A remarkable journey through time
Alone but not apprehensive, and aged just 16, Charles Newman left his home in Blackford, Somersetshire, and boarded the barque Katherine Stewart Forbes, under the command of Captain Alfred Fell, at Gravesend on July 27, 1837. Three months later he disembarked at Kangaroo Island, where with the help of two other shepherds, three assistants, and their overseer he was employed by the South Australian Company to look after sheep. In his memoirs published in 1888, Newman described the situation as "rather ludicrous" given the fact there were only three sheep on the entire island.
Just five days later the Company shipped young Newman to Holdfast Bay, and in Adelaide he worked with one of only two butchers in the colony, and at the first-ever brick kiln near the current site of Morphett Street Bridge. After being employed as a night watchman of sheep at Coromandel Valley in 1839, Newman was entrusted with one of the Company's flocks at Mount Charles, which was named after him. They were days of discovery filled with promise, but he also recalled the terror and fear of confronting bushrangers, including a murderous villain named Goften, and a horse-thieving scoundrel named Green, who had the audacity to raid Newman's hut and steal, among other things, his tea. Later, Newman recovered his precious tea, but refused to drink it upon his grizzly discovery that Green had hidden it in his mother's stockings. The early days had their moments of despair, too.
Newman became a highly successful wheat farmer, allowing him to purchase his first section of land on June, 30, 1843, in the Onkaparinga District, and built his homestead, Blackford, named after his Somersetshire heritage. The area became known as Charles Town (now Charleston), said to be named in honour of Newman. A few years later he married a daughter of a close neighbour, Mary Dunn.
Newman was a District Councillor of note, was described as a "respected and conscientious magistrate that ever graced the bench" and was renowned for his fluent German. In 1850 he became one of the first trustees of the Charleston Methodist Church, so it was hardly surprising that he was not known to partake in fine wines and cleansing ales. One of his numerous poems was:
A Warning to the Drunkard
If to the ale house you have been
And spent your money there
No longer at that place be seen
Nor drink that lager beer.
No longer sing the drunkard's song
'Mid pewter pots and glasses
For all that do we know are wrong
They prove themselves but asses.
No longer round such places roam
To pass a drunkard's night
For money's best that's spent at home
To keep the cupboard right.
I am no advocate of drink
That makes a man a sot
Or cause a woman's heart to sink
That shares a drunkard's lot.
Charles Newman was born on March 9, 1821, and died on September 7, 1900. His great, great grand-daughter, Jennifer Porter (nee Newman), and her family currently resides in the Blackford homestead, while the original Blackford Stable is a prominent feature on the site of Genesis Vineyard, the embryonic home of Blackford Stable fine wines. It has been said that, on the chill of a winter's dusk, whispers of Newman's "A Warning to the Drunkard" may be heard amidst the rustling of the grapevine leaves.