Summary

The region around Newham, Woodend and Kyneton in Victoria was a popular focus for Scottish settlement from the mid-nineteenth century and the Newham Presbyterian church featured decades of services conducted in Gaelic.

The McKenzie Family

Alexander McKenzie was born in Gisborne Victoria in 1863, the son of Kenneth McKenzie and Hannah Glass who married in Melbourne in 1857 and lived at Red Rock/Gisborne. married Christina Baldwin at Kyneton in 1887. They bought land and built a house 'Craigilea' in what is now Don's Road, Newham which remained in family ownership until 2005. He died in Newham in 1921.They had four daughters, three of whom never married because their fiancés were all killed in World War I. The eldest Christina rented a house in Malvern and the other sisters, all employed, lived with her at varying times. The fourth sister Rachel married a widowed Methodist minister, Rev. Alfred Thomas in 1939. They had one son Raymond, born in July 1940. Rev Thomas died in October 1940 and Rachel and Raymond moved in with Christina.

Newham Presbyterian Church

According to the donor, the Presbyterian Church of Victoria appointed the Gaelic speaking Rev. William Fraser to the church at Bulla. One of his duties was to ride his horse to centres where there were Gaelic speaking settlers and he duly visited the people at Newham. The church at Newham opened for worship in 1868. Malcolm McDonald was the precentor for the services conducted in Gaelic for the Gaelic speakers in the congregation. The Rev. William Munro was ordained in 1869 to serve the churches in the Parish of Woodend and Newham. He conducted the service in Gaelic on Sunday afternoons and the chanting of the psalms was led by Malcolm McDonald. Rev. Munro was demitted in 1877. The bluestone church (now privately owned) is still standing.

The prayer book came into the possession of Alexander McKenzie in Newham near Woodend around 1900, and was passed on from his youngest daughter Helen to her niece Valerie Roberts, the donor, around 2000. Raymond Thomas recalls hearing many discussions regarding his grandfather Alexander and a schism in the Newham Presbyterian church and has noted that: 'Alexander used the Gaelic bible in the Newham Presbyterian Church up until the time Gaelic Services ceased. A few years later he was excommunicated.' The bible remained unused at 'Craigilea', the McKenzie farm.

The Scots in the Newham Area, Victoria

After 1850, many Scots who settled around the Woodend/Newham region had arrived on the 'Priscilla' in Melbourne in Febuary1853. Both the 'Priscilla' and the earlier 'Georgiana', which arrived Geelong, 16 October 1862, were sponsored by the Highland and Island Emigration Society, an organisation which received donations from wealthy people to enable impoverished clans people living in the highlands and islands of Scotland to emigrate. Many of these people received immediate employment by pastoralists and business people whose labour force had dried up due to the gold rush. Single women went into domestic service.

The Kyneton newspapers from the mid 1850s to 1860s contained frequent references to Scots living in Newham, often in trouble with the law for police offences or overdue rates. Names that appear in various public records around the Woodend, Newham, Keilor area include Campbell, McDonald, McKenzie, Gillies, McIntosh, McKinnon, McLeod, McRae/McCrea and Murdoch. Many are buried in Woodend cemetery.

The township of Newham was occupied Mount Macedon Ranges Station in 1839 by the settlers Charles Peters and Edward Dryden, who arrived from Van Dieman's Land with sheep. The district of Newham and Woodend was created in 1861 and became the Shire of Newham and Woodend in 1905. From the 1850s, Newham was known variously as Hieland Town or Isle of Skye, indicating the strong Scottish heritage of the early settlers.

References

Roberts, Valerie 'Scottish Settlement in Newham', 2009 (unpublished research document)

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