, Hello,My name is John Graham, This is a brief story of my lifeI was born into a farming family in Scotland in 1816I married Hannah Rogers before emigrating to Canada and settling on a farm in Ontario,During the quiet farming times, I built sheds in the district for other farmers,We had two children, Rebecca in 1845, and James in 1848,It was to my enduring sadness that Hannah died soon after James’ birth,Then, along with the two children, my sisters Jane and Helen, we emigrated to Australia, We settled in BeechworthA gold rush was in full swing,There was a strong demand for building and saw milling skills, which offered plenty of work for me,However, with the rapidly expanding population in Beechworth, food supplies were very limited, so when some land came up for sale on the Oxley Plains I purchased a 120 acre block,The sale took place on December 28th, 1857,The idea was to grow grain, fresh fruit and grapes to sell to the passing gold traffic,In order to store the sheaves of grain I built a hay barn using logs, poles and bark from the forest in the hills to the south east. The bricks in the wall were hand made from local clay,Having grown up in snow country I pitched the roof steeply to shed the snow,Meanwhile, Jane took care of Rebecca in Beechworth and as she became older, Rebecca spent more time with me, At the tender age of fifteen, Rebecca commenced a private school on our neighbours land opposite where the Church of England was later built, In 1864 she married George Harry Brown who had settled on a recently surveyed 92 acre block of land at the Hurdle Creek,The Oxley Plains now has many farmers mainly grain cropping and sheep,Thank you for hearing my story,