Hello again Anne, Thanks for your reply to my post, re the snake perhaps it may have been a copperhead mistaken for a death adder, they are a quiet sort of a snake will just lie there while you walk over or past them, I remember them from the days when I did a bit of apple picking in Stanley many years ago. "Rosehill"? roses must have been popular in the early days of settlement, fairly easy to transport and propagate,and handled the climate fairly well , also they were probably a memory of "Home".The Nankervis property at Wooragee " was originally "Rosebank"probably from when Graham and Wilson built the stone house in the 1860,s. Anne somewhere in the Beechworth papers there is the story of the gruesome murder in what I think was a wine shanty or similar at Wooragee,seems that on occasions when the "Boss" was away his wife had a gentleman friend who came and "helped out". Unfortunately the "Boss" arrived home without prior notice of his coming and found a situation a little more than friendly, as a result he was murdered, chopped up with a tomahawk, and cremated in his own fireplace. Edgar Passey ,I think, has a reference to it in one of his more recent books. A good friend had the story and was going to give me a copy, unfortunately as with so many of my "mates" she is no longer with us to dabble in history. Back to the roses they were responsible for the sweet briars that infested the Wooragee valley right up to the 1940,s when 2 4 D became available, apparently they came from the rootstocks used to propagate the roses. Regards Alan French