JACOB MONDEL (1840—1895) and FAMILY

French Winemakers of Miranda

Jacob Mondel was born in Nasau in 1840, his parents being listed as Peter and Barbara on his death entry in 1895.¹In the days when Miranda was mainly a poultry and dairy farming, flower, fruit and vegetable growing area, the name Mondel was well known for wine making.

 The Mondel family were originally small landowners in France but when the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century made life very difficult they fled to the Rhineland area of Germany which at that time was controlled by Austria. At about twenty years of age young Jacob married Elizabeth Veronica Immelheinz, daughter of John J and Elizabeth. They began a family, with daughters Elizabeth (1865) and Dorothea Ann Dora (1868), and son Adam Marcus .1867)

 From 1860 to 1863 Jacob had served in the Austrian Army but, becoming dissatisfied with the system of Government, he applied for passports to come to Australia. A family story tells that Jacob did not have the money to buy his way out of the army, so he went ‘Absent Without Leave’ for 22 days in order to be discharged. The passports were withheld at the outbreak of war and not returned to him until the war was over when the area became part of the German Empire. Elizabeth would later tell her children of the harsh realities of the Franco-Prussian war, of the wounded brought in farm carts on straw, the screams of those in pain and the smell of their wounds. Jacob and Elizabeth were anxious to leave the insecurity of Europe at that time and to start a new life elsewhere. With financial assistance from his father, Jacob and his family sailed for Australia, arriving in July 1872 in Brisbane².

 The first addition to the family in the new country was Jacob, whose birth in 1872 was registered at Sydney, though he is said to have been born on board the sailing ship on the way out. Jacob Snr was offered work by a German who came to the ship looking for labour for his farm, but it was arduous work, turning a greenfeed cutter 16 hours a day, seven days a week. With the help of another man he obtained easier work, gradually moving into New South Wales where he found work to his liking, in the vineyards of the Macarthur Estate. Whilst there, the family increased, the births of Mary Catherine (Kate) in 1874 and Joseph in 1876 being registered at Camden. Jacob was a horticulturalist with wine-making skills which he used on the Estate and Elizabeth, whose ancestral family were said to have lived in a mansion in Europe, learnt the wine trade from her husband.

 In 1883 Jacob Mondel became a naturalised citizen and the following year, daughter Annie Mary was born and registered at Liverpool. There seems to have been a problem between Mondel and his employers at the Estate and there is a suggestion of a court case because Jacob ‘left too early’. As the family came to the Miranda area with some cuttings of ‘Isabella’ and ‘Muscatel’ grapes from the Estate. Perhaps this was part of the problem. Whatever the truth, Jacob was either discharged or left his job at the Estate at Camden and came to Miranda.³

 Prior to the job at the Macarthur Estate, the family travelled around and over those years some of the children of Jacob and Elizabeth married. Elizabeth’s marriage to Mathew Mayman was registered at Parramatta in 1887 and the births of their children were registered at several different places over the years. The Mayman family took up a Homestead Selection at Bangor in 1899.

 Adam married Ellen Pugh at Newtown in 1890 and children Ethel, Ida and Alfred were born in the 1890s in the same area. Kate married William Bourke at Kogarah in 1899 and Dora married Angelo Arditto at Burwood in 1906. A number of their children were born in that area. Annie never married.⁴

 When the family came to Miranda in 1893, Jacob Snr and his sons built a home on 12 acres across The Kingsway, then named Malvern Road, from the present site of the Sutherland District Hospital. There they established a vineyard and orchard, though the depression that developed in the 1890s made it difficult to make much progress. They had little money and the grapes were grown around stakes as they could not afford to run them on wire or trellis. The cuttings pruned off were thrown along the side of the paths worn through the vineyard and each morning Elizabeth Mondel would collect some of these ‘sticks’ to start the fire. If they were wet from dew or rain, she used them with paper to get her fire started.

When Jacob Senior died on 16 June 1895 aged 54, much of the responsibility for the farm fell on the older sons then at home, Jacob and Joseph, who were 23 and 19 respectively5. Father Jacob was buried in the Roman Catholic Section of Woronora Cemetery which had been formally gazetted as a General Cemetery on 2 April 1895, though interments had been taking place since 1 April 1893. Elizabeth, who always wore a floral bonnet tied under the chin with ribbon, continued to make wine, her grandson William recalled as a youngster being in a room with a number of big and small casks of liquid bubbling away as the wine fermented.6 The Mondels were not the only family producing wine in the Sutherland area as reported in a local paper in 1901– Mr. Stapleton’s vines have now reached their maturity and are fine flavoured. Mondel’s maintain their former prestige, while the newer vineyards are full of promise.⁷

 The following year on 13 September 1902, there was a very heavy late frost and the Mondel vineyard was lucky to escape the damage suffered by other farms in the Miranda area.⁸ The wine made could not legally be sold in bottles, so it was sold in demijohns of 2 gallon capacity which in 1910 sold for eight shillings, with grapes four pence a pound. The demijohns were fumigated by Elizabeth by cutting strips of hessian, dipping them in sulphur before lighting and dropping them in the jars. Each day, as the grape juice fermented, Elizabeth would scoop the scum from the top, while pouring in more juice from an enamel jug. When the fermentation ceased and the bubbles stopped, the jars would be plugged.⁹

There was little profit in their farm but the family enjoyed life in the area, walking everywhere. The horse bus from Miranda to Sutherland cost one shilling, which was too expensive to use unless absolutely necessary. There was not much opportunity to earn extra money, but when one appeared, the Mondels took advantage. Dora was a good knitter, making baby bootees as gifts for new babies. A Chinese man saw them and agreed to bring her wool and pay her for knitting the bootees which he then sold. Annie needed money to equip herself to go to Sydney for employment as a domestic servant. Brother Jacob, called Jake or Jack, acquired a contract for her to collect seed from the family’s African Box Thorn hedge and sell it to a seed merchant at five shillings a pound. As she was able to provide one pound a day, she was able to buy clothing and other items for her first job. The Mondel men liked to join in the cricket matches, even walking to Kogarah to participate on occasion. Jake was a noted cricketer and bowlers found it difficult to bowl him out. Adam was a skilled basket maker and he eventually moved to Western Australia. Joseph was the sort of man who liked to participate in community affairs and in February 1899 the St. George Advocate recorded that he was one of the organisers of a concert at the Congregational Church to benefit Mr. J. Paton Jnr. The following month the same newspaper reported that he had opened the debate on Women’s Suffrage at Miranda Improvement Society.¹⁰

In 1909 Joseph married Cecilia Talbot in a private house with a Methodist Minister officiating. Cecilia was a Methodist and the Mondels Catholic. There had apparently been a disagreement between Joseph and the Catholic church and, as his son, Harold, tells, ‘Father abandoned organised churches’. His mother’s farm was on Lots 87/89, part of the Holt Sutherland Estate,and Joseph leased five acres of land on Lot 98 owned by TS Holt on the south western corner of the Boulevarde and Taren Road. However, he continued to work on the family farm while building a shack for himself and his wife at Taren Road. It is highly likely that Joseph and Cecilia met at the dances held at the School of Arts which was then near the Sixways where Kiora Road, The Boulevarde and Port Hacking Road meet today at traffic lights. Joseph did maintenance on the old gas engine there and also acted as Master of Ceremonies at the dances.

 With the advent of World War I there was some discussion in the community about how long it might last. Joseph thought perhaps as long as 18 months and was laughed at by a group of men who thought it would be over in a few days. There was also concern about the ‘Germans’ in the community. The Mondel family came under scrutiny. Bill and Dorothy Mondel, the eldest children of Joseph and Cecilia, were subjected to harassment and their lunches stolen at school by a gang organised by three older girls. Joseph at that time had taken on the position of Librarian and Treasurer of the Miranda School of Arts after the resignation of Henry Luxton due to ill health in 1915. Hardly had he begun this job when a question was raised at a committee meeting in July regarding his ‘alien birth’. There were reports that some members would resign and others not join if Joseph did not withdraw from office. Fortunately Joseph was able to establish his non-German ancestry to the satisfaction of the meeting. Even German food names were changed, Cecilia on one occasion when asking for Pork Fritz, was told it was now Commonwealth sausage!

 Grandmother Elizabeth was very upset at the outbreak of war, probably remembering the traumas of her experiences in Europe. Late in 1915 she became ill and the prescribed treatment included some alcohol. This proved to be detrimental as she apparently had an allergy to alcohol, perhaps related to her wine-making years. Unfortunately Dr. O’Keefe was unable to reverse the effect. Elizabeth died on 6 December 1915 at the age of 71 being laid to rest with her husband at Woronora Cemetery. After her death the family decided to carry on the wine-making but their efforts resulted in vinegar and the production of wine was discontinued. Three years later the eldest son Jacob died on 8 March 1918 aged 45 years and he also was buried in the Roman Catholic Section at Woronora Cemetery.¹¹

 On his farm Joseph grew flowers for florists in Sydney – gladioli, stocks, godetia and violets. His children remember having to pick violet leaves in the rain and at night place them round violets. It was hard work for all the family for little return, especially during the depression days of the 1920s as they did not qualify for the dole because they had a farm. Joseph and Cecilia suffered the tragic loss of two daughters at this time. Dorothy was only aged seven years when she died in January 1920 in the Children’s Hospital from peritonitis following appendicitis. Baby Phyllis died in hospital a year later, aged 11 months.¹²

 A fierce hailstorm in 1930 made life more difficult, destroying and damaging local market gardens and killing many fowls who, frightened by the heavy hail on the roofs, ran out in the storm and were flattened.13 Bill worked in his father’s garden which supplied nine shops in Sydney with ‘bits and pieces’. Some of the shops started to close up and Joseph became a bit worried. Bill had grown a bed of about 800 tomatoes and they packed them into half-cases and carried them to the tramline which connected Sutherland and Cronulla, passing through Miranda. At Cronulla they sold them for 12 shillings a case and these funds tided the family over until Joseph was able to find some customers to replace those shops which had closed.¹⁴

 Bill, however, was artistic and in the depths of the Great Depression he would catch the 5pm bus to Sutherland, then the train to Technical College where he studied Drawing and Design to further his interest. Even this entailed working in the garden to earn enough money for his train and bus fares, and to buy a sheet of paper and a pencil. He could not afford to do painting. Later he had a job in the Botany Department of East Sydney Technical College, caring for their glasshouses, but painting was his hobby. He would miss lunch breaks to draw and often he walked from the train terminus at Cronulla to Boat Harbour to do water colours or drawings. He exhibited at various venues and at Easter Shows though he never thought of making a living at it.¹⁵

 In the 1920s Joseph and Cecilia’s house had two bedrooms, two verandahs and a bathroom. There was no electricity there for some years, though it came to Miranda about 1926 but not to their area until about 1946. They were the only family there until after World War II. Harold recalls Port Hacking Road in wet weather as being an impassable slippery clay surface. Marshall from the garage at Sutherland had a cable to reach half way along the patch to pull cars out. The family did not attend many social functions and rarely went to Cronulla. Harold and his brothers made tin canoes and paddled around Gwawley Bay amongst the mangroves and oysters. He was not a sports minded person but very bright, becoming dux of Miranda School in 1930, one of four children in that Mondel family to be recognised as the brightest at school, the others being his brother Steve who won his at Sutherland Intermediate High School and his two sisters, Edna and Una who also won them at Miranda School. Despite his brightness, Harold had sympathy with those who were caned for getting too many mistakes in the daily dictation test. He planned to steal the cane, waiting for a wet day so that he had an overcoat under which to conceal it, which he did after the headmaster had departed on the 4.20 pm tram. He joined the search party the following day, looking high and low unsuccessfully, as it was in the Mondel shed. Harold asserts that he never spoke of his deed to anyone as ‘the price of fame would have been certain death’.16

 Joseph and Cecilia may have been brought up in different religions, but the children were sent to Sunday School at Miranda Congregational Church, though Harold asserts they were ‘not keen’. His younger brother Bob on one occasion was ‘forced’ to go to Sunday School and was taunted by a boy saying that he was only there because the picnic was soon to be held. Bob knocked his accuser down the steps and never attended again.1⁷

 Harold made a kitchen garden when he left school, also working for Harry Atkins for five shillings a week and keep, caring for his poultry for a few months. He then minded a farm for Mr. McKearn while he was on holiday and worked a month or so for Carl Weeks at a garage in Cronulla but was mostly unemployed. During the 1930s Harry and Bob became involved in radio construction. The workers at Billy Mac’s pig farm opposite the Mondel’s bought an old radio set and the curious boys began checking how it worked which probably aroused Harold’s interest in that science.¹⁸

 In 1936 Joseph had pneumonia. His nephew, Jack Mayman, son of his sister Elizabeth, came to see him and the conflict over the different religions resurfaced when there was some argument about Father Dunlea, the hard-working Catholic Minister in the shire, being allowed in to see him. However, Joseph was then found to have Tuberculosis and was moved into the Prince Henry Auxiliary at Randwick, spending his last years there. Harry and Bill regularly peddled their bicycles (the only form of transport in the Mondel family) to see him on Sunday mornings. Joseph died there on 30 April 1939, aged 62. The local paper in May 1939 acknowledged his long association with the shire and his work for the community, including his assistance at almost every Shire and State election over the past 20 years.19

 The second World War broke out later that year and Harold went into the Army for a while. His brother Steve became a Flight Engineer in the Air Force, flying in Lancaster Bombers in the European sector on highly dangerous missions, earning the Distinguished Flying Medal. When the war ended Steve could have had a job with Qantas but chose to farm instead. Harry helped him establish his farm at Canoelands north of Sydney.20

 Harry himself, after his brief time in the army worked at Standard Telephone Cables for a few weeks and in 1941 obtained a job with Stromberg Carlson, testing telephone switch boards for the army. Together with his brother Bob, he went to a Morse Code Class run by Bob Waters in a shop in Surf Road, Cronulla to earn their Amateur Radio Operators Certificates. After the Japanese entered the war Harry became full-time at Stromberg Carlson, becoming involved with radar.

 Harry also wanted to obtain a First Class Operator’s Certificate with practical work included. It cost £60 which was very expensive so he read books and passed the theory and broadcast section of the practical examination. He then applied to the Marconi School which required him to do the full course, although he was well versed in most of its requirements. He visited the school when people could view the equipment and from that he learned how to do the final practical exam.21

After the war a carpenter uncle built two more rooms and an extra bathroom onto the Joseph Mondel family home but it was still the basic fibro house with an iron roof and the toilet ‘up the back’. They left it all behind when Cecilia sold out in the late 1950s for about £9,500.

 On 26 November 1949 Elizabeth Mayman nee Mondel died aged 84 years. Cecilia Mondel, widow of Joseph died on 7 July 1972 at age 85 years and was buried in the Methodist Section of Woronora Cemetery. Annie, sister to Joseph, was still living in the house on the corner of The Kingsway and Carrington Avenue until 1981 when she died on 26 July and was buried in the Roman Catholic Section at Woronora. In April the following year the house was demolished and the land sold. This was the final portion of lot 12a, which had been covered in acres of vineyards, 92 peach trees, various vegetables and some poultry, after the Mondel family established their family farm and vineyard in 1893.22

There were many stories associated with Annie Mondel. She was described as ‘bright’ and ‘intelligent’, ‘always well dressed when going to the city or church’ though that might be in ‘a tailored suit of a previous era’ and a ‘good shot’! If a dog got into her chickens, she would shoot it and deliver it back to the owner, and thieves after the eggs would be warned off with a gun! She was always happy to give a fresh egg to the young children being pushed past her fence in strollers by their mothers, though one mother was more concerned with the child breaking the egg and consequently hid it in the bushes somewhere to be collected on the way home. Around the area she was said to wear dresses made of ‘ticking’ (used for mattress covers), lisle stockings, men’s shoes without laces and a hat with a scarf tied under the chin, often adorned with cobwebs. It was usual for her to get good service at the butcher shop. She would walk in, hold up two fingers and the butcher would wrap up two lamb chops for which she would place some money on the counter, though it was said to be less than the chops were worth.23 Another long resident met her in a bank on one occasion and her voice was quite loud, so the other customers gathered round to hear her talk about earlier days, her protection of her property with a gun and her boyfriend going off to World War I to be killed.24 She assured others that she had been ready to fire on the Japanese if they had invaded. It was said she worked for a Judge and that years later she had still been able to prepare a ten course meal. As she aged the nurses in the new hospital would take her across the road and attend to her. Shortly before she died she was found collapsed on the road with thistles for the birds in her hand, and was taken unconscious to hospital in a passing car. Annie died in 1981 aged 96 years.25

 And so the death of Annie Mondel ended an era for the fourth generation Mondels in the Shire, a family who had worked hard all their lives and contributed much to the area where they made their homes.

 MERLE KAVANAGH

 First published in  Sutherland Shire, Some Early Residents, 2006, by Botany Bay Family History Society. Compiled by Maree McKinley and Sue Hewitt.    

Click on the name MONDEL, Jacob at the heading of this story. You will be taken to the database entry for Jacob Mondel and his family.

 Endnotes:

1.NSW BDM 1892 6982

2.Miranda Literary Institute Record of Proceedings July 1915. (LSC at SSL); Interview with William Mondel 5 Sept 1994 (LSC at SSL) SSHS Bulletin No.59, Feb. 1987, p.260

3.ibid.; NSW BDM Index 1872 1246, 1874 9010, 1876 9496, 1884 17921

4. NSW BDM Index 1887 4491, 1890 5598, 1899 6016 and 1906 6873; SSHS Bulletin No. 70 Nov 1989 p.492

5. Interview with Harold Mondel 10 Aug 1994; NSW BDM Index 1890 5598, 1895 6982 (entry ‘James’); SSHS Bulletin, No. 21, p.74

6. Michael Boyd, Woronora Cemetery and Crematorium 1895 – 1995, Woronora General Cemetery and Crematorium Trust, Sutherland 1995, p.1; Index to Burials, Woronora Cemetery; SSHS Bulletin, No. 59, Feb 1987, p.262; William Mondel interview

7. St. George Advocate, 9 Feb 1901, ‘Sutherland’ (From our Correspondent)

8.SSHS Bulletin No. 66, Nov 1988, p398

9. SSHS Bulletin No. 59, Feb 1987, p262

10. ibid; St. George Advocate, 25 Feb 1899, p3 and 18 Mar 1899, p3; Sutherland Shire Rate Books 1907, A Riding

11. William Mondel interview; Index to Burials Woronora Cemetery;SSHS Bulletin No. 59 Feb 1987 p.262; NSW BDM Index, 1918 3941

12. Harold Mondel interview; NSW BDM Index 1920 3180, 4804 1921

13. Harold Mondel interview

14. William Mondel interview

15. ibid.

16. Harold Mondel interview

17. ibid.

18. ibid.

19. ibid.; William Mondel Interview; SSHS Bulletin Vol.1 No. 27 p666

20. Harold Mondel interview

21. ibid.

22. Woronora Cemetery Burial Records; Pictorial News 6 Apr 1982, p2,

23. Interview with Osmond, Pullen, Dodds and Levy, 5 Aug 1993

24. Interview with Bruce Ballintyne, 17 Apr 1997

25. Osmond, Pullen, Dodds and Levy interview