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The Inebriates’ Farm At Balnarring
Above: The Rev. William Lockhart Morton. Picture courtesy of the Uniting Church of Australia Synod Archives
By Ilma Hackett
In the Mornington Standard of March 21, 1891 an article announced: “It is rumoured on what appears to be good authority that the Rev. W. L. Morton has decided to establish his ‘Inebriates Colony’ in Balnarring. Mr. Morton has visited many districts in search of a property suited to his requirements and it is stated he has selected Mr. Griffiths’s estate formerly known as ‘Vansuylens’. Should the place finally be converted
into a rescue home, it will prove a further instance of the ‘irony of fate’, it having been erected for, and long used as, a hotel.”
A number of Balnarring residents became alarmed as the rumours spread. There was a ‘yes’ to the praiseworthy work done by the Reverend Morton but a ‘no’ to a rescue home for drunkards in Balnarring.
Morton’s background
The Rev. William Lockhart Morton was a Presbyterian preacher and philanthropist. Born in Victoria’s Loddon district in 1851, he was the son of a Scottish immigrant. His father was Presbyterian, his mother Anglican and the young William grew up in a family with strong religious principles. Scholastic by nature, he studied law as a young man but, instead of pursuing a legal career, he decided to enter the ministry. After studying at the Theological Hall of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria in Melbourne (today’s Ormond College) he was ordained in 1875. That year he married Scottish-born Elizabeth Aitchison Elder. His first posting was to the Dandenong parish where the couple’s first child was born; the first of five daughters raised by the couple. After two years in Dandenong they moved to Camperdown in western Victoria where William preached for five years before receiving the important charge of Ballarat. He was inducted at the Ebenezer Presbyterian Church in 1883.
William Morton was described as being ‘gentlemanly, of genial disposition and enthusiastic’ and, in each of his churches, congregation numbers increased greatly. In Camperdown the church building had to be enlarged to accommodate everyone while instead of the Ebenezer Church closing, as had been contemplated, it was rebuilt and expanded such was the strength of the Reverend Morton’s evangelism.
The call to ‘Rescue Work’
The rescue work for which he became so well-known began in Ballarat. Distressed by the number of men of good background who had become drunkards and lived a day-by-day existence, without a place to sleep or means of caring for themselves, he undertook to take them in and rehabilitate them. He established ‘Hope Cottage’, a small two-roomed dwelling, where men were invited to stay. There was no charge but voluntary contributions were expected. Word spread and, as more sought help, more cottages were obtained. By 1888 the Hope Lodge buildings housed about twenty-seven inmates. The number soon rose to forty. Morton’s aim was to cure inebriates with a view to “the complete eradication of the drink habit and their restoration to society”. He relied mainly on donations to fund his work, as well as his own salary. Later, when asked why he had concentrated on rescue work he replied that there were “plenty to do church work but not one in a thousand is ready to take up rescue work.” Morton’s wife was a constant and enthusiastic helper throughout his ministry.
After six years in Ballarat Morton was transferred to Malvern where he continued his rescue work. A large home was made available and Hope Lodge expanded. However, Malvern was too close to the temptations of city life; he needed to get his charges away from the worst of urban influences. Morton looked for premises further afield where he could “treat alcoholism systematically as a disease rather than a vice in a healthily situated establishment where they can get sobriety”.
A Haven in Balnarring
Morton’s search for a suitable place brought him to Balnarring, to a property owned by James and John Griffiths, 45 miles from Melbourne on the Western Port side of the Mornington Peninsula. James and his brother John, the Griffiths Brothers of tea and coffee fame, had purchased Vansuylen’s, a former hotel, in 1888 and it had become a country holiday residence for them. Both brothers were committed lay evangelicals who gave generously not only to their own denomination (they were Anglicans) but to many philanthropic causes. They were impressed by Morton’s zeal and offered their country property for his rehabilitation project. Hope Lodge Farm was established and Morton sent all or nearly all his cases to Balnarring, after they were first introduced to the scheme and tested at Malvern.
Life at Hope Lodge Farm
The following is a description of the farm by someone who had been a resident, someone who, by his own admission, had ‘‘absorbed a good many hundreds of bottles of brandy in his time”.
“There are 34 residents on the farm mostly of a superior class and some of the highest professional attainments, who lead a peaceful and apparently pleasant and happy life. The farm is of 150 acres in area, 20 to 30 of which are under cultivation. The remainder is used for grazing horses, cattle and sheep, the latter for home consumption. It contains 300 to 400 fowls and ducks, many pigs, a large garden and orchard about six acres in extent. It is situated on elevated ground and commands a fine view of Western Port and the great Southern Ocean, Phillip Island, the Nobby and Seal continued next page...
Rocks, beyond which the Sydney and other steamboats can be seen ploughing the water on their outward and inward courses. The nearest hotel is seven miles distant, at Hastings. When once the inmates settle down here they have no inclination for either hotels or townships. There is a photographic department, a lithographic establishment and a saloon for painting where these works of art are executed with credit and skill. Nearly all the trades are represented and most of the work required on the farm is executed on the premises. Every Saturday night there is a musical concert with readings and musical accompaniments which are given by first class singers and readers and to which many of the surrounding settlers flock in. The Reverend W. L. Morton deserves great credit for the able and philanthropic manner in which Hope Lodge Farm, Balnarring, is carried on.” (3rd Sept 1892, Ovens and Murray River Advertiser)
Other enterprises undertaken at the Farm included an apiary, a blacksmith’s shop, tailoring and flower culture, ‘for which the soil was very well suited’. These occupations drew on the skills of the inmates. The farm aimed to be self-sustaining which, it was hoped, would bring self-respect to the men through the work they achieved.
Community fears settled
The Mornington Standard at the time wondered how the project would be received by local folk. “People as a rule look with suspicion on any scheme that is likely to bring large numbers of our unfortunate brethren into their midst... [such institutions] are very
useful and necessary... but in most localities the residents prefer to contemplate them... at a distance.”
This appears to have been the case at Balnarring. The good people of Balnarring need not have worried but initially that suspicion and fear had been present.
The Rev. Morton wrote that on the first day in the fields an overseer, a former army captain, and a dozen men had gone out to fell timber and cut firewood (The Griffiths brothers. had offered the group £3 an acre for clearing the land.) A group of local men appeared. They were carrying guns as they said they had been rabbiting. A spokesman for the group approached, stated that he was an old resident of the area and was expressing the general concern that ‘undesirables’ had been brought to the district. The residents were prepared ‘to use whatever precautions were necessary to protect their families’ as rumour had it that ‘jailbirds ’were amongst them. They needed to be able to identify such men. The group was assured they had been misinformed and that their fears were unfounded. The Rev. Morton invited anyone who wished to attend a concert to be held in the evening adding, for extra reassurance, that his wife and children would be there.
Some took up the invitation as the resident had mentioned in his account given above. In time, ‘friendly feelings’ between the community and the inmates of Hope Lodge Farm were established with the result that a number of the workers on the farm were invited into the homes of some of the local people.
The Move to Belair
James and John Griffiths charged no rent for the use of their property balancing this against the work done by the men. Even so the enterprise was a costly one and drew heavily on the Rev. Morton’s private means. He had become Moderator of the Melbourne South Presbytery and was elected a delegate to the Federal Assembly of the Presbyterian Church sitting in Adelaide. Morton made a number of friends in Adelaide who showed keen interest in his work with inebriates. Among them was Mr J. H. Angas who urged him to take up an offer from the South Australian Government to take over full control of a similar retreat at Belair. This was fully funded. Not only could he continue his rescue work there but also set up a training home for young people wanting to do mission work in Australia and abroad.
After two years the Hope Lodge Farm at Balnarring was closed and in 1893, the Rev. W. L. Morton transferred to Belair, six miles from Adelaide in S.A. There he continued his work of what one newspaper called ‘reclaiming drunkards’ at the Belair Retreat, working towards the principle of self-sufficiency with the inmates offering whatever skills they had to allow the retreat to function.
The China Inland Mission was established in Australia to recruit and train people to become missionaries. In 1890, after listening to a speaker from the Mission, Morton had wanted to become a missionary but was not accepted. Instead, he set up a training school for young men interested in mission work and two years later, at his wife’s suggestion, a second school was opened for young women in premises made available by John Angas. This became the Angas Missionary College. Both were interdenominational institutions based on faith principles and solidly biblical.
In 1913 Morton wrote a book, 'Drifting Wreckage - A story of Rescue in Two Parts'. The first part related to home rescue work; the other to overseas work.
James and John Griffiths sold the Balnarring property in 1893. Subdivision followed and, over time, the homestead section and surrounding acreage became the farm known as ‘Warrawee’. It was indeed, an ‘irony of fate’ that saw a former hotel become an inebriates’ colony.
References:
Drifting Wreckage - a Story of Rescue in Two Parts by Rev. W.L.Morton; Bruce Bennett’s unpublished research notes on the Griffiths Brothers Adelaide Observer 25 August, 1982. Obituary notice
Contemporary newspapers
‘Australian and New Zealand Training Homes’ by Ian Welch (Department of Pacific & Asian History.
Photographs:
Balnarring’s Hope Farm illustration from Drifting Wreckage State Library of S.A. collection Victorian Collections and State Library of Victoria collection.
