Rowville Wishing Well

The Rowville wishing well that is located at the Mobil service station on the north-east corner of Stud and Wellington Roads is a fairly recent creation. Contrary to what some people believe it does not date back to the early days of Rowville.

The original well was simply a deep hole in the ground lined with bricks. It was situated at about the same place as the present wishing well except for one major difference – it was about twenty metres further up in the air! How could that be, you may well ask. The answer is that when the well was dug about 130 years ago there was a hill on that corner of Stud and Wellington Road and the home of Matthew Thomas Bergin – and the well – were at the top of that hill.

In 1994 the hill was completely removed to leave a low, flat area on which the present Mobil service station was constructed.

Matthew Thomas Bergin was born in Ireland in 1840 and came to Melbourne with his parents Nicholas and Elizabeth (nee Barry) when he was about 10 years old. A brother Nicholas and sister Mary Teresa were born in Melbourne. Matthew and his brother Nicholas were to become two of Rowville’s earliest pioneers.
Matthew claimed to have first come here to Rowville in May 1853. In 1877 he gained the title to 77 acres on the corner of Stud and Wellington Roads so his property ran eastwards beyond the present preschool building in Wellington Road and then north all the way back to the present Stud Park Shopping Centre.

In 1867 he had married Elizabeth Shiels at St Francis Church, Lonsdale Street, Melbourne and they had nine children, seven of whom were Ann (born 1868), Ellen (1870), Matthew Thomas (1872), Nicholas James (1876), Thomas (1881), Edward James (1883) and Elizabeth Mary (1887).

A family this big would need a lot of water so it was important that they had a good well. Although people in those days didn’t use nearly as much water as we do now, it would still have been essential that Matthew dig and line the well and give it time to fill before the family moved there. I think that they came to live in Rowville permanently in about 1876.

As well as farming his land, Matthew worked for the Mulgrave, Berwick and the Ferntree Gully Shire Councils as a roads maintenance contractor. Matthew later became a Ferntree Gully Councillor, representing the South Riding (the area covered by Rowville and Lysterfield), and he served on the council for five years (1904-1908).

Matthew died at his home in 1920 aged 78 and is buried at Oakleigh Cemetery. His wife Elizabeth had died at Rowville in the previous year.

A legend has persisted for many years that the house was used as a hotel. I have found no evidence to support this claim. The legend may have come about because there was another Matthew Bergin, also an Irishman, living not far away in the early days and he owned the Springvale Hotel at the corner of Springvale Road and Dandenong Road. Perhaps people got the two Matthews confused. However, the Bergin descendants claim that family tradition holds that the hotel story is correct.

Matthew’s brother, Nicholas Thomas Bergin, lived across the other side of Wellington Road and ran a blacksmith’s forge until his retirement in 1936. He was a strong man and quite a character and everyone passing by would call in to have a yarn with Nick. Nick liked boxing and there were several bare-knuckle fights held in his forge in the early years.
Nick was the one who gave Rowville its name. In 1905 he applied to have a post office opened at his forge. When the postal authorities asked what address people should write to he recommended ‘Rowville’ in honour of the Row family who lived at Stamford Park in Stud Road. Nick shoed all of the horses in Edward Row’s famous jumping team so the Rows were Nick’s best customer. To ‘Row’ he added the ending ‘ville’ which is the French word for ‘town’.

After Nick retired, his niece, Elizabeth Bergin, (his brother Matthew’s youngest daughter) took over the running of the post office up until about the time of her death in 1960.

After Matthew’s death in 1920 his farm was inherited by his oldest son who was also named Matthew. Like his father Matthew also married an Elizabeth but their family was small – they only had one daughter whom they named Kathleen. When Kathleen grew up she married her next door neighbour, Jim Manley, whose family owned the 90 acres to the north of her father’s property. The Manley farm covered the present Stud Park Shopping Centre, Peppertree Retirement Village and the land back to Taylors Lane.

This second Matthew died in an accident in 1929 and his land passed to Jim and Kathleen whose four children, Marlene, Faye, Bruce and John grew up in the old house on the hill. After the postmistress Miss Elizabeth Bergin died, Kath moved the family down to live at the post office residence and their old house on the hill was left empty. They continued to farm the land until the 1980s when they sold the land to Ken Tewin who used it as a riding school.

Previously, back in the late 1920s, the Bailey family from Lysterfield had leased the property and set up a dairy herd as well as Tea Rooms and a small shop in the house. People driving by would stop their cars or buggies and walk up the hill to have scones and tea. The black trackers stationed at the Police Paddocks also came to buy lollies and tobacco from them. Eve Bailey remembered that her father put a cover over the old well to prevent her and the other Bailey children falling into it.

In the early 1980s the house was about to be demolished and the well removed so that the hill could be levelled. The Knox Council representative in Rowville, Cr Bernie Seebeck, set out to save the bricks from the well and enlisted the help of John Raymond, the Rowville Fire Brigade captain, and his volunteer firemen, to remove the bricks. As it happened, the plan to level the site was put on hold and Cr Seebeck organized for the Council to use the bricks to build a wishing well – complete with its gabled roof – and place it back on top of the hill.

There it sat for several years until finally, in 1994, the bulldozers and trucks moved in. The whole wishing well was lifted by a bulldozer and laid on its side next to Wellington Road while the hill was trucked away.

One day the workers arrived to find that someone had cut the roof off the well and driven off with it during the night. The rest of the well was then taken to the council’s yard for safe keeping. It was rebuilt and returned to the service station site in time for the official opening on 18th February 1995. Marlene Hobbs (nee Manley), the original Matthew Bergin’s great-granddaughter, cut the ribbon to officially open the well. Two sporting celebrities who joined in the opening ceremony that day were Gavin Wanganeen, the Essendon champion and 1993 Brownlow Medalist, and Lanard Copeland from the Melbourne Tigers Basketball team.

When the Heany Park Primary School opened, the Principal and parents decided to use the wishing well as the school’s logo. Cr Seebeck arranged for the left-over bricks that were still in the council yard to be used in the construction of the wishing well that now stands near the school’s entrance.
Bryan Power

Comments

 From Lana Diprose (31 Aug 2005)