The Cumming Family of Victoria

This website is an attempt to document the history of the Cumming family who are descended from John and Anne (nee Forrest) Cumming who arrived in Hobart in 1833, from Aberdeen, Scotland. Their four sons are located on the above task bar and from there it is possible to navigate to their descendants.

John Cumming was a builder by trade ultimately settling in Geelong in 1844, where he established the Cumming Brewery. His business flourished so much so that by 1857 he had purchased 110,000 acres of sheep runs around Darlington, which was then known as Elephant Bridge or Taylor's River, in the western district of Victoria. These properties consisted of Stony Point (15,573 acres, purchased 1849), Mount Fyans (48,000 acres, purchased 1856) and Terinallum (47,300 acres, purchased 1857). In 1857, he sold his brewery to Captain James Volum, which became the Volum Brewery, then later taken over and closed by the Ballarat Brewery in 1953.

John Cumming died in 1858 at the age of 62. In a remarkable life he had travelled across the world to seek his fortune, lost all his possessions twice and amassed a fortune big enough to set up what could have been a great pastoral dynasty.

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John and Anne Cumming's house at 70 Bellarine Street in Geelong in 2015. It is now used as medical rooms

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The grave of John and Anne Cumming in the Eastern Cemetery in Geelong. It is hard to make out but on John's it says that 'he was a colonist of Victoria for over twenty years.'

This is the facade of the Cumming brewery established by John Cumming in 1845. The Victorian Heritage Database notes that, "The former malthouse of John Cumming's Brewery (later Volum Brewery) was erected by Cummins in 1851. The brewery which had been established in Geelong in `845, is reputedly the oldest brewery in Australia still operating on the same site. Charles Laing, architect, called tenders for the original malthouse I March 1851m having designed this structure of squared coursed basalt in the Colonial Georgian style. John Cumming later sold to James Volum and his family, who were associated with the brewery until 1953. The former malthouse is one of the oldest industrial buildings in Geelong and still closely associated with its original function, although reduced in height and stripped of internal fittings."