Tuesday, 05 August
8.00pm
From the Logie award-winning team who brought us Dynasties, Family Fortunes is a four-part half-hour series that explores how dramatic reversals in fortune - for better or worse - have affected Australia's most interesting families.
Family Fortunes is a rare opportunity for viewers to enter the private homes of four families, as they reveal for the first time on television the intimate details of their history. In this new series, family members candidly discuss the unexpected incidents that have dramatically affected them - affairs, illness, car accidents, death and unjust wills - and the profound repercussions of these events. Each shares their unique perspectives, with great honesty and often great emotion.
Episode Four: The Manifolds
From the English county of Cheshire, the three Manifold brothers packed their bags in the 1820s to try their luck in the colonies. In 1838, the gamble paid off. The brothers were amongst the first pioneers to ride into the rich pastoral country of the western district of Victoria. They immediately laid claim to all they could see, bringing the family unparalleled wealth and status.
Two generations and decades later, Ed and Robert Manifold now hold title to the huge family estate, which was decided by the toss of a coin. One brother would get the magnificent homestead and the other the lion's share of the land. Ed won the toss and got the home. His brother Robert got the land.
But the life that Ed and his family now lead has proved vastly different to that of previous generations. With far less land and tumbling wool prices, times have become pretty tough. This film offers an intimate, inside look at what life on a grand colonial estate now offers. The servants, staff and estate labour have long gone. Instead, we join Ed and his wife Marion as they shoulder the burden of their beloved home between themselves. We witness the grinding routine of maintaining thirty rooms; their efforts to raise money to cover the basic costs of upkeep and repair; and how the family is now left pondering the future of their propertied inheritance.