled. Edward and Frederick eventually took up land out from Geraldton near Nabawa, and their descendants are still around the Geraldton area.
George came to Western Australia and had a property between Darkan and Collie, north of the Collie-Narrogin railway line, not far from Bulading Siding. His wife was Agnes McWhirter, with whom he had four sons. I do not know where they went or what family they had, except for one son, Fred, who had a farm south west of Wagin, and I seem to remember he only had daughters. He is now dead and his widow Elsie lives in Katanning.
William SHIELDS married
Maria GOODALL 9-12-1875
Now to William, my grandfather, who came to Victoria from Tasmania with his parents, James and Mary Ann Shields. As a young man, I am told, he worked on the goldfields. In 1875 he married Maria Goodall at Peubla, now Torquay. She was born at Jan-Juc (Bellbrae) in 1845. They appear to have lived in that area for some time as the three eldest children were born there.
Shields Family Wedding in Albany, Young’s Siding
courtesy Leanne Fonteneau
L-R – Grandfather Hamilton, Uncle Todd Hamilton, Vic Shields, Lillian Shields (nee Hamilton), Bridesmaid unknown, Lance Shields, Stewart Hamilton, Reverend Woolsey, Flower Girl was Nellie Weight.
Somewhere between 1879 and 1881, the family seems to have moved – William to northern Victoria where land was being opened up, and James Senior to Sale. The last record of the two youngest boys attending school in Jan-Juc was 1881 and William Shields’ second daughter (Margaret Evangeline) was born at Yielima in 1881. Later there was another daughter and three boys, all born at Yielima.
22nd June 1918 – Mrs Shields on plough
Nathalia (is a Parish in Victoria – Leanne Fonteneau) gave me information that William owned a 14 acre Crown Allotment 94A, also 320 acres. Numurkah Shire told me he paid water rates of £-/13/4 on this land on 9th August 1889, £ – /12/0 on 4th March 1891 and 12 shillings on 27th August 1891. This land was in an area known as the Parish of Yielema. He was a ratepayer there until 1907 when he sold out and came with his wife and family to Western Australia. They settled on virgin land at Nampup (now Nyabing) east of Katanning.
Dam sinking at Durranook 1914
Photo courtesy Leanne Fonteneau
As a young man, my father, John William (Jack) worked for H.V. McKay whose engineering works were at Sunshine, north of Melbourne. He also worked in timber mills and shearing sheds. Engines then were steam driven and he studied for, and got his ticket (which I still have) to drive stationary steam engines. (I believe this document was given to David, eldest son of Walter and Grace Green, after Grace dies in 1985 –VW) . The two eldest daughters (Florence and Evangeline) trained as nurses in Melbourne and came to Western Australia later. During World War I, one of them nursed in Fremantle, and the other went to Port Said and Cairo. (My understanding is that they both served in the Middle East – VW) The youngest son, Lance served with the 10th Light Horse (Need to verify – VW) in World War 1, and was at the landing at Gallipoli. When he returned, he went farming at Bencubbin.
Sadness hit the family in 1891 when the second son, Wilfred, died. In spite of this, Grandfather, Grandmother, my father, an aunt and three uncles came to Western Australia. They landed at Albany on Christmas Eve 1907, bringing with them a wagon, some horses, household things and even some of grandmother’s plants.
On the first night after landing they set up a camp at Chorkerup, just north of Albany. Because the horses were not tied up they took off and morning found them with only my father’s horse “Larry”. My father set out to follow their tracks and called into Mr Steicke’s farm “Wattle Hill” at the Porongurups. He loaned Dad a native who helped to track the horses through to the Stirling Ranges, eventually finding them at Mr Dick Parnell’s farm. Mr Parnell had seen them and knew by the harness marks that they had got away from someone. Dad always said that horses in a strange place always head north. Mr Parnell and Dad remained friends for life, and as a girl in my teens, I met him, as he used to judge draught horses at the Nyabing Show.
After returning to Chorkerup and harnessing up, they continued their journey and in January 1908, arrived at the land that Grandfather (William) had selected some time earlier. It was six miles north east of Nyabing. Being summer, it was necessary to cart water, and this was collected from a place six miles to the south east, called “Holland’s Tank”.
A tent was all they had to live in until a house was built. The first house was later replaced by one made of mud bats, which were sun baked and put together with clay mortar. Over the years improvements were made, but time takes its toll and the old house has gone back to the ground. The clearing of the land was all done with an axe, and fencing done the hard way.
The first three harvests were carted to Katanning, a distance of 44 miles (70km). In about 1911 the railway line was put through to Nyabing, and a store and a Post Office built. Prior to that all stores and mail were collected at Katanning.
There was a blacksmith’s workshop on the farm as my father used to do his own repairs, shoeing of horses, and replacing tyres on the cart, dray and sulky wheels.
Grandfather William Shields with his cat Sandy.
Grandmother (Maria) died at the Farm in July 1912, and is buried there. Williams Shields died at Katanning on 15th April 1942 at the age of 95. He is buried at Nyabing Cemetery. In October 1913, John William (my father) married Eliza Gibbs, daughter of William Gibbs, who was a pioneer of the Darkan District. There were only three children – myself and two boys, who have both passed away.
There is a lot more one could write about the conditions and hardships, the long distances from any conveniences, and the risks there were when anyone was ill, or a baby was expected, but I hope this small account will give anyone who reads it some idea of where the family came from and where they went.
(This account, with minor alterations by me, was written by my mother about a year before she died, in October 1985 –VW)
Looking down towards Durranook before much land was cleared
“Killing the Pig” at Duranook
Horses on Durranook
Additional Information added by Violet Wilson
As a child, my sister and I used to spend quite a lot of our school holidays at our grandparents farm – ‘Durranook’. We would travel to Katanning by train, where we were met by our grandparents. Forty four miles from Katanning to the farm always seemed to be such a long journey.
At the farm we were expected to pull our weight, and were given the chores to do – collecting eggs, helping with the milking, using the milk separator (it was a challenge to get the speed just right so that the milk and cream would separate properly), taking smoko (morning and afternoon tea) to the shearers, or to the men harvesting, as well as lots of other small jobs. However, there was always plenty of time to play, and we would spend hours collecting tadpoles from the water holes in the big rock near the house, running through the orchard, playing in the clay gullies or looking through the old photos and magazines which my grandmother kept in a cupboard in the hall. How I wish I had some of that information now!!
I remember well my grandfather’s “Smithy” and it was often my job to pump the bellows for him. When I was about nine years old, my mother underwent major surgery, and we spent three months on the farm. During this time (before Myxomatosis and 1080 poisons) rabbits were a major problem, and my brother and I used to trap them. We became quite skilled at setting traps near the burrows which had been dug around the water dams. After they were skinned (which was my job!) the skin was stretched on a wire frame and dried. Once dry, we would take them to the store at Nyabing where we were paid 3 pence per dozen for them. Once a week Gran would take the sulky with “Trixie”, into Nyabing. It was the social outing for the week.
Gran Shields was a calm, capable, gentle and dignified woman who never seemed to get flustered – quite the opposite of Pop Shields who had quite a fiery streak!! “Speak when you are spoken to,” he would say, and heaven help you if you had to be spoken to for a second time. He always liked me to sit on his knee and clean his fingernails with a burnt match. His pet name for me was Jemima, and he loved to sing Waltzing Matilda and Clementine for my amusement. I have very fond memories of them both.
I do not remember Florence, but I do remember Margaret Evangeline (Aunty Eve). She used to say “Stand up straight, pull your stomach in, put your shoulders back, pull your chin in!!” and she used to pinch my bottom!! We always used to think she was a very ‘crabby’ old maid!
I hardly remember other members of the family although I do recall visiting my great Aunt Irene Mills, who lived on a property not far from “Durrunook”. In later years, after her husband died, she moved to Albany with her daughter Marie, who never married. Photographs of her indicate that she was a beautiful child with the very distinctive deep-set, blue eyes evident in the Shields family. I can only remember great-grandfather William Shields at ‘Durrunook´. He used to sit in a chair just outside the kitchen door where it was cool, accompanied by his cat Sandy. I must have been about four then.
Gardens at “Durranook”
In about 1948 my grandparents left the farm to their youngest son, Stephen, (who had a really fiery temper!) Sadly it had to be sold a few years later. Gran and Pop moved to a small property “The Haven”, at the King River, which is about six mile from Albany, and they lived there until the death of my grandfather in 1953. Shortly after that, my grandmother moved to Wagin to be near her eldest son Lionel and his wife Joyce. She lived there for the remainder of her life, and died at the Wagin Hospital in July 1978. Gran Shields was a fine needlewoman and gardener. Her garden at ´Durrunook´ Nyabing was wonderful, and even when she was in advanced years, her garden at Wagin was always well tended. For many years she was a dedicated Country Women’s Association member.
At the time of my birth in Albany, my father was still working in Wiluna. My Brother David was cared for by my grandmother at Nyabing, and my mother went there until my father found work in Albany. Shortly after that, we went to live in the house Margaret Evangeline owned in Albany.
.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
DEATH
KATANNING.
West Australian
29 July 1912 – P7
Mrs. Shields, of Nampup, died suddenly at her residence early on Saturday morning. When she arose she said that she felt unwell, and within half an hour she suddenly expired. Dr. Holland certified that death was due to natural causes. Mrs. Shields was 67 years of age, and leaves a husband and grown-up family of three daughters and three sons.