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OUR STORY: MUMFORD | 25

Mumford Family

LOCATION: Redhill and Kangaroo Island
FARMING SINCE: 1849
OPERATION: Cropping, livestock breeding and trading

BY KIARA STACEY the early 1900s, before they bought their own
farm at Port Victoria.
ORE than 400 kilometres and a stretch There, they cropped and ran livestock,
of water separate the farmland owned including breeding draught horses.
Mby the Mumford family but there is Mary said Evan also ran a butcher from the
plenty to connect them. farm and would row out to the ketches - small,
Brothers Sam and Ben Mumford, and their two-masted sail boats - for their meat orders
wives, Helen and Bronwyn, each have their own and to supply food and water.
operation and trading names, but are in contact “He would make and pack wooden crates of
nearly every day to make their businesses work. meat with salt for preservation for the ships,”
Sam and Helen live and farm on Kangaroo she said.
Island, at Parndana, with their three sons Jack, A position vacant notice in the paper for the
Nick and Josh. butcher resulted in Evan’s son Walter meeting
Ben and Bronwyn also have land on KI, in and then marrying Lettie Chase, Clarendon.
some parts neighbouring Sam and Helen, but While Evan went on to settle at Georgetown,
have their base in the Mid North at Redhill, with it was the turn of Walter and Lettie to find their
their three sons, Charlie, Lachie and David. place, first at Urania, south of Maitland, then the
The family have a goal of growth and 445-hectare Broughton Park, Redhill, in 1924.
employing best practice, which is a message “When Walter and family came from Urania,
they learnt from their father Ron Mumford, and the new owners of the Urania farmer actually
he, in turn, learned from his ancestors. mortgaged it from them,” Ben said.
The family’s farming history in South Australia “At this time it was during the Depression and
stretches back to James Mumford, who arrived they ended up walking off the farm.
in Adelaide from England in 1849, before “The eldest son Leslie Charles, my uncle
working as a farmer. Charlie, when he was old enough, married and
According to family historian, and sister to Ben went back down to the original farm at Urania.”
and Sam, Mary Mumford, Port Pirie, James Walter and Lettie began their expansion of
originally had land at South Richmond and the property for their five children, with sons
Hilton, just outside the city, before he moved to Ron and Colin working alongside Walter for 20
the Yorke Peninsula, to Koolywurtie, to take up years.
his land credit selection. When Ron was 40, he married Valma Philbey,
While his son Harry remained on that property, a nurse at the Crystal Brook hospital.
another son, Evan, needed to find his own way, Valma had grown up at Alford, on her family’s
farming near Minlaton with wife Maria Cook in broadacre cropping and sheep farm.

Walter Mumford was the first in the family to settle
at Redhill. Picture supplied Brothers Ron, Colin and Charlie Mumford worked together on the farm. Picture supplied