Lives in Cricket No 4 - Ernie Jones

Chapter One Early Life: 1869-1892 Ernest Jones, born at Auburn, a small country town about 70 miles from Adelaide, in the mid-north of South Australia on 30 September 1869, the third son (and seventh child) of Joseph and Mary Jones née Williams, had no family background in cricket. What he did inherit was strength. His Welsh-born father was a stonemason who travelled to Australia from Calcoed, Flintshire, in 1855 and constructed many buildings in the northern areas of the colony, including the chimney stack at the Burra copper mines, the Catholic church at Saddleworth, and the Rising Sun Hotel in Auburn where the writer C.J.Dennis, author of The Sentimental Bloke , was born. Ernest – more generally known as Ernie or by his nickname ‘Jonah’ – continued to live in the mid-north until the late 1880s. He was educated at the Auburn and Gladstone public schools, where he began to play cricket, before beginning general labouring work for a medical practitioner, Dr Parkinson, in Crystal Brook. The doctor 7 Homestead. ‘Llaneast’, the cottage in Auburn, S.A., where Ernie Jones was born, was built by his father Joseph, and is today protected by Australia’s National Trust.