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as close to the shore as possible, and a light boat, capable of carrying three-quarters of a ton,
made repeated trips to the shore. We pulled the rope... and waded in and carried the goods
ashore... Provisions in those days were received on infrequent occasions, and kangaroo pie was
quite a favourite dish among the Louttit Bay settlers... Erskine House depended on a small tank
and a two-wheeled sledge for its supply of water. At peak periods as many a seven trips per
day were made to refill the tank... We used to hoist a flag
on the staff at Point Grey, so that the Wannamboo! vessel would put in for a passenger.1
In 1880, Jesse Allen cleared an area of forest above the town and built a house of brick, which
became Allenvale. He married a local girl, Sarah Anderson, in 1884. It was the first wedding
to take place in All Saints Church (built of wood in 1880), since it was moved 400 yards
downhill to a new site. The supporting planks were still in place, and Jesse and Sarah 'had to
scramble over these to enter and leave the church.'
Before All Saints Church was built, regular church services had been held in Erskine House.
In January 1878, residents in Lome sent a petition to the education department requesting the
construction of a school. In March, a site was chosen, on land bought from the Mountjoys, and
it was cleared of all rubbish and timber by May. The school itself was completed by August
1879: a stone building, 24' x 16', with a small central steeple for a single bell. It was officially
opened in September with John Danaher, a very tall man, as its head teacher, aided by a female
assistant.
A motley collection of 30 pupils was enrolled - among them six of Thomas Mountjoy's children:
Alfred, Frank, Edgar, Florence, Ernest and Arthur; Ada joined the following year. Their ages
ranged from 18 (Alfred) to 5 (Arthur). The desks were arranged in tiered rows, the youngest at
the front, and the oldest on the highest tier at the back. One imagines that Alfred, Frank and
Edgar felt far too old for formal education and wished they were somewhere else.
Eventually, 26 Mountjoys attended the school. But the Clissold family, who were able to field a
complete football team at a charity match in 1926, had sent 62 of their children to the school by
1979. Other families who filled the 1879 intake were the Andersons (five attended the first
classes), the Duncans (five) and the Stirfings (five). There were also four Gosneys at the school
in 1879.
The latters' father ran the Lome Hotel, the first hotel as such to be established there (in 1876).
Erskine House was technically a boarding-house. A second hotel, the Grand Pacific Hotel,
opened in 1878, as did a general store, a bakery and a bootmaker's and tannery. A jetty, at
Point Grey, was also completed that year.
All these developments in the late 1870s, including the establishment of an official Post and
Telegraph Office at Erskine House in 1878, were mainly prompted by the southerly advance of
the Melbourne-Geelong railway line, which in November 1876 reached Winchelsea. The line
was then extended to Birregurra, and in 1891 a branch line was operational between Birregurra
and Deans Marsh.
The Mountjoy brothers (and who, one wonders, was the ideas man, Thomas or Caleb?)
decided to add another enterprise to their various business concerns - a regular coach service,
conveying passengers and mail between Winchelsea and Lome.
This was a six-hour journey. But as the railway line moved southwest, the pick-up point moved
to Birregurra and then, in 1891, to Deans Marsh, considerably shortening the coach journey in
distance and time. Heavy goods
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