Hannah Mossop and the emigrants of Daylesford

Something I wrote for THE AGE, newspaper in 1997 The memory of Hannah Mossop is preserved on an unremarkable stone monument above a rectangular plot of ground in the Daylesford Cemetery. Her story is just one of many historical treasures secreted away in Victoria's alluring goldrush regions. The remote Dingle Peninsula on Ireland's Kerry coast and the Galtee Mountains that nurtured my Cleary clan might fire the soul, but a wander through the plains above Daylesford remains one of the great 'inns and resting places of the human soul'.
The shipping records say 2-year-old Hannah, sister of John 13, Henry 10, Isaac 5 and infant Jane, and daughter of 41-year-old Jane and 39-year-old Henry Mossop, died of worms outside Geelong aboard 'The Blanche' in 1852. Having survived the horrors of the journey from Cumberland, England, to Port Phillip, her parents must have been devastated to lose her so close to the 'promised land'.
Beyond the Swiss Mountain Hotel is the Mount Prospect Cemetery. Founded by local Presbyterians, it preserves the history of Scottish, English and Protestant Europe. There's not an Irish or Swiss-Italian name to be found in this cemetery. Marriage between Catholics and Protestants was frowned upon! The Richardson family from whose ranks came politicians and financiers, the Blains, the Yellands, Archibald Anderson from Roxborough Shire, Scotland, and the Germans - Johan Hasenfuss, Henry Haintz, and Friederike and Henry Zeis. All can be found in this unobtrusive cemetery just past the disused bluestone bridge that runs past 'Cleary's paddock'. The Zeis family grave is the only one that carries an inscription in a family's native tongue. Not far away lie Adolf and Alexandrina Zeis, parents of William, who died while preparing to to be sent for overseas service in the Great War.
And of course, there's the proprietor of the Telegraph Hotel, William Jones, who, in December 1863 had offered to repair John Heagney's stirrup before the Clare man rode to his fate in Hepburn's Lagoon. Buried here also are gunner Albert Yelland, who was killed in action on 30 September 1917 as the Battle of Ypres raged, and 18-year-old, Private S. Coutts, who went the same way on 29 August 1916 as news of the slaughter at the Somme flooded Australia, and Howard Boustead (Ypres). Surprisingly, there is one victim of the Great War, an O'Neil, in the Eganstown Cemetery. The Daylesford, Eganstown and Mount Prospect burial grounds mirror the social and political patterns of colonial Victoria. Collectively they tell a tale of optimism and hope against the spectre of unmerciful fate. The larger Creswick Cemetery adds the final chapter of the tale, for it catalogues the transition of the region from farming and independent mining, to large-scale capitalist mining. In 1882 the Australasia No. 2 mine collapsed drowning 22 miners whose deaths are commemorated by a large, sombre stone, centre-place in the Cemetery. In 1982, eighty-five-year-old Harry Pearce described the Australasia No. 2 disaster as a story of 'greed for gold, sacrifice of human life, incompetence, ignorance, personal ambition, heroism, drama and tragedy'. Michael Carmody, who was 20 when he warned his mates of the impending disaster, said 'they should never have drowned'. These were political times and the Miners' Union took a sophisticated line on the social relations of production. When the inquest declared that the flood was a result of 'an error of judgment which was such as might have been committed by any mine manager' the locals were outraged. The inscription 'Dr George Roche - A native of Cork - Died 24th January 1881 - Aged 51 - A true and warm hearted friend - A genial companion beloved by the poor - [His death is] Regretted by all who knew him .....' on a plain, unpretentious stone in the Catholic section of the Creswick Cemetery is a poignant reminder of the status afforded parish priests and local doctors in the old days. There are bigger, more famous cemeteries, Beechworth for example, than Daylesford, Eganstown, Mount Prospect and Creswick. Not one can lay claim to being the last resting place for such a diverse array of immigrant and Currency children. When I wander through them, I hear a chorus of voices, Irish and English, Scottish, Italian, German and Gaelic, and the sound of pick and shovel. An oasis of concrete and weathered iron in a sea of green, tilled soil, there's nothing better than a Daylesford Cemetery for those desperate to escape the suffocating saccharine monoculture that, as the year 2000 approaches, threatens to destroy our sense of place and history. Phil Cleary The Age Melbourne 1997
The Zeis men - Henry (37 years), Adolf (35) and (Jacob 24) did not make old bones.
William Jones' grave in Mount Prospect.
The Lafranchi grave in Eganstown.
A sudent of history examines the Chinese grave in the Daylesford cemetery.
Hi PhilHannah was my great great grandfather's younger sister. She was buried at sea 150m of the Cape of Good Hope. They lost another in Geelong after arrival.The thought of being remembered 150 years later is intriguing. By the way, there is a memorial stone in Lamplugh in Cumberland that is remarkably similar to the Daylesford one. Pity the stonemason there chiselled things like Dazlesford and Okotber! Any chance you had relatives in Daylesford? Mum thinks she remembers Clearys when she was a child. Jean Mullett nee Peterson.Thanks for the article.