Callander and Forer

We are currently working our way through a collection of photographs of Maffra and surrounds from the late Ted Clark, and are stumped by this one. We do not know of a Callander and Forer store locally, and checking on Trove shows them at Dookie and Wangaratta.


We have really worked hard on it, but cannot read any words on the other shops.

This looks more like Wangaratta to us, but can anyone confirm it?

Late Note: Thanks to Jackie on the Rootsweb AUS-VIC-NORTHEAST mailing list - This is in Mary Street Dookie in 1906. The two men in suits with the boy to the left are Callander and Forer.

Burgoyne Family

The Society has received an enquiry about the Burgoyne family at Maffra, with two later branches marrying into the McMichael family at Licola (so Linda knows them pretty well).

The photograph above is of the Burgoyne home on the Macalister River below Burgoynes Gap on the Licola Road. The site has since been re-roofed and had a verandah erected.

The family consists of Thomas Burgoyne (1833-1893, died Maffra) and Mary Ann Moore (1834-1924, died Maffra). Associated family names known for the next generation are McMichael, Teychenne and Graham.

We know Thomas was connected with the first Maffra Cheese Factory in the 1870s, which was somewhere on Finchley (we think).

If anyone is connected with the family, and wishes to be put in contact with the enquirer, who is descended from a sister of  Mary Ann Moore, please contact the Society. Any further information would also be appreciated.

Robert Curwen at Mewburn Park

Does anyone out there know anything about Robert Curwen, who was a soldier settler at Bushy Park after World War I?

Sgt Curwen appears to have been there about 1920. He was actually the first to have his sugarbeet into the factory one year, but was gone by 1925.

You can read a little about his exploits in the war, when he was in the first group to embark (and that is another whole story!), on Lenore Frost's blog The Empire Called.