Lal Lal

Yendon, Victoria

Archibald Fisken was eleven when he arrived in Victoria from Scotland with his parents and uncle and aunt in the 1830s. Young Archibald’s father, also Archibald, brought a prefabricated iron house and 40 casks of oatmeal with him. He built the house at the top of Lonsdale Street.

Archibald’s uncle, Peter Inglis, didn’t stay in Melbourne instead choosing to settle on a property he called Ingliston at Ballan on the Werribee River. Young Archibald went to live with his uncle and aunt and was tutored on the property. At the age of 19 Archibald was put in charge of the property which stretched all the way to Ballarat with what would become the Lal Lal property forming part of it.

Archibald was thirty before he married, a sixteen year old named Charlotte McNamara from Sydney. A competent farmer by now his uncle gave him Lal Lal providing he never put his name on a promissory note. They lived in a small stone house on a lower section of the property.

Archibald and Charlotte had a son they called Archibald James who also worked on the property. He married May Wanliss and it was Archibald James and May who built the present homestead in 1911. The homestead overlooked a magnificent lake that had been dammed on the Lal Lal Creek in 1847 to supply water for the farm. Lal Lal is an aboriginal name for water.

They had one child who was called Archibald Clyde Wanliss Fisken. He married Elspeth Cameron from Tasmania and they had 4 children. The first being name Archibald John.

Archibald Clyde was educated at Geelong Grammar, then went to England and joined the Royal Artillery in World War I and awarded a Military Cross for bravery in France. He became the federal member for Ballarat and served one term. He was chairman of the Australian Meat Board for ten years and served on Buninyong Shire Council and died in 1970

Archibald John met Patricia Falkiner and married in Melbourne in 1951 and lived at Lal Lal, they had four children David, Rena, Geoff and Anita. John managed the property until his death in 1989.

John and Patricia’s son Geoff now runs the property. He and his wife Susie now live in the homestead with their three children Sam, Emily and Anna.

Lal Lal homestead is an Edwardian double brick and faces south. The sixteen room house has a bedroom wing and a service wing.

The rambling gardens are the result of a succession of dedicated Fiskens. The main structure of the garden was established around 1911 and there are magnificent matures trees including a redwood, weeping elms, maples and palms which were planted over 100 years ago. There are lots of roses, philadelphus and rhododendrons. Archibald John before dying, had wanted the garden to join the lake so after his death Patricia built a low stone ha-ha wall to the lake. Granite has been quarried from the property to create the network of paths and stone walls.

The property runs cattle and 13,000 merino sheep and grows cereal and oilseed crops. The property covers 5,000 acres or in today’s terms 2025 hectares.