THE COATE FAMILY IN AUSTRALIA –
from a personal perspective
Nowadays, in 2005, there are Coates in many states and phonebooks – where a lot of them have come from I am discovering through the work of a relative, Nigel Boundy, in WA, and through my newly discovered cousin, Tish Briggs of Melbourne.
Nigel’s research has us going back to John Coate (1738-1820) m. to Betty Sherrad (1747-1805).
They had four sons Thomas, William, John and James, and daughter Elizabeth - born at Mulchelney near Martock near Yeovil in Somerset. Thomas, the forebear of my side of the family, married Mary Coggan, whose son Vincent fathered our Australian founder George Coggan. Brother William, or his son William, appears to have married a Nancy Coggan, who, it now appears, was a niece of Mary’s. William appears to have moved approximately 34km, from Mulchelney in Somerset to Hammoon in Dorset, and produced our other Australian branch, just "found", from Talbot Coate 1897-1978, whose daughter Patricia (Tish) Briggs and husband Bill I have recently (October 2005) met. They have a detailed family tree also, which allowed us to trace what we think is a direct connection back
to John Coate and Betty Sherrad. So although the following details relate to George Coggan’s side, there is a whole new chapter still to come from Talbot’s side.
As a young lad myself, in the 1940s and 50s, only direct descendants of George Coggan Coate were thought by my parents and grandparents to be in Australia. Although George Coggan had 8 sons who lived to maturity, only three, to my knowledge - when I was young - had sons. David, Edward (Ned) and Joseph, my grandfather. Their sons were James and Ernest (Coate’s Motors, Bairnsdale Ford Dealers); Edward (Ted), chief electronics engineer for Phillips, Holland, and my father, Joseph Robert (Joe), Storekeeper and Guest House proprietor, Lakes Entrance. Of these three third-generation males, only my father had a son, the others of his generation having girls -- Kaye (Heath), Angela (Carlisle), Jennifer (Butler), Sue (Dahlsen) and Janet (Fyander). So I was told from an early age that I was the last male Coate to carry on the name in Australia. What a burden for a young bloke, and an incentive to produce children! Now, others have arrived on the scene, thanks to the work of cousin Nigel Boundy in WA. I discovered that my Uncle Jack (John Ernest) had a son John Clive who had a fourth-generation son like myself – John Alexander, who, in turn, had two sons Ronald John and Ian Thomas, plus two daughters Jeanette and Christine . Fifth-generation Ronald now has a sixth-generation son Aaron and two daughters. His brother Ian has a sixth-generation son Brett and two daughters. Also, Henry (Uncle Harry, Nigel Boundy’s grandfather) had third-generation son Harry, whose fourth-generation son David has a fifth-generation son Nick and two daughters.
When I lived in England during 1956-58 , I attempted some research and found only two branches of the family – one in and around Bristol, Somerset, and another rumored to be on the Isle of Wight - not visited. The Somerset lot were successful makers of cider – “Coate’s Cider”, a nationally recognised brand name and a direct competitor to "Babycham". They had a radio advertising jingle – (deep West Country accent) "Coate’s comes up from Somerset, where the cider apples grow, O!" Their patriarch, Redvers Coate, was not at all keen to acknowledge an Australian branch of the family. Teddy Coate some years earlier had the same experience. Perhaps he had suspicions my order was to get a foot in the door of the company? There are two villages called "Coate", one in Somerset, the other in Wiltshire, and a Coate Lake attaches to one of them (near Swindon). Nowadays they call it Coate Water and hold festivals there.
George Coggan Coate was born in 1838, in the village of Mulchelney, near Martock, near Yeovil, Somerset, the son of a butcher, Vincent Coate and Ann Dyer. In Ballarat, on April 20 1864 he married Mary Hannan, born Limerick, Ireland in 1842 (parents John Hannan, farmer, and Louisa Ormond).They were aged 25 and 22 respectively and settled down to produce another 12 children after John Ernest was born in 1862, out of wedlock. Not uncommon in those days apparently.
I have not been able to trace the ships on which either GC or MH arrived in Australia, although we think that George Coggan arrived in 1856 . When they married in Christ Church Ballarat, GC gave his
occupation as labourer, MH as dressmaker. Their children were (birth years are approximate): George, 1864; Annie, 1866; James, 1867; Louisa, 1869; Joseph Robert, my grandfather, 1872; then followed Alfred, 1875 (deceased 1890 at age 15); and David, 1877, who, with Rubeena (Petersen) had two boys, James and Ernest, who became the Ford dealers in Bairnsdale. Next, came Edward (Ned)1878, who married
Charlotte Fordham and had children, Edward (Teddie), who married Mabel Wright, daughter Janet (Fyander), and Mary, who married Joseph Henry, a grazier near Colac, and had one son, Joe. Mary, 1881, who does not appear to have married, next came Henry (Harry) 1882, who married Kitty Fletcher and produced Dorothy (Nigel Boundy’s mother), Harry Charles, Jennifer and David Coate’s father, and
Thomas Robert, Amanda Coate’s father. Eveline (Linie), 1883, was next and youngest, marrying Alex Young, with two sons Alexander and David . By this stage, Mary Hannan was 41 years old and had borne 13 children. George Coggan had obviously not stayed away from home for long periods! Somewhere there was also a Vincent, deceased at 5 months. I now know that young Vincent was the first child (b.1890, d.1891) of John Ernest and Ada Phillipa Hunter; their later children being Irene, Edith, and John Clive (Charles) – the most fecund line for sons, now having sixth-generation boys, Aaron and Brett.
George Coggan, our great grandfather, died 13 September 1922, aged 84. Mary, his wife, died on 11 February 1907, aged 64. Alfred, who died 15 August 1890, aged 15, and Vincent, who died 5 January 1891, aged 5 months, are buried in the same grave, together with George Coggan and Mary Hannan in the St Kilda General Cemetery. The grave is in the "Other Denominations" section (actually a section reserved for The Society of Friends). Was GC or MC a Quaker? I don’t think so. More he was likely a Mason. It is number 194, in F section, and I am sorry to say was unmarked, next to the marked grave of one, Alfred Johnson number 192. These details were discovered by my son, Richard, in 2000 when he moved to live near the cemetery, and, knowing that GC was buried there somewhere, tracked the grave down. Finally, in October 2005, I was able to arrange for a bronze plaque to mark the grave, and am pleased to say that my immediate family and Nigel contributed to the cost. A family gathering was held
on 8 January, 2006 to celebrate our heritage and visit the grave. Fifty family members attended.
George Coggan became a carpenter, then a contractor, mainly to the State Government, and
the boys obviously worked for the old man. They lived for some time at San Remo, Phillip
Island where my grandfather JR was born. There is a story that when GC was away chasing work, Mary and the boys had to trap rabbits and catch fish to survive, there being no money coming in. Be that as it may, later they lived in Allansford near Warrnambool, where GC was a successful businessman and ran racehorses in the Warrnambool Cup. He and the family built the original long steamer wharf there and the town concrete water storage tanks up on the hill (still there and in use today). The firm of Coate Brothers built the Point Lonsdale Lighthouse in 1902, a major item of public works, a fine example of concrete construction and a thing of beauty right up to the present time. I attended, with some relatives, the centenary of its construction in 2002 . At the time, David Lawrence’s wife Val was
Mayor of Queenscliffe, so we had ringside seats, so to speak . By the way, David – Colonel David – is
Chairman of the Fort Queenscliffe Museum. The family must have been highly skilled in the use of concrete in those days. Coate Brothers also built the brick fence around the Kew cemetery, which students of architecture are still shown today; the Goulbourn River bridge and causeway at Shepparton; the Newmarket Saleyards; the Jolimont Railway Workshops, the lifting bridge (wooden) at Swan Reach (which was soon eaten out by the teredo worm), and, no doubt, other government works. Another later firm also known as Coate Bros. was formed by indenture (I have the original) on 6 July 1904 between Joseph Robert, my grandfather, George Vincent, and James, in order to take up the contract for the consolidation into permanence of the entrance at Lakes Entrance. And that is where my grandparents enter the picture.
Joseph Robert and wife Isabella (nee Gray) from Stawell, and James, came to Lakes in 1905 to take up the contract for the Entrance, and my father JR Junior was born there shortly after on 5 July
1905. I presume that David and Rubeena arrived later to help with the establishment of the
tourist launches at Lake Tyers, another initiative of JR's. The firm established a granite quarry – now pretty well overgrown -- on the Mississippi Creek, some miles up from the end of the North Arm. This is still accessible today by road -- Quarry Rd, off the gravel road and Bruce’s Rd, which is an extension of Metung Road at the intersection with the highway at Kalimna West.
In 1961 and 1962, I was Sea Scout Master at Lakes and I took the boys for weekend camps to the quarry where we mapped the area, swung on ropes, built rope bridges and had fun in the creek. In the early '50s, there was still a couple of rail trucks and an engine boiler there – all gone now. The rails and most other iron was all pulled up for scrap during World War II. At some time in the recent past, there has been a walking track established from the head of the North Arm to the quarry, but looks very mullocky and overgrown now. However, the quarry is an interesting relic of our past. Now, in January 2006, I understand that clearing and improvements have been done, including a plaque. From the quarry, the huge boulders were loaded by steam crane onto railway trucks for the trip to the North Arm; loaded onto a barge or barges and towed by steam launch down to the "New Works" (the Coate Bros. Works -- now called Flagstaff) at the edge of the channel at the entrance to Cunninghame Arm. Here the boulders were again handled by steam crane onto railway trucks and so brought to the required position for placement against the bank. Each huge rock was directed into place by a diver, Uncle Jim, in full suit with brass helmet, double hand-pump for air onshore etc. My father had the old diving suit and pump, hoses etc. in a shed for many years – I remember playing with the stuff! I don’t know precisely when these works were completed – they probably went on for 15 years or so. The amount of cement poured into the eastern and western piers was apparently something of a record in its day and mentioned in concreting textbooks. Sometime before the Entrance works began, the firm also built the original timber bridge over the Tambo at Swan Reach. This was a lifting bridge to allow the passage of steamers as far as Mossiface. The teredo worms eventually destroyed this bridge and it was replaced with the present concrete structure. But the best effort was the construction of the concrete
highway bridge over the North Arm at Lakes Entrance -- only in 2001 was it replaced by a larger one
with greater height for boats to pass. The Coate Bros.' Bridge was the first prefabricated and assembled on site concrete structure of its day (perhaps either in Victoria or in Australia!). They built it in sections at the "New Works", shipped them across using the quarry barges and
assembled it using the steam cranes. Heaven knows the amount of traffic that bridge carried over the years but it was still sound when finally destroyed, partly by explosives.
JR started the tourist promotion of Lake Tyers, then a popular picnic and bathing place, using a horse-drawn dray for transport and later used a Hudson car to take tourists to the Buchan Caves. He was also instrumental in the development of a tourist promotion committee for Cunninghame (Lakes Entrance), as well as Lake Tyers, where Uncle Dave had the passenger launch, "Rubeena". Incidentally, the present boat at Lake Tyers named "Rubina" is not the original. She is the old "Bellbird" from Peel’s Lakes Entrance fleet of "Bird" boats. David – always Uncle Dave to me – and Aunty Ruby lived on the Esplanade in a weatherboard house (they were all weatherboard then) not far from the Club Hotel. A little further away was a Motor Garage – petrol, mechanical, welding, etc, which their sons, Jim and Ern, eventually took over with a sub-agency of the Bairnsdale Ford dealership. Of course, this eventually led to the acquisition of the Bairnsdale business, Coate’s Motors.
Marriages brought the arrival of two girls each to Jim and Jon, (Kaye and Angela), and to Ern and Diana (Jenny and Sue). In the Lakes Entrance days, so my father tells, Jim and Ern had a Bugatti sports car, Joe, my father, had an Indian motorbike with sidecar (my aunt Con says it was a Harley Davidson, but there was an Indian agent in Bairnsdale then) , and as both Joe and Jim played in a local dance band, they must have been in much demand by the ladies when still bachelors! They traveled from Orbost to Omeo and all points in between at weekends - playing at dances and balls – Joe was a saxaphone and clarinet man, and a photo of the assembled throng at Orbost shows Jim also with saxaphone. Alas, I never took to music except for a brief go at drums, and one minor gig with the
Oxford Uni Jazz band. Nor did I have a Bugatti or a motorbike just a Lambretta!
My father, having met my mother during her holiday at Lakes, courted her in Bega, NSW, traveling on Sundays on the motorbike there and back, roads largely gravel, and he was obviously successful. Just as an aside, it is of some interest that I was born in Bairnsdale at 2.5 lbs weight (1140 grams),
put in a shoe box in cottonwool, described as a "skun rabbit", and lived to tell the tale. No modern hospital or humicribs then - something of a minor miracle! The Lakes Garage, where Jim and Ern started out, became Kent’s Motors and later Kent Engineering, when at the site of the WW2 Oil Bore in Lakes Entrance, off Coate’s Road. Dave and Ruby moved to Bairnsdale and lived in (I think) what is now "Riversleigh" country house. Ern Coate was a Beaufighter pilot during WW2, serving in the Middle East and later the Pacific. He was asked to join the famous Pathfinder squadron in England – which flew very fast Mosquito planes (made largely from wooden components) and was sent to England for trials. They put up two Mosquitoes as a demonstration to impress Ern. During their aerobatic display, the wing broke off one, so Ern therefore stayed with Beaufighters, earning the DFC, shooting down a six-engined Dornier flying boat in the Mediterranean and, later, a Bar to the DFC.
Oil was first discovered by JR Senior on his farm at Bunga Creek . There was an exploratory oil bore put down but nothing commercial found. The resultant bubbling, oily spring of warm water was a favourite play and splash spot for me whenever visiting the farm. There is today a commemorative sign on the site. The original farm house and part of the barn are still there - on the left as you go
down the hill on the Old Bunga Rd to the Bunga Creek (coming from Lakes). The turnoff is at the intersection with the Lake Bunga Rd. and the highway – instead of turning right to Lake Bunga, go straight ahead on the gravel road. Down at the creek crossing is the head of Lake Bunga’s waters and here I had my first shot - grandfather took me there as an offsider while he tried for ducks – no luck, so it was decided to initiate me into 12-gauge shotguns – I still have his old Greener hammer gun, the very one that bruised my shoulder and nearly deafened me. I guess I was about 6 years old, in 1940.
The farm supplied fresh milk, cream, butter, eggs, chickens and pork for JR’s Guest House in Lakes – Victoria House – (now a motel, the "Esplanade" ), what a businessman was Joe Coate! I remember
going with JR out to the farm in the Mercedes Benz truck. The Merc was originally a sedan – JR took the body off and converted it into a tray truck for farm use , we used to coast in neutral gear coming back to Lakes Entrance down Meringabaur Hill to see how far she would go before stopping. It was great fun for a 6 or 7-year-old boy. John and David Lawrence and I used to play in the sedan body of the car, under a massive pine tree at the old house "Kirkenong" on the Esplanade. There is now a Caltex service station on the site. JR also had an interest in a mine out near Buchan, I think it was some mineral used during WW1 for making steel but was quickly superseded; also an interest in the Sugar Beet Mill at Maffra, and, for a time, of all things a roller-skating rink at Lakes Entrance.
Nowadays, the word is entrepreneur!
James – Uncle Jim –who never married, apparently had at least one sweetheart, Myrtle, after whom we – Jim and I aged 9 – named my first boat. He was a great friend of George Washington (Washie) who had the Golden Age Hotel in Omeo, and legend has it that the two of them were wild lads in their young days, toting six-shooters (revolvers) around the town. It was not uncommon for people around the goldfields to carry revolvers or pistols around the turn of the century. I remember my father handing in his .32 calibre pistol to the police at the start of WW2 (only to be issued with another one two years later as an officer in the RAAF.) Unc. as he was known to all in his later years , lived
with my mother Zillah (nee Caldwell) and I while Dad was away at the war, and he taught me a lot of little things that boys need to know. Like how to use a hammer (I drove a hundred tacks into the wooden stepladder), how to persevere with a fiddly knot or bit of wood to be shaped until you get it right, how to sail my little dinghy "Myrtle", and how to behave when taken to the Club Hotel
for a whisky. At six or seven years of age Unc. would take me to the pub for his afternoon session - always a whisky drinker, like my father and grandfather – and sit me up on the bar for a "red whisky", served by Aunty Lil (Lil Doolan, not a relation), in reality a raspberry cordial. I felt like one of the boys.
Joseph Robert Senior married Isabella Gray, daughter of Edward Gray (born Aberdeenshire Scotland) and Susan Binks (born Launceston Tasmania). The Gray family were stonemasons in Stawell and Isabella’s parents’ grave is in the cemetery there, suitably carved. On a bushwalking trip to the Grampians some years ago I was driving past one of those signs "Historic Monument" ahead. On following the directions into a paddock to a clump of trees, there before me was a stone cairn about three metres tall, with a marble plaque declaring "Peace Memorial – Erected 19 July 1919 on the site of Treasury, Commercial St, Pleasant Creek, population in 1856 about 56,000". Oh, I thought, interesting. Then I walked around the cairn and noticed several names and initials scratched in the jointing cement – blasted vandals I
thought -- ha, ha, until I saw the name "J.R.Coate". This would undoubtedly have been my father,
aged 14. Probably the marble plaque had been carved by his mother’s father Edward, a stonemason, and the cairn had been erected by a working-bee-cum-picnic-day at which my father was present, along with other children. Vandals all. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. JR and Isabella had four children -- Isabella who married Jack Lawrence (John and David Lawrence’s parents); Violet who married Raymond Symmons (Rodney Symmon’s parents); Joseph Robert Jnr. (my father) who married Mary Elizabeth Zillah Caldwell; and Constance Anne who married James Wilson (Joanne Earl’s parents). JR Jnr. and Ray were in business as Coate and Symmons, "The Big Store" at Lakes , groceries, bakery, hardware, clothing, millinery and drapery – a sort of general store in the true sense of the
word. Isabella and Jack lived in Melbourne, the Lawrence family having hotel interests, but after Jack’s premature death came back to Lakes to live at "Kirkenong" . Vi was a successful Big Game fisher and she and Ray had a commercial boat in the 1930s. Zane Gray was one of their clients. Con's husband Jim was a naval officer in WW2, and later introduced the Totalisator to racetracks, when CEO of Olivetti in Australia. Jim went on to head up the Carnation company for many years. I never knew
much about other members of my father's or grandfather's generations and failed to get details of the rest of the family while the appropriate people were still alive -- so often this is the story from generation to generation.
There is a Coate Avenue and a Coate Park in Fairfield, Melbourne. The park goes down to the Yarra and is a legacy of John Ernest Coate (Jack) who lived there and owned a slab of land, part of which is now
occupied by the Amcor Laboratories. Jack was mayor of Heidelberg and a Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Board of Works. JR Snr. was also a Commissioner and was present at the opening of the Maroondah dam, so says the commemorative plaque. As for myself, I married Audrey Anne Killeen (the
Irish again!) in 1960 - 45 years ago . Audrey's father Patrick Joseph Killeen was born in Offaly, King’s County, Ireland, one of the "white" Killeens so named for their tendency to white hair in old age , and her mother Hilda Monks was from London. We have two children – Richard, married to Lisa
(Tassicker) and grandson Mitchell Tassiker Coate (2.5 years) and granddaughter Charlotte Ella Coate (one year) -- the delight of their grandparents. Our daughter Robyn (Petch), now lives in Canberra with husband Gavin and our other two lovely grand daughters Ellen (22) and Chloe (19), after various Army postings for Gavin – Townsville, UK, Darwin, etc. Nowadays Gavin is in civvy street and they both hold responsible jobs - Gavin at Raytheon, and Robyn at ANU. Rick our son, after the demise of
Ansett where he was flight crew, got into golf club management, loves it, and is now General Manager of Long Island Country Club at Frankston. Nowadays Audrey and I live in our little piece of
paradise at Paynesville on the Gippsland Lakes, where we have in a sense "come home" to our Coate territory after 37 years living in the Melbourne suburbs. When we were first married in 1960 we lived at Lakes Entrance. Robyn was born in Bairnsdale and spent her first 18 months at Victoria
House. We moved to Melbourne in 1963 for career opportunities and, well, here we are again!
Robert Joseph Coate (Bob)
(1934 - 2009)