This photograph, in the Young Historical Museum’s collection, shows Alexander Aston making a dam on Morabla station in January 1927.
In constructing a dam, the ground was loosened by horse- or bullock-drawn ploughs and then the scoops, pulled by horses, would remove the soil to deepen the dam.
After the required depth was reached, lime was usually spread over the surface and stock were encouraged to trample it in as a water-sealing method.
Morabla was located at Old Balabla, two miles from Weedallion Siding.
Alexander Aston was born in 1882, his birth registered at Wangaratta.
His father was Alfred Aston, a native of Staffordshire, England, where his father was a landowner.
Alfred came to Victoria in the early 1870s and was successful as a miner.
He married Ballarat-born Alice Hannah Ewart in 1875 and they moved to Peechalba, near the border with NSW.
In about 1889, they selected land near Grenfell, calling their property Arramagong East, and built a splendid residence known as Aston House.
Alfred died in 1902, after which the family moved to ‘Wendouree’.
Alexander married Louisa Isabella Diamond, cousin of Mr A. H. Grimm, late of Glen Esk, Bimbi, in 1912.
Their son Philip was born in 1913 and daughter Alene in 1915.
Aston attempted to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I but was rejected.
By November 1914, they were living at Morabla, when Louisa volunteered at the Patriotic Bazaar in Morangorell.
Aston ran sheep on Morabla for wool production, registering his brand in February 1917.
He also operated a sawmill. During the 1930s, with Bertie Bryce Gunning, he came third at the Bribbaree P.A.H. & I. Association’s crop competition with their Nabawa wheat crop.
In 1945, Aston and other farmers complained to the Young Pastures Protection Board that they were doing all they could to eradicate rabbits but were hampered by a lack of manpower, ‘water carting, hand-feeding of stock, and the extremely hard state of the ground due to the abnormally dry conditions’.
Aston also bred horses and won second prize for a blood mare at the Bribbaree Show in 1947.
On one occasion, while Aston was at his other property in Bowral, his daughter Alene took over ‘the steering wheel at “Morabla”, hitching up the tractor to the farm machinery’ to ‘work up the fallows’. She ‘showed a high standard of efficiency in carrying out an exacting work’.
Louisa died, aged 78, in the Young District Hospital on 28th August 1955.
Aston later married Lydia Anne Thompson (née Davies) in 1957.
They moved into the town of Young in 1963.
Alexander Aston died, aged 86, in the River View Rest Home, Cooranbong, on 29th January 1968.
Karen Schamberger - Young Historical Society