Riddoch, John (1827-1901) and George (1842-1919)

Riddoch, John and George, pastoralists, were born on 27 October 1827 and on 10 August 1842 at Turriff, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, sons of John Riddoch, farmer and his wife Helen, née Duncan. After the family migrated to Victoria in 1851-52, John junior was a carter, gold digger and buyer on the River Ovens goldfields. He used the money made from gold to become a Geelong shopkeeper and wine merchant. On 12 May 1854 he married Eliza King at Geelong. After borrowing heavily, in 1861 he paid £30,000 for Yallum Park, near Penola, South Australia. Here he built an Italianate mansion, surrounded with exotic trees and a forty-acre (16 ha) deer park; a genial host, he entertained princes, dukes, governors and Anthony Trollope. John was a loyal friend and patron of Adam Lindsay Gordon who wrote some of his poetry, including ‘The Sick Stockrider’, at Yallum.

George attended Mr Ross’s Geelong Seminary before moving to South Australia in 1861. He partnered John in Nalang in the upper South-East, Weinteriga on the Darling River, New South Wales, and was Yallum’s overseer. He was a member of the local road board in South Australia and the sheep and vermin board in New South Wales. On 26 August 1873 at Maryvale, Wimmera District, Victoria, he married Ann Eliza Wilson.

Through astute buying, by 1891 the Riddoch brothers held the freehold to over 75,000 acres (30,352 ha) of their run; it extended to the Coonawarra Fruit Colony (which John had founded in 1891) in the north, Glencoe in the west and almost to Mount Gambier in the south. As flock-masters of merinos and cross-breds, which suited the wet South-East, and as large-scale experimental farmers and graziers, they were staunch members of the South Australian Pastoralists’ Union. Sometime president and vice-president, George negotiated shearers’ wages and conditions in the 1890s; he represented the union in the Federated Employers’ Council of South Australia and was a delegate to intercolonial conferences of the Federal Council of Pastoralists’ Unions.

For Full Biog: http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A110400b