John Dight III was fifth child and first son of John Dight II and Hannah Hilton.
JOHN DIGHT II was born in England on 24.3.1772 to John Dight (died 1790) and Martha Burrows who were married on the 2nd September 1761. Told to take a sea journey due to his own ill health, John Dight II came to NSW as Surgeon of the ship Earl Cornwallis sailing for 206 days from London in November 1800 arriving in Sydney Cove on 12 June 1801. He brought with him his wife Hannah Hilton (8.11.1781 – 27.5.1862) and infant daughter, Sarah (born March 1800).
After the floods of 1806 when Hannah and John II moved to Parramatta while their new house was being built, JOHN THOMAS DIGHT III was born in 1808 near the Hawkesbury River.
In a letter by his father to a friend in England, John Dight II says ”he was sending his eldest son into a foundry, as he thought he would thus get the most valuable training for life in a new country. This and the practical experience he gained at his father’s flour mill at Campbelltown stood the young man in good stead when a few years later he went with his brother to Port Phillip and built the first mill on the Yarra”.
The Medical Journal of Australia, October 13th, 1934, p. 477
In his late teens, John Dight III was sent into an apprenticeship to Mr Smith, a Millwright in Sydney and later to the flour-mill his father acquired at Campbelltown.
It was whilst in Campbelltown that he met and married ISABELLA (née Mitchell) on 27th August 1832 and took up 44,500 acres of land in 1837 west of Albury known today as Bungowannah and Jindera or Dight’s Forest. Bungowannah (a Woradgery word meaning “a creek from the overflow of a river in flood” was only eighteen miles from Elizabeth Mitchell. They also took up 86 acres on the Yarra River in 1839.
The residents of early Melbourne had to rely on all their supplies coming across from Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania), it being closer than Sydney, including flour. In fact residents were often without bread and flour, despite the fact that some of the early settlers made their own flour. John Dight III realised if he had a flour mill erected he could become Melbourne’s first commercial flour miller.
He chose a spot on the bank of the Yarra River (now known as Dight’s Falls) a few miles from Melbourne and employed a millwright from Sydney to erect his mill and to cut a stone race for waterpower. However, milling operations upon the completion of the mill, were dependent on the level of the water in the Yarra and when this dropped the mill was unable to operate. John Dight Jnr ordered a steam mill to be shipped from England which was unfortunately lost at sea. Undaunted, he ordered another but by the time it arrived the depression of the early 1840’s had hit Melbourne and Dight found he could not make the mill a paying proposition.
This property included what is known today as the Collingwood Football Oval. It was purchased in 1839 for 481 pounds and sold in 1879 for 21,924 pounds. After the mill suffered many misfortunes, John moved to Albury. Isabella and John spent most of their married life at Bungowannah and it is not known how many years they spent in Melbourne, however it is known that they owned two residences in Collingwood. One was called “Yarra House” which is now the site of the Dunlop Rubber Company and the other was called “Campbellfield” and stood near the falls.
John and Isabella had five sons and nine daughters. Their second son, Charles, managed “Bungowannah” for some time and was a well known member of the Albury community. There is a memorial dedicated to him in the Albury Botanical Gardens.
Hamilton Hume was a friend of the Mitchell and Dight families and married John’s sister Elizabeth. It seems that Hume and Hovel’s discovery of the Murray River and their trek to Port Phillip Bay influenced the Dights, Huons and Mitchells to take up land in the south.
The twelve children of John Dight III and Isabella:
Jane Elizabeth (1833 – 27.11.1926 who in 1859 married Henry Scott)
Emma Ann (23.8.1835 – ? who in 1851 married Peter Stuckey)
Mary Frances (23.8.1837 – 28.5.1927 who in 1858 married EDWARD GEORGE HARRISON)
John Thomas (born 1839 – died 3.9.1878)
Charles Hilton (31.1.1841 – 17.12.1913 who in 1869 married Emma Dight)
Sophia Louise (3.10.1843 – 28.12.1923 who in 1862 married Curtis Reid)
William George (12.9.1845 – 9.6.1890)
Isabella Dight (1848 – 7.10.1896 who in 1869 married John Dight Mackay)
Frederick Edward (1850 – 28.3.1882)
Alice (1851 – 9.7.1928)
Eva Susan (died 19.6.1928)
Amy Huon (3.5.1855 – 12.1.1924 who in 1880 married John Watson)
Arthur Mitchell (1858 – 17.12.1868)
Florence Sophie (1861 – 1.2.1865)
At the age of 21 on the 18th March 1858,
married