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To lay the foundations of a colony ‘Sept 1st.1824. With a light breeze from the westward we weighed and quitted the port (Port Jackson) and made an offering to the NNE on our voyage ... to plant or lay the foundation of a colony on some eligible spot on the shores of Moreton Bay ...’1 Those were the words of the botanist and explorer Allan Cunningham, written as he travelled aboard the Amity, bound for Moreton Bay with Queensland’s first European settlers. Other passengers on the ship included the New South Wales Surveyor-General, Lieutenant John Oxley; his assistant Robert Hoddle; Lieutenant Henry Miller as Commandant of the new settlement, Miller’s wife Jane and their two sons; Lieutenant Butler; 14 soldiers, some with their wives; a storekeeper and his assistant; and 29 convicts. On 14 September 1824, the Amity anchored off Redcliffe (called Red Cliff at first) and the settlement party landed. Oxley chose a settlement site within the triangle now created by Anzac Avenue, Redcliffe Parade and Humpybong Creek, where the main attraction was the availability of fresh water. There, over the next few months, a house was built for Commandant Henry Miller, as well as one barracks complex each for the soldiers and the convicts, a store and a few smaller buildings, including a gaol. Adjacent the gaol was a fixture that no convict station of the time could be without – a whipping post. Over the next few months, about 40 hectares were cleared for farming but it was Left: General Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, in 1845. It is fitting that Queensland’s capital was named after him – he was the patron of the first European settlement at Moreton Bay. Below: The small beginnings at the convict settlement in Brisbane town, 1835. View from the south bank of the river, to what is now Brisbane’s central business district.
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wasted effort because the soil was hungry and unproductive. The prospects of the place ever becoming self-sufficient were obviously forlorn from the outset but it was the beginning of modern Queensland. It was an unlikely start for a new society in the north. In September 1824 it might have seemed even more improbable that, just 35 years later, the Moreton Bay settlement would become the capital of the new colony of Queensland, separate from New South Wales and a place with its own distinct destiny. Unlikely, improbable, but not completely unforeseen. Even in 1824, there were hopes, even plans, that the new settlement at Moreton Bay would one day be much more than a penal station. Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales from early 1821 to the end of 1825, was, like Lachlan Macquarie, Patrick Logan and many other men who had a profound influence on embryonic Queensland, a Scottish soldier. They were men whose backgrounds and military service in Europe, America and India had equipped them with a broader world view than was common
at the time. Brisbane had instructions from London to start a penal settlement at Moreton Bay but he looked beyond that limited objective. Brisbane insisted that a site suitable to eventually receive and maintain ‘a great number of persons’ should be chosen and convicts sent there only as a temporary expedient, ‘the best means of paving the way for the introduction of a free population.’2 Brisbane was an effective patron of the new settlement and it is fitting that the capital of the state that grew from his vision should bear his name. The governor’s ambitions for Moreton Bay reflected an opinion about Australia’s future that had been gathering strength since before the First Fleet had set sail for New South Wales in 1787. Even then, some people thought
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Above: They revealed the unknown. William Landsborough (left) described the pastures of the central west. Ludwig Leichhardt (centre) travelled from the Darling Downs to the far north in 1844-45; he disappeared in 1848, provoking numerous searches that greatly expanded geographical knowledge. Edmund Kennedy (right) was with Thomas Mitchell in 1845-46; he made his own expedition to the Barcoo and Cooper Creek in 1847 and then was killed in 1848 while exploring on Cape York. Right: John McKinlay explored Queensland’s far west in 1861, during a search for Burke and Wills.
chapter two – to lay the foundationS of a colony
that the intended convict settlement in the Antipodes should one day be more than that; that it should be allowed to become a place where a new community, a free society, would develop with the full British inheritance of social and economic freedom under the rule of law. In the meantime, New South Wales was to be a Crown Colony, administered by governors who took their instructions from the British government via the Colonial Secretary. There might have been additional reasons for the British decision to send convicts to Botany Bay but, as King George the Third explained in his speech to Parliament in January 1787, the primary motive for the venture was ‘to remove the inconvenience which arose from the crowded state of the gaols in different parts of the Kingdom.’3 That inconvenience had arisen because, since the American revolution, it was no longer possible to send convicts to the north American colonies. By Letters Patent dated 25 April 1787, Captain Arthur Phillip was appointed Governor of New South Wales. He and his successors were empowered to make orders for the good government of the colony, entirely within their own discretion and subject only to the requirement that such orders should conform with British law unless the particular circumstances ‘clearly authorised a deviation.’4 Thus, the early governors were, in effect, given the authority to make laws for the colony – an authority that would normally have been entrusted to a parliament. The early governors of New South Wales in practice had greater powers than could have been exercised by the monarch within Britain itself. Governor Phillip and his immediate successors, Governors Hunter, King, Bligh, Macquarie and Brisbane (for a time) were thus autocrats, with sweeping powers to make laws and administer them. While the new colony was, in effect, to be a military dictatorship, British5 law and the fundamental principles underlying it were to apply. Even the convicts were to have the benefit of the law and they were entitled to look to the governor to uphold their rights. Their civil rights were constrained and partially suspended by their convictions and sentences but they were always entitled to due legal process, rough and ready though those processes might sometimes have been in early New South Wales. Absolutism was necessary in the context of a remote colonial prison managed by soldiers. However, it was also a context of emerging liberalism, a time when British people were beginning to jealously compare their freedoms with those in other countries. Freedoms and legal rights were being seen as precious things, part of the distinctively British heritage. Even in New South Wales, settlers who were not soldiers or convicts were heard to say that they ‘did not care for the Governor or the Orders of the colony – they were free men, and would do as they pleased’.6 There were critics of colonial absolutism in England too. Many said that the American colonies had been lost because Britain failed to respond to legitimate colonial claims for rights and freedoms. Certainly, the American revolution was an episode that vividly demonstrated to British authorities that they could only ignore colonists’ perceptions of their rights and liberties at their extreme peril. Then came the French Revolution and the even wider propagation of notions of the rights of man and inviolable individual freedoms, ambitions
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for representative government, responsible government and even a republic. It was a time of intellectual ferment, a time when liberal ideas were being listened to with increasing sympathy – or anxiety. The trend of the times, the rise of powerful new ideas is indicated by the fact that in 1794 the author Tom Paine was charged with sedition and had to flee England following the publication of his book The Rights of Man. There was not yet tolerance for such a challenge to the established order. In 1859, just as Queensland was being separated, John Stuart Mill’s book On Liberty and Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species were both published and acclaimed, tolerated as well as condemned. The liberals had won the debate with the conservatives; the old regimes that had fought to reinforce the established order and to suppress dissent had given way to an open society in which individuals were free to pursue knowledge and happiness with minimal interference by the state. This new spirit of the age was to be a potent force for change in the new land that was becoming Australia. It was to strongly influence the course of affairs in New South Wales, including the region that was to become Queensland. It spurred changes in the roles of the governors, transforming them from Below: The Archer homestead at Durundur. The Archers were among the first settlers to seek country beyond the Darling Downs, first in the upper reaches of the Brisbane Valley.
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autocrats into local heads of a constitutional monarchy within a democratic system of representative government where the governors acted on the advice of ministers who were responsible to parliament. The position of the governors would evolve into the local parallel of that of the monarch in Britain. In retrospect, we can see that the changes came remarkably quickly. In 1787, Governor Phillip had been given the powers to act as an absolute monarch. In 1859, the position of Queensland’s first governor, Sir George Bowen, was a vice-regal one – he was to act within Queensland in place of the monarch. He had no greater powers than the monarch in Britain; like the monarch his powers were to be limited by constitutional arrangements that ensured the rule of law and prohibited absolutism. It had been a remarkable transition in just seventy years. However, the change had not occurred in a straight line, there had been ebbs and flows of philosophy and policy. One of the ebbs back toward absolutism had been the cause of Queensland’s creation. A short lived regression to absolutism had resulted from the sharp rise in criminal convictions in Britain that followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the consequent surge in unemployment. Convicts were being sent to New South Wales in increasing numbers but the cry often heard in Britain was that transportation had lost its terror, that under the liberal Governor Macquarie convicts in Australia were more comfortable and had better futures than they would ever have had in Britain. It was said that a convict could be transported, work for an assigned master for a few years and then get a ticket of leave that might also be a ticket to becoming a wealthy and respectable man. Not punishment at all, the critics said. In response, the Secretary for Colonies, Lord Bathurst, sent John Bigge to the colony to review the state of affairs and recommend changes. ‘The prospect of Transportation to Australia must once again become an object of real Terror at Home and must outweigh all considerations of economic or social growth of Australia as a colony’ Bathurst directed Bigge.7 Moreton Bay, to become Queensland, was brought into existence by these chilling words. Bigge duly recommended that the existing system should be toughened and that the worst cases among the convicts, those who refused to submit to discipline or committed further offences after arriving in the colony, should be sent to special penal stations, far from Sydney. They should be places where remoteness would deter escape and where severity would instil ‘salutary terror.’ 8 Northern regions would be especially suitable; the ‘punitive tropics’ were thought to be places where the hostile bush and even more hostile Aborigines would be powerful deterrents to escape. Convict gangs would clear the bush; when they had finished the convicts would move out and settlers could move in.9 Bigge’s recommendations were endorsed by the British government but not by Macquarie, who returned home at the end of 1821. He was replaced by Sir Thomas Brisbane, the man who should be regarded as Queensland’s founding father. Brisbane, a distinguished soldier and astronomer, came to Sydney with instructions to tighten up the convict system and especially to implement
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Bigge’s suggestions for distant penal outstations. To do that, Brisbane needed to identify a suitable venue. In October 1823 Brisbane sent the colony’s Surveyor General, John Oxley, north to look for possible convict station sites at places that had been described by the earlier explorers James Cook and Matthew Flinders. The story of Oxley’s explorations of Moreton Bay and the Brisbane River in November and December 1823 has been well described by several scholars.10 So has the story of Oxley’s report to Governor Brisbane and the decision to establish a convict station in Moreton Bay. Because of that decision, on 1 September 1824 the Amity set sail on its voyage north. On 17 September 1824, just three days after the Amity had arrived at Redcliffe, Oxley and Cunningham set out to further explore the Brisbane River. Then, on 10 October, Oxley, Cunningham and others returned to Sydney. There, Oxley’s report further excited Governor Brisbane’s interest in the northern satellite. On 3 November 1824, Brisbane wrote to Lord Bathurst – ‘I propose to visit the newly discovered River and Country at Morton Bay, with a view of determining by personal observation the comparative benefits, which may result to the Mother Country from its being converted into a penal settlement, or left open to the purposes of Colonization and Commerce. ... At the same time, I hope to be able to furnish Your Lordship with a more particular account of the Climate, Soil, Natural Productions and Commercial capacities of Morton Bay and of the recently discovered River Brisbane.’ 11 Brisbane set out almost immediately, aboard the Amity with a party that included Oxley, Chief Justice Francis Forbes, Captain John McArthur (son of the John McArthur of Rum Corps and Merino fame) and Francis Stephen, the Clerk to the Executive Council. It was to be the first vice-regal visit to what is now Queensland and it had a momentous outcome. Oxley took the party up the Brisbane River, this time to about Seventeen Mile Rocks. On the way, the governor carefully noted the area around the junction of Breakfast Creek with the river and agreed with Oxley that it would be a far better settlement site than Redcliffe. That view was reinforced when, at Redcliffe, it became apparent that Miller and his settlers were much troubled by ‘natives’ who stole tools and other articles at every opportunity. ‘As a result, the Commandant has been obliged to keep them at a respectful distance.’ 12 The ‘natives’ were regarded with respect and not a little awe by the Redcliffe soldiers and convicts. There are several descriptions of them being considerably taller and more powerful than the Aborigines the white men had hitherto encountered further south. Robert Hoddle wrote ‘The natives were a fine looking race of men ... in general very friendly, but anxious to possess all they saw on our persons ... In the interior they were troublesome and thievish to the party who accompanied Mr. Oxley, which compelled them to resort to violent measures. They were liable to sudden gusts of passion ... yet a little management restores them to good humour. They were very jealous and never suffered their women to approach us. A white man, Parsons, who had been cast away on the Coast lived amongst them for nearly two years and received very kind treatment. They furnished him with food ... Nature supplies their wants in abundance. They lived in families, their huts were built of bark, with some regard to convenience ...’ 13 Oxley wrote that some of the men he saw along the Brisbane River were some of ‘the strongest and best-made muscular men I have seen in any country.’ 14
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Below: The junction of Breakfast Creek (at right) and the Brisbane River from Toorak Hill, about 1875. This area had been suggested as the main settlement site when the convict station at Redcliffe was closed down.
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chapter two – to lay the foundationS of a colony
We will never know how many Aboriginal people might have lived in the area that was to become Queensland when the white settlers first arrived. We do know that the Aborigines lived in confederations of family groups that were part of larger groups sometimes called ‘tribes’ but perhaps more accurately called language groups. Their governors were their spirit ancestors who had ordained their laws and rules of social organisation in the Dreamtime, the creative time when those ancestors made the world as the Aborigines inherited it. At Moreton Bay, the first Aboriginal reaction to the white incomers was one of curiosity and cautious welcome, in the belief that the white men brought with them goods that would greatly improve their standard of living. The Aborigines were attracted to the Redcliffe settlement, and then to Brisbane, especially when the white men began growing crops. Conflict broke out when the Aborigines got to the crops before the white men did. Violence also often resulted when convicts escaped – the authorities had promised the Aborigines lavish rewards for the return of escapees; the escapees employed desperate measures to avoid capture by the Aborigines.
Left: King Sandy in 1899. Originally from the Toorbul Point area, when he died at Wynnum in 1900 he was described as one of the last of the Brisbane district Aborigines. Above: Timber-getting, probably on Fraser Island. A photograph by Richard Daintree, who made a splendid pictorial record of colonial Queensland.
Brisbane and the other governors all had stern instructions from Britain to treat the Aborigines with fairness and compassion. In 1824, when the physical area of white occupation was still narrowly confined, those instructions largely took care of themselves. Later, as we will see, the governors’ task of reconciling their instructions and their consciences with the demands for settlement expansion proved to be all but impossible. Untroubled, for the moment, by these considerations, Brisbane returned to Sydney. On 4 December 1824, the governor expressed himself to the Sydney Gazette newspaper to be ‘amazingly gratified with the excursion; and, from the knowledge He has been personally able to acquire, there can be little doubt but that Australia will, at no distant period, derive considerable and lasting
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benefit. ... We are credibly informed that His Excellency intends ... the removal of the present temporary settlement [to] about nine miles from the mouth of the Brisbane.’15 This was a site on the north bank of the river, between the mouth of Breakfast Creek and Toorak Hill. In February 1825, Brisbane directed Miller to dismantle the Redcliffe settlement and take everything that could be moved to a new site on the Brisbane River. The settlement was relocated in May 1825 (although there is some doubt about the exact date),16 not to Breakfast Creek but instead to a spot further upstream, on the north bank of the river in the locality around the present William Street in Brisbane city. The future of the new town was very much in Miller’s hands. As commandant, he was the delegate of the governor in the new settlement; he was the de facto governor. The governor had given him written instructions but the distance from Sydney meant that in practice the whole responsibility for the planning and management of the new settlement fell on Miller’s shoulders alone. In addition, Miller and the later commandants were appointed magistrates and the discharge of that office added to Miller’s workload. Although he was only a Lieutenant of the 40th Regiment, Miller was a very experienced soldier who had fought with distinction with the Duke of Wellington in many of the bloodiest battles of the Peninsular War, including Waterloo. He would have risen to higher rank but for the huge surplus of military officers once the Napoleonic Wars ended. Miller worked hard to re-establish the settlement on its new site. Within a few months he had erected his own Commandant’s Cottage, on the present site of the old Government Printing Office, between William and George Streets. As the residence of the senior official in the settlement, it was often called Government House and it was the venue for official entertaining. Governor Darling stayed there when he visited Brisbane in 1827, as did Governor Gipps in 1842.17 Not surprisingly, the odds were against Miller and progress was slow, too slow for Governor Brisbane, who recalled Miller in August 1825 and replaced him with Captain Peter Bishop. Bishop was only at Brisbane for a few months before, in March 1826, he was replaced by Captain Patrick Logan. Logan was certainly the most effective and most controversial of all Moreton Bay’s commandants. His achievement was that while Brisbane was but a makeshift, temporary place when he arrived, within four years he transformed it into a town that would soon aspire to being a colonial capital. The Moreton Bay establishment began to grow rapidly. By the end of 1826 there were 145 convicts in Brisbane; by 1830 there were 925.18 Logan began a development program that included the ‘New Farm’ and another farm; an improved water supply, a wharf and buildings that included a proper hospital, diverse living quarters and new barracks. He had William Street made into a formed road; he established a quarry on the Kangaroo Point cliffs and he opened a cemetery near what became Petrie Terrace. A government garden was commenced in 1828, later to evolve into the Botanic Gardens. Logan was also an enthusiastic explorer who added considerably to geographic knowledge of the Moreton Bay hinterland.
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Above: Map of Brisbane in 1844, by C.F. Gerler, with Gerler’s key. A town was being built on foundations laid by the convicts. 1 Andrew Petrie 2 Handel, cattle drover 3 Savory, the only baker 4 Bensteads, sawyers 5 T. Richardson, the only general store 6 Convict barracks 7 W. Kent (druggist shop) 8 Fitzpatrick (the first chief constable) 9 The lock up 10 The Constable’s place (only two in all) 11 Slate’s Post Office 12 Slate’s pineapple garden 13 Church of England 14 The hospital 15 Mort, the milkman 16 Wright’s hotel
17 General cemetery 18 Tread and windmill 19 Edmonston’s paddock 20 Old R. Jones 21 Dr Simpson (the first Commissioner) 22 Old Major Prior 23 The Gaol 24 Skyring’s Beehives (soft goods shop) 25 Hayes, milkman 26 Brothers Fraser (first house) 27 The Catholic church 28 McLean’s blacksmith’s shop 29 Edmonston’s butcher 30 Bow’s hotel 31 Taylor Shappart 32 Montifeur, financier
33 W. Pickering 34 Sergeant Jones 35 Soldiers Barracks 36 Officer de Winton 37 Commission stores 38 Queen’s wharf 39 Captain Wickham’s office 40 Commissioner T. Kent 41 Commissioner’s garden 42 Captain Coley 43 Government gardens 44 Father Hanley (the only priest) 45 Saw pits 46 Queen Street 47 The boat house and boatman’s House 48 The first tombstone (two graves)
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Logan’s 1827 selection of Limestone Hills (called Ipswich after 1843) as the site for a limekiln and sheep station was to prove especially significant. Colonial Botanist Charles Fraser visited the locality in 1828 and noted that it was a place ‘which will at no distant period be the principal key to the internal communications of this most interesting part of Australia.’19 Fraser was right. In 1828 Alan Cunningham had confirmed a route from Moreton Bay, through the gap which was given Cunningham’s name, to the rich lands of the Darling Downs that Cunningham had first described in the previous year, following an overland expedition via the New England region. Once pastoral settlement began on the Darling Downs in 1840, the Cunningham’s Gap route became vitally important and Ipswich was poised to evolve as a commercial centre for the pastoralists of the interior. Today, Logan’s monuments and the most vivid evocations of Brisbane’s convict past are two buildings – the Commissariat Store on the river bank below
William Street (built 1828-29) and the windmill on Wickham Terrace (built 1829). But, unfortunately for Logan’s reputation, the Brisbane of his time became notorious and is still imagined as a place of truly terrible severity, a place where ‘excessive tyranny’ prevailed. There is room for argument whether Logan really was a cruel, sadistic tyrant, whether in the Brisbane of his time the sound of the lash really was incessantly heard; but it is clear that at the very least Logan was a man who applied discipline to the cruel limits of the standards of the day. In October 1830, Logan and his soldiers were about to leave Moreton Bay, on transfer to India. Logan decided to undertake one last exploring expedition. There was rejoicing among the convicts in Brisbane when they got word that, on 17 October 1830, Logan had been killed by Aborigines, at a place not far from the present town of Esk.
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Above left: The Sophia Jane, the second steam powered vessel to come to Moreton Bay. Like many sailing ships that were converted to steam, she retained her sailing rigging – just in case. Above right: The Commissariat Stores building (in centre, with pediment). An extra storey was added in 1912. The Commissariat Wharf, later called Queen’s Wharf, is shown on the riverbank below.
chapter two – to lay the foundationS of a colony
Five more commandants were to follow Logan (Clunie, 1830-35; Fyans 1835-37; Cotton, 1837-39, Gravatt, 1839, and Gorman, 1839-42) before Moreton Bay was opened to free settlement in 1842. Moreton Bay contained its largest number of convicts (947) in 1831. From 1832 the numbers dwindled, until in 1836 there were only 368 convicts at the place. The figures included many women – 135 women are known to have been sentenced to Moreton Bay between 1829 and 1837. They were housed in a ‘female factory’ on the present site of the General Post Office in Queen Street until 1837, when they
Above: The windmill, viewed from South Brisbane, about 1835. Built in 1828-29, the wooden windmill sails were intended to power millstones for grinding grain. At first, the windmill did not function properly and instead convicts were put to work on a treadmill to provide the necessary power. The windmill dominated Brisbane’s skyline for many decades. It was later used as a weather observatory and, in the 1930s, it was used for television transmission experiments. Right: Captain Patrick Logan may or may not have been a cruel tyrant, but he was certainly a very effective administrator and was responsible for laying Brisbane’s foundations.
were moved to Eagle Farm. Some had their children with them – in 1831 there were 43 children at Moreton Bay altogether, including the children of soldiers as well as those of convicts.20 There had been civilian officials attached to the convict settlement, but Andrew Petrie is generally described as Brisbane’s first free settler. He arrived with his wife, Mary, and young family in August 1837, aboard the James Watt, the first
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steam powered vessel to enter Moreton Bay. As Superintendent of Works, he overhauled and improved much of the settlement’s infrastructure. Petrie’s distinction was that he saw there would be opportunities in Brisbane once it became a free settlement. He stayed, and made remarkable contributions as a designer, builder, public works contractor and explorer. Other civilians came in 1838. Sydney’s fiery Presbyterian evangelist and political radical, Reverend Dr John Dunmore Lang, was keenly interested in the northern settlement and he saw a need for mission work among the Aborigines there. He arranged for a party of German Lutheran missionaries to come to Moreton Bay to establish a mission at a place the missionaries called Zion Hill, now the Brisbane suburb of Nundah. They were Queensland’s first missionaries and its first successful agriculturalists. By the time the Germans arrived, the convict apparatus was winding down. The end of transportation from Britain to New South Wales had been foreshadowed and the official enthusiasm for maintaining the northern outpost was wilting. Transportation to New South Wales ceased in August 1840, although the British government continued to send convicts to Van Diemen’s Land and Norfolk Island. Governor Bourke had been shrinking the Moreton Bay establishment since 1837. In May 1839, Bourke’s successor Governor Gipps decreed that almost all the convicts remaining at Moreton Bay should be withdrawn, leaving just a small number of officials and convicts to care for government assets pending the opening of the area to free settlement. There would be an interval before free settlement could begin, while surveyors did the work needed to make town planning and land sales possible. The chronicler of Brisbane’s early history, J.J. Knight, wrote ‘the heavy dark cloud which hovered over the settlement for 16 long, dark years lifted and revealed to view, not the exclusive haunt of the felon, but a home destined for the free man.’21 The end of the convict era at Moreton Bay meant, in the short term, a sharp drop in population, to about 200 convicts, officials and ‘free persons.’22 Throughout the convict period there had been a prohibition on free people approaching within fifty miles of the Moreton Bay settlement without special permission. The prohibition was not officially lifted until May 1842 but, in the meantime, permission to enter the settlement seems to have become easier to obtain. In 1840, ten free men came to settle in Brisbane – presumably, they were allowed to do this because they brought necessary skills or services to the place. In 1840, a 60 ton schooner, the John, began plying regularly between Sydney and Brisbane. On 19 October 1840, a small quantity of goods was carried from Brisbane by pack bullocks, over the Great Dividing Range via Cunningham’s Gap, to new pastoral stations on the Darling Downs.23 Those pastoral stations were then but a few months old. In early 1840, land seeker Patrick Leslie had ventured north to look at the Darling Downs region that, 13 years before, had been lavishly praised by Allan Cunningham for its pastoral possibilities. Leslie was enraptured by what he saw. He and his kinsmen wasted no time bringing flocks to the new area, establishing Canning Downs and Toolburra as the first pastoral stations in what was
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Main image: Wool being carted from the outback toward the coast, for shipment to Britain. The ‘golden fleece’ financed Queensland’s early development and drove the expansion of settlement. Top right: Sheep in Queensland’s central-west – ‘put all your money into four feet,’ men said. Centre right: Proud of his craft – shearer Jim Morris with his blade shears, Tara district. Below right: Shearing with the ‘blades’ on Vindex station, near Winton.
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to become Queensland. Journalist Theophilus Pugh observed in his 1859 Moreton Bay Almanac – ‘The Messrs. Leslie were the individuals who thus acted as the pioneers of their pastoral brethren, and the tale of their success soon brought a host of others. Flock after flock, herd after herd, came pouring in until the Downs was fully occupied, and the more adventurous and enterprising found themselves compelled to push further out into the unexplored wilderness.’ It was an exciting time, the whole of Australia was in a ferment of sheep-growing ... put everything into four feet, men cried.’ Waves of pastoralists came north to claim country where they could find it, each wave pushing beyond the previous edge of settlement. In 1841, the pastoralists crossed the Great Dividing Range from the Darling Downs and began claiming country in the Brisbane Valley. By May 1842, there were 45 stations in the Moreton Bay hinterland and 1,800 bales of wool had already
Left: Dr John Dunmore Lang, standing at right, addressing the New South Wales Legislative Council. Lang was a strong advocate for separation of the northern part of New South Wales. Above, and above right: The brothers Benjamin (at left) and Robert Cribb. In 1849, they were among the Fortitude migrants and, like many others who arrived on that vessel, they made a difference to Queensland. Benjamin founded the Ipswich business that became Cribb and Foote; Robert was a Brisbane Council alderman and a Member of the Legislative Assembly.
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been shipped out of Brisbane.24 In 1843, the pastoralists pushed north into the Burnett then, by 1854, into the Dawson and Fitzroy districts. They moved out to the western edge of the Darling Downs, then even further out, to the Maranoa and toward the Warrego district. On the eve of Queensland’s separation in 1859, all the useful country between Rockhampton and the Warrego and from thence east to Brisbane had been claimed. Within that settled area, new communities began to evolve, towns were born, tracks linked the towns and the Queensland we know today began to take its shape. From the Leslies’ small beginnings, by 1858 there were 3.5 million sheep in the area of the future colony, 450,000 cattle and 20,000 horses. Wool was the staple export.25 Wool gave validity to claims that before long the northern part of New South Wales would be able to stand on its own feet, and should be allowed to do so. The pastoral expansion immediately quickened the tempo of affairs in Brisbane. Sydney merchants became interested in the profits that might be had from trade with the pastoralists via Brisbane. On 11 December 1841, the New South Wales Colonial Secretary, Edward Deas-Thomson, wrote to John Williams of Sydney authorising Williams to open ‘a store in Brisbane Town, Moreton Bay.’26 A few months later, a fortnightly paddle steamer service began running between Sydney and Brisbane.27 After a long delay in obtaining approval from London, the first sale of Brisbane lands was held in December 1842. The sales made it possible for a free economy to begin to develop.28 The convict era had officially ended in May 1842 when the restraints on free settlement were lifted and when the last Commandant, Lieutenant Owen Gorman, handed control of Moreton Bay to a civilian magistrate, Dr Stephen Simpson, who was also Commissioner for Crown Lands. In January 1843, retired naval officer John Clements Wickham took over from Simpson. A serious economic depression afflicted the whole of New South Wales from 1842, but the financial difficulties did not seem to diminish the keen interest in sales of land in Brisbane and Ipswich. A more serious handicap to the development of Moreton Bay, now taken to include the whole settled area between the Tweed and Mary Rivers and west to the edge of the Darling Downs, was the shortage of labour that followed the end of the convict period. There were local people, pastoralists in particular, who argued for the reintroduction of convicts to solve the labour shortage. The British government also wanted a place to which it could send ‘exiles,’ as convicts were now being called. In November 1849 and May 1850, 517 exiles were landed at Moreton Bay – the Bangalore, the second of the two ships that brought the men from England, arrived in May 1850. It was the last convict transport ship to come to the eastern mainland of Australia.29 The exiles were given conditional pardons and were easily able to find employment, mostly on pastoral stations. They were virtually free men, as long as they did not attempt to return to Britain. Most of them seem to have merged into the general population. That population was burgeoning. A census on 2 March 1846 showed that the ‘Northern Districts’ – Moreton Bay, the Darling Downs, and ‘outside areas’ (including some northern rivers areas) – contained 2,525 people. By the next census in 1851, the population had swelled to 8,375.30 This included the exiles, but they were heavily outnumbered by free immigrants who had come north
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from southern parts of New South Wales and by the free immigrants who, from 1848, began arriving by ship direct from Britain. These free immigrants, especially the more than 600 people31 who arrived in 1849 aboard the ships Fortitude, Lima and Chasely under a scheme organised by Dr John Dunmore Lang, completely changed the social character of the Moreton Bay region. Lang’s immigrants comprised a high proportion of educated, non-conformist tradesmen and small business people. Imbued with Lang’s ideas, they were fiercely against renewed transportation of convicts, not only because they feared competition in the labour market but, more fundamentally, because they wanted to live in a free, moral and law abiding society. Many of these immigrants were to become prominent in public affairs in the new colony. ‘No more important was the arrival of the Mayflower to America than the arrival of these three ships to Queensland.’32 The economic depression started to lift from 1848; the population was growing and Moreton Bay was acquiring the commercial and public
Below: Newstead House, from O’Reilly’s Hill, in about 1872. Built by Patrick Leslie, the house became Brisbane’s de facto ‘Government House’ after it was acquired by Leslie’s brother-in-law, the Government Resident John Clements Wickham. Right: Patrick Leslie – in 1840, he was probably the first man to bring sheep to Queensland’s pastures.
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chapter two – to lay the foundationS of a colony
institutions that a free society needed. The Moreton Bay Courier newspaper had begun publication in 1846; a Moreton Bay District Association was formed to advocate the advancement of all the interests of the district; the first Circuit Court sittings of the New South Wales Supreme Court was held in Brisbane in May 1850; land sales were held in Drayton and Warwick in 1850 and a bank opened in Brisbane. Maryborough, where an improvised port had opened in about 1845, had become a flourishing town. Other towns were emerging. Their progress is reflected in the 1851 and 1856 census figures33 – Town
1851 population
1856 population
Brisbane
2543
4395
Ipswich
932
2459
Drayton
200
263
Warwick
267
472
Dalby Maryborough Gayndah Gladstone Toowoomba (estimated)
109 299
353
92
152 224 1000
By 1853, the new status of Moreton Bay was recognised when John Wickham was appointed Government Resident (in effect, deputy for the governor), the new title indicating recognition of the northern district’s coherent identity and acknowledging the growth that had occurred. Wickham and his family had lived at first in the old Commandants’ Cottage but, in about 1848, they moved into Newstead House which had been built two years earlier by Wickham’s brother-in-law, Patrick Leslie. Newstead House became Brisbane’s de facto Government House, where the town’s most impressive social occasions were held and where governors came to stay. The recognition extended to Moreton Bay may have been an acknowledgement by the Sydney government of the strength of the separation movement in the northern district. The tide of official opinion was now running strongly in favour of self-government in the colonies. In 1850, the Australian Constitutions Act provided for the separation of Port Phillip (to become Victoria) and stated that the area in the north of New South Wales could also be detached and formed into a separate colony, upon the petition of householders in that part of the mother colony. The legislation made it clear that the separated areas could move toward responsible selfgovernment – they would not be Crown Colonies, subject to government by a governor acting on instructions form London. Instead, they would be given full responsibility for their own internal affairs. The separation of Victoria was a powerful example for the north. On 8 January 1851, Dr Lang convened a meeting in Brisbane to consider the possibility of separation for Moreton Bay. There was enthusiastic support. The Moreton Bay and Northern Districts Separation Association was formed and separation became a lively issue. However, opinions about the merits of separation were sharply divided.
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Part One – Laying the Foundations
The decisive opinion was clearly going to be that of the British government. Petitions and counter petitions were got up; representations were made from Moreton Bay by every available means. The general view emerged in Britain that smaller areas within a large colony should have separation and responsible self-government as soon as it became apparent that the interests of the smaller place could not be adequately catered for by existing arrangements; the British authorities thought New South Wales as it was in the early 1850s was far too large for administrative efficiency. The New South Wales Constitution Act of 1855, which established responsible self-government in the parent colony, made provision for separation of portions of the colony by altering the northern boundary. If a portion of New South Wales was so separated – It shall be lawful for Her Majesty, by letters patent to be from time to time issued under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to erect into a separate colony or colonies any territories which may be separated from New South Wales by such alteration as aforesaid of the northern boundary thereof; and in and by such letters patent, or by order in council, to make provision for the government of any such colony and for the establishment of a legislature therein, and full power shall be given in any by such letters patent or order in council to the Legislature of the said colony to make further provision in that behalf. By this enactment, the way was opened for the creation of a separate northern colony by simple administrative action.34 All that was necessary was a ministerial decision. The in-principle decision for separation was taken in 1856, but housekeeping concerning such matters as boundaries and financial adjustments had to be tidied up before separation could be finally ordered and the new colony ‘erected.’ On 6 June 1859, Queen Victoria signed the Letters Patent that approved the creation of the new colony and appointed Sir George Ferguson Bowen its governor. Five weeks later, the steamer Clarence paddled up the Brisbane River with the word Separation painted on its hull. The Moreton Bay Courier published a joyful poem – Good news has come to Brisbane Town Hurrah for Separation; Tis really true, we tell it you Without exaggeration. We shall have for our Governor – ’Twill please you the relation – Sir George Ferguson Bowen, now Cheer, make it long, you sought it long, Loud be your acclamation Till echo bound the joyful sound Beyond the furthest station. The time was seen, God bless our Queen Victoria thy donation We thankful own, bind to thy throne Today the new born nation.
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chapter two – to lay the foundationS of a colony
We fervent bend to Heaven, send Our ardent supplication That God may bless with peace and rest, This favoured infant nation. Brisbane, be seen, now show to them, To all the wide creation That we are men, most worthy men To be extolled a nation.35
Above: ‘The Squatter Taking His Ease’ at Woroongundi station – watercolour by Charles Archer. The writing desk in the centre was used by the Archer brothers to write detailed letters to relatives in Scotland and Norway.
Not quite yet an infant nation. Queenslanders had to await the arrival of their new governor, who would formally proclaim the separation of the colony and announce the arrangements for its erection. Since 1824, the foundations had been laid. Now they were ready for the erection of the pre-fabricated system of government that Sir George Bowen would bring with him to Brisbane on 10 December 1859.
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