Histories

Ellen Elizabeth Eldridge was born on 25 Sep 1868 in Cathcart, Victoria. She was the tenth of twelve children of Daniel Eldridge, born 1825, and Bridget Fanny O'Connor, born 1826. She is the only link to the Eldridge family but the name lives on in her grandson, Robert Eldridge Delahoy.

She married George Delahoy on 21 Jun 1887 in Cathcart. Together they moved into Great Western and ran a successful butcher shop down the road from the Exchange Hotel owned by George's mother, Ellen, and step-father, Henry Holdsworth. They had seven children between 1889 and 1904 during their time in Great Western and, later, Jeparit. The following events up until 1918 are mainly taken from Delahoy's Mile.

In 1907, they sold the Hindmarsh Hotel in Jeparit and moved onto a farm in Myall. When George became ill and unable to work, the family moved to Woomelang where Ellen bought the local bakery and ran it successfully for a number of years. In 1912, the bakery was destroyed by fire, however, with the help of a number of locals the bakery was rebuilt. When George died in 1913, Ellen evidently lost the will and put the bakery up for sale, eventually striking a deal to swap the bakery for a wheat farm in Speed in the heart of the Mallee country. By this time, 1914, her eldest child, Emma, was married and moved out but the remaining six boys all moved to Speed with Ellen to help run the farm in the middle of what turned out to be a bad drought. There were no roads and they were forced to drive the wagon and horses across country into what was essentially a desert.

With the wheat unharvestable and the horses dying, Ellen decided it was pointless staying on the land and the family moved into Merbein, on the Murray River and a little west of Mildura, and stayed with her eldest daughter Emma and her husband Rudie Huff. Robert and Rupert enrolled at the Merbein primary school. The drought broke later that year and the family was able to move back to their farm in Speed.

1915 saw their first successful harvest, Robert and Rupert were attending the Turriff East State School as well as working on the farm and George had enlisted into the army. Around this time a local school teacher, Olga Andrews, was reported missing and it fell on the Delahoy brothers to search for her eventually finding her unconscious deep in the scrub. A few weeks later when she returned to thank the boys, William fell head over heals.

Around the middle of 1916, Ellen and the two youngest, Robert and Rupert, made a trip into Melbourne to abuse the makers of a failed seed drill. The trip was unsuccessful and they had to make do with a second hand drill. New Year's Day 1917 was spent tracking down the murderer of a neighbouring farmer and was eventually found crushed under his own horse, the result of failing to negotiate a steep descent in the Mallee scrub. The entire area had been overrun by a major mouse plague, the house was infested and was slowly being torn apart by the tiny, furry rodents and later in the year when the mice population diminished, the rabbits moved in. Meanwhile Ellen, who was staying with Emma in Merbein, negotiated a deal to buy a block of land in the Merbein township returning to the farm in February.

That year, despite the hardships of the mice and rabbit plagues, produced an excellent crop and the Delahoys were living happy and William announced his intention to enlist in the army. The doctor who performed his medical wasn't happy however, the combination of his false teeth and a mild heart condition, apparently brought on by his years of hard work on the farm, made him unfit for service. He was sent home and advised to reduce his workload.

The war continued in Europe while the boys sowed the new season's crop for 1918. Harry got his driver's license and bought himself a shiny new Ford T Model Tourer. On 11 November the war ended and thoughts turned to the future. Ellen was fifty years old.