PIERRE PALLOT
By. Richard Shiell

“Pierre (Peter) Pallot was a true pioneer of the Waanyarra district. He arrived with the first prospectors, raised a large family and now has over 500 descendants.
Pierre (Peter) Pallot was born on 9th December, 1824, at St. Peter Port Guernsey. He was the son of Jean Pallot and his wife Jeanne (nee Queripel).
As a youth Pierre went to sea and it was as a seaman that he arrived in March, 1849 at Port Adelaide and took whatever work he could find. At one time he worked as a shepherd on the pastoral station ‘Vectis’ near Horsham in Victoria.
Pierre was seized by gold fever which swept the country in 1851. He went to Forest Creek diggings (now Chewton) near Castlemaine. There, he joined a party of Guernsey men who had also travelled from Adelaide. The party included Nicholas Gallienne and his son, Frederick, Peter Le Messurier and Charles Baker. Charles was among the first to find gold at Jones’ Creek (Waanyarra) in 1853.
0n 15th February, 1853 Pierre Pallot married Sophia Gallienne in Adelaide. It was thought that they travelled back to Jones’ Creek later that year and followed the various rushes which occurred in the district.
Evidence of this can be seen in the birth registrations of the many children Sophia bore in the following years at Kingower, Two Mile Creek, Beechworth, Dunolly, Newbridge and Tarnagulla. Later the principal abode of the family was at Ironbark Gully, a source of rich alluvial gold deposits for many years, and situated about one mile south-east of Tarnagulla.
Pierre took out a cultivation licence on 10 acres of land at Nuggetty Flat, north of Waanyarra in 1869 (Allotment 5, Section A). Later he took an adjoining 13 acres of crown land (Allotment 12). After the death of his wife Sophia in 1871 Pierre moved to this property. No doubt this was also to be nearer to the other Guernsey men and their families, many of whom by now were related to Pierre by marriage.
Charles Baker had married Sofia’s sister Marie, and sister Harriette had married Robert Scholes. Nicholas and Rachel Gallienne lived at Waanyarra until their deaths in 1888 and 1882 respectively.
Peter and Sophia had 17 children but only seven survived to adulthood. The oldest son John Henry Pallot was the only one to settle in the district and John’s property is still in the possession of his step-daughter’s family. Sophia had a son prior to her marriage to Pierre Pallot. This boy Peter Le Messurier was raised in Waanyarra by his grandparents Nicholas and Rachel Gallienne. He later married a widow Annie Barnes and conducted a general store and post office at Jones’ Creek. Two of his descendants still live at Tarnagulla.
In 1886 Pierre, now 62, married his deceased wife’s sister, Lucretia aged 45. Lucretia had assisted with the upbringing of several of Peter’s children but unfortunately she died within a year of her marriage to Peter.
Pierre continued to reside at Nuggetty Flat until 1891 when he then sold his land for £1 an acre and went to live in rotation with various members of his family. In 1911 Pierre Pallot, aged 88 died in Prahran at the home of his son Bill. He is buried at the Brighton Cemetery.
It is 77 years since Pierre Pallot died and there would be few people alive today who would remember him even as an old man. One such person is his granddaughter, Ivy Pallot.
Ivy described her grandfather as a “small, quietly spoken, active man who had white whiskers and an animated manner. Among his possessions was a 45 cm. long bottle in which was enclosed a model of the barque Water-witch, the vessel which brought him to Australia. Peter also had a tin trunk in his bedroom in which he kept biscuits and lollies for distribution to his grandchildren.
It was 1902, while Pierre was living with Ivy’s parents in Horsham that he wrote a letter to his granddaughter Sophie, aged 17, daughter of John Pallot of Nuggetty Flat. This letter is evidence that Pierre must have obtained an adequate education as the handwriting was good and the spelling accurate. Although the letter was written when he was aged 77, the handwriting is firm and there are no signs of the mental or physical deterioration often seen in elderly people.”

Thanks to Edna and Alan Holt for their book of 1983, “A Pallot Story”, from which most of this article is derived.
Richard Shiell, 1988.


Life of John Pallot 1857-1935

John Pallot was born on 26th September, 1857 at Dunolly, Victoria. He was the oldest surviving child of Pierre and Sophia Pallot although Sophia had a living son from a previous union with Peter le Messurier in 1851. (see separate entry)

His Early Life
John must have obtained a reasonable elementary education and several xamples of his handwriting have survived. It is thought that he attended the Tarnagulla school as the family lived mostly at Ironbark Gully until around 1871. This was situated about one mile south-east of Tarnagulla. After leaving school John worked in the forest as a woodcutter and engaged in part-time mining with his father and brothers wherever a new ‘rush’ occurred in the district.
John’s mother died in 1871 after bearing her 17th child in 20 years and the family moved to Waanyarra where Sophia’s parents and sisters could look after the younger children. John’s father Pierre had in 1869 taken up a cultivation licence at Nuggetty Flat north of Waanyarra.
John married Jane Mathews Trenoweth of Laanecoorie in 1881 and they had five children over the next ten years, Albert, Henry, Sophie, Edith and Lillian.
Land Selection
In 1886 John selected 20 acres of Crown Land (Allotment 14) at Nuggetty Flat immediately to the north of his father’s property. (Allotments 5 & 12). In conformance with the Government requirements he built a house, fenced and cleared the land and obtained title in 1891. Life must have been tough however, for within 4 months John had the property mortgaged to Thomas Comrie, the Tarnagulla storekeeper, possibly in settlement of outstanding debts incurred by his growing family.

Change in Fortunes
It is assumed that John must have had a massive upturn in his finances around 1905 as we find that on 25th November, 1905, he bought back the mortgage from Thomas Comrie and purchased three other blocks in the name of his son Albert. Shortly after this he commenced building a fine new house of mudbrick beside his old two-room timber dwelling. This must have seemed quite palatial with four large rooms (three bedrooms and a parlour).
The old building was retained as a kitchen and spare rooms and was not finally demolished until about 1948. The new building was constructed from local mud and the outside rendered with cement and painted bright red with white tuck pointing. Eighty years on, most of the paint and rendering has long since eroded away but remnants may be seen high up on the walls under the eaves. The interior walls were plastered and contrasted greatly with the papered hessian walls of the old building.
John and his wife bought a suites of mahogany bedroom and dining room furniture, and ornamental fire-surrounds to complete the dwelling. All of this is still in the house in good condition.
The source of John’s newfound wealth is uncertain but can only be as a result of a massive gold find at the Waanyarra Rush of 1902-5. In fact there is a story, in the 1931 ‘History of Tarnagulla’ published for the Back to Tarnagulla celebrations of that year, of ’Mr. A. Pallot of Waanyarra finding a 5Ooz. Nugget.
By 8th August, 1908 John’s money must have run out as the property was mortgaged again and the ornate and serviceable country verandah was never built around his new dwelling, although the metal ties for this purpose are still plainly visible on the south side of the house facing Tarnagulla Road.

Loss of Wife and Remarriage
John’s wife Jane died on 6th November, 1909 and although he was no longer flush with funds he had a home, a wagon and a fine team of horses and secure contracts to supply boiler wood to the local deep mines and those of Bendigo. John had met the widow Drusilla Aulich on numerous occasions and he took to leaving her with a little firewood on his trips past her house to the railway station. She had no income except a small pension from the City of Vienna (her late husband’s birthplace) and what she could earn dressmaking to support her three young children.
John and Drusilla married on 19th December, 1912 and she and her children Marie (11), Leon (9) and Ferdinand (7) moved into residence at John’s farm at Waanyarra three miles south-east of Tarnagulla.

Pallot Children
John’s son Albert Pallot had an 84 acre property 1 miles north of Nuggetty Creek and lived there in a small wooden house for some years. When he was about 40 years of age he married Annie Bofill of Waanyarra but they had no children.
Henry Pallot married Ethel Jenkins in 1914, and they had one daughter Ethel Gladys. Henry worked most of his life with the Forest Commission in Bendigo.
Sophie Pallot married Charles Raven in 1912. They had three sons and one daughter and in later life Sophie conducted a newsagency in Dunolly for some years.
Edith Pallot married Thomas Sweatman who was an officer in the Salvation Army. They had one son, also Thomas.
Lillian who had been living at home as housekeeper to her father moved out prior to the arrival of the new wife and young family. She married Tom Stephenson from Goldsborough and was a frequent visitor to the home until her tragic death at the age of 30 in 192 1. Her son Wesley Stephenson appears in several photographs at Nuggetty during the 1920’s.

Mallee Farm
In 1915 Drusilla’s half brother Wesley Brideson was killed at Lone Pine, Gallipoli. He had been raised by Drusilla and named her as his beneficiary in his Will. Prior to the outbreak of War, Wesley had acquired a 640 acre leasehold property at Danyo in a remote area of the Victorian Mallee. This was a typical ’bush block’ covered with dense Mallee scrub. Wesley had lived in a tent and had cleared only 100 acres prior to enlisting in the Light Horse Brigade.
Once the legal formalities were complete John Pallot and his son Albert immediately sent their horse teams by rail to Danyo and set about clearing and cultivating the remaining land. Eventually they built a small house and stables on the property.
Clearing of Mallee land was very arduous work. It involved dragging a ’Mallee Roller’ across the bush Mallee scrub and after this had dried a little it was burnt. The Mallee Roller was a large, heavy log approximately 3 metres long and 1 metre in diameter. A team of eight draught horses was required to pull it but a lot of the larger trees had first to be cut by axe or saw. After burning, the land was worked with a disc cultivator and the Mallee roots grubbed and sold as firewood. Wheat was sown with a McKay seed-drill and harvested with a ’Sunshine’ harvester. The first crop was taken in 1916 and the farm proved very productive for a few years as the ground was new and the seasons good.
In 1924 Albert left to go share farming with a Mr. Muir on better land. He later married Annie Bofill of Waanyarra and settled in Bendigo where his brother got him a job with the Forests Commission.
When Albert left, John Pallot, aged 67, decided it was time to retire and Leon and Ferd Aulich (his stepsons) took over. The Danyo farm had produced a reasonable income and had even permitted such luxuries as allowing Leon a year at Melbourne Tech in 1918 and Marie three years at Methodist Ladies College from 1919-21.

Sale of Mallee Farm
Leon and Ferd did not like the hard monotonous life of a wheat farmer in the Mallee with its isolation and low scrubby sand hills so unlike the forest area where they had grown up. A lengthy visit by their sister Marie in 1926 to act as housekeeper produced only temporary respite. Her opinion of the area was not improved by the finding of a 6 ft. black snake in her bed one evening as she was preparing to undress by candlelight.
In 1927 the Danyo property was sold to a neighbour, Mr. Les Flavell. It did not bring a lot of money as the land was leasehold and the machinery all on hire purchase. However, it is noteworthy that Drusilla was able to pay a debt shortly after this to Duggan & Sons in Tarnagulla which had been outstanding since the death of her first husband Carl, 21 years earlier.

John Pallot’s Years of Retirement at Waanyarra
John Pallot on his retirement ran dairy cows for cream production and raised pigs on the skim-milk which remained after separating the cream. The income often was meagre and in 1926 we find him writing to the Department of Lands requesting extra time to pay rent of £4.11.0 due on Allotments 6, 6A and 7, Section 11 (the blocks south of the house and across the road).

Recreational Activities at Nuggetty
Late in 1929, Drusilla purchased a secondhand Chevrolet car which gave the family new-found mobility.
Picnics to various places became a popular event along with tennis and golf in Tarnagulla. Prior to this, Leon had constructed a six-hole ’golf course’ around the house paddocks, and Leon, Marie and her mother regularly played a round after clearing up the breakfast dishes.

Marie Buys Farm at Nuggetty Flat
By 1933, John Pallot was 75 years of age and must have found the pressure to meet mortgage payments and Department of Lands’ rents very irksome. His wife Drusilla had died on 8th October, 1932 aged 64 and his stepsons had no interest in farming. John decided to sell the farm and Marie agreed to buy it arranging finance through her Bendigo solicitor, Mr. John Herring. This transaction took place on 22nd May, 1933. The purchase included the three blocks held in the name of Albert Pallot and the various leasehold blocks (Allotments 6, 6A, 7 and 14A) on which John had been paying rent for many years and of course the 20 acre home block (AI 4) on which the house and outbuildings were situated. Old John Pallot was delighted with this arrangement and it enabled him to live on at Nuggetty until his death in June, 1935.

Marie Marries
Marie married Murray Shiell in April, 1937 and lived on at Nuggetty where Murray attempted to improve the fencing which by now was more than 50 years old. He ran chickens and a few sheep but unfortunately developed tuberculosis and died in 1944 leaving Marie with two children, Richard (6) and Julie (4).
Marie left the farm in the care of her brother Leon and after working in Melbourne for three years opened a ladies’ and children’s wear shop in Dunolly in the building which is now the Gold Museum.
The title to the property was transferred to Leon in 1957 and he continued to graze sheep on the land and in the forest until he took the pension around 1972. He transferred title of the property to his niece Julie McHarg and her husband Malcolm in 1971. This was later sold to her brother Richard Shiell, a Melbourne surgeon, in 1979 but Leon continued to live on in the house until his death in 1984 at the age of 8 1.
Since that time Nuggetty has been used as a holiday retreat by the Shiell family and is home to a brood of swallows, six pet horses (rarely ridden) and dozens of kangaroos who graze almost to the back door. Uncle Ferd Aulich, a healthy 83, checks hand feeds the horses regularly after first driving the 50 kms from his home in Castlemaine.
This is a unique property surrounded on three sides by State Forest yet serviced by telephone, electricity and a sealed road on the south. It has the charm of seclusion yet is only five minutes from Tarnagulla or Laanecoorie by car. John Pallot would have been pleased to know that a century after he selected the site, some of his relatives are still in possession and enjoying the charms of the bushland he knew so well.