Thomas Male
Thomas Male
Thomas Male’s parents, Thomas and Eliza Male, and his two older siblings, Susannah and William, arrived in Port Phillip aboard the "George Fyffe" from England in 1841. They became early pioneers of the Brighton area, where young Thomas was born in 1846.
Sadly, in 1856 Thomas’s mother Eliza died in childbirth, and later that year, in October, his father Thomas, whilst returning from Melbourne, hit a concealed stump in his cart and he was thrown from his cart and died. This left Thomas an orphan at the age of ten, living with his aunt and uncle.
Thomas Male arrived in the Moorooduc area in the 1880’s. He was a heavy haulage contractor and worked with large teams of bullocks and horses in the early days of the settlement.
He acquired a quantity of land and engaged in mixed farming. He came to live in Yuilles Road, Mornington in his retirement. Thomas had been a councillor with the Shire of Mornington for 14 years and president of the Shire for one term.
Thomas Male died at the age of 74 in 1920. He had married three times and left a large family. There are still many descendants in the area.
His son, Thomas Male Jnr, purchased the butcher shop at 39 Main Street Mornington in 1926, and ran the shop until he retired in 1947, when the shop passed to his sons.
The Males owned land along Males Road opposite the old Moorooduc brick hall, and cattle were brought to their slaughter yards there.
Horses and carts that were used for deliveries were kept in the stables in the backyard of the shop, then taken to a paddock in Queen Street overnight and brought back in the morning ready for work.
