Rumbelow Settlers' Cottage

Posted by the Rex Tilbrook Legacy Facebook page, 1 November 2024

The Crystal Palace (Rumbelow family residence in Franklin Parade, Yilki) was dismantled by the late Rex Tilbrook during the early 1960s and then rebuilt next to the original Whaler's Inn at the Bluff Victor Harbor. It was originally set up there as a Whaling Museum, but later reverted to holiday accommodation since vanishing to development. One of the oldest settlement homes in South Australia, the Crystal Palace / Whalers Cottage was a very popular Encounter Bay tourist attraction but sadly its fate today is unknown.

The Crystal Palace was offered to the Victor National Trust but they were not able to undertake moving the building from the Bluff and finding a new location for it. 

Pioneer Cottage Rebuilt

• Victor Harbour Times (SA : 1932 - 1986) 

•  Fri 21 Dec 1962 

On a property formerly owned by Governor John Hindmarsh at Encounter Bay, a pioneer's cottage has been re-erected more than 100 years after it was originally built less than a mile from its present site, in the heart of Yilki. The cottage was first built what is known as Franklin Parade. In the early days the house was called 'Crystal Palace'. 

In 1855 Malin Rumbelow senior  arrived from England in the Pestonjee Bomanjee with his wife and nine children, including Malin, junior. When young Malin married the cottage was built for his bride.

Mr. and Mrs. R. P. Tilbrook, of Dunstan Avenue, Kensington Park, who are keenly interested in preserving the history of the early days of the South Coast, have rebuilt the cottage above Rosetta Bay, near the saddle of the Bluff. The cottage, complete with shingle roof, still retains a considerable portion of the original material used.

Whaling operations at Encounter Bay began in 1837, when a party from Sydney in the 'Hind' (Captain Blenkinsop) and a double party of six boats from the South Australian Company were seperately established. The latter company took 160 tons of oil, yielding about £40 a ton, thus establishing the first industry in S.A.

The eventual site of the whaling station used by the S.A. Company was purchased at Rosetta Bay, the property first belonging to Governor Hindmarsh, with a clear title some distance out to sea for wharf construction.

The settler's cottage, complete with whaling relics, will be open for daily public inspection on December 27.

Mr. Tilbrook said this week the cottage stands as a monument to the memory of the settlers whose courage and fortitude founded our colony.

Whaling Weapons on Display

• Victor Harbour Times (SA : 1932 - 1986) 

•  Wed 11 Apr 1979 

A room featuring harpoons and instruments used by Victor Harbor's whaling ancestors has just been added to the Whaler's Haven museum. The new room is the first of many changes being planned for the colony museum on the slopes of The Bluff at Victor Harbor.

The people planning the changes are the owners Mrs. Dorothy and Mr. Rex Tilbrook. 

By Christmas they hope to have working exhibits ordinary activities of the colonial days such as blacksmithing, processing dairy produce and leather working.  Mr. Tilbrook is presently digging an underground dairy as well as building rock re-inforcement walls for a road winding around the haven's garden.

The changes sound exciting, however the museum is already' attracting a regular supply of school tours and visitors to its exhibits.

Surrounded by the everyday items of colonial days, the visitor can easily imagine how life must have been for our fore-fathers. The museum encompasses a settler's cottage, saddlers, blacksmith and cooper's shops and a livery stable.

The key attraction is the settler's cottage which the Tilbrooks painstakingly removed from its original site on Franklin Parade and reconstructed at its present position.

The five-room cottage was originally built by one of the colony's early settlers, Malen Rumbelow, jun., who arrived from England in 1855 with his father, Malen his mother and eight brothers and sisters.

It was built for Malen junior's bride as was affectionately called 'the Crystal Palace.'

In 1959 the cottage was offered to the Tilbrooks who dismantled it, lettering and numbering each board. Rebuilding was completed in 1962. More than 70% of the external weatherboard and 98% of the of the tongue and grooved timber were retained. 

The inside of the cottage is packed with the every day belongings and furnishings of early settlers with kitchen drawers containing cooking utensils, night clothes laid out on the bed and button-up boots waiting to be worn again.

'We are trying to bring into line all the things that would have been used by people when they came here last century,' Mrs. Tilbrook said. To do this she and her husband have drawn on the belongings of their early settler forebears as well as many since discovered old-time possessions. One piece which is particularly unusual is a small cup and saucer made from cloves.

Mrs. Tilbrook said she was given this when the Whaler's Haven first started about 20 years ago by a 90-year-old woman who had been given the set when she was a child.

'I couldn't even guess how old this is likely to be,' she said. People used to make these as gilts to put with the linen to keep it smelling fresh.'

In a small cabinet near by sits a collection of Scrimshaw work or whale bone engraving which was a hobby of some of the early whalers. Next to these are carved whalebones which have been made into back scratchers, fans, ink stands, pen knives, snuff boxes' and walking sticks.

This whaling theme is obvious throughout the cottage and has been highlighted by the new whaling display added to the homestead. The whaling room features early harpoons collected from SA and whaling areas in Tasmania.

Among these are arrow and toggle type harpoons, killing lances, blubber spade, knife, ladle and forks as well as a boarding or flensing knife used for boarding whales and cutting the strips radially around the body so that rope tackles could pull the strips of blubber from the carcass.

One weathered harpoon handle was picked up off the beach by the Tilbrooks about 20 years ago after a sever storm along with a couple of half-buried whale bones.

The Tilbrooks believe it is important to show the whaling history of our forbears and to show what a cruel and dangerous

industry it was. The brutality of the whaling equipment is plain to see but this is balanced by the more homely, day to day surroundings of the people from our colonial days.

It is a trip into our past which is absorbing as well as educational.