A photograph of the Stephens family preparing to milk their cows in Drouin.
John Stephens is captured on the far left alongside his four youngest daughters, Elizabeth, Beatrice, Eliza and Henrietta, undertaking the work of dairymaids.
They stand next to their cows with milk pails in hand.
In the background is a bark slab hut.
John arrived in the district around 1885 and purchased a 164-acre property in Greenshields Rd. He named it "Rose Banks".
He was born in St Agnes, Cornwall around 1848.
In the 1861 census for St Agnes, John was 13-years-old, living at home and working in the mines as a copper dresser. His father had been a copper miner but died just a year earlier at the age of 38.
A copper dresser, from an extract used in the census, was a person who dresses - either by hand or machine - ore sent out from the mine, rejecting waste material and selection that which is valuable.
If two or more minerals were present, the job also entailed separating them - generally by hand - before the ore was dealt with by jigs, vanners and revolving tables.
John emigrated to Australia on the ship "Great Britain" at 20-years-old, arriving in 1868.
Soon after his arrival, he went to the goldfields around the Bendigo area. It was said that nearly half of the population at that time were Cornish miners.
John married Frances Agnes Mann, who was also Cornish by birth, in Clunes in 1870.
Frances had arrived in Australia in 1858 with her mother and sister. They travelled to Clunes to join up with her father who had arrived two years earlier.
John and Sarah stayed in Clunes for the next 15 years and had five children. They moved to Drouin in 1885, where two daughters were born.
Frances died in Drouin in 1919 at the age of 68 and John in 1929 at the age of 81.
In his will, he left sums of money for his older children but the farm and bulk of the estate was left to his daughters Agnes, Beatrice and Elizabeth who were all still living at home.
It was left to their discretion if they retained the property or sold it.
In 1931, they moved into a house in South Rd, Drouin, leasing out the farm.
In 1936 or 1937, after the deaths of Agnes and Elizabeth, 84 acres was sold off and the remaining 80 acres was leased out.
Beatrice continued to live in Drouin until her death in 1972, living her entire 85 years in the district.
Photograph and information courtesy of the Drouin History Group.
For further information about the group, visit drouinhistorygroup.org.au