Heritage 0609_OH Poltalloch.pdf - Australian Heritage Magazine

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The Royal party at Poltalloch in November 1867.
Davenport and McDougall bought
100 head of horned Durham cattle
for 5 guineas a head. These were
from the herd of Joseph Hawdon,
the first overlander from Sydney to
Melbourne and to Adelaide. Later,
in March 1845, under instructions
from Samuel Davenport, McDougall
began an epic ride overland to Port
Phillip to purchase a further
500–600 cattle. He completed this
remarkable feat, returning by
September of the same year having
lost only two animals on the
journey.
Neill Malcolm hoped to
encourage the emigration of tenants
who had been displaced by
clearances on his highland estates to
settle in South Australia. Nothing is
recorded in the Davenport letters of
the planned emigration but a letter
written by McDougall and dated
September 1845, states:
There is not the least doubt that
any person who comes to the
Colony will derive many benefits
from doing so, and if some of my
countrymen would pluck up
courage enough to come, I am
satisfied that they would have no
cause to repent.
Another of McDougall’s letters
published in The South Australian
News, April 1845, gives a glimpse of
daily life at the homestead:
I have now commenced to lay out a
garden, where I hope to cultivate
the vine, orange and almond trees
with success, this climate is so well
adapted for their growth.
Of the Aboriginal population
McDougall comments:
The natives who are very numerous
at present are very quiet. I generally
Map of lakes showing Malcolm’s 39th Survey.
employ one of them as a water
carrier, for a week at a time, and
give him an old shirt, or an old pair
of trousers, with which he seems
perfectly satisfied.
By all accounts McDougall
enjoyed a good life on Poltalloch.
His daily fare included fish of many
varieties supplied by the Aborigines,
kangaroo tail soup and locally shot
game. Milk and butter was supplied
by the dairy.
Poltalloch played host to some
famous visitors. English writer and
traveller Anthony Trollope dined
there while on his travels around
Australia in the 1860s. He wrote:
I also visited a large cattle-station
in the south of the colony, on the
eastern side of the lakes. It belongs
to a rich Scotch absentee
landowner who sits in our
parliament, and I will only say of it
that I think I ate the best beef there
that ever fell my way.
Praise indeed! Poltalloch beef had
already taken prizes at the Adelaide
Show. In 1859 two bullocks, “fatted
on the grass of the Murray” took out
first and second prizes.
In 1867 Prince Alfred, Duke of
Edinburgh and Queen Victoria’s
second son, visited Poltalloch while
on a camping and hunting tour of
the Lakes region. He had travelled
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