Anna Maria Magdalena Bidstrup nee Zwar
– a detailed life story
6.4.1855– 17.9.1942
The second child and first daughter of Michael and Agnes Zwar
Anna Maria Magdalena Zwar was born at Dry Creek (Thomastown near
Melbourne) on 6th April 1855. Her mother Agnes was staying with
her parents, the Zimmers at Dry Creek near Melbourne. Her father
Michael Zwar was up at Broadford clearing the property he had recently
bought.
(In later life Anna hated the length of her name as it would not
fit on any document she had to sign. Her father Michael had two
sisters named Maria and two named Magdalena in Germany. Three of
them died as children, but one sister Maria grew to adulthood.)
Childhood
Anna was baptized by Pastor Goethe at Dry Creek on 6.5.1855, exactly
a month after she was born. Pastor Goethe, the first permanent Lutheran
pastor in Melbourne, had married Anna’s parents several years
earlier shortly after he began his ministry in Melbourne.
A few weeks later Anna, along with her brother Adolphus and their
mother, moved up to Broadford.
The Sugarloaf is a small mountain near Broadford and presents people
with the challenge to climb it. Anna was apparently carried up the
Sugarloaf when she was only six months old.
Like the rest of her family, Anna walked to school in Broadford.
Anna attended the Church of England school, which had opened in
1857 with Julius Armstrong as teacher. ( from Broadford History
p. 95). Michael Zwar applied to the Government with several others
for finance to start a German school in Broadford, but it was refused
as there were not enough students. (George Carlos)
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Courtship
Anna was kept busy helping her mother and the young brothers and
sisters who continued to arrive. When Anna was ten years old she
had four brothers and two sisters to care for. As the oldest girl
most of her time was taken up with housework. When her youngest
brother Henry was born there were 10 children and Anna was 18 years
old. At this time a Danish carpenter’s son, George Bidstrup,
began courting her.
There is a story passed down about the courtship. One night Anna
went to a dance in Broadford. Afterwards she was to walk home alone
about 2 kilometres up Zwar’s hill. Her father found her in
the company of young George at the Dry Creek Bridge as her father
was returning from an evening at the hotel. This led to a scene
in which father suggested that the two might as well be married.
Anna was delighted with the idea, not only out of her love for George
but also the opportunity to escape from the endless housework at
home.
Marriage to George Bidstrup
On 27th April 1874 Anna and George were the first couple to be married
in the new Broadford Church of England. The new brick Church had
only been dedicated the day before. It replaced an old timber one.
Reverend A. Toomath married them.
George Bidstrup was 24 years old. He had been born in Adelaide
on 19th July 1849 while his father was refitting the barque ‘Calcutta’.
His father Bidstrup had arrived in Adelaide as a carpenter in 1845.
On the voyage out, when some of his shipboard companions suffered
from frost—bite, he had the unenviable task of removing limbs
with his saw.
In Adelaide he married Esther Hounson, a cook from Sussex, and
they lived in Hindley Street. In 1851 they moved to Collingwood
in Melbourne and five years later to Kilmore and finally to Broadford
in 1861. In 1866 when George was 18 years old, his father died,
leaving a widow with 9 children, the youngest only 5 years old.
After their marriage George and Anna lived in the main street in
Broadford where George was a butcher. Their first four children,
Charles, Frances, George and Walter were born there.
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Hawthorn Farm
In July, 1880, Anna’s father, Michael Zwar attended the auction
of Mr. J. Stafford’s farm on the Sugarloaf Creek. It was the
custom of the auctioneer to put on a free keg of beer while people
looked over the property before the auction began. Michael enjoyed
this generous act of hospitality to the full. The next morning when
he could think clearly again he learned that he had successfully
outbid everyone else at the auction and was now the owner of a 110
acre property called ‘Hawthorn Farm’. This was quite a
problem for Michael because he did not really want the property
himself, so he persuaded his son—in—law George Bidstrup
to take it over, confidently assuring George that he could eventually
also buy out the surrounding farms of Gilbert, Wade, Jones, McCulla,
Seymour and both J. and P. Farrell. George agreed.
In 1880 George and Anna and their 3 children moved to ‘Hawthorn
Farm’ where they and their descendants would farm the property
for over 100 years. Over the years they also acquired every farm
Michael Zwar had confidently predicted they would buy except P.
Farrell’s. In 1980 over 70 of the descendants came together
at Broadford to celebrate a centenary of Bidstrup history on the
property, which had now grown to 3500 acres. The celebrations began
with a service of thanksgiving in St. Matthews Church of England,
where George and Anna were the first couple to be married. A time
capsule was buried on the Bidstrup property.
The road running along the front of the property had been the first
‘road’ from Melbourne to Sydney. The carriages had a lot
of trouble ascending and descending the steep and rocky far side
of the Sugarloaf creek. One can still see where some of the rocky
outcrops had been partially cleared, but it was still a dangerous
and difficult steep bank to negotiate.
One of the first country hotels in Victoria stood on the edge of
Bidstrup’s property. It was no longer in use as the main road
from Melbourne to Sydney had moved to avoid the dangerous steep
bank of the Sugarloaf Creek.
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Annadale
When George and Anna Bidstrup moved onto ‘Hawthorn Farm’
in 1880 they renamed it ‘Annadale’, the name by which
it is still known today. On the farm they had poultry, dairy cows,
pigs and sheep. It was mainly a dairy farm. They milked about 25
cows and took the milk a mile down the road to a creamery. They
milked 75 cows at the peak. A diary records they milked 71 cows
in 1905. Their sheep were shorn on a tarpaulin in the paddock -
probably about 150 sheep.
Anna loved fishing. Sometimes she would get through the milking
early so she cou1d spend the evening fishing down in the creek.
She loved growing vegetables. She also did beautiful crochet work
and made a supper cloth for each of her granddaughters.
The last 3 children were all born on the farm. Alfred (1882), Helena
(1885) and Ernest (1886). Anna’s younger sister Emily used
to help out whenever a new Bidstrup baby arrived. Thomas Marchbank
had been courting Emily for a number of years and he put the hard
word on her father Michael that if Emily didn’t stop going
off to look after Bidstrup babies he’d go and look for a wife
somewhere else!
When they first moved to ‘Annadale’ there was an old
house there of two or three rooms - later it became the workshop.
(....from an interview with Ernie Bidstrup.)
A new house was built with an imposing and large curved verandah
at the front.
It is said that the bushranger Dan Morgan slept a night in an old
slab hut behind the Annadale homestead.
The following description of the Annadale home was written in
1981 by Mrs. Frances Williams:
THE STORY OF A FAMILY - ANNADALE BROADFORD
Annadale had a long passage dividing two
bedrooms in the front, followed by two more bedrooms, then the
living room, with Uncle Ernie’s roll—top desk, and on
the other side the large drawing room, opening on to the verandah,
which then encircled the house on the other three sides. A passage
crossed the back with a door leading into the large kitchen, with
its big range and bread oven in the wall. Always there was a cast
iron kettle or urn boiling on the stove.
With an entrance only from outside one came
to a sort of underground room, (this is the only way I can explain
it): and then beyond that two rooms that were out of bounds to
me. I think that any man helper slept there; though maybe when
all the seven children were at home they were used by the family
themselves.
Many a bath Auntie Helene gave me in the
wooden trough in the outside wash—house, and I can still
remember how cold it was after leaving the shallow warm water.
Maybe it was just as well that I think this tribulation only happened
once or twice a week!
Probably it was when Auntie Betty came to
Annadale as a Bride, that the end of the kitchen was cut off to
make a bathroom, and a new kitchen and storage added, - and the
old kitchen became a living room.
Outside, even in Wendy’s toddling days
was the underground well with this pump, always an interesting
thing to the children.
I guess this well might even have been the
cause of Uncle Ernie getting into trouble at school, when on being
told that people couldn’t do two things at once, he answered,
“Please Sir, I can, I can hold the billy and turn the tap!”
The stables, the cowshed, the dairy with
its separator, the chooks and sheds nearby where things were mended
etc. the two big fruit trees in the front and the large mulberry
tree in the back, the shed where in 1910, Mum and Dad had their
wedding reception, the cottage, the shearing shed with its pens
and wool press, and the sheep yards nearby, all find a memory
tucked away in my mind.
The old original home is still there,
but now there is a lovely new gracious Annadale, just further
along the road, past where the old ruined house of the nearest
neighbours, the McCullas, used to live. I can remember playing
there as a child, but now there isn’t a sign of it left.”
Ernest recalled going to 2 different schools. At first he went
to Kur-Kurrac.
“Sister and I rode on a pony through
the back paddocks to near the school. It was walking distance.
Over a mile. Another school was brought from Lowry, and I finished
up in it. [* Note: The Kur Kurrac Rural School was moved
in to Broadford to provide more accommodation for the infant department.
... p. 95 BROADFORD A Regional History.]
Lowry was a mile this side of the
house, and the other a mile the other side. I went to school for
about 9 years. When I left school I worked on the farm. Mostly
dairying. Some sheep. Pigs. My brothers George and Walter went
to Beechworth to the (Zwar) Tannery. Walter came home. Alf, Walter
and I did the work on the farm. Then George and Charlie went to
Preston to work at the Tannery.
After I married my mother lived in
turn with Mrs. McNab and Mrs. Figgins at Kilmore. (My father was
dead).” ... Ernest Bidstrup.
Ernest: “My mother was a fine woman.
She did a lot of crochet work in later years. She worked outdoors
a lot in her younger days. She loved to get the cows milked early
in the evening, and then get down to the creek to catch fish for
breakfast. She liked to visit her neighbours.”
The outside work included stooking hay. She was of a wiry build.
She had a fall in her 80’s and broke her hip and had to have
one shoe built up.
Ernie used to stay at the Zimmers for holidays sometimes.
“We often went to Epping to visit
Annie, Lizzie, Mick, Charlie, Billie and Albert (Zimmer).”
Ernie could also recall visiting the Kaiser family near Melbourne
when he was young.
“Every Sunday Anna wrote in copper-plate
hand-writing to each of her three sons in Queensland. She also
wrote to her sister Ada Crowl, and her own daughter, Fanny McNab,
whilst they were in South Africa. It was a family ritual for everyone
to gather round whilst she read aloud the replies.”
[Alan & Esme Bidstrup]
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Other Pieces of Information:
“My own father Charles Neils Bidstrup
had been to the Boer War and
Mr. Rogale (?) in Melbourne has been in contact with me for any
information as he is writing a History. Fortunately I’d kept
books and papers my mother had treasured and Mr. Rogale says one
book ‘Fantastic’ and not available anywhere in Melbourne.”
Thelma Lockwood. Letter of 16.10.76 George Bidstrup's three sons
settled at Warra, on the Darling Downs” (in Queensland).
[Norm Z. Bowden. Letter of 4.2.1970]
George Bidstrup died in 1920. Anna survived him by another 22 years.
“She left ‘Annadale’
in 1922 after the marriage of her youngest son Ernest. For the
next 20 years she lived between her children. When she broke her
hip a trained nurse, Sister Hayes, was engaged to accompany her
to each home, caring for her personally, even to cooking separate
meals for her.”
[Alan & Esme Bidstrup 2001].
Anna passed away on 17th September 1942 aged 87 years, and was
buried in the Broadford cemetery.
Compiled by
Kevin P Zwar
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