Pioneer farmer · Currency Creek, Lake Alexandrina & Laura, South Australia
In 1872 John Cox trekked with his family of six children and a reaping machine 150 miles north to the new wheat country around Laura, when Laura, as Fanny later recalled, was not yet on the map.Fanny Rieck, née Cox · recollections recorded 1929 · Southern Argus, 17 October 1929 ↗
This Family Line
A pioneer farming family who arrived in South Australia on the S.S. Susannah in 1849 and spent the next quarter-century moving steadily north and inland — from Yankalilla to Currency Creek to the Lake Alexandrina hills, and finally to Laura. Their youngest daughter Fanny would go on to marry Hermann Rieck and spend nine years cycling through Europe.
The full story of John Cox and his family — from the voyage on the S.S. Susannah to the pioneer years at Currency Creek and the long trek to Laura.
○ In preparation The Research ReportThe research establishing the Cox family origins — including the marriage certificate of John Cox and Elizabeth Lloyd, family connections traced through Fanny’s letters, and research by a previous generation that the family had not previously located.
○ In preparation Fanny & Hermann · The Travel YearsNine years of travel through Europe — Ceylon, Italy, Austria, England, Wales, France, Switzerland, Germany, and the Riviera — recorded in letters to the Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 1899–1908.
● Available now Fanny & Hermann · The Later YearsThe return to Europe in 1913, detention in Bavaria during the First World War, Hermann’s death in 1921, and Fanny’s long journey home alone — in Fanny’s own words.
● Available nowThe Six Children
When John Cox arrived in South Australia on the S.S. Susannah in 1849, the colony was not yet a decade old. He went first to Yankalilla on a cattle station, learning what his youngest daughter would later call “colonial experience.” From there he moved to a place called Burgher’s, where he started cattle breeding — until the stock escaped into the Tiers Mountains and went wild. In 1851 he bought land in the hills overlooking Lake Alexandrina, and there the family farmed wheat, tended an orchard, and planted a vineyard, selling their produce to the mills at Middleton and Goolwa.
The land was poor and worked out. He tried sheep, but wool fetched only two and a half pence to three pence a pound. So in 1872, John Cox loaded his family — six children and a reaping machine — and trekked 150 miles north to the new wheat country around Laura. His youngest daughter Fanny was twelve years old. She would remember that journey, and that landscape, for the rest of her life.