Ferny Creek in the Dandenong Ranges
A home among the gum trees with Koala bears. Lyre-birds and a Kangaroo--or two.

Ferny Creek, an outer suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, is 33 km south-east of Melbourne's CBD. It is part of the Local Government Shire of Yarra Ranges. At the 2006 Census, Ferny Creek had a population of 1536.

The suburb is built around but mainly to the south of Dunns Hill (height 561m) with most of Ferny Creek lying between 400 and 550 metres above sea level. It is named for the stream running through it, Ferny Creek. The suburb is largely surrounded by conservation zones and national parks, with the Dandenong Ranges national park on its northern and west sides, the Upwey habitat corridor to the south and Sherbrooke Forest to the east.

From early in its European history the area was used by Melburnians as a place to get away from the maddening crowd. People came for weekend and summer camps and to gain some relief from the oppressive heat. As a result, gradually over the years, simple "weekender" cottages developed. As the city grew, all of the original forest was felled to build the many timber-framed, weatherboard clad structures that still make up much of Melbourne's suburbia. All of the forest now to be seen is "regrowth" that has happened since that early denuding process.

Today the area still attracts many visitors and tourists who come to enjoy, amongst other things, the beautiful scenic drives and many walking tracks that are an integral part of the local parks. One well known and very popular track quite close to Ferny Creek is called "The Thousand Steps". This particular track has also become a local memorial to Papua New Guinea's infamous "Kokoda Track", and the bloody battles fought there by Australians during WWII.

Dandenong Ranges in Autumn

The Chamberlain Family
Preston Capes, Northamptonshire; the village they left behind.

I wonder what Thomas Chamberlain and Susannah Catherine Bull together with their four children, William (9), Sarah Ann (7), Giles (3) and 11 month old Edwin were thinking about as they celebrated their last Christmas in the village of Preston Capes, December 1841? I wonder what their hopes were that made them take such a momentous step, and what their fears were as they prepared to step out into the great unknown? They boarded their ship just a week later, so pretty much everything would have been packed, and may have even travelled ahead of them to their boarding dock at Gravesend, so that their home probably seemed like a stranger - cold and empty. This picture of Preston Capes was taken about 150 years after the family left for their far side of the world in New Zealand.

Although I live in Ferny Creek, I am a fifth generation part of this pioneering family of six who left their home in Preston Capes, Northamptonshire and sailed from Gravesend, England with 297 other immigrants on Sunday 2nd January 1842. Enduring four months of very cramped conditions, aboard the "London", and losing Edwin to bronchitis, they were like so many other families, who lost the youngest members of their families to the cruel conditions of that early migration (And when considering the plight of boat people migrating to our shores in the twenty-first century, one is forced to ask, "What has changed?"). On their arrival at Port Nicholson, an early name for Wellington, New Zealand, they were quite literally dumped on the beach, and left to fend for themselves as they started a complete new life. The New Zealand Company was very good at promoting the scheme under which so many migrants came, but was very poor in the support they provided once these travellers had arrived.

This site is dedicated to the pioneering members of my family, in all of their many branches. Their strength of character, fortitude and their vision has left a magnificent legacy, a foundation on which we in subsequent generations can only hope to continue the building process, and thereby pass the baton on to future generations. Today this family number in their thousands across New Zealand and beyond. This is why I have used the word "Destiny" as the title for this website.

To get started, follow this link to the - Foreword & Table of Contents

enjoy - Ian

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