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local conditions: the baby died of dehydration.
A few years later Tom bought a 320 acre block, Lot 7, Section 2, fronting the Kotta Road and
southeast of the Mountjoys' spread. There he built a timber house. Later on, the land between
the two blocks was purchased by the Pearses, which gave them a total of 1100 acres. Here
they grew wheat, grazed sheep, milked cows (White Shorthorns) and reared eight other
children.
According to the Pearse family history: 'Annie was a strong, resourceful woman... able to turn
her hand to anything as the need arose. She milked the cows by hand, made butter and baked
bread. (She used) a scrubbing board to do the washing under a large peppercorn tree... In
1900 their timber home was destroyed by fire when one of the children upset a kerosene lamp.
In an attempt to get the furniture out of the burning house, the piano became jammed in the
doorway, preventing any other furniture being saved... Another house was constructed. This,
however, was also destroyed by fire in the early 1930's.'
Tom Pearse died in 1909 from Parkinson's Disease. Annie eventually moved to Echuca and
thence to Geelong, where she died in 1944.
Gottlieb Dohnt also came north from Geelong, taking 321 acres of land at Wharparilla in 1875.
A Prussian by birth, he had emigrated ten years earlier with his wife, Elenore, and five children.
He built a three-room weatherboard house, 20 feet by 12, with a shingle roof and a brick
chimney, for £65. Further additions to his property at Wharparilla were two dams, a reservoir,
a well, a stockyard, sheds and a garden. They cost him £372. His first year of farming brought
him a miserable five bushels of wheat (one bushel equalled six gallons) from 12 acres, and the
second year 14 bushels from 19 acres. As a result he had to get a mortgage on his land, and
was not able to pay it off and buy the
123
William v Piffero
Other farmers in the area had their families to help them, or were younger and fitter. Possibly
William's neighbours lent a hand, if they could, or if he allowed them near him. Who were they?
In 1876 William's immediate neighbours were Lawrence Mountjoy and his nephew, who
farmed to the north of his selection; John Balding was to the northwest; James Ferguson to the
west; Bartolomeo Piffero to the southwest; Thomas Pearse to the south; and WS Balding to the
east.
By 1880, Piffero and the Baldings had disappeared from the Torrumbarry map - and so had all
the Mountjoys by 1895. But Thomas Pearse, unlike many of the settlers, was there to stay. He
was also acquainted with the Mountjoys and may well have come to Echuca because of them.
The Pearse family history says that Tom Pearse went to Echuca in 1875. His father, Thomas
Butson Pearse, had died in 1862, when Tom was 13 years old. When his mother, Martha, died
aged 52 in 1870 the family property, Angahook (originally Anglohawk) was sold, and Tom and
his youngest brother, Harry, became coach-drivers for Cobb and Co, on the run between
Geelong and Lome. Both are mentioned as 'the regular drivers' in Jesse Allen's account of life at
Lome, and, as such, must have been well known to the Mountjoys, who knew their father.
There can be no doubt of this.
Thomas Butson Pearse, who came to Geelong in 1844, where he was in business as a butcher,
purchased a cattle station of some 4,000 acres at Airey's Inlet in 1852, with a sea frontage of
10 miles up the coast of Lome. The Pearses were not just neighbours, but in the same business
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