Author : Lorna Medwell (Burke)
ISBN 0 9775741 0 5

This is a digital version (PDF) of the original print edition.

This is the story of two journeys of discovery – one of two young people to a new land – the other of our visits to England and Scotland to find our ancestors.

John Medwell was a coachman on the Great North Road and lived at Stamford in

England. He was transported in 1837 on convict ship the Moffat 2 and assigned to Thomas Livingstone Learmonth at his properties of Bunninyong and Burrumbeet.

Annie Coutts was a weaver from Dunfermline who married John in Ballarat in the year of the Eureka Rebellion. They began their new life together in Learmonth when parts of the Stations of Ercildoune and Dowling Forest were put up for sale in June 1854.

Much more than a family history, ‘Lincolnshire Poacher, Learmonth Pioneer’ is an account of the early exploration and establishment of this part of the Ballarat Shire. It covers the development of the Township of Learmonth; the men and women who were our pioneer settlers and early farming in the local district.

Learmonth soon became a thriving community at the centre of the Ballarat Shire, boasting a Courthouse, Shire Hall, School, Masonic Lodge, four Churches, an Agricultural Society, Public Hall, and even a Royal Regatta on the Lake.

Learmonth had a regular train service, a railway station and the Medwell Chaff Mill.

Travelling chaff cutters and threshing machines served the local districts of Blowhard,

Miners Rest, Ascot, Burrumbeet, Addington, and Waubra.

Exhaustive research has traced the family from the earliest records. It explores the social conditions of the urban poor in the English Midlands; Dunfermline and its Damask weavers; and Kincardine, the fishing and shipbuilding town on the Firth of Forth.

The research methodology is described fully and charts document the ancestors, as well as the first Australian generations of the Medwell Family.

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