Richard married Mary Ann Barrett in November 1886 at Moondarra, which is on the road between Erica and Moe. She was born in Jericho, which was south of Matlock on the Great Dividing Range. I say 'was' because to my knowledge there is nothing there now, although I noted on a web search recently that gold miners may be looking at the prospects within the area once more. Jericho was a thriving little gold town for a while, but it was already in severe decline in 1867, and when I was there for work purposes in the mid 1980's it was nothing more than a small clearing and a patch of blackberries.

Did Richard meet her at Jericho? Was the family there at one stage before moving back south towards Walhalla? Richard and Mary's first child, George, was born in Toombon, so presumably the family resided there for a while before settling in Walhalla. The locations of the births of their remaining children indicate the family came to Melbourne in about 1897/98. This photo of Jericho in 1906 comes from the Museum of Victoria Collection.

The first child, George (b 1887), married Lillian Jenkinson (b 1886) in South Melbourne in February 1915. Lillian was the (a?) daughter of Andrew Jenkinson and Susan Rickards. They had one child, Ronald, born in Bendigo on 15 September 1924.

The second child, Charles (b 1890), joined the AIF in WW1 and a copy of his Service Record shows he enlisted on 7 January 1916, and served in 23 Battalion. At enlistment he was about 5'11" tall and 148 pounds, with brown eyes and dark brown hair. I suspect that when he enlisted he was a carpenter/joiner living at Apsley, but that at some stage while overseas his wife moved to 11 Dudley Street, Fitzroy, Victoria to be with her in-laws, Richard and Mary Ann. He was still in Melbourne at Royal Park in June 1916, but he left for overseas in the Miltiades on 1 August 1916, disembarked at Plymouth on the 25 Sept 1916, and by late Nov 1916 he was in France. He then seemed to be back and forward from England to France and in hospital frequently with illness. He returned home on the Swakopmund on 2 Aug 1919 - which shows how long with shipping and other problems it took to get some troops home. Was he a signaller or engineer?

Richard Rawson (b 1864) & son Henry
About 1910