Long serving teacher
A long-serving (and maybe long-suffering) teacher with the Victorian Education Department and local resident, Dorothy (“Dot”) Jean Salter, was of Chinese-Australian heritage. When she taught humanities subjects at Rushworth, some of the students called her “Ching” or “Old Ching”, reflecting the casual racism that was unfortunately still prevalent in the area in the 1960s and early 1970s. Dot retired in 1971 after 27 years of service at Rushworth Higher Elementary School, which later became Rushworth High School.
During her time at Rushworth, Dot rose through the ranks to become the Senior Mistress. Some of the girls from the ‘60s will remember her measuring their hemlines so that they were no more than the maximum height above the knee. The introduction of the mini-skirt had resulted in quite a few hemlines going up. There are many, many other stories about Dot, but suffice it to say that her willingness to respond to any provocation simply inspired some students to keep coming up with things that would get a rise.
She travelled on the Stanhope South bus with the students, where she ruled the roost, as she did not have a driver’s licence until later in life. According to one former student who travelled on the bus and shall remain nameless, “After gaining her licence, she would sedately follow the bus into the Rushy schools. But one morning, Mrs Salter got a rush of blood and decided to overtake the bus and beat it to Rushy. Unfortunately, this manoeuvre at the Zegelin Road intersection resulted in her steering wheel locking up as she turned into Zegelin Road. Her car, slowly turning in tight circles, broke through the adjoining dairy farmer’s boundary fence and scattered cows in all directions. All the children on the bus were beside themselves with laughter.”
Chinese-irish heritage
Dot’s grandmother Bridget was an Irish lass born in Limerick in 1841 before coming out to Australia with her parents Thomas and Margaret Ryan. The family appear to have been working in the goldfields of northern Victoria. That could be where she met her future husband, known later as “James” Amoy.
James was a native of the island now known as Xiamen, just off the south-east coast of China in Fujian province. They had their first child together prior to getting married in a Christian church in Castlemaine in 1862. Presumably, James had migrated to Australia in search of gold, as the family moved around various goldfield towns as their next three children were born.
By the late 1860s they had settled in a small town then known as Sago Hill (now Haddon), a few kilometres south-west of Ballarat. Their remaining nine children were born in that vicinity.
Entrepreneur
While Bridget was mothering her growing family, James was developing his business interests. He engaged in mining as a tributor, which meant that he supplied certain elements required for the business in return for a percentage of the profits. James organised Chinese labourers and supplied some of the equipment required in the mining ventures. Not everything went smoothly. He was attacked with an axe by miner Chun Goon in 1882 in a dispute over the purchase of mining equipment.
James survived and branched out into storekeeping in Haddon. Given the size of the town, it was possibly the only store in town. In the mid-1880s, James became naturalised. He also purchased one of the two Haddon pubs, the British Queen Hotel, from countryman Ah Tan for the sum of 101 pounds and 10 shillings. The pub was delicensed by the Licensing Reduction Board in 1908, but James had already relinquished the ownership by then.
Dot’s mum
Dot’s mother, Ellen May Moy, was born in Haddon in 1882, the eleventh of Bridget and James’ children. When she was only ten, something went awry in her parents’ marriage. James had allegedly left Bridget, who still had six of her children to care for but had no means of supporting them. The case finished up in court, where James was given an order to provide maintenance of one pound and ten shillings per week.
Ellen later married Hugh Featherstone, and Dot was the first of their three children, born in 1907 at Ballarat East. In turn, Dot married school teacher Edgar John Salter in Bendigo in 1931. The family moved to Rochester later in the 1930s and then to the Waranga area, where they had property at Stanhope South. Dot remained in the area after the death of her husband in 1955, who she outlived by 50 years.
Sources: Trove and Ancestry websites
