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John had left the scene.
Sleepy Hollow and the Barrabool Hills sustained them all in rural content.
But in 1864 Thomas Mountjoy, then aged 38, made the move that transformed his family's
fortunes, as well as these of his brothers and their wives. He leased 27 square miies of land at
Louttit Bay.
What prompted this investment and Thomas's move away from the Barrabool Hills? Perhaps
the death of his father-in-law, and a desire to own a place, a new place, of his own. Although
Caleb is associated with this enterprise by the Who's Who of Victorian worthies published in
1888, it seems more than probable that Thomas made the initial move on his own.
The Who's Who says, in a biographical note on Thomas: 'In 1864 they [Thomas and Caleb]
went to Louttit Bay, now Lome, and in 1868, started a Temperance Hotel'. Early in 1868
Caleb was still in Geelong. For JH Bottrell's account of the early days of Highton, names him as
being a member of the church committee of the solid stone church that replaced the little brick
Wesleyan chapel there.
The new church was begun in November 1867 - the foundation stone being laid by the Rev
James Bickford - and at Easter 1868 the first service was held in the new church. There were
'great celebrations', according to Bottrell, which included 'a great tea meeting on Good Friday in
the Church of England Day School on the opposite side of the road'. Bottrell continues: The first
baby to be christened in the Highton Church was the daughter of Mr Caleb Mountjoy.'
Christened Emma, she later married a Methodist minister, the Rev TJ Thomas.
Others in th 1868 church committee ('Mr L Mountjoy, treasurer') included Joseph Ross, Philip
Hoskin, Ivan Cann, Fred Worland, John Foster, John Hobbs, Henry Johns - and 'W
Honeycombe'.
Would that Bottrell had said something more about William Honeycombe, who in 1868 was 71.
His name appears, and then he disappears once again from view. But at least some of the
people with whom William, Lawrence and Jane were acquainted become for a moment more
than just names.
We learn that Joseph Ross was a bootmaker who later became a Methodist minister; Philip
Hoskin was a farmer: he came from Penzance in Cornwall, emigrating in 1854; his son Philip
also became a minister. The son of
Ivan Cann, Marshal! Cann, was, says Bottrell, 'a famous walker', setting up a record in 1886
for the one-mile walk and winning awards. Walter Worland, son of Fred Woriand, was 'the
locai Blondin... a very clever tight-rope walker. On one occasion he walked on his tight-rope
from Yarra Street Wharf to the Moorabool Street Wharf. He sometimes took a wheelbarrow
with him, and performed tricks, like tossing a pancake, on the rope. We also learn that
Lawrence Mountjoy and a Miss Adcock started a Sunday School.
The church was destroyed by a hurricane that swept over the area in 1926, but was rebuilt the
following year.
Although all of Caleb's children in the 1860s were born in the Barrabool Hills, this does not
preclude him from being with Thomas at Louttit Bay. For all Thomas's children born in this
decade were also born in the Barrabool Hills. Only his seventh child, Ernest, born in 1871, was
bom at Louttit Bay. Up to then, both the brothers' wives gave birth on the farmlands west of
Geelong, not down south. It seems that the venture on which Thomas embarked in 1864 was
supported by Caleb financially, rather than by his physical presence, although he may have
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