I never met my grandfather, Michael John Gorey (after whom I was named), because he died before I was born.

Mick grew up at Corop and Whroo in north central Victoria. According to the snippets I gathered from my father and aunts, he left home at a young age, became a shearer, and travelled widely around Australia.

This is the “biography” of him that was compiled for a book I published in the late 90s. Contributors included my father, who is now deceased, and other relatives:

Throughout his life Michael John Gorey was a colorful character and hard worker who toiled for his family in often adverse conditions. Susceptible in later life to mood swings and sometimes contradictory, he raised a large family in difficult circumstances marked by natural disaster and human tragedy. Three of his sons (Edward, Archibald and Michael) and a daughter (Sheila) had their lives cut severely short.

Mick was born at Corop on March 25, 1884. According to his birth certificate, his father Edward was employed as a boundary rider. The following year, the family moved to an 80-acre farm south-west of the township and lived there until 1889.

Michael Gorey

They then moved to Whroo where Edward had acquired the lease on a 150-acre property owned by the Crown. Mick attended the Angustown State School where he received at least a rudimentary teaching. He maintained a passion for reading throughout his life.

The tales Mick told of his childhood include memories of skylarking in the Goulburn River and jumping into the water from a railway bridge. He enjoyed school and once earned praise from a school inspector for drawing a spray of gum leaves.

He left home when he was about 14. His daughter Mary believed he went to work for an auctioneer. Son Peter believes his first job was with a butcher. We don’t know why he ventured forth so young. It may have been a desire to escape from his circumstances, or the origins of a quest for independence and self-sufficiency.

During the early years of last century Mick travelled throughout Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia following work. He was a shearer, potato picker and agricultural laborer. Like many young men of his era he enjoyed a drink and a wager. His brother-in-law Charles Tennant, a policeman at Cobram (Mary Gorey’s husband), apparently locked him up once “for his own good” according to Peter.

Not much more is known of Mick’s early days, although at some stage he made his way to live in Melbourne where he worked as a horse-drawn lorry driver. He was an accomplished footballer and is said to have played with North Melbourne in the Victorian Football Association.

Mick’s mates included characters like Bug Sullivan, a professional boxer, and Crying Dinnie Quinlan, who spoke in a high-pitched Irish voice.

At one stage Mick came into some money, possibly by winning a lottery. He used the proceeds to buy a farm and settle at Waubra.

Mick married Eleanor Sutherland in Fitzroy on April 19, 1913. She told her children the story that they met one day when she was walking in Richmond, tripped over, and was helped up by a handsome young man who later became her husband and the father of their 12 children.

The newlyweds had a good start in life, with Mick owning his own farm. It therefore seems strange that he continued a transient lifestyle and followed spud picking work to Gippsland, but that was his nature.

Mick never enlisted in the First World War for political and practical reasons. He was a new husband and father producing food for the nation. He proudly supported the anti-conscription movement which sharply divided Australia at the time. Many people of Irish descent were opposed to the war, which coincided with a major uprising in Ireland.

“When I see a German gunboat sail up the Murray and bombard Echuca, then I won’t hesitate to enlist,” Mick said.

The first five children (Sheila, Edward, James, Michael and Archibald) were born at Waubra, except Edward who was born at Trafalgar. Edward died in 1922 from diphtheria, aged five.

The family moved to Ballarat about 1922 and Mary was born that year. Twins Daniel and Margaret, plus John who was born 12 months after the twins, were also born at Ballarat. They lived in a house on the corner of Lydiard and Gregory Streets. During these years Mick earned his income by shearing and picking potatoes.

In 1927 he took up a farm at Dalmore in Gippsland. His brother Ned worked a neighboring farm which he had acquired under the Soldier Settler scheme. Noreen was born at Koo-Wee-Rup, while the last two children, Eleanor and Peter, were born at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Carlton.

Mick grew potatoes on his Dalmore property, milked about 20 cows and bred some pigs. He was knowledgeable about potatoes, less so about milking cows. He had a mix of Frisians, Ayrshires and Jerseys which he used to trade at Dandenong market.

Mary said the livestock agents “used to see him coming because he didn’t know anything about cows”. Jim Gorey used to say his father was a good farmer and a very hard worker, but not such a good manager.

The family house was enlarged by joining another alongside, with one room occupied by Mick’s father Edward. The massive floods of 1934 caused severe damage in the area and resulted in a government plan to create channels for control measures. The farms of Mick and Ned were compulsorily acquired, with compensation paid. Edward moved away after the flood to live with his other son William at Lemnos.

The Great Depression hit farm commodity prices hard, so the devastation of losing his crop in the flood left Mick with huge debts to repay. Peter Gorey recalls hearing that his father owed £500 to the Dalmore storekeeper. Apparently the pair had struck an agreement that Mick would pledge half that year’s potato crop towards clearing the debt — an arrangement which the storekeeper accepted until the flood. A legal battle followed, with the end result being that the agreement stood.

Nevertheless, Mick was broke. He also had a wife and 10 children to support. He looked far and wide for a new property and eventually settled at Fumina near Mt Baw Baw. He leased a farm from the Rankin family, for a peppercorn rental, on the understanding that he would clear the heavily timbered land. He did this and saved up enough money to later buy a farm at nearby Icy Creek.

The Gorey family’s arrival at Fumina caused great rejoicing in the small community. It meant they would have a school and they hoped a church as well. The staunchly Catholic enclave was shocked to discover that Mick wasn’t one of the flock.

They were further stunned to learn he was communist. Mick read widely on Marx and the Russian Revolution and turned strongly against the Vatican.

Tragedy struck in January 1939 when the family home at Fumina was destroyed by fire in the massive statewide blaze which devastated Victoria. The fire claimed the life of Mick and Eleanor’s son Michael, who suffocated in a dugout at Tanjil Bren.

Mick’s bravery helped save the lives of his wife and children. They were advised to “shelter” in a cleared paddock some distance from trees and buildings. A moving account of the fire was written by children John and Dan Gorey, with help from their Aunt Jemima (Bill Gorey’s wife) and published in the Shepparton News on February 6, 1939:

“We gathered up all the clothes that we could and then father, mother and we seven children ran as fast as we could to the big paddock where dad made us lie under a wet blanket whilst he carried water from a dam two chains away,” the boys wrote.

“All that he had to protect him was a wet towel on his head … the flames were hundreds of feet high and when the wind changed to the south we were caught between two blazing mountains and could not escape. Dad was our only protection by keeping the blanket wet.”

Nearly all their possessions, except some livestock, were lost in the fire. The children were effectively refugees. They stayed for a week or so with kindly souls in Warragul while accommodation was found. Daniel and John went to live with Mick’s brother Bill and his family at Lemnos. Eleanor, Noreen, Nell and Peter went to stay with Eleanor’s brother-in-law John Robertson and his eldest daughter Doris at Barkers Creek near Castlemaine. They stayed there in the historic sandstone house built by Eleanor’s German forebears.

Mary and Sheila had already left home. Jim and Archibald stayed with their father at Fumina, Jim helping to rebuild from the ashes. Archie, who was ill for much of his short life, died in 1943 aged 22.

The youngest children returned home after about two months away, while Dan and John spent several months more at Lemnos. By this time Mick and Jim had built a shed, which provided some shelter. The children slept in tents, often in wet and cold conditions, until a house was built. The family did receive some assistance to get back on its feet, with donations of food and clothing, however there was nothing like the generous support offered to victims of more recent, smaller bushfires. Mary recalled though that her mother had bought a new lounge suite on lay-by from Myer just before the fire. The store kindly wrote off the debt.

Mary said her parents were devastated by the loss of Michael, who was “dad’s favorite”. Michael was a popular young man, liked by everyone who knew him.

The family moved to Icy Creek in June 1940 after a heavy fall of snow. Mick was 56 and the farm was covered in trees, bracken fern and scrub.

“Naturally it was a long time before any farming of any sort could be done, so my father rented a block of land at Vesper (8km away) to grow potatoes,” Peter said.

“It belonged to a member of the Adams family. While the potatoes were in the growing stage there, he and the elder boys would launch an assault on the jungle that was Icy Creek.”

Peter speculates that his father chose this harsh lifestyle because he disliked working for wages. He could have easily gained work in a sawmill or road gang.

Mick loved growing potatoes. He could have earned much more money cutting firewood on his own farm, but preferred to grow spuds at Vesper, so that’s what he did.

He stayed there in a two-room wooden house with his son Dan and they both went home at weekends. Dan sometimes went home on Wednesday night as well, allowing Mick an evening to indulge his liking for beer at the Noojee Hotel.

Mick had some quaint personal characteristics. Peter said his father loved talking about his past, but he used to get “completely carried away”.

“The funny thing was that no one took any notice, because we had heard it all before. Mum would be darning a sock, Dan and the girls would be playing cards and I would be reading a book, all of us totally oblivious to Mick’s monologue,” Peter said.

“His eyes would take on a faraway look as he recounted how he made a wealthy squatter look a fool, or how he advised the union rep to settle a dispute over a pay rise. He always placed himself in the starring role and his acting was superb.

“These monologues would last about 20 minutes until, like a man coming out of anaesthetic, he would slowly come back to reality. Then he would reach for his deck of cards, and humming away to himself, would start playing patience.”

Mick had a fortnightly shaving ritual in which he assembled all the necessary paraphernalia and inserted his dentures. Then he would hold his nose and shave his top lip. It was the only time he wore false teeth.

Another peculiarity was a tuneless whistle, which he blew incessantly while he worked. He was known for this throughout the district.

Mick was diagnosed late in life with a heart condition. He was supposed to stop work, which he did for a while, before starting again. His favorite job was charring out stumps.

“This involved stacking a quantity of dry wood around the base, heaping clods of dirt over this wood to about three quarters of its circumference, wait for a windy day and set fire to it,” Peter said.

“Then, when it’s well and truly burning, cover the stump completely with more clods and it would create a combustion effect underground, most times burning the stump completely, roots and all.

“It was the only way to tackle the stumps in that district. Grubbing them out would have taken a week a stump. Blasting them out with gelignite would have cost a fortune. Charring, or stoving as it was sometimes called, was the most economical way to do it.”

Noreen remembers her father being a voracious reader who also encouraged his children to read. He used to often buy from the socialist International Bookshop at the top end of Bourke Street, which only closed in the early 1990s. Mick’s favorite fiction included the Australian bush poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson, and he could recite many of their works.

His children were treated to a broad range of literature and opinions. Noreen read Hitler’s Mein Kampf when 14 or 15. She also read the works of American journalists Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley regarding the rise of Mao and modern China.

Noreen said Mick’s literary and political tastes were unique in the remote district where the family lived. She said the reading offered some escape from the hardships of what was effectively a 19th century lifestyle, without electricity.

Mick’s children all drifted away from Icy Creek except Dan. After a major operation in the 1950s which required ongoing medical attention, Eleanor went to live with Jim in a house he had bought at Drouin. Mick, who never owned a car in his life and never had a licence, made his way down to see her when he could. His transport was usually foot, train or bus depending on availability. There was a mail car which travelled from Icy Creek and Fumina to Noojee and Warragul. This provided a link by motor vehicle into these towns.

Mick’s children respected their father and enjoyed his company, but his erratic behavior made him difficult to live with.

“He was at times a moody person, even to the point of becoming morose or sullen,” Peter said.

“But for the most part he was quite cheerful and you always knew where he was by the sound of his unique whistle.”

In 1997, Noreen said: “As he grew older, I realise now that dad began to suffer from depression and mood swings. The death of Arch and then Sheila in the mid-40s didn’t help.

“Sometimes he would work cheerfully around the farm whistling tunelessly and at other times a black mood would take over to such an extent that he would speak to no-one for weeks.

“Nevertheless, dad could be great company. He had fascinating stories of outback New South Wales and his shearing days. He recalled travelling on Cobb and Co coaches and even riding a bicycle incredible distances from one shed to the next.”

One of his tall stories was: “I’ll never forget the mosquitoes at Wilcannia. They were huge. I didn’t mind so much the bites. It was the ruthless way they dropped me when they’d finished.”

Mary recalled that her father always maintained an interest in lotteries, but without much success. Contrarily, he was a committed socialist. He was never religious, but on his death bed asked for a priest. Questioned about this contradiction, he said: “You never know”.

Because he lived mostly in Gippsland, Mick had infrequent contact with his brothers and sister, except Ned while he lived at Dalmore, although there were occasional visits each way. Mick was said to be closest to his brother William. Mick would send potatoes to his brother and receive fruit in return. Their sister Mary Tennant used to occasionally visit Dalmore with her husband Charles and younger children. In contrast, Mick might never have seen his brother Charles again after leaving home about 1898. There are no recollections among Mick’s children of Charles, who was a transient war pensioner, visiting Gippsland.

Mick died on January 31, 1959 after a short illness, aged 74.

He was buried at Drouin cemetery on February 2, 1959. In his will, written 1954, he left everything to his wife Eleanor. In the event that she might have predeceased him, he made provision for his son Daniel to have the farm at Icy Creek.