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engineer, timber merchant and produce dealer) who formed the Chilwell Gold Mining Company
in 1878, with a proposed capital of £2000 in 2000 shares of £1 each, consisting of 1750
contributing and 250 paid up shares, some of which were held by Lawrence Mountjoy. The
new company's prospectus stated: This Company is being formed for the purpose of proving
the ground which has been prospected for some time on Mercer's Hill in the municipality of
Newtown and Chilwell.' The freehold of the site had been bought and shafts dug and timbered.
Machinery to expand the operation was now needed and a grant of £150 from the government
was sought.
Within a year the enterprise was dead. The public were apathetic, water filled the shafts, and a
drift of fine sand hindered progress. At a special meeting, held on 13 August 1879, the
shareholders voted to wind up the company's affairs. The land, equipment, timber and sheds
were sold off at fair prices, so presumably Lawrence Mountjoy did not make a loss.
He and Jane were now living in a house in Thornhill Road at Highton, not far from Roslyn, their
former farmhouse home. It was an address appropriate to the apotheosis of the Mountjoy
brothers' lives: Thomas was a successful hotelier and property-owner at Lome; and Caleb was
a prosperous grazier, managing farms and many acres at Echuca and Deans Marsh. These were
jointly owned by Caleb and Thomas, although Lawrence may also have had a stake in them.
Lawrence himself was a worthy member of the Highton community. A retired farmer, he was
now a 'gentleman' and lived in a fine stone house called Fernside, where he and his wife would
remain for over 20 years.
Fernside, built in the sober style of a gabled Scottish manse, had been the home of Mr TM
Sparks in the 1850s. It was next owned by William McKellar, and then by George Synnot,
who bought the house at an auction in 1866.
The Adcocks, Thomas and Henry, had separate homes further down Thornhill Road; as did
Colonel Conran, who had lived there, in Barrabool House, since 1874. Once ADC to
Governor La Trobe, and the first Sergeant-at-
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arms in the Victorian Parliament, Col Conran retired after 20 years spent in England and settled
in Highton where, according to JH Bottrell 'he lived the life of an English country gentleman." Mr
Bonsey, the police magistrate, had been the previous owner of Barrabool House, and the
Colonel continued Mr Bonsey's practice of striking a bell 'for the purpose of letting the men
working in the fields know the time to commence or cease work.'
Bottrell likened the scenery thereabouts to the leafy lanes of southern England - a rural idyll. He
wrote in 1931: 'The view from the corner of Thornhill and Bonsey Roads presents a picture of
almost ethereal loveliness. But every home in Highton seems to have a lovely view.'
Here lived Lawrence and Jane, experiencing the comforts and social status achieved by hard
labour, luck, good investments and good works. Periodically they must have made use of the
Mountjoy coaches that met the trains at Birregurra and then Deans Marsh and carried them off
to Lome. There must have been many family gatherings at Erskine House, and indeed at
Fernside; and at Yan Yan Gurt, the homestead at Deans Marsh that eventually became Caleb's
final family home.
But when Erskine House was sold, in 1889, did any of the three brothers and their wives ever
visit Lome again?
Meanwhile, Lawrence was disposing of his farmland south of the Murray River at Torrumbarry.
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