My great-grandfather, James Elijah Crook, was born in London in 1819. He arrived in Tasmania with his parents in 1832. His mother died in 1888, aged 90 years.
In 1841 the family came to Melbourne. Accompanied by one of his brothers (William), Elijah took a small herd of cattle to the Murray, the purpose being to take over an abandoned property that had been unoccupied for more than a year, but they were not successful as pressure was used to give the land to a public man who had some political influence. He then leased a place in the Bacchus Marsh area. Later he built the Woolpack Inn, a slab structure of 8 rooms, stables, etc. This Inn became the meeting place for several of the hunt clubs in the district. Among the leaders was one Thomas Pike, who had imported a pack of hounds for his own use. They hunted emu, kangaroo and dingo for their sport. The original Inn gave way to a larger brick and stone structure, and many were the hectic revelries held under its roof in the Ballarat gold-rush days.
Elijah was an impressive figure - 6'2" tall, 24 stone in weight and his strength was demonstrated on one occasion while travelling to Melbourne by Cobb & Co. coach, which was 'bailed up' by two masked highwaymen. Unaided, Elijah quickly knocked out the two men and delivered them to the law. One of his interests was distilling his own spirits and making wine.
1849 saw his purchase of Manor House at Bacchus Marsh after the death of Capt. Bacchus, who had built it in 1838. Adjoining the house was a brick building said to have been used to lock up prisoners overnight on their way to gaol in Melbourne.
In 1856 Elijah married Miss Atherne, a Tasmanian-born girl of English farming stock. They had four sons, three daughters, and 14 grandchildren, one being my grandfather.
The Manor House remained in the Crooke family for many years, and on the death of Elijah it was leased for a period. Later, one of my grand-uncles lived there until his death in the late 30's.
by John Hetherington The Age, Saturday, August 17, 1963
Some say the Manor House went up in 1838, others in 1845, but the point is never likely to be settled now, unless unsuspected evidence is unearthed; at any rate the house is not less than 118 years old, and today it looks sturdy, strong, even indestructible.
Tis air of indestructability is misleading. Three years ago the old place was derelict. It had then stood untenanted for four years, and wore an expression of desolation and misery. White ants were destroying the woodwork, including some of the floors. Vandals had smashed nearly every window for the sheer fun of it.
One of the few unshattered panes of glass in the house was in a pair of French doors on the ground floor. It is miraculous that this pane should have escaped, for the inscription 'James E. Crook, 1857" is scratched into it.
This has been identified as the signature of James Elijah Crook, sometime landlord of Bacchus March's famous Woolpack Inn, who bought the Manor house after Bacchus's death in 1849, and whose family owned it until 1947. His granddaughter, Mrs. Theo Crisp, and a great-grandson, Mr. McCausland Crisp, still live in Bacchus Marsh.
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The new owner, James Elijah Crook, was by all accounts a man of strong personality, and the Manor House continued to be the social centre of the valley. In Crook's day also it was often visited by a young man who was to make a name as a bushranger; this was the self-styled Captain Moonlight (or Monnlite), an adventurer named Andrew George Scott. Scott, whose father was an Anglican priest stationed in Ireland, seems to have had some difficulty deciding whether to make a career of the church or of crime. In the end crime won.
After serving as an army officer in the Maori War, he was dishonorably discharged in Melbourne and found his way to Bacchus Marsh in the late 1860's. He was then in the middle 30's, and, as a step toward qualifying for ordination as a priest, he became a lay reader in the Anglican church at Bacchus Marsh and also in the churches of nearby Melton and Myrniong.
James Elijah Crook must have liked Scott. At any rate, he engaged him to tutor the Crook boys; in fact, Scott must have had a disarming personality, for he was well regarded by most people who met him.
He moved to Egerton, roughly midway between Bacchus Marsh and Ballarat, and soon afterwards, on the night of May 7, 1869, a masked man stuck up the manager of the bank at Mt. Egerton and got away with ?1000 in notes and gold.
At the time Scott was lay reader to the Anglican church at Egerton, and the police had no convincing reason to associate this pious and personable young man with the robbery. The parishioners also held him in esteem, and when he left the district some time later for Sydney they presented him with a gold watch and chain as a mark of their good will.
The sequence of twists and turns which led to the discovery that Andrew Scott and Captain Moonlight were one and the same man need not be detailed here, but he was eventually tried for the Mt. Egerton robbery, found guilty and sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment.
On his release in 1879, he became a kind of strolling evangelist, lecturing to rapt audiences on prison reform and the virtues of the Christian life. But his apparent redemption was short-lived. Within a few months he became Captain Moonlight again, and was leading a band of bushrangers in southern N.S.W.
His luck did not last. He surrendered to police after an affray at Wantabadgery station, N.S.W., in which two of his five accomplices fell to police bullets. The survivors were tried in Sydney. Two escaped with life sentences, but Scott and the other two were condemned to death and hanged.
The Manor House has looked on many changes since Andrew Scott tutored James Elijah Crook's sons there.
Through the years it remained the home of the Crook family - except after old James Elijah's death, when , from 1889 to 1908, it was rented to a succession of tenants - but the cost of keeping it in repair was heavy. In 1943 the Crook family the Crook family offered it, with five acres of land, for sale by auction, but bidding stopped at ?1000 and it was passed in.
In 1947 Lifeguard Milk Products bought it, with six acres of land surrounding it; Lifeguard has a factory at Bacchus Marsh, and the directors were looking to the future.
Then, in 1952, the Manor House fell vacant and, without a tenant, rapidly deteriorated. The wonderful old brick walls, ranging in thickness from 18 to 24 in., were still sound, and the iron-covered shingle roof was in tolerable shape, but by 1956 the house looked to be fit for little but demolition.
