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Harriet Mogg.
Arthur was 25 and the son of Nathan and Elizabeth Trewin, and may have worked for William
Trewin on the Trewin farm. He was the same age as Rhoda. Is it not conceivable that she fell in
love with him on a previous visit to Torrumbarry 18 months earlier, and that his rejection of her,
or indifference, caused her, as she said, to go out of her mind? And then Arthur married
someone else, someone she also knew, who was perhaps prettier than her, Harriet Mogg.
Whatever Rhoda's mental distress, it was so deep, so insoluble and all-consuming that she had
to blot it out, to negate herself and die. And with the balance of her mind disturbed, though still
with some presence of mind, she dressed herself in the dark, put on her hat, and walked under
the stars to the dam. There she waded out into its cold black depths, until the waters of oblivion
covered her head, and her clothes dragged her down to a muddy death.
The grief of Caleb and Louisa Mountjoy was multiplied when Rhoda's older brother, Lawrence,
died in November the following year, of a gastric ulcer, at the age of 34. He was buried at
Highton.
He had married Helen Sophia Copeland in July 1883. The wedding took place at the home of
her uncle, Robert London, in Wharparilla. He owned 320 acres not far to the east of
Lawrence's selection; her father was the local surveyor. She and Lawrence had four children:
two boys, who were born on Lawrence's selection at Torrumbarry, and two girls, who were
born at Deans Marsh. Lawrence disposed of his Torrumbarry acres in 1886 and took up
farming at Deans Marsh, where his father, Caleb, had recently bought some land from Robert
Calvert.
In 1887, Caleb's possessions in the parish of Bambra amounted to 4045 acres; his homestead
was now at Yan Yan Gurt. It was here that another family tragedy occurred in August 1891,
involving the youngest daughters of both Caleb and Thomas - Annie Mountjoy, aged 13, and
her cousin Ada.
The sad facts were presented to the Police Magistrate and Coroner, Mr Heron, at a magisterial
inquiry held at Yan Yan Gurt on 27 August, and reported (often erroneously) in The Colac
Herald the following day, under the headline Suffocated by Charcoal Fumes. Thomas and
Caleb Mountjoy both made statements, as did two of Caleb's daughters, Emma and Mabel,
and Dr George Marr Reid. The Coroner, Mr Heron, wrote out all the statements himself, apart
from that of Dr Reid.
Ada Mountjoy, who was 14, had been staying with her cousins in Deans Marsh for some
months. On Saturday, 22 August, Caleb and Louisa left Yan Yan Gurt for Geelong before
going to Melbourne on the Monday. Presumably Caleb's only surviving son, Edmund, now 21,
was left in charge of the farm. But as he gave no evidence before the Coroner, he may not have
been at home. Annie's older sisters were there however; Emma, aged 23, and 17-year-old
Mabel; Ada's older sister, Florence, aged 22, also seems to have been at Yan Yan Gurt.
The last that 17-year-old Mabel Mountjoy saw of her younger sister Annie and her cousin Ada
was in the dining-room on Tuesday night. 'They were both then well; she said.
Emma, the eldest of the four girls, had more to say; They were in their bedroom. Annie was
undressed but Ada was not. There is no fireplace in the room... But they had a nail can in the
room & in the nail can they had some lighted charcoal. The girls were sitting over the can. I
wanted them to let me take the can for the sake of warmth into my room. They said that would
not be fair & I did not take away the can. I never again saw the deceased girls alive.'
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