“MISS one payment and I will foreclose,” Mr Graham intoned as Edith Emily Hitchings signed the contract to buy his farm in 1928.
Ever since then, the Hitchings family has been working that farm, a section of the original Powlett subdivision a couple of kilometres north of Wonthaggi. Edith named the farm Avonhurst in memory of the river she had left behind in England.
When the Great Depression hit in 1929, the family had to do whatever it took to keep the farm. Rather than spend hard-earned money they were forced to make do with whatever was at hand, mostly the family’s sweat and tears.