Anne DRYSDALE

DRYSDALE, ANNE (b. Pitteuchar, Fife, Scotland, 26 Aug 1792; d. Coryule, Vic, 11 May 1853). Squatter.

Anne Drysdale came of upper middle class lowland stock, the daughter of Kirkcaldy's town clerk, and obtained farming experience in Scotland before emigrating to Victoria, whence some relatives had already gone. She arrived on the Indus, 15 March 1840 and was helped by Dr Alexander Thomson, a leader of the Geelong and Melbourne Scots Presbyterian communities, at whose house she initially boarded and where she met Caroline Newcomb. With Thomson's assistance the two women secured a 10 000 acre run, Boronggoop, and lived on and ran it together.

Newcomb (b. London, England, 5 Oct 1812; d. Brunswick, Vic, 3 Oct 1874) came from a military family. She emigrated to Hobart in 1833 and transferred to Victoria in June 1837, when she became governess in the Thomson home in Geelong, where she met Anne Drysdale three years later.

Drysdale was a devout Presbyterian; Newcomb a devout Methodist. They conducted joint daily devotions and were conscientious churchwomen. Newcomb, in particular, was a founder of the Drysdale Wesleyan Methodist Church and of the Ladies' Benevolent Association of Geelong. In 1861 she married the local Wesleyan minister, Rev J D Dodgson.

In temperament, the two women complemented each other well: Drysdale the older, socially secure and tolerant; Newcomb the younger, vigorous and assertive. Both were sustained by shared and firm Christian faith, were independent-minded, cultured and energetic in their business affairs. When Newcomb died 21 years after Drysdale, she was buried beside her friend.

ADB 1; C I Benson (ed) A Century of Victorian Methodism (Melbourne, 1935); I Wynd, Balla-wein: A History of the Shire of Bellarine (Drysdale 1988)

MALCOLM D PRENTIS