Alexander Hepburn Stone

The Hepburns at Gourdie Farm Woodstock West, Victoria Alexander Hepburn Stone

In July 1857 a dairy maid from Craigie in Perthshire sailed from Liverpool in the largest and one of the fastest clipper ships of the time and eighty-three days later arrived in Melbourne on the way to the Bendigo goldfields to marry her sweetheart there. Andrew and Margaret Hepburn were married at the end of the year and lived at American Gully where Andrew has a share in a mine on Victoria Reef. It was there that their first six children were born. However, in 1871, no doubt looking to secure the family's future, Andrew sold his share of the mine to his partner and bought a farming property at Woodstock West in Central Victoria. They called their new home "Gourdie", the name of one of the big houses in the district where they had grown up in Scotland. Since then it has been home to successive generations of the Hepburn family, right up to the present.