Henry Hickmott - Life and Times in South Australia and Victoria

Life and Times in South Australia and Victoria

Henry Edward Hickmott was born at Mount Barker in South Australia on 17 May 1853, the only son of Henry Hickmott (1825–1914) and Sophia Goldsmith (1828–1853). His parents and two older sisters, Emma and Eliza Hickmott, had sailed from London to Port Adelaide on the Emily in 1849 and then travelled to Mount Barker where Henry Edward's father worked at the local brick works. Henry Edward's paternal grandfather, Samuel Hickmott (1799-c1872) had earlier been transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1840 for sheep-stealing. There is some evidence that Samuel may have travelled to South Australia to join his youngest son and his family there.

Henry Edward's mother, Sophia, died not long after his birth and his father quickly re-married, to Harriet Waters in Adelaide in 1853. They lived for a time with Harriet's family in the rural settlement of Meadows. In 1854 Henry and Harriet and their family travelled to Melbourne in Victoria and thence to the gold-rush town of Clunes where they lived for the next twenty years. While at Clunes Henry Edward, like his father, worked as a miner, labourer and brick-maker. It seems that although he had no formal education he was well-learned. In her memoir I Loved Teaching Frances Elliott notes that Henry Edward, who had been invited to adjudicate a classroom debate

"… had never attended school, and yet he could write a very good letter. Having a stepmother, he had to go out and earn his living at an early age. He told us that the different people he worked for were always very willing to help him in his willingness to learn. He made a very satisfactory adjudicator".

She concluded by adding that he "later became a Member of Parliament in Western Australia".

In 1872, Henry Edward moved with his parents and step-siblings to the Wimmera township of Charlton where his father had purchased a farm, and would also establish a brickyard overlooking the river on Olive Street. On 27 October 1877, he married Elizabeth Ann Owen, the sister of a close friend and fellow local cricketer John Richard Owen, at Kingower near Bendigo. Elizabeth was born at Emerald Hill in 1855. Her parents, Edward Owen and Elizabeth Evens, were both from Wales. They met and were married at Liverpool in England in 1850 and sailed from there to Victoria in 1852. Lured by the news of fresh discoveries of gold in the Kingower/Inglewood region, Edward, or Taffy as he was known, and his family moved from Melbourne to Bet Bet near Dunolly around 1857 and then on to Kingower. The old couple remained there through the town's boom and bust periods - the population of Kingower peaked at around 8,000 in the 1860s, before declining to just 100 by the time of Edward's death in 1908. His wife Elizabeth died in Kingower in 1893. They are both buried in unmarked graves in Kingower's fast disappearing cemetery.

In the same year he was married, Henry Edward's stepmother, Harriet Hickmott née Waters, was killed when she was struck by lightning at her home in East Charlton. The incident was recorded in the St Arnaud Mercury on 17 February as follows:

'About 5pm on Wednesday a severe thunderstorm burst over East Charlton, and an hour later Mrs Hickmott and her son Samuel (a youth of 18 or 20) had just returned to their home in that township after a visit to a selection belonging to the family at Watson's Lakes, when a flash of lightning struck them both dead in the doorway of their house … Mrs Hickmott was thrown several yards out of the building, the apparel around her chest and shoulders being set ablaze, and her face much disfigured by the electric current, which appears to have struck her on the head and traveled down her right side. Her son Samuel was smitten on the right shoulder the current passing diagonally across his body until it came to his heart, his clothing being burnt even to the undershirt. Another son, named James, who was indoors at the time, was struck on the left forearm and hip, and for a time was paralysed, but has since recovered.'.

While at Charlton, Henry Edward worked mainly as a brick maker and building and roads contractor, with evident success. In 1881, he purchased a farm at West Charlton and in 1885 had built, on Camp Street in the eastern part of the town, a four-roomed brick house. This and a similar dwelling built for his stepbrother, John James Hickmott, were, the leader writer of the East Charlton Tribune informed his readers, 'additional evidence of the increasing development of the rapidly rising town of Charlton which, at the present rate of progression, promises to become a large and populous provincial centre of activity'. An elder of the local Wesleyan Church, Henry Edward was said to have given a 'short but stirring speech' there in March 1886 to mark the retirement of its minister, the Reverend E. Taylor. In October the following year he used the local newspaper to announce that he had for sale 'colonial salt' that was extracted from Lake Kunat Kunat by his brother-in-law Joseph Smith of L'Albert (Joseph Colmer Smith married Henry's older sister Rebecca Hickmott at Clunes on 25 August 1869. A Cornishman, he was born at St Austell in 1832, the son of Thomas Colmer Smith, a storekeeper, and Jane Rowett).

Henry Edward's passion beyond his family, work and religion, was cricket. In this capacity he was described by the East Charlton Tribune as a 'trundler' who sometimes 'disturbed the peace' of his opponents' 'timberyard' and, very occasionally, scored a few runs. Perhaps his most notable achievement was against St Arnaud on 20 October 1879, where he took 2/19 and participated in a last wicket stand which resulted in a historic win over East Charlton's arch rivals. The joy of winning was to be short lived, however, as East Charlton, and Henry Edward's bowling, were thrashed in a return match held at St Arnaud a couple of weeks later.

In 1890, Henry Edward sold up his Charlton holdings and moved with his growing family northwards to Lalbert where they stayed for the next eighteen years. The family lived initially on Joseph Smith's 186-acre (0.75 km2) block of land (allotment 47B) which was located on the eastern side of the town. The children from the Hickmott and Smith families made up the bulk of the early classes of Lalbert School No 2990 which was built by the local community and opened on 18 March 1889. By this stage Henry and his family were living on their own farm some three miles (5 km) to the east of Lalbert. As at Charlton Henry Edward worked as a farmer and building and roads contractor, conducting road works in and around the township, and overseeing on behalf of the council engineer the clearing of mallee scrub from different properties. He served for a time as a Trustee of the Lalbert cemetery and the Chairman of the local Vermin Board. And of course he continued to play cricket.