Having been for some years a reviewer I know the
possible humiliations awaiting the man who sends out anything
by way of a book; but here are my “Memories” with all their
imperfections admitted in advance. The genesis of this volume
was in a proposal by the Editor of the “Courier”, Mr.
Sanderson Taylor, backed by the Associate Editor, Mr. Firmin
McKinnon, that I should contribute a series of articles in the
form of reminiscences.
That loosened the floodgates, and the flow lasted for
two years. Truthfully, I may say that the “Memories” are
reprinted in response to many requests. Since the beginning of
the series many changes have occurred. Some of the men and
women mentioned have gone on the long journey; others have
changed their abiding places, and there have been changes in
the conditions of people, but in the main I give the material
as originally printed.
The book is not intended to be historical, but may have
historical value. In no sense is it to be taken as covering
the period 1877 – 1926. It is just a series of remembrances,
impressions – personal and general, with opinions, my own
opinions. The articles appeared under my name and with a
characteristic spirit of tolerance the “Courier” allowed me to
fulminate or praise regardless of its own particular policy.
The Townsville “Herald” before my day at the end of
1877 had editors of note, men who left their mark on the
history of the North, and one at least who has done much
pioneering in the journalism, agriculture, and military life
of Queensland. Major A. J. Boyd was a predecessor. He was a
fine scholar, and not only a classicist, but a master of
French, Italian and German. In much later years I heard him
speak to an audience of Italians at a luncheon in the Brisbane
Botanic Gardens that he lifted them to their feet, and to
enthusiastic vivas. He spoke of Dante, and in the tongue in
which Dante gave the world the great expressions of his
genius. Major Boyd was of the days of the “Cleveland Bay
Express,” and he left a standard of journalism in the north
which made things rather strenuous for his successors.
Later he was on the staff of the “Queenslander”, ran
big schools at Milton and Nundah on public school lines, and,
in turn, was head master of Toowoomba Grammar School,
commanded the Garrison Artillery of Queensland, and edited the
“Agricultural Journal.”
Then there were Sigerson and Conroy. I took over from
Conroy, and well remember the opening lines of his last leader
in the “Herald.”
They ran: “To use a colloquial though by no means
elegant expression, we are literally ‘stumped’ for news.”
My journey from Sydney to Townsville was by the old
Victoria, under Captain Thomas Lake, and shipmates included
Victor Sellheim, NOW Major-General Sellheim, C.B., C.M.G.,
Adjutant-General of the Commonwealth Forces, and one of the
most gallant and honest gentlemen that Australia has produced.
Another was a chubby chap with yet the fat legs of
babyhood. We know him now as Mr. E. Lissner, a well-known
Brisbane business
man, and a member of the Stock Exchange.
Sellheim was aged 11, and I was 21, and Lissner
probably about 6. The first named was going to Maytown to
spend Christmas with his father, Mr. P. F. Sellheim, then
police magistrate and warden on the Palmer, and later Under
Secretary for Mines in Brisbane.
Lissner was going to Charters Towers, under maternal
protection, to the home of his father, Mr. Isidore Lissner,
who later was Minister for Mines for Queensland.
Sellheim not long ago told me – our friendship has been
long and undimmed through all these years – that he remembered
standing with me one night watching the phosphorescent glow in
the water that broke from the sides of the old Victoria while
I explained the natural history of the starry streams.
The Townsville “Herald” was owned and run by Mr. James
McManus, a practical printer, and a shrewd man of business,
but it was rather a shock to hear him spoken of as “Jimmy”
McManus. To the disrespectful I spoke of Mr. McManus, and make
no mistake about the “mister.”
The “Herald” was almost entirely a local paper – there
was economy in the matters of telegrams, and only occasional
letters from Charters Towers, and flickers from the dying
light of the Palmer.
The Hodgkinson was flourishing, and we had on the day I
landed news of the opening of the new port, which later became
Port Douglas, named in compliment to the Premier of the day,
the Hon. John Douglas, who long since has gone to his rest,
but leaving hostages to fortune in his distinguished sons, who
are an honour to his name. One is Mr. Hugh Douglas (Elliott,
Donaldson, and Douglas), formerly M.L.A. for Cook, and who
held Ministerial rank in the State; Mr. E. A. Douglas,
barrister; another, Mr. Justice Douglas, of the Northern
Supreme Court; and another was Lieutenant. H. M. Douglas, one
of the Queenslanders to give his life for his country in the
Great War.
On the “Herald” learning something about printing, was
a tall, lean lad, Jack Mehan who later became one of the
originators and owners of the Townsville “Bulletin,” which was
built up from the “Herald,” that paper becoming a big weekly.
Later came the amalgamation of the “Northern Miner” and
the “North Queensland Register,” under Mr. Dave Green, and the
“Miner” and the “herald” passed into the shades. These
amalgamations were long before my time.
I always associate Jack Mehan with another very dear
old friend, John N. Parkes, who has filled practically every
high position in the life of Townsville, having been for
sixteen years President of the Chamber of Commerce, and the
last fourteen years in an unbroken succession.
Prosperous men they are, who have done the State some
service. Three of Jack Mehan’s boys fought overseas, and he
had the privilege to give one of them to his country, a
bright, capable lad, above whose grave the poppies bloom in
that great God’s Acre in Northern Europe, where so many
thousands of Australians sleep.
Both Mehan and Parkes were fine athletes, and
specialised in sprint running. Parkes could get very near to
evens over 100 yards. Jack Mehan probably was the first to try
out Malone, when that great runner arrived as an immigrant
with the inevitable Irish bundle.
The “Bulletin” of Townsville had associated with it as
editor-in-chief the late Dodd Clarke, and also “Beachcomber”
Banfield, of Dunk Island. The books of “Beachcomber” are as
beautiful in the literary sense as in their Nature
revelations.
Townsville in the late 1870s was beginning to grow. It
aspired to be capital of the North. It was not content with
the trade of Charters Towers and the Hughenden settlement, but
Burns, Philp, and Co. despatched teams under Mr. Archie
Forsyth to Winton, then better known as Western Creek.
Those days were before the railways, and inland
journeying was by coach or buggy, while goods transport was by
bullock or horse wagons. The town had most excellent hotels,
and the Queen’s, under Mr. Evans, the owner, was equal to
anything in the land. A luncheon attraction was the “Welsh
rabbit” prepared by Harry, the head waiter.
One day Roger Sheaffe, Walter Hayes, Armstrong the
inspector of police, and a Gulf squatter, quite a character,
were lunching together, and the Gulf man was asked if he would
take “Welsh rabbit.”
His reply was a gruff negative.
“Do have some,” said Walter Hayes, “it’s very good.”
The Gulf man said,
No; it’s too much like a (adjective) bandicoot!”
Another whom I met at the Queen’s was a young Herbert
River sugar planter, later Sir Alfred Cowley. He was quiet and
cultured. Mr. Evans, the wise old landlord, said one day,
“That is the cleverest man I have even known. He was sugar
planting in Natal, and is teaching the people on the Herbert
their business. But he is wonderfully learned.”
I asked, “Why doesn’t he go in for politics?”
Mr. Evans said, “Well, I suppose he’s too much of a
gentleman for that game.”
Yet the sugar planter became a politician, member for
Herbert, the Parliamentary authority on the sugar industry, a
member of the cabinet, and later Speaker of the Legislative
Assembly with a knighthood.
Louis Becke, of the Australian Joint Stock Bank, and
Tom Kelleway were my special pals. Louis had two brothers in
the North – Cecil and Alfred, both very proper young men, and
rather doubtful about the brother, who as a lad had been
supercargo with the notorious Bully Hayes in the South Seas.
Louis was a caged eagle. He had an impediment in his speech,
but was a wag.
Once he
complained that his conversational brilliance was too often
spoiled by “his d… stutter.” He went on to say: “I start with
a deucedly clever thing, but before I can get it out every one
has seen the point, and the epigram is like a sodden damper.”
In those days I heard much which afterwards went to
make up “By Reef and Palm,” and other books.
And Tom Kelleway also became a banker. He was
physically one of the most perfect men I have ever seen. Both
now sleep the long sleep. Good comrades, and ever to be held
in affectionate remembrance.
Of course, we quarreled with the other paper, which was
edited by one Hughes, who had been a Church of England parson.
He was a brilliant and incisive writer, and often held me
squirming on his pen point. One day my friends suggested that
I should hammer him, I was always in training, and was
persuaded, and went to the office of the reptile contemporary
seeing red, but Hughes politely invited me in, gave me a chair
and a cigar, and talked to me like the good chap that he was.
My friends outside waited in vain for “the thunder of the
captains, and the shouting,” but it was a wilted youth who
went out to them. Perhaps there was something which forbade
chaffing. Hughes and I became quite good friends, and I no
longer wrote of the “pariahs of the Press,” and he forebore to
repeat his observations that an infant’s feeding bottle was
more suited to me than an ink bottle, or that my paper reeked
with a callow juvenility.
Probably the most interesting figure in Northern
journalism in my time was Thaddeus O’Kane, editor and
proprietor of the “Northern Miner,” at Charters Towers. In
those days “The Towers” was a stirring town. The field was
rich, money was abundant, the consumption of strong beverages
was enormous – partly a climatic and partly a social
phenomenon – and the miner was the kingpin.
Those were the days when the gigantic Warden Charters
was the chief representative of the Government on the field.
Looking back over all the intervening years, a long avenue of
joys and sadnesses, the principal recurring thought is upon
the wonderfully good order on “the field.”
Charters Towers had seen some rousing and violent
times, but ordinarily the miners looked to it that there was a
general tone of decency and fair play.
But to get back to Thaddy O’Kane, as he was called. A
spare, grizzled man, as I remember him, about middle height,
soft and cultured in speech, and with all the little touches
of the Public School and University. But his eye was ever on
the alert for an affront to himself or to public morals. It
was a keen, aggressive, Irish eye. And his pen was vitriolic.
Of course, he was “agin” the Government, but more particularly
against all persons in authority, and every issue of the
“Miner” revealed the wickedness and incompetence of Charters
Towers officialdom – that is, as Mr. Thaddeus O’Kane saw it.
Many stories were told of his earlier life. It was said
that he had been a private secretary to Lord Palmerston; but
my impression now is that he was a man of good Irish family,
and had probably been a schoolmaster.
A few years later I met him with Pritchard Morgan, when
O’Kane was on the way to Bowen to battle for that electorate
with the young barrister, Edward Chubb, later a K.C. and
Justice of the Supreme Court.
O’Kane was there at his best, and at his worst. A keen
organiser, wonderful in the preparation of literature, but as
a platform speaker a failure. His speeches were too carefully
prepared, too loaded with “facts and figures,” while his young
barrister opponent spoke form a generous and modest heart of
the simple essentials of the country. It was the destructive
critic failing when face to face with the constructive worker.
Mr. O’Kane left a family, and his son, Jack, was for some
years on the “Courier” in Brisbane. What an ark the old paper
has been!
Reference has been made to the excellence of John N.
Parkes and Jack Mehan as sprint runners. Another in Townsville
at the time was Robert Philp, after Sir Robert Philp, who was
managing partner there of Burns, Philp, and Co.
Our old friend Mr. Charles Melton, the doyen of the
“Courier,” tells me that in his younger days Robert Philp was
quite a fair boxer, but he starred in pedestrianism. A match
was arranged in Townsville between Philp and Fred Symes, of
the Customs. Symes was not an athlete by any means, and even
an indifferent walker, but he could not resist a challenge
from Philp, with an offer of 25 yards in a hundred. The event
took place on the old racecourse, and created a great amount
of interest. Symes showed a quite unexpected agility, and won
by several yards amidst great cheering. It was not that Philp
had lost his dash but the genial second officer of Customs –
Hughes, afterwards Income Tax Commissioner in Brisbane, was
the sub-collector – was quite a dark horse.
Ross Creek was the south and south-east boundary of
Flinders Street in those days, and in passing it may be said
that Flinders Street was, and probably is, one of the hottest
places I have experienced.
The beach was delightfully cool, but Flinders Street,
cut off from the sea breeze by Melton Hill and Castle Hill,
and the slopes thereof, was very oppressive.
On the town side of the creek there were only a few
buildings – the A.S.N. Co.’s offices with Smith and Walker as
agents, Burns, Philp, and Co., Clifton and Aplin Bros., and a
few shacks further along.
Later on my second visit, the “Standard” office, Tom
Wright’s paper, with Henry Knapp, the solicitor, as editor, W.
J. Castling’s butchery, formerly Johnston and Castling, and
the Post Office had been built, and a few business places up
towards the Newmarket Hotel. Ross Island was reached from
Flinders Street by a ferry boat (very occasional), and over
there we had a cricket ground, but some of the big matches
were played out at a place known as the German Gardens,
towards Kissing Point.
There were crocodiles in Ross Creek. Some black kiddies
were bathing one afternoon in the creek from Burns, Philp, and
Co.’s wharf, when one of them about 8 years of age was
“snapped.” The crocodile swam up the creek holding the little
chap above water, while blacks frantically yelling and
throwing stones ran along the bank. Then the crocodile
disappeared with its victim, leaving just a swirl on the
water, and all was over save the weird lamentations of the
bereaved.
From Burns, Philp’s wharf in 1880 I shot a 13ft
crocodile with a Snider bullet, which ripped a good hole
through the back from side to side.
Smith and Walker in addition to the agency of the
A.S.N. Co. had a general auctioneering and commission
business. Mr. E. J. B. Wareham was one of the shipping office
staff, and his son E. B. Wareham, was the office boy. The
last-named stuck to the shipping business, and is now manager
of the Adelaide Steamship co., and was well known when in
Brisbane as the Queensland manager. In my days in Townsville,
he was in knickerbockers. He married a daughter of the late J.
G. Macdonald, P.M., and his only son made the supreme
sacrifice in Gallipoli with the sons of many of Queensland’s
best known men.
Burns, Philp, and Co., was a young and enterprising
firm, and the old established and chief warehouse was that of
Clifton and Aplin Bros. Mr Clifton was of the courtly type,
and was a good financial manager. Mr. William Aplin and Mr.
Harry Aplin formed the second section of the firm. William
Aplin later became a member of the Queensland Legislative
Council. He was a cheery man, and had drifted into
storekeeping on the Etheridge, I believe. In his heart he was
always a bushman, with the love of the wide spaces, the brave
horses, the flocks spreading over the open downs, or the dash
to deal with rowdy cattle, or to cut off a small mob in a
“moonlighting” expedition.
Later the firm was joined by Mr. Villiers Brown, who
had been a bank manager, and son of the Anthony Brown, so well
known in the early life of the State. Some years after the
retirement of Mr. Clifton, it became Aplin, Brown and Crayshaw
Ltd., with headquarters in Brisbane.
As Ducrow said: “Let us leave the cackle and come to
the ‘osses.”
The Hanrans, John and P. F. (later P. F. Hanran
M.L.A.), and “Young Johnny,” Mr. Joe Hodel later on, and Dr.
Frost were among the principal racing owners in Townsville.
The Hanrans had the love of the horse and of the sport with
their Irish blood, and in earlier days they were pretty well
known at Ipswich and on the Downs. Dr. Frost had his own ideas
of training. His formula was plenty of water, plenty of
linseed (boiled), and plenty of work. A ribald youth published
a screed descriptive of the methods, and referred to the
probable protests of Jimmy – who had to train under the
doctor’s directions – and part of it, as well as I remember,
ran:-
“Give
‘Exhibit Marking gallops and gallons of clear H²O
Then
more, mixed with limum, and then still more eau,
Plus a
bushel or more of solid torteau
‘The
process,’ says Jimmy, ‘deserves no laudo.’
But the
doctor says, ‘Jimmy, you vade retro!”
That doggerel was a change from prosy municipal meetings and shipping reports, and the doctor’s anger soon passed, especially when the linseed fed ‘osses won a couple of races, and the sapient amongst us were covered with the contumely which falls to the false prophets of a provincial town.
Racing in Townsville at the end of 1877 included
hurdles. Brisbane saw hurdle racing, and even steeple chasing
in earlier years. We had not then got to the full appreciation
of the sprint as a means of providing big fields and
profitable totalisators. The hurdle race at Townsville at
Christmas, 1877, was won by one of the Mosman family, a
younger brother of the late Hugh Mosman M.L.C., brother of
Lady Palmer and of Lady McIlwraith. He was a hard goer to his
fences, and with remarkably good hands.
On going to Townsville I took letters of introduction
to James Gordon, of Cluden, and to Andrew Ball, from an old
friend, Henry Bohle, after whom the Bohle River was named when
he was in the Queensland Government Service.
James Gordon, who had been Sub-Collector of Customs,
had retired. He was the father of a very good friend and
comrade, Major “Bob” Gordon, who served with the Gordon
Highlanders in the Tirah campaign, and with the First
Queensland Contingent in the South African War. “Bob” or
“Boomerang” Gordon, as he was known to the Scottish soldiers,
commanded the Gordon Highlanders Mounted Infantry Company in
South Africa, having been lent by the Queenslanders.
Cluden and Stewart’s Creek were tip-top places for duck
shooting, and many a good bag we scored there. Andrew Ball had
been a station manager, but prior to my time had married and
became a landlord of a Flinders Street hotel. He had done a
lot of pioneering out Cloncurry way.
The Police Magistrate at the end of 1877 was Gilbert
Eliott, who had been well known in the Burnett district, where
he had sheep country. His brother spelt his name “Elliot” – or
it may have been the other way about. During my second stay in
Townsville, the Police Magistrate was Charles Dicken, who
later was Secretary the Agent-General in London and then
Agent-General and C.M.G.
A sister of Dicken married Henry Ulick Browne, the
fifth Marquis of Sligo, and a brother was in the Harbours and
Rivers Department in Brisbane.
Succeeding Dicken as P.M. came Edmund Morey, a man of
the “pure merino” school, who had been a station owner in
Riverina and later owned Mitchell Downs.
Morey, Mrs. Morey, Robert Logan Jack and Mrs. Jack,
Hercules Coutts, of the Q.N. Bank, and Mrs. Coutts, Willie
Stevenson, later a sugar grower at Innisfail, and Swiss
Davies, later of Ipswich, both of the Q.N. Bank, lived with
the C. J. Walkers at Eagle’s Nest when I was domiciled there.
Mr. Morey was a widely read and cultured man, and
though to many he seemed austere, I found him always a
charming friend.
Mr. E. Morey, of the Taxation Department in Queensland,
is a son.
Dr. Jack and I had met at Cooktown, and with Inspector
Hervey Fitzgerald, of the Police, had gone out a little way on
the beginning of his exploratory trip in Cape York Peninsula..
Many a profitable hour I spent in his little geological museum
on Melton Hill. Mrs. Jack was a beautiful and accomplished
woman. Her son James Love insisted on joining his step-father
on the Cape York trip, though only a kiddie, but a strapping
chap. He is now a well-known horse-breeder, owner of racing
stuff, and a shipper to India, and he imported Chantemerle and
other good ones. O last saw him judging the bloods and
miscellaneous at the Royal National Exhibition at Bowen Park.
It is impossible to recall the old days in Townsville
without a thought of the bank managers. Halloran, of the Bank
of New South Wales, was a son of the Sheriff of Queensland. He
was of the splendid Viking type – about 6ft 3in., blue-eyed
and with a long fair beard falling in (as it was then
regarded) masculine beauty well over his great chest.
Ferdinand Sachs was manager of the Australian Joint
Stock Bank – musician, literateur, boxer, fencer, and
wonderful shot with a rifle. He had his private bachelor home
at Hermit Park, and the story runs that one night he gave his
guest, Julian Thomas (“The Vagabond”), rather a shock. At
dinner “The Vagabond” had been jeering at some of the stories
of sharp shooting, and later, in the dark, was walking in the
garden serenely puffing a cigar. Presently there was a crack
and a splash, and the glowing end of the cigar was cut clean
off by a bullet from Sach’s Winchester. “The Vagabond” didn’t
afterwards question the daring of our sharpshooters.
Shire, afterwards of the London office, was at the
Queensland National Bank, and was succeeded by J. K. Cannan, a
son of Dr. Kearsey Cannan, of Brisbane. J. K. Cannan gave
Queensland some fine sons and daughters, including J. K., the
lawyer, and General “Jim,” C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., and lots of
other good things.
Townsville was too conventional for me, and so I
secured a job on the Cooktown “Herald” early in 1878, my
successor on the Townsville “Herald” being Francis Hodson
Nixon, who was an architect, an artist and a poet. He was a
brilliant writer, and blessed in having his quiver full of
“hostages to hazardry,” as Thomas Hardy puts it.
A son of F. H. Nixon is Frank Nixon, , the secretary of
the Timber Merchants Association in Brisbane and a well-known
Press controversialist.
After Nixon on the “Herald” was P. Dempsey, a gentle,
scholarly man with a great fair beard. On my second stay in
Townsville, I was writing for the “Standard”, edited by Henry
Knapp, an English solicitor, and the proprietor Mr. Tom
Wright, frequently lent me to my old chief, McManus to bring
out the “Herald” on days when Dempsey was too ill for work.
Another Townsville journalist was R. H. Pearce.
“Gitano” was his pen name, a very brilliant man and a master
of satirical jingle.
For the “Standard” I wrote a semi-historical article
about seven columns, including a report of the opening of the
first section of the Townsville- Charters Towers Railway to
the Reid River.
The contractor was James McSharry, an engineer of the
Brisbane Water and Sewerage Board who won great fame in
Gallipoli and France, and a soldier’s grave in La Belle
France. James McSharry was a great pioneer, warm hearted, and
a wonderful handler of men. Once a strike threatened, and he
went out and met 200 uproarious men.
“We want
so-and-so,” they kept yelling. It meant a considerable
addition to the cost.
“Well,”
said McSharry, “if I give you that will you make it up to me
in some other way?”
There was
an immediate cheer and cries for “Yes,” and then cheers for
“McSharry.”
The leader
of the trouble stepped out and said: “Look here, McSharry, if
you not think it a fair thing, say so, and we will get back to
work. You’re white all through!”
“No, men,”
he said, “it’s right enough.”
So the
strike trouble ended.
No striking
for strike’ sake.
The white
ant had not got into the Labour movement.
There was
no Labour movement then, but workers and employers in the
North in those days dealt with a dispute on the man to man
system.
The
Townsville “Herald” had another editor after Dempsey, a very
clever chap from one of the Old Land universities, but he was
not keen on the grind of a provincial newspaper. He was
red-bearded, and stood about 6ft 3in. I forget his name. Later
he became a Government Agent on the South Seas, and while on
duty, was shot clean through the head.
He was
followed by my old friend, the incomparable Archibald Meston,
who could swing an axe with the best of bushmen, take a turn
with the gloves with the smartest professional, lift weights
with a Sandow, spin out columns of vivid, glowing prose, write
a little poem reminiscent of the sweet things we dullards read
in the Greek Anthology, or lampoon in satirical verse an
opponent in controversy.
The
“Herald” was for six months an arbiter on philology and
politics in the North, and then Meston pushed off to Cairns
with Horace Brinsmead to clear scrub and grow sugar, and to
subdue the heights of Bellenden-Ker.
I had
succeeded him as editor of the “Observer”, then a Brisbane
morning paper, and felt in a comparison just as a little peep
of candlelight ought to feel when the heavens are ablaze with
the glories of a tropical storm. As Mr. Pepys would have said:
“And so to Cooktown”.
[The
Cooktown Chapters have been extracted separately as Part 1]
Chapter VII -Off to Brisbane – Editing a Morning Paper – Joining the “Courier”- A Staff of Brilliant Men – The Francis Adams Tragedy – Lane and the Labour Movement – Politics and Politicians
When John Flood was asked by the new owners of the
“Observer” to recommend an editor he sent me a telegram to the
North and definitely offered the job, asking me to sail by
first steamer.
It did not take long to get to a decision, and I took
over from Mr. Archibald Meston towards the end of February
1881.
Mr. Flood and I had been rival editors and close
companions in Cooktown, and in my new work he was “guide,
mentor and friend.”
The proprietors were McIlwraith, Morehead and Perkins,
three members of the Government, and McIlwraith was Premier.
It was arranged a couple of days after I had taken
over, that I should meet Messrs Morehead and Perkins, and the
meeting took place at the office of Morehead and Co., in Mary
Street, in the old stone buildings opposite the present
headquarters of Moreheads Ltd.
I had rather feared the first impressions, for I was
slight and perhaps more juvenile looking than my years, for
then I was nearly 25.
“You are very young,” said B. D. Morehead, and the soft
impeachment had to be admitted.
We talked things over, politics especially, and the two
big men seemed not a little concerned.
It may be said that both Morehead and Perkins seemed to
regard an editor, or a newspaper man of any sort, as a kind of
retainer or hanger-on.
Frankly, we never hit it. We did not exchange much in
the way of courtesies. McIlwraith was different. A great big
man, big-brained, big-hearted, generous, dominating, and
brave. Queensland never sufficiently appreciated him. He was
the peacemaker as between his colleagues and their editor.
When he expressed a reasoned wish it was promptly observed. I
have never known a man so free of littleness, even to his
political opponents, and they were his only enemies. When my
year with the “Observer” was up, and I was transferring to the
“Courier” I said to him: “I’ll often come to you for advice”;
and he said “Come and see me often.”
The “Observer” office was at the corner of Edward and
Adelaide Streets, where the Freeleagus restaurant now is.
The manager was Mr. J. M. Black, still hale and well in
Brisbane, who had a printing business of his own, and he also
printed the “Observer”.
He did not interfere much with the paper, but he was
always available, and many, many times his sound judgment and
wide knowledge saved us from slips.
It was an evil day for the “Observer” when Mr. Black
gave it up. He was succeeded by Mr. W. M. Crofton as manager,
and that was the end of the agreement between the editorial
and managerial sides.
Crofton was a clever accountant, but was narrow, and
entirely dominated in one sense by Mr. Perkins; but in another
way he influenced the Perkins element in the directorate.
The regular news staff, besides myself, was composed of
R. J. Leigh and W. H. Qualtrough.
Leigh was a wonderful worker, upon whose heart I am
sure “Observer” was written. He had a failing, and his end was
tragic and intensely sad. He could do anything on a paper,
including good fighting leaders.
Qualtrough was a big, handsome chap, who worked well,
but who refused to take life seriously.
Both were loyal, willing helpers.
There were some “side issues”, as Leigh called them,
including Theobald Vincent Wallace-Bushelle, a son of the
famous Madame Bushelle and that great basso, her husband, who
was at one time in England considered a rival of Lablache.
“Toby” Bushelle was a nephew of Vincent Wallace, the
composer of “Maritana” – his mother’s brother – and he did
most of the musical and dramatic notices for the “Observer”,
besides pursuing the elusive advertisement. He was a very fine
singer, a basso, like his father and his brother John. The
last-named old Sydneyites will remember. “Toby” had toured
with a great many companies, including the Caradinis. He
helped me a great deal in the matter of voice-training.
The leader writers included Mr. J. G. Drake, of the
“Hansard” staff, later a barrister, and later again a Crown
Prosecutor with a long service in the Queensland Legislative
Assembly and in the Federal Senate, a member of the Federal
Government with the portfolio of Postmaster-General.
Another was Mr. Robert Nall, also of the “Hansard”
staff, and later one of the heads of the Sydney “Daily
Telegraph”.
Others were Mr. E. Thorne, and that very brilliant man,
Mr. William Coote, who succeeded me when I went over to the
“Courier”. Mr. Coote was the architect of the present Brisbane
Town Hall, and did a history of Queensland, besides much
pamphleteering.
It was very hard to keep on the lines of policy which
the directors, or a majority of them, desired, and to secure a
measure of public confidence. Messrs Morehead and Perkins were
extremists, and favoured violence in attack. McIlwraith
favoured hard logic, or strong facts and mild language.
But the “Observer” was bought for the purposes of
strong party onslaughts, and there was not a little bitterness
on both sides.
The “Telegraph” was violently anti-McIlwraith, and
supported the Opposition, led by Mr. Samuel Walker Griffith,
later Sir. S. W. Griffith P.C., G.C.M.G., and Federal Chief
Justice.
That, I fancy, was before Mr. Brentnall became
regularly associated with the “Telegraph”.
Mr. Brentnall’s work I remember quite well – his short
snappy sentences and “hammer it home” method of argument.
The “Courier” had refused to become a violent partisan,
and was never very keen on the Morehead-Perkins influence, and
that had led to the purchase of another morning paper
specially for party propaganda.
Perhaps the
occasion is not the only one in “Courier” history when its
refusal to be complaisant led to an opposition to it being set
up.
Another violent factor in the Government ranks was Mr.
Lumley Hill. On one occasion he brought a letter to the
“Observer” which had been approved by McIlwraith, and
reluctantly I published it, with a “ready-made” footnote,
having been, as Mr. J. M. Black reminds me, held free of
responsibility.
It was an
attack on Mr. Hemmant, formerly of Stewart and Hemmant, and
Agent-General for Queensland under the Douglas Government.
Mr. Hemmant
behaved generously in the matter, and an apology was
published, with a provision for a subscription to some
institution.
It was my
second libel case, and my last.
The
directors had the grace to absolve me from blame. McIlwraith
took all responsibility, and Lumley Hill laughed at him. I
don’t think McIlwraith
ever forgave it.
It may be
added that Dr. Carr Boyd, the father of “Potjostler” Carr
Boyd, the explorer, was a writer for the paper until he
quarreled with Mr. Perkins; and that W. J. Waldron for a long
time did a Parliamentary summary.
We formed a
company to take over the “Observer” from McIlwraith, Morehead
and Perkins. £10,000 capital, in 40 shares of £250, and the
subscribers included many well-known pastoralists, one being
James Tyson and another E. J. Stevens.
As already
said, Mr. J. M. Black resigned from the management and devoted
himself to his own by, and that practically was the end of the
“Observer” as a morning paper from a commercial point of view.
Mr. Black knew all about the printing and publishing of a
paper, and had many strong friends, even in the opposition
camp.
When Mr.
Crofton took over the management and Mr. William Coote became
editor, succeeded by Mr. P. J. Macnamara, the office was moved
into a new brick building near the Town Hall, about where
Edwards and Lamb, drapers, later established themselves.
But the
game was up. The paper lasted but a year under the new regime,
when it was bought – lock, stock, and barrel – by Mr. C. H.
Buzacott, then managing partner of the “Courier” and
“Queenslander” – the Brisbane Newspaper Coy. Ltd. – and moved
to the “Courier” office.
Mr.
Buzacott decided to publish the “Observer” as an evening
newspaper, with a separate editorial staff, and he appointed
me editor, and I selected Mr. Tom O’Carroll, son the editor of
the “Courier”, as my assistant.
The new
evening paper was notable chiefly for its startling headlines
and sensational leaders, and Mr. Buzacott introduced the “On
Dit” column, which was always and quite wrongly attributed to
me.
The day
came when the brilliant William O’Carroll, editor of the
“Courier”, was to relinquish the strain of night work.
Carl
Feilberg took over from him, and Mr. Buzacott decided that I
should go on to general work, including one or two really
special features, and O’Carroll should take the editorship of
the “Observer”.
That was
carried out and the “Observer”, I am sure, was very much
improved. Mr. O’Carroll’s experience and wisdom much
outweighed my exuberance and enthusiasm. In time he died. On
the day of his funeral I was “down to it” with a very sharp
attack of malaria, a legacy of New Guinea. O’Carroll had been
a good worker. Like many other journalists he liked to be well
away from his work, and he made his home at the Three-mile
Scrub, on the road between Newmarket and Ashgrove, a
delightful place with tress and ferns, some of the primeval
scrub standing, a sanctuary for our sweetest song birds, and
sloping down to a clear stream which in the wet season went
tumbling and foaming over its bouldered bed. It was a
paradise, restful and sweet, with the scents of wattle bloom
and the near eucalyptus forest.
At about 2
am after a strenuous night’s work, O’Carroll, when first I
knew him, used to mount his old grey mare at the back of the
office (which was in Queen Street) and plod quietly home.
The next
editor of the “Observer” was Walter J. Morley; and then our
present chief of the Brisbane Newspaper Co, J. J. Knight, who
specialised in municipal affairs, and who had a staff of good
leader writers, including Mr. M’Mahon, formerly of the Sydney
“Star”, and Mylne, one of the most scholarly and trenchant of
journalists and myself, if it be not immodest to claim
inclusion.
Mr. Knight
was the last of the separate editors, the “Observer” passing
to the direction of a general editor or editor-in-chief, who
of course was editor of the “Courier”.
Now that is
the correct story of the “Observer” from my first knowledge of
it.
When I
joined the “Courier” in 1889 it had moved from the old offices
to George Street – where the Johnsonian Club, with a certain
fitness of succession, is now housed –to the new building in
Queen Street, then lately erected by Mr. John Hardgrave, and
adjoining what was then the British Empire Hotel.
Mr. Charles Hardie Buzacott was the managing partner,
and in the proprietary were also Mr. E. I. C. Browne (Little,
Browne, and Ruthning of those days), and Mr. William Thornton,
the Collector of Customs. Here I might say that Mr. Buzacott
was a wonderfully capable journalist and a tremendous worker.
In later years he did a great deal in the way of leader
writing, and had a keen sense of humour. Those who did not
know his work little
suspected that the quiet, reserved and sometimes brusque man
was the writer of articles of beautiful English and often with
humour like that of Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The editor was William O’Carroll, a good judge of work,
an uncompromising critic, and a hater of shams. His strong
point was foreign politics – not expecting the Crowned Heads
and their Ministers to mend their ways under his suggestions,
but so that the people had not time to read up foreign affairs
in full should be given an intelligent bird’s-eye view of
them.
The sub-editor and then editor of a rather short-lived
“Evening News,” was Carl Feilberg, who was good at the job,
but who was better as a writer.. He had a turn as sub-editor
on the “Argus” in Melbourne, but was glad to get back again to
the “Courier,” on which he became editor. In addition to
sub-editing he did the “Political Froth” in the
“Queenslander,” having succeeded W. H. Traill in that special
job, and I succeeded Feilberg.
Richard, or “Dick’ Newton was writing and reporting,
and did most of the descriptive stuff, such as the Birthday
Ball at Government House; and he also did, with remarkable
insight, the theatres, though specialists did the big musical
jobs.
E. J. T. Barton, later sub-editor and then editor, did
the cables and telegrams; and W. J. Morley, later editor of
the “Observer,” did the law reports.
Graham Haygarth, who was shot years after at Charters
Towers, did the racing under the pen-name of “Hermit,” with an
occasional jingle reminiscent of Whyte Melville, and was
succeeded by E. A. Smith, “Pegasus,” a scholarly Englishman
who in time raced some very good horses, and we often talked
over the old days.
There were some general and special writers, and a good
many leaders came from “outside.”
The “Courier” of those days was trenchant in the
treatment of public affairs, careful in its treatment of the
Queen’s English, and scrupulous in the correctness of its
reports.
My work was general, and in a little while very
important, and the beginning with the “Courier” had some
bearing on what I conceived to be a reporter’s duty to his
paper.
Brunton Stephens, during the Governorship of Sir Arthur
Kennedy, was transferred from school teaching to be
correspondence clerk at the Home Secretary’s Office. The
Governor was a keen admirer of the poet’s more serious work,
and so was Miss Kennedy, who was a great reader and a keen
critic. Sir Arthur Kennedy had served at Cape Coast Castle and
Hongkong, and on all his journeyings abroad he was accompanied
by his daughter. They thought more of a fine poem, or even a
good bit of prose, than of a fat bullock. Miss Kennedy once
said: “It is by the art and literature of the place that
people will judge Queensland of the ‘eighties.” In literature,
to use a Brunton Stephens phrase, they knew “what’s what.” It
seemed to the friends of the poet that in his letters to all
and sundry from the Home Secretary’s Department he would
“unconsciously slip into verse.” Was that not the obsession of
Mr. Boffin’s friend, Silas Wegg? I sued the idea, and wrote
for the “Queenslander” what purported to be a letter to “The
worthy Mayor and aldermen of famous Wingeroo,” in reply to an
application for the establishment of a pound. It was assumed
that Brunton Stephens had been instructed to say that if the
Mayor and aldermen would provide the material and build the
yards a pound would be established. It was in the days when
the singing of Swinburne was still a rage, and all our little
rhymsters affected the alliteration done to death of Adam
Lindsay Gordon.
One verse rang:-
“Let
the swearing, swaggering splitter seek the silky she-oak
shade;
Cause
the towering tree to totter till its thund’ring thud is
made;
Till it
lies in sandy softness on the easy earth, and then,
Let him
cut, and split, and mortise – Mr. Mayor and aldermen.”
It was the veriest doggerel, with only the redeeming
grace of an idea, but it shook the Home Secretary’s Office and
the Johnsonian Club to smithereens, and Brunton Stephens
called me a villain – in a Pickwickian sense, of course – and
told me I should very probably end up by being hanged. Who
knows?
At the “Courier” office in those days, and up to the
time I went off to England in 1887, there was a sort of
special room for contributors. I had a table in it, and met
men, some of whom are well worth remembering.
The first was John Douglas, the ex-Premier. He was a
regular leader writer for the “Courier.” His work was bright
and scholarly, as became a Rugby boy and a University man;
there was the keen inside knowledge of one who had so lately
been at the head of the Government, and there was a splendid
breadth of treatment. Charles Hardie Buzacott and John Douglas
had been on different sides in politics, but between them
there was a deep mutual esteem. I think John Douglas continued
to write “Courier” leaders until he was appointed Government
Resident at Thursday Island. He was, in a sense, poor in the
world’s goods,. He had been a Downs pastoralist, but had no
regular profession, and had abstained from “making good”
financially – which is a contradiction in terms, while he was
Premier. He had a family of sons to educate and spared nothing
for them, and it was necessary that he should use his brains
and exercise his splendid administrative powers. Often at
night we sat and talked when our work was done, and from John
Douglas I learnt the duty of real service to my country.
Whether the lesson was ever wisely applied is another
question.
Two men in those days were at the top of my mind, two
Johns – John Douglas and John Flood. They were above small
things in working for Queensland.
“Where do I come in?” did not occur to either of them.
John Douglas had the vision of a statesman, the soul of
a patriot, and his honour
always seemed to me something lustrous.
When first I saw a great operatic artist, as Lohengrin,
step from his swan-drawn skiff, “mystic, wonderful” in his
shining armour, I caught breath and said, “He is like John
Douglas.”
And yet how few of our young people are taught who and
what John Douglas was?
Some loud-mouthed or subtle demagogue blooming into a
sudden affluence is popular, but the men who served Queensland
rather than themselves are almost forgotten. To me John
Douglas ranks with the best of those who have led a Government
in this land of ours for absolute purity of motive and
loftiness of aspiration. He had absolutely nothing to gain
from his political service – at any rate, he gained nothing in
the monetary sense. It always seems to me a great tribute to a
political leader in a young country that his friends should be
able to say: “He died a poor man!”
When H. E. King was defeated for Maryborough by our old
friend, “Jack” Annear, he was on the unemployed list.
He had been Speaker of the Parliament of which
McIlwraith became the head in 1879. He, also, became a
“Courier” leader writer.
King was tall and sharply rounded at the shoulders,
wore a very long brown beard, had very shaggy brows, a soft
voice, and a very pleasant “way with him.”
He was an Irishman of an old Church of England family –
came from the West, and had all the best that education could
give him.
He was in the Imperial Army for some years, but threw
up his commission to come to Australia.
His sister, Catherine King, was a well-known writer,
and her book, “Lost for Gold” is well known to Queenslanders.
It is to an extent founded on fact, and deals with the life
and death of Griffen, who was hanged at Rockhampton for the
murder of his subordinates on the Peak Downs escort.
H. E. King married a sister of Dr. Armstrong, of
Toowoomba, thus an aunt of Mr. W. D. Armstrong (later M.L.A.
and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly), of Adair, near
Gatton, and he raised a big family of sons and daughters, all
of whom I knew as youngsters.
In the days when King was Speaker and I editor of the
“Observer,” I was often a guest at Ivy Lodge, Toowong –
Toowong was the fashionable suburb of those days. We had many
jolly dances, and the family was musically inclined. On one
occasion a very fine light baritone appeared, well trained and
an artist. It was Lawford, a barrister, who had married one of
the charming daughters of W. L. G. Drew, C.M.G., of Toowong, a
sister of Mrs. J. O’N. Brenan, and of Mrs. (Major-General)
Jackson, of the Royal Artillery.
To get back to H. E. King –we were room mates for a
time, but he did most of his work at home. King was a very
polished and trenchant writer, but he did not talk much. In
later years, and when over 60, he went for the Bar, passed
with flying colours, and became a Crown Prosecutor. One of his
sons became a journalist and did remarkably well in Brisbane
and elsewhere. He was, I believe, formerly a partner in the
Brisbane “Sunday Sun.”
Francis Adams was for quite a long time one of the
regular leader writers. He was a son of Mrs. Leith Adams, the
English novelist, and before coming to Australia had published
some rather striking essays and verse. The essays were very
fine, but with a certain bitterness of spirit in them.
Adams was a consumptive, and had a grievance against
fate, which was often noticeable in his work. When in Brisbane
he did a lot of verse writing, and published a couple of
volumes. Some of the work was repulsive, some was delightful.
Adams had an affectation with his verse. He would not have a
capital for the initial letter of a line unless the preceding
line closed with a full point. And on occasions, to show his
unconventionality, he would have the Deity put with a little
“g”.
Adams was for a long time associated with Gresley
Lukin, William Lane, and J. G. Drake, on the old “Boomerang,”
a very bright, though truculent, paper, which had Monty Scott,
and later, Cecil Gasking, as artists.
Adams was a very brilliant man, and some of his
“Courier” leaders were wonderful evidences of scholarly
English and sustained energy. His strongest point was in the
personal leader. Poor Adams! His health went from bad to
worse. Years before we knew him on the “Courier” he had lost
his wife, and married again to an Australian girl, a nurse –
tall, strong, capable.
The end of things for the handsome, brown-bearded
Englishman was tragedy. He became very bad indeed – both lungs
and throat affected – and he suffered very much. One night,
late, he was having a bad time – choking, agonized. Yet his will was
indomitable. He said to his wife, “Give me the revolver.”
She gave it to him and turned away. There was a sharp,
stinging report, for Adams had put the revolver to his head
and fired. His wife turned to him, took the revolver away,
composed his limbs, sponged his fatal wound, sent for the
doctor, and the doctor sent for the police.
The circumstances as I relate them were published at the time. Some blamed Mrs. Adams, some praised her. Those who praised her knew how greatly generous she had been, nursing the sick man with infinite tenderness, but always subject to his intensely masterful nature. Pace! Francis Adams. Hw rote his own epitaph, which, as closely as I can remember, ran:-
“Bury me
with clenched hands and eyes open wide,
In storm
and trouble I lived; in trouble and storm I died.”
William Lane did occasional leaders for the “Courier,”
but the bulk of his work was contributing sketchy articles and
notes upon Labour ideals. He was a vivid and effective writer,
though he was obviously a visionary, and his work was
sometimes over-sentimentalised. Yet there was no mistake as to
his earnestness. I had almost said fanaticism. And, as is so
often the case, he was intolerant to a degree, and any
condition of economic or social affairs which did not
harmonise with his view was violently condemned.
One recognises that reformers have often been
fanatical, but quite as much good has been done in the world
by solid and temperate reasoning as by strenuous and bitter
advocacy.
To speak of William Lane in his days of the Press in
Queensland would have had an affected sound. It was always
“Billy” Lane. He was a violent “dry” in the matter of liquor
traffic, and a most violent pacifist. His reading was fairly
wide on economic subjects, but he had very little knowledge of
contemporary literature.
From the “Boomerang” he went to the newly-established
“Worker,” which was mainly his conception, and certainly was
founded in the literary sense by him. He wrote always under a
pen name of “John Miller,” yet his identity eventually leaked
out, and in the shearers’ huts in the West, on mustering camps
and at those little meetings of “billabong whalers” where two
or three were gathered together, the name of “Billy” Lane was
reverenced.
In the so-called Labour movement – the movement which
his genius really brought into being – one never really hears
his name. If the Trades Hall does not bar monuments there
should be something there to educate the young to a knowledge
of the real Moses of Labour in politics in Queensland.
It may seem queer to outsiders that the promoter and
leader of the New Australia settlement in Paraguay was a
former leader writer and contributor to the “Courier.”
It is not proposed to go into the history of this
visionary Eden in South America, but just to mention a few of
the points connected with it which were discussed by Lane in
the “Courier” office.
He had an intense faith in human nature, in the
glorious gospel of mateship – not as we know those things
today, but as they would be existent in a communal settlement
where nothing was known of business competition, the struggle
for food and shelter, and the cursed lust of gold.
The “tall straight men of the West” the “Brave-eyed,
deep-bosomed women of Australia” were to build up an ideal
community in a land where there would be no taint of
selfishness. The difficulties were pointed out over and over
again, but Lane was intolerant even of the most friendly
criticism. His was the glowing faith, the indomitable spirit.
Now, apart from the general difficulties of pulling through a
scheme of the kind with a purely secular basis, Lane was not
the man for the job. Naturally he was a despot, just as Lenin
was, and Trotsky.
He had no experience of handling men. With a battalion
of trained Australian soldiers, with all their fine sense of
discipline, he would have had a mutiny in a week. And when he
was personally known all the glamour of “John Miller” (his pen
name) and of “Billy” Lane disappeared.
He was rather small and badly crippled. His tone was
always aggressive. It was another case of Caesar or nothing.
Well we know what happened.
Lane left Australia, and founded Cosme Colony, and then
sick of it all, and probably disillusioned, he came out to New
Zealand, and again earned good money on a capitalist paper.
And in New Zealand he died.
As I have said, he was intensely earnest; he dreamed
his dreams up in the old “Courier” building, where Phillips
and Sons, auctioneers, are now established, and he woke to
find them dreams on the inhospitable Paraguayan settlements.
P. J. Macnamara who had ventured on a “Bulletin” in
Brisbane and had for a time been Editor of the “Observer” was
one of Lane’s first fleeters in the Royal Oak for Paraguay,
but soon had his fill of Communism and Socialism and all the
other isms except patriotism, for he came back to Queensland a
devoted Australian, an out and out Britisher, and an
individualist of the most pronounced type.
He went to Nanango ultimately, established a prosperous
little paper there, bought an hotel, built a beautiful hall,
and generally took on an air of affluence.
I last saw him at the old Burnett town, and we had a
very pleasant day together. He compared the conditions of the
workers there and at Yarraman with the best that could be
given in Paraguay, even had Lane realised all that he dreamed.
His conclusion was characteristic: “Communists should
find a congenial sphere in a black’s camp or at Woogaroo.
In 1881, the Johnsonian Club had its home in the Belle
Vue cottage adjoining Belle Vue Hotel.
Once a month we had a supper, which was always an
absolute delight. After supper we smoked our clays, the long
churchwardens, with a jar of tobacco on the table free to all.
Brunton Stephens, Carl Feilberg, Richard Newton, John
Flood, “Bobby” Byrnes (whose Christian names ere John Edgar),
A. J. Carter, Horace Earl, and other men of splendid
comradeship and genius would be there, and we youngsters
regarded them as veritable Gamaliels at whose feet we sat and
drew in wisdom.
There were many others, of course – artists like
Clarke, lawyers like George Paul, and Granville Miller, and
literary doctors like K. I. O’Doherty and Lyons; and the whole
atmosphere was full of mental stimulation.
But the literary, artistic, and scientific sides of
things were not forgotten.
The most delightful night that I spent at the
Johnsonian was after the move into Elizabeth Street, and on
the occasion of Brunton Stephens reading from manuscript his
new poem, “Angela.” It was a long poem, and the motif was the
love between a devoutly Christian maid and a chivalrous man
who was an agnostic.
I remember some of the poem- a sad and impassioned
work. It has not been printed, so far as my remembrance goes,
and no literary friend has been able to tell me what became of
it. I do not know the poet’s family sufficiently well to ask
questions of them. A mutual friend of Brunton Stephens and
myself asked me about it in later years, another poet also
sleeping the long sleep.
He said: “Do you remember what happened to Burton’s
translation of the Arabian Nights?”
My own impression was that Brunton Stephens destroyed
the manuscript. Some people, however liberal they may be, or
however doubting, have an aversion from disturbing the settled
religious beliefs of others.
Brunton Stephens was intense in his spiritual sense,
and that may have been a reason for the destruction of a poem
of great beauty and depth of thought. He was hyper-sensitive
in this regard for the spiritual leanings of others.
The McIlwraith Government gained a majority in the 1879
elections, ousting the Government at the head of which was Mr.
John Douglas.
The colleagues of Mr. Douglas in various offices, and
with changes from one department to the other, included S. W.
Griffith, J. F. Garrick, J. R. Dickson – all of whom were
raised in later days to knighthood – R. M. Stewart, William
Miles, Geo. Thorn, Peter McLean, and Charles Stuart Mein.
Of these I knew all very well, save Mr. Stewart, though
they were not in office when I came to Brisbane in 1881.
To Mr. Douglas reference was made in an earlier page.
As then said, he was more of a statesman than a politician,
and, though he could put up a good fight when he thought the
occasion demanded it, he was always more concerned in the
welfare of the country than in a small party advantage.
S. W. Griffith was tall and spare, and he wore a long
brown beard. The whole of the Douglas ministry was bearded.
That was a fashion of the day.
Nor had we got to the vulgarity and the petty
mindedness which centred its zest for jocularity on a man’s
personal appearance.
Sir S. W. Griffith in my opinion was the greatest of
the public men of the country, though not as a party
politician.
Sir J. F. Garrick was a brilliant lawyer, a well set
up, handsome man, cultured, and of great personal charm He was
a remarkably fine speaker, with a fine, ringing voice.
Later, when he was Agent-General for Queensland, I saw
a good deal of him, and knew more of his wonderfully
sympathetic nature.
Lovers of horseflesh will remember how sometimes he
drove up to Parliament House with Mrs. and Miss Garrick in a
covered phaeton and a spanking pair of bays.
William Miles was the Jack Blunt of the Cabinet; a
pastoralist, a strong man in financial matters, and to him was
credited the origin of the £10,000,000 loan and the
construction of the Cairns railway. Mr. Miles was one of the
promoters also of the Royal Bank of Queensland.
He had as a son-in-law Mr. Herbert Hunter, of Victoria
Downs, the builder of Stanley Hall, near Clayfield, who was a
director of the Royal Bank, and the owner of some first-class
racehorses.
Mr. Miles was the open enemy of McIlwraith and Palmer-
not a vindictive enemy by any means, but a fighter.
Probably it was a similarity of temperament which kept
these fine old Queenslanders so far apart.
Then there was James R. Dickson, later a Premier of
Queensland, and our first member of the Federal Cabinet. Mr.
Dickson (afterwards Sir James R. Dickson) was rather
sententious in manner, but very capable, very courteous, and
always the good friend of newspaper men.
He made his home on the heights just beyond Breakfast
Creek, a charming stone house known as Toorak, and from which
Toorak Hill takes its name.
Mr. Fred Dickson, Crown Prosecutor, is a son of Sir
James.
George Thorn had been Premier from June 5 to March 8,
1877. He graduated from Sydney University, where he had a
distinguished career, and was a fine Latin scholar. Virgil was
to him not only a great poet, but an agricultural authority.
The “Bucolics” he specially admired, and would declaim page
after page with more zest than he ever put into a political
speech. George Thorn was very capable, but he was not taken
altogether seriously, because he would not take himself
seriously.
Peter McLean was an earnest Scot, a Logan River farmer,
a great reader, and the dominant star in the temperance
firmament. Later he became Under Secretary for Agriculture,
and did the State good service. He was a particularly good
debater.
Last on the list is Charles Stuart Mein, a well-known
solicitor, and a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Defence Force. He
was in later years raised to the Supreme Court Bench, and was
a wise and capable judge.
All of the
Douglas Ministry are sleeping the long sleep, the last to go
being Mr. Peter McLean – good, hearty, and hardy Scot.
The party
cemented up from more or less antithetical elements by Sir
Thomas McIlwraith – who was plain Mr. McIlwraith then – gained
a considerable victory, and took office in January, 1879. The
party went to the country under a magnetic leadership, as well
as with a popular programme.
McIlwraith
was a Scottish engineer who came to Australia in connection
with the railway contracts and bridge building of Peto,
Brassey and Betts. The Brassey of the firm afterwards was Lord
Brassey.
McIlwraith
became interested in pastoral properties, and was socially
very popular. He was big and florid, and pictures in 1881
showed that a few years earlier he had attended a fancy dress
ball as “The Maranoa Baby,” with cape and long robe and the
bottle usual with infants. It was a great joke.
A salient of his policy was borrowing for reproductive works, such as railways and harbours. It may be explained that the policy of what was termed the Liberal Ministry in the matter of railway building finance, was to proclaim reserves, under the Railway Reserves Act, and to sell blocks, alternately or otherwise, devoting the receipts to construction.
The
McIlwraith alternative scheme was to borrow money, build the
railways, and then sell the land. The idea caught the popular
fancy, and especially when it was backed by a popular proposal
to borrow £3,000,000 on the London market. The figure was
sensational at the time, for we had not then become accustomed
to financial plunging, laying up burdens by way of taxation to
pay interest, and taking away from industrial production a
very big proportion of the population to join the great army
employed at “the Government stroke.”
I had heard John Murtagh Macrossan expound the policy
in Cooktown, and it struck me as likely to be good for a young
country. It certainly was for a time, but the germ of
borrowing has been ever since an acute influence in public
affairs.
The general
trend of McIlwraith’s mind was to big, dramatic methods of
development. He was obsessed by the glamour of Sir John
Macdonald’s policy in Canada, though the Queensland movement
came along rather earlier than the letting of the contract for
the new Canadian-Pacific railway, which was in May, 1881.
The
development was towards land-grant railways, and chiefly the
Transcontinental railway, north and south in Qld.
But
McIlwraith was not the father in Queensland of the land grant
railway idea. The first public move was by John Douglas about
a year after he had left responsible public life.
In 1881,
McIlwraith had a very strong team; men of affairs, capable in
their way, and very big men in the public eye. His right hand
man was Sir Arthur Palmer, with whom he was connected by
marriage. They were married to two of the Mosman sisters –
Lady Palmer was slight, dark, and very reserved, yet her
intimates spoke of her always as a very sweet woman. Lady
McIlwraith was robust, cheery, a delightful hostess, and very
fond of the brighter side of life.
But that is
a digression, Sir Arthur Palmer had been Premier in 1870-74 of
a pastoralist Government, and McIlwraith had been Secretary of
Works and Mines in the Macalister Ministry, January to
October, 1874.
Arthur
Hunter Palmer was of Irish birth, and he was soon after his
arrival in Australia superintendent of the Dangar stations in
New South Wales.
He was
masterful, quick to wrath, easily appeased, and those who knew
him best said he had a heart of gold. He was a capable and
conscientious administrator, and gave to Queensland many years
of devoted service. He settled down at a charming home, Easton
Gray, Toowong, and was a familiar figure for years on the
River Road with his smart phaeton and speedy pair of ponies.
He was a
pastoralist of the purest Merino. He closed his political
career as President of the Legislative Council. No man was
more familiarly known in politics; and his blunt, brusque way
came to be regarded as a matter of course.
On one
occasion I heard him give a well deserved rebuke to a number
of his guests – while he was Lieutenant Governor – at a
Queen’s birthday ball. During the supper, and just before Sir
Arthur Palmer rose to propose the toast of “Her Majesty the
Queen,” a number of the guests rose, and noisily left the
supper room to dance some “extras.” It was a flagrantly
ill-mannered thing to do, but probably was attributable to
want of knowledge of the proprieties.
Sir Arthur
let out with characteristic
frankness, and vainly Lady Palmer sought to quell the
storm. The Lieutenant – Governor had his say, and it was just
as well. He had the sympathy and support of the people
generally. Next day a few of the offenders called at
Government House, and sincerely apologised.
“Well,”
said the Lieutenant-Governor, “I didn’t know you were in it,
but this I will say, that to call and apologise is a dam
decent thing to do.”
Sir Arthur
Palmer on another occasion, and with less justification
perhaps, appeared as a censor morum.
A very fine
distinguished actress was to appear at the Theatre Royal in
Dumas’ play of “The Lady of the Camellias.”
Our
Lieutenant Governor had heard of the play and decided that it
was “nasty”; so under orders, his son and A.D.C., Willie
Palmer, wrote declining the vice-regal patronage, and giving a
frank reason. The letter halted a little grammatically, and
the leading man at the theatre read it out to the audience.
The episode
created a laugh; but the letter, in its sense, was
characteristic. Sir Arthur Palmer, rough of speech as he
sometimes was, would not tolerate anything which he deemed
indecent in literature or art.
Which
reminds me that on the occasion of a big exhibition in
Brisbane certain beautiful specimens of French statuary were
sent through the instrumentality of the secretary, Mr. Jules
Joubert.
The works
were more French than a French bean, and shocked some of the
people on the Exhibition Committee.
It was said
that in deference to the very forcibly expressed views of Sir
Arthur, little calico coulottes were bestowed on the pale,
unconscious marble. I cannot vouch for the truth of the whole
of the story. These little incidents illustrate one side of
the character of the man who was so conspicuous a figure in
our public life, so great a pioneer, so earnest and clean
handed a worker.
Sir Arthur
Palmer was at heart a Puritan, and who is there of us big
enough to throw a flippant word at his memory? Not I, for one.
Why are the memories of great men such as he not perpetuated
in our public places?
The first
Minister for Justice with McIlwraith was John Malbon Thompson,
an Ipswich solicitor, but he retired after about four months.
Mr. Thompson was punctilious, courteous, and much esteemed. He
had served as Lands Minister in the Palmer Government,
1870-73. I did not know him personally.
He was
succeeded by Mr. Ratcliffe Pring Q.C., afterwards Mr. Justice
Pring, under the title of Attorney-General. Pring was a
brilliant lawyer, with lots of Parliamentary experience, for
he had been Attorney General in the Mackenzie Ministry in 1867
and in the Lilley Ministry in 1869. He was a fighter, and a
very successful criminal law advocate. He went to the Supreme
Court Bench before my arrival in Brisbane.
I knew him,
but not very well, and our private talks were mainly about
horses. He had been the owner of some pretty good racing
stuff, and usually rode about Brisbane on a good sort of
roadster, a black about 15 hands being his best.
Mrs. A. V.
Drury was a sister of Mr. Pring. On his elevation to the Bench
he was succeeded as Attorney General by Mr. Henry Rogers Beor,
but that was before my time in Brisbane.
Two men who
were to play important parts in the Australian judiciary were
in succession Attorneys General in the McIlwraith Government –
Pope Alexander Cooper, later Sir Pope, the Chief Justice of
Queensland; and Mr. Charles Edward Chubb, later Mr, Justice
Chubb, of the Supreme Court.
I had met
them both in the North when they were on circuit.
Cooper was
born in New South Wales, had a distinguished school and
University career, and went to the Bar in England. He was a
nephew of Fred. Cooper, also a barrister, who was member for
Cook in our Legislative Assembly.
Pope Cooper
succeeded Beor as member for Bowen. He was not at all keen on
politics, though he did very well in Parliament, and as
Attorney General having first call on the Supreme Court
vacancy, he took it, and did much better on the Bench than was
expected. He was much interested in art, and somewhat in
music. His wife, who predeceased him by a good many years, was
a very fine musician, and published some charming songs with
her own words and music.
On a few
occasions Mrs. Pope Cooper did musical notices for the
“Observer” when I edited it as a morning paper, and notably
one very fine article on the Montague- Turner Opera Co.
Mr. Justice
Chubb, now retired, had always literary tastes, and knew a
good picture. His father, a well-known solicitor, was a
playwright and poet, with an inclination to the humorous.
Succeeding
Pope Cooper for Bowen, Mr. C. E. Chubb was a success in
Parliament. He was an excellent debater, and had the very warm
respect in the Assembly of the severe and somewhat bitter
Griffith Opposition. He was sincere and tolerant and soon
showed the qualities which made his appointment to the Bench
later on a very popular one. In his quiet sober way he had
quite a fund of whimsical humour, and it was said of him that
in his younger days he was never at a loss for a botanical or
Latin name for a plant.
“Of
course,” said Frederick Manson Bailey, the Government
Botanist, “you may call a plant whatever you like, and so long
as people do not understand they are quite satisfied.”
Mr. Justice
Chubb has retired from the bench after a long and very
honourable service. He was born and schooled in England, but
he has been a warm friend of his adopted State.
Mrs. Chubb,
who died some years ago, was a daughter of that very fine
Queenslander, Sheriff McArthur, of the Northern Supreme Court.
Charlie
Hardie Buzacott was Postmaster-General in the first McIlwraith
Government, and certainly, was the father of the Divisional
Boards Act, which gave a remarkably good system of
decentralization within the State. He remained in office for
over a year, and then found his task as managing proprietor of
the Brisbane Newspaper Co. demanded the whole of his time.
It was
remarkable that though Mr. Buzacott had in ordinary
conversation an impediment in his speech he was quite fluent
when on the platform or in Parliament.
He was
succeeded by Boyd Dunlop Morehead, who was Premier in 1888.
Morehead as
a wag – bright and really witty. On an occasion the law firm
of Little and Browne (late Little, Browne and Ruthning) had
done some work for the Government, and presented an account,
which was certainly long and considered “pretty stiff.” Some
talk was indulged in as to the capacity of lawyers. A few days
later a Birds protection Bill was going through Parliament,
and some one asked: “What is your definition of a snipe?”
Morehead
rapped back, “A little brown bird with a very long bill!”
The after
Morehead came F. T. Gregory, on the of the Gregory brothers,
so well known as explorers.
He was a
surveyor, a man of much ability, but rather overshadowed by
his brother, A. C. afterwards Sir A. C. Gregory.
Macrossan
and Perkins I have referred to in a previous chapter.
Albert
Norton succeeded Macrossan as Minister for Mines and Works.
As already
stated Mr. John Douglas was the first in Queensland to bring
prominently to notice the question of land grant railways. The
system later was bitterly opposed by S. W. Griffith, who had
succeeded Mr. Douglas as leader of what was recognised as the
Liberal or Radical Party; but Douglas was always favourable to
it.
Of course,
when McIlwraith introduced his big scheme, termed by one of
its leading active opponents, Mr. H. Hardacre (present member
of the Land Court), “the gridiron scheme,” things had
developed rather unfavourably in Canada. The scandals
associated with the name of Sir John Macdonald (who was
absolutely cleared by a Royal Commission) gave arguments
against the “big syndicate” methods.
It was on
February 4, 1881, that John Douglas called a meeting in
Brisbane to consider the land grant railway question. It was
said then that American capital was available and that a Mr.
McClure, who was in Sydney, was prepared to undertake to
finance a scheme.
Mr. Douglas
suggested as a first proposition a line to Cunnamulla, which
would open up the country and preserve the South-western trade
to Brisbane. The scheme would be under what was known as the
Railway Companies Preliminary Act, which contemplated
alternative offers and conditions.
Mr. Douglas
explained that a line of 500 miles would require from a
company a capital of £500,000, with £50,000 paid up.
The company
would then issue stock bearing interest, and the purchasers of
the stock would then have the option of continuing to receive
interest, taking land as collateral security, or of converting
the stock into land.
The
“Courier” pointed out that there was no definite scheme, but
Mr. Buzacott had favoured the land grant system at the
conference, and mentioned that lines could be built at £2100
per mile.
He saw no
reason why land grant lines should not be constructed right
through the country.
Mr. Gresley
Lukin, it may be mentioned, had been agitating the question in
Melbourne, but he favoured a line opening up the country
explored by the “Queenslander” expedition – Favenc and Briggs
– and this agitation was really the genesis of the definite
Transcontinental Railway, from the terminus at the Queensland
Central Railway to Point Parker.
It may be
observed that had the railways been built on the land grant
system, Queensland would have had only a tithe of her present
public debt, and the land would still have been there for the
purposes of taxation.
And also,
there would have been much closer settlement in the past 35
years over a great part of the State. Did we make a mistake
when we loaded up the people generally with taxes, and as it
seems for all time, by borrowing money for railway building?
It may be
observed that the idea of John Douglas was not to leave the
workings of the railways to a private company, but to allow
the company to build the lines and take land as payment The
idea would shock the perpetual lease advocates, but they may
not be quite so wise as they believe. At any rate our interest
bills and our worry over conversion loans are not dreams.
In 1881 the
Duke of Manchester visited Queensland, and every one hastened
to do him honour, to give him a hearty welcome. The Duke
enjoyed his visit to the country places, he spied out
land-grant railway matters, and became interested in some
pastoral properties.
He was a
stranger, and we “took him in.” One story is told of his
inspection of a far West property, where there was a charming
host and a rally of the host’s pals, all real good sorts. The
place was sparsely stocked, but the books didn’t show that,
and as the Duke was taken out to see the cattle little mobs
were deftly moved from place to place, and really Wingeroo, or
whatever was the name of the run, seemed to carry about 50
head to the mile.
Once the
Duke stopped and said: “Mr. Blank, these cattle are
wonderfully alike.”
“Just a matter of breeding, your Grace,” was the ready
reply. “We breed from the best Shorthorn strains in the
country, and the stock varies little.” It is related that the
cattle were “blacks, browns and brindles” and all other
colours. I fancy the Duke did not buy the run.
At another
place he met R. W. Stuart, “Dick” Stuart, noted as an artist,
horseman, and rough rider. Stuart had a few quiet bullocks,
and on a camp to show how well cared for the cattle were, he
caught an occasional beast and mounted it. On another
occasion, to make up a four-in-hand team for a short run with
the Duke, Stuart put a bullock in near side on the pole.
Another
story of the Duke was told me at Roma in the days when Mount
Abundance was so hospitable a centre and “Jock” Robertson was
cock-of-the-walk.
Bridget was
pressed into the service as housemaid and to wait at the
table. She was very good, but a wee bit rough. It was
explained to her very carefully, “Now Bridget, before you ask
the Duke anything you must say ‘Your Grace’
At table
Bridget was handing round vegetables, and when she came to the
Duke she said, “For what we are about to receive, etc will you
have a spud?”