In 1840, Niel Black ‘took up country’ in the rich lands along Mount Emu Creek at the heart of the Western District. Backed by prominent partners in Scotland, this upstart Scottish farmer survived economic hardship in the 1840s and established a fine sheep and cattle run. During the 1850s, in the partnership’s name, he started buying sections of the vast ‘squatted’ acreage.

In 1858, he won election to the Legislative Council thereby becoming ‘Honourable’, and in 1867 he entertained Prince Alfred at ‘far-famed Glenormiston’, the treasured homestead he built in 1860, but had to leave in 1869 when the partnership’s assets were divided. In 1876 he moved back to the District, into Mount Noorat House, a mansion he described as ‘the crowning folly of my life’. But Black’s astonishing social rise never earned him the title of gentleman. It was his three sons’ destiny – a destiny their father secured with iron determination – to assume fully the role of Western District gentry alongside contemporaries from other pioneer families. Their firm, Black Bros, run by AJ (Ian) and SG (Steuart), set out to re-mould their inheritance, including Glenormiston which they recovered. In 1899, the celebrated beef herd was sold as they proceeded to improve and subdivide land for dairying. Thereafter they promoted rural industrialisation in the form of co-operative Butter Factories and Creameries with conspicuous success. Among the most potent symbols of their wealth was the creation of Dalvui, a homestead of splendours and, ultimately, broken dreams.

About the presenter

Maggie Black is a researcher, writer and editor, whose career was primarily spent working for international United Nations and non-governmental organisations. Among many books and international reports she wrote or edited are histories of Oxfam and UNICEF: A Cause for Our Times: Oxfam the first 50 years, (Oxford University Press, 1992); Children First: The Story of UNICEF, (OUP 1996); and The World Report on Violence Against Children, (United Nations, 2006). Since 2009, she has turned her attention to her great-grandfather’s pioneering life in embryonic Victoria, and his own and his sons’ involvement in the emergence of a new settler society. Her primary source is Niel Black’s voluminous archive in the State Library of Victoria, which is unique in the light it sheds on the process of ‘squatting’, Aboriginal exclusion, the skulduggery required to gain proprietorship over vast acreages, and many other themes of colonial activity in Victoria between 1837-1880.

Housekeeping

This event will be offered both in person at the RHSV, 239 A’Beckett St Melbourne 3000, and online via Zoom.

At the RHSV refreshments are served from 5.30pm – 6:00pm and the Zoom session will start, as will the lecture, at 6.00pm.

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