Writer’s amusing mistake

THE township of Fyansford on Geelong’s western fringe was named for Captain Foster Fyans, who was appointed as Geelong’s first police magistrate as the result of a petition for a police presence sent to Sydney in 1837.

Fyansford was named after a ford near the present township, while Fyans established his home, Balliang, near the similarly named sanctuary.

By 1843 the first Fyansford Hotel had been established on the west bank of the Moorabool River by John Atkins.

It was bought by Abram Atkins in 1844 but was closed in January 1845 and became a private residence.

In the short time it had been opened, Australian author Rolf Boldrewood ( Robbery Under Arms) had stopped at the Fyansford Hotel on his way to his station near Port Fairy.

Boldrewood, whose real name was Thomas Alexander Browne, later wrote in his book Old Melbourne Memories about his return journey through Geelong in what appears to have been December 1845 on his way to Melbourne for a Christmas break.

The amusing account was recalled by the late Geelong historian Ian Wynd writing in the Geelong Historical Society magazine The Investigator in June 1974.

Boldrewood had stopped in Geelong on his return trip to Melbourne and went to the Fyansford Hotel to have breakfast before leaving for Melbourne.

“Dismounting at the stable door (at the former hotel), I gave my mare to the groom with a brisk injunction as to a good feed,’’ he wrote.

A similar injunction for breakfast in the house to a “maidservant’’ was greeted with surprise.

The “maid’’ was about to reply when the master of the house looked in and stated that the house was no longer an