General meeting and AGM

Brenton Lush gave a fascinating account of his family's connection with Inman Valley through the generations.

Great great grandfather John was born in England in 1807, arrived in SA in 1838 and settled in Inman Valley in 1843. At Inman Valley he grazed sheep and cropped wheat and barley. His wife Martha kept the farm going on the occasions when John walked to Adelaide to sing at concerts and paint portraits.

Great grandfather James Arthur was the fifth of eight children and his siblings were among the first to move away. He had no formal education bar a small number of lessons but he was self educated as he was a poet and lay Methodist preacher. He was a shepherd when there weren’t fences so sheep were penned at night and James slept in a watch box.

Grandfather Hartley was born in 1896, the seventh of eleven children, and worked at grazing, wattle bark production, rabbiting, and shearing with his brothers. As a returned soldier he bought acreage using low interest loans under the government scheme. His grandmother had a small herd of cows and the milk went to raising pigs.

His father Adrian was the inaugural chairman of the Yankalilla & District Historical Society in 1977. He received life membership in 1989. He died in 2011. His book ‘Gentleman John the Lush Family History’, 2001 received an award for the best family history of the year by the SA Genealogy and Heraldry Society. He compiled ‘The Inman Valley Story’ for the Methodist church centenary and rural school celebrations, concluding 116 years of education in the district in 1971. Brenton continues to run the highly successful Corriedale Hills sheep stud with his wife Jo and three children.