page_title: McCrae Homestead
section_title: McCrae family
hierarchical_section_title: McCrae Homestead / McCrae family
caption_attribution_description: English: "Georgiana's Journal (1841-1865)" — by Georgiana McCrae; edited by Hugh McCrae, published in 1934. About the McCrae Homestead and regional Melbourne history, from 1841 to 1865.
context_page_description: McCrae Homestead is an historic property located in McCrae, Victoria, Australia. It was built at the foot of Arthurs Seat, a small mountain, near the shores of Port Phillip in 1844 by Andrew McCrae, a lawyer, and his wife Georgiana Huntly McCrae, a portrait artist of note. The homestead is under the care of the National Trust of Australia, and is open to the public. Volunteers who are knowledgeable about the history of the house conduct tours and answer questions.
  One of Victoria's oldest homesteads, it illustrates how early pioneers used whatever they found locally to build houses and farms using primitive construction techniques. The walls of the house are made of horizontal drop slab cut from local timbers including stringybark from the top of the mountain. Tuck, who was employed by the McCraes and assisted by the older boys of the family, used wattle and daub, bark, messmate shingles and sods as well as slabs and squared logs.
  Georgiana designed the house and each detail such as the Count Rumford fireplace. The three thousand bricks necessary to build it were sent down the Bay from Williamstown to Arthurs Seat on the Jemima, a small sailing boat.
context_section_description: The McCraes were early settlers to the new colony of Victoria, Australia. Andrew arrived from England in 1839, and Georgiana also emigrated to Australia following her husband in 1841 with their four young sons.
  As did Georgiana, her eldest son, George Gordon McCrae (1833–1927) recorded many of his experiences at Arthur's Seat both in diary form and as sketches and paintings. They were one of the first families to settle on the Mornington Peninsula and they built their new home near the future location of McCrae Lighthouse, overlooking Port Phillip. The McCraes also knew Arthur's Seat as Wango, the name given this large granite outcrop, by the Bunurong.
  In 1934, one of Georgiana's grandsons, the poet Hugh McCrae, published her journals, under the title "Georgiana's Journal." The journal chronicled her pre– departure from England in 1838 on the Argyle in 1840 to the year 1865, including the years at Arthur's Seat from 1844 to 1851. Letters included in the diary that she received from Arthur's Seat from her children, George Gordon, Willie, Sandy, and Perry who were sent on ahead of their parents from Melbourne, with their tutor John McClure, express their excitement as they helped build huts, fished from the beach below the homestead and explored what was then a pristine environment teeming with bush creatures. They also befriended the Bunurong, the indigenous people of the Port Phillip area who taught them their language and songs. The four boys learned how to fish with wooden spears. In 1847, George wrote a detailed description of a Corroboree. John McClure was born on the Isle of Skye and had received an education in the classics and therefore the McCrae's sons received a fine education in conjunction with living a pioneer lifestyle. The Schoolhouse, one of the original huts on the property, was nicknamed "The University of Arthur's Seat", also referred to later by this same title by the Burrell family children. In the 1920s John Twycross made a pictorial photograph of the hut which at this stage was leaning somewhat.
  A watercolour painting was done in the late 1850s by Edward La Trobe Bateman entitled "Mr McClure's Hut."
  On 19 July 1846 Georgiana wrote one of many entries in her diary , this describing the homestead.
caption: "Georgiana's Journal, Melbourne 1841-1865" was published in the form of a book by Hugh McCrae in 1934.
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