The MacDonald Family of Goulburn is a family tree filled with adventurers. From undertaking the longest cattle drive in Australian history; trekking from Goulburn to the newly opened ranges of the Kimberley in Western Australia to settle ‘Fossil Downs’ Station; to great sea voyages to Japan and the Islands.

Jean MacDonald, only daughter of Donald (Dan) MacDonald and Edith Maud Mitchell didn’t escape that adventurous spirit, being the first woman from her family to live at Fossil Downs, a two million acre station in the far north of Western Australia, still one of the largest stations in Australia.

Jean donated this collection of family mementos to Goulburn Mulwaree Library in 2004 , and it gives an interesting insight into the personal life of one of Australia’s pioneering pastoral families.

The MacDonald Family in Goulburn

Donald MacDonald Junior was better known as Dan MacDonald. The son of a Scottish immigrant from the Isle of Skye, Scotland, he was born at the property ‘Bradley’ in near Laggan. Like his father and brothers, he was a pastoralist, and owned many properties, including ‘Rossiville’, and ‘Arnprior’, in Larbert. Most famously, he was part owner with his brothers of the ‘Fossil Downs’ station. Dan took up the pastoral lease for himself and his brothers in 1883. Although he wasn’t a member in the famous droving party, he was integral in the establishment and location of the station, having previously been in WA prospecting, and was close enough to search out and collect a leasehold for the land.

Dan MacDonald married Edith Maud Mitchell in 1904, and had three children five years apart; Archibald in 1905, who would later live in ‘Rossiville’, Goulburn; William in 1910, who would take over the running of ‘Fossil Downs’ and build the current homestead; and lastly Jean in 1915, who inherited the E.C. Manfred designed home ‘Yurabi’. It was Jean who bequeathed this collection to the Library.

A Life Between Pages

One of most interesting items in the MacDonald Family Archives is the travel diaries of Maud MacDonald from a trip to Japan in 1907, which she undertook with her new husband Dan, and his sister Anne Christina (Nance) MacDonald. These diaries are detailed accounts of the travelling party's time at sea, as well as events that happened on land. Coordinates are marked as well as the days at sea.

Included with the travel diaries is an absolutely gorgeous panorama booklet showing prints of Japanese landscapes, titled Views in the Land of the Rising Sun. Together with the diary, they give an amazing glimpse into what Japan would have been like from a Westerner's point of view in the early days of the 20th Century.

A page from the diary of Maud MacDonald during a trip to Japan, 1907, as well as a page of the souvenir book of panoramas Land of the Rising Sun, undated.

Cooking and the Home

One of the most popular, yet always unique, items we receive at the Library are handwritten cookbooks. A collection of recipes and home remedies, written out with painstaking care, or sometimes scrawled in a hurry, these items are always an amazing glimpse not only into the original owner, but into the foods Australians loved in times gone by. These hobbled together scrapbooks would have travelled around with Jean MacDonald as she lived her life, moving from place to place. Stuffed full of recipes gathered from family and friends, some pages more well-thumbed than others, they tell their own story about the writer’s life and the times in which she lived.

This collection also includes a small selection of printed cookery and housekeeping books from the 1920s, some gifted from her mother and some collected by Jean herself.

The handwritten recipe books of Jean MacDonald.

Scrapbooking History

Another sweet memento is a childhood scrapbook owned by Maud MacDonald. Born Edith Maud Mitchell, the scrapbook has an inscription of the poem from Charles Kingsley’s A Farewell. This scrapbook was most likely started by her parents, as the first entry is an in memorium flyer for T. McTurk Gibson, the first Mayor of Port Augusta, South Australia, a town that Maud’s father, Samuel James Mitchell, was also Mayor of in the late 19th Century. McTurk Gibson died in 1879, when Maud was only three, so it seems unlikely she stuck it in there herself. This scrapbook is filled with items such as stickers, flyers from the opening of a roller rink in Adelaide, poems, coats of arms, and all sorts of other bright and trivial things.

Edith Maud Mitchell’s scrapbook, circa 1879.

Lastly, there is a notebook of newspaper and magazine articles on the history of Goulburn and the Southern Highlands, mostly from the 1920s. Probably created by a young Jean MacDonald, the collected articles are about the areas surrounding Goulburn or significant events, such as Belmore Falls, when St Saviour’s hall burned down, or the wallabies in the zoological area of Belmore Park.

Scrapbook of events from Goulburn and the greater region, date unknown.

You can view the rest of the MacDonald Family Archive at Goulburn Mulwaree Library today! Contact the Library for more information.