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Medway to the Yarra

Medway to the Yarra was written and published by Colin Martin in 2004. It is a history of the Martin and associated families in Kent and Australia with descriptions of the villages in which they lived from the late sixteenth century to the present day. It has 264 pages and some 130 photographs. The ‘Introduction’ to the book is included below.

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Colin Martin

 

The Martin and associated families history site

William Martin was born in Yalding in the mid-sixteenth century. A common man, his life was uneventful and unrecorded, except for his marriage – to a woman whose name remains unknown – and the birth of a son in 1590. It is from this humble origin that his descendants have been traced to the present day. This book describes a little about them and the world in which they lived.

As more of the Martin history unfolded so too did that of other families related by marriage. The Harris family from Halling was one with close links; others included the Poynter, Thornton, Gransden, White, and Woolmer families.

At the outset little was known about Thomas James Harris. His birthday was uncertain and we knew almost nothing of his wartime exploits, other than his awards of the Victoria Cross and the Military Medal in the First World War. Since then, with help from a number of people, a record of his life, and in particular his war service, has been pieced together. His story is one of incredible heroism and bravery: Chapter 8 is dedicated to his memory.

The history of the Martin’s for nearly four hundred years is inextricably linked with the Medway, a river that meanders its way for 70 miles1 through the heart of Kent from its source in the Ashdown Forest to its mouth in the Thames estuary at Sheerness. In earliest times it provided fresh water for the hamlets and villages that sprung up along its banks. Later, it became a major highway with sailing vessels carrying farm produce and industrial goods down to the estuary and on to England’s capital by way of the Thames. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brick, lime, paper, and cement works were built along its banks providing much-needed employment for many villagers, including those from the Martin and Harris families.

It was the cement industry that provided the catalyst for the migration of one of William’s descendants and his family to Australia. Appropriately, it was another William – the seventh christened with that name – and his family who made the move to Western Australia in 1955. William’s son, Colin, later moved to Victoria to live not far from the river Yarra, another waterway fundamental to the development of a city and its suburbs, and a feature of this story.

The Yarra rises east of Warburton and flows through Melbourne's eastern suburbs to Port Phillip Bay: it was critical to the establishment of Melbourne beside its banks in 1835. The river provided shelter for the first ships and drinking water for the first inhabitants, it was a ready-made sewer, and it gave the early industries the fresh water they needed for their processes. Today, Manna gums with tall white trunks grow in its upper reaches and along with stately river red gums they form a canopy over silver wattles and river bottlebrush. Over the years, the mouth of the river has been completely transformed by realignment, widening and deepening to create a modern port. In very recent times improvement in the water quality has seen the re-emergence of the platypus in the river.

Regions alongside the Yarra and the Medway have been occupied for thousands of years. Stone age tools have been found on the banks of the Medway and the Wurundjeri tribe camped beside the Yarra, and fished its waters, for hundreds of generations before the coming of the white man. Neither group knew of the other. Europeans didn’t set eyes on the Yarra until the early nineteenth century – that was the first the aborigines knew of them and unfortunately, it was to herald the end of their traditional way of life.

Descendants of William Martin progressively moved downstream on the Medway from Yalding to Snodland, to Halling and finally to Cuxton. They were never more than a mile or so from its banks although most of them gave it little thought. It was always there in the background, ever present, ever flowing, a scenic back drop to the green downs – and later the grey factories. Those factories provided employment but it came at a price. Like the Yarra, the lower reaches of the Medway became badly polluted. Deposits of noxious mud covered the once pristine gravel beds, oil slicks coated its surface, and the fish died. Nevertheless, it remained an essential and useful contributor to the lives of people living along its banks. It was not always benevolent: in August 1890, eighty year-old Richard Martin drowned in its muddy waters at Halling.

It was 1964 when the two rivers became linked through the Martin family. It was then that Colin and Margaret Martin set up home in Victoria not far from the Yarra at Lower Templestowe and the “Medway met the Yarra”. The Martin’s had come a long way: William Martin, in the 16th century, couldn’t have possibly imagined his ancestors living on the other side of the world in Australia, then a country waiting to be discovered by Europeans. However, were he to be magically transported from his time in Yalding to the present-day in Templestowe he would be agreeably surprised. The countryside surrounding the Yarra at Templestowe has many of the attractive features common to his native village – and more.

Until recent times a written record of family history was restricted to the rich and famous. Working class families knew little of their origins and usually took little interest – perhaps they thought it wasn’t worth recording or maybe they were too busy surviving in a difficult world. Lack of formal education and limited opportunity to pursue their history would not have helped. At best, oral history was passed from one generation to the next and much of that was lost along the way.

This book has been written in an attempt to rectify that lack of historical record – as best as can be done today. Of little significance in the broad scheme of things it is of some relevance to the descendants of William and those related by marriage. After all, that history, whatever its perceived importance, is an integral part of who we are, and what we are, today.

Introduction