Corinella

Trading Name	Not known
Years of Operation	1827 1828
Company Number	No number
Address	Brick Kiln Road Corinella
Council Lot No.	11a
Coordinates	-38.411480 145.446552
Current Use	Primary production

What better way to start this blog than with the first brick makers in Victoria.  In December 1826, a party of settlers from Sydney arrived at Corinella in Westernport Bay.  They bought with them, around 10,000 bricks used as ballast in the ships.  As the settlement grew, in early 1827, they set up a clamp to make more bricks.  It is believed that around 30,000 more were made at the site.  These were reported as being better made than the Sydney bricks.  The Governor required each settlement to set up their own brick works.

Given that each cubic yard of clay makes about 200 to 250 bricks, then the brick pit would not be large.  The settlement was located at the end of Jamieson Street Corinella and a small pit is still visible in the paddock further east at the end of Brick Kiln Road.  I suspect that name may be a clue.  A large percentage of the bricks were “recycled”shortly afterwards by the Anderson brothers who built their home on the Bass River from these bricks, as well as a salt works and a flour-mill.

One of the convicts was Charles Rote, a Brick Maker.  Some of the  other convicts in the original settlement were Charles Baker, a mason and bricklayer from Bristol;  John Clark, another convict was a Bricklayers Boy; James Boland, Stonecutter;  Thomas Softly, Bricklayer and Benjamin Pearce, Bricklayer and Plasterer.

In late November 1834 Captain John Hart, Master of the whaling ship “Elizabeth” with a party of whalers from Portland to Western Port to gather wattle bark used in Tanneries during a lull in whaling. Captain Hart had traveled the coast previously in 1831.  Hart had been singing the praises of the area.  This led to John Batman settling Melbourne in 1835.  (Batman had earlier tried to obtain land at Westernport without success.)  In early December Hart landed at Red Point near the 1826 settlement with 20 Bark Strippers, a team of bullocks and a dray.  He later settled on French Island.

A "Hart" Brick Mounted in a Monument at Corinella

A John Hart later tried to establish a salt works there and as part of this process, he made bricks.  They were hand made and were impressed with a single heart motif.  People often mistake these “Hart” bricks for the original convict bricks produced in 1827.  This is not the case.  Most convict bricks were scavenged and pilfered years ago but many “Hart” bricks are in Corinella.  A house, (the Palmer Homestead) made from them burned down as late as 1999.  It was probably John Junior as the bricks were first made in 1872.  John moved to Melbourne and went into partnership with George Preston, then out on his own for a couple of years in the mid 1870s.

A single heart has been used by a number of brick makers in early settlements, usually by convict makers.  Soon after the settlement was abandoned, later arrivals pillaged the site and little now remains.  Anything around these days is likely to be one of the "Hart" bricks.

Brick Kiln Road at Corinella with the remains of the clay pit at the top of the picture.