|
Peruvian wreck |
|
Vanishing Types –
squatter, shepherd and shearer |
|
The Genesis of Toowoomba –
the old Toll Bar Road |
|
Pioneer and Peer |
|
Mount Lindesay – early
ascents |
|
Gold Coast early history -
Wongawallan |
TRAGEDIES OF THE SEA
AUGUST 4, 1907
The whole east Coast of Australia,
from Cape Wilson to Thursday Island is strewn with the
wreckage of ships lost from time to time over a hundred years.
One of the saddest wrecks was that of the steamship,
Gothenburg, lost off Bowen, on February 24, 1875.
She left Port Darwin for Melbourne on the 14th
with 88 passengers and a crew of 38, reaching Somerset via
Albany Pass, on the 19th. The passengers went
ashore and bought a lot of pearlshell. A strong wind arose,
and the steamer lost two of her anchors. If she had not steam
up, she would have gone ashore.
Two passengers, the Hon. T Reynolds and Mr. Shoebridge,
were nearly left behind. It would have been well for them if
they had remained on shore. They had the weather to Cape
Cleveland, and then there were strong winds and rain squalls.
At half past six in the evening of the 24th,
with full steam on, and forward topsail, and a running sea,
the Gothenburg struck on the Barrier Reef east of Port
Denison, near Holborne Island. The engines were kept going
astern, until near daylight, when the boats were lowered
during a heavy thunderstorm, when those on deck could only see
those in the boats during a flash of lightning. The ship keeling
over prevented any use of the starboard boats.
Shortly after daybreak, the seas broke over her and
swept the passengers from the deck, Mr. Justice Wearing of
West Australia, being one of the first to go. The French
Consul came up with all his money under his arm, and said he
would go on the masthead, but a sea washed over him and swept
him off. There were about 80 people in the boast at the time
the heavy seas came, and then both the boats capsized. Five
men and a woman got on one of the keels and a wave took the
woman off and drowned her. One wave washed a child from the
arms of her mother when she was standing on deck holding on to
a rope. By twos and threes the doomed men and women were swept
by those remorseless seas, and drowned before the eyes of the
others, who were waiting for their own fate.
One witness in the subsequent inquiry said: “There were
only 12 of the crew and 10 of the passengers saved. All the
officers and stewards were drowned. It was astoundingly
frightful to see men, women, and children drowning before your
eyes, and you powerless to help them. Both men and women met
death fearlessly. There was not a murmur from any person on
board. When they were struggling in the water, they were
bidding each other goodbye as if only parting for a short
time. Ah heaven! The pathetic tragedy of all that dreadful
scene of drowning mortals in the wild waste of storm tossed
remorseless waters, their requiem the roar of the breakers and
the howling of the spectral winds,
Then
rose from sea to sky the wild farewell;
Then
shrieked the timid and stood still the brave
And some
leaped overboard with dreadful yell,
As eager
to anticipate their grave,
And the
sea yawned round her like a hell.
Ah, yes,
it is the picture of all shipwrecks since the days when the
first ships were built.
Four men who were washed adrift in that first boat
landed at Holborne Island, and then the boat was smashed on
the rocks. The men who tied themselves to the mast remained
there for 24 hours. A few were in the main rigging. One
witness said that Captain Pearce and his chief officer were on
duty on the bridge until both were washed off.
And when all was over, the death toll gave the list of
the lost at 105
The steamer Bunyip came from Townsville and brought
Putwain, the diver, to recover the box with 2500 ozs of gold.
That was apparently the first consideration.
On nearing the wreck, the body of a man suddenly rose
to the surface, naked but for a linen waist belt full of bank
notes reduced to a pulp.
One of the boats going over to Holborne Island passed
another naked body of a man with thick curly hair, but all
these bodies were allowed to drift, as there was too much
anxiety concerning the living. It seems remarkable that these
naked bodies were not taken by sharks.
The survivors were all taken to Bowen, whose citizens
kindly collected £52, of which £32 was given to 12 survivors,
who left with Captain Lake on the Victoria for Sydney. They
all got free passages from McMeckan, Blackwood, and Co., the
owners of the Gothenburg.
A couple of days after the wreck a mob of blacks were
seen camped at the mouth of the Don waiting for cargo to be
washed ashore. The wreck had been signaled by blacks from one
island to another, and thence to the mainland. They told a
white man that “Plenty blanket come up directly!.” It appears,
however, that none of the cargo came ashore on the mainland,
so the myalls waited in vain for their blankets.
Some gruesome sights were seen by Diver Putwain when he
went down into the cabin of the doomed vessel. Just inside the
cabin door were two dead women standing with their arms around
each other, their long hair floating around their faces like
the filament of seaweed, their disengaged arms rising and
falling in the disquisitions of the sea, as if they were
warning the diver against intruding there against the
sanctitude and solitude of their final resting place.
Lying in a berth were two drowned men who had evidently
never awakened to their awful fate, and the tragic and
melancholy scene so mesmerized Putwain that at first he took a few
minutes to recover from his resolution to reenter the death
chamber, around and over which rolled the green waves of that
peaceful and treacherous ocean.
Many strange fishes swam around him, and outside the
vessel huge sharks circled coming within a yard of his helmet.
He found the box with the gold in it and the Bunyip
conveyed it to Sydney.
SQUATTER, SHEPHERD, SHEARER.
Let us
call up pictures of the old and new, squatters, shepherds and
shearers, just to see how they look, and lead off with the
squatter.
All types are familiar to me, from today back to when I
was ten years of age, and a good memory bridges the whole
intervening space between the old time squatter, wearing
moleskin trousers, Crimean shirt, cabbage tree hat, and
blucher boots, living on a uniform diet of salt beef and
damper, with a packhorse and a blackboy and a couple of spare
horses, his saddle for a pillow at night, in wild unknown
country, lullabyed by the howl of the dingo and the mournful
whistle of the stone plover; the drays following with stores
that might be six months on the road, facing floods and
droughts, and fires, and hostile blacks, and lost stock, and
all other ills that are cheerfully borne by the brave man who
looks sternly at fate, and denies it to do its worst.
They were real men, the best of those old pioneers,
whose memories are not sufficiently revered, because the work
they did has no hope of ever being fully understood. It has
been my lot to see a number of those old squatters pass
through the stages, from the bark hut and the beef and damper
stage, to the fine house, a conservatory, a motor car, or
carriage and pair. It was just the same, genial, sincere,
cheerful, hospitable, personality, proud of his past
achievements, and in parts ashamed of his unpretentious past.
But the pomp and circumstance, the glory and the splendour,
the lace and the trimmings, of the sons and daughters, would
have made the Great Mogul give up his palace, and hide his
distinguished head, so as to be out of the hopeless
competition.
Amazing deeds were done by those early squatters,
incredible to a majority of the present day; but we have to
remember that splendid pioneering work is still being done on
Australia’s north and north-west frontiers, where many
pioneers have still to face hard lives and hard work far from
the advantages of civilization.
The majority of the early squatters were men of good
families, many well educated, of fine physique, and fired with
a fearless spirit of adventure. The explorers were the first
of the pioneers, and the squatters went out on their tracks,
with copies of their charts, or following their barked-tree
lines.
New South Wales squatters followed the routes of
Leichhardt, and Mitchell, and Cunningham, immediately their
reports were published.
Patrick Leslie followed Cunningham’s track to the
Darling Downs, and took up Toolburra station, where he arrived
on March 20, 1840 – the first station occupied in Queensland.
His brother Walter followed, with 5600 sheep, 10 saddle
horses, 2 bullock teams and drays, and a team of horses and
dray. The men employed were 22 ticket of leave convicts, said
by Leslie, in a letter of 1878, to be “good and game men as
ever existed, and equal to any 40 I have ever seen since.”
Only one servant accompanied him on his pioneering
trip, a life-sentence prisoner named Murphy, sent out in the
Countess of Harcourt from Dublin in 1837. He gave such
splendid and loyal service to Leslie that Governor Gipps
granted him an unconditional pardon. The old Hibernian warrior
finally died in Charters Towers on April 6, 1878, aged 76. His
name is borne by Murphy’s Creek, a railway station at the foot
of the Main Range, on the overland line, a few miles from
Toowoomba. The blacks called that creek “Tamammareen,” scene
of the burnt fishing nets.
When Leslie was returning to Sydney, where his friends
had given him up for lost, and he was mourned by Kate
Macarthur, to whom he was engaged, he met Dr. Dobie, somewhere
in New England, on his way out on Cunningham’s track, but in
search of a way to the Clarence River, where he was the first
squatter – there being only a few cedar-getters on that river
in 1840, mostly ticket-of-leave men or time-expired prisoners,
who had gone around by whaleboats or cutters from Illawarra or
Port Macquarie.
The first squatters on the Lower Clarence were the
Smalls, John and George, Thomas and William, cousins from an
old Kissing Point family on the Parramatta; the Devlins and
James Sweeney.
How Dr. Dobie and his men and stock ever got down from
New England to the open country on the Clarence, in those days
of no tracks or roads, or even blazed tree lines, is a serious
conundrum.
And think
of the men who cheerfully went far west and far north, into
absolutely unknown country with hundreds of wild and hostile
blacks in all directions; men who went out on to the Murray,
the Darling, the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee, the Bogan, Namoi,
Gwydir, Severn, and McIntyre; far west to the Maranoa, the
Warrego, and Paroo; and north to the Mary, Burnett, Fitzroy,
and Burdekin.
A squatter
named Macpherson followed Mitchell’s track to the Cogoon, and
took up Mt. Abundance, on which the town of Roma stands today;
lived there for years with only a hutkeeper, and bade
Leichhardt a last goodbye on April 4, 1848.
Pioneer
squatting was a serious work in those days. Mitchell on his
journey of 1846 saw houses deserted, yards and dairies in
ruins, and roads overgrown with weeds, where the frontier
settlers had been driven back by the blacks, who drove nearly
all the first squatters away from the Namoi, the Severn, and
the McIntyre.
It was an
evil time for the shepherds of those days, for they were
killed in all directions. They carried their lives in their
hands, and the shepherds were not always the victims. In 1861,
October 17, came the murder of 19 people in one day at Wills’
station on the Nogoa, including Wills, senior, himself, and I
have stood by the one grave on Cullin-la-ringgo in which 16
are buried.
Four years
before, in 1857, eleven people, including nine of the Fraser
family, the tutor, and an old shepherd, were killed one night
at Hornet Bank station, on the Dawson.
A squatter
named Faithful, overlanding to Victoria in the 1830s, had
seven men killed out of 15 on the same day.
Several
squatters were killed on the Mary and Burnett, including
Blaxland, a partner in 1846 in Gin Gin station with William
Forster, afterwards Premier of New South Wales, the man from
whom the lung fish, Ceratodus, is named Ceratodus Forsteri.
Weir, the
owner of Callandoon, had his son killed by the blacks, and in
the case of one murder of a white man, an avenging party went
to a blacks camp, when the men were absent, and shot all the
women. That was related to me by one of the white men
concerned, and confirmed by the old blacks that were there.
There was war everywhere between the two races. The early
squatters went out hundreds of miles beyond all roads, and all
settlement, and faced difficulties unimaginable today.
They have
gone forever, those old-time squatters – vanished with an
environment which can never return. The present day squatter
has none of their difficulties and dangers, though, Heaven
knows, he has enough to contend with in blowflies, foxes,
eagle-hawks, dingoes, strike lunatics, and the payment of
members brand of politician, the greatest national calamity of
all. By the modern squatter is meant the man who made his own
station, and is the owner, not the manager installed by a bank
or some financial institution, and sometimes not knowing a
wombat from an opossum or a brigalow from a bottle tree.
The
shepherd of today rides round his fences on horseback, or a
bicycle, or a buggy, and has to face nothing more dangerous
than a goanna, or a carpet snake. The modern shearer goes to
his sheds on motor bicycles or in motor cars, and requires two
sheets on his bed, a warm bath, and his dining table seems to
lack nothing but salad bowls, finger glasses, serviettes, and
sparkling Moselle. If the
old time shearer who never struck, except for more work, could
just come back to express his opinions, his language would
doubtless rake well and give pleasure to all.
If the
shepherds of the early years could return to have a look at
their modern representatives, they would merely sadly observe,
“Oh, spare me days! Is that a shepherd? Take me back to the
cemetery!”
Could
the old-time squatter come back to see the more fortunate
station owners of today, useful colonists, and mostly real
good fellows, he would be like Job’s warhorse, and hear
little more than the thunder of the captains, and the
shouting – especially the shouting!
THE OLD TOLL BAR ROAD
INTERESTING REMINISCENCES
On Friday last a representative of
“The Chronicle” had a most interesting interview with Mrs.
Sarah Ann Taylor, (wife of the late Mr. Charles Taylor, who
died some 28 years ago).
The reason
for the interview was the notes written by Mr. Meston under
the heading used above. At that time mentioned in Mr. Meston’s
memoirs, Mrs. Taylor had charge of the gates on the old Toll
Bar Road. By the way, Mrs. Taylor, it may be mentioned, is 81
years of age. “I was the only one in the family, apart from
mother and father,” she stated, “and we came to Australia in
1851 in the ship ‘Hope.”
“My father
was a carpenter in the old country and was engaged in the
building of the Crystal Palace in London, which opening event
I witnessed. I distinctly remembered seeing there, Queen
Victoria, Prince Albert and the Duke of Wellington. I can
distinctly remember the man who was in charge of the building
of the place – his name was Paxton.”
An
original photograph handed to the esteemed lady by Queen
Victoria was produced immediately, so reverently was it held
amongst other collections.
Mrs.
Taylor has 42 great grand-children, and many of her
descendants served with great honor in the late war. The
building in which Mrs. Taylor now lives is in Neil Street,
adjoining the Darling Downs Building Society. Her daughters
are Mesdames J. B. Henderson, Toowong; Oliver Smyth,
Toowoomba; George Smyth, Gatton; H. Ashley, Mount Hatton;
Messrs. George Taylor, Brisbane; and A. E. Taylor, Toowoomba.
There are also four members of the family dead. In the present
house, they have resided for 20 years.
Speaking
of the old Toll Bar Road, Mrs. Taylor, who had charge of the
gates at the time, had some interesting reminiscences to
relate and, although the pleasant old lady is well advanced in
years, she introduced many interesting matters in the course
of the conversation our representative had with her. Of a
retentive memory, she was able to give out first-hand the
information sought.
“At that
time,” she stated, “we charged £1 per 1000 for sheep to pass
through the gates, 1d per head for cattle in a mob, 1d per
head for working bullocks, and 2d per wheel for every wheel,
which meant that if there were four wheels on the vehicle, the
charge would be 8d.”
In a
humorous strain Mrs. Taylor stated that at one time a circus
came through, included in the outfit of which was an elephant.
She had particulars alright of horses etc., but the elephant
was not scheduled, so she let him through without charge.
“This occurred about 55 years ago, Mr. Pressman,” the lady
added, “so I hope they won’t prosecute me for it now, and I
don’t think there is any harm in mentioning it at this stage.
Another matter I might mention is a number of sheep which were
being driven over the ‘possum track to avoid the toll, and
when we heard of them proceeding by a side track we got in
touch with the drovers, and them the owners, and they were
fined heavily by the Government.”
“At the
time of was speaking of, Peter Brassey and a Mr. Betts had
charge of the construction of the railway further west.
“I have
seen as many as from 24 to 30 bullocks in one team
endeavouring to get up the range in wet weather. Pity we could
not get some of that ‘wet’ weather now,” she added,
ironically.
“Old Mr.
Galton, who had the hotel there, would bring his supplies to
the bottom of the hill and then double bank with his bullocks
and bring his goods up, in sections; I remember that quite
well. I have seen as many as 35 and 40 going or coming to or
from Toowoomba and other parts in one day,” the lady added.
“Before we
took over the Toll Bar the gate was conducted by old Mr. Ryan,
who later handed over to Mr. J. A. Phillips, who afterwards
owned the Queen’s Hotel. The name of Mr. Turner, whose
Christian name could not be remembered that he came from about
Helidon.
“On one
occasion she remembered a man coming along on a knocked-up
horse, which he was practically pushing along, and asked for a
bucket of water for the quadruped. You know, we were selling
soft drinks at that time.” Our pressman assured Mrs. Taylor
that he did not know. “Well, we were, anyhow,” she added. “We
could not supply him with the fluid asked for, and pointed out
that it cost 4/6 per load, and that it had to be carted up the
range and that it could only be obtained on two days during
the week. The visitor then ordered half a bucket of hop beer
for his horse, which was supplied, and was relished,
apparently by the thirsty beast.
A ROMANCE OF AUSTRALIAN
LIFE
BY JOHN SANDES
There was
once a famous racehorse – acclaimed by thousands at Randwick
and Flemington – who was named The Australian Peer. It was
years afterwards that the late Sir John Forrest, of Bunbury,
who was the first real Australian peer, was made a baron.
Another
Australian peer, the Earl of Ducie, a hearty old gentleman of
88, late of Maryborough, Queensland, who recently inherited
the earldom on the death of his elder brother at the age of
94, arrived at Liverpool yesterday by the Ascanius from
Sydney, and today I called upon him at the Curzon Hotel in
Mayfair, where he is staying for a few days with his relatives
before going off to his family seat at Tortworth Court, in
Gloucestershire.
There he
will be welcomed home by his two sisters, who have not seen
him since he said goodbye to them on the eve of his departure
from England for Sydney in a sailing ship 57 years ago.
An old
gentleman who has been in Australia since the close of the
Crimean War, is surely entitled to describe himself as an
Australian – as he does. He is also without doubt the fourth
Earl of Ducie, and he announces that he intends to take his
seat in the House of Lords forthwith. An Australian peer,
unquestionably.
From the
banks of the Murrumbidgee to the benches of the House of Lords
is a long step, but this straight-backed, clear-eyed old
gentleman with his snow-white beard and moustache has
straddled it. Sitting beside him on a sofa in his private
sitting room at the Curzon Hotel in Mayfair, while he smokes
his cigar with evident enjoyment, and speaks calmly of
incidents which took place when the diggers were still rushing
from the Turon to Ballarat, and when the echoes of the
fighting at the Eureka Stockade had hardly ceased to
reverberate around Bakery Hill, one has a feeling that this
ancient earl is Rip Van Winkle reincarnated and descending
again from his Catskill Mountains to a world that has
forgotten almost all that he remembers.
Berkeley
Basil Moreton, fourth Earl of Ducie, has come back to a
country that is vastly changed from the England that he left
in 1855, as a lad of 21, when his Rugby schooldays fresh in
his mind.
“I went
out to Sydney,” said the old gentleman, “in a ship named the
Waterloo. Our chief mate, whose name I cannot remember,
afterwards became the captain of the Dunbar, which was wrecked
on the rocks just outside Sydney Heads, and only one man was
saved – only one man! Just before we reached Sydney, peace was
declared (as we heard afterwards), at the end of the Crimean
War. Sir William Denison, who built Fort Denison in Sydney
Harbour, was then the Governor of New South Wales. He was an
officer of the Royal Engineers, and I believe that he
reconstructed the military defences in Sydney. There was an
apprehension during the Crimean War that the Russians might
send a naval expedition against Sydney, and new forts and
batteries were hurriedly constructed to meet the danger. I had
letters of introduction to Sir William Denison and I
accompanied him soon after my arrival on a visit to Bathurst.
We drove over the Blue Mountains in a carriage attended by an
escort, and I remember that there was a strong detachment of
soldiers at Bathurst. They were encamped on tents on the bank
of the river. I have no idea that they were there on account
of a great outbreak of bushranging that had taken place in the
Bathurst district.
Sir
William Denison and myself lunched with the officers at their
mess in the encampment. I can see the white tents by the river
and the red coats of the soldiers now.
After I
had enjoyed Sir William Denison’s hospitality in Sydney, I
went to a Murrumbidgee sheep station owned by Clarke and
Macleay, and there I remained for about two years learning all
I could about sheep.
In 1857 I
had a trip to Melbourne with one of the partners, and went to
the races at Flemington. Then back to Sydney by a small
sailing vessel, which took three weeks to make the voyage,
and, in due course, I bought a station at Gayndah in
Queensland. It was while I was there that I rode in my first
race.”
The old
gentleman displayed a sudden gleam of excitement at the
mention of his racing exploits, but there was something else
as well as excitement, there was a distinct chuckle that
seemed to demand investigation. “Did you win the race?”
inquired the interviewer.
“No, I did
not – but I could have won it,” was the bewildering reply of
the ancient earl, who accompanied his answer with a look that
can only be described as sly. Surely, reflected the astounded
interviewer to himself, this octogenarian British peer is not
going to confess that he is a “Johnny Armstrong.”
“You see,
it was this way,” said the fourth Earl of Ducie, lighting a
fresh cigar. “The owner of my mount had two horses entered for
the race – mine and another. He had declared to win with the
other. So I had to deny myself the pleasure of being first
past the post.”
Thank
goodness the explanation was perfectly proper and strictly in
accordance with the most rigid code of turf morality. That a
rider who had the blood of belted earls in his veins, and who
was destined to become a belted earl himself 60 years later,
should deliberately pull his mount at an up-country race
meeting in Queensland, might have shaken the faith of the
early Queenslanders in the House of Lords.
Happily
Mr. Berkeley Basil Moreton – as he was then – did not pull his
too speedy mount at that almost pre-historic race meeting. He
merely abstained from winning on the animal – strictly in
accordance with the law and custom of the turf.
“Did you
ever do any riding over fences?” was the next inquiry, and a
twinkle promptly appeared in the old gentleman’s eyes.
“I tried
to,” he said, “but at that time there were very few fences in
Queensland. The country was in its natural state. I recollect
riding 50 miles once without seeing a fence, though I saw
scores of emus and kangaroos. At last, when I had almost given
up hope, I sighted a bit of a dogging fence, but I got a great
disappointment. My horse would not jump!”
One
gathered that the pioneer pastoralists of Queensland in those
early days suffered heavily. Droughts, fires, and attacks by
the blacks on lonely out-stations made life both strenuous and
unprofitable for them.
“Sheep
were a failure, so I went in for cattle,” said the old earl,
“but I found pretty soon that the only use I could make of the
cattle was to boil them down, and in the end I lost my Gayndah
station. I took up another place then near Maryborough, on the
banks of the river, and that has been my home for the last
fifty years. It was there that I was married; it was there
that all my children were born, and it was there that I lost
my wife. I wish that she could have lived to come to England
with me and to share in the honor and high station that has
befallen me. My place at Maryborough is about 90 miles from
Gayndah. It is in a beautiful position on the ban of the Mary
River. A fine place, the land should be worth a bit of money
some day.”
The old
gentleman went on to narrate how he entered politics and
became a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. In the
1880s he became Minister for Education in the Government of
Sir Samuel Griffith, and remained in office for three years,
until the Griffith administration was displaced by Sir Thomas
McIlwraith. The turbulent tide of Queensland politics swept
him out of the Legislative Assembly, but he became, in due
course, a nominee member of the Legislative Council, which has
now been swamped by Labour nominee members and has committed
suicide by resolving upon its own abolition.
“I hear
that the Royal Assent has been given to the abolition of the
Legislative Council,” said the patriarch, chuckling, “but I
have still got my gold railway pass,” and he proudly showed it
to me dangling on his watchchain, a unique decoration, one
imagines, among all orders and ornaments worn by the members
of the House of Lords.
The now
Earl of Ducie may live in grandeur at stately Tortworth Court
in Gloucestershire, and he may take his seat on a bench
upholstered in red leather in the House of Lords when the King
and Queen go there to open Parliament, but his heart will be
still in far away Australia. One knows it from the changed
tone in his voice when he spoke of the old home by the river
near Maryborough.
***
In this
history of the old Brisbane gaol, there is a remarkable
incident that ought to be dear to the heart of Conan Doyle,
and all spiritualists. When Stevens, the botanist, was killed
in 1866, near Mooloolah, by three blacks, one known to the
whites as “Tommy Skyring” was arrested and held for trial
until he was anxious to be hanged, as he could neither eat nor
sleep. He had actually given himself up to the police, and
asked to be hanged, as the ghost of Stevens repeatedly came
and looked over his shoulder, until the fear of it became
unbearable!
He
actually died in gaol, worn out to a state of emaciation, his
death due to starvation and want of sleep. What mystery is in
the tragedy, the plain fact remains a certainty.
***
In my
reference to the first Queensland editor, Arthur Sydney Lyon,
who died at Cleveland Point on October 2, 1861, no mention was
made by me that he not only started the Moreton Bay “Courier”
on June 20, 1846, but he also started the “Free Press” in
1849, the “North Australian” in Ipswich on October 2, 1855,
and the “D. D. Gazette” on June 11, 1858.
The “Free
Press” was a squatters’ paper, and was for a time edited by my
uncle, Robert Meston, father of the present Mrs. A. K. Cullen,
of “Ardendeuchar,” Warwick, and Mrs. Paterson, of Toowoomba.
He was at the time owner of Morven station on New England. No
copy of the paper appears to be available.
Mrs.
Paterson is now 93 years of age, and her brother, Frank
Meston, is 95, and still breaking in his own horses on
Rivertree station!
***
The
Japanese earthquake recalls a fairly severe shock of
earthquake in Brisbane on December 14, 1851, and two others
since then. There was one in 1843.
***
How many people know that the French started a
settlement at Albany and then abandoned it before Major
Lockyer arrived there with his gang of convicts.
***
When
captain J. Lort Stokes was out on our coast in the Beagle from
1837 to 1843, he had a cook who had come through an amazing
experience. The cook and two Negroes were the sole survivors
on a small vessel that had capsized, the three being
imprisoned in the hole where they could have lived until the
pent up air became too foul to breathe.
They
managed to bore a hole in the boat, and thread out a stick
with a handkerchief which floated in the breeze. Fortunately
the unique flag of distress was seen by a passing vessel,
which sent a boat and crew who cut a hole big enough for the
cook and the two Negroes to come through.
This
happened more than once in the history of the sea, and in the
1850s, on the Tweed River, in New South Wales, a settler named
Johnny Boyd, a timbergetter, was walking along the beach with
an axe over his shoulder, when he came to the hull of a vessel
lying bottom upwards on the sand. Hearing a knocking from
inside he cut a hole large enough to free a Frenchman, who was
the sole survivor of the wreck. He, too, like the cook on the
Beagle, had plenty of food, but it was a terrible dark cell to
be hold up in.
***
Among the
earliest surveying ships on our coast was H.M.S. Fly, Captain
Beete Jukes, who was sent out from 1842 to 1846. The Fly
people unfortunately excited the hostility of the aboriginals
at nearly every place they landed, and, of course, that left a
bad legacy of ill-feeling against the next white men who came
along the coast. At Cape Direction Bayley, the boatswain, was
one of those who went ashore, and he was so badly speared that
he died on the third day. That cape is a most romantic spot,
with the most eccentric granite forms ever seen by me on any
part of the coast. Jukes writes of the Cape Cleveland blacks
as “well made, active men, erect, free, and graceful, with
good faces, and soft vocalic speech.”
***
In
Wickham’s River, now the Burdekin, they were “tall, athletic
men, bold and confident, one man with a Nubian like face.”
During a
visit by me to cape Cleveland, in 1881, accompanied by Edwin
Norris, in the yacht Maude, a broken 4 pounder cannon cast
iron ball was picked up on top of the Cape, among the rocks,
one of several others found there, and assumed to have been
fired from some passing vessel, whose people regarded all
aboriginals as legitimate targets. As the Fly record mentions
the shooting of aboriginals at Rockingham Bay, Cape Melville,
and Cape Direction, it is probable the Cape Cleveland people
received some cannon practice.
**
STORY OF ASCENTS
SOME EARLY HISTORY
I have
followed with the deepest interest the correspondence on Mount
Lindesay, Mount Barney, and Mount Hooker, and students of our
Australian history are indebted to the labours of
correspondents for the trouble they have taken to define, and
in some cases to ascend, these mountains to determine their
correct altitude, to survey the surrounding country, and in
other ways to compare or contrast the descriptions given by
Allan Cunningham and Captain Logan and Mr. Fraser in order to
remove the confusion caused by the original names being
transposed. I note that most of the correspondents spell the
name Lindesay without the “e.” One writer, Mr. J. Hardcastle,
in “The Daily Mail,” of September 20, concludes: “It will be
noted Cunningham spelled the name “Lindesay,” but the “e” has
now been dropped.” In the interests of Australian Historical
Society, I would like to point out that, although through our
careful orthography, the “e” has been dropped in the year
past, yet in Northern New South Wales it is now generally
included, thanks to Mr. H. Selkirk, F. R. H. S., who, in 1918,
drew the attention of the Lands Department to the erroneous
spelling, with the result that the necessary corrections were
ordered to be made upon the official maps of the department.
As is generally known, this name (which ought to have been
perpetuated today by the colossus of the Macpherson Range,
near the boundary of the States – Mount Barney, that Allan
Cunningham and Mr. Fraser ascended) was given out of
compliment to Colonel Patrick Lindesay, officer commanding H.
M.’s 39th Regiment in the colony.
It may be interesting to mention that Mount Lindesay,
which is a detached, remarkable mountain, standing alone in
splendid isolation, like Saul among the people, unconnected
with any particular range, although there are to the north
Mount Clan Morris (now Mount Walker), and Knapp’s Peak, and to
the east Mount Barney (the original Mount Lindesay) of the
same dominant character, is only a few miles from Kyogle, and
the new Federal Government proposed line. This highly
picturesque mountain gives rise to not fewer than three of our
rivers. A mere spur of it separates the dark defile of the
Richmond River (120 miles long) from those of the Clarence
River, which also rises in Mount Lindesay, pursuing amore
southerly and longer course over 250 miles. At a short
distance on its northern side rises the Logan River.
The
scenery in skirting the base of Mount Lindesay is exceedingly
interesting and romantic, the country being open forest,
well-grassed, and presenting occasional tracts of soft woods,
which, with the advent of two projected railways, will yield
the treasures to closer settlement.
In the 1850s and 1860s, there were three roads from
northern New South Wales to Limestone (Ipswich) and Moreton
Bay. One was via the Lower Richmond, along the beach, crossing
the Tweed and the Logan near their mouths, which was the route
taken by Mr. Oliver Fry, J. P., the first Commissioner of
Crown Lands for the border police district of the Clarence, in
the latter 1840s, when travelling to Brisbane. The second
road, a mere bridle track, went out from Casino, via Mr. W. C.
Bundock’s Wyangarie station, and stretched across the
intervening country from Mount Warning, by which route
Brisbane is only 60 miles distant from the Richmond. It is
decidedly the direct line, and there are no insurmountable or
even formidable obstacles in the way. The third also was a
bridle track by the foot of Mount Lindesay, up the valley of
the Richmond, which is crossed and recrossed repeatedly. There
are series of beautiful flats or plains, of limited extent,
each surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, with the river
flanked with tall trees where originally lofty cedars
occasionally towered silently in its deep bed.
Unumgar station now owned by Mr. T. de M. Hill, is the
highest station on the Richmond River, distant from Wyangarie,
about 20 miles. It was taken up by Mr. James Glennie, a
brother of Archdeacon Glennie, of Warwick, and of Dr. Glennie,
at Singleton, and a second cousin of Mr. G. J. T. Glennie,
chief of the Stock Department at Murwillumbah, who came from
the Hunter about 1846.
From him
it passed to Captain Sherwood, who sold it to its present
owner, Mr. T. Hill. It is decidedly the most picturesque and
romantic station in Northern New South Wales, situated on a
gentle slope in the narrow valley of the Richmond, the
mountains to the right and left forming quite an amphitheatre.
Mount Lindesay (4060 feet) rises in the distance in front like
a square turret. At that half forgotten period of our history,
Mr. Glennie, gathering up the wreckage of his fortune, which
he was obliged to sacrifice during the bad times following the
disastrous period of 1842, when the Colony became practically
bankrupt, buried himself in this Northern wilderness, “far
from the haunts of prying men.” Mr. Glennie made several
unsuccessful attempts to reach the summit of Mount Lindesay.
The aboriginals of this part of the country told him that two
blackfellows once ascended to the summit of its square tower
by means of the numerous wild vines which were then growing up
its steep and quite precipitous skies. But a great bush fire
on the mountain having subsequently destroyed all the
vegetation, the summit, up till 1872, had been inaccessible to
mortals. To ascend Mount Lindesay has ever been regarded as a
remarkable feat. Fully 100 feet of rope is necessary, and even
then success is not to be lightly won, as there are two cliffs
to be scaled before reaching the top, the first 190 feet high,
and the second one 100 feet.
Many attempts have been made but only seven have been
successful.
The first white man on Mount Hooker (Lindesay of
today), it is admitted, was Mr. Pears (at one time Police
Magistrate at South Brisbane), who, with Mr. T. de
Murray-Prior, of Maroon, in 1872, gained the top.
The next successful one was Mr. Borchgrevink and Mr.
Brown, in 1899.Since then the following have succeeded:
Messrs. C. B. Paul, C. Boyd, and W. P. Campbell, in 1903; J.
Alderman, in 1910; E. P. Dark, in 1913, Messrs B. A. Strachan
(headmaster, Thargomindah public school) and W. Gaylard, of
the Department of Public Instruction in 1913, Mr. Gaylard
again reaching the top with Mr. M. O’Connor, in 1915.
These authorities differ as to the area of thick scrub
on the crown, variously estimating it from 10 acres to 40
acres. Early in September last, three young surveyors from the
Tylorville survey camp, with the aid of long ropes to
negotiate the overhanging rocks, also succeeded. They
discovered names carved on trees (as other did), a penny and a
collar stud; also found plenty of water in the dense scrub on
top, but like most of the others, they vow they would never
tackle the feat again.
**
BY ISOBEL HANNAH
Attention was recently directed to
the inquiry of the correspondent regarding the derivative of
Wongawallan. There are still, no doubt, old residents of the
Logan and Albert who have recollections of the notorious
aboriginal Peter, but it is evidently forgotten that
“Wongawallar” was the native name of that “Murdering Peter,”
who for many years terrorized both his fellow tribesmen and
the early white settlers from Logan to the Tweed. When
settlement first took place in the southeastern district of
Queensland, there was a considerable aboriginal population,
principally owing to the abundance of native food on the coast
and elsewhere. The original inhabitants of what is now the
Logan and Albert districts were amongst the best developed
physically and mentally of the Australian blacks.
Wongawallar was no exception, but he was absolutely
untamable, and in the fastness of his native mountains, he was
as quicksilver in the hands of the representatives of law and
order, who were constantly seeking to apprehend him.
When a settler named Wilkinson was murdered by him on
what is now Wonga Wallan Creek, the authorities made renewed
efforts to effect his capture, but in vain. At length,
however, during a fight in February, 1879, Wongawallar had his
foot almost severed by one of the Albert tribe, known as
“Grasshopper,” (Tibirei), who was goaded beyond endurance by
his adversary. The murderer was then secured, and shortly
afterwards, while awaiting trial in Brisbane Gaol, died from
his wound, defiant to the last of the white man’s authority.
During the
following month of March, a great corroboree was held at
Tambourine, in which blacks, headed by one known as the “Chief
of the Logan and Pimpana,” gathered to take part. There came
tribal representatives from the Richmond, Tweed, Brisbane,
Ipswich, and the surrounding districts to the number of 250,
with a contingent of twice that number of dogs. An eye-witness
has recorded that the night was very dark, and from the number
of camp fires, the scene resembled a new rush on the
goldfields.
After waiting some time, a peculiar humming noise, made
by the men’s voices, and taken up from hut to hut, gave signs,
as it were, of the approaching rise of the curtain. A chant
was raised, and about 100 blacks gathered around a tree, and
commenced ascending, until there were about thirty of them up
the trunk. It was cut off about 40 feet from the ground, and
they crowded up until the tree could hold no more, with one of
them on top. These performers had a grotesque head-dress, with
an arched box from the back of the head to the forehead, upon
which were cockatoos’ crests placed in sticks standing erect.
On a song being given by those below, gins included, the men
on the tree would all swing round half way at arm’s length,
bowing their heads, feathers and all,, and then back again,
giving the impression that the tree worked around in a groove. It was, of
curse, notched deeply all the way up, giving them a foothold.
With their motions up the tree, their savage shouts, beatings
of nullah nullahs, the eerie shadows of the aboriginals in the
glow of the camp fires, it must, indeed, have been a weird
scene, worthy even of Dante’s imagination, a scene which
cannot come again to the grassy glade between the gum trees
near Kinghorne, not far from where is now the road, which
crosses the Albert Bridge.
It was believed by the superstitious blacks that the
spirit of Wongawallar was amongst them at this corroboree, and
that his vengeance was directed to the one who was mainly
instrumental in his capture. It is a curious fact that
“Grasshopper” suddenly lost both hearing and speech, and
becoming most eccentric in manner, provided for long
afterwards a living embodiment of their belief.
Pimpana,
from an aboriginal word signifying the “place of the
soldier-birds,” and Coombabah (Koomboobah, place of the cobra)
were also in the country of Wongawallar.
Pimpana was a mustering station, and Coombabah an
outstation, so that the cattle run was actually from
Beaudesert to the sea-coast, and included all of what is now
Southport.
Employed at the former station was John Watkins, an old
marine veteran of the first Chinese War, 1841- 1842. He came
to the Colony in its early days, and before going to Pimpana,
was engaged at the Manchester Cotton Plantation, on the
Nerang. There was also a cotton plantation at Pimpana, and,
when that station was thrown open for selection in 1869, Mr.
Watkins removed to Hotham Creek, to take charge of the post
office established there when the first mail coach
communication was opened with the metropolis. The township
that consequently sprung up, and of which Mr. Watkins may be
said to have been the founder, received the name of Pimpana,
although some three miles distant from the original Pimpana.
For some
years prior to settling on the Coomera, Wilkinson had resided
on the Nerang River, adjacent to where the old Main Beach
Hotel was afterwards erected at Meyer’s Ferry, near Southport.
With the demolition of that old building a few years
ago, there disappeared an interesting landmark which for many
years stood upon a grassy knoll between the placid waters of
the Nerang and the more boisterous surge of the great Pacific.
To many, indeed, the old building must have been a “house of
memories,” for it was a favourite resort in the old coaching
days when Southport was in its infancy and Coolangatta and
Burleigh were merely names with no indication of the great
pleasure resorts they were destined to become.
In July, 1875, the late J. H. C. Meyer arrived with his
family at what was known in those days as Nerang Creek Heads,
now the fine watering place of Southport.
The original selector of the hotel site of 80 acres,
was James Beattie, a timbergetter, who in the sixties, 1860s,
had a good shingle-roofed verandahed cottage on the river bank
where he lived with his mate, Jim Miller.
This was known to the cutter men and timbergetters as
the “House of Blazes.” Portion of the residence is still
standing on what is now the property of Mrs. J. G. Appel.
In Beattie’s time, there was also a jetty where the
cutters called, a large log barn, and an adjoining building,
which he allowed the Meyers and Mr and Mrs. Wilkinson to
occupy.
On the other side of the road, Charles Edwards, who
sailed a cutter from the Nerang, and his wife lived on the 40
acres owned by him, portion of which is now the reserve
presented to the public by the late Hon. J. G. Appel some
years ago. This was known as “Dolly’s Flat.”
Aboriginals
were numerous and across the river at Bundall was the
gathering place of all the South Coast tribes and those of
northern New South Wales. For untold ages great corroborees
were held, and traces of the camps and bora rings are still to
be seen in the locality.
Wilkinson, who was of a retiring nature, was known as
“Midgenstick Jack” from the fact that he earned a living
gathering midgensticks obtained from a palm growing in the
scrubs, which were shipped to Brisbane in Mr. Edwards cutter,
and eventually sold as walking sticks. Wilkinson, however,
seemed to have a propensity for provoking the anger of the
blacks, for early in 1876, he incurred the displeasure of some
of them, owing to a dispute over the payment of midgensticks
which they had brought him. They threatened his life and a
hostile demonstration took place outside Beattie’s barn.
A large number had gathered under the leadership of a
powerful black, called Billy Blossom, and they demanded the
surrender of the refugees. The terrified Wilkinsons took
refuge under a bed, but by the diplomatic action of the Meyers
family, to whom
the natives were favourable, owing to their kindness, they
were pacified, and eventually departed in peace.
It was realised, however, that the enmity of the
natives was unabated so far as the Wilkinsons were concerned,
and they were requested to leave. They then removed to Upper
Coomera, where, as has been stated, Wilkinson met his death at
the hands of Wongawallar.
Mr. Meyer was so impressed with the possibilities of
the locality that he purchased Beattie’s property, and entered
upon sugar growing, the industry then booming in South
Queensland. The scrub river flats were cleared and planted,
and owing to the immunity from frost and fertility of soil,
produced, strong crops of sugar.
About 1883, Mr. Meyer erected a sugar mill, and was one
of the first to operate a vacuum pan. Portion of the old mill
was incorporated in the building recently demolished, and the
afterpart formed the big shed which was the last to go, and
previously was the meeting place of many kanakas, who were
employed in the neighbourhood.
When the price of sugar fell to £6 per ton, the sugar
growers of the Nerang were faced with ruin, and at that time
there were seven mills in the district.
Southport was just beginning to attract visitors, and
the ferry, which had been established by the far-seeing Meyer,
brought tourists, who even then realised the beauties of the
locality. Owing to their representations, Mr. Meyer obtained a
license for his residence, which was situated on the corner
between the fig trees opposite the fine Surfers Paradise Hotel
of today.
A number of Brisbane speculators purchased the section
fronting the sea from Mr. Meyer, and subdivided it. Then came
the financial crash of 1893, and the place languished until
the construction of the Southport bridge and road brought it
again into prominence.
Mr.
A. Meston writes: “Your northern telegrams report the wreck of
a ketch called the “Myra” with all hands. This was evidently
the ketch “Myro,” a boat on which I had an unforgettable
experience, the worst in my lifetime.
The
Myro was a long narrow ketch of about 10 or 12 tons, once
owned by the London Missionary Society, who had her fitted as
a steam screw driven launch, but when she finally arrived at
Thursday Island, the engine, and screw and boiler were removed
and then she became one of the fastest sailing boats in the
Torres Straits.
At
the time of my unpleasant experience, she came down to
Weymouth Bay to load sandal wood collected by the Pascoe River
blacks for Cobbett and Edmonds.
After
about four months on the Peninsula, from Newcastle Bay to the
Chester River, including a week on Forbes Island
(“Mootharra”), my final camp was on the southwest shore of
Weymouth Bay (“Co-keeng-on”) having been located for two weeks
14 miles up the Pascoe, a river with more crocodiles (“Eewye”)
than any other in my experience.
On the
morning of my leaving by the Myro for Thursday Island, I was
bitten on the right wrist just about daylight, by a snake the
blacks called “irra,” a brown snake with two red streaks
across the head, still unknown to science. This was my third
snake bite. The blacks had told me on the previous day that
the bite of “irra” was not fatal for two days, being quite
unconscious of my near experience in proving their accuracy.
Not until midnight of the day of the bite was I conscious of
being bitten at all, though the snake was seen by me and
killed. Awakened by a dreadful pain in my wrist, a Pascoe
black on board saw at once what was wrong and with my razor
made two incisions in my wrist, said by Dr. White to be as
skilful as if done by a surgeon. But the blood refused to
flow, and so, all the way to Thursday Island, for another
awful day and night, there was an agonizing pain which reached
the limit of human endurance.
And all
the journey that gallant Myro, before a southeast gale,
travelled nine miles an hour, and rushed through Albany Pass
and round Cape York in the night, and anchored at Thursday
Island at 6 in the morning, just in time to save my removal
from this planet.
I
entered the hospital, under Dr. White’s care, weighing 12.4
and three days under a month emerged with 9 stone.
Alas! It is sad to remember that Dr. White and Dr.
Wassell are dead for years, and that Fred Lancaster, skipper
of the Myro on that trip, has also gone hence to the land of
shadows, and now the Myro herself is at rest, for ever, among
the coral fields, and rainbow coloured shells, and weirdly
painted fishes, of, the Barrier Reef.
The sad story, “A Grave among the
Pines,” in a recent edition of the “Courier,” was of great
interest to me and, I should say, to many old identities on
the Condamine and Balonne Rivers. The doings of the men who
blazed the track for us should always be remembered and make
interesting reading. These days unfortunately a number of us
are more interested in letting the other fellow know how fast
our new “bus” can go when she is opened up. However, that is
by the way.
Mr. H. Staunton was a great friend of my people, and
though only a lad, I remember him very well. He was a
particularly fine type of young Englishman, and was the owner
of Coalbar station, just off the Condamine River, between
Undulla and Murilla. A large sized photograph of him has been
hanging in the lounge room of the Royal Hotel and later the
new Royal, Surat, for something like 45 years, and thousands
of travellers have viewed the picture with very great
interest. Mr. Staunton was killed by lightning on Warkon
station on the 31st December, 1883. Warkon, at the
time, was owned by Messrs. Archie and Finlay Campbell. He had
exchanged a very fine blood stallion named “Trumpeter” for
some bullocks from a close-by grazier named Robinson, who
lived on the Channing Creek, near Moraby. He left Coalbar on
New Years Eve morning with the intention of making a short cut
across to Mr. Robinson’s place, calling in at a neighbour’s
place, Mr. Beck, of Yulabilla; on the way he was joined by a
man named Frank Meston. They crossed the Condamine River, and
when within a few hundred yards of the main Surat – Condamine
Road, a storm broke over.
The two horsemen selected a huge trunked gum tree on a
pretty cypress pine ridge for cover. The tree was very tall
and remarkable for having little or no foliage. The lightning
struck this tree at the very top, and merely cut the bark all
the way to the bottom.
Mr. Staunton and the two horses were killed on the
spot. Meston was partially paralysed and suffered from shock.
He eventually crawled about four miles to Yulabilla, and gave
Mr. Beck particulars of the tragedy.
My stepfather, the late Mr. William Lawton, Basin Dome,
Surat, and I were at the spot about three weeks after the
happening. My stepfather remarked to me how strange that this
tree should have been selected for cover when so many heavier
foliaged trees were close by.
He also remarked how quickly the horses had decomposed.
The pine ridge where Mr. Staunton is buried is now covered by
the ever spreading pear. It is a pretty spot.
OCTOGENARIAN TALKS
NORTH COAST TRAINS
By Nettie Palmer
The Westaways, of Merridan Plains, are not so much a
family as an elaborate clan,, and their home is not so much a
station as a district. Anyone who drives south through to
Brisbane from Maroochydore or Buderim, knows the Meridan
Plains cattle station, the seven or eight Westaway homesteads
scattered through the pastures. Again, anyone driving from
Mooloolah or Landsborough to the seaside at Caloundra, must
pass near Westaways; the road from Mooloolah practically
shares the Westaway roads, and lets anyone see at a glance
that here is no new settlement, but a long cleared pastoral
home. They say that, so far from being exhausted, these plains
have even improved since they were first selected in the
1860s; the spare soil washed down from the Blackall Ranges
since they have been denuded of trees, has spread over these
flats. There are morals to be drawn from this by the
afforestation enthusiasts, but Merridan Plains will probably
not draw them yet awhile.
Looking at
the fact of such an old establish settlement, one wonders if
anyone still living remembers the beginning of it. The man who
remembers it is Mr. Tom Maddock who lives on a dairy farm at
Glen View, between Merridan Plains and Mooloolah. In order to
tell you the Westaway history he has to reveal his own, which
is full of life and variety. Well on in the eighties, and with
a flowing beard that seems to relate him with some remote
past, Mr. Maddock has vigorous opinions, and eyes that kindle
as with youth. He knows the North Coast district like the palm
of his hand.
“I was brought to Brisbane from Cornwall by my father
at the age of four,” said Mr. Maddock. “We came in 1849 in the
Artemesia, the first free ship to come to Moreton Bay
settlement.”
“My father got land at Eagle Farm, and did general farm
work. He was needed, because in those days, vegetables were
scarce, sweet potatoes 18 shillings a hundred. I grew up in
Brisbane, and thereabouts, but in 1862 I started with old John
Westaway for Bli Bli, up on the Maroochy River. Cutting timber
we were, especially red cedar, and we’d cart it with bullocks
over to the Mooloolah River with Lowe and Gregory’s bullocks.
Then it would be shipped off to a sawmill.”
“Would it go to Campbell’s sawmill on Coochin Creek,
entering Bribie Passage at the north end?”
“That didn’t concern me so much. We got the timber
ready. It was after some time at Bli Bli that Westaway went
prospecting for land, and I was with him when he decided on
Merridan Plains.”
“Do you know why that name was chosen?”
“Well, it should have been Meridian Plains, something
to do with the geography of them, but no one ever got it
right. The Westaways weren’t exactly settled on the land
they’d taken up, and it was at Alexandra Headland, between
Maroochydore and Mooloolaba, that John Westaway died in 1869.
I took the body to town by boat; no, we didn’t go through
Bribie Passage; just straight round in the open bay.”
“The murder of the botanist near Westaways! That was at
the place they call Dead Man’s Waterhole to this day. I knew
all about the blacks that did that. The chief one was piper,
of course. You hardly ever had any trouble with the blacks,
but Piper saw the botanist with a fistful of change, and that
was too much for him. I helped to catch Piper, and that took
some tracking. The policeman reckoned he could just catch him
with his little hand, but he needed me to help him; it was at
Cobb’s Creek, at Woombye, we caught him”
“But it wasn’t enough to have Piper. We knew he was
guilty; but we couldn’t prove it, without Johnny Griffen, his
accomplice, who said he was willing to turn Queen’s evidence,
but kept changing his mind and running off again. The police
decided they had to have Johnny Griffen, and said ‘spare no
expense.’ So they gave me the job, and I tracked Johnny
Griffen for 21 and a half days, till I got him, up near
Yandina. The police spared no expense. I never got a copper.”
“And was Piper convicted?”
“He was not, The police let Johnny Griffen get away
again, and the case against Piper was dismissed. The blacks on
the whole were no trouble at all, though. You had to show them
you could shoot, then you didn’t need to do it. Westaway got
frightened away from the Pine River by the blacks, but that
was because he wasn’t ready. He started to make the bullets
when he saw them coming, and spilt the lead; that wouldn’t do
at all, so he went back to Brisbane and made a fresh start, to
Bli Bli.”
“Did you take your bullock teams up on Buderim?”
“Yes, it was all close scrub then. The blacks used to
work with us, clearing and felling. And believe me, Buderim
isn’t a blacks’ name at all. It’s just ‘Bother ‘em!) (bugger
them!) what we all used to say when we couldn’t find tracks
through the tall timber.”
“But some
of the names here are real blacks’ names, only we don’t know
the right meaning. The blacks would say anything they thought
you wanted them to say. Mooloolah ought to be Moolooloo, and,
of course, it’s the name of the mouth of the river; then when
the railway came they pinched the name for the railway station
and the inland township, and the seaside place has to be
Mooloolabah.”
“Except when it’s called Point Cartwright on the map,”
I said, “confusing everyone with Point Arkwright, a few miles
north, near Coolum!”
“As for the meaning of Moolooloo, some say it means
‘platypus,’ and some say ‘black snakes.’ The place called
‘Mudloo,’ near Woodford, is the same name, I think, and they
say it means black snakes. The meaning of Caloundra? I heard
it meant beachwood, the wood on the beaches, but perhaps it
was the beech-wood in the scrubs.”
“What else I did? No, I wasn’t always bullock-driving,
not by a long way. I was a horse-breaker for years, and used
to be sent for right up to Rockhampton. And I could shoot,
too, in those days; do anything with a rifle. When I look out
at those fowls in the yard here, it often crosses my mind that
you could knock over six of them with a good gun.”
“Did you get to know the blacks well, and speak their
language?”
“Well, there wasn’t much of their language to know, so
it seemed to me. They used to make one word do for so many
things. They had to learn the English names for most things we
used. Of course we got the names of places from them. That
ridge over there, above Glen View, people call it Tippi, but
the blacks called it Sippi. That means bird mountain. It was
always full of birds. Then there’s Caboolture. Petrie says it
means the place of carpet snakes, but the name for carpet
snake is wung-i. The blacks who told him that meaning for
Caboolture were pulling his legislation, the way they always
liked to do. I was never sure that I’d got the rights of any
name from them. Got on with them well enough. They’d work in
with us on Buderim or on the plains. We’d camp together, all
using the same cooking fire.”
“I’ve been settled at Mooloolah here since 1878. There
was a school, the Merridan Plains school, by the Glen View
cemetery you passed coming here today. The earliest settlers,
the men I came up with first, are all buried there, except
John Westaway, as I explained, and Tom Pethbridge. The others
were John Westaway’s two sons, William and Richard, Edmund
Lander (of Eudlo) and Tom Laxton, who fenced in Caloundra 50
years ago.”
“Changes? Yes, there’s that one smooth, made road out
there, but it only runs about as far as this from the
Mooloolah railway station. We need a good road through to the
coast. Our natural port is Caloundra, but it’s a long time
since I saw it. Yes, a lot of things happened when I was a
young man! Why my father came to Queensland, do you ask? Why,
he emigrated, in the Artemesia, that’s all.”
It is clear that the speaker has never felt himself a
mere “immigrant,” with uncertainty about his surroundings. He
and his son, Mr. Ewen Maddock, have left their mark on the
district in the work they have done.
As I went on to my destination, which was on the rise
of the “bird mountain,” rightly called Sippi, I felt that by
virtue of what I had been hearing, I, too, was for that day no
mere tourist. The map of the region, sparkling and alive from
the wall of the Blackalls to the stretching Pacific, lay
securely in my mind. The long lovely plateau northwards by the
ocean, Buderim, nowadays a network of little, varied fruit
farms, looking as idyllic as a fruitful Italian landscape, was
also present in the mind as a dark name, first trodden by
Andrew Petrie, but cleared and conquered only long after that.
The road back from Glen View past Westaway’s to Caloundra
seemed, after what I had been hearing, something newly
discovered. To speak with someone to whom the past is at least
as real as the present is to break into the past. In a world
where all forces seem working toward a smooth featureless
uniformity, it is good to remember that there are men who,
depending on no appliances of cosmopolitan civilization, have
won for themselves and their fellows a quiet place in the sun.
REPORT BY THE PROTECTOR OF
ABORIGINALS
Mr. A.
Meston, southern Protector of Aboriginals, has forwarded to
the Minister for Lands, a Report relative to Curtis Island.
The Report has been placed at out disposal.
The Report states that the island extends from opposite
Gladstone North to Keppel Bay. The outer coast was washed by
the ocean, and the inner coast bordered the narrows, from
Gladstone to the Fitzroy River, a distance of 42 miles, and
through the passage, the Government steamer Premier, conveyed
passengers from Gladstone to Rockhampton.
In one part, where the width was not more than 40 or 39
yards, the channel was dry at low tide, and there was a rise
of tide there of 10 to 14 feet. The whole of the frontage of
the island to the narrows, was bordered by two varieties of
mangroves; a narrow fringe, deepening in places where blind
salt water creeks or narrow inlets ran back into the island
from the narrows.
On the side facing the ocean, there were no creeks. The
total coast line of Curtis Island was about 140 miles, and the
total area 175 square miles, or 112,000 acres. The greater
part of the island was comparatively unknown, except to two or
three stockmen, who had ridden over it since Monte Christo
station was held by F. Fanning, who transferred in 1870 to
William L. MacGregor, who transferred to A. C. B. Praed in
1873, and who, in turn transferred to R. L. Paterson in 1875.
In 1879 it was bought at auction by A. Menzies and R.
L. Paterson, who transferred to Jeffery and Murray in 1883,
and they, in 1887, to J. Dougall, from whom it passed to the
present holder, A. Menzies, in 1893.
The station rented an area of 146 square miles, paying
a rental of £273, and the homestead was situated about 6 miles
from the Narrows and about 14 miles from Cape Capricorn and 16
miles from Sea Hill. It stood on the crest of a ridge, about
200 feet above sea level.
Mr. Meston speaks of the mosquitoes on Curtis Island as
the worst he ever experienced. “There are three distinct
varieties on Curtis Island, each one worse than the other.
They range in size, from the small black to the cadaverous
long legged dark grey type, with a bill that can only be
baffled by a leather jacket.”
Mr. Meston went to the southeast of the island and
opposite where the Lord Auckland, with Colonel Burney’s
colonizing party, stranded in 1847.
In crossing the island, dugong and turtles were met
with, and large oysters were found on the sea coast rocks. The
oyster rocks extended over about 5 miles of the outer coast.
Boats could not land on the coast, and the rocks were so hard
that not more than one oyster would come off without breaking.
Mr. Meston considered the geological formation of the
country as astonishing. There was no sign of permanent water.
There were tracks of emus, kangaroos, dingoes, plain and scrub
turkeys, bandicoots, and porcupines, on the island. Some of
the country is covered with a stunted variety of tea-tree
about 10 or 12 feet high, impassable for horsemen, and forming
a cover for birds and animals. The vegetation on the east
coast is hard and stunted, with rocky soil. The whole of the
south end of the island is comparatively worthless and
destitute of any permanent water.
At the north end, wild pigs were numerous. The Monte
Christo station had killed 500 or 600 wild pigs in two months,
as they had multiplied so much as to become a nuisance,
uprooting the best of the grass flats. Thousands of pigs had
been shot in the last 10 or 15 years, and the recent drought
must have killed considerable numbers by thirst and
starvation. The grazing qualities of the land were pronounced
fair, and fish and oysters were stated to be in abundance on the sea coast.
Mr. Meston stated that there is an abundance of land
fitted for cultivation, a considerable quantity of game,
practically inlimited fishing along the whole outer and inner
coast line, vast quantities of oysters on the eastern side,
and fishing and crabs along the whole course of the Narrows.
Turtle and dugong were also plentiful. The island in ordinary
seasons would carry 2,000 head of cattle. Wild pigs would
multiply to thousands if protected. The best parts of the
island consist of undulating country, ridges, and low hills,
with intervening flats, all timbered by open forests, chiefly
eucalyptus, acacias, banksias, and casuarina, the waterholes
of the flats being surrounded by belts of tea-tree. One half
of the outer coast consists of stony ridges, falling back into
flats and low ridges.
The northern half is a series of sandhills with patches
of good grass, dense thickets of tea-tree, and low, stunted,
sea coast shrubs. On the northeast end there was an extensive
marine plain, about 3 miles across, a favourite resort of wild
fowl. All the western side, from end to end, was fringed with
mangroves, which followed the blind creek into the island. On
the outer coast there were no mangroves.
The only white people on the island, apart from those
at Monte Christo, were the lighthouse people and the
lightkeepers at Cape Capricorn and at the pilot station at the
extreme northern corners of the island.
Mr. Meston advises that the whole island be proclaimed
a reserve under the Native Birds Protection Act, as hundreds
of birds, including ducks, swans, and native companions, go
there to breed, and as the “birds of Queensland are being
destroyed indiscriminately, with a prospect of extermination,
the sooner they are given a few secluded parts to nest in,
without disturbance, the better.” The Report directed
attention to the “the wholesale destruction of the Eucalyptus
citriadora on the western side of the island. Under the
misleading name of spotted gum that beautiful and rare tree
was being cut in hundreds for timbering drives in the gold
mines in the Rockhampton district, while other timber was
available.”
The
Southern Protector of Aboriginals (Mr. A. Meston) has
submitted a Report to the Minister for Lands on a recent visit
to Curtis Island, the area of which he puts down as 175 square
miles. The greater portion of it, he says, is practically
unknown, and this can be understood by his references to the
mosquitoes, the ravages of which are unbearable.
Monte
Christo station, on the island, he mentioned, was taken up by
Frederick Fanning in 1869. Rock oysters, fish, and game
abound, and wild pigs seem to be present in great numbers.
There is an abundance of land fitted for cultivation. Mr. Meston adds: “I
would earnestly advise that the whole island be proclaimed a
reserve under the Native Birds Protection Act, as hundreds of
ducks, swans, and native companions go there to breed, and as
the birds of Queensland are being destroyed indiscriminately,
with a prospect of extermination, the sooner they are given a
few secluded parts to nest in without disturbance, the better.
I desire also to direct the Minister’s attention to the
wholesale destruction of the eucalyptus citriadora on the
western side of Curtis Island. Under the misleading name of
“spotted gum,” this rare and beautiful tree is being cut in
hundreds, to be used chiefly for timbering the drives of some
gold mines in the Rockhampton district.”
Sir,-
Archbishop Duhig’s reference to the trees of Bardon, including
a plea for their retention, was in accord with his love of the
clean and beautiful in life and nature. Through the valleys of
Bardon, you sense the sweetest and the dearest of the
perfumes, “the smell of the bus.” Big trees send forth their
strong, wholesome scent, as clean as their own limbs. This is
the perfume, unlike any other, that inspires us to go out into
the clean, open spaces and the breeze.
But man marks the earth with ruin. There are men in
Brisbane who remember monarchs in these valleys whose bright
and glistening leaves were probably rustling and murmuring in
the wind when Oxley’s whaleboat came up the stream we know as
the Brisbane River. Those monarchs had to fall in order to
make way for homes. But the new generation has been, in many
instances, wantonly sacrificed to make room for evanescent
flowers.
If the trees of Bardon were removed, only dreary
hillsides and unattractive gullies would remain. Fortunately,
there are tree lovers in Bardon who will not allow the trees
on their properties to be destroyed. To these people our
thanks are due for what remains of the original beauty of
Bardon. I would say that all trees should be invested in a
trust, and no tree should be felled without a permit from that
trust.
I am, Sir,
etc.,
Catalyst.
To the Editor
Sir, Mr.
Tom Welsby’s letter in a recent issue of the “Courier,”
revives recollections of old time acquaintance with the
Ceratodus. I first saw the “Burnet salmon” at Gayndah in June,
1862. The fish weighed, I should say, 18 or 20 lb. I was told
it was “no good to eat.” The Burnett aboriginals, among whom I
had then been living for two years, expressed the exact same
meaning.
From January 1861, I lived on the Burnett waters for 15
years. Boyne and Auburn Rivers- mainly affluents of the
Burnett- 7 years, and 8 years on the very banks of the Burnett
at Gayndah, the best accredited habitat of the Ceratodus.
During all those years, I never saw or heard of any
one, black or white, eating the fish. I never tasted it; but
let us hope that, as a result of its wide and successful
distribution in other waters, by Mr. D. O’Connor, it may yet
come to be classed as edible.
After an arduous and exciting hunt on the head of the
Dawson River in January 1863, for country, I located, and
subsequently stocked, Box Vale. While spelling my horses at
Mount Hutton, for three weeks, my mate, - Dick Stuart- and I
fished daily Hutton’s and Indune Creeks, and other Dawson
waters, and caught numbers of Barramundi, a very beautiful and
delicious fish, I never heard it called the “Dawson salmon,”
and, of course, that name would be inapplicable to the Burnett
fish. The Dawson waters run into the McKenzie and Fitzroy.
In 1869, my late brother-in-law, William Forster
McCord, of Coonambula, some time M.P. for Burnett, got
specimens of the Burnett salmon, had them salted, and sent
down to his uncle, the Hon. William Forster, then a Minister
of the Crown in Sydney, and afterwards Agent-General for New
South Wales in London. The result was that the “lung fish”
became the “Ceratodus Forsteri.”
Early in 1882, Professor Caldwell was sent out from
London to investigate. He came accredited to me – then Police
Magistrate at Gayndah. I drove him to Coonambula, which became
his headquarters. Under McCord’s advice, he pitched his camp
at the junction of the Auburn and Burnett Rivers, about three
miles from the head station. The Boyne junctions with the
Burnett a mile or so below the Auburn. I secured for Caldwell
the services of my bailiff – “Dicky Dutton”- to direct several
blacks engaged in search for spawn in the large holes at
Gayndah. McCord had a good squad of blacks for Caldwell at his
camp. All the hatchery work was done at Coonambula head
station by Mrs. McCord, as a labour of love. I have often
watched her transferring the little hatchlings from small
cells to larger in specially made traps containing numbers of
square, different sized, watertight cells. The eggs are round,
gelatinous, and semi transparent, about the size of a large
pea, or the tip of a little finger. The embryo shows in it a
small dark streak. In some ways it resembles frog spawn. The
eggs were found in the weeds and mud at the dies of and
bottoms of the rivers Auburn and Burnett. About ten years
later professor Richard Semon was sent out from Germany, to
scientifically exploit the Ceratodus. He also came accredited
to me, then Under Colonial Secretary. By a fortunate chance,
McCord was in Brisbane, so I introduced the professor, and
McCord took him up to Coonambula. In August 1891, Semon
pitched his tent also at the junction of the Auburn and
Burnett Rivers. McCord got together all the available blacks,
that Caldwell had had, and, with the assistance of Mrs.
McCord, at the head station, the expedition into the embryonic
growth was most successful. Then Professor Spencer stayed at
Semon’s camp and stayed there a while in pursuit of ceratodus
spawn. These two met a couple of years later, at Jena in
Germany.
Semon’s book published in London in 1899, tells that
“the ceratodus has to come up every 30 or 40 minutes to
express air from its pouch or lung. It will die very soon if
kept out of the water in which it uses its gills like other
fish. When it comes up to express air or inspire, it makes a
groaning noise. It does not crawl on land nor does it get on
logs in the water to sun itself. Out of water it is helpless,
cannot make progression, nor does it, in drought time, embed
itself in mud.”
Not being able to get Semon’s book in Australia, I
asked a daughter of mine who lives in England to try. She
procured a second hand copy, but kept it, sending me the
extracts, I have quoted above, and graceful acknowledgements
to her uncle, aunt, and father, for valuable help that
contributed to the professor’s success.
As the book is not procurable here, what I have written
may be of interest to many of your general readers.
I am, Sir,
etc.,
W. S.
Parry-Okenden.
Redcliffe.
February 20.
SEMI CIVILISED NATIVE
CANNOT SETTLE DOWN
[This is
the second of a series of articles which Mrs. Bates is writing
for “The Advertiser.” In her first article, which appeared in
January 2, she dealt with the aboriginal in his wild state, as
he first appears from the interior. In this article, she deals
with the semi civilised native, and in the third article, she
will deal with the native who has become fully civilised. Mrs.
Bates has lived for years in remote spots where she can study
the native and his life. She is recognised by scientists as
one of the greatest living authorities on the Australian
aboriginal.]
Every
group that comes down from the wilds into civilization has its
own group name and its totem name, applied to and by itself.
Its group name may be taken from some local dialectic term,
its totem name is that of the bird, animal, or reptile, which
was found by the water in the far off ages of its ancestors’
wanderings.
Many distinct groups have appeared within civilised
areas, such as the War’du Wong-ga (wong-ga means speech, talk,
dialect etc Wardu- wombat), and the Wan’bering Wong-ga
(Wan’bering – a sort of native gooseberry growing among the
sandhills of the Great Australian Bight). The former came from
Fowler’s Bay, and the latter’s water was Ilgamba water, a
permanent soak at the Bight head. They were a wild dog (ilga)
totem group. Both groups are now extinct.
These and many other groups are represented among the
derelicts now wandering along the outskirts of civilization.
They are mixed and jumbled together through their promiscuous
mating. A man of the old Baadu group may lay claim through a
Munjinga mother or grandmother to the Munjinja Wong-ga, and
call himself a Munjinja Wong-ga; fair-haired, red-haired, and
even white-haired children have come out of the vast wild
areas of Central South Australia and Central Western
Australia.
Along the headwaters of the Murchison and Gascoyne
Rivers, I traced the broad-faced, yellow-haired descendants of
the Dutch criminals whom Pelsart marooned on the mainland in
the 17th century. Little Bai-ali, the son of
Goo-yama, a Munjinja, and Thang-una a Mang-gundha, had quite
white hair as a child and boy, and his father told me that
white hair was a family characteristic in certain areas, just
as left-handed boys and girls came from certain families.
In the area south-south-west of the Badu Wong-ga of
Boundary Dam, there were families – or perhaps descendants of
one family – most (but not all) of whose members were six
fingered and six toed. Helm published the sketch of one female
member of these families in the sixties (1860s)
How far
into these central areas did Leichhardt and his doomed party
penetrate? They left no outward track for the natives to
follow, but old men who have kept up with the young trekkers
from their home waters, tell of legends of “jinna nganju,”
“spirit footprints” (boots?) which their initiation guardians
pointed out to them as they fearsomely stepped aside to avoid
them.
There was once a great area that no native entered
until an Englishman crossed it. No mob or small group or
single person ever crossed Nullarbor Plain until the late
Arthur Chichester Beadon crossed it from Ilgamba Water at the
head of the Bight to Murgaree Water on the plain’s northern
edge.
The natives hunted kangaroo and emu about 20 miles from
the plain’s edge. Beyond that distance they never ventured. A
great “sulky” ganba (magic snake) owned the plain and killed
and ate any native whom he caught upon it. The plain swarmed
with kangaroos and emus, as, owing to the snake legend, it had
been a perpetual sanctuary for big game. No native ever
crossed it until a little mob was persuaded by Mr. Beadon to
accompany him from Ilgamba to Murgaree Water.
There are four main tracks- north, south, east, and
west – by which the central aboriginals have been entering
civilization during the past 60 years. How far northward they
trek I have not been able to ascertain.
The various civilised areas, stations, goldfields,
telegraph outposts, railway sidings, farms etc., which they
reach, all react upon the little mobs who suddenly come upon
them. Best of all these civilised areas are the stations,
especially those stations where white women and children are
living.
There are no drones among those splendid outback
pioneers. The station owner went fearlessly to the wild
creatures, his women gave them food. He gave them occupation
of some kind, and his wife initiated the naked women and girls
into little home duties suited to their understanding. The
utter fearless of the white people was “magic” to the natives,
and so just and so kindly and temperately were they dealt with
by the white family that I have found children and
grandchildren of these wild central cannibals claiming the
station as their ngoora (camp, fire, home) though it had been
alien ground to their fathers.
The decent white woman kept down the half-caste menace
as much as it was in their power to suppress it by their own
daily example. The only effective way of bringing British
civilised conditions to the understanding of the aboriginals
is by example. The natives stayed and worked and learned and
were kept separate from the white family. There was no
familiarity of intercourse. The white women visited the camp
if sickness was there, but the native privacy was otherwise
undisturbed, and the white people kept their privacy.
Other little wild mobs came to the telegraph outposts,
where conditions somewhat similar to the stations prevailed.
The men were given crude jobs, easily learned, by which they
earned their keep. The wise white telegraphists kept their
distance, and the natives learned – by example- to keep
theirs. From the first moment of the natives’ contact with the
white man, their study of him begins. In the intimate spying
of their own wild lives – always “feeling” danger in camp or
on trek- the
tiniest incident is noted, and so every smallest detail of the
daily life of the white men and women is studied by them,
always from their own standpoint.
What great responsibility rested upon those early
pioneers and indeed, upon every white man and woman who comes
in contact with these wild humans! They come out of their
fastnesses, a wild animal mob from the stone age of culture,
and they suddenly impact against twentieth century
civilization! The distance is unleapable by them, yet they
conform to it by covering their nakedness and giving up their
age long wild foods for the white man’s refined products.
Cannibals of a month or so eat tinned fish, cake, and lollies.
That is the “jump” that has led to their extinction.
In my many years of investigation among them, I have
regulated the foods I give them to their constitution. In
their wild life, they have great variety in foods, grubs,
edible seeds, roots, fruits, honey from ants, and eucalypts,
gum (for dysentery etc.) from various trees, long-tailed
iguanas and short-tailed reptiles for constipation), animal
meat and bird meat etc., and if near river or creek or deep
waterhole, they have a fish diet.
These foods, eaten raw or slightly cooked, kept them in
health. So that when illness came to them, it was surely magic
and they generally turned over and died from the magic. They
must have meat, for every central native is a Koo’gurda or
meat-eater- from Kooga-
meat and urda, arra, jarra, charra, “belonging to.”
Koo’gurda is not a tribal or group name………..
MRS. RANKEN’S REMINISCENCES
Mrs. Fanny
Ranken writes:
The “Peeps
at the Past” that I here offer were recalled by a little book
of dates of bygone events. I remember that the Port Curtis
diggings (Gladstone, Queensland) in 1858, were called the
Calliope diggings. Thousands of men rushed up to find that
only about 300 could make a living there. The gold discovery
about the same time at Rockhampton was a similar
disappointment, and men were glad to work for rations.
This led to the making of the Archer’s hospitable and
beautifully situated home, Gracemere, on the mere or lake, and
so called after a sister who, with her parents and others of
the family, lived in Norway after leaving Scotland.
At one time races were held on what was then the lake.
The garden, which extended from the bungalow shaped house to
the edge of the mere, was full of rare plants, shrubs and
trees. On one of my frequent visits to the Archer’s a flood
set in, obliging those who had to go into the township to take
boast. Not a fence was to be seen in the intervening eight
miles. All the young men at Gracemere spent one night, if not
more, rescuing the people living about, some of whom had taken
refuge in trees. To my regret I lost, in one of our many
moves, a large sheet of paper with clever sketches of the
rescue party, everyone being easily recognised.
One of the Archer brothers, Alexander, better known as
“Sandy,” was lost in the wreck of the Quetta on the Queensland
coast. Strange to say, his deck chair was found at Thursday
Island, where Frank Jardine was chief magistrate, and was
treasured by him, for Gracemere had been as much his home when
a boy as his own home.
Colin, another of the Archer’s, was the builder of
Nansen’s ship, the Fram. I met all the brothers at various
times at Gracemere, and, physically and mentally, they were
very fine men. Gracemere was a favourite house of call, and
was always full of young men – relations and friends getting
“colonial experience.” Often I have been the only woman
sitting at the long dining table, in a company of 35 or more
men folk. The Archers were gentlemen of the old school, full
of courteous chivalry.
Archie Archer was at one time in the Queensland
Legislative Assembly.
In 1880, I knew Mr. Dalrymple, who explored the Kennedy
district, but who was latterly quite lame from injuries he
sustained after having escaped the dangers of exploration
unscathed. In those days there was a very good class of people
in the north, and the women were always ready to initiate a
“new chum,” as I was, into all sorts of ingenious makeshifts.
Friendships formed then have lasted to this day.
I remember seeing Gardiner, the bushranger, running for
his life across a paddock not far from our house on Mount
Athelstane Range, and I saw him fall, disabled from a gunshot.
In the same year, the three Jardine brothers, of whom
Frank, already mentioned, was one, started to explore the
country up to Cape York. They were not heard of for a long
time, and we were all very anxious about them; but they
returned without boots to their feet or shirts on their back.
Their horses had eaten poison grass, and the natives had been
troublesome, but they had achieved what they had set out to
do.
In 1868, Lord Belmore came out as Governor, and on the
same day one of our boys was born. My husband announced the
fact to his mother as “fashionable intelligence,” the son’s
advent and the Governor’s being at the same time.
The Rev. Dr. Lang passed away in 1878. My husband wrote
an obituary notice for a Sydney magazine, which was shown to
his widow. Mrs. Lang was so gratified that she expressed a
wish to see the writer. We called on her and a friendship was
thus formed that lasted to the day of her death.
When Sir John Robertson and other old pupils of the
doctor, put up the statue to his memory in Wynyard Square, on
the spot where he used to hold his political meetings, they
asked Mrs. Lang to unveil it. She was of such a retiring
disposition that she shrank from the publicity, but felt,
after all their kindness, that she should not refuse. She
wrote me that the evening of the day turned out very wet, and
that all the time she “wanted to bring it (the statue) in out
of the rain and set it by the fire.”
In 1882, one of our boys saw the Garden Palace in
flames, when he was pulling himself across in his dingy from
North Shore to Mort’s Dock, Balmain. In those days premium
apprentices were welcome. Indeed, other apprentices, too, only
the latter did not go through all the “shops.” We were then
living in one of two houses that were called Highgate Terrace,
in Parkes Street, named after Sir Henry Parkes. One window
looked into Neutral Bay, and another took in the rough road or
track, leading through the bush to Willoughby Falls, the only
other house then visible being Branxholme Hall, named after an
old place at home. How changed it all is now! No one knows
anything about the falls.
**
Following
in the wake of Mr. A. Meston’s “Geographic History of
Queensland” comes a small pamphlett of 35 pages issued by the
Government Printer.
The preliminary chapter is a letter addressed to the
Hon. Horace Tozer appealing strongly for justice to the
aboriginals, and atonement for the shameful past.
The rest of the work is a concise and lucid history of
the manner in which the aboriginals were treated by the
various colonies, an account of the work being done by all the
colonies at the present time, and a brief but comprehensive
outline of a scheme for the future improvement and
preservation of the Queensland aboriginals.
Certainly no other man is better qualified to write and
speak authoritatively on such a subject; and if Mr. Tozer will
accept Mr. Meston’s proposals and inaugurate a system of
Aboriginal Settlements on suitable reserves, with competent
men in charge, and lay a solid foundation for the lasting
benefit of this unfortunate race, he will hand his name down
to posterity associated with a noble philanthropic work more
enduring than any legislation passed in the colony up to the
present time.
**
That
daring aeronaut, Miss Essie Viola, who behaved so bravely in
the late balloon accident at Gympie last week, is announced to
make a balloon ascent here on Saturday afternoon next, when it
is to be hoped no such accident will happen again. She will
descend from the balloon- a new one, by the bye- in a
parachute. Miss Viola will make an ascent in Gympie today.