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Ceres. Most of the selections had been taken up in 1840 by immigrant Scotsmen, who paid
anything from £120 to £2,448 for their piece of land.
A few years later, the Geelong Advertiser described the Barrabooi farmers as 'a class of people
of whom we may justly fee! proud. They include many persons of real respectability, and for
industry, intelligence and honesty bear comparison with like classes in any country under
heaven.'
One of these worthies was David Fisher, a pioneering farmer and manager of the Derwent
Company who, as he himself claimed, had built the weatherboard cottage that was 'the first
house worthy of that name' in Geelong - which he sold in 1842. He must also have built the
homestead on the 1,280 acres he acquired in 1840 at the eastern end of the Barrabool Hills,
about two miles west of the bridge over the Barwon at South Geelong. He called this
homestead Roslyn -after the Scottish town, Roslin, some seven miles south of Edinburgh, in
which he was born in July 1801. He occupied the homestead in 1842.
Fisher was a very enterprising and active Scot, with his fingers in many pies. He became a local
celebrity and was known as Kingfisher, or King David. Gardening, it seems, was his chief
delight: his house in Geelong was surrounded by a large picturesque garden and an extensive
orchard. A local diarist called Belcher said of Fisher: 'He was a great horticulturalist and was
judge and steward at al! the shows. Frequently he was an exhibitor and never liked to lose .
the special prize for dahlias. He owned a valuable farm situated between Highton and Ceres,
where he made and lost a mint of money.'
Some evidence of Fisher's financial misadventures (he aiso founded the township of Ceres) is
provided by the sale by auction of the Roslyn estate in 1851. It was subdivided and sold off in
lots of various sizes, Roslyn itself being reduced to an oblong of 419 acres, set between what
was then known as Fisher's Hill and the town boundary. David Fisher is said to have retained
223 acres untii he moved to a new home in Belmont, perhaps in 1858.
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Fisher's Hill, later caited Ceres Lookout, is now known as the Brownhill Heights Lookout, from
where a good eastward view, albeit obstructed by trees, can be obtained of Geelong and the
land where Lawrence and Jane once lived. Their homestead, Rosiyn, was pulled down long
ago.
We may safely assume thai Jane's father, William Honeycombe, lived there with them. He was
80 in 1857, a year before we find all the Mountjoys ensconced in the Barrabool Hills.
Lawrence must have leased his piece of Sand in the BarraboGl Hflls, perhaps with Caleb, in
1858. There is no known record of this. But Lawrence Mountjoy's name appears on a map of
the Rosiyn estate made in the 1860s, He is shown (no mention of Caleb) as occupying 195
acres. The Tramp brothers, with 162 acres, are neighbours to the south.
Thomas Mountjoy is said, in The Early Days of Highton and Belmont by JH Bottreil, to have
leased a farm 'beyond Fisher's Hill towards Ceres' - ie, west of Rosiyn. But the whereabouts of
this farm has not been identified. Most likely, he and his wife, Sophia, went to live and work on
the farm occupied by her father.
Richard Mountjoy leased a farm which was siiuated south of the Barwon River and northeast of
Rosiyn. The Sand had been bought in 1840 by RH Browne. This homestead, within sight of the
river, was called Glencairn. Here, or in an adjacent cottage, lived Richard and Mary.
He died in July 1866, by which time she had born 12 children, between 1841 and 1867. When
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