Ward Names

Tirhatuan: Stories behind the Rowville-Lysterfield Ward Names

Tirhatuan

Tirhatuan was the name of the home of the first European settler in Knox, the Reverend James Clow who was born in Scotland in 1790, the son of a flour miller. James was born without a left hand and possibly as a consequence of that, was educated for the church. He was accepted into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in 1813 and in 1815, at the age of 25, he obtained an appointment as a chaplain with the East India Company in Bombay.

After suffering much ill health in India Clow retired in 1833 and returned to Scotland. He could see, however, that life there would not offer many opportunities for his eight children so in 1837 the family sailed for Hobart Town. He was disappointed with Hobart but interested in the news of the new settlement at Port Phillip so he set sail once more and by good fortune arrived at the very time when the centre of Melbourne was being auctioned. He made the wise decision of buying two acres of land in Swanston Street (close to the present site of the Myer store) and then returned to Hobart to collect his family.

To the Settlement at Port Phillip

Crowded aboard a small schooner with a year’s supply of provisions and the timber to build a house, the family experienced a terrifying crossing of Bass Strait that took 17 storm-tossed days and only finished when the ship ran aground at Williamstown.

James was 47 years of age and grumbled about being miserable living in the bush in Swanston Street so it is doubtful that the life of the squatter appealed to him. He was, however, anxious that his eldest son James Maxwell Clow should find a career and so he sought a suitable stretch of land on which to establish a cattle run.

He discovered an unsettled area north of the six square mile site on Dandenong Creek that had been selected for the establishment of the Native Police Depot. (This area, now much reduced, is known as the Police Paddocks).

The Corhanwarrabul Run

In August 1838, Clow obtained the squatting rights for only a few pounds a year for this huge area of land which extended from Dandenong Creek to the Dandenongs. It covered 36 square miles and was known as the Corhanwarrabul Run. In 1841 he built a homestead on rising land to the east of the junction of the Dandenong and Corhanwarrabul Creeks and named it Tirhatuan. It is believed that tirhatuan was the local aboriginal word for the sugar glider possum that can still be found in the area.

In the 1841 census, 12 people were recorded as living in the homestead. When Clow sold the run to John Wood Beilby in 1850, the house consisted of eight rooms and there were stock yards, a woolshed, orchard and gardens. In 1857 Beilby left the property which was then occupied by Charles Webber until about 1863 when the pastoral lease was held by three men named Dargon, Barry and Jennings. The last recorded occupant was Julius Politz, a cigar merchant who grew tobacco south of Wellington Road at Kilcatten Park (part of which is the site of the present S.E.C. Station).

It seems that the abandoned homestead eventually tumbled down in the 1860s.

A Dig Uncovers Tirhatuan

In the late 1970s the Archaeological Society of Victoria excavated the homestead site and some of the artefacts unearthed are now on display at the Visitors’ Centre at Jells Park. The dig revealed that the house had an earthen floor and the walls were made of wooden slabs. The iron roof was supported by heavy wooden poles. Some of the walls were almost a metre thick, being made with a core of stone faced with mud bricks and the house was surrounded by a wide verandah. A bottle store containing almost 80 bottles was uncovered and this discovery allowed the archaeologists to date the site accurately.

In the front of the house was a raised bank to give access to the verandah and beyond the bank was a ditch constructed to drain water away from the house. In the top of the bank and along the sides of the ditch, many aboriginal artefacts were uncovered.

The Aborigines in Rowville

James Clow spoke highly of the aborigines who visited the homestead. Members of both the Yarra Yarra and Westernport tribes who frequented the area were kindly treated by Clow and his family and he maintained very good relations with them. In discussions about how government should assist the aborigines, he advocated very enlightened views that were at odds with the opinions of most of his contemporaries. He proposed that the unsettled areas of Westernport and Gippsland should be given to the aborigines and that they also be given cattle to run on these lands. However, he recommended that no houses or cattle yards be constructed but that the cattle be allowed to run wild. The aborigines would hunt them when they needed food and Clow advocated that they be given guns to allow them to hunt more effectively.

Even more radical for a clergyman was his opposition to allowing Christian missionaries access to the tribes. He believed that the aborigines needed to be removed entirely from the influences of white society until “the unnatural progress of extinction of the race has become to a material degree checked or averted”. Needless to say Clow’s suggestions were not adopted and by the 1860s there were only a few survivors of the once flourishing YarraYarra and Westernport tribes.

James and his son had not been particularly successful squatters but the investment in the two acres in Swanston Street eventually made them both wealthy men.

Clow had conducted the first Church of Scotland service in the colony (on Christmas Day in 1837) and was very disappointed not to be made the first official chaplain. He was eventually rewarded in 1858 when he was selected to become the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church for the Colony of Victoria.

Clow is remembered locally in the naming of Clow Street in Dandenong and Clow Avenue in Ferntree Gully. Tirhatuan Drive runs from Wellington Road to Rowville Secondary College and the school’s logo is the tirhatuan.

A plaque on a large boulder north of the bridge in Wellington Road bears this inscription:

“This plaque commemorates the arrival of the first white settler in this area, the Reverend James Clow, in early August 1838. His home “Tirhatuan” was erected on the Corhanwarrabul Run which extended from here to the foot of the Dandenongs. Erected 30th August 1988 by the City of Knox and the Knox Historical Society as a Bicentennial Project”.
Bryan Power