#talbotville

[moonshot5]

talbotville ontario

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Ford Maverick

Ford St. Thomas Assembly Plant

[if68]

Former St Thomas Assembly Plant

[foxspirit1928]

Miss Fisher Australia Tour (16)

Vic Freeman is the first “old friend” of Phryne’s that we were introduced to. He suffered PTSD after the Great War and was “shearing up in Talbotville”. The show did not get into details about Vic’s condition, except for implying that he was disfigured. When Phryne touched his face and whispered “Still dashingly handsome in the right light”, it was tender and heartbreaking. In the book, Kerry Greenwood described how he couldn’t handle the noise from civilization, so he chose to live in a secluded area deep in the mountains where he could be alone, with a wombat as his only companion. The wombat ended up saving Phryne’s life, but that’s another story for another time.

According to Phryne, Talbotville was “at least a day’s drive”, which kind of surprised me because my research suggested that it was 350 km (217 miles) from Melbourne. If the Hispano-Suiza’s top speed was 85 miles an hour (and Phryne claimed that she could do better than that), it should only take 3 to 4 hours. However, considering the road conditions in the mountains, I guess she couldn’t possibly get anywhere near the top speed, so flying the Tiger Moth was the right choice.

The information about Talbotville was quite scarce online. There is a Wikipedia page about Dargo that briefly mentioned it: “[Dargo] provided a stopover for Victorian Gold Rush miners on their way to the goldfields of Grant, Talbotville, and Crooked River” in the 1860’s. Then I struck gold, pun intended, when I found a Victorian Heritage Database Report (link here) stating that Tolbotville survived into the twentieth century after the gold rush as it didn’t solely depend on mining. Because it was situated on a large river flat, the residents were able to grow crops as well. In the book, that’s how Vic found odd jobs to earn money or goods for a living. According to the report, the last family in town left in 1950, so I guess there is nothing left to visit.

(Posted 30-Jan-2019)

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Falcon assembly line, Ford St. Thomas Assembly Plant,

c 1968

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Special to The Mail and Empire.  St. Thomas, March 18. - County Magistrate Hunt to-day sentenced Fred McCully to four years in Kingston Penitentiary when he pleaded guilty to stealing automobile tires from Pere Marquette cars at Talbotville. McCully’s record had been investigated, and it was found that under the alias of McDonald he had been sentenced at Bondon to three months at Mimico Reformatory and also for three years at Kingston for theft.” - from The Mail and Empire. March 19, 1918. Page 04.