Generations of the Chirnside family will gather this weekend to celebrate what would have been Thomas Chirnside’s 200th birthday.
Descendants will attend a ceremony at Werribee’s Crossroads Church on Sunday and visit historical Chirnside landmarks before finishing with lunch at Werribee Park.
Brothers Thomas and Andrew Chirnside, who came from a farming family near Edinburgh in Scotland, migrated to Australia in 1839 and 1841 respectively with a few hundred pounds – then a handsome sum – and a drive to improve the family fortunes.
Thomas started acquiring and moving livestock between Sydney and Adelaide, and opened his first sheep run near Clunes in country Victoria. In 1852, he built a jetty at Point Cook to ship his wool and to help the rest of his family arrive by sea. The brothers became the biggest pastoralists in Wyndham and spent a large part of the 1870s establishing Werribee Park, including the construction of the mansion.
The original building comprised 60 rooms and had the largest wood fire oven in Victoria outside of government house.
Thomas took his own life in 1887.
Robert McCallum, Thomas’s great-great grandson, said Thomas was a hard worker who did not tolerate idleness in himself or others.
“He left a pretty big legacy in the area,” he said. “Without his vision and get up and go, I don’t think Australia’s agricultural industry would be anywhere near what it is now.”
