Heritage Overlay No. 024 Citation No.: 029 Place: …...Shire of Melton Heritage Study – Volume 3 Consultants: David Moloney, David Rowe, Pamela Jellie (2006) Sera Jane Peters (2007)(2009)

Shire of Melton Heritage Study – Volume 3

Consultants: David Moloney, David Rowe, Pamela Jellie (2006) Sera Jane Peters (2007)(2009)

Heritage Overlay No. 024 Citation No.: 029 Place: Farm Complex, 1229-1279

Gisborne-Melton Road

Other Names of Place: Funston’s Farm Location: 1229-1279 Gisborne-Melton Road, Toolern Vale Critical Dates: Construction: c.1856 (stone ruin); c. 1870s

(weatherboard cottage); 1931 (main house); c.late nineteenth century (garage/former dairy); c.early twentieth century (farm sheds).

Existing Heritage Listings: None Recommended Level of Significance: LOCAL

Statement of Significance: The farm complex, comprising two weatherboard houses, a bluestone ruin, a brick garage, an underground tank, and brick foundations at 1229 – 1279 Gisborne-Melton Road, Toolern Vale are significant as an intact physical legacy of possibly the last surviving nineteenth and early twentieth century farming property beside the Toolern Creek. The buildings on the site provide a tangible understanding of the development of the site. The surviving stone ruins represent remnants of an early structure, possibly a cottage, the adjacent timber cottage, underground tank and hand-made brick garage reflect developments in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the existing main house providing an understanding of developments during the interwar (c.1920s-1940s) era. The main house, timber cottage, underground tank and brick garage appear to be in good condition.


Consultants: David Moloney, David Rowe, Pamela Jellie (2006) Sera Jane Peters (2007)

The house and associated buildings at 1229 – 1279 Gisborne-Melton Road are architecturally significant at a LOCAL level (AHC D.2). The main house demonstrates original design qualities of an interwar Bungalow style. These qualities include the recessed hipped roof form, together with the minor gable and skillion verandah that project towards the road. Other intact or appropriate qualities include the asymmetrical composition, single storey height, horizontal timber weatherboard wall cladding, galvanised corrugated steel roof cladding, face red brick chimney, broad eave with exposed timber rafters, timber verandah posts, paired timber framed double hung windows, timber framed doorway with panelled and glazed timber door, window hood, and the gable infill (panelled and timber battening). The cottage demonstrates original design qualities of a Victorian vernacular style. These qualities include the steeply pitched hipped roof form clad in galvanised corrugated steel, large hand-made brick chimney, modest overhangs, beaded edged timber weatherboard wall cladding, symmetrical configuration of the main façade with its central doorway and the flanking timber framed twelve paned double hung windows, and the timber shingling under the existing roof cladding. The vernacular construction methods of the cottage includes bush pole joists and a lack of stumps. The small brick gabled garage also contributes to the architectural significance of the place, while the surviving stone ruins and undergound brick tank contribute to the significance of the setting of the place. The house and associated buildings at 1229 – 1279 Gisborne-Melton Road are historically significant at a LOCAL level (AHC A4, B2). The stone ruin dates to c.1856 (built for J Jones), the weatherboard cottage was built for J Jones c.1870s, the main house was built for J Funston in 1931, and the garage dates to the late nineteenth century. It is the only nineteenth and early twentieth century small farm complex remaining beside the Toolern Creek, whose original subdivision was designed to facilitate such development. It is one of only three places to have survived the devastating 1965 Toolern Vale fire. It is one of only two places in the Shire with evidence of three generations of farming houses. It is associated with pioneering families in the Toolern Vale district, and with the Green Hills pastoral estate. The random rubble ruins and brick foundations are also historically and scientifically significant (AHC C.2) because of their potential to provide an understanding and appreciation of nineteenth century farm life and settlement at Toolern Vale. Overall, the house and associated buildings at 1229 – 1279 Gisborne-Melton Road are of LOCAL significance.

Description: The house and associated buildings at 1229 – 1279 Gisborne-Melton Road, Toolern Vale, have a rural setting on the bank of the Toolern Creek. The main house has a large open front setback to the rear and there are early and introduced gardens. The asymmetrical, single storey, horizontal timber weatherboard, interwar Bungalow styled house is characterised by a recessed hipped roof form, together with a minor gable and skillion verandah that project towards the road. The overall composition is more typical of Federation era dwellings. This composition is identified in a number of interwar dwellings in the Melton Shire (see comparative analysis). The roof forms are clad in galvanised corrugated steel. An early face red brick chimney adorns the roofline. Broad overhangs with exposed timber rafters are features of the eaves. An early feature of the design is the front verandah. It is supported by introduced square timber posts. Other early features of the design include the paired timber framed double hung windows, timber framed doorway with panelled and glazed timber door, window hood, and the gable infill



(panelled and timber battening). The house has been recently renovated and a new fence introduced. As well as the main house, there are five structures dating from the early development of the site in the nineteenth and twentieth century. These buildings are a timber cottage, brick garage, undergound tank and surviving ruins of an original cottage. There are also foundations, that may have been a stockyard or dairy. The modestly scaled, single storey, beaded edged timber weatherboard, Victorian vernacular styled cottage is characterised by a steeply pitched hipped roof form clad in galvanised corrugated steel. Two early hand-made brick chimneys adorn the roofline. Modest overhangs are features of the eaves. Other early features include the symmetrical configuration of the main façade with its early central doorway and the flanking early timber framed twelve paned double hung windows, internal horizontal lining boards and scale of chimney-place, and the early timber shingling under the existing roof cladding. The new owners have repaired the cottage and replaced some of the original bush-pole floor joists. The owners note that the cottage had no stumps and was lying directly on bush poles laid on the ground. The small brick garage has a simple gable roof form. The garage is constructed of hand-made bricks and has a galvanised corrugated steel roof, and a cement floor. There are early vertically boarded double vehicular doors at one end, introduced during the conversion of the building into a garage. Small timber openings are situated on the longitudinal facades. Nearby are also the random bluestone rubble ruins of an original cottage. The ruins appear to represent a corner of an early structure. One face of the remains shows evidence of a painted or limewashed surface. In the new carport beside the garage is an undergound tank of brick, with concrete render. It is in excellent condition and holds water. It has an unusual shape, with a circular body below ground, but a V-shaped internal neck. A new concrete lip and metal cover have recently been added. Further west of the houses is another site surrounded by peppercorn trees, where a brick foundation of a previous structure is visible. These archaeological remains may be the dairy /stockyards of the property and are located directly across from the ford over the Toolern Creek. The group of three generations of houses is situated very close to one another, and very close to the Toolern Creek. An early grave site (now unmarked) is apparently visible across the creek. History: Contextual History Prior to survey and subdivision of this area the original track from Melton to Green Hills station ‘Hyde’ ‘huts’ passed just a few hundred metres from the present farm buildings.1 These were on what became J&A Dennistoun’s pre-emptive right. Messrs Dennistoun also held the Green Hills pastoral lease. The pre-emptive right occupied the east side of the creek, directly opposite No.1229 Gisborne-Melton Road. The site of the huts was near the bank of the creek, just south of the Coimadai – Diggers Rest Road, a few hundred metres upstream of the present site. Also on the east side of the creek, within sight of the old home, on what would have been the Dennistoun pre-emptive right, are several unmarked graves. These ‘graves’ are marked on an early plan of the locality.2 This site is known to Toolern Vale locals, and one of the graves is

1 Lands Victoria, Historical Plans: ‘Yangardook, County of Bourke’; Sydney H3 (1847) (2); and Feature Plan 66, ‘Plan of part of Yangardook’ (i) (1866?) 2 Feature Plan 66, ‘Plan of part of Yangardook’ (i) (1866?)



thought to be of surveyor Henry Wade. Grave markers have been removed and the site is in danger of being lost to memory.3

History of the Place Allotment 40 Parish of Yangardook, of 103 acres 3 roods and 26 perches was purchased by J Jones 21st February 1856.4 This farm was one of 18 roughly rectangular allotments of about the same size created by the Crown between the Melton-Gisborne Road and Toolern Creek between Melton and Toolern Vale. As was rarely the case in Melton Shire, nearly every one of these allotments had a different crown purchaser, meaning that they were initially taken up by genuine small farmers. Here, as elsewhere, it was normal for early settlers to locate their dwellings beside a creek, which provided a water supply, especially critical in the dry Melton Shire. No 1229 Gisborne-Melton Road, is the only such creekside dwelling remaining in operation on the Toolern Creek. In 1856 ‘John Jones, Yangardook, bullock driver’, made applications for inclusion in the Voters Roll on the basis of this freehold property. In 1870 the local newspaper reported an accident on the property:

‘Another of those many accidents to which men are liable while following threshing machines occurred on Thursday morning at the farm of Mr Jones, Greenhills. A man named David Rigg, band cutter to Mr Parkinson’s machine, while in the act of walking along the top of the machine slipped into the drum completely grinding one foot to the instep and the other, I am informed, up to the ankle. He was immediately conveyed to the Melbourne Hospital where he died almost immediately. It’s a pity the owners of machines cannot put some protection around the drum of their machines. The unfortunate man leaves a wife and family near Melton to deplore the melancholy event.’5

In 1883 the Melton Shire valuation listed Jones as owning 295 acres in Yangardook, plus 20 acres in Djerriwarrh.6 It is likely that Jones had purchased Allotments 39 and 41 on either side of his original Crown grant allotment. Jones’ wife Jessie died on the 9th May 1884 ‘at Toolern’, aged 76.7 John Jones died soon after, on 24th December 1884, aged 68 years. Their tombstone in the Melton cemetery states Jessie died at ‘Green Hills Toolern.’8 In 1885 Messrs Grant and Porter, John Jones executors, put the property up for sale. It was now 215 acres in extent, being Allotments 39 and 40. The sale notice described it as being on Toolern Creek, and divided into six paddocks. The house was described as:

‘a four room weather board cottage and kitchen, with iron roof. Three stall stable, barn with iron roof; cart shed; hay and chaff house; pig styes.’9

3 Mr Alan Funston (property owner), personal conversation, 10/1/2002 4 Parish Plan: Parish of Yangardook 5 Express, 8/1/170 6 Express, 13/10/1883. 7 Express, 10/5/1884 8 Melton Cemetery Inscriptions, Melton Family History Group2001 9 Express, 7/3/1885



This would appear to be the dwelling which survives on the property today. Close to this is a corner of a former bluestone dwelling, which is likely to have been their original dwelling, or an outbuilding. By 1892 Allotments 39-41 were in the ownership of Matthew Ingle Browne, of the Green Hills estate. Together with the land on the east side of the creek, and the Green Hills homestead allotment itself, this was all that remained of Green Hills estate, the majority having been sold in 1888 to Harvey Patterson, who established the Melton Park estate. In 1898 MI Browne’s son Walter was advertising the lease of ‘Jones’ Farm, west bank Toolern Creek.’10 Another local records that in 1905 the farm formerly held by John Jones was ‘now occupied by Mr J McPherson.’11 In 1922, following Browne’s death, the ‘subdivisional sale’ of Green Hills estate was conducted in the Mechanics Institute Hall, Toolern Vale. Lot 11 of 198 acres 2 roods and 22 perches, ‘known as Jones’ farm’, was described as ‘all agricultural land’, with a ‘good lucerne flat’, subdivided into five paddocks. Lot 11 was purchased by Mr Joseph Funston, at £20 per acre.12 Brothers John and George Funston, stone wallers and farm labourers in Ireland, arrived in Australia in the mid 1850s where they worked erecting walls on the Mount Aitken and Gisborne Park estates. George Funston married Isabella Alexander at Sunbury 1873. Their second son, Joseph Alexander was born 1877, birth registered at Sunbury. Joseph Funston worked for the Beatys and Brownes for many years, he might have been manager/overseer of Greenhills Estate. Upon purchasing the property, Joe Funston, his wife and two sons resided in the original Jones timber home on the Toolern Creek. His wife died, and the new house was erected after Joseph married his second wife, former Isabel Agnew, the teacher at Toolern Vale school, in 1931. Joseph and Isabel also had two sons.13 Maps confirm that there was one house on the property in 1916, and two by 1938.14 Joe Funston served as a member of the School Committee for about thirty years. When it was decided to erect the tennis courts at the old school site, he cut the saplings on Green Hills and carted them to the school where they were erected as fencing around the court. The Funstons worked the property as a dairy farm carting the milk cans across the creek twice a day. At first the family supplied cream, moving later into whole milk which was water cooled on the property then sent to McMahon’s Dairy at Sunbury where it was brine cooled before distribution. By the 1930’s, milk was collected morning and night by ‘the milk bus’ which also collected children for Sunbury Catholic schools in addition to milk cans. The bus ran as far south as Butler’s road, Melton South, to Warrawong and back. The Exell, Cahill and O’Neill farms were among the many it serviced.15 By the early twentieth century many Funston descendents were still living in the Gap, Sunbury and Toolern districts, many involved in dairy farming. Joe Funston died 27th June 1957 and is buried at the Melton cemetery.

10 Express, 29/1/1898 11 ‘Melton Reminiscences’, by RL (Robert Lidgett) 12 Sale Schedule documents, dated 26th August 1922 provided by Mrs Lorraine Gillespie. The 1925 Shire of Melton ratebook confirms Joseph A Funston as the owner of the site (NAV £159). 13 Mary Tolhurst, personal conversations May, June & July 2005 14 Army Ordnance Maps, 1916, 1938 (Sunbury) 15 Mary Tolhurst, personal conversations May, June & July 2005



It is now one of only three Toolern Vale houses not destroyed in the devastating 1965 fire. The property is owned by the Azzopardi family who have sympathetically restored the buildings and undergound tank and cleared the vegetation from the ruins.

Thematic Context / Comparative Analysis: Melton Historical Themes: ‘Farming’ Known Comparable Examples: Historically, this property is the only nineteenth and early twentieth century farm property remaining beside the Toolern Creek. The other known historic places surviving on Toolern Creek are:-

• Oaks (Place No.34): substantial ruins of formerly large stables on Minns’ farm.

• Hilton Brae (Place No.57): moderate ruins of a small bluestone cottage possibly associated with the Greenhills pastoral lease.

• Brookfield (Place No.28): Ruins of Samuel Kitson’s farm, comprising mainly mature and impressive garden plantings, and the ruins of a part-underground dairy.

The main house is also one of only three dwellings to have survived the 1965 fire at Toolern Vale. The others are Greenhills (Place No.55), and the cottage on the north-west corner of Gisborne – Melton and Diggers Rest – Coimadai Roads (Place No.31). The earlier house is a rare surviving early (1880s or earlier) weatherboard farm house in the Melton Shire. Others are the Mt Kororoit Farm (Place No.146), and Wattle Grove (Place No.48). This compact complex of three generations of housing (including the relics of the original bluestone house) is rare in the Shire. The only other comparable complex is Evansdale (Place No.327).

Architecturally, this type of interwar Bungalow style, with its Federation composition, is not unusual in the Melton Shire. A modest (or substantially intact) example of its type, other comparable dwellings include:

• House at 932 Holden Road, (Place No.103). A more substantial homestead-type example of an interwar Bungalow, the house features a Federation-like composition having a central hipped roof form and projecting gables linked by a return verandah (that is an extension of the main hipped roof). This property is also accentuated by an early timber post and woven wire fence. This dwelling possibly represents the most intact and substantial example of an interwar homestead Bungalow type in the Melton Shire.

• House, 2 Exford Road, Melton South (Place No.193). This is a highly intact and more substantial example of an interwar Californian Bungalow style (as opposed to an interwar homestead Bungalow style). It features a hipped roof form that traverses the site, together with gable roof forms that project at the front and sides that are linked by a flat roofed porch. There are also projecting flat roofed bay windows under the projecting gables.

• House, McCorkells Road, Toolern Vale (Place No. 44). This house has a Federation/Edwardian composition of broad hipped roof form with projecting minor roofs and encircling verandah, although the minor roofs are gable in form. The



comparable interwar design qualities include the broad eaves with exposed timber rafters, timber framed double hung windows, timber framed doorway and timber and glazed door, rudimentary timber verandah construction and the face brick chimney with a soldier course capping.

Condition: Good Integrity: Substantially intact. Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Melton Planning Scheme Heritage Overlay. The brick remnants representing the ruins of a stockyard or dairy are recommended for inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Inventory. Recommended Heritage Overlay Schedule Controls:

External Paint Controls: Yes – brick garage (former dairy) & stone ruins. Internal Alteration Controls: No Tree Controls: No Outbuildings and/or Fences: Yes – timber cottage, brick garage, stone ruins and

archaeological foundations to the west.

Jones’ House



Garage (former dairy)

Documents

Heritage Overlay No. 024 Citation No.: 029 Place: …...Shire of Melton Heritage Study – Volume 3 Consultants: David Moloney, David Rowe, Pamela Jellie (2006) Sera Jane Peters (2007)(2009)