sketcher, architect, builder and surveyor, son of Joseph Ablett Pettit, a builder of Ipswich, England, set sail for Victoria as an intermediate passenger in the Atrevida on 12 September 1852, accompanied by his wife Elizabeth Ann, née Taylor, whom he had married at Norwich. They had no children. Pettit described the voyage in the form of a continuous letter to his father, which included quick sketches of ports visited en route and concluded on arrival at Melbourne on 6 December 1852. He and a fellow-passenger, Robert Taylor, set out almost at once for the goldfields. They were issued with mining licences in January 1853 and spent about six months prospecting without success. Pettit described life on the goldfields in a series of letters that incorporate diagrams of mining equipment and sketches of a primitive hut, possibly his and Taylor’s temporary abode.
By October 1853 he was at Prahran, Melbourne, styling himself 'Jno. H.W. Pettit, Architect’ and writing to his father: 'Building is the Business to make money at here’. The following month he was at 'Oakleigh in the Dandenong Ranges’, intending to set up as a builder. This project came to nothing; in March 1854 he complained to his father that he and Taylor had been left in the lurch by a 'Yankee’ carpenter. In April 1855 Pettit was appointed superintendent of works for government roads and bridges in the Gippsland region; in September 1856 he became assistant surveyor for the district. Briefly in an architectural partnership with George Hastings in 1856, the firm designed the Early English wooden drop slab Christ Church of England at Tarraville, Alberton Shire, believed to be the first church in Gippsland and now the second oldest wooden church in Victoria. Pettit then established himself at Sale (Gippsland) as an architect, builder and surveyor, designing Clyde Bank and calling tenders for a hotel later that year. He practised there until his death on 26 June 1895.
Pettit’s letters home continued to be enlivened by sketches dotted throughout the text, mostly crude and apparently quickly executed. Some, indeed, were mere diagrams of some building nicety for his father’s edification. A more finished sketch of a ringtail possum drawn on a separate sheet shows more expertise and sensitivity (Mitchell Library).
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
