THE PADDINGTON
CEMETERY
An Ithaca Labour Councilor said
"the tombstones are good road metal." 1907
An
old cemetery is one of the most pathetic and melancholy
spectacles in this world, and the pathos of it is deepened
when it has been allowed to drift into neglect and ruin, with
broken fences, overturned tombstones, fallen railings,
obliterated inscriptions, rank weeds, long grass and general
desolation.
Longfellow said he “loved that ancient Saxon phrase
which called the burial ground God’s Acre,” but old and
neglected cemeteries are a poor compliment to the respect
shown to God’s special property in graveyards.
It is not an honour to our boasted civilization that
primitive races, and those we are pleased to call “savages,”
had far more reverence for their dead, than the most highly
civilised races of the present.
The aboriginal burying grounds of the world were not
holiday resorts for lewd and frivolous larrikins and
larrikinesses, and sundry other types of human animals whose
presence is an insult to the dead. Nor were they feeding
places for goats and cows, and they were not allowed to drift
into a condition which is an insult to the living.
The Roman Catacombs (“Roma Sotteranea”), prove the
reverent care of the ancient Romans for their dead.
The Alabaster Sarcophagus of Psammetichus, and the
magnificent urns and expensively embalmed bodies of ancient
Egypt, show a reverence for the dead not paralleled by any
other nation of the world. And no other nation had ever a
custom corresponding to the Egyptian “Trial of the Dead,” one
of the most weirdly dramatic and tragically mournful and
pathetic spectacles in human history.
To come from the ancient to modern times, let us ask if
our own fair land of Queensland has a noble record in its
treatment of the dead men and women, the heroes and heroines
of the rough old pioneering days of the past, the men and
women whose life work made stepping stones for the present to
walk over where they had to swim or wade through many a dark
morass.
Brisbane’s first cemetery was on the bank of the river
on the curve of North Quay. That was the graveyard of the
convict period, a time of horrors unimaginable by the people
of today. On that then lonely spot, overlooking the placid
river were deposited the bodies of soldiers, convicts, and
officers, who died from 1825 to 1839, and today their dust
lies there in the silence of that river bank, heedless of the
continuous roar of the city which stands now where they saw
only the primeval forest, and nightly heard the howl of the
dingo and the songs of the savage tribes, far less savage than
the whites of that period. They lie there forgotten, the
flogger and the flogged, the slayer and the slain.
The old headstones from that graveyard were removed
many years ago to the cemetery at Paddington.
There was also another early cemetery by the river and
Roma Street, in front of where the Helidon Spa establishment
is situated. The tombstones from there were also removed to
the Paddington cemetery which is therefore the most venerable
graveyard in Queensland, the one with the most
fascinating historical associations, the one surrounded by the
most pathetic and romantic memories of the early days of
Queensland.
The ancient Necropolis, venerable with age and sacred
to the memory of our early settlers, was the subject for
discussion in a recent meeting of the Ithaca Shire Council,
which decided that it should be vested in the Council, and
transformed into a recreation ground.
In answer to a question concerning the disposal of
headstones, Labour Alderman White replied : “Break them up and
use them for the footpaths; they make good road metal!”
And nobody even attempted to brain him with a ruler!
Probably the braining process would be as much a physical
impossibility with White as it would be with a piemelon, but
some might have at least have mercifully have thrown him over
a precipice if there was one convenient.
Darwin said that today, even among the most highly
civilised races, there are a number of men still in the
Troglodyte stage, men who have the skulls and intellects of
cave dwellers who sat in their dark dwelling places and gnawed
the grilled bones of even their own parents, when having a
special feast.
To such men there is nothing sacred, and they care for
nothing but the welfare of their own carcasses.
It was said of Cato that his love of gold was such, he
sifted the ashes of his dead father, to see if they would pan
out a few pennyweights. There are men who would dig up graves
for the sake of the shrouds on the dead, and have them made
into shirts.
Some of the Ithaca aldermen are evidently still in the
Troglodyte stage, a stage at least ten thousand years lower
than that of any savage race of today. The proposal to insult
the dead by making road metal of their tombs give the Ithaca
Council, and Alderman White, an unenviable distinction that we
gladly believe will stand as the only record of the kind in
Australian history, from the landing of Phillip to the far off
period when this continent is to be once more submerged in the
ocean. If Alderman White’s skull is not broken up for road
metal after he is dead it ought to be placed in the Museum
beside that of the Diprotodon, and other extinct animals of
the Post Pliocene period in Australia. And the “Daily Mail”
sent out a Troglodyte reporter who approved of Alderman
White’s advice.
This is the first appearance of the Troglodyte in
Queensland journalism. It is safe to say that on no other
paper is such a reporter possible, at least not on the staff.
He would be kept in an iron cage in the yard, and fed on
thistles.
The Paddington cemetery holds most of the historic
people of Moreton Bay and Queensland. And in a series of
articles we shall endeavour to save the names and deeds
of the most remarkable from the oblivion of time.
Before entering those old cemeteries in that solemn,
little valley, which may be called the Valley of the Shadow of
Death, it may be well to have a glance at the outside. In
those days, the various sects extended their exclusiveness
beyond the grave, and so the Wesleyan, the Jew, the Roman
Catholic, and the Church of England dead were kept carefully
apart by a fence or a street. It was a somewhat inconsistent
scheme on the part of those who believe in a resurrection that
is to find all equal before God on the Day of Judgment. But
theology is not one of the exact sciences, and is subject to
many amendments. Today, in the Toowong cemetery, all sects
sleep as it were in the same room on apparently harmonious
terms, as there is no recorded case of a general disturbance.
Outside all the sects were two classes of unfortunates
to whom consecrated burial was denied. Those were suicides,
who murdered themselves, and malefactors whom the law murdered
on the gallows. These are the dead “outside the fence,” though
there is no reason to suppose they have not slept as
peacefully, as those inside.
No headstones were placed over these lost souls, and so
their graves are not discoverable today. Their names only are
found in the records. No one call tell who was the first
honest person inside, or the first criminal outside.
Toowong
Cemetery started with the grave of Miss Hill, a daughter of
the late Walter Hill, who was first Curator of the Brisbane
Botanic Gardens, in 1855. The next grave was that of Governor
Blackall, on January 3, 1871. (Correction: Ann Hill was buried
November 3, 1871)
Today the
dead in Toowong Cemetery are more in number than the whole of
the living in Queensland at the date of Separation, when the
population was represented by 25,000 people.
Among the men buried in the old graveyard between Roma
Street and the North Quay were two named Stapylton and Tuck.
Stapylton was one of three surveyors sent up by Governor Gipps
to start a trigonometrical survey of the Moreton Bay district,
the other two being Dixon and James Warner, who was, in after
years, Sergeant-at-Arms in the Assembly.
Stapylton and his two men, Tuck and Dunlop, were attacked by the blacks near Mt. Lindsay, and Stapylton and Tuck were killed, Dunlop being left as dead, but he crawled into the scrub and was found there alive by the relief party from Brisbane, and recovered dying only about 10 or 12 years ago.
The remains of Stapylton and Tuck were brought to
Brisbane and buried in that old ground near Roma Street, where
they may be turned up some day in an excavation or a posthole.
Two blacks named Merridoo and Noogamill were captured
in May 1841, taken to Sydney, tried and sentenced to death,
brought back to Brisbane and hanged from a beam on the present
Observatory, the old convict windmill.
These two blacks, the first men hanged in Brisbane,
were also buried not far from Stapylton and Tuck.
The railway station of Stapylton on the Southport line
perpetuates the name of the dead surveyor.
Among those outside the fence in the Paddington
cemetery is a black called Dundalli, hanged in 1854 in Queen
Street on the site of the present Post Office. He was charged
with several murders, including those of Mr. Gregor and Mrs.
Shannon at the Pine River, in 1846.
In the same month, another black called “Davey” was
hanged in Queen Street for killing Mr. Trevethan at Wide Bay,
and he too, is “outside the fence” at Paddington.
Many readers will remember Lachlan McLean, the once
well-known and respected blacksmith, of Elizabeth Street. His
father and family came to Sydney from Ross-shire in Scotland,
in 1841, and six months afterwards came on to Brisbane, where
McLean, senior, was the first blacksmith. He died about 40
years ago and was buried at Paddington.
There was a remarkable incident on the day of the
funeral. At the moment of passing the old gaol at Petrie
Terrace, now a police barracks, an aboriginal prisoner named
“Tommy Skyring” was attempting to escape. He had climbed to
the top of the wall, and was just about to lower himself, when
a warder shot him dead, and he fell alongside the funeral
procession, nearly on top of one of the mourners.
Tommy was one of three blacks who killed Stevens, the
botanist in 1866, near Mooloolah, at the spot still known as
the “Dead Man’s Lagoon.”
It appears that Tommy gave himself up to the police, as
Stevens haunted him. He said the dead man came repeatedly and
looked over his shoulder, and this so scared Tommy that he
refused to eat, and wasted away to a shadow.
But the old love of freedom overcame him, and he was
making a dash for it once more when the warder’s carbine
stopped him at the start.
He, too, lies outside the fence at Paddington among the
unwept, unhonored and unsung.
At present in Brisbane are some visitors from Scotland,
impelled by a desire to find among the Paddington dead, the
grave of a relative who was buried there in 1864, and they
have been successful.
Since the Toowong cemetery started a number of people
have been taken up and removed to there. Among these were the
members of the McLean family.
Among those buried in the Presbyterian section at
Paddington was the Rev. Thomas Mowbray, a once well-known
Presbyterian parson, whose name is retained by “Mowbray Park”
at South Brisbane.
He was father of the present Mowbray P.M. of Warwick,
and the late Willie Mowbray, once P.M. at Herberton, and
finally at Gympie.
He was also father of the wife of the still juvenile
and vivacious Dr. John Thompson, the most experienced medical
man in Queensland.
The Mowbray Estate remained in the hands of the family
until recent years, the last of it being sold to the South
Brisbane Council, who made it the public Mowbray Park of
today.
The remains of the Rev. Thomas Mowbray were removed in
after years to the cemetery at South Brisbane, where Mrs.
Mowbray, who died ten or twelve years ago, is also buried.
Among those in the Catholic ground at Paddington are
the remains of a Mr. And Mrs. Loague who came out from
Londonderry, in Ireland, in 1852.
Loague was for many years a highly esteemed officer in
the Police Force, stationed at Petrie Terrace gaol.
One of his daughters, a fine-looking woman, married a
Mr. Mylchreest, who was for many years pilot and harbour
master at Cairns, the first there, a six foot two,
broad-shouldered man, who died leaving one son and one
daughter.
The son died, and the daughter, one of the finest
specimens of women in North Queensland, married a Mulgrave
River stockowner named Simmonds, who died some years ago,
leaving a widow and four children, one of whom, the eldest
girl, is married and residing at present in Wynnum.
It is especially interesting to find such proofs as
these that there has been no deterioration, in the second or
third generations, and that Loague’s descendants today are
quite equal in physique to their old Hibernian ancestors. A
few facts like these dispel many illusions concerning the
adaptability of Queensland, North and South, for the white
races.
The smallest graveyard at Paddington is that of the
Wesleyans. It has also the distinction of being the most
neglected. There does not appear to have been more than 70
or 80 people buried there, and some of the graves have
either not been marked by headstones, or some of those
stones have been broken or removed.
A few score are lying on their faces, as tombstones
frequently do even when erect, and here and there is
merely a fragment bearing a part of an inscription.
On some graves the headstones alone indicate the
site, the wooden railings having long since decayed, or
been broken or removed for firewood, by some of the ghouls
who do these things at night when the nocturnal reptiles
are out in search of prey. The surrounding fence has also
supplied much firewood, which left panels with no rails,
or one rail, and here and there dreary gaps in the
palings, with signs of age, and neglect, and decay, and
the trail of desolation over it all. Alone of all that is
not dismal, and dead, and forgotten, or unfit to be seen,
stand two or three silky oaks and a Bunya pine, of which
we might say, as Byron said of the cypress:
“Dark tree still sad when
others’ grief has fled,
The only constant mourner
o’er the dead.”
The oaks, which are about 40 feet in height, afford
favourite climbing exercise for the small boys of the
locality and only a very foolish sparrow ever builds a
nest on even the highest branch.
At the south-east corner of the cemetery is a
recumbent vault stone telling us that below is all that is
mortal of Annie Thompson Pugh, wife of Theophilus P. Pugh,
whose name will be handed on to posterity associated with
“Pugh’s Almanac.”
Pugh was once a member for North Brisbane, and
while in the House voted for the repeal of the Civil
Service Act.
When he stood again for Brisbane, the whole Civil
Service was waiting for his blood, and he was thrown out
with a loud bang.
Pugh was a little man with so much restless energy
that he was known as the “Industrious Flea.”
On the stone is only one line stating that:
“She never caused her
friends to grieve until she died.”
a neat
epigram such as shows that brevity is often the soul of
eloquence as well as of wit.
Mrs. Pugh died on March 1, 1866, aged 33 years.
Near the grave is a stone with the name of William
Alfred Finney, the eleven months son of Thomas and Sidney
Ann Finney.
Sidney House, at Toowong, bears the name of the
mother, and she and the once well-known Tom Finney,
founder of the firm of Finney Isles and Co., are in the
same Land of Shadows as the child who died on June 11,
1869.
That is one of the only three graves in a decent
condition, but yet one naturally wonders why it has not
received more attention, or the stone removed to Toowong.
The best kept grave there, apparently recently much
improved, is that of Henry Edward Tom, second son of Henry
and Emma Tom, a child of two years and five months, who
died on August 22, 1864.
That was 43 years ago, but the memory of the lost
child is still green in the hearts of some of the Tom
family, well-known and respected squatters today on the
Maranoa.
Pathetic beyond expression are these childrens'
graves, and there are many of them.
“Only a child,” says the casual fool who has not known sorrow, or is not capable of feeling nor caring that
“out of the souls of the mothers of these, the light and joy of their life has fled,”
as
they consigned those once dearly loved white shrouded
little forms to the dust.
Very singular are fatalities in some families.
Amy Josephine Leigh died on April 18, 1867, aged 8 months, and next year William Theodore Leigh died on January 17, at exactly the same age. The stone tells us that they were
“children of Thomas Leigh, and Jane White.”
White, presumably being the mother’s maiden name.
The inscription reads:-
“They have early flown,
dear, suffering ones,
Home to their rest,
They have early learned the
simple tones
In the land of the Blest,
In that painless clime, in
that region fair,
Sweet Amy, dear Willie,
we’ll meet you there.”
The oldest grave appears to be that of Johanna Sutherland, who died on December 14, 1852, aged 70, and next comes George Poole, a Brisbane chemist and druggist, who died on May 6, 1853, at 30 years of age. Of him it is said that
“he
died triumphant in the faith of the Gospel.”
The Markwell family, well-known since early days, are represented by Mary Ann, wife of John Markwell, dead on April 8, 1855, aged 30, and Mary Ann, the wife of Isaac Markwell, dead on November 2, 1862, aged 45. Evidently Mary Ann was a favourite name in that family.
On the tomb of the wife of W. J. Killick
Piddington, dead on October 25, 1866, aged 36, is this
inscription, referring to her eight year old son, who died
on September 27, 1865:-
“Yes, ‘tis sweet balm in our
despair,
Fond, fairest boy,
That Heaven is God’s, and
thou are there,
With Him in joy;
Farewell then,
for a while farewell,
Pride of my heart,
It cannot be that long we
dwell,
Thus torn apart.”
These are two verses from a very little known poem,
one of the most pathetic in the language. It appeared with
the title of “Casa Wappy,” the pet name of the poet’s son,
who died at the age of four or five, and each double verse
ended with the name. They are among the finest In Memoriam
verses ever written, and the author was the famous
Scotsman, Dr. Macbeth Moir. They first appeared in
“Blackwood’s,” over the nom-de-plume “Delta” in 1847.
On one tomb is the name of Eliza, wife of Charles
Abraham, whose name would indicate a Hebrew origin, but
she may have been a Christian. She was born on July 15,
1813, and died on March 12, 1875. One of her sons is today
a Brisbane town traveler for a firm bearing a Semitic
name.
On her headstone is the following eulogy:-
“She was - but words
are wanting to say what!
Think what a wife should be,
and she was that.”
Florence Gertrude was the seven months daughter of
Charles Henry and Caroline Harley, who inscribed over the
tomb of this young soul thus prematurely hurried from the
world:
“To those who for her loss are grieved
This consolations give,
She from a world of woe was called
To bloom, a rose in Heaven!”
The name of Harley was well-known to Brisbane in
recent years in the firm of Rogers and Harley, printers,
of Elizabeth Street.
The name of “William” (buried on July 7, 1868) four
days’ old son of William H. and Minna Miskin, now in
Rockhampton, was once a well-known Brisbane solicitor, who
for some years was also Official Trustee in Insolvency,
and he lived out at Toowong.
He was an enthusiastic entomologist, and by
purchase and exchange made one of the finest butterfly and
moth collections in Queensland.
But the blue serenity of the Miskin household was
overclouded by a darkness that might be felt. A new and
strange planet, called “Governess,” swung into the orbit
of the Miskin system, and the lawful occupant of that
sphere appealed to the Terrestrial laws, and Miskin and
“Governess” swung off into an orbit of their own, and have
remained there ever since.
Miskin’s butterflies were sold to the Brisbane
Museum for £250, and are there at the present time, all
except one specimen – “Governess Superbus”- which he
wisely retained.
One of his brothers, A. E. Miskin, was once owner
of Bundall plantation on Nerang Creek, his partner for a
time being “Charley Morris,” the present C. A. M. Morris
P.M. of Ipswich.
This Miskin afterwards took up a 1280 acre
selection of the Johnstone River and settled there.
But the four day’s old baby of July, 1868, has
slumbered in blissful unconsciousness, and the mother, a
most esteemable woman, is far away from the lonely grave
of the child of her early days.
James Stevens died on August 27, 1866, aged 75
years, and the headstone was “Erected by his bereaved
widow.” Alas! Alas! Thus are we ever face to face with the
Eastern Monarch’s Proverb:
“Take all the world can give
or land,
But know that death is at
the end!”
“Letitia, wife of Robert Raymond,” is all that one
headstone records.
Jane, the wife of Henry Franklin, once a builder in Fortitude valley, died on September 5, 1859, leaving this message:
“Farewell, my husband, I’m
gone before,
My love for you can be no
more,
Grieve not for me, nor
sorrow take,
But love my children for my
sake.”
James Wakefield, who died at 57, on July 8, 1857,
was father of the well known Hiram Wakefield. His widow
died on July 4, 1873, aged 68.
Remarkable are the deaths of so many young women.
Mary Ann, the wife of Henry Walpole, an old time Valley
tradesman, died on August 5, 1854, aged 21. Her sister
Francis died on October 15, in the same year, aged 18, and
a child who survived her, died at 21 – the same age as her
mother.
Elizabeth, wife of Daniel Allen, cabman, of Fortitude Valley, died at the age of 30, on May 6, 1875. She was born in Roscrea, Tipperary and left three sons. She buried her first two infant children in unmarked graves in the Church of England portion of the cemetery.
Henry John Isaac Markwell, son of John Markwell,
and one of the dandies of the period, a fine young fellow,
was killed off his horse on the Toowong road.
Fanny, the wife of William Sexton, of South
Brisbane, died on March 12, 1872, aged 27, and Susannah
Sarah, wife of E. J. Kingston, a Valley storekeeper, died
on October 8, 1859.
The old Brisbane Costin family, well known today,
gave the grave, on May 7,1875, a young man of 18½ years,
son of Thomas A. Costin, once a Queen Street saddler,
whose successor was the well known Jarman. His brother, W.
J. Costin, is the present chemist in the Valley, and
father of W. C. Costin, the Clerk of Parliaments. His
brother, J. T. Costin, is in charge of the lithographic
department in the Government Printing Office, and one of
his sons, J. M. Costin, went recently to Thursday Island
as Shipping and Fisheries Inspector.
Mr. And Mrs. Thomas Costin, the grandparents, came
to Moreton Bay in September, 1848, on the advice of T. H.
Green, Mrs. Costin’s brother, who was then a merchant and
stock and station agent in South Brisbane. The Costins
went in those days to the church on the present site of
the Longreach Hotel. Then Costin, J. P. Smith, A.
Warricott, Freeman, and Chambers, started the first
Methodist cause in Queensland in a little lane on the site
of the present “Telegraph” newspaper, and the first
minister to arrive was the Rev. William Moore, the first
church being erected in Albert Street and Burnett Lane,
and doing duty for some time for both Methodists and
Congregationalists.
In those days the present Angus Gibson, M.L.C.,
lord of Bingera plantation, was making a living out of
cabbage growing at Bulimba. In 1863 he was going along
Queen Street and heard singing in the Albert Street
church. It must have been first class singing, for it
fascinated Angus, and he went in and became a Methodist,
and has continued to be one ever since. This is the tale
told by Angus himself.
Jane Merry, wife of T. F. Merry, died on May 26,
1865, aged 32. She was the first wife. Merry was for years
a draper in the Valley, when Tom Finney was there in the
same business, before he came to Queen Street. He is still
alive, and a member of the firm of Barnes and Co., of
which Barnes M.L.A., is the head.
Caroline Rhodes, who died on March 2, 1864, at the
age of 21, was a daughter of Ralph Rhodes, who then had
the Sawyers Arms Hotel in George Street, where Trittons is
today. Rhodes and his wife were people much esteemed and
their carefully kept house was a favourite resort for
people from the country. He married a second time, but
both are dead. Rhodes had a daughter named Cordelia, who
married a George Gotcher, and died on August 24, 1869,
aged 25 years. Her mother, Rhodes’ first wife, Margaret,
died on August 26, 1869, aged 53 years, so that mother and
daughter died within two days of each other.
The stone over John Bucknell Waldron, who died at
27 on July 26, 1861, was erected by the children of the
Congregational Sunday School “as a token of love and
esteem for a kind teacher.” How many of those children are
alive today?
Harriett Paten, wife of John Paten, died on
February 24, 1861. Paten, in 1856, was a leading bootmaker
in Queen Street, and he and “Bobby Cribb” were associated
in business. The headstone records that
“And
as we have borne the image of the earthly,
we
shall also bear the image of the Heavenly.”
Clara Alice Harries, wife of Eustace Henry Harries, died on April 25, 1870, and the stone says she was
“Blest in hope, revered in memory.”
She died in giving birth to her first baby.
Harries was a draughtsman in the Colonial Architect’s
Department, of 40 years ago.
Catherine Ann Girling, wife of William Girling,
died on November 14, 1865, aged 21, and her sister Mary
Smith Deacon, died on November 27, aged 20.
By this time the reader will doubtless have noticed
the astonishing number of deaths among young women aged
between 16 and 21, and here comes a remarkable statement
by one of Brisbane’s oldest inhabitants, a man who has
been here since 1851. He says that in the early days there
was much bad water, total disregard of drainage, cesspit
closets of the worst type, and no attention to sanitation.
Much fever, then considered to be malarial, was certainly
typhoid. The critical age was that from 16 to 22, and once
over 22, there was a prospect of a fairly long life. The
death rate among children and young girls was terribly
high. Painfully conspicuous is the absence of old people
in the cemetery.
Among all in the Methodist section, there are only
two over 60 and two over 70. The majority are under 30.
And young men appeared to have no more immunity than
women, as the list will show.
Among those, R. B. Boardman Silcock died in January, 1865, aged 38; Menander Malcolm on June 28, 1872, aged 27; G. G. Stokes on October 28, 1872, aged 22 years; and James Chapman, on November 10, 1867, aged 13 years. On his headstone are the words,
“Faith
looks beyond the grave, and on to light and
immortality.”
Over Stokes are the words,
“Man cometh forth as a flower and is cut down.
He
fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not.”
With this we finally leave the Methodist cemetery,
one of God’s most neglected acres.
“Where the traveller meets
aghast,
Sheeted memories of the
past;
Shrouded forms that start
and sigh,
As they pass the wanderer
by;
White robed forms of friends
long given
In agony to the earth and
heaven.”
When the Paddington cemeteries were first reserved,
that region was then “out in the bush,” and apparently
no-one foresaw an extension of Brisbane in that direction
within the lifetime of any of the existing generation.
The ridges sloped down from Petrie Terrace into a
swamp at the bottom. In those days ducks and herons and
snipe fed in that swamp, and kangaroos and wallabies
hopped through the ironbarks and spotted and box gums on
the surrounding slopes. At night there was heard the
mournful howl of the furtive dingo, and the call of the
melancholy stone plover. Blacks climbed the trees and cut
out the opossum and the wild bees nest. Electric trams
were far off, in an unknown and unimagined future. The
Philp and Kidston and Bowman parties were lying dormant in
protoplasm, like the egg of Eros in Chaos, to be hatched
one day by numerous strange devices. Around Brisbane
stretched the primeval wilderness, to unknown regions
beyond.
These thoughts arise as we stand in the
Presbyterian cemetery, by the grave of Andrew Petrie, that
fine old Scot, who came to Sydney as one of a select band
of Scottish mechanics in the Stirling Castle in 1831.The
stone tells us that he was born on June 25, 1798, and died
at Brisbane on February 20, 1872. What eventful 41 years
occupy that space from 1831 to 1872! And how closely are
the Petries identified with the early history of
Queensland! Tom Petrie, who lives at the North Pine, is
today, at 71 years of age, the oldest resident of
Queensland. He came here as a year old baby with his
parents in 1837.
In 1837 Andrew Petrie was engaged in Sydney as
foreman of Works in Moreton Bay and he and his family came
up in the small steamer James Watt. In the following year
Petrie first discovered coal at Redbank, where the Tivoli
mine is today. In 1838 e discovered the Bunya pine at the
Blackall Range and brought the first plants to Brisbane.
This tree actually received the name “Pinus Petriane,” but
J. C. Bidwell, a collector of that time, sent some
specimens to London and it was named “Araucaria Bidwilli”,
the name it bears today. Bidwell is buried at the mouth of
Tinana Creek.
Petrie’s first work at Moreton Bay was the repair
of the treadmill, the Observatory of today. From a window
of that Observatory, in 1841, there projected a beam, on
which two aboriginals were hanged, though proved
afterwards to be innocent. The gallows were arranged under
Petrie’s instructions, and the hangman, who came from
Sydney, complimented him on his work. Petrie was not proud
of the compliment. In May 1842, accompanied by Henry
Stuart Russell, author of the “Genesis of Queensland,”
Joliffe, Wrottesley, a convict crew, and two aboriginals,
Petrie went on that memorable Mary River and Wide Bay trip
from which they brought back Bracefell and Davis, the two
convicts who had been ten and fourteen years respectively
with the blacks. Andrew Petrie was a fine specimen of a
man, tall and good looking, with curly hair and beard. His
sons, too, were all tall, fine men, and only Tom is left.
One of his daughters married the late Bob Ferguson, who
stood six feet four. Bob was for many years Inspector of
Works, and among his early contracts was the erection of
the Sandy Cape lighthouse, in 1872.
In the same railing as Andrew Petrie, is Mary
Cuthbertson Petrie, who died on June 1, 1855, also Walter
Daniel, a year and ten months child of John and Jane
Petrie, died on November 3, 1857. This child would be a
brother of the present Andrew Petrie M.L.A.
Andrew Petrie had a son named Walter, who at 20
years of age, was an exceptionally powerful young fellow.
At that time, a small creek ran from the present Roma
Street station down across Queen Street, by the site of
the present New Zealand Buildings, and into the river at
the end of Creek Street.
Walter Petrie fell in, and was found drowned,
partly buried in the mud, and grasping a bunch of
mangroves in his hand. As he was a splendid swimmer, he
must have hurt himself in the fall. His brother, John
Petrie, father of A. L. Petrie, M.L.A., had a child whom
he named Walter after the drowned youth. There was a
singular coincidence when that child at a year and ten
months old, was drowned in the same creek responsible for
the death of
the uncle whose name he bore. That is the child in the
Paddington grave.
There is also another child of five months, Annie
Petrie, who died on December 21, 1863. Here then is the
grand old warrior pioneer of the early days, for ever at
rest, while:
“The
Almighty hand from an exhaustless urn,
Pours
out the never ending flood of years.”
And all we who are alive are but as a foam wreath
on the advancing wave behind which lies the dead ocean of
the past.
Matilda Buxton, who died on March 3, 1866, aged 41,
was the wife of J. W. Buxton, who had a stationary and
fancy goods shop in Queen Street, where Ryder the tailor
is today. They buried two of their children, Matilda
Adelaide, on April 11, 1862, and Ada Matilda, on March 3,
1865.
An elegant marble column, with a draped crest, is
over the grave of Celia Sabina Craies, wife of William
Craies, first manager of the Bank of New South Wales in
Brisbane. The stone says:
“So long thy power hath
blessed us,
Sure it still will lead us
on,
O’er moor and craig and
torrent,
Until the night is come.”
The only other marble headstone is over a son of
Archibald McMillan, owner of some of the first vessels in
the Polynesian traffic. The boy, aged 11, died on March
28, 1866.
Jessie Mainwaring, wife of a once leading Queen
Street tailor, died on July 29, 1875, aged 37 years.
Adam Cumming, aged 31, died on May 23, 1861. He
succeeded John Stephens, brother of T. B. Stephens, and
uncle of the present Hon. W. Stephens, as secretary of the
Queensland Steam Navigation Board.
William Cowans, who died on February 3, 1871, at the early age of 32, was a bookseller and stationer in Edward Street. The stone says:
“The spirit and the bride say come;
and let him that heareth say come;
and let him that is athirst come;
and whoever will,
let him take the water of life freely.”
We have certainly no desire to be irreverent, but
this does read like a free invitation from a newly married
couple who have opened an hotel. All epitaphs ought to
leave not a shadow of anything suggesting the ridiculous.
They should be severely clear, and concise, elegant and
expressive. Heaven knows there is a vast supply to select
from.
Mary Jeffcoat died March 3, 1855, aged 50, and
Julia Jeffcoat on September 15, 1862, aged 49. Descendants
of this family are still well known in Ipswich.
Jessie Campbell Mackellar, who died on January 11,
1872, aged 29, was the wife of Alexander Mackellar, a once
prominent printer and lithographer, whose maps of Brisbane
were famous at one time, and are still well known.
Alexander McDonald, an Argyleshire Highlander, was
a well-known tide waiter in the Customs, at Lytton. He was
father of Alick McDonald, known to us today as the
landlord of the Shamrock Hotel, in Edward Street. One
daughter was married to Murray Prior, the handsome
barrister brother of Mrs. Campbell Praed. He died a few
years ago at an early age. The tombstone over McDonald was
“erected by his friends and brother officers.”
Donald Coutts, who died on December 27, 1857, was
the owner of “Toolburra,” the first station taken up on
the Darling Downs, by Patrick Leslie in 1841. He was a
brother of Tom Coutts, who died recently at Toolburra. Tom
was the owner who sold the station, or part of it, to the
Government, and acquired some prominence in a recent
Parliament in connection with a letter written to him by a
prominent member of Parliament who was alleged to have
claimed commission. Donald Coutts was killed by the kick
of a foal, at Bulimba, where he resided in a house built
for D. C. McConnell. Beside his grave is that of a
sister-in-law, Anna Maria Thompson, who died on March 8,
1862, aged 47, and the stone says:
“A pilgrim panting for the
rest to come,
An exile anxious for her
native home.”
Jessie Guthrie, who died on June 20, 1871, was the wife of John Guthrie, who was first a solicitor with Little and Brown, and afterwards on his own account. He lived in a house called “Lucerne,” long occupied afterwards by John Scott, once Chairman of Committees, at Milton. Beside it stood one of the handsomest fig trees in Brisbane. Jessie was Guthrie’s first wife. His second was Miss Fowles, sister of William Lambert Fowles, once Legislative Assembly for Clermont, and father of the present Under-Secretary in the Treasury. Guthrie was residing at Wooloowin, when he died, and his second wife now resides in Tasmania. In the grave with the first wife are her two children, Mary Isabella, aged 4, and Francis Drummond, aged 2, one died in July 1864, the other in July, 1861. Intensely pathetic are those graves that hold the mothers and their children.
John Randall, who died on November 31, 1873, aged
45, was head master of the Normal School, and his pupils
and friends erected his headstone as a memorial of their
esteem. He opened the school at first with a graceful
little speech, in which he expressed a hope that they
would all be conspicuous for punctuality, and equally
obedient to him in school and their parents at home. The
youngsters afterwards held a public meeting in the
playground, to discuss if it was possible to thus serve
two masters. This awful problem was left unsolved. Randall
left a family, deservedly held in high esteem. They lived
for many years next the brewery at Milton, but are now
residing on Gregory Terrace. One daughter is the wife of
B. W. McDonald, manager of the A.U.S.N. Company.
There were originally five sons and five daughters,
but three of the sons are dead. All five daughters are
married.
Janet M. Burns, who died on February 6, 1875, was
the eldest 4½ year old daughter of John and Jane Burns.
John Burns was partner to the once well known firm of J.
and J. Burns, now represented by Burns, Philp & Co, in
whose firm James Burns is managing partner.
Alexander Gordon Cummings, who died on December 28,
1866, was the four year old child of Charles C. and Helen
Cummings, who in those far off days, kept an hotel at the
corner of George and Turbot Streets.
George Phillips was a carter and contractor on Spring Hill, and he and his wife, Eliza, buried their son, William, aged 30, on September 23, 1871, and the stone says:
“Walking humbly with his God,
he was prepared to obey the summons
‘Come up hither.’
Be
ye also ready”
John Murray, who died aged 33, on January 11, 1866,
left a widow who married a Mr. Nott. Murray was the most
expert painter and glazier of his time and Nott had a
general store in Elizabeth Street. Mrs. Nott survives him
and still resides out near Woolloongabba. On April 16,
1861, she buried her 4½ year old child by her first
husband.
Angus Mathieson, who died March 11, 1872, aged 38,
was a South Brisbane carpenter. On his grave is a
ponderous stone, like the dome of a vault.
Next to him is a grave with four children named
Laing, four little girls, Helen, Margaret, Ann and
Elizabeth, aged 11, 13, 14 and 17 months, not one reaching
two years of age. Three died in 1863, and one in 1873, so
the first three must be the children of two mothers,
unless two were twin. A cypress pine “Callitris Robusta,”
evidently an old tree, has fallen between the two graves,
and lies partly on the stone over Mathieson, with a branch
over the little girls. The four dead children, the dead
man, and the dead cypress! There is no more pathetic or
mournful scene in the cemetery.
Richard Sexton, who died on April 6, 1869, aged
61, was a clerk of R. Towns and Co., and is represented
today by a nephew in the Railway Survey Department.
There the traveller meets
aghast,
Sheeted memories of the
past;
Shrouded forms that start
and sigh
As they pass the wandered
by,
White robed forms of friends
long given
In agony to the earth and
heaven.
From the Methodists, we pass across a street, into the adjoining graveyard, occupied by all that is mortal of the Queensland Baptists of a bygone age.
The name “Baptist” dates back to Thomas Munzer, of
Storck, in Saxony, in the year 1621, nearly 400 years ago.
History tells us that “he excited a rebellion of
the lower orders in Germany, quelled in bloodshed in
1525.”
Several other insurrections followed, all ending in
blood, and finally from 1535 to 1540, a number of
Anabaptists were executed in England. On January 6, 1661,
about 100 of these peculiar people, led by Thomas Venner,
a wine cask cooper, appeared in arms in London, and were
only conquered after half of them were killed. They fought
like devils, and killed a lot of soldiers. Sixteen of them
were executed, including Venner. The Baptist published
their Confession of Faith in 1643. In 1635, Rhode Island,
in America, was settled entirely by Baptists, and today
they are a peaceful, respectable and important body among
the religious sects of Queensland.
The warlike, death defying spirit of Venner, and
his self devoted warriors has departed. The most
remarkable modern Baptist preacher was Charles Haddon
Spurgeon, who died at Mentone, in Italy, on January 31,
1892.
With this we pass into the Baptist section of the
Paddington cemetery of Brisbane. It differs from the
Methodist graveyard in appearance, by being surrounded
with an old paling fence, which has locked gates, the key
being held by a local resident, who has the privelege of
grazing his cows among the tombstones.
Byron says:
What matters where we fail to fill the maws
Of
worms? On battle field or listed spot,
Both
are but theatres, where the chief actors rot.”
In Brisbane it matters not apparently where our
dead are buried, for ultimately the moo cow crops the
herbage around the tombstones and perfumed Capricornus
regales himself with the bouquets left on the graves by
bereaved relatives.
In the Baptist area is the same neglect – general
decay and wreckage and desolation. Fallen headstones,
ruined railings, and broken fragments prove how brief is
remembrance of the dead.
Here we have Mary, the first wife of Moses Ward, a once well known chemist. She died on May 21, 1872, aged 55, and Moses has since filled the vacuum in his soul with a fresh bride who brought him a substantial dowry. A good solid dowry dries a lot of tears. On her grave, the grief stricken Moses of 1872, has told us that:
“I would not have you ignorant brethren concerning them that are asleep;
that ye sorrow not, not even as others which have no hope;
for if ye believe that Jesus died, and rose again,
even so also them which are asleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”
We make no attempt to explain this, as the human intellect
is limited, and would be lost beyond redemption in an
attempt to elucidate these intricate theological problems.
Great men were living before Agamemnon, and there
were “Badgers” in Brisbane before the autocrat of the
tramways.
Benjamin Badger died on November 18, 1874, aged 49,
followed by his wife Ellen, on December 8, 1874, at the
age of 50, and Joseph their son, on December 22, a
fortnight after their mother.
With these, the Badger family became extinct.
Susan Elizabeth Warry and Edith May Warry were two
children who died in 1864. Their father was C. S. Warry, a
Brisbane and Ipswich chemist, brother of R. L. Warry, a
once well known merchant, and T. S. Warry, who died as a
bachelor. His two brothers are also dead.
Eli Hallet, of Huddersfield, England, died on
September 24, 1866, aged 28 years. His father was a
butcher, and with J. and W. Orr, then butchers of South
Brisbane.
Benjamin William was the nine year old son of
Thomas and Ruth Baker. The stone tells us that the boy was
drowned, and also invites to “Come to be where Jesus
is and see his smiling face.”
Eliza Brady Atkins was a ten months child, who died
on February 11, 1867, and William Bryant, from Tovil, in
Kent, died at Kedron Brook on October 15, 1865.
Agnes Lucy Blackford, who died on May 22, 1868, was
the wife of William Blackford, a baker in the Valley.
Emma Slater was the wife of Slater, a once
prominent bookseller and stationer, who was the
predecessor of Gordon and Gotch. She died on August 8,
1865.
Jane Orr, who died on March 15, 1863, at 58 years
of age, was the wife of an old South Brisbane butcher of
the firm of J. and W. Orr.
Her daughter, Margaret, died on December 25, 1870,
aged 23.
One headstone merely tells us that Hannah Maria was
the wife of Herbert Watson.
John Cadbury died on May 28, 1866, aged 29.
The next stone records the death on June 19, 1867,
aged 64, of John Bale, who was the father of the once well
known J. L. Bale, secretary of the Brisbane Building
Society.
Kate Spilsbury, who died on August 26, 1862, was
the wife of an old Brisbane confectioner, the Compagnoni
of his day.
Joseph Street, who died in November 1867, aged 43,
was the father of a family of robust good looking girls,
who once kept a millinery and artificial flower shop in
the William Street building now occupied by the
Protectorate of Aboriginals. It was also once the office
of that pious paper, the “Evangelical Standard,” of which
Brentnall was one of the associate editors. One Miss
Street married A. D. Douglas, afterwards Inspector of
Police, and another married J. G. Drake, the ex-Federal
Minister. Mrs. Douglas died recently and Douglas has gone
to reside in London.
Eleanor Ann, was the six months old baby of Emily
Copeland, whose husband kept the Prince Consort Hotel, in
the Valley. The child died in December, 1871.
John Samuel Kingsford, who died on July 17, 1870,
at the age of 22, leaving a young wife and infant son, was
a son of the Rev. John Kingsford, a Baptist minister, and
brother of R. A. Kingsford, once M.L.A. for South
Brisbane, and for many years a resident of Cairns, where
he was defeated at an election by F. T. Wimble. R. A. and
John Kingsford were drapers in Queen Street, where their
business was ruined by a disastrous fire. Then John took
to preaching, but Richard Ash stuck to business and
prospered.
Thus ended “Truth’s” first epistle to the Baptists,
and we leave that section with a feeling of sorrow, to
find that the dead have been as much neglected as those of
the Methodists and that the graves are in an equally
disgraceful condition.
We cross the tramline and look down from the
embankment of the raised street at half a dozen
headstones, which represent the Jewish cemetery. It
appears that a number were removed to Toowong, and it
would have spared any self respecting son of Israel many a
blush had the others been removed, and all trace of the
cemetery been obliterated. Presumably the Jews who sat
down and wept by the rivers of Babylon, were compelled to
gaze at a cemetery like that at Paddington. There is not
even a fence, nor any railings. The wandering Jew, in all
his peregrinations, never saw anything like that. We
cannot picture any Hebrew passing that spot and not
fainting with shame. As usual in Jewish cemeteries, the
stones bear inscriptions in both Hebrew and English. One
records the death of “Aelcey,” the wife of Coleman Davis,
who died on May 13, 1876, aged 36. The Jewish year is
given as 3685. Coleman Davis was a well known man who kept
a toy shop called the “Civet Cat” in Queen Street.
Osias Loewe died on December 10, 1872, aged 43. On
the headstone is an arm with a hand pouring water out of a
pitcher into a broken basin. One of Loewe’s daughters
married Isaac Markwell and became the mother of a man who
was drowned in his bath at Wooloowin, under circumstances
which evolved a remarkable lawsuit. Another daughter
married the manager of one of our banks.
Herbert Michael, son of Lawrence Levy, died at the
age of 27, on November 20, 1871. He was clerk with A. E.
Alexander a well known auctioneer of that period.
We leave this desolate and forlorn Jewish cemetery
with a series of sighs to express our emotions, for
language is not equal to the occasion.
Then we obtain the key of the Presbyterian area and
ramble into a wilderness of lantana which requires a scrub
knife before we can read the inscriptions. Here we find a
superior class of headstones and monuments, with much
clearer inscriptions, but all the higher ground is covered
with lantana, and many headstones are nearly invisible.
George Christie died on March 16, 1857, aged 36, his
daughter Sarah Ogilvie having died on April 27, 1856, aged
3, and his brother on February 12 in the same year. George
Christie was manager of a store at the corner of Russell
and Grey Streets, in South Brisbane. The store belonged to
old Bobby Towns and Co., and Christie was their
representative.
John Moffit was a teamster who died in January
1861, aged 38, and his mother Margaret died in December
1860, aged 68. They had a daughter Minnie who married
Daniel Cahill, and she is now an elderly widow residing at
Peachester. One of her children, a boy, aged two and a
half, died on April 10, 1871, and is buried beside his
grandparents. The grandmother, Margaret, once lived near
Colinton, and while there had an adventure with the
blacks.
One of her sons was in the house seriously ill, and
his father had gone away for assistance, leaving only
herself and the dying boy. The blacks had seen Moffit
leave, and thought it a fair time to raid the house, and
probably kill Mrs. Moffit. But she was equal to the
occasion. She dressed herself in Moffit’s clothes, walked
round the house, went inside, and came out again with
another suit on. She did this lightning change artist
business so neatly that the blacks thought there were
three or four men in the house, and retired. This presence
of men probably averted a tragedy.
A remarkable man was James Low, who was born on
January 4, 1791 in Scotland, and died at Brisbane on
September 24, 1871. His wife, Isabella, died at “Newmill
on Drumoak” in
Aberdeenshire on October 29, 1823. A son died there also,
aged 11. A
daughter, Catherine, married to Charles Smith, died at
Brisbane on December 8, 1853, and a son, aged 19, died on
September 2, 1851. His daughter, Annie, married Rudolph
Zillman, son of J. L. Zillman, of German station, one of
the original German missionaries, sent to Moreton Bay by
Dr. Lang in the convict days. James Low was a very well
known timber getter in the Maroochy and Mooloolah
districts, and his name is handed down to posterity,
attached to the tree known to both timber getters and
botanists, as “Jimmy Low,” the botanical name being
“Eucalyptus Resinifera.”
Mary Foran, wife of Edmund Mellor, died on January 17, 1859, aged 26, and in the same grave are her two children, one a month old, and the other a year and a half, John and Agatha. On the stone is
“They are gone to the grave,
we no longer behold them;
whose God was their ransom,
their guarantee and guide.
He gave the. He took them,
and He will restore them
and death was no sting for their Savior who died.”
This
is the usual enigmatical epitaph which baffles all human
comprehension.
Edmund Mellor was a well known man, who for many
years was captain of the old stern wheel steamer, Settler,
which ran between Brisbane and Ipswich. His second wife
was a Miss Duncan, whose daughter is the Eva Mellor of
today, whose stately and statuesque figure is occasionally
familiar in Queensland. The dark eyed Juna, this “daughter
of the gods, divinely tall,” stands six foot two, and is
probably therefore the tallest woman in Queensland. One of
her mother’s sisters was married to John Stewart, an old
pioneer veteran, who died a year ago on the Pine River. He
was a father of the late Miss Stewart, of Brisbane. A
brother of Mrs. Mellor, Charles Duncan, is a well known
storekeeper at Laidley. He was the first man that took a
dray from Maryborough to Gympie, when that field was
discovered.
James Powers died on August 20, 1854, leaving a
wife and four children, one of whom in the present day is
the well known Charlie Powers, who was Postmaster General
in the Morehead Ministry, 1889 – 1890.
Robert Mauley died on February 24, 1855, aged 25,
the son of a cabinet maker in Elizabeth Street, half a
century ago.
Alice, the wife of Matthew Henry, died at 23, on
August 11, 1851. The stone speaks for the husband “who
loved her during life, mourned her death, and revere her
memory.” Beneath that “Blessed are the dead who die in the
Lord, Amen.”
David Muir, a shipwright of that time, erected a
stone over his two children, one 4 years, one born and
died on the same day, October 24, 1863.
Kate Pringle, a niece of Tom Finney, died on July
21, 1864, aged 24, one of the appalling number of young
girls cut off ultimately in their youth. Tom Finney’s
first wife was a Miss Pringle, who lived only for a few
months. His second wife was a Miss Jackson, and the third
is the present widow who survives him. Very few people
know that Tom was married three times.
A Catherine Jolly, who died, aged 28, on August
27, 1863, was daughter of the Rev Thomas Jolly, of
Roxburghshire, in Scotland.
“Where are the Kings, and where the rest,
Of those who once the world possessed?”
In the centre of all the Paddington cemeteries
stands that devoted to the Roman Catholics of a past
generation.
It is said to be still the only Catholic cemetery
consecrated in Queensland. This means that it was all
consecrated at one time. The usual custom is to consecrate
each new grave. The ceremony was performed in the year
1858, by Archbishop Polding, of Sydney, one of the
earliest and ablest of the Roman Catholic prelates in
Australian history. The ceremony was solemn and
impressive, and there was a great gathering of the
Catholic people. The cemetery in those days was merely a
patch of ordinary forest, covered by coarse grass, bushes
and trees. The Archbishop’s gold Pectoral Cross fell off
his breast into the grass, and no one saw it fall. When
the loss was discovered, they searched for it in vain. An
advertisement appeared in the “Courier” offering £5
reward, but there was no response. The cross was regarded
as lost beyond recall, and superstitious people considered
the loss an evil omen for the new cemetery. No finder
appeared, and no emaciated, conscience stricken wallaby
hopped along with it as did the jackdaw of Rheims with the
Cardinal’s ring.
Then came a remarkable series of events. A man,
whose name is forgotten, came out as an emigrant cook, on
board a vessel called the Alfred. He was one of the
spectators at the consecration of the cemetery. A few
weeks afterwards, whilst on board the steamer, Bredalbane,
at the present Queen’s Wharf, he fell overboard and
drowned. When the authorities opened his clothing box,
there, lo and behold, lying on top, was the Archbishop’s
lost cross. He had known it was a valuable article of
solid gold, and was waiting to get a bigger price than the
£5 reward. Of course, every good Catholic firmly believed
that God had drowned that man for his sacrilegious
appropriation of the cross! There must be a divine
judgment in such cases. We can recall a man who stole a
priest’s horse, and three months afterwards he became a
member of the Queensland Parliament. This shows that no
man can appropriate sacred property without some awful
fate overtaking him.
We were on a visit to Cunnamulla seven years ago,
when some impious ruffian stole £3 /15 s out of Father
O’Sullivan’s room in the Catholic Church. The genial
priest assured us that the man would most certainly be
struck down by lightning.
But that is a digression. There were many graves in
the catholic cemetery before it was consecrated by
Archbishop Polding. ..(text missing) ...chapter of
information for his book on “The Early Days. The husband
of the girl wife, Mary Ann Gorman, married again, and
still resides in Brisbane, where he keeps a store in
Boundary Street.
Louis Schneider was a saddler who died on April 27,
1868, aged 30. His widow, Maria Jane, afterwards married
Joseph Baines, and became Mayoress of Brisbane. When
Baines died she married a contractor named Ryan, who built
the Roman Catholic Church at Kangaroo Point and the Palace
Hotel at South Brisbane. The lady had then s German, an
English, and an Irish husband. Perhaps she was solving
some great ethnological problem, or was like the Irish
bigamist who was proved to have married six wives, and
explained to the judge that “he was merely trying to get a
good one!” She is still in robust health, drives out
daily, and owns the Pineapple Hotel.
Mrs. Sybella Clune died in Margaret Street on June
11, 1863. The headstone was erected by her only surviving
daughter, a Mrs. Cameron, who was afterwards lost in the
Fiery Star, which was burned at sea on Good Friday. Thomas
M. Clune died on April 10, 1853, aged 27, and the stone
was erected by his sister.
John McCabe, who died in 1861, aged 53, was one of
the leading merchants of that time, and also owned a
number of teams. He also owned Queen’s Wharf, and a large
area of South Brisbane. His store was in George Street, at
the corner of Charlotte Street, opposite the old “Courier”
office John McCabe and Jeremiah Daly were great chums, and
in their many visits to hotel parlors, McCabe’s toast was,
“Here’s to oor ainsells, and whaur will you get the like
of us?” It is clear from this that McCabe was a Scot. His
toast was like the Highlanders’ prayer, “Lord, send us a
guid conceit o’ oorsels!” Of the Daly family we have much
to say in a future article.
Sarah Jones who
died on October 10, 1867, aged 49, was the wife of John
Jones, who kept the St. Patrick’s Tavern in Queen Street,
where Tronson’s shop is today. Old residents speak of her
as a fine specimen of a woman, and a great favourite.
Two children, one two years and the other four
months, died on December 3, 1864. Their parents were the
once well known Mr. And Mrs. Darragh of Kangaroo Point, an
old time honored family, for many years in the butchering
and hotel trades at the Point.
Catherine Sneyd, who died aged 46, on July 23,
1858, was the wife of Samuel Sneyd, the first chief
constable and jailer in Brisbane. He was a Baptist and she
was a Roman Catholic. On the day of her funeral the
service was to be conducted by the Rev. Dean Signey who
waited at the grave for an hour after the appointed time,
and then went home. When the coffin arrived, the service
had to be read by a layman, and much strong feeling was
shown for some times afterwards through the absence of a
qualified priest. Mrs. Sneyd had nine children and on her
grave is this verse:
“’Tis religion that can give
Sweetest pleasure while we
live,
‘Tis religion must supply,
Solid comfort when we die.”
The
Sneyds lived in a house in Adelaide Street between the
present Parcels Post and Finney Isles corner, where was
the first bougainvillea vine ever grown in Queensland.
A few readers will remember a wild young Irishman
named James McGowan who had a farm at Lytton and was
killed off his horse on February 18, 1875, aged 29. There
was nothing McGowan loved but a fight. He was always “blue
moulded for want of a ” and would offer cheerfully
offer to fight all hands, anywhere, at any time. On one
occasion he took possession of a Methodist Church, and
challenged the whole male congregation to mortal combat.
The Methodists regarded James as a man possessed of
devils, and fled. He was a fine type of fighting Irishman,
and we mourn over the grave of that young warrior cut off
untimely in his youth. We miss these fiery spirits at the
peaceful elections of today. His sister, now dead, married
Adam Fiebig, who still owns the old Crown hotel in George
Street. Fiebig still has a great veneration for his dead
wife.
James Cash, who died on December 15, 1870, aged 68,
was an old pioneer who was farming and timber getting at
the Pine River, where “Cash’s Crossing” is still a
landmark in the district.
In the same grave is Mary McQuinney, his wife’s
mother, who died on May 20, 1870, and his daughter Mary
Ann, wife of Pat Hughes, who died on November 23, 1872,
aged only 21. An appalling number of young wives, under 26
years of age, died in those early days, apparently from
bad nursing, bad medical attendance, or no attendance at
all. Ignorant midwives have filled many graves.
Under one stone is Patrick Mooney, a Tipperary man,
who died on September 20, 1851, aged 51, also his eldest
daughter Mary Scanlan, who died on April 6, 1873, aged 40,
and James Mooney, his eldest son, who died on August 31,
1873, aged 44. Mooney was a fine specimen of a man, six
feet four, who kept a hotel at the corner of Russell and
Stanley Streets, South Brisbane. Mary Scanlan was the wife
of Jeremiah Scanlan, who kept the Queensland Hotel in
Edward Street, about 25 yards below the present
Metropolitan, then kept by Mrs. Duncan. Jerry was an old
policeman from New South Wales. He did well in Brisbane,
and owned both the Queensland and Metropolitan hotels.
Opposite Jerry was the once fashionable Menzies
boarding-house, which still stands there, but the Menzies
are both dead. One daughter married Thomas Bryce, of the
Carrying Company, and another married West, the merchant,
of Townsville. One of Jerry’s nieces, a Miss Cuneen,
married Ferdinand Papi, an Italian, the present head
teacher of the Woolloongabba State School, and became
mother of Bertram Papa, the lawyer, and the fair Amy Papi,
a name known in the social columns.
A Daniel Tracey, who died on October 4, 1853, aged
55, and his widow Catherine on September 3, 1871, were a
couple of fine people who lived in Margaret Street, and
their daughters, very handsome girls, all died young. One
daughter, Mrs. Brown, died on October 20, 1866, aged 30,
and Ann on November 30, 1869 aged 22. The stone over the
grave was erected by the daughter Bridget, “in
affectionate remembrance of her dear parents and sisters.”
She, too, had only a short life.
Alice Higham, (pronounced Hyam), who died on August
8, 1872, at the age of 80, was the wife of Higham, who was
a timber getter on the Tweed River in the early days. They
both came out in Governor Darling’s time. She was a grand
old woman, the soul of honesty and hospitality.
Christopher Weir, who died on July 23, 1873, aged
61, was a cabman who once kept a hotel out beyond the
Hospital, on the Bowen Bridge Road. Michael Weir also kept
the same hotel. It was a great resort of the young bloods
of those days, and many a lively scene was enacted in that
now forgotten house, which has long ceased to exist.
We find that another cabman, still alive, the well
known Jack Sweeney, of the George Street stand, buried his
young wife Catherine, aged 25, and her infant son, on July
24, 1869. Sweeney was once a very smart policeman
stationed at the Towers, Ravenswood, and Cooktown.
Honora Thomas placed a stone over her husband, John
Thomas, who died on April 3, 1864. They kept an hotel in
Queen Street, where Alexander Stewart and Sons’ warehouse
stands today. The same house was kept as the “Donnybrook
Hotel” by a Mat Stewart, a very unusual name in hotel
keeping. On the grave of Thomas we find:
“Not lost, not lost, but
gone before,
To that land of peace and
rest,
Where in God for evermore,
We hope to meet together
blest.”
Widows as a rule, lack a sense of logic, or they
would not so often consign their departed husbands to
where they apparently meet with peace and rest for the
first time. In this case, too, the poetry is deplorably
defective. It is the kind of verse that is composed in a
hurry while you wait.
Margaret, wife of Thomas Faulkner, died on January
18, 1869, aged 41. One of her grand daughters is the wife
of Under Secretary Brady, of the Works Department.
There is a handsome stone over the grave of Francis
Murphy, who died on August 15, 1872, but so far no
information concerning
him is available.
There is one peculiar inscription over the grave of
a young wife, named Janet Murphy, who was born at Grafton
on April 3, 1853, and died at Brisbane on November
18,8172. She was thus only 17 years and eight months old,
and the stone says:
“A loving wife, a mother
dear,
A faithful friend lies
buried here,
Our loss is great which we
sustain,
In Heaven we hope to meet
again.”
There is said to have been a John Murphy for many
years a messenger in the Lands Office, where he was
succeeded by Gamble. Janet was the wife of a John Murphy.
An old military warrior is represented by Patrick
John Burke, of the 56th Queen’s Own Regiment.
He died on March 17, 1867, aged 80 years. Doubtless he did
some hard fighting in that in that famous old regiment.
Robert Eaton, who died on December 2, 1861, aged
62, was a compositor on the “Courier,” at the corner of
Charlotte and George Streets. The old office is now a
boarding-house. What ghosts of old compositors must
meander in silence through the rooms when all the boarders
are asleep! Eaton’s mother followed him to the grave on
April 2, 1874, aged 74. Remarkable is the number of those
whose age is the same as the year of their death.
Joseph Brown, who died on January 29, 1868, aged
only 33, was a drayman, and “a good, true man,” as an old
colonist describes him, who lived out at Teneriffe.
John Ede buried a child aged five on January 14,
1851. Ede was a watchman in Queen Street. One son, Willie
Ede, is today a cabman at the Central Station, and one is
a vanman.
Ellen Lonergan, who died on November 27, 1870, aged
25 (another at the fatal age), was wife of John Lonergan,
still a drayman in the Valley. His second wife was a Miss
McIver, sister of McIver, a well known blacksmith in the
Valley today.
Ellen Reilly, who died on September 16, 1855, at the fatal 25 years, was wife of Patrick Lonergan, an old time sailor, who lived in Albert Street in the period when its reputation was much cleaner than it is today.
“He came, he went, like the
Simoom,
That harbinger of fate and
gloom,
Beneath whose widely wasting
breath,
The very cypress droops to
death,
Dark tree, still sad when
others grief has fled,
The only constant mourner
o’er the dead.”
Those unhappy types of men and women who rise in
the night to take a dose of medicine, and make the deadly
mistake of selecting the wrong bottle, are represented by
John Guilfoyle, who died on January 24, 1874, aged 27. He
was a compositor at the Government Printing Office, and
the headstone informs us that it is “ a tribute of respect
to his memory by the men of the Government Printing
Office.” He was only a young man, but was married, and his
four year old son had died on March 8, 1871. The father of
John died on November 7, 1858, aged 41. He was a
quarryman, who worked on the old Kangaroo Point quarry,
where the Naval Stores are today. The son who died had
risen from sleep, and instead of a bottle of medicine
prescribed by Dr. Bell, he got a bottle of carbolic acid,
drank some before the dreadful mistake was discovered, and
died a cruel death.
Even doctors fall victims to these fatal errors.
Some readers will remember Dr. Clark, who once practised
in Stanthorpe. He went to live in a New South Wales town,
we believe it was Gulgong, and one night he rose to get
some medicine, took the wrong bottle, and when his wife
awoke in the morning, he was lying dead beside her.
A John Meillon, who died on August 1, 1862, had a
brother Joseph Meillon, who was educated as a lawyer and
in 1869, went to practice at Grafton on the Clarence
River, the other lawyer being George Foott, who had
succeeded James Lionel Michael, a well known literary man
who was drowned in front of his on house. Henry Kendall,
the poet, was a clerk in Michael’s office. Foott’s wife,
his second wife, was the widow of Boulanger, a name known
to the music world as a brilliant composer.
Sarah Jones, who died on October 10, 1867, aged 40,
was the wife of John Jones, who kept St. Patrick’s Tavern,
in Queen Street.
There is a neat stone over Francis Murray, who died
on August 15, 1873, aged 37. He had a cabinet makers shop
in Queen Street, next to Paddy Mayne’s butcher’s shop,
which stood on the present site of the British Empire
Hotel. Beside Murray are his two girl children, Isabella
Jane, died June 23, 1870, and Annie Maria died October 23,
1873, one three and one sixteen months. Murray was once
Mayor of Brisbane, was also fairly well to do in cash, and
advanced a considerable sum to Sir Maurice O’Connell, who
was unable to repay it and the Government had to overcome
the difficulty with a special appropriation.
Paddy Mayne died in the backroom of that Queen
Street butcher’s shop, and Bishop O’Quinn and Joe Darragh,
who was a cousin of the Bishop, were with him when his
will was being made. Mrs. Mayne was supposed to be a
Protestant, and Mayne had a big powerful coachman, also a
Protestant. When the will was being made, Mrs. Mayne
suspected that she was not receiving due consideration,
and she sent the coachman in to remove the Bishop and
Darragh, and removed they were. However she had no reason
to complain of her share in the will. She afterwards gave
the coachman a farm at Moggill, and conferred an annuity
on Tom Slaughter, the accountant. Both Mayne and his wife
were very good hearted liberal people, who did many
generous acts. It is a shame that Paddy had to confess to
a murder at Kangaroo Point, in his early days, for which
an innocent man was hung- the death bed confession haunted
his family to their graves. Mrs. Mayne was a fine specimen
of a woman, and an excellent wife and mother. She is said
to have sent for a priest when dying, and to have admitted
that she was a Catholic.
Near to the grave of Mayor Murray, is that of
Elizabeth Baines, first wife of another Mayor, the E. J.
Baines of a previous article. She died on March 3, 1863,
aged 39.
A boy named William Costelloe, who died on May 11,
1861, aged 15, was the son of a man who had held a high
position in the Inland Customs’ Revenue Department of
Ireland.
Eliza Quinn, widow of James Quinn, kept a hotel at
German Station. Quinn was formerly a clerk with George
Edmonstone, one of whose daughters married John Markwell.
Edmonstone was a Queen Street butcher, a genial, amiable,
old gentleman, who became a member of Parliament. The
present writer had many a chat with him from 1875 to 1877.
On January 1, 1865, D. H. O’Leary buried his infant
son Daniel Michael. Daniel senior was a son of Tom
O’Leary, the father of Jack O’Leary, for years clerk of
the Cairns Divisional Board, and now Traffic Manager on
the Musgrave Tramway Company’s line from Cairns to
Harvey’s Creek, on the Russell River. Jack’s mother, a
dear old lady is still alive and well, and a regular
attendant at the Catholic Church in Brisbane. The O’Leary
family were mostly brunettes and Jack, as every Cairns man
knows, has a decidedly auburn tinge in his hair.
Catherine Queely, who died on January 5, 1865, aged
16, was the daughter of a shoemaker who came over from New
South Wales, and opened a shop in Albert Street, a few
doors from Queen Street. The daughter was a fine specimen
of a girl, and her death from typhoid fever nearly broke
Queely’s heart. A brother of Queely was killed out on the
Dawson on the same day as the 19 people were killed by
aboriginal attack on Horatio Wills’ Cullen-La-ringo
Station, on the Nogoa, October 17, 1861. We have stood
over the mass grave in which 16 of the 19 were buried.
In four fragments is the stone that stood over the
grave of Kate Agnes Hickey, who died on October 28, 1863.
Hickey was a resident of the Valley.
Richard Belford, who died on April 28, 1865, was
once editor of the “Courier,”, and afterwards editor of
the “North Australian,” the leading paper in Ipswich of
the early days. Bishop O’Quinn brought that paper to
Brisbane, and it is represented by the Catholic paper,
“Australian” of the present day.
Daniel Lyons, who died in 1865, aged 60, was father
of Daniel Lyons, a saddler in Turbot Street in the early
days, and brother of James Mooney, a hotelkeeper in South
Brisbane, one of whose sisters became the wife of J. M.
O’Keefe, ex-M.L.A., for the Lockyer, a man likely to bound
into the aroma with a wild Hibernian war cry at any
moment.
John Ahearn erected a neat stone over the grave of
his brother Denis Ahearn, a native of Donickmore, County
Cork, who died on February 12, 1875, aged 32, the fatal
age of the Ahearn families, as three of the men died at
that age.
When Camille Desmoulins, of the French Revolution,
was before the revolutionary tribunal, and asked his name,
he replied, “I am the age of the ‘bon sans culotte,’
Jesus" – an age fatal to revolutionists!”
Apparently the age of 32 was as fatal to the
Ahearns as 37 to the French patriots. These Ahearns, who
were carpenters, finally left for California. The Ahearn
family mentioned in the last article are still
represented. Two of the girls married two of the brothers
of Cahill, the present Commissioner of Police, and both of
the brothers died. The widow of one is now the wife of the
well known and popular hotelkeeper Denis O’Connor, who has
given his name to “O’Connor Boatshed,” and is an
enthusiast in rowing and other athletic circles. A brother
of the sisters is now on Charters Towers.
The J. W. Buxton who once had a stationery and
fancy goods shop in Queen Street, and whose wife died on
January 21, 1867, was a man of considerable means. He
became infatuated with an actress, and fled away with her,
leaving a very fine wife, who was immeasurably the
superior of the actress in physique, intelligence and
character. Why a man sometimes deserts a splendid woman
for a worthless specimen, or a woman forsakes a splendid
man for a contemptible weed, are two conundrums beyond the
reach of human intelligence.
Jessie Lamont, a widow, died on April 3, 1866, aged
51.
The stone records:
“Take comfort Christians
when your friends,
In Jesus fall asleep,
Their better being never
ends,
Why then dejected weep?
Why inconsolable as those
To whom no hope is given?
Death is the messenger of
peace,
And calls the soul to
Heaven.”
One of the daughters, Marion Flora, died on May 23,
1873, aged only 29. She was the wife of James Chapman,
father of Ebenezer Chapman, now a builder in Fortitude
Valley. Jessie Lamont lies in the Presbyterian ground,
near to Margaret Elizabeth Bethune, wife of David Lachlan
Brown, head of the firm of D. L. Brown and Co. He died not
long ago in Toowoomba, and his first wife died on April
29, 1869, aged 33, at “Langlee Bank,” Bowen Bridge Road.
The stone says:
“Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
His
second wife, still living, was a daughter of the Rev.
George Wight, once Immigration Lecturer.
George Lindsay, described as “son of the late
George Lindsay, of Aberdeen,” died on April 20, 1873. He
was an elderly man, confidential clerk to John Bourne, who
built the Brisbane bridge of 1873.
Lindsay died in the year the bridge was opened.
There was a great demonstration at the opening, and Dr.
Carr Boyd wrote a long celebration poem in the “Courier,”
over the “nom de plume” of “Ralph de Peverial.” Boyd is
represented today by his youngest son, Gerald, who is in
the Lands Office, and the second son, known to the press
as “Potjostler,” is in West Australia. The eldest son
David was a surveyor. His widow is wife of the present Dr.
Brown of Rockhampton. She was one of several sisters, all
handsome women, daughters of a Mr. Ransome who was once
C.P.S. at Goodna, and lived at Little Ipswich.
The Jeremiah Daly referred to before as a chum of
merchant John McCabe, was father of the once well known
barrister and Crown Prosecutor, Tom Daly, one of whose
sisters was Judge Miller’s first wife. Another married the
Hon. Sydney Dick Melbourne, and one married a son of
Christopher Newton, head of the Sydney firm of that name.
They were all fine looking women.
Buried somewhere in the catholic cemetery is a man
named Barrett, who died in 1867. Barrett had come out in
the last convict ship, which landed him at Sydney in 1840.
That ship was called the “Eden,” a facetious name for a
convict vessel. Barrett had revealed a conspiracy on
board, and as a reward he received a reprieve. After five
years in Sydney and Illawarra, he came to Moreton Bay, and
joined a party of timber getters on the Tweed. One of the
party was a man named Robert Cox, a victim of one of the
most notorious murders in Queensland history.
Cox and Barrett came to Brisbane on a visit in
March 1848, and stayed at Sutton’s Bush Commercial Hotel.
On Kangaroo Point, corner of Holman and Main Streets.
On Sunday night, March 26, Cox was murdered under
diabolical circumstances. His body was cut up and his head
cut off. The head was found by a dog, in a baker’s new
oven, in a building erected for John Campbell, father of
the present Amity Point Campbell. A man named George
Cummins found the trunk of the body on the mud foreshore
of the river, where it was left by the retreating tide.
Parts of the body and three shirts, soaked with blood,
were found in a well. The cook at Sutton’s Hotel was a man
named William Fyfe, who was a friend of Cox, who was
staying with another friend, named Moseley. Fyfe and
Moseley, and a butcher named Lynch, were arrested, but the
final proceedings were taken against Fyfe only. The
enquiry lasted five days, and some remarkable evidence was
given, all reported in the “Courier” of that date. Fyfe
was committed for trial, sent to Sydney, tried and found
guilty, and hanged, protesting his innocence to the last.
He had written a long speech for the scaffold, but
was not allowed to deliver it, but the public heard it
afterwards.
This atrocious crime is introduced for this
reason. Twenty years ago, in North Queensland, the
present writer met a son of Barrett, and heard the whole
of his father’s story of the crime, as told to the son.
It is quite different from anything so far published.
Barrett’s story was that Cox, and three others, well
known men then Patrick Mayne included, and long
after, were sitting drinking and card playing in
Sutton’s hotel, when a row started between Cox and one
of the others, who picked up one of the old heavy brass
box snuffers, with the projecting sharp point to adjust
the wick. He threw this at Cox, and it struck him on the
temple, and the sharp point entering the brain and
killing him. There was no murder intended by anybody,
but worse than murder followed. The other three men in
terror of the consequences, at once conspired to put the
guilt on Fyfe, who was not even in the hotel. He was
over in North Brisbane, and did not return until nearly
daylight. But the apparent evidences of guilt were woven
around him with such devilish ingenuity, supported by
the evidence of the three conspirators, and the female
relations of one of them, and that of two others secured
by special inducement, that Cox had enough against him
to send any man to the gallows. And two of the
conspirators were in Sydney and saw the innocent man
hanged. Such was the tale told by that Barrett who
sleeps there in the silence of the Paddington cemetery.
Peccavirrus!
But rave not thus
And
let a Sabbath song
Go
up to God so solemnly;
The
dead may feel no wrong,
The
sweet Lenore hath gone before,
With
hope, that flew beside,
Leaving
thee wild for the dear child,
Who
should have been thy bride,
For
her the fair and debonaire,
Who
now so lowly lies
The life upon
her yellow hair,
And
death upon her eyes;
The
life still there upon her hair,
And
death within her yes.
-
Edgar Allan Poe’s “Lenore.”
The
Church of England cemetery is on the slope of a ridge, on
the south side of the Paddington cemeteries, enclosed with
a paling fence, in a fair state of preservation. So far as
examined the oldest grave dates back to 1847, when Samuel
Henry Copperthwaite was buried, on May 27. The most recent
graves are dated in 1875, so apparently all funerals after
that went to Toowong. Except on three or four graves the
lantana has been kept out, and the ground is clear. But
there is the same dismal spectacle of fallen and leaning
and broken stones, as in the other cemeteries. Evidently
grass fires have killed some of the trees. Among those
that remain are a few that date back to the start. There
is a silky oak at least three feet in diameter, and a fine
grey ironbark very little less. The others are Moreton Bay
ash, blue gum, cypress pine, and a few figs. The old road
winding through the ground is still clearly defined,
though unused for over thirty years. What a long line of
hearses and sad processions passed along that road, in the
vanished years that saw so many “white robed forms of
friends long given, in agony to the earth and heaven.”
There must be thousands of dead in that graveyard, since
the burial of Miss Hill, Walter Hill’s daughter, in the
Toowong cemetery in 1871 up to the present day, that
graveyard has received 29,600 dead, representing a period
of 26 years. At Paddington, the Church of England ground
received bodies for 28 years. The graves are in rows over
the whole area, probably not more than one in fifty with a
headstone. Conspicuous here, as in other cemeteries, is
the small number of old people, the great number of
children, and young men and young women. The great
majority are under 40.
On entering the gate, the eye is caught at once by
three graves that call back many historic memories. A blue
granite eight foot high monolith, the Egyptian symbol of
the Supreme God, stands on the grave of Arthur Stuart
Bernays, the eight month old child of Lewis Adolphus and
Mary Bernays. This child died on May 16, 1865, or 42 years
ago. The fact is recorded on a square of marble screwed on
near the top of the monolith, which is a miniature of that
Cleopatra’s Needle that stands 68½ feet high and weighs
over 185 tons. As that was sculptured more than 1500 years
before Cleopatra was born, it is not clear why it bears
her name. Bernays,
the father of that child of 1865, is the present Clerk of
the Assembly, a position he has held since the first
Parliament of Queensland opened, in the old convict built
stone building in Queen Street, afterwards the Supreme
Court.
We may marvel at the fact the L. A. Bernays has
seen all our Governments and their supporters come and go,
and sat and listened to their oratory – and is still
alive! He is probably immortal and will be sitting in the
house a thousand years hence.
Close to the gate is one of the neatest and best
kept tombs in the cemetery. It bears the name of Medora
Ann Little, who died on February 27, 1872, aged 37. The
Spanish name of Medora was probably taken from the Medora
of Byron’s “Corsair.” Mrs. Little was the wife of the once
well known Crown Solicitor, Little, who tells us on the
tomb that:
“Her
children rise up and called her blessed,
Her
husband also and he praiseth her.”
We
cannot improve on those old eulogiums of the Hebrew
prophets. They were eloquent and expressive. Contrast this
zenith of epitaph with the nadir on that of the gravestone
in Massachusetts, USA:
“Sacred
to the memory of Anthony Drake,
Who
died for peace and quietness sake,
His
wife was constantly scoldin’ and scoffin’,
So
he sought for repose in a twelve dollar coffin.”
Or we
may go to a graveyard in classic Cambridge, and find the
following:
“Here
lies the body of Mary Gwynne,
Who
was so very pure within,
She
cracked the shell of her earthly skin,
And
hatched herself a cherubim.”
It is
remarkable that the British race, in Britain and America,
is responsible for the most ridiculous epitaphs on record.
No other race appears to have placed puns or sarcasms on
the graves of the dead. Who but a Yankee would record this
on a gravestone in Iowa:
“beneath
this stone our baby lies,
He
neither cries nor hollers,
He
lived for one and forty days,
And
cost us forty dollars.”
And we
go to a grave in Cheltenham for a specimen of what the
rustic chaw-bacon of England could do on a headstone:
“Here
lies I and my two daughters,
Killed
by drinking Cheltenham waters;
If
we had stuck to Epsom Salts,
We
shouldn’t be lying in these vaults.”
No
such epitaphs are possible on an Australian tombstone.
Such a stone would be capsized, or smashed, as being an
insult to the dead.
After this digression, we return to an iron railing
enclosing two remarkable pioneers, prominent in early
Queensland. These graves have also been well kept. Here
lies Richard Jones, M.L.C., of Sydney, who died on
November 6, 1852, aged 70. He was known to the public of
that time as “Merchant Jones,” a man who invested a lot of
capital in squatting in the first years of the Darling
Downs. The first sheep that ever came over the range,
belonged to Jones. They were brought through Cunningham’s
Gap, in 1842, by a man named Summerville, who was
Superintendent for Jones. He took up Tenthill and Helidon
stations, and put the sheep there. Another superintendent
named Rogers, at the same time took up Grantham station,
and took there a flock of sheep owned by George Mocatta,
who took up Innes Plains on the Logan.
Writing in 1876, John Campbell, who took up
Westbrook in 1842, said, “I had resided for some months
very quietly on the Downs (1842), intent on getting my
cattle broken into their runs, when I was one day
astonished at hearing a French horn being blown, and
looking out over the plain (Westbrook) saw a single
horseman approaching. Upon coming up he proved to be Mr.
Summerville, the superintendent for Mr. Richard Jones,
whose stock it appeared was on its way to what is now
Helidon station.”
That is the Richard Jones whose last sleep is in
the Paddington cemetery.
Buried beside him is John Stephen Ferriter, who
died on October 21, 1865, aged 63, another squatter of the
early days. Ferriter and Uhr were partners. One of these
Uhrs was once Sergeant-at-Arms in the Assembly. John Uhr
was killed by the blacks at Sandy Creek, near Gatton.
Other Uhrs were officers in the native police, and well
known in the north especially Darcy Uhr. Pioneering
squatting was a different business from squatting of
today. The number of whites known to be killed by blacks
in the first ten years of settlement were 254.
When Rogers went to Grantham station, near the
present Laidley, he took possession of about 400 sheets of
bark the blacks had stripped for their own wet weather
camps. These had been taken off ironbark trees, after the
rough outside was knocked off. Rogers gave nothing in
return, and Campbell said that this act of mean robbery
led to the murder of at least seventeen white men, mostly
shepherds.
Then the Sydney Government sent up a detachment of
soldiers, who were quartered at the foot of the range, to
protect dray traffic. The camp was long known as the
“Soldiers’ Barracks.” Those were days when John Kemp
estimated the fighting strength of the Helidon district
tribes at twelve hundred men. If one had only complete
reminiscences of Richard Jones and Stephen Ferriter, the
two men side by side in the Paddington cemetery, what an
interesting picture they would give us of those long
vanished old, wild, rough days.
“Tell us ye dead!
Will
none of you in pity reveal the secret
Of what ye are, and what we dread to be!”
When
Jones died he was member for the Stanley boroughs, in what
is now Queensland, in the Legislative Council of New South
Wales. He had been chairman of the Bank of New South
Wales, Sydney. He died out at New Farm, and the body was
brought by water to the Queen’s wharf, from whence a
funeral procession of about 500 people followed it to the
cemetery.
The chief mourners were Thomas Jones, J. S.
Ferriter, Daniel Peterson, and William Uhr.
Jones , who was a native of Wales, and came to
Sydney in 1819, married in 1823, Mary Louisa Peterson, by
whom he had two sons and four daughters.
His daughter, Mary Australia, married Captain W. B.
O’Connell, Minister for Lands.
The daughter, Louisa, married R. R. Mackenzie, once
Premier.
Ferriter’s widow, a tall, handsome woman, resided
for about 20 years in No. 2, Hodgson Terrace, with a maid,
who stayed beside her to the last.
The
Uhr at the funeral, was Ferriter’s partner.
There was one E. B. Uhr, J.P., a squatter at Wide
Bay.
A writer of 1854, says of Ferriter:
“John
Stephen Ferriter, R.N., was the Agent for Immigration, and
lived in a cottage adjacent to the stone barracks between
George and William Streets, afterwards the Colonial
Treasurers’ Office. He was somewhat addicted to bad puns,
but otherwise of a kind and gentle disposition.”
Thomas Grenier, a youth of 17, who died on August
25, 1857, was the eldest son of Thomas and Mary Grenier,
who kept a hotel at South Brisbane at that time. It was
the chief resort of the squatters, and there was many a
wild scene there. On one occasion some joker packed all
the knives, spoons and forks from the breakfast table into
a valise of old Captain Collins, who calmly rode away with
them to the Logan, and got home before he discovered the
contents.
In the meantime Grenier had the blacks’ camp
searched, and much suspicion fell upon innocent men, until
choleric old Collins walked in, and banged all the cutlery
on the table, with language that nearly set fire to the
house.
The Grenier family owned much property in South
Brisbane, including Highgate Hill.
A 22 months old child of J. C. and Emily Vidgen,
was buried on March 25, 1866. The mother is also dead. She
was the first wife of the well known and much liked
secretary of the Brisbane Gas Company. She was a
Lancashire girl, but they were married in Scotland.
Vidgen’s second wife was a Miss Mossop.
In the notice of Crown Solicitor Robert Little, we
omitted to mention that his first wife was a Miss Geary,
daughter of old Captain Geary. His second was a Miss
Bramston, sister of Bramston, once Attorney General – 1870
–74. He also held a seat for three years in Herbert’s
first ministry.
Bramston and R. G. W. Herbert, our first Premier,
batched together in the house well known as “Herston,”
near the children’s hospital. The name was thus
constructed. They took the “Her” from Herbert, and the
“Ston” from Bramston, and made a blend of “Herston” out of
the first and last syllables. G. P. M. Murray, our ex-P.M.
calls his house “Yarrum,” his own name reversed.
Amongst those buried in that Church of England
cemetery, unknown and unrecorded, is a man whose name
calls back an episode of 1842. At that time, there was an
Eaton Vale station, on the Downs, a young Jackaroo named
Barker, who in after years became the Hon. Wm. Barker, of
Tamrookum station, on the Logan. An old man named Kelly
and his wife and son, were traveling as hawkers, and
camped on the present site of Leyburn, then taken up as a
station by Pitt and Bonifant. This Pitt gave his name to
the present Pittsworth, and one of his daughters married
the late Macdonald-Paterson.
Two men posing as shearers joined the hawking
party. On the second night out from Leyburn, these two
persuaded young Kelly to sleep at their fire, and shot him
dead while he was asleep, their intention being to kill
old Kelly and his wife, and take all the property. But old
Kelly heard the shot, got his gun and went over to the
camp. The two scoundrels ran away, and afterwards
separated. One went towards the Clarence, then called the
“Big River,” and the other, after going nearly to the
Severn, doubled back to the Downs. He was a small dark man
with one eye, and his name was Selby. He went to Jimbour
woolshed, left there and went by Westbrook, on the way to
the main range. Having accidentally shot off one of his
fingers, he made for Rosewood station, to have his injury
seen to by Dr. Goodwin. Young Barker was one of the
pursuers on his track. Selby left Rosewood and went
towards the Logan, evidently making for the Clarence. The
hutkeeper on Telemon was a ticket-of-leave man, named
Brown. Barker gave him a description of Selby, and also
told him there was a reward of £100 for his capture,
consequently Brown was on the lookout for him. Two days
afterwards, Selby walked up to the hut, and Brown
recognised him at once.
He acted as a genial host to Selby, while he sent
an aboriginal secretly for assistance. Selby was taken to
Maitland, tried and hanged, an act of justice due directly
to Barker and Brown. Brown died in 1856, in Brisbane, and
lies in the Paddington cemetery. He got the reward and a
free pardon for the capture of Selby.
Barker, and Murray-Prior, and C. R. Haly married
three sisters named Harper, all very handsome women.
Prior’s wife was the mother of Mrs. Campbell Praed, and
Mrs. John Jardine.
Mrs. Barker was the mother of the well known Barker family of Brisbane.
‘We are no other than a moving row,
Of
magic shadow shapes that come and go,
Round
with the sun illumined lantern held,
In
midnight by the Master of the Show.
But
helpless pieces of the game he plays,
Upon
this chequer board of nights and days,
Hither
and thither moves, and checks, and stays,
And
one by one back in the closet lays.
In one grave, which ought to have received a
little more attention, are Louisa Tully and her month old
child Blanche.
She was the first wife of the late William Alcock
Tully, ex-Surveyor General, and eldest daughter of the
late Simeon Lord, of Eskdale station and son of Simeon
Lord, one of Sydney’s best known men seventy years ago. He
was generally known as “Merchant Lord.” The Eskdale Lords
once lived in Tasmania, where they had a station called
Bona Vista, near Avoca. Fred Lord, of Brisbane, some years
M.L.A. for Stanley, was born at Bona Vista, on November 8,
1841. The station was once stuck up by two notorious
bushrangers named Dalton and Kelly. While they were inside
the house, Constable Buckmaster came onto the verandah.
They fired through a glass door and shot him dead, one
ball striking him in the forehead. Nobody else was hurt.
Lord’s daughter, Louisa, was then a child. She was born
there in the year 1837, and died in Brisbane on February
20, 1866, aged 29. Her only sister married a Lieutenant
Airey, who came to Sydney and Brisbane as a Lieutenant of
Marines, in the Challenger with the Duke of Edinburgh, in
1868 and 1869. He became in after years, the late
Lieutenant Colonel
Airey, of Sydney.
One of the Challenger’s men died in Brisbane and is
buried at Paddington. His name was Percival Perkins
Baskerville, Commander in the Royal Navy. He died on March
1, 1869, aged 21.
One of Louisa Tully’s brothers, Robert Lord, was
once member for Gympie. His widow is the present wife of
Sir Horace Tozer, Queensland’s Agent General. Louisa Tully
left two sons, one of whom is in ‘Frisco, and the other in
Sydney. Tully’s second wife was a Miss Darvall, sister of
Anthony Darvall, for many years manager of the A.J.S. Bank
in Ipswich, and a candidate at the first federal
elections.
The first Mrs. Tully had five brothers, William,
Robert, Frederick, Alfred and Simeon. The first two are
dead. Simeon, one of the owners of Eskdale, has also an
oyster farm at Lord’s Creek, Southport. One his daughters,
Ruby Lord, is at the convent school at Warwick, and
exceptionally clever at woodcarving and fancywork.
W. A. Tully, husband of Louisa, was once a very
prominent Brisbane man. He was born in Dublin in 1830 and
graduated as a B.A. of Trinity College in 1852. In that
year he came to Tasmania, and met the Lord family. He
stayed there until 1863 and became Inspecting Surveyor in
the Survey Office. In 1863 he came to Queensland, and in
1864 was Commissioner for Lands in the Kennedy district.
In 1864 he was transferred to the Warrego. In 1866 he was
appointed Chief Commissioner, and then Under Secretary for
Lands. In 1875 he became Acting Surveyor General, and in
1883 was appointed Surveyor General. Finally he became a
member of the Land Board. He and the second wife, Miss
Darvall died, and are buried together in Sydney. The first
wife, Louisa Lord, is alone in the Paddington cemetery.
Charles Henry Rawnsley, who died on January 16,
1873, aged 55, was a staff surveyor who surveyed much of
the country around Brisbane.
He purchased land and built “Witton Manor” on it,
at Indooroopilly, the house long occupied by D. C.
McConnell, and afterwards by Andrew Bogle.
Rawnsley took some interest in natural history, and
was the cause of a curious discussion in the “Courier,” on
a supposed new bower bird which was actually named
“Ptilonorhynchus Rawnsleyi,” and held that name until
Gerard Krefft, of the Sydney Museum, proved it to be an
immature male Regent bird, with only part of the yellow
colors displayed. The Rawnsley’s “satin winged bower bird”
retired into oblivion. Charles Coxen, Sylvester Diggles,
and Gerard Krefft, were
the principal writers in this old time long dead
controversy. One of Diggles’ sons is in the Electric
Telegraph office.
William Grosvenor Armstrong was the year old child of Octavius (and Jessie Augusta) Armstrong, one of our veteran police magistrates, still in service at the Central Police Court, and residing at South Brisbane. The child died on May 29, 1872, and the stone says,
“I know, Oh Lord, that Thy judgments are right,
and that Thy faithfulness hast afflicted me,”
one of
the conundrums common among epitaphs.
The name of Georgina Hely, who died on September
10, 1866, as the widow of F. A. Hely, of New South Wales,
at the age of 71, recalls an old and remarkable family of
the early days. Hovenden Hely, a giant of six feet six,
was one of the men who started with Leichhardt on his
second expedition. He and Leichhardt and Daniel Druce
(“Old Ironbark”), left Sydney for Raymond Terrace, on the
Hunter River, in the steamer “Thistle,” on September 30,
1846. From there they came overland to Jimbour. However,
Hely’s experience with Leichhardt were not pleasant, and
the expedition returned from the Mackenzie River as a
disastrous failure. When Leichhardt started west on his
last trip, in 1848, and no traces of him were discernible
for three years, Hovenden Hely went out in 1852 with a
search expedition, but his two blacks deserted him, and he
returned to the coast, after being within two days journey
of where the wild blacks told his own blackboys the
Leichhardt party were all killed.
Hovenden Hely had a number of sons, who ranged in
height from 6ft to 6ft 4in., and three of them are well
known in Brisbane. The Georgina Hely, of the Paddington
cemetery, was mother of the wife of the late W. L. G.
Drew. She was a tall handsome woman.
William Yaldwyn, the now retired police magistrate,
of Brisbane, buried a six weeks old child on May 12, 1867.
Yaldwyn’s second wife is a daughter of the genial Phil
Agnew, Post and Telegraph Master of Dunwich. The child of
1867 was named Duncan Francis. Yaldwyn was one of the
early squatters of the Dawson, and was out there in 1861,
when 19 people were killed on Wills’ station on the Comet.
Mary Ellen, the wife of T. H. B. Barron, was a
daughter of Arthur Wilcox Manning, once Under Secretary.
This was the Manning whom a relative named Bowerman, also
in the service, struck on the head with a tomahawk, and
badly wounded. Parliament in an hour of unreasoning
sentimentalism, rushed through a “Manning Pension Bill,”
giving him a pension of £600 per annum, and £300 yearly to
his widow if she survive him. Manning died after drawing
about £20,000 and his widow still draws the £300.
Bowerman’s tomahawk will probably cost Queensland
about £30,000. And Manning went to live in Sydney, and not
a penny of the pension has ever been spent in Queensland.
Barron’s first wife, Miss Manning, died on December
21, 1866. His second wife was a daughter of the once
Registrar-General Blakeney, and she is still alive. Both
wives were fine looking women. The only daughter of the
second wife is married to a son of Sir Arthur Hunter
Palmer.
Charlotte McKeand, who died on April 19, 1865, was
the wife of a giddy financial agent, McKeand, who had an
office at the top of Queen Street, beside where a chemist
named Drew had a shop, near where Dr. Hugh Bell resided,
at the corner of Queen and George Streets. McKeand made
much money and lost it again in a fashion common with
giddy men, and all that is left to perpetuate his name is
his wife’s grave at Paddington. He was the sixty per cent
magnate of that period. He owned the land now occupied by
James Cowlinshaw and Herbert Perry, on the Breakfast Creek
road.
Henry Kingsmill Shaw and his wife Helen, buried a
year old infant on November 29, 1874. Shaw was one of the
managers of George Raff and Co., and had a tragical death
in a lagoon near Dalby. He stripped to swim in after some
ducks he had shot, became entangled in the weeds, and was
drowned. The present writer remembers the sad event. The
widow married again, and kept Auckland Villa, Tank Street,
as a boarding house.
Tom Haynes, who died on June 12, 1875, was coachman
for Governor Cairns, who put a large, horizontal slab,
with a cross, over his grave, and an inscription to say it
was a record by the Governor.
Charles Street, who died on September 23, 1873,
aged 42, was engaged at Pettigrew’s Sawmills in William
Street. His brother was father of the Street sisters who
had an artificial flower and dressmaking shop in the
building now occupied by the Protector of Aboriginals. One
of these sisters married J. G. Drake, and another was the
wife of Inspector A. D. Douglas.
Daniel Weinholt, over whom is a fine marble
monument, died at Cleveland, on February 28, 1865, aged 43
years, leaving a widow and four children. He was a son of
the then late J. B. Weinholt, of Kent and Weinholt, who
were among the early squatting families of Queensland. The
monument was erected by the brothers and sisters.
Thomas Burnett Temple, M.R.C.S., who died on June
10, 1864, aged 32, was a young doctor who came out for his
health, and died of consumption. His mother lies beside
him, and Cecil Burnett Temple, a child of 13 months. The
mother died on November 24, 1873, aged 50. The grave has a
marble slab on a large stone cross.
Inside one railing is a row of five headstones,
over F. J. Barton, and his two infants, Charles Samways
Warry, Albert Barton, Thomas Symes Warry, and Thomas
Warry. F. J. Barton, who was a doctor, died on August 31,
1863. He was married to a Miss Warry, who, as Barton’s
widow, married Dr. Hugh Bell, and, on a trip to Scotland,
was lost in the Fiery Star, which was burned at sea, on
Good Friday, 1866.
Barton was one of the first doctors of the Brisbane Hospital, when it was in George Street. Albert Barton, who died on February 23, 1864, was his brother. The stone says:
“I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness,”
another
epitaph conundrum.
Thomas Symes Warry was a chemist in Queen Street. He died, unmarried, on August 19, 1864, aged 42. The stone says:
“Blessed is he that considereth the poor.”
Also
this remarkable verse:
“’Tis
strange that those we lean on most,
Those
in whose laps our limbs are nursed,
Fall
into shadow, soonest lost,
Those
we love first are taken first,
God
gives u s love, something to love,
He
lends us, but when love is grown
To
ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls
off, and love is left alone.”
This Warry was a humorist. On one occasion he
induced Billy Brookes to climb a greasy pole in front of
his shop in Queen Street. Those were days when Billy was
not the severe good templar he became in after years. The
pole climbing scene was exhilarating. Billy, with the aid
of sandpaper on his hands, and got about half way, then
slid down with great celerity. Then he and Warry went over
to call on “Pretty Polly,” at the Treasury Hotel, to drink
confusion to greasy pole climbing.
“Pretty Polly” afterwards married a man named
Moffit, and they kept the Royal Hotel, opposite the Post
Office for years. After she became a widow, Polly went to
Charters Towers, and died there.
Thomas Warry, senior, died at Gladstone, on
February 7, 1869, aged 77.
The mother of the late Tom Pratten, of the Railway
Department, was a Miss Warry.
Emily Gertrude, was the year old child of Sheppard
and Emily Smith, and died on February 24, 1862. Smith was
the first manager of the Bank of New South Wales. He was a
tall, fine specimen of a man, about six feet two, and his
wife was a little woman. The smallest women never seem to
hesitate about facing giants.
Richard James Coley, who died on September 12,
1864, aged 60, was Sergeant-at-Arms in the Legislative
Assembly. Coley came to a tragical end at the cottage
still occupied in George Street, close to Harris Terrace.
His son came to an equally tragical end in after years.
One daughter was married to a squatter named Thompson, on
the Dawson, and another married C. B. Dutton, once
Minister for Lands, Minister for Railways, and Minister
for Works and Mines, in the first Griffith Ministry.
Beside Coley are his two little girls, of 8 and 13. The
first died on March 4, 1845, the other on June 30, 1851.
Sarah Emily Harris, who died on September 17,
1866, aged 78, was the mother of John and George Harris,
once the leading Brisbane merchants and shipping agents.
George married a sister of the late George Thorn, of
Ipswich, and their well known home, “Newstead,” at the
mouth of Breakfast Creek, was famous for its generous
hospitality. Mrs. Harris, who is yet alive and well, is
still a fine looking woman. She is mother of the well
known Did Harris. The mother of J. and G. Harris is
described as a grand old lady. Both brothers are dead.
John Hurrow Turner, who died on July 20, 1862, was
manager of the Union Bank in Brisbane. He was born at
Milthorp, in Westmoreland. It is rather singular to find
two John Turners, managers of the Brisbane Union Bank,
and no relation to each other. John Hurrow Turner came
up from Melbourne to take the place of John Sarjeant
Turner, whom the directors wanted in Melbourne for some
special work. He came up also in the hope of improving
his health, but consumption had too strong a hold, and
he died while in Brisbane, at the early age of 36.
“Why dost thou build thy
halls, son of the winged days?
A few short years and the
blast of the desert comes
It howls in thy empty court”
Ossian
“A spirit passed before me,
I beheld
The face of Immortality
unveiled;
Deep sleep came down on
every eye save mine,
And there it stood, all
formless but divine,
Along my bones the creeping
flesh did quake,
And as my damp hair
stiffened, thus it spake,
‘Is man more just than God?
Is man more pure
Than He who deems even
Seraphs insecure
Creatures of clay, vain
dwellers in the dust,
The moth survives you, and
are ye more just?
Things of a day, ye wither
ere the night
Heedless and blind to
Wisdom’s wasted light.”
Byron’s Paraphrase from Job
A few extra
particulars concerning the old historic Hely family.
Frederic Augustus Hely, whose wife lies in the Paddington
cemetery, was the first Superintendent in Chief of
convicts in Sydney. He died in 1835, and was buried in a
vault in his own orchard at Gosford, Broken Bay. His wife
was Georgina Lindsey Bucknell. One of their sons was
Hovenden Hely, the explorer, who was out with Leichhardt
in 1846, and went to search for him in 1852.
One son was Henry Lindsey Hely, a barrister, who
became a Queensland District Court judge.
One daughter married the late W. L. G. Drew, then a
paymaster in the Fleet. He came to Queensland, joined the
Civil Service, and his last position was Chairman of the
Civil Service Board.
Another Hely girl married Edward Strickland, a
major in the Royal Artillery, and afterwards Sir Edward
Strickland, Commissary- General, who served in the Zulu
War of 1878.
Another girl married Captain G. K. Mann, Royal
Horse Artillery, who after retiring from that position,
became Superintendent of the Penal Settlement on Cockatoo
Island, Sydney Harbor, where he planned and superintended
the docks.
Hovenden Hely was the father of the six tall sons
of whom one is Major Hely, at present in the Government
Savings Bank.
These are a few results from F. A. Hely’s marriage
in the long ago with the woman who lies in the Paddington
cemetery.
Mary Grace Sheppard, who died on June 28, 1869, was
the wife of Edmund Sheppard, judge of the Metropolitan
District Court. Her infant son, Alfred Henry, had died on
October 15, 1866. One of our chief Government officers
tells the following gruesome story:
In 1869
a young fellow named Davidson was out one night with some
boon companions, and they were on their way home late at
night. Davidson lived in North Brisbane, the others on the
South side. He went with them to the ferry, and they
advised him to go home. The ferry boatman was a Chinaman,
named George. A punt also ran across on a rope, there
being no bridge. They pushed the boat off, and Davidson
took off his coat and trousers and dived in head first
after it. The Chinaman merely said, ‘Oh, let him swim
out,’ and pulled away. Davidson was drowned, and the
police dragged for two days without success. On the third
day, the ferry boat left the steps with Mrs. Sheppard,
then on the eve of becoming a mother, two other
passengers, and the officer who tells the story. When a
short distance out the punt was coming in from the south
side. Suddenly, at the stern of the boat, the body of
Davidson rose from the river, head first, shot up, until
breast high, glared, as it were, for a second with those
ghastly, glassy, staring eyes, turned over on the back,
and floated away. The second it rose, the officer, with
remarkable presence of mind, instantly caught Mrs.
Sheppard by both arms, to prevent her turning around to
look at the body, and held her for at least a hundred
yards, speaking to her softly, and telling her he would
give a clear explanation. The judge afterwards thanked him
earnestly, expressing a belief that he had save his wife’s
life. Alas! Poor Mrs. Sheppard got puerperal fever after
the birth of that baby, and lies there in the Paddington
cemetery, so her life went after all.
A young Church of England clergyman is thus
recorded: “Jesu Mercy. In memory of the departed John
Brakenridge, M. A. of Christ’s College, Cambridge, Clerk
in Holy Orders. Died March 26, 1861, aged 31.” He was one
of the many young men who have come out to Queensland in
that advanced stage of consumption which no climate can
cure.
Amos
Braysher, who died on September 27, 1871, aged 35, was the
landlord of “Braysher’s Hotel,” now the Metropolitan, in
Edward Street. His widow married Duncan, and after Duncan
died, Mrs. Duncan kept the hotel for years.
Mrs. Duncan’s Metropolitan Hotel was the favorite
house for squatters in those days, and probably then the
best hotel in Brisbane.
Buried at Paddington, is an old fellow named
Marvel, perhaps a descendant of the famous Andrew Marvel.
He was one of the band of ticket-of-leave men who came to
the Darling Downs in 1840, with Patrick Leslie, when he
took up the first station, Toolburra. In after years,
Leslie wrote that “they were 20 as good and game men as
ever I saw, and worth any 40 I have ever seen since.”
Marvel was a chum of Peter Murphy, whose name is
borne by Murphy’s Creek, on the Toowoomba line. Murphy was
also one of Leslie’s men, and he died at Charters Towers
on April 6, 1878.
Among the stone less graves is that of Tom Mostyn,
one of the mob who pulled Trevethan’s butchers shop down
in the beef riots at Charters Towers, on October 30, 1872.
Another man named Perkins was with Captain Owen
Stanley on the Rattlesnake, on the Queensland coast, in
1846, and was present at the Captain’s funeral at North
Shore, Sydney, on March 10, 1850.
There are many interesting men lying among the
unknown dead. A young fellow buried there was a son of
Charles Alcocks, who was one of the owners of the “Free
Press,” a squatting paper, published in Brisbane in 1851,
the office being on the site of the present Australian
Hotel. Young Alcocks was killed by being thrown from his
horse at Cowper’s Plains, in 1851. These plains are
erroneously called “Cooper’s Plains,” though named from
Dr. Cowper, the first medical man at the early convict
settlement at Moreton Bay. Even Moreton Bay is spelled
wrongly, as it was named by Captain Cook after the
Scottish Earl of Morton, in whose name there is no “e.”
An old lady, still living, tells us that in the
Paddington cemetery, she has a brother, who went up the
Brisbane River on June 27, 1846, in the first trip of the
small steamer, Experiment, owned and built by Pearse, when
the first and second class passenger return fares were 6s
and 4s, and the freight on wool was 2s per bale. She
remembered when Francis Gill, for many years Postmaster at
Ipswich, had a saddler’s shop at South Brisbane, in 1843.
This latter tough old gentleman is still alive and well,
and can be seen weekly in Queen Street, faultlessly
dressed and wearing a bell topper hat.
She herself remembers when the first soda water and
lemonade factory was started in North Brisbane, by Fisher
and Gregory, in 1853, and Dr. Hobbs had his dugong oil
fishery on the island of St. Helena, fifteen years before
Superintendent Macdonald started to cut the scrub in 1864
to prepare it for a penal settlement.
A two year old son of John and Ann Nott was buried
on May 17, 1875. Nott was a merchant in Elizabeth Street,
and had a wholesale house there. His wife was widow of a
painter named Murray. She was a daughter of Lachlan
McLean, whose son, William McLean, was once a well known
blacksmith in Elizabeth Street. Nott died at Enoggera
Terrace. His widow is still alive, and resides near
Woolloongabba. She was referred to in a former article.
Elizabeth Bateman, who died on March 9, 1873, was
the wife of Samuel Bateman, who kept a hotel on the site
of the present Hotel Cecil. It was built by a man who was
foreman printer on the “Courier,” in old Jimmy Swan’s
days. After Bateman died, the property was bought at a low
figure by Dr. Mullen, who built the Hotel Cecil of the
present day.
The Horrocks family buried three of their children,
Reginald Blackall, Algernon Levinge, and Gertrude Mary
Horrocks, in 1871 and 1873, aged 13 months, 10 months and
2 years and 9 months. Horrocks was the well known officer
in charge of the Orphans, and was once Immigration Agent.
He held a Captain’s rank in the army. He was a Manchester
man, and a nephew of the Horrocks known to all women
and drapers, as the originator and maker of “Horrocks’
long cloths.” He married a Miss Miller, whose father was a
police magistrate at Armagh, in Ireland. That marriage was
against the wish of his uncle, and it cost Horrocks a
fortune.
Horrocks was an educated, polite man, who commanded
general respect. The tragical fate of one of his sons is
still familiar to Brisbane people. A daughter, aged 18 or
19, died recently, but Mrs. Horrocks still resides in
Brisbane. Reginald Miller, of the Audit Office, is her
brother.
Ernest Alexander Cairncross, a child of 21 days,
who died on September 26, 1867, was a son of Cairncross,
who kept a store on the corner of Queen and Albert
Streets, where Rutter, the chemist, recently had a shop.
Cairncross was married to a daughter of old George
Edmonstone, once M.L.A., for Brisbane. He had a butchering
business in Queen Street. One of the daughters of
Cairncross married the present Hon. A. J. Thynne, who was
staying at the time with the Cairncross family on Spring
Hill. This Cairncross is often confused with Captain
Cairncross, who owned Wattlebrae, and in front of whose
house was the “Cairncross Buoy,” well known to all boating
men. That red buoy is still there.
A. R. and Annie Jones buried an infant on February
28, 1870. Jones was a shipbuilder, predecessor of Paul and
Gray.
One of his sons, named Sydney, became partner in
the legal firm of Rees R. and Sydney Jones, of
Rockhampton. He married a daughter of the late John
Ferguson, and when he died his widow, who had several
children, married J. T. Bell, late Minister for Lands.
There is a stone placed over Charles Augustus
Basham, by his brother, W. H. Basham, who still resides at
Oxley. Basham died on April 12, 1873, aged 37. The father
of these Bashams was an officer in the Irish Coast Guards.
Our informant was present, as a boy, at his funeral, at
Cushendall, Red Bay, Glens of Antrim, in 1849. The boy had
run away from home to see the funeral, and saw a hearse
for the first time. This gruesome vehicle gave him an
awful scare, but nothing like the scare his dad gave him
when he reached home.
Amelia Isabella Peake, who died on April 22, 1873,
aged only 24, was the wife of Captain Peake, first Captain
of the old Government steamer, Kate, which finally sank in
Moreton Bay. Two of Mrs. Peake’s infants are buried with her. The
ages, 24, 25, and 26, were the fatal period for an
appalling number of wives. When his wife died, Captain
Peake went to Sydney, and died somewhere in New South
Wales.
One day in 1872, someone saw two large strange fish
in the pond of the Botanic Gardens. Captain Peake had a
seine net and that was taken down to the pond. The fish
were caught and caused great astonishment, as no one at
the time had seen anything like them. But the usual expert
came along and found that they were two specimens of Ceratodus of
the Mary and Burnett Rivers. Enquiries proved that they
had been caught years before in Tinana Creek and been sent
down to the gardens by the late R. B. Sheridan, then
Collector of Customs, in Maryborough. Then they were
restored to the pond and vanished again into oblivion
until the days of curator McMahon, when one of his men, a
Teutonic gentleman, was cleaning out the pond, and caught
a ceratodus, then weighing about 12lbs. The German merely
remarked, “By shingo, dis vos goot,” and took it home and
ate it. Next day he caught another, but McMahon happened
to come along, and sent it up to Curator de Vis at the
Museum. De Vis saw at once what the fish was, and sent it
back to the Gardens, where it was placed in the pond, none
the worse for its temporary absence. Finally that one and
his mate were removed to the fountain pond at the
south-west corner of the Gardens, and both were taken away
by the flood of 1893, or 21 years after Captain Peake had
hauled them out in his seine net.
John Wallace Barnett, who died on September 3,
1872, at the age of 46, was a well known man in Brisbane,
where he was Consular Agent for the United States, a
country in which he had lived for some years. He and
Heusmann, and G. R. Fyfe, were once owners of one of the
principal Mount Perry mines, and the town of “Fyfe
Barnett,” actually stood on the present site of Mount
Perry. Barnett’s only son, Sydney Barnett, married a
daughter of William Baynes, once a partner in the
squatting firm of Moore Brothers and Baynes, owners of
Barambah station, on the Burnett.
Baynes was returned as member for the Burnett, at
the General Election of 1878, as a supporter of
McIlwraith. He was a fine, genial, honest fellow, and a
general favourite on both sides of the House. The present
writer was a member in those days and can write with
authority. Sydney Barnett lives today at Ormiston, on the
Cleveland railway.
One of Cobb and Co.’s coachman, a young fellow
named Henry Taylor, was drowned in Oxley Creek, on March
11, 1870, aged 29, and his fellow employees erected a
stone over his grave.
Marie Louise Fairlie, wife of Patrick Fairlie,
sixth son of the then late Colonel James Fairlie, of
Holmes House, Ayrshire, Scotland, died at Brisbane, on
February 16, 1873, aged 31. Referring to the “Courier”
of that date, we find only the funeral notice, but there
is a very ambiguous paragraph referring to the sudden
death of some lady, in a high social position, who had
been addicted to looking upon rainbow colored wines, and
had been fed on nothing but brandy and water for weeks
before her death. The “Courier” thought the subject
demanded a searching enquiry.
I came to the place of my birth and cried
“the friends of my youth, where are they?”
and an echo answered “Where are they?” –
Arabic
poem.
They grew in beauty side by
side
They filled one home with
glee,
Their graves are severed far
and wide,
By mountain, stream, and
sea.
The same fond mother bent at
night,
O’er each fair sleeping
brow,
She had each folded flower
in sight,
Where are those dreamers
now?
Among the unknown graves are those of a number of
aboriginals, who were hanged.
These are said, by some early colonists, to have
been buried outside the cemetery, and others say they were
buried in a corner inside.
It is certain they were all taken charge of by the
Church of England.
On April 21, 1854, a notorious
black called “Dundahli,” was hanged on the site of the
present General Post Office. He had been accused of seven
murders, but the one he was hanged for was that of William
Gregor and Mary Shannon, at the Pine River. On the day he
was hanged – by a hangman purposely brought from Sydney –
there was a mob of about 33 blacks on the “Windmill Hill,”
where the Observatory is today. They called to Dundahli,
as he stood on the gallows, and he called back, telling
them to be sure and kill “Woom-boongoroo,” the black who
had betrayed him. He was captured in the Valley, where he
had incautiously ventured among a lot of other blacks,
through the agency of a man named Baker, who in after
years had a farm and hotel at Walloon, in the Rosewood.
Baker knew Dundahli, and
enticed him into a room where three other men were
concealed, and the four men sprang on him, and held him
until the police came. Dundahli was badly knocked about in
the struggle.
Mrs. Baker told the writer in
1878, that there was a reward of £25 for his capture, and
she went to the courthouse and drew the money for her
husband. She is said to be still alive, in Ipswich, or was
a few years ago.
Dundahli had too long a drop,
and fell with his feet on the coffin underneath. The
hangman doubled his legs us, and added his own weight,
until the miserable black was strangled.
It was a ghastly spectacle for a crowd of men,
women, and children.
Dundahli was buried at Paddington, either inside or
outside the Church of England ground.
Two other blacks who were hanged are also there.
These were “Chanerrie,” and “Dick,” hanged on August 4,
1859, for a criminal assault on a German woman. They were
two Burnett River blacks.
The came “Kipper Billy,” who was shot by Warder
Armstrong when attempting to escape from the jail. It was
remarkable that no bullet wound was discovered, but it
must have reached his interior somehow, unless he died on
shock, or what the modern Sawbones calls “stoppage of the
heart’s action.” Presumably, if the heart continued
working, death would be indefinitely postponed.
Some enterprising criminologist opened “Kipper
Billy’s” grave, and took his skull away. This raised much
indignation on the part of Shepherd Smith and Henry
Buckley, the cemetery trustees. Someone, in 1854, had dug
down to Dundahli and taken his head. The Paddington
cemetery was a lonely isolated spot in those days, and
there was opportunity enough to dig up anybody.
Buried there is a man named Jubb, who had a hotel
in Cunningham’s Gap, on the old road to Toowoomba, in
1852. In that year, two distinguished visitors went up to
see the squatters on the Downs. These were Lord Kerr, and
Lord Scott, the latter being a son of the Duke of
Buccleugh. They stayed, on their way up and down, at
Jubb’s Hotel. These were the first lords who ever visited
the territory now called Queensland. Jubb’s name recalls
the “Jubb Jubb” in the “Hunting of the Snark.”
A neat headstone marks the grave of Thomas Ayerst
Hooker, second son of James and Mary Hooker, drowned in
the Condamine crossing at Undulla, on December 13, 1866. A
squatter named James Hooker, or Hook, was one of the
owners of Weranga Station, in 1856, afterwards sold by
Hook, or Hooker, to Mort and Laidley. Was this young
fellow Hooker his son? Perhaps some old squatter will
kindly tell us. And was the body brought all that distance
in those days, to be buried at Paddington?
Buried on December 23, 1871, was a child of seven
months old, named Moreton Franklyn Ryder, son of the long
experienced and courteous Under Secretary W. H. Ryder, of
the Home Office. Ryder was born in Prince Edward Island,
Canada, in November, 1843, and came to Victoria in 1851.
In 1861, he was on the staff of the old “Guardian”
newspaper in Brisbane, and in 1862 became a clerk in the
Government Printing Office. Thence he rose rapidly and
finally reached the post of Under Secretary, in 1896. He
had once a sadder bereavement than that of the baby of
1871, when a fine son was killed on Breakfast Creek bridge
by being thrown off his pony on the way to school. One of
his sisters was married to Rickards, once station master
at Ipswich, and became mother of Katie Rickards, the
brilliant pianisto.
Harold Durham Paul, who died on June 12, 1873, was
a four months and fourteen days old baby, fourth son of
George William and Emily Paul. This George William is our
well known genial Judge Paul, who was born at Penrith, New
South Wales, on June 2, 1839, and came to Queensland on
December 25, 1863. He became Crown Prosecutor in 1866,
Acting Judge in 1871, and District Court Judge in 1874. He
has been three or four times Acting Judge of the Supreme
Court.
A young fellow named William Page had an accident
on board the ship Light Brigade, on her way to Brisbane,
and was so badly injured that he died after arrival, on
December 15, 1866, aged 22.
A young fellow named John Mace, said to be a
brother or nephew of the famous boxer, Jem Mace, was
drowned in the Brisbane River, on September 11, 1869, aged
23.
One grave holds the infant son of George Hope and
Morforwyn Verney. Captain Verney was aide-de-camp to
Governor Blackall, and left Queensland when the Marquis
died.
Evidently Mrs. Verney, if we are to judge by her
name, belonged to a Welsh family.
The child died on November 26, 1870.
It would appear as if one early settler was
somewhat of a humorist, with regard to names. That was
Henry Rosetta, who died on December 9, 1863, aged 49.
Beside him lies a six year old son, whom he had named
“Christmas Gift,” and who died June 23, 1864. This is the
Rosetta who gave his name to “Rosetta Swamp” of the
present day, the notorious quagmire out of which Dr. Ham
has ordered the City Council to expel all microbes without
delay.
One stone less grave contains a man named Marks,
who was one of a number badly injured in a terrible boiler
explosion at the Union foundry, in Maryborough, in 1872,
when seven men were killed. One half of the boiler was
blown clear over a Chinaman’s garden, 200 yards away.
In 1855, two shiploads of German immigrants arrived
in Brisbane, by the ships Merbz and Aurora. They were
engaged in Germany by a man named Kirchner, of Kirchner
and Co., of Sydney, who brought them out on a two years
engagement.
They were intended for the stations, as men were
scarce in those days, especially shepherds, of whom a
great number were killed by the blacks. The squatters were
to pay £16 for each German’s passage, to be deducted from
his two years’ wages. A majority of the squatters made no
deductions, and the Germans gave great satisfaction. A
number shared the fate of those who fell under the spear
and nulla. Among these immigrants were two brothers named
Muller, one of whom died a month after arrival, and was
buried in the Paddington cemetery. The brother went as a
hutkeeper on Manumbar station, and was killed by the
blacks.
Captain Graham Mylne, M.L.A., and his wife, Helena
White, buried a five months old child on May 31, 1868.
Mylne in that year, was member for the Warrego. The
Mackenzie Ministry was in office, and in a precarious
position. Not a soul of either the Council or Assembly is
alive today. South Brisbane was represented by T. B.
Stephens, North Brisbane by A. B. Pritchard and Dr.
O’Doherty, the Valley by Charles Lilley. The 20 members of
the Council, and the 31 of the Assembly are all dead.
Mylne spoke of the position of the Ministry, who had been
defeated on the Address-in-Reply, by 13 to 11, and the
Governor refused to accept their resignation. Mylne’s
wife, the mother of the child at Paddington, was a Miss
White, sister of Albert White, of the Logan River, now of
Bluff Downs, west of Toowoomba. Besides his station on the
Logan, Albert White held old Combabah Station, which took
all the country from the Coomera River to Nerang,
including Southport.
In 1870, the Manager of Combabah was old Sandy
Gordon, who kept a whole pack of Kangaroo dogs, the
leaders of which were usually about a mile ahead of Gordon
on the march. Present writer was a youth of 17, when on a
first visit to Queensland, in 1870, and we had two days
kangaroo hunting with Gordon. Southport then was covered
by heavy forest, with rank undergrowth, and long grass,
full of wallabies.
Albert White, the present owner of Bluff Downs, on
the head of the Burdekin, was in Brisbane last week. He is
one of the finest specimens of men in Queensland. He was a
young man when owner of Nindooimbah and Coombabah. His
sister, who married Graham Mylne, is still alive and well,
in Sydney, but Mylne died many years ago, at Eatonswell
Station, on the Clarence.
One of his sons, also a Captain Mylne, fought in
the South African war, and was on the staff of Lord
Metheun. He passed through Brisbane last week, and we
shall have occasion to refer to him and Albert White
again.
David Williams, who died on March 26, 1874, was a
Welshman, who had been years in the pilot service, at
Gladstone, and was also some time in the Port Office.
Can anyone enlighten us concerning Clara Ann
Hopkins, who died on April 12, 1874, aged 29, and on whose
grave is this extraordinary verse?
“She
is not as we saw her last,
On a
suffering dying bed;
To
her all death and pain are past,
And
by living streams she is led;
She
has learned the sacred story,
Of
the Saviour’s dying love,
Her
eyes now see the glory,
That
awaited her above..”
If the writer of this had seen the look in the eyes
of those who read it, he would have fled somewhere in the
middle of the night.
In the centre of Rosewood, near Marburg, is a flat
valley, once known as Sally Owen’s Plains, still known as
such to old residents. Sally was an old time celebrity,
who kept a hotel at Western Creek, between Rosewood and
Grandchester, then known as “Bigge’s Camp.” She used the
plains for her cattle and horses, as they were safe there
from horse thieves and cattle duffers. The “plains” were
merely an open forest pocket in the brigalow scrub. An
enterprising person , who had run an illicit still in the
old country, thought Sally Owen’s plains an ideal spot for
a similar institution, and he made whisky and rum there in
hundreds of gallons. Likewise he killed cattle and boiled
then down for tallow. He took this tallow to Ipswich in
large casks, but there was only about six inches of tallow
in the inside of the casks, and all the rest was occupied
by kegs of raw spirit! This was engineered so cleverly
that there was never any discovery. That old time
distiller of Sally Owen’s Plains, lies at rest in
Paddington cemetery, near the southwest corner.
We withhold his name for the sake of his
descendants. The shepherds, shearers, stockmen, and
bullock drivers of those days must have had a gay time
with the rum from Sally Owen’s Plains. Artemus Ward would
have said “that sort of rum inspires a man with a wild
desire to smash windows!”
In reference to correspondents who wrote to make
corrections.
Notwithstanding the fair Josephine Papi’s
declaration that her uncle Jerry Scanlan was a surveyor,
we have the inexorable facts that he was a saddler by
trade, and a policeman by choice. Those who knew Jerry
most intimately, say he would not have known the
difference between a theodolite and a concertina. Jerry
had a weakness for attending funerals, mounted on a
serious looking horse, with two long “weepers” hanging
from the back of his hat.
In reply to Mr. Rendall, who says his father’s name
was John Wood Rendall, we can only say that John Randall
is the name on the tombstone.
In answer to Mr. Conroy, we have the fact that a
Constable John Conroy was burned to death on the
Durundur Road. There may have been two constables of
that name.
“The
man, how wise, who sick of gaudy scenes,
Is
led by choice to take his favourite walk,
Beneath
Death’s gloomy, silent cypress shades,
Unpierced
by Vanity’s fantastic ray,
To
read his monuments, to weigh his dust,
Visit
the vaults and dwell among the tombs.-
Young’s
Night Thoughts
How
loved, how valued once, avail thee not;
To
whom related, or by whom begot;
A
heap of dust alone remains of thee
‘Tis
all Thou art and all the Proud shall be.
-Pope
The
doctor says that I shall die;
You
that I knew in days gone by,
I
fain would see your face once more,
Con
well its features o’er and o’er,
And
touch your hand, and feel your kiss,
Look
in your eyes and tell you this;
That
all is done, that I am free,
That
you through all eternity
Have
neither part nor lot in me.
-Amy
Levy
A neat headstone is over Susan Geary, wife of
Lieutenant William Geary, R.N. She died on August 9, 1852.
She was the mother of all the Queensland Gearys, including
four girls and three boys, of whom only one girl is alive
today.
One of the sons was once manager of Jimbour station
when Joshua Bell was owner, in the days when champagne was
a common beverage, and the silver on the Jimbour dining
table cost £500. Those days have passed.
It is interesting to remember that Joshua Peter
Bell was an enthusiastic admirer of the Miss Geary who
married Robert Little, the Crown Solicitor. Both were
competitors for her hand, and Little won. It was a
grievous disappointment to Bell, but the squatters of
those days, like the French Mirabeau family, had a talent
for choosing fine women, and Bell went and wooed and won a
daughter of Dr. Dorsey, of Ipswich. She and the Miss Geary
who married Little, were two of the finest specimens of
women in Queensland. One Miss Geary married Percy
Faithfull, member of an old time honored family, in New
South Wales. On one occasion in their single days, the
sons of Faithfull were driving home across the Goulburn
Plains, when they were attacked by Gilbert, the
bushranger, and his gang, who had bailed up Springfield
station, and rounded up the whole population. The
Faithfull boys made a gallant fight, and were quite a
surprise party to Gilbert. The Gilbert men were armed only
with revolvers, and knowing that one of the Faithfulls had
a rifle, in addition to their revolvers, galloped round at
long range, fired under the necks of their horses, and
from behind trees, and generally gave the Faithfull
warriors a wide berth. One of Gilbert’s men got fairly
close and fired from behind a tree, point blank at one of
the Faithfull brothers, but Faithfull’s horse threw up its
head at the exact moment, intercepted the ball with its
forehead, and fell dead. Finally the bushrangers cleared,
and the gallant fight of the Faithfulls was afterwards
recognised by the Government in a gold medal for each of
the party.
One Miss Geary married E. O. Moriarty, engineer in
chief of Harbors and Rivers in New South Wales. Another
married a nephew of Sir Maurice O’Connell. The Miss Geary
who married Robert Little had a family of four sons and
four daughters.
William Henry Geary, the grandfather, died on
February 20, 1870. He was at one time Harbor Master in
Brisbane. One of his sons, Godfrey N. B. Geary, was once
chief clerk in the Lands office, and a captain in the
artillery. He involved himself in a a lawsuit for breach
of promise brought against him by a Miss Hollingsworth, of
Stanthorpe, and she got a verdict for a thousand pounds.
But she merely held it over him in terrorem, like a
Damocles sword, which was to fall only if he married
another girl. As he contracted no further engagements, the
sword remained suspended until he died. Miss Hollingsworth
finally married Tom Coventry, a gentleman whose name is
not unknown in mining circles. Mrs. Coventry, an educated,
intellectual, woman, was for years, the social editor-ess
of the “Telegraph,” and once started on her own account a
bright little journal called the “Princess,” which reached
22 numbers, and died generally regretted by all who knew
it.
On the headstone of the Mrs. Geary from 1852 we
read:
“And I heard a voice which said: ‘
Write – blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.”
Margaret Francis Clara, wife of William Pickering,
died on June 28, 1859, aged 43, and Pickering died on
March 11, 1868, aged 57. Pickering was once Curator of
Intestate Estates, also an auctioneer and commission
agent, and owned a lot of land in the Valley, where the
Pickering Estate took in a considerable area now covered
by closely built houses. Alexander Raff succeeded him as
Curator of Intestate Estates. One of his sons, now
deceased, was a once fairly well known Captain Pickering,
for some years labor agent in the South Seas. His family
are still in Brisbane.
Elizabeth Cowell, who died on January 17, 1864,
aged 38, was the first wife of Tom Cowell, once one of
Brisbane’s best known men. Tom once had a dairy farm at
the “One-mile Swamp,” the present Woolloongabba, and
carried milk into town in two cans slung on a yoke
across his shoulders. The farm was owned by old “Joe
Howe,” who is still alive. Joe had one daughter who
married Bill Moody, of Oxley.
Cowell prospered , as he deserved to prosper , and
in after years became the proprietor of the Sovereign
Hotel in Queen Street. Finally he retired, and lived in a
house on the North Quay, near the Longreach. The house was
afterwards occupied by Dr. Purcell, and at the present
time is tenanted by the Military Club. In that house, Tom
Cowell’s first wife, a fine specimen of a woman, died a
tragical death through her clothes catching fire, and the
servant girl who tried to save her was also burnt to
death.
In after years, Tom married again, and the second
wife is still alive. By the first he had one daughter, who
married a man named Daniell, who died not long ago.
Present writer knew Cowell well. Once sold to him for £40
a double choke bore Greener gun which cost £65. Cowell
afterwards sold it to Lennon, of Lennon’s hotel, for £40,
and Lennon used it for many pigeon matches. When he died
the gun disappeared, and finally found its way to a
Brisbane pawn shop, where warehouseman John Bell saw and
bought it for £5, and it is now in his possession.
On Mrs. Cowell’s grave is the line
“Ye know not what shall be on the morrow.”
One headstone, which has fallen down, bears the
name of two children, Emma and William Henry Collins, who
died in 1863 and 1864. Beside them is the grandmother,
Mary Collins, who died on July 12, 1873, aged 86, one of
the very few old people in the cemetery. The father of the
children, Jimmy Collins, was a well known butcher and
tanner, who once owned the present York Hotel, which he
built up from a butcher’s shop, the money being mostly
provided by Joshua Peter Bell, who realised the words of
the Psalmist, “passing away, passing away,” for he never
saw his cash anymore.
Ann Ellen Boyce, second daughter of William Martin
Boyce, E.L.C.S., died on June 11, 1866, aged 24. Also
Susan, wife of W. M. Boyce, died on May 27, 1874, aged 58.
The stone also records Ellen Victoria Board, youngest
daughter of W. M. and Susan Boyce, who died at Melbourne
on August 24, 1877, aged 34. She was the wife of T. A.
Board, of Sydney, brother of G. L. Board, present chief
clerk in the Lands Office and Inspector of State Forests.
The stone also records Stuart Leslie Board, a child of the
mother, who died in Melbourne.
William Martin Boyce was for many years Town Clerk
of Toowoomba, and his only son, J. A. Boyce, is the well
known P.M. of Townsville. The first wife of W. M. Boyce
was a Miss Brown of Tasmania. When G. L. Board was a youth
he went to a collegiate school kept by the Rev E. B. Shaw,
close to the old windmill, the present Observatory. Among
his fellow pupils were the McDougalls and Taylors, of
Toowoomba, Pring Roberts, Arthur Chambers, Fred Hamilton,
Jack Kent, the two Hausmanns, and other sons of the
pioneers.
A four months’ child named Frederick Charles
Cracknell was a son of Cracknell, who was the predecessor
of Matvieff as head of the Telegraph Department. He lived
four miles out on the Ipswich Road, near Hardcastle’s old
hotel.
Gilbert Wright, of New South Wales, was a solicitor, who died in Brisbane on June 12, 1866, aged 37. He resided in the Valley. His widow married the well-known R. R. Smellie, founder of the firm of R. R. Smellie and Co. On Wright’s tomb are the words,
“I wait for the Lord;
my soul doth wait,
and
in His word do I hope.”
Charlotte Greenwood was the wife of Christopher
Henry Greenwood, and died on March 16, 1857, aged 23.
Greenwood kept a hotel in Grey Street, near Russell
Street, South Brisbane. One Miss Greenwood married George
Grenier, of Oxley. The Grenier family held a lot of land
in South Brisbane.
Joseph Thompson, who died on December 19, 1857,
aged 38, had his name handed down by the Thompson Estate
on the Ipswich Road, near the junction.
On March 11, 1856, a young fellow named J. M.
Omanney, aged 20, was thrown from his horse and killed on
the Breakfast Creek road. He was a son of Major Omanney,
of the Bengal Engineers.
One of the earliest graves is that of Edward Roe Thomas, fourth son of Jocelyn Thomas, Esq., of Van Diemen’s Land, who died on July 31, 1853, aged 32. The stone assures us that
“he died in the Christian faith, a firm believer in his Saviour.”
His
father was careful to have the “Esquire” on the tombstone.
Some day we shall see a stone to the memory of John Brown,
J.P.
A neat stone marks the grave of Frederick Neville
Isaac, of Gowrie, Darling Downs, who died on July 12,
1865, aged 44. This name takes us back to the early
squatting days, to the year 1845, when Hughes and Isaac
held Westbrook and Stanbrook stations, when Tom Bell,
grandfather of the present Bells, held Jimbour, and ex
P.M. Papa Pinnock held Ellangowan. Leichhardt named the
Isaacs River, a tributary of the Fitzroy, after F. Isaac,
of Gowrie station. It is rather remarkable that the name
on the tombstone is Isaac, whereas Leichhardt and the
early records give it as Isaacs. The Isaac in the
Paddington cemetery was only 23 when he met Leichhardt at
Gowrie in 1844.
Alice Elizabeth Burrowes, who died in March 1859,
was the sixteen year old daughter of Major Edward
Burrowes, one time Deputy Surveyor-General when A. C.
Gregory was Surveyor-General. Burrowes held a Lieutenant’s
commission in the 93rd Regiment at 17 years of
age. He married a Francis Susannah Nalder, who died at the
age of 68, at Burketown, when on a visit to her son, and
was buried under the only shade tree within a radius of 30
miles. Eight of her family are still living, five sons and
three daughters. One of the girls, Frances Mary, is a
widow, living in Yorkshire. Amy is a Mrs. Allan Campbell,
of Bathurst, and the third, Augusta, is the wife of the
well known Brisbane chemist Harry Cormack. The first
treadle sewing machine that ever came to Queensland was
imported by A. C. Gregory, and presented to Mrs. Burrowes.
It was a great curiosity in those days. Mrs. Cormack’s
name, Augusta, was given in honor of Gregory, whose name
was Augustus.
A man named Peter Martin was drowned off McCabe’s
wharf at South Brisbane. In 1855, and is buried at
Paddington. He was one of three men wrecked away east of
Fraser’s Island, and they landed from one of the
vessel’s boats on the coast of Bribie Island, where the
other two men were killed by the blacks. Miller got away
and landed on St Helena, when Dr. Hobb’s dugong fishing
station was there. McCabe’s wharf, where he was drowned,
was on the present site of Baines’ Brothers wharf. The
first “Courier” office was on McCabe’s wharf, and did
not move over to George Street until 1852. The present
W. J. Costyn, chemist in the Valley, was a boy in the
“Courier” office on McCabe’s wharf, in 1847 and 1848,
and the money to pay for the first plant was found by T.
H. Green, whose sister Costyn married in after years.
James Swan, who has been often credited with starting
the “Courier,” came on the scene only after the office
was removed to George Street.
“Farewell, my son!
And farewell all my earthly happiness!
Farewell, my only son!
Would to God I had died for thee!
I shall never more see earthly good in the land of the living!
Attempt not to comfort me!
I shall go mourning all the rest of my days,
until my grey hairs come down with sorrow to the grave!”
Hervey’s
Meditation
I
pass, with melancholy stare,
By
all these solemn heaps of fate;
And
think, as soft and sad I tread
Above
the venerable dead,
Time
was, like me, they life possessed;
And
time will be when I shall rest.
-Parnell
In the Baptist section of the Paddington cemetery
is William Grimes, who died on October 30, 1870, aged 60.
The stone tells us that he “was the father of Messrs.
Grimes of this city.” It also records the death of Ernest
Henry Grimes, a grandson, who died on May 12, 1875, aged
6. The Grimes family are prominent in Brisbane history
over a considerable period. Samuel and George Grimes were
members of the Assembly as representatives of Oxley and
Bulimba.
In 1874, S. and G. Grimes, grocers of Queen Street,
had a sugar and arrowroot mill at Oxley, adjoining the
Pearlwell Estate, owned by Dr. Waugh, one of whose
daughters was drowned in the Quetta.
Sam and George Grimes were men of undoubted
honesty, but not orators or statesmen. On one occasion
when Sam rose to speak, Morehead got up and walked out,
remarking: “I can’t stand the hum of that arrowroot mill!”
This sarcastic observation referred to the
arrowroot making at the Coongoon mills. Grimes and Petty,
and S. and G. Grimes were once familiar firms.
One Miss Grimes married J. B. Hall, Accountant in
Insolvency.
One daughter and one son, Ernest Henry Grimes,
remained unmarried.
Jane Bulgin, who died in 1872, was the wife of
auctioneer Bulgin, of Brisbane’s early days, and mother of
Henry Bulgin, generally known as “Lord Bulgin,” who died
recently, leaving a family, of whom one was for a time
nurse in the General Hospital. One of “Lord Bulgin’s”
sisters was a girl whose beauty captivated Sam Griffith,
Chief Justice of the Commonwealth, and Sam did his best to
induce her to become Mrs. Griffith, but Sam was not her
ideal, or she had no idea that he would one day have a
salary of £3,500, and so she rejected him and married C.
C. Carrington, one of the still living men who have been
longest in the Civil Service in Queensland.
Clara Reinhard,
who died on November 27, 1867, was a year old child
whose sister was one of the cleverest pupils in the early
days of All Hallows Convent School. Can anyone tell us
what became of Lillian Reinhard?
William Hickey, who died on August 7, 1871, is
under a stone erected by his brother, Matthew Hickey, who
was 30 years with D. L. Brown and Co., and is now with
Alexander Stewart and Sons. Hickey’s brothers were well
known perambulating salesmen in the days when Mallens and
Ziemans and other old time peripatetic merchants were out
in search of spare cash from the pioneer settlers.
The oldest recorded grave in the cemetery is that
of “Margaret Brown, of Ipswich,” native of Kildare,
Ireland, who died on August 30, 1845, aged 35. Being
Irish, she was evidently no relation of the Ipswich Brown
family, which included Peter Brown, once mayor of Ipswich,
and a leading architect, as they were all decidedly
Scottish, and wore kilts and called themselves “Broon.” So
far we have failed to trace the Maggie Brown who was taken
out to the Paddington cemetery over sixty five and a half
years ago, or three years after Brisbane was thrown open
to free settlement, in 1842.
Conspicuous among the graves of the white race is
the solitary last resting place of “Sing Cong Long,” in
the Presbyterian ground. How came this one lonely disciple
of Confucius and Mencius, and Bhudda, among the adherents
of the stern merciless uncompromising John Knox, who
bearded the Scottish, Queen Mary, in her den? Sing Cong
Long was a Chinese merchant and fruiterer, who had shops
in Albert Street, and was a general favourite with all
classes. And yet Sing Cong Long had unscrupulous enemies –
with whom he wanted to get even – and he studied the
various religions to ascertain which one gave most promise
of a conclusive settlement. He decided in favor of
Presbyterianism after reading a translation of a sermon by
Calvin, who held that the chief joy of the Blessed was in
sitting on the battlements of Heaven and joyfully
contemplating the gymnastic performances of lost souls
basting in the sulphur ocean of fire underneath! Hence the
appearance of Sing Cong Long in the Presbyterian cemetery!
Caroline Jane Blakeney, buried on March 23, 1866,
was a little girl, six years and 20 days of age, daughter
of William and Eliza Blakeney. Blakeney was the once well
known Registrar-General, and son of Judge Blakeney. One of
his daughter s married T. H. B. Barron, and another
married S. B. Leishman, the squatter. Both were fine
looking women. One of Mrs. Barron’s daughters is the wife
of one of Sir Arthur Palmer’s sons. C. J. Blakeney, a once
well known lawyer of Brisbane, Cairns, and Cooktown, was
another son of the Judge.
Thomas William Hutton, a young man who died in May
1874, was the son of an old gaol warder, whose name is
borne by Hutton Lane, between Adelaide and Ann Street. One
of his daughters married a son of Stuart Russell, author
of the “Genesis of Queensland.”
Maria Passmore, who died on April 11, 1872, aged
27, was the wife of Hugh Passmore, one of a family well
known in the early days of Toowoomba, where they were
prominent citizens.
Edmund Morris Lockyer, who died on June 28, 1872,
aged 62, was a son of Major Lockyer, who came up the
Brisbane River in a whaleboat in 1825, and wrote a full
description of all he saw. Among the men with him were two
red-haired soldiers, at whose fiery ringlets the blacks
were much astonished. Lockyer and his party camped one
night at the mouth of Oxley Creek, and in his diary he
says, “Emus were running about all night, making an
intolerable noise.” As emus do not move at night, and make
very little noise at any time, Lockyer evidently referred
to the stone plover, usually known as the curlew.
Lockyer’s name is handed down to us by Lockyer’s Creek at
Gatton, one of the tributaries of the Brisbane River.
Peter and Magdalena Betz buried a year old child on
February 20, 1870, Betz kept the West Riding Hotel, at the
foot of Queen Street.
The only child of William and Ellen Scarr, was
buried on October 23, 1874. Scarr was a draughtsman in the
Survey Office, and still resides in Brisbane. Very
melancholy are these children’s graves. Old Matthew Prior,
the poet, wrote,
“Happy
the babe, who, privelege by fate,
To
shorter labour and lighter weight,
Received
but yesterday the gift of breath,
Ordered tomorrow to return to death.”
Edward Hackway, who died on August 18, 1871, aged
41, left a widow, a handsome woman, who married John
Killeen Handy, member for the Mitchell in 1863.
Bramston petitioned against his return, but the
Committee decided that he was legally entitled to hold the
seat. The petition was based on the ground that Handy was
a priest of the Roman Catholic faith, and as such could
not be a member of Parliament.
The chief evidence was that of Dr. Cain, who said
that with the Church of Rome, a priest is always a priest,
and that he cannot give up, nor can the church take from
him, the priestly character conferred by ordination. He
might dress like a layman, but he is always a priest. Even
if under major excommunication, he still remains a priest,
though cut off from positive and active communion with the
faithful. Under minor ex-communication he can still say
Mass, and even under major excommunication he can
administer baptism in emergencies. Handy said he joined
the Church of England in 1863, and next month was married
by a Church of England clergyman. In 1865 he started
practice as a barrister in Brisbane, where he had arrived
in the previous year. Evidently Mrs. Hackway was Handy’s
second wife. Handy’s vote on one occasion saved the Palmer
Ministry from defeat, a friendly act not forgotten by
Palmer.
An old time publican named Woods kept a hotel in
Queen Street, on the site of Todd’s auction mart. He was
the man who introduced the first cab to Brisbane, one of
the old “jingles” which have long since disappeared,
though in a majority over the hansoms for many years. The
two seats were back to back, the same as in an Irish
jaunting car, but faced to and from the driver, whereas in
the Irish car the seats were back to back facing over the
wheels.
The first “jingle” was received with great applause
and much mirth, and as at that time the streets bore no
resemblance to a billiard table, it was necessary to hold
on securely to avoid being fired out into space. No
citizen of
that date was recognised in “society” unless he had been
on Woods’ jingle. The driver on one occasion, after taking
too much rum on board, drove his astonished steed into the
waterhole at the corner of Albert and Adelaide Streets,
and went to sleep on the front seat. Sarcastic bushmen
woke him up, and asked if he was fishing. One of them
waded in and led the horse out.
A young man of 22 named Martin Collins died on May
2, 1871. His father was a butcher in Queen Street, and one
of the family is still in the same trade in Warwick.
A child’s grave bears the name of Irwin Maling, who
was a military captain connected with a detachment of the
50th Regiment, which bore the name of the
“Dirty Half-hundred,” a name said to have been acquired by
their severe economies in personal expenditure, especially
where ladies were concerned.
Mary Jewell, who died in December 1874, aged 41, was the wife of Jewell, whose name is born by Jewell’s Buildings, near the Grand Hotel.
(text missing) Fahey was adopted by the New England
blacks, who took him to the triennial festival at the
Bunya Mountains. Fahey evidently was quite at home with
the blacks, and he remained with the bunya tribes, who
ornamented him with raised “Moolgarre” scars on the breast
and shoulders, and gave him the native name of
“Gilburrie.” He had been 12 years with the blacks, whose
language he spoke fluently, when found and brought in by
Lieutenant Bligh and the native police in 1854. He was
taken to Sydney, identified by the Superintendent of
Convicts, and actually sentenced to 12 months hard labor
for absconding 12 years before. Fahey escaped and joined
the blacks in 1842, the year in which Davis and Bracefell
were brought in by Andrew Petrie. Fahey had a brother, a
free man, who came out in 1852, and was in Sydney when his
brother was brought in. After “Gilburrie” Fahey had served
his time, the two brothers came to Brisbane, and went to
work on Jimbour station under the name of Bryant, but
“Bilburrie” was at once recognised by the blacks. Burke,
the manager of Jimbour had been killed by the blacks in
1852, not far from the station.
The Bells told Fahey that they cared nothing about
his previous career; but he only stayed there over one
shearing season, and went away to New South Wales where he
died.
The other brother, Denis Fahey, came to Brisbane,
and worked for William Pettigrew. He was a tall, dark,
powerful man, with restless eyes, and an uncontrollable
temper. In a row one night at McAdam’s public house,
some one struck him with an axe handle from behind, and
he died two days after. He is buried in the northwest
corner of the Catholic cemetery at Paddington. Some
woman who loved him went out every Sunday and placed a
bouquet of flowers on his grave for 12 months. The she
married and went away south, and never more did flowers
adorn the grave of Fahey, the wild Hiberian, brother of
the still wilder “Gilburrie,” who lies in some unknown
grave in the sister State.
“Death
is here, and death is there;
Death
is busy everywhere,
All
around, within, beneath,
Above,
is Death, and we are Death,
Death
has set his mark and seal,
On
all we are and all we feel,
On
all we know and all we fear,
All
things that we love and cherish,
Like
ourselves must fade and perish.
Lost,
lost, for ever lost,
In
the wide pathless desert of dim Sleep,
That
beautiful shape! Does the dart gate of Death
Conduct
to thy mysterious Paradise,
Oh,
Sleep?
-Shelley
What
guilt,
Can
equal violations of the dead?
The
dead how sacred! Sacred is the dust
Of
this Heaven labored form, erect, divine!
This
Heaven assumed majestic robe of earth.
-Young’s
“Night Thoughts.”
Among the dead is one name well known in the Queensland State and Federal service today. On November 12, 1871, Richard Bliss, aged 44, was buried in the Paddington cemetery, and beside him lies his two little girls, Mary Sophia Bertha, and Maud Ethel, who had died in 1865 and 1869, aged six years and one year. Richard Bliss and family came to Queensland in 1864, in the Flying Cloud, commanded by Captain Jones, who was in after years drowned in the China Seas.
The Bliss family, on arrival in Brisbane, went to
stay with the Rev. John Bliss, at St. John’s parsonage, in
William Street. John and Richard Bliss were brothers, but
the clerical Bliss had been out some years before the
other, and had ceased to be a new chum when his brother
arrived. Richard Bliss became an officer in the Audit
Office, and also the father of six sons, of whom one is
today in the Treasury, one in the Lands Office, and two in
the Customs, in Brisbane and Townsville. One son, the
eldest brother, was a captain in the militia, and was
present with Colonel Prendergast at the storming of King
Theebaw’s palace. One of the daughters of Richard Bliss
married the well known and deservedly respected Dr. Ryan,
of Gympie.
Mary Ann Hamilton, who died as a girl, at the age
of 13 years, was a daughter of the once well known J. A.
Hamilton, who was in charge of Dunwich for over twenty
years. One of her brothers is a responsible officer in the
Port Office today. Hamilton, who died some years ago,
married a second time, and the second wife is still alive,
and at present on a visit to a daughter in North
Queensland. By each wife he had a family of six children.
There was no better known man in Moreton Bay, and Dunwich
has never had a more considerate or sympathetic
superintendent.
Among those in the Presbyterian cemetery is
Margaret Stewart, who died on August 31, 1858. She was the
wife of Hugh Stuart, who died on June 28, 1871, aged 73.
Hugh was a popular blacksmith, whose smiddy was at the
back of Menzies boardinghouse, opposite Jerry Scanlan’s
hotel in Edward Street. Jerry’s hotel was then kept by a
man named Fishley, the predecessor of Jerry. Stewart was
an enthusiastic Highlander, and a great patron of the
Caledonian sports. Likewise he was a general favourite,
and a real good old Scot.
James Paish, who died at the age of 26, on November
16, 1866, was a member of the “Queen’s Own” the 50th
regiment, then stationed at Brisbane, in the Petrie
Terrace barracks. This regiment left an unpleasant record.
They were in frequent conflict with the police, and a
source of many troubles. The men had an unsavory
reputation. They were charged with various robberies, and
never paid any bills except compelled. Frequently the
police sent at night for the officers to come and take
charge of their men, who had been arrested. Three of them
assaulted Constable Colahan in Albert Street, which even
then had an evil reputation, and had him apparently killed
when the police arrived and handled the soldiers roughly,
in fact the three of them were knocked out by a present
day retired Inspector of Police, renowned for his size as
a son of Anak.
In South Brisbane, the redoubtable citizen, Paddy
Fox, is the only surviving link that binds us to that
Queen’s Own squad of 1868. When the regiment departed,
Paddy was left behind. He was either too virtuous and
abstemious to continue longer with such a reckless crew,
or he was asleep at the hour of despatch.
Henry Watson, who died on December 17, 1861, at the
age of 38, was a young man of independent means, whose old
country parents were comfortably situated. Watson married
a daughter from the Grenier family of South Brisbane. He
was the first man who traded in oysters from Moreton Bay
to Brisbane. This was a hobby with Watson more than a
source of revenue. He bought a cutter and engaged a man to
bring oysters to Brisbane and sell them. The oysters in
those days were sold at 10s per bag, or a shilling for a
bucketful, and were a much better quality than we get
today. Watson’s career was unfortunately cut off at the
early age of 38, and the oyster trade languished for two
years afterwards.
Two children of Robert D. Henry died at Goodna in
1873 and 1875. Henry was then a warder at Woogaroo, but he
was a man who held a sailing master’s certificate, and in
after years we find him as captain of the schooner Tom
Fisher, which was built on the Clarence, and named after
Tom Fisher, the leading storekeeper of Grafton in those
days. The schooner traded for many years between Brisbane
and Thursday Island, and is still “going strong.” Captain
Henry is at present residing in Ernest Street, South
Brisbane. His wife is a sister of David Graham, retired
Inspector of Police, well known in Brisbane, Charleville,
Rockhampton, Townsville, and Burketown. He is now a
resident of Edmonstone Street, South Brisbane.
The first vessel Captain Henry had in Queensland,
was the Governor Cairns, which was built in England
purposely to be used by the Queensland Government as a
pilot schooner. Her construction was supervised by Captain
Daniel Boult, and she was brought over by Captain
Cairncross, nephew of the Captain Cairncross who resided
at Wattlebrae, near Bulimba. Captain Henry had charge of
the Governor Cairns, for some years in Moreton Bay, where
she was the pilot schooner. In the first days of the
annexation of New Guinea, she was chartered as a yacht for
the use of the Government. Then she had a term of service
at Cooktown and Thursday Island. About two years ago,
Captain Henry bought her a s a speculation, and sold her
in Sydney at a profit. This vessel had a varied and
successful career at least so far as escaping accidents or
wreck was concerned.
Mary Baird was the wife of the Rev. John Wilson, a
Presbyterian parson, who lived near the Christian
Brothers, on Gregory Terrace. She died on January 17,
1866, aged only 29. Wilson preached in the old Wharf
Street church, and is remembered as a good preacher, and
all round real fine fellow. He is the subject of a very
comical reminiscence. Two immigrant ships had arrived, and
on board were many girls, some of whom were of a somewhat
frivolous disposition, girls for whom Mrs. Grundy had no
terrors. When one loose onshore these festive ladies
atoned for the restraint of the sea voyage. Their conduct
was giddy in the extreme. Three of the choicest and their
gentlemen friends took possession of Wilson’s hay loft
under the impression that it was some peculiar sort of
Australian bedroom. Wilson heard the voices and advanced
towards the loft in the form of a hollow square, or some
other military figure, and overheard remarks which turned
half his hair grey. He turned and fled to the police
station, muttering a prayer as he ran. At the station he
found the giant O’Driscoll, the genial Inspector Andrew of
today, and told him a dreadful tale. O’Driscoll asked him
if he would like them all hanged or merely admonished and
discharged. Wilson wanted them all arrested before they
set fire to his hay loft. O’Driscoll’s office was then in
Adelaide Street, next to the old Wesleyan church. He took
two policemen with him, and Wilson, in a cab, and the four
started for the scene of operations. The night was dark
and heavy rain was falling. O’Driscoll got a ladder, and
climbed up to the loft, followed by Wilson. Both stepped
inside, and O’Driscoll lighted a candle. The scene that
presented itself turned the balance of Wilson’s hair grey.
Lying on the hay were three very scantily dressed ladies,
and three gentlemen wearing nothing, all sound asleep. One
of the three “gentlemen” was an American black, whose dark
skin contrasted conspicuously with the snow white limbs of
his “lady,” who was said to be a splendid specimen of a
woman. The scene in which she figured was one that could
only be described in a language that no reader of “Truth”
could understand. And all this in a clergyman’s hay loft!
It was blasphemy, sacrilege, atheism, and – most
unbecoming!
The stern O’Driscoll was so shocked that he held on
to a rafter to keep himself from falling out of the loft.
Wilson clasped his hands and muttered, “Merciful God, what
sons and daughters of Bekal are these?” Then duty called,
and the warlike voice of the representative of
O’Driscoll’s warrior race, woke the three brides and
bridegrooms up in a hurry.
Seeing the colossal form of O’Driscoll standing
over them, they at first took him for Beelzebub, and gave
a yell that was heard at Sandgate! The ladies completed
their toilet in record time, and the sad procession of six
were marched down to the cells and locked up. They were
brought up next day, and, after a severe reprimand,
discharged. One of them was a humorist. He said they all
went to the clergyman to get married, and as it was a wet
night and rather late when they arrived, they did not like
to disturb him before morning! There was necessarily a
great future before that man, in fact he became in after
years a Brisbane alderman, and what giddier height could
any man attain?
The bride of the dark gentleman settled in Albert
Street, where she had a home for years, renowned for its
hospitality to paying guests! Finally she captivated a
well off gentleman from the bush, and he married her and
took her home, and she became the mother of some very fine
children, and was an exemplary wife. She had proved the
truth of the adage that virtue is its own reward!
To mention her descendants would be to heave a
bombshell into a circle of some of Brisbane’s most select
society, so we merely shed a tear and pass on to the next.
It may be as well to mention, however, that Wilson’s
yardman was responsible for the party in the hay loft.
Wilson always said a short prayer when he thought of the
horrors of that awful night.
A well known son of that dear old clergyman married
the widow of squatter Clapperton. She was originally a
Miss Kendall, a very accomplished, fine girl, who was
educated at the Brisbane Convent School.
Graham Lloyd Hart was the three year old son of his
well known father of that name, founder of the legal firm
of Roberts and Hart, merged into Hart, Mein and Flower,
then Hart and Flower, then Hart, Flower and Drury, and
finally Flower and Hart. Hart was one of the directors in
the troubled times of the Queensland National Bank. The
child died on April 10, 1874.
We omitted to mention that Irwin Maling, of the
last chapter, was the Captain Maling who was private
secretary to Lord Normanby. He was brother-in-law of
General English, of the 53rd Regiment, the
“Shropshire Dashers.” English married Maling’s sister.
“How bold the flight of
Passion’s wandering wing,
How soft the step of
Reason’s firmer trend,
How calm and sweet the
victories of life,
How terrorless the triumphs
of the grave.”
-Shelley
“ In death itself there can
be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates
sensation, but there are many roads to death, and some
of then justly formidable, even to the bravest; but so
various are the modes of going out of the world, that to
have been born may have been a more painful thing than
to die, and to live may be more troublesome than
either.”
-Colton’s “Lacon.”
“Oh, God! It is a fearful
thing
To see the human soul take
wing,
In any shape, in any mood,
I’ve seen it rushing forth
in blood,
I’ve seen it on the breaking
ocean,
Strive with a swollen
convulsive motion,
I’ve seen the sick and
ghastly bed
Of sin delirious with its
dread.”
-Byron.
Among the un-recorded dead is a half caste named
“Macinnon,” who died in 1869. He was the
son of an old pioneer “Paddy Macinnon,” who was out in
1847 with McPherson, on Mount Abundance station, which he
had taken up on Sir Thomas Mitchells’ description in 1846.
Paddy was stockman for Macpherson, and is described
as a wild character, who lived for years with the blacks.
When the blacks finally drove Macpherson off the station,
he gave Paddy all the stock that was left.
In years afterwards, Paddy made periodical trips to
Dalby or Drayton, with a small mob of fat cattle, and had
a wild spree while the proceeds lasted.
There was no Roma before 1862, in fact a sketch of
it in 1864 shows a primitive settlement of half a dozen
houses and the post office. Paddy had the usual platonic
affection with an aboriginal lady, whose name was
“Concern,” who bore him a son, the usual result of
platonic affections that are prolonged beyond a reasonable
limit, and when Paddy died at Forester’s public house on
the Condamine in 1861, the boy, whose native name was
“Wyreela,” passed into other hands, and finally reached
Brisbane, where he died in 1869, aged 21 years, the cause
of death being inflammation of the lungs. He is buried in
the lowest part of the Church of England ground at
Paddington.
Buried near him, in the same month, was an old
ex-convict named Tom Davis, who came out with the convict
ship, Eudora, in 1838. After the vessel left Liverpool,
someone confessed to committing the crime for which Davis
was sentenced, and a pardon for him came out on the next
ship. Davis worked on Captain Cadell’s steamer, the “Lady
Auguste,” the first vessel that ever ascended the Murray.
The Governor of South Australia, Sir Henry Young, was on
board that pioneer ship. Davis also worked, in 1846, for
the Tyson brothers, the afterwards well known Jimmy Tyson,
and his brother, on some country they took up at the
junction of the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee. Davis came to
Brisbane in 1858, and went up to the disastrous Canoona
gold rush, on the Fitzroy. He returned to Ben and was
engaged by Murray Prior for Maroon station, where he
remained for twelve months, and thence went to Toolburra,
until October 1867, when Nash discovered gold. Davis went
to Gympie, did well there for two years, prospected in the
Bopple scrub, got fever there, came to Brisbane, and died
in a friend’s home in Turbot Street.
He had a brother lost in the “Fiery Star,” burned
at sea, on Good Friday, 1865.
“A restless impulse urged
him to embark,
And meet lone death on the
drear ocean’s waste.”
Ella Lavinia, wife of Daniel Skyring, was the
ancestress of all the Skyrings of the present day. Daniel
owned all the land where All Hallows Convent stands, and
used it chiefly as a pineapple garden, where he grew some
of the best pines in the market. Likewise he owned, known
as “Skyring’s quarries,” to the present time. While
Skyring grew fine pineapples and grapes, his wife and two
daughters had charge of a drapery establishment, the
“Beehive” at the corner of Queen and Edward Streets, where
Hunter’s boot shop is today. Dan Skyring, jun., had a
dairy farm out at Kedron, and brought fresh milk to town.
It was pure milk, as there were no poisonous
“preservatives” in those days. Daniel junior and his
brother Zechariah, went afterwards to reside at Gympie.
Old Mrs. Skyring died on July 27, 1863, aged 59, and the coffin was exhumed on March 26, 1882, and removed to the Toowong cemetery. On the tombstone we are told –
“Weep not for me, prepare
to meet your God.”
Mrs. Skyring is now buried in the Toowong cemetery,
near Governor Blackall, and over her is a handsome
monument.
Her son, George, in after years, was owner of
Baffle Creek Station, where his first wife died. She was a
Miss Waldron of Fortitude Valley. George died at Gympie,
where he was at the time Inspector of Slaughter Houses.
Miss Waldron was a sister of Mrs. Steele, now widow
of the late chemist Steele. She survived Steele, and at
present resides at South Brisbane. Zechariah Skyring and
his wife died within a week or two at Gympie. Daniel, who
had the dairy at Kedron, married a Miss Payne, daughter of
Thomas Payne, a once well known and much respected farmer
at Oxley. He had four daughters, all handsome, fine
specimens of women. One married William Dart, now
orchardist on the Blackall, but at that time owner of
Dart’s sugar mill, where the St. Lucia Estate is, on the
Brisbane River. Another is the present Mrs. Reeves, of
Toowong, and the fourth became Mrs. Elferson, of Gympie,
now a resident of Gympie. Daniel Skyring is still alive,
and residing retired on the North Coast. The Skyrings were
one of the oldest Brisbane families.
George Dudley Webb, who died on September 11, 1870,
aged 70, was secretary and general manager of the A.U.S.N.
Company. He and W. J. Costin, the chemist, were two men
chosen by the shareholders of the Brisbane Permanent
Building Society, in 1863, to audit the books. Alfred
Slaughter was the manager of the company, and old Robert
Cribb was one of the principal shareholders. Cribb bossed
Slaughter and had a free and easy way of taking deeds away
to his own office, and some were not returned. This gave
the shareholders an idea that there was something wrong,
and hence the audit by Webb and Costin. No one doubted old
Bobbie Cribb’s honesty, but he had a loose style of doing
business, and the auditors found it necessary to enter a
protest. This made the old fellow very wild, and he
assailed the auditors in great style, but they all
survived.
One of Webb’s daughters, a girl named Alice, aged
19, died on November 14, 1864. His son, Ernest Webb, was a
well known man as Resident Secretary of the A.M.P.
Society. He married a daughter of L. A. Bernays. Ernest
was an enthusiast in boating, and was an active member of
the rowing club. It is quite certain that Webb’s early
death was attributable to chiefly to an unlucky
speculation in Mount Morgan shares. He was one of the
victims of Billy Pattison’s foolish bet of £10,000 that
shares would reach £20.
Webb bought heavily and found himself involved when
shares were falling. The prospect of failure broke his
heart in a few days after the receipt of the bad news.
His brother, Harry Webb, went in for pastoral
pursuits, on the Logan.
Daniel Petersen, who died on January 21, 1855, aged
46, was a
grocer and storekeeper, next McCabe’s wharf, South
Brisbane. The business was continued by Petersen and
Younger, the son and son-in-law. One of the sons was the
afterwards well known Seth Petersen, who distinguished
himself while in the position of Registrar in Brisbane,
and in after years left for the south. One of his brothers
was presiding at the recent Valley election.
William and Ellen Scarr buried their only child at
that time, on October 23, 1874. Scarr is now retired on
pension, and resides at “Alsatia” on Dornoch Terrace,
South Brisbane. He was father of Scarr, the footballer,
who died recently from blood poisoning. Scarr senior had a
brother prominent in racing, and as handicapper in New
South Wales. Another brother, Frank Scarr, was a surveyor
and land commissioner. A township was once surveyed on
Bowen Downs, near Muttaburra, and called “Scarrbury,” in
honor of Scarr, but the town never got beyond the name.
A year old child named Moreton Bradley Lytton
Hitchins died on February 25, 1876, his father being a
clerk in the Post Office in the days of Salisbury, R. T.
Scott, Crosby, and Lawry.
A young fellow named William Ker Atchison, died in
November 1868, aged only 27. He was a Customs agent, and a
general favourite, but consumption ended his career in the
morning of his days. In the words of Shelley he was
“A lovely youth, no mourning
maiden decked,
The lone couch of his
everlasting rest;
And virgins, as unknown he
passed, have pined,
And wasted for fond love of
his wild eyes.”
In the north west corner of the Church of England
portion, is an old timber getter, who was a cedar cutter
on the Maroochy River, at the time of a remarkable tragedy
in that locality. The timber getters were all in camp on
Sunday, and there was a wild unholy revel on over proof
rum. This began on Saturday, and continued over Sunday.
One man, a big, powerful fellow, took rather too much rum,
divesting himself of all his clothes, and started to chase
the wife of one of the other men. She ran into the hut,
got the husband’s gun, and ran to another hut, the rum
maddened man in pursuit. She met him at the corner of the
hut face to face and fired, the charge of No 2 shot
striking him in the stomach. In three minutes he was dead.
It was a dramatic and tragical scene!
At the same camp, some of the blacks who were
working for the cedar cutters were also given an excessive
share of rum, and three of them went to sleep on the beach
at low tide. The rum had paralysed them to such an extent
that even the rising tide failed to rouse them, so they
were all drowned, and their three dead bodies were found
close together on the beach next morning. The other blacks
took them away and probably ate them, as they would not
regard rum as a poison. In after years it was said that
beach was haunted, and there were men who declared they
saw the mad cedar getter racing round among the trees, and
the drowned blacks walking on the sand. Others said they
saw the ghost of Stevens, the botanist, who was murdered
by the blacks in 1866, at the “Dead Man’s Waterhole,” near
Mooloolah. The rum in those days was good, and men saw
nothing worse than ghosts. With the rum of today men see
nothing but devils, a specially ferocious class of devils
with iron teeth, arms like those of an octopus, and the
green and yellow eyes of a crocodile.
Gilbert Elliott Gore was a child buried on May 30,
1875. This child was evidently named from Gilbert Elliott,
the first Speaker in the first Queensland Parliament. He
was proposed by St. George R. Gore, seconded by
Macalister, and chosen unanimously.
The original Gores took up Yandilla and Tummaville
stations on the Downs in the early forties. One of these,
Robert Gore, and his wife, Mary and child were drowned in
the wreck of the steamer, Sovereign, outside the South
Passage, at Moreton Island, on the 11th of
March, 1847. The Gore best known in Brisbane was Ralph
Gore, who was for years Immigration Agent, and Visiting
Justice at St. Helena and Dunwich. He married a daughter
of E. I. C. Browne M.L.C., of the legal firm of Little and
Browne. One of Morehead’s jokes referred to this firm
which he called the “Snipe lawyers,” as “the snipe is
little and brown, with an absurdly long bill.” They had
done some work for Morehead and the bill made him gasp for
breath.
When Gore died, his widow resided for some time in their old home at New Farm. During a voyage to the old country with Captain Withers, of the Quetta, she and that giddy mariner, contracted a platonic friendship of the kind common among sea captains, and he deserted his wife to fly with his new found love, forgetting his wife as the false
“Theseus once in Dia forgot
his beautiful haired Ariadne.”
Old Browne, M.L.C., was a wealthy man, and chief
owner of the “Courier.” His share went to Mrs. Gore, who
is today chief owner of that journal. Of course, Captain
Withers was aware of Mrs. Gore’s financial position, but
captains are never influenced by considerations of wealth.
They invariably marry for pure love, and live the simple
life – when there is no chance of any other variety.
Ralph Gore inherited a title, and was Sir Ralph at
the time of his death. This title is now borne by his
eldest son, who is an officer in the army. There were two
other children who are said to be still alive, and the
infant “Gilbert Elliott” in the Paddington cemetery.
William Holbrook, who died on January 15, 1870,
aged 36, was a young man employed as jeweler by Flavelle
Brothers and Roberts, of that date, and the neat headstone
was erected “as a token of respect by the employees” of
that firm.
Harry Dobbin Shepperson was the two year old son
of Harry and Mary Shepperson, and died on September 11,
1870. There is also a son who lived only for one day.
This is the Harry Shepperson, a stationer, who has been
previously mentioned as the gay Lothario who fled with
the giddy actress, though some old colonists fiercely
affirm that Buxton was the faithless man who deserted
his wife to browse on fresh theatrical fields and
pastures new. However, but for these “Bygone”
reminiscences, the loves and hates of all parties
concerned would be as a tale that was told by some
unrecorded narrator in a long forgotten age.
They are gone,
And others come, so flows
the wave on wave,
Of what these mortals call
Eternity;
Deeming themselves the
breakers of the ocean,
While they are but the
bubbles, ignorant
That foam is their
formation.
Byron
So peaceful shall thou end
thy blissful days,
And steal thyself from life
by slow decays,
Unknown to pain in age
resign thy breath,
When late stern Neptune
points the shaft with death,
To the dark grave retiring
as to rest,
Thy people blessing, by thy
people blessed!
-Homer’s “Odyssey.”
“Tis a long, ‘tis a last,
‘tis a beautiful rest,
When all sorrow has passed
from the brow and the breast,
And the lone spirit truly
and wisely may crave,
The sleep that is dreamless,
the sleep of the grave.
-Eliza Cook
On July 1, 1873, a Scottish visitor, traveling for
his health, died in Brisbane. His name was John Howie, and
he died at the age of 50. The stone over his grave was
placed there by his nephew James Isles, whose mother was a
Miss Howie. James Isles came to Queensland in 1862, and in
1866 he and Tom Finney bought out the drapery business of
T. F. Merry in Fortitude Valley. They continued that
business there until 1870, when they removed to the cornet
of Queen and Edward Streets, where the original title of
the firm is retained by the widely known Finney, Isles and
Co., of today, now fronting Edward and Adelaide Streets,
and withdrawn from their old Queen Street corner.
James Isles was a true type of old Caledonia’s
sons, and the physical vigor of his race was transmitted
to his own five sons, all of whom were champion athletes,
whose performances are recorded in Perry and Carmichael’s
“Athletic Queensland.” The well known J. T. Isles, of
Isles, Love and Co., among other performances, won the 440
yards Footballers’ Handicap in 1888. In 1887 he won the
150 yards handicap and the 440 yards handicap.
Very sad was the untimely death of Willy Isles, one
of the brothers, at an early age, the cause being
peritonitis
..(text missing) ."Fisherman’s Island was a dreary
place, a patch of earth, a desert of mud, a sea of water.
The quantity of driftwood was surprising, and the
multitudes of centipedes truly alarming. At first we had
some quantity of green grass, but A. C. Gregory’s
exploring party landed and cut it all for their horses on
board ship. We had to pull several miles to the muddy
waterhole for every drop of brackish water we had. James
strained mine through all sorts of things, but it never
lost its muddy look and flavor. Influenza, fever, and ague
were bad amongst us, and were only indifferently combated
by quinine and strong brandy and water.”
The James mentioned by Grundy was a James Morton,
afterwards killed by the blacks at Manumbah station. In
1847 he had two mates killed beside him by the blacks, on
the Clarence. His own turn came afterwards. Grundy said
Morton had a mortal fear of blacks. His brother, Charley
Morton, was either a first or second mate on the
Boomerang, and he died suddenly one night at Mercer’s
Hotel at Kangaroo Point, and was buried at Paddington.
John Cook was a chemist in the Valley, the only
chemist there 55 years ago, and his business was
afterwards purchased by W. T. Costin, the present veteran
Valley chemist, the oldest now in Queensland. Cook, the
old time pill pounder, sleeps in the Paddington cemetery.
Perhaps his soul is proscribing a teaspoonful of Celestial
nectar, some ambrosial nepenthe, to angels with a “tired
feeling” in the Elysian fields. And we may be sure it is
“a tablespoon three times a day.”
John Pound, who died on July 14, 1875, aged 55, was
father of Jonathan Pound, whose son is the present
chairman of the Southport Shire Council. Jonathan is still
in robust health, and owns a lot of property on the shores
of the south end of Moreton Bay.
On August 8, 1868, a German named F. M. Raaaba, was buried, aged 57. In the year 1856, a German family of that name came to Brisbane in the ship Helena. One of the sons, a boy aged 13, named Charles, became, in after years, a prominent resident of Maryborough, where he finally settled in 1875, after years of teamster work to and from the stations on the Burnett. From team driving he went to hotel business, and kept the Royal Exchange Hotel, in Adelaide Street. In 1894, he became an alderman, and has been a good and useful citizen. Will some Maryborough man kindly write and say what became of him.
George Hall, who died on October 18, 1855, aged 31,
was a clerk in the firm of Christopher Newton Brothers of
Sydney. He came to Brisbane for the benefit of his health,
and added one more to the victims of consumption.
It was usual in those early days for consumptive
people to come north in the hope of recovering in the
climate of Moreton Bay, but they were usually in too
advanced a stage.
Among the old time shepherds buried at Paddington,
was Harry Brown, who was shepherding on Burrandowan
station, in 1855, when it was owned by Phillip Friell and
Gordon Sandeman, who bought it from the first owner, Henry
Stewart Russell, who took it up in 1843, the first station
on the Burnett. Several shepherds and hotel-keepers were
killed on Burrandowan, and Harry Brown was speared through
the side. Shepherding was a dangerous occupation for the
first twenty years on the Burnett and Mary. Brown finally
died at Brisbane in 1861, while in the service of the
first “Brisbane Club,” which had only started the previous
year, the first meeting to organize having been held in
the office of D. F. Roberts. The first ballot for member
was held on March 1, 1860, and the first club room was on
the premises of W. A. Brown, the sheriff, in Mary Street.
The first committee included Sheppard Smith, of the Bank
of New South Wales, E. S. Elsworth of the A. J. S. Bank,
and Nehemiah Bartley. They drafted the rules and engaged
the first servants, among whom was Harry Brown, who never
quite recovered from that Burrandowan spear wound.
Since Brown’s time, the modest pioneer club, in the
one room in Mary Street, has grown into the Queensland
Club, housed today in the palatial building facing the
Gardens and Parliament House.
A girl named Sarah Ann Pratten died in 1859, aged
23, the age – from 23 to 26 – fatal to so many young women
in the early days. Miss Pratten was an aunt of F. L.
Pratten, present Deputy
Registrar of Titles in Brisbane. Her father, the
granddad of the present Prattens, came to Brisbane in the
forties, and was farming at Cowper’s Plains, today
erroneously called “Cooper’s Plains,” though named after
Dr. Cowper, the first medical officer in the convict
settlement at Moreton Bay. Pratten senior died at the
Plains and was buried there. His son was one of the
pioneer surveyors of what is now Queensland, and did much
useful work on the Darling Downs, Maranoa, and elsewhere.
He married a sister of R. S. Warry, once a
prominent Brisbane merchant, and she became the mother of
six sons and three daughters. One of the girls married a
son of the late Rev. J. H. Hassall; one married Leslie
Tooth, grandson of W. B. Tooth, who was one of the
pioneers of Wide Bay, the present Maryborough district. He
was a brother of Atticus Tooth, who came from Kent in
1839, as a cousin of the famous brewing Tooths of Sydney.
He and W. B. Tooth took up Wide Bay stations from which
John Bales had been driven by the blacks. I n 1856,
Atticus Tooth held a station on the Mary River, including
the present site of Gympie, and had ten thousand sheep
there, but a wet season, extending over several months,
drove him elsewhere, and he married, in 1869, a daughter
of D. R. Emmerson, of Bowen, and became one of the first
squatters in the Port Denison district.
Four of G. L. Pratten’s sons are alive today, and
the three daughters still survive, two married and one
single. Harry Pratten is in the Bank of New South Wales,
at Rockhampton, George in the Railway Department, Paul in
the General Post Office, and F. L. Pratten is Deputy
Registrar of Titles. The well known Tom Pratten, late
secretary in the railway head office, died recently, and
Arthur was killed in Bundaberg by falling over a balcony
when walking in his sleep. The present Mrs. Pratten,
mother of these sons, was a sister of Dr. Hugh Bell’s
wife. Their brother, R. S. Warry, started business in
Queen Street about the year 1853, and in the year, 1862,
erected what was then the best building in Queensland, a
large brick store next the Royal Hotel afterwards the
first office of the Queensland National Bank. He had two
brothers, Tom and Charles, both chemists, one in Brisbane,
and one in Ipswich, and both died at an early age. Tom was
a practical joker of an unusual type, and a gruesome tale
describes the most remarkable of his performances. He
invited the principal citizens to a special dinner,
presumably in honor of his birthday, or his grandmother’s
death, or his best girl coming of age, or an imaginary
legacy left to him by his uncle in Spitzbergen. In the
centre of the table was a large, round dish under a cover.
“I think,” said this peculiar joker, “that we better start
on the principal dish,” and he raised the cover to reveal
the fresh head of an aboriginal, who had been hanged that
morning! It was garnished like a ham, with frilled pink
paper, and the thick mass of black hair had a dozen
rosebuds inserted here and there. The company first gasped
for breath, and then some of them fell over the backs of
their chairs. Others fell over the doorstep rushing
outside, and two fainted. A bombshell could not have
scattered that dinner party more effectually. It was Tom
Warry’s champion joke. He had induced the authorities to
give him the head for scientific purposes, and he
explained afterwards that this was in order to settle the
great physiological problem of how fright affects various
types of men! But Brisbane citizens were clean “off” Tom’s
dinner parties forevermore.
Warry senior, father of all the Warrys, died at the
age of 78, as the final result of a fall between a steamer
and the wharf. One of his daughters married a Dr. Barton,
and when he died, she married Dr. Hugh Bell. One of her
daughters, by Dr. Barton, is the wife of the Hon. Albert
Norton, M.L.C., and the other, who is still single,
resides with her sister.
One final anecdote of Tom Warry’s frivolity. He
got about a dozen boys into his shop one day and painted
all their faces in about twelve different colours, then
sent them home looking like the broken tail of a
rainbow. The sky blue, and the bright red, and the rich
bronze boys, are well known citizens of Brisbane today.
“One fond kiss and then we
sever,
One farewell, alas, for
ever!
Deep in heart wrong tears
I’ll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans
I’ll wage thee,
Me, -no cheerful twinkle
lights me,
Dark despair around benights
me.”
-Burns
“Thy day without a cloud
hath passed,
And thou wert lovely to the
last;
Extinguished, not decayed;
As stars that shoot along
the sky,
Shine brightest as they fall
from high.”
-Byron
“Lo! Where this silent
marble weeps,
A friend, a wife, a mother
sleeps;
A heart within whose sacred
cell
The peaceful virtues loved
to dwell.
-Gray
“So softly death succeeded
life in her,
She did but dream of Heaven,
and she was there,
No pains she suffered, nor
expired with guise,
Her soul was whispered out
with God’s still voice.”
-Dryden
An interesting historical character is James
Charles Burnett, who died on July 18, 1854, aged 39. He
was the oldest surviving son of William Burnett, of
“Burnettland,” on the Hunter River, and he entered the
service of the Survey Department in Sydney in 1834, when
only 15 years of age. In 1842 he was deemed capable of
conducting a general examination of the Great Dividing
Range, which he followed to the 30th parallel
and then came on to Brisbane. He was afterwards engaged on
surveys on the Clarence and Richmond, and returned to
Moreton Bay and did so much useful and excellent work that
he was held in the highest esteem by his department, and
by Governor Sir Charles Fitzroy, who requested that his
name be given to the Burnett River, and that was done.
Burnett had named the Fitzroy River in honor of Sir
Charles, who repaid the compliment by requesting that
Burnett’s name be given to the famous Burnett River, on
which Bundaberg and Gayndah stand today.
Burnett, like most men in those pioneer days, died
at an early age, and was buried in the Church of England
cemetery at Paddington, there being a large funeral at
which the Rev. Robert Creyke officiated.
Shortly after his death, his horses were sold by
auctioneer Bulgin, father of the late somewhat eccentric
“Lord Bulgin,” well known to Brisbaneites. The sale will
show the value of horses at that time. A bay colt sold for
£14, a bay horse for £17, a grey colt for £36, a brown
draught mare for £43, and grey draught for £35, and a
solitary mule for £11.
There was much talk about a tablet to his memory,
but so far we have not seen it, unless it is among the
fallen and broken stones. The erection of a tablet or
small monument to the memory of Burnett would come
gracefully from a subscription among the people on the
Burnett River.
He was one of the men who made Queensland history
in the old, wild, rough, days, when life was very
different from that of the present.
Arthur Henry Garbutt, of Stockton-on-Tees, and Jane
his wife, recall an old time Garbutt family who lived at
Coorpooroo, where Thomas C. Garbutt owned a large area of
land. He was the man who named Coorpooroo, a word which is
sadly mispronounced, being always called “Coorparoo,”
whereas “Coorpooroo Jaggin” was the name of the South
Brisbane tribe of aboriginals, who pronounced the word
Coor-poo-roo with accent on the second syllable.
Garbutt’s widow married a Dr. Temple, who practiced
in Brisbane and died here. After old Garbutt’s death, his
horse and buggy were bought by P. R. Gardon, the genial
old Caledonian, ex-Inspector of Stock. The horse was a
dark chestnut, afterwards owned by Robert Gray, the once
well known Under Colonial Secretary, and finally Railway
Commissioner, whose first wife was a daughter of Dr.
Dorsey, of Ipswich, and sister of the wife of the late Sir
Joshua Peter Bell. One of Garbutt’s sons, and brother of
the one who died at Cleveland, was squatting for a time on
the Logan. This was the F. O. Garbutt, who in after years
held a station property in the Herberton district, where
he finally kept a hotel at the Coolgarra Hot Springs. He
was a big, powerful, specimen of a man. About 25 years
ago, he and the present writer entered what is now the
York Hotel. Garbutt had a misunderstanding with some
aggressive person who had several friends present and
while he was engaged in a go-as-you-please combat with the
man in front, he was assailed by two of the man’s friends
in the rear. This made it necessary for us to take prompt
action, and Garbutt and “we” cleared that private bar in
one of the shortest times on record. One victim wrote to
the “Telegraph,” to ask whether a Queensland magistrate
who had broken two of his ribs in a bar room was a
suitable man to hold a Commission of the Peace? No name
was mentioned, but he referred to “we,” and there was no
more about the little episode.
When Garbutt left the Logan to go north, he was
accompanied by Robertson, an old Logan squatter, who
afterwards took up Wyroona station on the Wild River, a
tributary of the Mitchell. Garbutt is now hotel keeper at
Mount Molloy.
Paulus Bront was a German seaman on board the
steamer Shamrock, an old time steamer that ran to Sydney
from Brisbane in the days when the small steamers Hawk,
Swallow, and Bremer, built by Taylor Winship, ran from
Brisbane to Ipswich. The first was the Experiment, built
by James Canning Pearce.
Winship, in those days, had a fine garden and
orangery, from where the present Palace Hotel is along the
river west to the baths and the North Quay Ferry at South
Brisbane. Paulus Bront, on June 26, 1854, was walking
ashore from the steamer on a plank, fell off, and was
drowned, as scores of men have been since then to the
present time, at the Brisbane wharves.
The Swallow, of Winship, and the Experiment, of
Pearce, sank at the wharves in the river, the Swallow
drowning her steward as previously mentioned.
In a Doncaster cemetery is the following quaint
epitaph on two brothers:
“Here lyeth two brothers by
misfortune surrounded,
One died of his wounds and
the other was drowned.”
Charles Thomas Clay and his wife Elizabeth, buried
a five years’ old child on July 31, 1872. Clay was a clerk
in the Lands Office in Brisbane, but he got an appointment
in the Agent General’s Office in London and left
Queensland.
The second daughter of Montague Stanley, R.S.A.,
died on June 24, 1864, aged 22. Stanley, as the R.S.A.,
indicates, was a member of the Royal Society of Artists,
and practised his profession in Edinburgh. He was,
perhaps, the first professional artist whose family came
to Brisbane, and two of his sons became well known men in
Queensland. One was F. D. G. Stanley, the Government
Architect, who designed a great number of our public
buildings, including Parliament House and the Supreme
Court, and the other was for many years Engineer for
Railways, connected with the department from the time the
first section of a Queensland railway was made in 1864,
from Ipswich to the Little Liverpool Range, a distance of
21 miles, by Peto, Brassey and Betts, whose tender was for
£86,900, or £4,000 a mile. The first Victorian railway
cost £38,000 per mile, South Australia £28,000, and New
South Wales £40,000.
The Queensland line from Ipswich to Dalby, crossing
the Liverpool and main ranges, cost £10,600.
Engineer Stanley, son of artist Stanley, was a
capable man, whose integrity was never questioned. The
first Queensland railways were by far the cheapest and
most substantial of all the first Australian tracks, and
all constructed since under Stanley or Ballard have held a
deservedly high reputation.
Montague Stanley, the artist, never came to
Queensland! He died at Rothsay, in Scotland, but his sons
came to Queensland, and the mother and the rest of the
family followed. H. C. Stanley, the engineer, has four
sons and four daughters one of whom, Pearlie Stanley,
married Victor Drury, the solicitor, now practicing at
Dalby.
Architect F. D. G. Stanley had three sons and four
daughters. His son, M. T. Stanley married Mary McIlwraith,
daughter of Sir Thomas, and her sister Jessie married a
Mr. Gostling, now residing at Sherwood. M. T. Stanley is
an architect, his brother Ronald is in the Commissioner
for Railways Office. One of H. C. Stanley’s sons, also H.
C., is now in Townsville, and another son, Talbot, is in
charge of the Gayndah extension. A son of F. D. G.
Stanley, who died some years ago, is an Inspector in the
Works Office. H. C. Stanley, senior, was recently on a
visit to Brisbane, which he left last Tuesday. He has an
office in Sydney and a branch in Brisbane.
A man named George Perrin, said to be a descendant
of that Perrin who fought the heavy weight, bare handed
battle with Johnson, back in the eighteenth century, is
buried in the Church of England cemetery. Perrin was one
of the stockmen on Burrandowan, when that station was held
by Philip Friell, and Gordon Sandeman, who bought it from
Stuart Russell, author of the “Genesis of Queensland.”
Friell was a man with a remarkable history, which
would make interesting reading, but would require at least
a chapter for
itself. It is enough here to say that he died of heart
disease on board the steamer Argo, off Cape Horn, on
September 17, 1853, aged 48. He was a son of Captain
Friell, who was killed in India, while a captain in the
Duke of Wellington’s Own Regiment. Friell’s life was saved
on Burrandowan by George Perrin. Friell was asleep under a
tree, holding the reins of his bridle, and Perrin was
lying face downwards about 20 yards away with his gun
beside him. Hearing a slight noise, he raised his head in
time to see a tall black close to Friell, and just poising
a brigalow hand spear to drive through him. Perrin acted
promptly, and the black fell dead with his head within
three yards of Friell, who awoke with great celerity.
Perrin was one of the typical bushmen at the dinner
given to the Duke of Edinburgh, in Brisbane, in 1868. The
ball to the Duke was given in Christopher Newton and Co.’s
store, in Eagle Street. At the dinner the Duke proposed
the toast of “The Ladies.” Perrin, just for fun, dined as
he would have dined in a shepherd’s hut. He cut his bread
in his hand, and used his knife as a fork, drank his tea
out of the saucer, with a noise like a cow drinking the
last water out of a puddle, and asked a horrified swell
opposite to “Chuck us over the mustard mate!”
Another joker, one of the Coomera River Brinsteads,
saw the humour of the situation, and posed as the wild
timbergetter.
He and Perrin caused a lot of amusement, and even
the Duke had to smile. Perrin died in 1869, and was buried
during heavy rain. Even the grave was half filled with
water running down from the side of the ridge. Some grimly
humorous bushman remarked “If some rum were mixed with
that water it would agree better with old George!”
Perrin had married an immigrant girl, a most
cantankerous person, who gave him an awful time, but one
day she was bitten by a black snake and died within an
hour. George afterwards said that the snake died first! In
a Devonshire cemetery is the following epitaph-
“Margery, wife of Gideon
Bligh,
Underneath this stone doth
lie,
Nought was she e’er known to
do,
That her husband told her
to.”
That would have suited Mrs. Perrin’s gravestone,
also, we grieve to say, a lot of other ladies’ monuments.
Henry George Morris, who died in1865, was a son of
the wife of Judge Lutwyche, by her first husband, whose
name was Morris. Harry was a young man of only 25 when he
died from the effects of some gastric trouble, contracted
when on a visit to Kedron Brook. A fall over a stump
aggravated the trouble, in fact was supposed to be the
fatal agent, and he died on the following day. His sister,
Miss Morris, step-daughter of Judge Lutwyche, is now the
wife of A. G. Vaughan, the well known Government Printer.
Judge Lutwyche after whom the Brisbane suburb was
named, invariably treated Miss Morris with all the
consideration he could have given his own daughter and
recognised her as such in his will.
Paul Lyons Burke, who died on August 26, 1868, aged
35, was secretary of the Brisbane Hospital and a prominent
member of the Masonic body, who gave him a Masonic
funeral.
In the Paddington cemetery is an old pioneer, who
came out in the early days on a free passage, and went
to the “Government boarding house” at Port Macquarie in
the time when old Colonel Gray was boss of that
reformatory, the same Colonel who was father of Robert
Gray, who died as Queensland Commissioner for Railways,
and who, as Under Secretary in the Home Office, is still
kindly remembered by the old officers of that
department. We shall call the free passage pioneer John
Brown. He takes us back to the days when old Panton
built George Thorn’s house at Ipswich, and kept a store
there; when William Hendren returned as member for
Bulimba, in 1878, had a draper’s shop opposite where
Cribb and Foote are today, and William Vowles had the
Horse and Jockey Hotel, kept in after years by Thompson.
Vowles was grandfather of Solicitor Vowles, who
contested Dalby at the last election with Joey Bell, and
was for many years an alderman of Ipswich. He was a
Devonshire man, who annually imported a cask of cider,
and invited his friends to “come and join.” Present
writer drank that cider for three years. John Brown was
groom at Vowles’ Hotel, and Vowles sent him to Brisbane
on horseback on a special message. At the One Mile
Swamp, now called Woolloongabba, Brown’s horse threw him
against a tree, and killed him, and he was buried at
Paddington.
Sweet is true love though
given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is Death who puts
an end to pain:
I know not which is sweeter,
no, not I
Love, art thou sweet! Than
bitter death must be;
Love, thou art bitter; sweet
be death to me.
O Love, if death be sweeter,
let me die.
Sweet love, that seems not
made to fade away,
Sweet death that seems to
make us loveless clay.
I know not which is sweeter,
no not I.
I fain would follow love, if
that could be;
I needs must follow death,
who calls for me;
Call and I follow, I follow!
Let me die.
-“Elaine’s Song” –
Tennyson
A young man named Robert Mauley died on February
14, 1855, aged 23. This rather rare name was once famous
among the warriors of a past age. In Scott’s “Lord of the
Isles,” is the following passage, giving some of the
English knights who fought under Edward at Bannockburn.
“Ross, Montague, and Mauley
came,
And Courtney’s pride and
Percy’s fame;
Names known too well in
Scotland’s war
At Falkirk, Methven and
Dunbar,
Blazed broader yet in after
years
At Cressy red and fell
Poitiers.”
It may be that the youth in the Paddington cemetery had some of the blood of those old warrior ancestors.
A man named George Arthur Smith died on March 24,
1868. Smith came to Victoria in 1861, in a ship called the
Donald Mackay, which on the same trip brought out the late
Bishop Quinn, and Dr. Cani, who afterwards became Bishop
of Central Queensland. Also the well known surveyor P O
'Kelly, of Maryborough, a fine old Irish gentleman, a boy
of the olden time, who arrived there on January 1, 1863,
the year in which no rain fell for ten months, followed by
a wet season of four months. George Smith was a ganger on
the railway, when the tunnel was being cut through the
Little Liverpool Range, and afterwards a sub-contractor
under John Gibbons, a contractor who gave his name to
“Gibbon’s camp,” known as such for many years on the
Toowoomba railway line.
Gibbons was once partner with Randall in railway
and building contracts in New South Wales and the well
known “Randall’s Terrace” of nine houses in Newtown, in
Sydney, bears Randall’s name as the builder and first
owner. House no 9 had the credit of being haunted.
Smith was injured in a premature blast on the
railway, and was brought to the Brisbane hospital, where
he died, aged 47. John Gibbons had a stone erected over
his grave, but it is amongst those that are smashed.
Gibbon’s widow in after years married Detective Sergeant
McGlone, who came from Sydney to Queensland, and arrested
Frank Gardiner, the bushranger, at Apia Creek, on the road
to Clermont where he was living under the name of
Christie, and had a small store and butcher’s shop.
An old time honored Queensland pioneer family are
recalled by the graves of John Edmund and William
Alexander, two children of John and Margaret Hardgrave.
The first was the third son, who died on October 30, 1860,
aged a year and a half, and the other died 11 days
afterwards at the age of five and a half. He was the first
son. The late John Hardgrave was born in Louth, and
educated in Dublin. His wife, who survives him, was a Miss
Blair, a very handsome woman, who was born at Ballymeena,
in Ireland, within 50 yards of the house in which General
White was born, and after the death of her parents came to
Queensland with her uncle Reed (afterwards engineer of the
steamer Hawk), in 1849, and was married six months
afterwards to John Hardgrave. The young couple at first
resided in one of three brick cottages built up in the
convict days as residences for the officials, and situated
where Ned Sheridan’s shop is today, near the Longreach
Hotel, where the convict workshop and lumber yard stood in
those old wild days. The soldier’s barracks were on the
corner now
occupied by the Geological Museum. One of the brick
cottages was afterwards fixed up as the first Church of
England in what is now Queensland. Mrs. Hardgrave saw that
church opening by the Bishop of Newcastle, she attended
there for fifty years and then saw it pulled down. How
many people go to church for 50 years?
She had five sons and three daughters, including
the two boys who died 47 years ago, and one daughter, Mrs.
Campbell, who died recently. John Hardgrave, who died last
year, was one of Brisbane’s best known men, and one of the
most respected. At death he was chairman of the Board of
Waterworks, a position he held for many years.
Among the graves is a son of the Rev. Thomas Jones,
a schoolboy, who was a great favourite. On the day of the
funeral the scholars of St. John’s school would not allow
the coffin to be placed on the hearse. They formed relay
parties and carried it all the way to the cemetery.
There too, is the son of John Scott, who was once
Chairman of Committees, and lived for many years in the
house at Milton, close to the railway cutting on the north
side of the station.
Near him, in the old house on the hill, in what was
“Walsh’s Paddock”, lived the redoubtable Henry Walsh,
father of the beauteous “Coojee,” and once Speaker of the
House. Beyond Scott, at Auchenflower, lived Sir Thomas
McIlwraith, and within 50 yards of the brewery was “Papa”
Pinnock, P.M. When the famous “Steel Rail” discussion was
raging, a railway guard was promptly sacked for calling to
the driver to call at “Steel Rails!”
Ann Eliza Young, a girl of 16, died in 1874. Her
father was a Chinese settler who was once a clerk in the
old firm of J. and G. Harris, and afterwards ferryman
between North and South Brisbane from the present Queen’s
Wharf at the foot of Russell Street. He married a woman of
good family, her brother having an interest in the firm of
R. Towns and Co. Young was a cook on her father’s station.
One of Young’s sons, Ernest, was for a time teacher
in the South Brisbane school, and another kept a fish shop
for some time in Melbourne Street, near Gray Street. A
daughter, Katie Young, a good looking girl, was for years
with a firm of storekeepers in Boundary Street, then
married a son of Benjamin Babbidge, once Mayor of
Brisbane, had two children, and died of typhoid fever. Old
Young and his wife still reside in South Brisbane.
Jane Orr, who died on March 15, 1863, aged 58, was
wife of a Constable Orr of that period, and mother of
three daughters and a son. The daughter Maggie became the
wife of Peter Phillips, the present day tailor, and her
sister Jane, who remained single, still resides in
Boundary Street, near Vulture Street. Her sister Phoebe
and the brother died long ago. Constable Orr on one
occasion was escorting some prisoners to Sydney. The
steamers in those days called at Newcastle, and while
there it appears that Orr’s vigilance was relaxed long
enough to allow the prisoners to escape, and as a result
of that he left the police force.
Very sad was the drowning of a handsome young
fellow who was a nephew of Dr. Simpson, who had charge of
the Government stock at Redbank. The nephew was an only
son of Dr. Simpson’s sister, who was a widow in the old
country. The doctor sent for this nephew to come out and
stay with him, intending to make him a present of
“Wolston” of which Dr. Simpson was the first owner. The
nephew, who was only 27 years of age, was crossing the
river from Wolston to the coal pits, the boat capsized,
and he was drowned. This was a cruel blow to Dr. Simpson,
who soon afterwards sold Wolston to the late Matthew
Goggs, and went to England.
A sister of Goggs married Captain Coley, who was
once Sergeant-at-Arms, and died by his own hand in the
small cottage still standing in George Street, near Harris
Terrace. One of his daughters was married to C. B. Dutton,
once Minister for Lands.
James Fleming, who died on March 7, 1872, aged 55,
is said to have been the squatter who once held Burenda
station, on the Warrego.
Jane Campbell, who died on May 22, 1866, aged 29,
was the wife of Constable Alexander Campbell, who at the
time was stationed with a detachment of Native Police at
Humpybong. Governor Bowen was there on a visit on the day
Mrs. Campbell died.
Rosina Cox, who died on April 17, 1873, aged 29,
was the youngest daughter of Sarah and William Cox. Cox
was a warder in the gaol, and died within the last two
years.
Joseph William Saville, who died on March 5, 1869,
aged 36, was a groom employed in Duncan McLennan’s livery
stables, and he was thrown from his horse and killed in
George Street.
Richard H. Watson, who died on May 5, 1868, aged
61, was the builder of the Commercial Hotel, in Edward
Street, and kept a boarding house near there. One of his
sons was afterwards the well-known Watson, the plumber,
who became one of the mayors of Brisbane.
Thomas Palmer, who died on July 12, 1867, aged 60,
was one of the two brothers who started a ginger beer and
cordial factory beside the present police court.
From the Palmers the business passed into the hands
of one who was then in their service, the well-known
Marchant of the present day.
Isabella Thomasena Deacon Ferguson was a child of a
year and 10 months, and died on September 18, 1865, the
mother being a sister of John Petrie, and aunt of the
present Toombul Petrie. She was the wife of the late
Inspector of Works, Ferguson, one of the biggest men in
Queensland, and with a heart to match. Among his numerous
works he superintended the erection of the lighthouse on
Sandy Cape in 1872, when the blacks carried all the
material and rations from the beach to the top of the sand
hill, 315 feet in height, exactly the same height as the
hill on which the Double Island lighthouse stands. Bob was
a giant with a giant’s strength. One night in Mrs.
McGregor’s Hotel in Rockhampton, the same grand old
Highland woman who afterwards kept the Great Northern
Hotel in Cooktown, an aggressive Hibernian gentleman,
named Barry, whose brother married Miss McGregor, made
himself unpleasant, and finally sparred up to Ferguson, as
a bantam rooster might spar at a cassowary. Bob rose,
quietly grabbed Barry by the neck of the coat and the
northwest cape of his pants, and heaved him head first,
not at the door, but against a thin partition. Barry went
through this partition, took half of it with him, and
disappeared! Then Ferguson sat down and ordered drinks for
the company as if nothing had happened.
A man named Harry Burrows died on March 9, 1862,
aged 45. He was working for Crown Lands Commissioner and
Surveyor J. C. Bidwell, when that official was running a
marked tree line from Maryborough to Brisbane. That line
went through the present site of Gympie, and it is certain
that Bidwell found gold there 15 years before any was
found by Nash. That was clearly proved in after years by
G. W. Dart, who was one of Bidwell’s party, and who wrote
an account of the gold find to one of the Maryborough
papers. Dart saw the gold, and said Bidwell showed it to
many of his friends. Bidwell never finished his track, as
severe privations in the scrubs in wet weather, with poor
food, laid the foundations of an illness that killed him,
and he died and was buried at the mouth of Tinana Creek,
where can be seen today, the huge mango trees which
Bidwell planted, the first ever grown on Queensland soil.
He was the man who sent specimens of the bunya
trees to Kew Gardens, and today that tree bears Bidwell’s
name, “Araucaria Bidwelli,” though the honor should have
gone to old Andrew Petrie, who was certainly the first
discoverer, in fact the bunya for a time was actually
called “Pinus Petriana.” Harry Burrows was out with
Bidwell in the worst part of his trip, and had one or two
narrow escapes from the blacks He afterwards worked for
Atticus Tooth, and also for J. D. Mactaggart, an old Wide
Bay pioneer who died at Kilkivan, on January 16, 1871, an
uncle of the well known stock and station Mactaggart
brothers of Brisbane today. Burrows was away south in
1854, on the Hunter River, and in a letter written by him
in 1861, to an old Brisbane resident, he said he was in
Newcastle when an aboriginal named Harry Brown was burned
to death while intoxicated. This was the “Brown” who was
one of the two blacks with Leichhardt in his second
expedition of 1847, when no one ever returned.
An old resident says that in the cemetery is a man
named George Smith, who died in 1863. He tells us that
this man was once tried for his life on a charge of
murder, somewhere on the Downs. Evidently he means a
George Smith, who was one of two men, the other being John
Morris, tried in 1854, for the murder of James Tucker, on
Gowrie Station. Both men were acquitted, as the evidence
showed Tucker’s death to be the result of a drunken row.
Two doctors were witnesses, Dr. Buchanan and Dr. Labatt,
and they gave two totally different versions. One swore he
saw no wounds to Tucker’s head, and the other swore he was
dreadfully knocked about! There being nobody to decide
when doctors disagree, the evidence went for nothing.
Morris had a brother who was killed at Oxley, on
the day Sir Charles Fitzroy, the Governor of New South
Wales, in which Queensland was then included, was on his
way to Ipswich, accompanied by Captain Wickham, the
Brisbane P.M., whose name is borne by Wickham Terrace, the
private secretary, Captain Gennys, and police escort. They
had lunch with Dr. Simpson, at Woogaroo, and were met by a
big escort from Ipswich, where the party had supper at
Colonel Gray’s house, and there was a swell ball the next
day, and an address was read by R. J. Smith, who was then
M.L.C. in the Sydney Council, representing Wide Bay,
Burnett, and the Maranoa. Picture a man representing those
three electorates today!
Morris was riding after horses, about a mile beyond
the Rocky Water Holes at the spot where old Billy Coote
had his mulberry farm in 1876, and his horse ran him
against a tree and killed him, about the time the Governor
was passing. His body was brought to Brisbane in a two
horse dray, and buried at Paddington.
November 1, 2002
Courier Mail, Brisbane: The ground beneat the old Lang Park is giving up its secrets of early life in Brisbane, writes Craig Johnstone.
She had bright red hair, was tall and well-built. At some stage in her short life, she had badly broken her left leg. Most likely her family had plenty of money. No one yet knows how or when she died, although it was at least 127 years ago, but where she was buried is no mystery at all.
The woman with the red hair was one of about 5000 buried at the site of Queensland's largest public works project- the $280 million Suncorp Stadium.
Her fully preserved skeleton and coffin (complete with some of her hair and scented wood shaving) have been exhumed by a team of University of Queensland archeologists who worked at the site between August 2001 and May 2002.
Her remains were among 397 the team excavated and removed from the stadium site, used as a burial ground between 1843 and 1875. It was Brisbane's first major cemetery after free settlement.
Convicts who died in Brisbane's earliest days as a penal colony were buried near where the William Jolly Bridge now stands.
The archeologists, working for the Public Works Department and operating under rules set by the Environmental Protection Agency, have dug up priceless details of early Brisbane.
Along with remains of the dead, belt buckles, coffin handles and religious medals, all more than a century old, were found. But it is the human remains they found and took from the site that are bound to generate the most interest.
The exhumations involved remains from the Anglican, Catholic, and Presbyterian sections of the cemetery, as well as 16 sets of remains from an Aboriginal cemetery. More than half the coffins the team discovered were less than 150 cm long, suggesting that most of those buried in the cemetery were children.
The team recently submitted the first of a series of reports to the Government, detailing the results of the salvage and how they went about their excavations in a place that most people now regard as a sporting venue.
The painstaking work of analyzing what they found is still going on in University laboratories. By February, 2003, the team should have compiled a report detailing discoveries about the remains.
This salvage has attracted much less controversy than the excavation of graves that occurred in 1990 at the time of the Hale Street redevelopment. The row over moving the remains of the dead grew so heated back then that an Anglican priest accused then Lord Mayor Sallyanne Atkinson of grave-robbing.
This time, however, the Beattie Government did everything it could to avoid being accused of desecration.
In August last year, an ecumenical service was held in the stadium's western stand to recognise the site's former use as a cemetery. Only those graves that would be damaged by the stadium redevelopment were salvaged by the archeologists.
That is, where excavations for the redevelopment would cut below the level of the burials, those graves were salvaged. But the remains of thousands will stay where they were interred.
How the team undertook their work is as fascinating as what they found.
First, they needed to excavate and remove the fill that had been dumped in the area since it ceased being used as a cemetery in 1914. That unearthed "grave stains," or patches where the trained eye can tell a coffin had been buried.
"Once a grave site had been identified, a 20 tonne excavator was used to scrape the surface away, centimetre by centimetre with a batter bucket, until wood or bone was detected," the archeologists report said.
"As the salvage was of a cemetery area, it was considered inappropriate to open large areas of the sit, therefore the heavy machinery was used to target the grave sites."
Talks are going on between the university and the Brisbane City Council as to where to re-inter the remains. It is likely they will end up at Toowong Cemetery.
All the material from the Aboriginal cemetery was moved to a secret sacred storage area at the University's anthropology museum. The Aboriginal remains are not being examined.
They will stay in the museum until negotiations between the Council and representatives of the Turrbal people come up with a suitable location for their re-interment.
The team was lead by Dr. Jon Prangnell, of the University's archeological services unit. Prangnell said DNA tests were now being carried out to discover what diseases those buried at the site might have suffered.
Tests will screen for up to 2000 diseases, including influenza, smallpox, tuberculosis, even leprosy.
The team also is performing a population study to try to differentiate the remains into ethnic backgrounds. What the team already has discovered is fascinating enough.
"People weren't buried with much at all," Prangnell said. "With the Catholics, we found a few crucifixes, rosary beads and medallions. But I don't think we found one wedding ring."
As he says in his report, "All other graves were devoid of personal items (except a ceramic plate in the Presbyterian cemetery)."
"This is somewhat surprising. There is no archeological evidence to suggest that once coffins were placed in the ground they were dug up at any later time.
"Either people did not intend to be buried with their possessions or their possessions did not make it into the ground with them."
One other interesting discovery was that none of the graves was the accepted six feet deep.
The gravediggers went only 1 metre down before striking hard bedrock, and many of the coffins were just below the surface.
The team found that many of the coffins were pressed flat, with the lid resting on the base- probably the result of the weight of the fill dumped in the area when it ceased to be used as a cemetery.
Of the woman whose remains were intact, Prangnell said: "My guess is she was a big, red-headed Catholic woman, but probably of some wealth."
The break in her left leg meant that it was about 5 cm shorter than her right.
But the archeologists have found no sign of grinding in the pelvic area, suggesting that she died soon after her femur bone had healed.
Her body lay under what is now the stadium's playing surface, just near the north-east corner of the field.
The slope from Petrie Terrace down to the Stadium originally ended at a swamp, near where Castlemaine Street now runs. Prangnell speculates that water flowing down the slope to the swamp helped preserve the woman's remains.
And her identity?
"Other than DNA screening all of Brisbane, we won't know her relatives," he said.
The Queensland State Archives holds some records of the old cemetery, but these are mostly related to the bodies exhumed in 1913 and re-interred at Toowong Cemetery.
Finding out who she was is going to take some prolific detective work.