History
Top: John McLure's hut (watercolour by Edward Latrobe Bateman) Below Right: John McLure
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARTHUR’S SEAT
By Ilma Hackett & Keith Murley
I
t was referred to, humorously, as the ‘University of Arthur’s Seat’. The small slab hut roofed with thatch stood a short distance from where the McCrae family’s homestead was being built on the lower slopes of Arthur’s Seat on the Mornington Peninsula. At one end was a massive chimney tapering upwards and at the other, the doorway. A small window let in light. This was the schoolroom for the McCrae boys and their tutor’s hut. The year was 1844. The Search for a Better Life John McLure was twenty-nine when he was engaged by Andrew McCrae in 1842 to tutor his three young sons. Born at Sleat, a village on the Isle of Skye, McLure had somehow achieved a good education and had studied classics and divinity at the University of Glasgow. Like many of his countrymen, McLure migrated to the colony of New South Wales to escape the rising poverty in Scotland. Arriving in Melbourne in 1838, aboard the Brilliant, he found employment as a teacher. His first position was at a private school in Windsor then at Scots School, a government-subsidized school in Collins Street attended by both boys and girls. continued next page...
May 2023
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PENINSULA