Establishment of Westgarthtown

In March 1850, William Westgarth and Captain John Stanley Carr, an Irishman of 25 years residence in Germany, purchased Section 25, Parish of Keelbundora, 16 kilometres north of Melbourne. The 640 acre section, which now forms part of the suburbs of Thomastown and Lalor, cost £1 per acre.

The names of those Germans and Wends who purchased land from Westgarth and Carr are included in Table 1, along with their dates of naturalisation and formal land purchase, price paid and acreage received.

Ten acres were reserved for a church, cemetery and school. Figure 1 shows the central location of this reserve, along with the landholdings of the settlers. In the sale of lots, each settler received a creek frontage, to ensure availability of water. As the creek was not always reliable – it soon became known as the Dry Creek – legal access to a spring in the north of the section was provided.

As well as those Germans and Wends who settled at Westgarthtown, others who arrived from 1849-51 settled at Germantown (Grovedale) near Geelong, at Hawthorn, Richmond, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, Mill Park and Greensborough, or dispersed about the Port Phillip District among the Anglo-Celtic population. In 1853, German settlements were also established at Doncaster, Harkaway and in the Western District near Hamilton.