What's in a Name?

By Phil A'Vard from notes supplied by Roger Cleverden and Wilma Patterson

DOES ANYONE know any members of the Wright or Cockatoo families?’ joked John Shaw (Civil Engineering Manager).  No reply was forthcoming. However member Roger Cleverden, while taking photos of progress at Gembrook, recalled the question when he was approached by a friendly resident, Jim Cuthbert. It turned out that Jim knew of a lady whose ancestors once owned a large block of land in what is now known as Avonsleigh and whose name was given to Wright Road and Wright station, the latter being opened in 1904. In discussion with Jim, Roger learned that the lady Wilma Patterson (nee Wright) and her husband Ray were constantly touring Australia in a campervan conducting interim ministries for the Churches of Christ. and were not easy to contact. Roger took on the challenge to find them.

Photo:  Member John Schurmann found this photo in his Grandmother's effects.  Most of the men shown were her brothers who travelled from Doncaster to Wright around 1919 - Richard Schurmann Collection/PBPS Archives

It is a small world indeed, for he rang a friend who was a Churches of Christ Minister to find that the Pattersons were known to him personally as they had spent quite some time in ministries around the Mornington Peninsula. This friend led Roger to Wilma and Ray’s daughter- in-law and then on to Wilma herself -  in a caravan on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland! Amazingly, it turns out that Wilma and Ray Patterson are friends of Norm Wadeson, Board member of the E.T.R.B.

At Roger’s request, Mrs Patterson has supplied a little information about her grandparents, John Walter and Anna Mary Wright (nee Meyer).  John and Anna Wright owned and operated Avonsleigh, a guest house located near the corner of today’s Wright Road and the Belgrave - Gembrook Road, in a district which was then known as East Emerald. The house still stands although its role has changed and its name has become associated more with that of the district.

Prior to settling in East Emerald. John delivered goods to the Romsey and Tullamarine districts to the north of Melbourne while Anna Mary managed a grocery business in North Melbourne. Many of John’s relatives can still be found in these areas today.

Photo: A studio portrait of Walter and Anna Wright. On the back of the original is the wording: ‘To our Dear Son. Walter F. Wright. From his loving Father and Mother. 1915.’ Courtesy Wilma Patterson

Anna Wright had an association with the hills community some time before her marriage. Her father. Wilhelm Meyer, was a timber cutter in the Berwick area before moving with his family to East Emerald. She was apparently a very strong willed woman and her granddaughter, Wilma Patterson, found her quite formidable as a child.

Wilma tells that Anna once travelled by Cobb & Co. coach on her own to Gaffneys Creek to bring back five nephews and nieces when their mother died. Their father was a miner in that port of Gippsland. She reared two of these children with her own brood before she and Walter took up residence in East Emerald.

Wilma recalls seeing her add a column of pounds. shillings and pence figures simply by running her finger down the column then writing the total at the bottom — no computation tables or adding machines.

Stalwarts of the Church of Christ. John and Anna Wright moved from East Emerald to Belgrave after their Avonsleigh years and subsequently to Balwyn so they could be near their children.

Photo: The old Wright station building prior to demolition in 1961. - JOHN THOMPSON

Anna Mary died in 1940, her husband Walter was killed about 1930 by a motor car after alighting from a tram in Whitehorse Road, Balwyn probably unaware that his name would remain on a little station on the Puffing Billy railway.

Our thanks must go to Roger Cleverden for locating Mrs Wilma Patterson, and to her for bringing to light this interesting background to part of our heritage.