Chapter 3

part two – Sovereigns and Ambassadors

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chapter three – We hail, with triumphant joy, this Glorious Event

We hail, with triumphant joy, this glorious event ‘We, reposing special trust and confidence in the prudence, courage and loyalty of you, the said Sir George Ferguson Bowen, ... have thought fit to constitute and appoint ... you ... to be, during our will and pleasure, our Captain General1 and Governor-in-Chief in and over our said colony of Queensland.’ 2 Queen Victoria’s appointment of Sir George Bowen as the first Governor of Queensland followed a procedure that was already long established and was to continue, almost unchanged, until very recent times. The colonial governors, and later the governors of states, were and are representatives of the monarch and thus it was and is within the monarch’s personal prerogative to appoint and dismiss them.

In exercising that prerogative, Queen Victoria and her successors acted on the advice of the British government. That in effect meant the Colonial Office, a powerful government department that was first established to manage colonial affairs in North America and was the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Colonies, usually known as the Colonial Secretary.

The governors who came to Queensland through the colonial period (and even long afterwards) were selected from within a narrow group of ‘suitable’ people. They were aristocrats or at least well connected ‘gentlemen’, or they were military officers; they had sometimes held political office or public service positions in Britain; some of them needed a salaried career and what better career than being a governor? Others were independently wealthy and simply wanted to serve the Empire in a useful and distinguished way. In many cases, there was a mix of all these characteristics and motivations.

There was a hierarchy of governorships – the appointment to Queensland was relatively junior, New South Wales was better, but a posting to India was a glittering prize. Some men moved through the hierarchy – Bowen, for example, was a career governor who lived in various government houses almost continuously from 1859 to 1886.

Ambitious men like Bowen knew that if they were to climb the vice-regal ladder they had to please the Secretary for Colonies and his bureaucracy.

The governors had to furnish regular and full reports with commentaries on local affairs. They certainly had to explain actions they had taken on any constitutionally sensitive issues and their involvement in any controversies.

Their instructions required them to act on the advice of their local governments on local matters, but they had to jealously safeguard Imperial interests in areas such as defence, external trade and international relations.

In practice, the governors had to exercise their own judgments in many cases where they might have preferred to wait on advice from London. Time and distance often prevented that, at least until after telegraphic connections between Australia and Britain were established in 1872. Bowen complained Left: Queensland’s first governor, Sir George Ferguson Bowen in 1882, when he was beginning a term as Governor of Hong Kong. At the time of separation in 1859, he was the man for Queensland’s hour.

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also that he had pitifully few resources of books and wise men to guide him – he had no library and early Queensland was not well endowed with men who could give the counsel a governor might need.

It was a robust era. The governors were appointed, given a set of instructions and told to get on with it. If they did well they were promoted, if they failed they were recalled or at least not re-appointed. They had to be good all round men of courage and sound judgment, decisive and energetic, able to deal with the sternest challenges.

What could have been more challenging than Bowen’s instructions to go to the place that was to be called Queensland and there ‘erect’ a new self-governing colony?

Queen Victoria’s Letters Patent appointing Bowen were signed on 6 June 1859.

While that date is often said to be Queensland’s date of birth, the fact is that the new colony was only conceived on that day. Clause ten of the Letters Patent provided that they would not come into effect until the document was received and published in Queensland by its new governor. Thus, the reality of Queensland’s separation had to await the arrival of Governor Bowen.

That is why Saturday, tenth December 1859, is the great day in Queensland’s history. On that day, Sir George Bowen arrived in Brisbane town, took the oath of office as ‘Captain-General and Governor-in Chief’ and had it proclaimed from the balcony of his temporary Government House that he had done so.

Queensland was born.

The new colony had come a long way since the first convicts were landed at Redcliffe in 1824. It had also been a long journey for Sir George and Lady Bowen, from the Greek island of Corfu to Queensland.

George Bowen, 38 years old when he arrived in Brisbane, was born in Ireland where his English father was a church rector. Bowen began life with no particular advantages except the opportunity for a good education and that was a chance he turned to very best advantage. He was sent to the excellent English public school, Charterhouse, then won a scholarship to Oxford. There he was academically and socially successful. He took first class honours in Classics and gained his Master of Arts in 1847 and made many personal connections that were to propel him ever upward in his career.

Then he went to Corfu, one of the Greek Ionian islands that had been a British protectorate since 1815. On Corfu, Bowen was a political secretary in the government and Rector of the Ionian University. He travelled on horseback across Greece from the Gulf of Corfu to Istanbul (then Constantinople); he spoke modern Greek fluently and he wrote widely about the Ionian region and won minor celebrity through his three books about that part of Greece. Bowen returned to England in 1851 to take up a fellowship at Oxford and in 1852 he helped campaign for the election of William Gladstone, later to be Prime Minister on four occasions. It was a valuable association that was strengthened later, when Gladstone also became involved in the government of the Ionian islands. Bowen returned to Corfu in 1854. In 1856 he was knighted and in the same year he married Contessa Diamantina, daughter of Count Candiano di Roma, the President of the Senate of the Ionian islands. In 1859 Bowen was appointed Governor of Queensland, an appointment which was largely due to

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Gladstone’s patronage and influence. For the rest of Bowen’s working life, his occupation was ‘Governor.’3 Lady Bowen, the exotic and noble Contessa Diamantina Roma, is often said to have been the first Greek to come to Queensland. Although she was a Greek national and spoke modern Greek fluently, her personal orientation was far more Italian than Greek; Italian was her first language and it was the language that she and George Bowen used in private moments.4 Diamantina Roma was connected by blood or marriage with many notable Greek and Venetian statesmen, soldiers and members of European royal families.5 Her own family was part of the Venetian nobility that had taken over Corfu in 1401 and had governed it until 1797; the Venetians on Corfu never forgot that they were Italian.

Left: Sir Augustus Charles Gregory – explorer, surveyor, pastoralist and parliamentarian. He had a decisive influence on land settlement policy and administration through the colony’s first two decades.

Above: A letter from Bowen to Gregory about the naming of Roma Street in Brisbane.

Diamantina Roma was just 26 years old when she arrived in Brisbane. The Bowens already had one child, Adelaide Diamantina, who had been born on Corfu in August 1858. Three more children were to be born to the Bowens at Government House, Brisbane – Zoe Caroline in 1860, Agnes Herbert in 1862 and George William in 1864. A fifth child, Alfreda Ernestine, was born in Auckland in 1869.6 Lady Bowen was a dutiful, self-effacing woman who radiated courtesy, kindness and generosity. Robert Herbert was probably perceptive and accurate when he wrote that ‘Her beauty is more in expression than in feature.’7 A classic beauty or not, the Contessa was undoubtedly graceful and gracious, an exotic ornament in the otherwise monochromatic social firmament of infant Brisbane.

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Sir George was ‘portly and tall’ and, from every account, an intellectual showoff who peppered his writings and his conversation with Latin and Greek quotations and obscure literary allusions. He was bombastic, pedantic, longwinded and a relentless self-publicist. The Contessa was genuinely loved by the community; Sir George was endured, often admired but never loved except, perhaps, as the Queen’s surrogate.

Despite his frailties, Queensland was lucky to have Bowen as its first governor.

He had the opportunity to make a very significant and positive difference to the fortunes of the infant colony; he seized that opportunity and made the most of it. Few men have done as much for Queensland – it is arguable that none have done more. Bowen was not an endearing man but, at least during his term in Queensland, he was effective. Queensland was his first vice-regal appointment; it was a humble one and he was fiercely determined to rise to better governorships. He was in the prime of his life and he had powerful incentives to work hard and well. He did, and Queensland was the beneficiary.

So, in particular, were later governors – Bowen blazed the track along which they all walked.

Bowen has the unique distinction of having been the central figure of the events of 10 December 1859. It was the day when, as reported by the Moreton Bay Courier newspaper ‘The great event of our history stands recorded. A new epoch in the annals of Australia has come to pass; ‘our era’ has commenced; and the delays and disappointments of the past are amply compensated by the triumphant success of the present. ... We have attained the object of our wishes – the goal of our long cherished hopes, and it will be for us to show that, although young, we are vigorous, – although wealthy, we are careful; and that, although few in comparison with other colonies, we may yet become many by attracting the peasantry of Great Britain to our shores.’

Through several previous days, the people of Queensland had worked themselves into a state of feverish excitement in anticipation of the governor’s arrival and what it would mean. Sir George and Lady Bowen had landed in Sydney several weeks before, aboard the British warship Cordelia. News of their arrival had travelled to Brisbane by steamship, while Sir George spent some days in Sydney consulting with the New South Wales governor, Sir William Denison, and other government officials concerning the details of the separation of Queensland. Lady Bowen spent the time recovering from seasickness. Then the Bowens re-boarded the Cordelia for the final leg of their journey to Brisbane.

As the Moreton Bay Courier recounted ‘5th instant was the first day on which the arrival of H.M.S. Cordelia was looked for, and on that account, a series of holidays, lasting over four days was commenced. Steamers went down to the bay – visitors poured in from the country, – and flags waving by day, and fireworks by night, gave a glimmering idea of the enthusiasm held in check until the actual landing.’ However, there was a delay of four days while the Cordelia battled contrary winds and the ship’s captain avoided making ‘bad weather – out of consideration to Lady Bowen.’

It was arranged that a flag would be hoisted at the Government Resident’s office in the town when there was definite news of the arrival of the Cordelia Right: Lady Bowen, the Countess Diamantina Roma, was admired and loved in Queensland.

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in Moreton Bay. At about sunset on Friday evening, 9 December, mounted troopers who had been on the lookout at Sandgate galloped into Brisbane and shouted out the news that the Cordelia was coming across the bay. ‘Flags were everywhere hoisted as the glad intelligence spread like wildfire through the city and other demonstrations of joy were made.’

At about half past nine the next morning the river paddle steamer Breadalbane and two other vessels paddled downriver to meet the Cordelia, which had anchored off the river mouth overnight. The Breadalbane carried the reception committee, comprising Robert Herbert (Bowen’s former private secretary, who had sailed to Sydney with Bowen but had come to Brisbane some days before), the Government Resident, Captain John Wickham, the resident Supreme Court judge, Alfred Lutwyche, Colonel Gray, Ratcliffe Pring (soon to be Attorney General) and other ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ as well as a band to play ‘enlivening strains’ as the Breadalbane paddled downriver.

The Breadalbane tied up alongside the Cordelia; the reception committee went aboard the Cordelia and were introduced to Sir George ‘with Lady Bowen sitting apart from the crowd watching the proceedings with evident interest.’

Master of ceremonies for the introductions was Abram Moriarty, a public servant from Sydney who had been seconded to Queensland for nine months to act as Bowen’s private secretary.

Then the Bowens and the official party boarded the Breadalbane for the journey upriver to a landing stage located in the Botanic Gardens. Everywhere along the river there were signs of welcome, with cheering echoing from other vessels, decorations on riverbank buildings and flags flying – even the Greek flag as a compliment to Lady Bowen’s Greek heritage.

Finally, the Breadalbane reached the landing place. More than 4,000 people were assembled on the nearby riverbanks – the crowd might have been even greater but for the earlier return home of many country people who could wait no longer. A 21 gun salute was fired while the governor stepped ashore to be welcomed by John Petrie, Mayor of Brisbane. Then the vice-regal couple passed under a triumphal arch before they stepped into the carriage that was to head a procession up to Dr Hobbs’ house, which stands today as the Deanery within the St John’s Cathedral precinct.

‘Arriving at Government House, His Excellency and her ladyship ascended to the balcony, where they were loudly cheered by the throng below, and soon afterward His Excellency took the requisite oaths of office.8 The Queen’s commission, appointing His Excellency Governor of Queensland, was then read by Mr. Herbert from the balcony and that was followed by Abram Moriarty’s reading of Bowen’s proclamation that he had assumed the office of Governor-in-Chief.’

Bowen then spoke. ‘... I shall not fail to represent to our gracious and beloved Sovereign the loyal greeting with which you have received Her Majesty’s first Representative among you. I shall have the pleasure of seeing you all again at the pavilion at ten o’clock on Monday morning and until then I bid you all Goodbye.’

It was as well that the next day was one of rest because a marathon of proceedings awaited the Bowens on the Monday, 12 December, when they began to meet the people. From soon after daylight, more than

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Below, top: Sketch showing the view from Brisbane’s lower George Street area, toward Kangaroo Point.

Sawmill in centre right foreground.

Bottom: Petrie family members prepare to fly a flag to honour the arrival of Governor Bowen on 10 December 1859. The women are in front of the Petrie family home, at the corner of Wharf and Queen Streets in Brisbane.

chapter three – We hail, with triumphant joy, this Glorious Event

Above left: Dr Hobbs’ house (on ridge line, in centre). The house was leased for use as a temporary Government House, between 1859 and 1862. On 10 December 1859, the proclamation of Queensland’s separation from New South Wales was read from the balcony of the house.

Above right: John Petrie came to Brisbane as a child in 1837. By 1859 he was Mayor of Brisbane.

4,000 Queenslanders had again assembled at the Botanic Gardens to await the Bowens, who arrived at 10 am and were welcomed with resounding cheers.

The official party gathered on a platform, beneath a banner carrying the words ‘We hail, with triumphant joy, this Glorious Event – Our National Birth.

Aid the infant State with wise Legislation; let Industry – the mother of its existence – feed the flame of its vitality; and young Queensland will then become the Queen of Lands.’

A series of addresses was read – from the people of Queensland, the Mayor and Corporation of Brisbane municipality, the clergy of Brisbane, the Cordwainers of Brisbane, the working classes, and the people of Ipswich. To each of these addresses the Governor replied individually and at length. The welcomers stressed the advantages of their ‘rich and fertile land’ and their previous sufferings from ‘the evils consequent upon a distant legislature.’10 Bowen pledged his best efforts in laying the foundations ‘for this new and mighty and flourishing province of the British Empire. ... My object here (in Brisbane), as in the other principal settlements of Queensland, (all of which I hope to visit in the next twelve months), will be to see and judge for myself – to ascertain the real wants and wishes of the inhabitants of all classes, in order that the views and measures of the Governor may harmonise with the voice of the people’ he said.

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In his reply to the ‘Working Men of Brisbane’ he warned against class division. ‘... you characterise your address as proceeding from “Working Men.” I feel certain that you do not mean by that phrase to imply that you belong to any separate class whose feelings and interests are adverse to, or even distinct from, the feelings and interests of any other class of inhabitants of this colony. In a new and free country like that in which we are living ... every man is emphatically a working man. You will at all times find me your zealous fellow workman in all that may tend to promote the happiness and welfare of the people of Queensland.’11 Bowen kept his promise to Queensland. He set to work with vigour and enthusiasm. He had not been idle, even through his first weekend in Queensland.

Queen Victoria’s Letters Patent had very precisely instructed Bowen about the kind of government he was to ‘erect’ for Queensland. There was to be representative and responsible government, with a parliament comprising an appointed Legislative Council and an elected Legislative Assembly.

Once the parliament was brought into existence, Bowen was to make laws ‘for the peace, order and good government of our said colony ... with the advice and consent of the said Council and Assembly.’ That would achieve representative government.

There was also to be an Executive Council, which would advise the governor on the administration of the colony. By convention, once a government had been formed within parliament, the Executive Council would comprise the premier (who would usually but not always also be the colonial secretary) and the various ministers. They would be responsible to parliament and thus Queensland would have responsible government.

However, pending the first session of parliament and the formation of a government, Bowen had the authority and responsibility to govern Queensland as a de facto Crown Colony, in much the same way the early governors of

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chapter three – We hail, with triumphant joy, this Glorious Event

New South Wales had managed that colony before the development of democratic institutions. Bowen did not back away from that task but he wanted men who could give him good advice and who could see that decisions were effectively implemented. So, Bowen established an interim skeleton government, comprising reliable senior men who would act as ministers and who would also comprise an Executive Council.

Bowen could not afford to waste time – there were too many urgent administrative matters that needed immediate attention. On 10 December, presumably at the interim Government House and soon after the reading of the commission from the balcony of the house, Bowen formed his first Executive Council by appointing Robert Herbert as Colonial Secretary and Ratcliffe Pring as Attorney General, both of them to be Executive Council members. At the same time, Abram Moriarty was formally appointed Bowen’s private secretary, in place of Herbert who had previously held that position. A Government Gazette, Number One of Volume One, was issued the same day to announce the appointments.

On Monday 12 December, the Executive Council had its first meeting and its first decision was to appoint Abram Moriarty to be the Clerk to the Council.

Moriarty thus became Queensland’s first public servant. On 15 December, Moriarty was appointed Under Colonial Secretary – filling the position that would today be that of the permanent head of the Premier’s department.

On 18 December, the Executive Council was enlarged when Robert Ramsay Mackenzie was appointed Colonial Treasurer.13 Bowen now had the essential apparatus of government in place. He had achieved in days what had taken many decades in other places. Other colonies had grown into democratic self-government only after progressing through several earlier stages of development. During those stages of growth, institutions progressively evolved and local people gradually gained experience in the business of government. Queensland, on the other hand, was to have responsible and representative government right from the beginning of its life as a self-governing colony, even though there were very few people in Queensland who had any experience of representative politics or public administration. Creating the system of government and tactfully teaching people how to run it was Bowen’s challenging task.

Far left: The Chinese were reviled and victimised by many white settlers, but the fruit and vegetable crops from their gardens kept outback people in better health.

Centre and right: Chinese men load bananas on to a punt at Geraldton (called Innisfail from 1911) in north Queensland, and then take the bananas by river towards market.

Above: Not all Queensland’s early Chinese migrants were miners or labourers.

He was assisted through the critical first months by several very able people.

There was much criticism of Herbert’s appointment, from those who thought that a local man should have been given the job – and from disappointed local men who weren’t considered for the historic appointment. (We say men, because the enfranchisement of women and the possibility of their entering politics was in the far distant future.) However, there was one very good reason for Bowen’s choice – Herbert was newly arrived in the colony and he was not aligned with any of its many factions.

Herbert was young, just 28 years of age, but he was well equipped for the job by personal background and experience. He had aristocratic connections and had some private means; he went to school at Eton, then did well at Oxford and began to read law before accepting an appointment as a private secretary to William Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1855.

Due to political upheavals, the appointment was short lived and Herbert went

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back to studying law. He was admitted as a barrister but never practised. In 1859, when Bowen was seeking a private secretary and a man who might be able to take up important offices in Queensland, Herbert was recommended

by Gladstone and probably also by Lord Carnarvon – Herbert’s cousin and parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Colonial Office.14 Herbert took the position and travelled to Australia with the Bowens. He was told that his appointment to the position of Colonial Secretary would only become permanent if he won election to the parliament and then secured the necessary support to form a government. Herbert achieved that and, on twenty second May 1860, he became Colonial Secretary and Premier by virtue of his ability to command a majority in the parliament. He held that office until February 1866, and again, briefly, later that year. He was a highly effective first Premier of Queensland – hard working, a good administrator, learned, with more experience of government than most other Queenslanders at that time. Despite his youth and his aristocratic manner, he was able to attract political and personal support. By all accounts, he was charming and unfailingly courteous. Above all, he was able to work in a very productive partnership with the impatient and often difficult Bowen.

Ratcliffe Pring, Queensland’s first Attorney General, had been the colony’s first resident barrister. An English lawyer, he had migrated to Sydney, then came to Moreton Bay in 1857 as Crown Prosecutor. He was to have a tempestuous career in Queensland politics and the law, but for several years he was probably one of the best and certainly busiest legislators Queensland ever knew.15 Robert Ramsay Mackenzie was described by Bowen as a pastoralist ‘of high honour and integrity, of methodical habits of business.’ Like so many of his fellow sheep-men, Mackenzie had come from Scotland with a modest fortune and had at first done well in Australian pastoral pursuits. He was insolvent by 1840 but recovered and by 1853 he owned a substantial slice of the best country in the Burnett district and in the Central Highlands. He won election to the first Queensland parliament and held his seat until 1869, when he returned to Scotland to assume his family’s baronetcy.16 The business of setting up the machinery of government in hand for the moment, Bowen began to keep his promise to visit all the principal places of settlement beyond Brisbane. On 20 December 1859, Sir George and Lady Bowen began a tour of Ipswich, a town for which Bowen seems to have later developed a special fondness. The Bowens went first to Booval, then they were escorted into the town centre by a cavalcade of about 400 horsemen. That night, the visitors were entertained at the North Australian Club; there was a levee next day and a ball at night. The Bowens were finding that vice-regal appointments to the Australian colonies were not sinecures.17 The Ipswich visit was soon followed by a trip to Gayndah. Then, in late March 1860, Bowen made his first tour of the ‘interior.’ On 10 April 1860, Bowen wrote to Herman Merivale, Under-Secretary for the Colonies – ‘I ascended from the coast to the table-land of the Darling Downs through Cunningham’s Gap ... ; which, though not equal as some enthusiastic Queenslanders imagine, to ‘anything in the Alps’ is certainly finer than anything I ever saw in the British Isles.

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‘Some of the squatters had descended in to the lowlands to meet and escort me to their houses, so we formed a very picturesque cavalcade as we wound up through the luxuriant forest of the Gap. On the summit I was greeted with loud cheers ... and there I found another batch of hospitable squatters, with a cold collation and plenty of champagne and hock ... ‘[in] the residences of the squatters ... I found carpets and curtains, plate and pianos, champagne and crinoline, in places where fifteen years before the face of a white man had not been seen.

‘I was escorted into Warwick by 400 horsemen. I rode one day ... seventy miles in eight hours – of course, with a change of horses. You should never send a Governor here who cannot ride and shoot.’18 By now, Bowen felt that he had gained a good understanding of what Queenslanders expected of their governor. He was firmly convinced that a governor of any of the Australian colonies should be much more than a

Below: Ipswich in the early 1860s. The town came to prominence quickly because it was most convenient for the pastoralists of the hinterland. For a time, it was proposed as Queensland’s capital.

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titular and ceremonial head of the system of representative and responsible government. He wrote to the Duke of Newcastle on 7 April 1860 – ‘Nothing can be more opposed to this theory than the wishes of the Anglo-Australians themselves. The Governor ... is expected not only to act as the head of society; to encourage literature, science and art; to keep alive by personal visits to every district under his jurisdiction the feelings of loyalty to the Queen, and of attachment to the mother country, and so to cherish what may be termed the Imperial sentiment; but he is also expected, as head of the administration, to maintain, with the assistance of his Executive Council, a vigilant control and Below: Key figures in Queensland’s first government of its own; Ratcliffe Pring (left) was the colony’s first Attorney General; Abram Moriarty was Queensland’s first public servant; Robert Ramsay Mackenzie was the first Colonial Treasurer and Robert Herbert (at right) was the first Colonial Secretary and Premier. These men were appointed by Bowen pending elections and the first sitting of the Queensland parliament.

supervision over every department of the public service. In short, he is in a position in which he can exercise an influence over the whole course of affairs exactly proportionate to the strength to his character, the activity of his mind and body, the capacity of his understanding, and the extent of his knowledge.’19 In the light of those observations, it is not surprising that the distinctive quality of Bowen’s time in Queensland is that he was an interventionist governor. He had clear and strong views about what was best for the colony and he used his considerable influence and his actual or perceived authority to achieve outcomes that accorded with his visions. In particular, it is clear from the historical record that he worked through Herbert, Premier of the colony for the first six years, to get what he wanted. On many occasions, Bowen skated right up to the edge and even went well beyond the constitutional limitation that he should act on the advice of his ministers and give consent to their decisions. The reality often was that Bowen advised and the government consented.

In retrospect, Bowen’s intervention may appear surprising and inappropriate.

However, it caused little surprise or dismay at the time. The practice of

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responsible government had not been fully developed when Bowen arrived in Queensland. There was little community experience of the system and there was still a lingering notion that the sovereign (hence the governor) had powers independent of the parliament and should exercise them for the public good.20 Bowen was right when he said that Queenslanders expected him to play an active role, guiding parliaments and ministries. There was a community perception that Bowen had considerable personal power and there was an expectation that he should use that power. The point was well illustrated when he visited Rockhampton in October 1862. The Rockhampton community demanded that he provide them with a steam dredge, new roads, more immigrants and telegraphic communications. When Bowen explained that his hands were tied and the matters raised were the responsibility of Parliament, which was in recess at the time, the Rockhampton people were undeterred – they told Bowen to summon a special session of Parliament and then direct the law makers to pass the laws the Rockhampton people wanted.21 Bowen may have been flattered by the perception that he was omnipotent, but he also knew very well that the high expectations also meant great disappointment and even hostility when he could not deliver all that his supplicants asked for.

It did not take him long to find out that even the vice-regal cloak was a poor shield against criticism of the harshest and most direct kind.

Had Bowen not seized many initiatives in the early days, matters would have proceeded much more slowly and far less satisfactorily. The colony simply did not have enough people of talent and experience to form the pool of wise legislators and administrators that good government required, so Bowen found that he had to encourage, cajole and even direct.

Whatever injury Bowen may have done to constitutional niceties, it must be said that in the first six years of his term Queensland enjoyed some of the most far-sighted, productive and stable government that it ever had. The stability of those early years contrasted with what was to follow, when Queensland governments were marked by kaleidoscopic instability.

Bowen returned from his travels filled with a sense of urgency about the many things that needed to be done. Apart from anything else, the rapidly growing population was creating demands that had to be met.

When Bowen arrived, Queensland’s non-Aboriginal population was said to be 23,520, an increase from 10,296 in 1851 and 16,907 in 1856. In 1861, the total had increased to 30,059, comprised by 18,121 males and 11,938 females. The rate of increase between 1856 and 1861 had been almost 80%. Some of the population growth had resulted from natural increase, but there were 4,902 immigrants from Britain and Europe and 5,117 people had come from other Australian colonies, mainly New South Wales.

In 1861, Brisbane had 6,051 people while Ipswich had 3,002. There had been spectacular growth in some of the country towns – Drayton’s population had increased from 263 to 320 in the five years, while Toowoomba, which was of no account in 1856, had 1,180 inhabitants by the 1861 census. Rockhampton was home to almost nobody in 1856, but 698 people lived there in 1861. The pastoral industry was the colony’s major employer, with 4,331 people working within it. Domestic service ranked second, with 2,004 employees.22

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Bowen and other authorities thought it unlikely that the high rate of population increase would continue – but it did, due in large measure to aggressive government promotion of Queensland as a land of golden opportunity for British and German migrants. In 1865, the colony had 86,921 people; in 1869 it had 109,161. Thus, during Bowen’s eight and a half year term in Queensland, the colony’s population multiplied almost fivefold. The demands on the government also multiplied and there was a particular obligation to find employment for the migrants who had been enticed to Queensland by careless promises of abundant work at high rates of pay.

In December 1859, Bowen’s first task was to secure the money that would be needed to carry on government, pending the first sitting of the parliament which would introduce revenue raising measures and vote supply to enable government to be carried on. Bowen arranged bank borrowings in Sydney, pledging the colony’s future revenue from land sales and rents.23 Then he planned Queensland’s civil service. He wrote a minute for the Executive Council suggesting the structure of the bureaucracy and that entry to the public service should be by merit, assessed by competitive examination.

On 23 January 1860, the Executive Council adopted Bowen’s suggestions and the first entry examinations were held in September 1860.24 Entry by merit and competitive examination! – that was a novel concept, but it was strictly adhered to by Bowen. He was often besieged by young men who had come out from Britain with letters of introduction and who expected the governor to find public service employment for them. Bowen refused to entertain their applications.

Bowen then turned his mind to education, which was a matter of special concern to him. He was mortified by census figures which showed that more than 30% of the population could neither read nor write, while a further 12% could read but not write. More than 40% of children aged between five and fourteen were not attending school. When Bowen arrived in 1859, the colony had just two ‘National’ or public schools that had been provided by the New South Wales administration, at Warwick and Drayton (a National school, soon to become the Normal School, opened in Brisbane in January 1860). There were five church schools (either Church of England or Roman Catholic) in Brisbane, two in Ipswich, one on the Darling Downs and two at Maryborough.

In the same places there was a total of 30 private schools, conducted for profit by teachers who charged a small sum per week per pupil.25 Elsewhere, there were no schools at all. A handful of children were educated privately; for the rest, a hard life was their only schoolroom.

Bowen devised a scheme where the government would provide National or state primary schools in places where the population justified it. In smaller places, there would be primary provisional schools, where, if the local community provided a school building and teacher accommodation, the government would appoint and pay a teacher. Then there would be Grammar Schools, government supported secondary schools that would equate with the English public schools. The plan was that eventually these grammar schools would be established in each of the principal towns of the new colony. Government aid to church schools would be phased out, along with all financial support for places of worship.26 Later in 1860, the parliament passed laws to implement Bowen’s scheme.

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Bowen seems to have gained particular satisfaction from opportunities to open new schools or to present prizes. There was a special moment for him when he opened the Ipswich Grammar School in 1863 because the school represented the achievement of many of his highest ambitions for the colony’s education system. Bowen said at the opening – ‘Educated myself at an English public school and university, my sympathies are naturally enlisted in the inauguration of the first public school established in this new Colony, with the object of providing for our youth some of the higher branches of a liberal education. ... I observe with great satisfaction that this institution will be carried out, so far as circumstances permit, on the well-tried plan of the old public schools of England. ... This school professes to teach grammar in its widest sense ... not a mere preparation for some specific business, trade or profession but a preparation for the whole business of life.’27

Above left: Flooding at the new goldfields town of Gympie, 1870.

Above right: Rockhampton grew from a forlorn port for the failed gold rush at Canoona.

The interval between Bowen’s arrival and the first sitting of parliament from 22 May 1860 presented an opportunity for Bowen to set an agenda for Queensland’s early years. He took steps to establish a police force and several corps of Volunteer Rifle Brigades as a first move toward the creation of the colony’s own defence forces. He planned legislation to implement his vision for education and he worked with Herbert to frame land laws that

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he hoped would reconcile the competing interests of large pastoralists and small farmers. He advocated increased immigration and used personal contacts in Britain to achieve that. He promoted the incorporation of local government bodies, arguing that local government was the only security against undue centralisation and the best means of keeping public spirit alive in remote localities.28 Bowen and his first Executive Council governed Queensland for five months.

It was a great compliment to Herbert that he, as an outsider, was able to comfortably secure election to the first parliament and then command the majority in the Legislative Assembly that enabled him to head the first ministry and become the colony’s first premier. It was an even more remarkable achievement that, in an era of loose and unstable political alliances before the mature development of political parties, Herbert was able to hold the office of premier for six unbroken years. That was a record term until William Forgan Smith held the office from 1932 to 1942.

Bowen and Herbert seemed to be able to work together very effectively, which is a tribute to Herbert’s patience and tact because dealing with Bowen was never easy. It is difficult to look back over 150 years and discern whose influence was dominant in particular situations, but the overall outcome was good government, stable and far-sighted. However, it was not all plain sailing for Herbert, nor for Bowen.

The arrangements for creating the first Queensland parliament had been placed in the hands of the Governor of New South Wales, who needed time to define electoral districts and finalise the electoral rolls. When the rolls were

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closed, they excluded about one third of Queensland’s adult males because, said the New South Wales authorities, the instructions from the Colonial Office required that the new Queensland parliament should be a mirror of the parliament of the mother colony and based on franchise entitlements that existed before 1858. These arrangements attached a property qualification to the right to vote. However, in 1858, the New South Wales franchise had been extended to all adult males. The New South Wales governor had advice that the pre-1858 model should be followed and this was the basis on which the electoral rolls were compiled for the elections held in April 1860.

It soon became clear that this advice was based on a mistaken interpretation of the Colonial Office instructions and that a serious error in law had been made. The error was pointed out to Bowen by Justice Lutwyche, as early as January 1860. However, Bowen did nothing about the matter, saying that the problem would be one for the new legislature to deal with itself.

Lutwyche was not easily put off. Lutwyche was an able and effective judge, but he and Bowen seem to have disliked each other at first sight. Bowen excluded Lutwyche from the Government House circle on the grounds that his wife, Mary Ann, was ‘unsuitable’ – she had been the judge’s housekeeper.

Lutwyche suggested that Bowen was trying to suppress the achievement of full democracy. He began to publicise the view that the Queensland legislature was invalidly constituted, particularly after the parliament sought to reduce Lutwyche’s salary to a level far below what he had been paid as a judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court. Lutwyche said publicly that as a matter of law all adult males should have been given the vote. That was a popular argument.

Left: Somerset in 1874. The settlement on the tip of Cape York was intended as a refuge for mariners and as a sign of Queensland sovereignty in the far north.

Above, top: Gladstone in about 1868. The town had several false starts before it kept its promise to become one of Australia’s most important export ports.

Centre: A paddle steamer at the main jetty at Cairns in 1877, when the new town was just a year old and developing as a port for the hinterland goldfields.

Below: Concrete pylons under construction for the first iron Victoria Bridge, 1869. Opened by Governor Normanby in 1874, the new bridge replaced an earlier timber structure and was described as ‘permanent’.

However, it was swept away by floodwaters in 1893.

Bowen was drawn into a maelstrom of controversy, during which it became apparent that Lutwyche had been right and all the proceedings of the Queensland parliament were invalid because of the defective election procedure. The matter had to be rectified by the British parliament, which enacted special legislation in October 1861 to retrospectively validate all the proceedings of the Queensland parliament since May 1860. Because of the bungle, universal manhood suffrage was not introduced to Queensland until 1 January 1873. Lutwyche and others insinuated, or said outright, that the whole debacle was a ploy by Bowen to frustrate the achievement of full democracy in Queensland. Bowen’s apparent personal identification with the large pastoralists of the Darling Downs left him vulnerable to such innuendos.

There was one enduring constitutional outcome. Lutwyche (and his wife) had created so many antagonisms it was resolved to take steps to ensure that he could never become governor, even in an acting capacity. Lutwyche was, until 1863, Queensland’s only Supreme Court judge. The normal arrangement would have been that in the absence or incapacity of the governor, the most senior Supreme Court judge would act as governor. That made it highly likely that Lutwyche would be called on to act as governor at some time. To forestall any possibility of that, the office of lieutenant-governor was created and the President of the Legislative Council was usually appointed to that position to act as governor when necessary.29 Thus, for many years, Lutwyche and later judges were excluded from the possibility of acting as governor. There has been no appointment of a lieutenant-governor since 1949.

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Despite these and many other difficulties, Queensland in Bowen’s time entered a period of sustained social and economic growth. There were many signs of progress. In Brisbane in 1864, Bowen laid the foundation stones for the Brisbane Town Hall (in Queen Street, roughly opposite the present Myer Centre) in January, then for the first cross-river bridge in August. In May 1865 he was able to declare the new bridge open.

The quality of life was getting better, even if the benefits of developments like the Cobb & Co coaches that began running from Brisbane to Ipswich in 1865, the extension of a telegraph system within Queensland and its linking with interstate systems and the introduction of gas lighting in Brisbane, did not benefit everyone in the community. For most people, life was hard and ungenerous. Many migrants had been lured to Queensland by the false promises of immigration recruiting agents who thought only of the bounties

Mary Ann Jane Lutwyche (left) was thought to be ‘unsuitable’ and was the reason for arrangements designed to prevent her husband, Supreme Court Justice Alfred Lutwyche (right), from ever acting as governor. Alfred was a stormy petrel who said that Queensland’s first parliament was not properly constituted. He was later proved right.

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for each passenger they enticed aboard a migrant ship. Aboard the ships, the assisted migrants and many others found themselves between decks in overcrowded, filthy and unhealthy circumstances. Sometimes they had to fight for food. Their anxieties about the very real risk of shipwreck were tempered by the joyful prospect of a life of plenty in Queensland – but when they arrived they usually found that the only work was menial and ill-paid, with wages less than they might have got had they stayed home. If they arrived at the wrong time in the economic cycle they might well have found there was no work to be had at all, at least not anywhere near the coast.

For everyone, migrants or not, life was often a desperate struggle against the spectres of poverty, accident and ill health. There were almost no government social welfare cushions, while private charity was very limited and capricious with its benefits. Newspapers of the day carry many references to accidents, on the roads and elsewhere, that meant death or penury for individuals and their families. The newspapers also contain frequent references to people cutting their own throats or using other tragic measures to end what they saw as an unequal struggle.

The struggle to earn a living often forced people who had never previously gone more than a few miles beyond their place of birth in Britain or Europe to travel far inland to seek work on the new pastoral stations of the interior. There was work to be had in the bush in Bowen’s time. The last of the explorers were searching for Leichhardt and Burke and Wills and were finding grasslands that were coveted as the new pastoral El Dorado. Pastoralists pushed into the new areas, sometimes even ahead of the explorers, and the pastoral frontier often expanded as much as 300 kilometres in any one year. The new stations needed an abundance of labour, especially in the initial development phase and before gangs of South Sea Islanders30 were taken inland in the 1870s to put up fences, sink dams and perform other tasks that white men would only do at much greater cost. Queensland certainly rode on the sheep’s back and the ride was getting better as wool prices rose and as new management methods on the inland plains increased the productivity of the Merino. The rush for grass was halted by the 1866 drought but, by the time Bowen left Queensland, sheep were everywhere except in the far western districts of the colony.

That far western region had been expanded in 1862 when the colony’s western border had been pushed even further out, by approximately 300 kilometres, so that it ran north from Poeppel’s Corner, rather than from Haddon’s Corner as before.

Bowen was troubled by the impact of pastoral expansion on the original occupants of the land. He had come to Queensland with Utopian ideals regarding the treatment of Aborigines, but events and his contact with pastoralists quickly made him aware how difficult it would be to reconcile ideals with the realities of inexorable pastoral expansion. Bowen was caught between, on one hand, the almost unanimous view of colonists that Aborigines would have to give way to white settlement, and, on the other hand the demand that Aborigines be treated humanely and the legitimacy of their presence in the land acknowledged.

That latter view was expressed in Bowen’s instructions from the Colonial Office, which itself was under pressure from British lobby groups, including the Aborigines Protection Society and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery

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Society. Bowen’s position was made even more difficult by the events at Cullin-la-Ringo station, near Springsure in October 1861, when 19 white people were murdered by Aborigines. It was an open secret that the vengeance was terrible and indiscriminate.

Similar episodes, on a smaller scale, were happening right across the pastoral frontier. We will never know how many people were slaughtered during the early years of white settlement in the outback. Colonists had an interest in exaggerating the ferocity of Aborigines and the numbers of killings they committed. Missionary organisations and similar bodies, for their own propaganda purposes, often greatly magnified the scale of white reprisals.

White men who were guilty of atrocities were also often guilty of adding a zero to the number of notches they had on their rifle butts or to the number of black ears they had pinned on a wall at their station.

It is certain that many dozens of white people were killed during the early years of confrontation between settlers and Aborigines on the frontier and it is also certain that many hundreds of Aborigines died. Some historians31, say that there might have been as many as 20,000 Aboriginal deaths on the Australian pastoral frontiers. However, clear evidence to support such figures

Above left: Dancing between decks on an immigrant ship. However, a voyage to Australia as a migrant was rarely very much fun.

Above right: Roll call on the quarter deck of an immigrant ship.

is elusive and estimates of total deaths are based on many assumptions and guesses. Whatever the truth, it is certain that the Queensland Aborigines survived the first phase of pastoral settlement. Their disappearance from most districts came later and was due to a much more subtle cause – the fatal attraction of the food and the goods that might be had wherever the white man settled and the alcohol and opium that might be available around new towns and stations. That attraction meant that Aborigines were exposed to diseases against which they had no natural immunity; it also meant all the dependence and degradation that were symbolised by the annual ‘blanket day.’ White people shrugged and sighed that the Aborigines were ‘dying out.’

That was certainly true. It was a process that killed many more people on the pastoral frontier than bullets ever did.

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Above: The landing of immigrants from their ship, 1870s.

Bowen’s response to these tragedies was to ask that the Native Police should be curbed. The Native Police Corps had been established by the New South Wales government in 1848 and had become active from 1849 in the McIntyre and Condamine rivers districts that were to become part of Queensland. The Corps was comprised of white officers in charge of Aboriginal men who were usually drawn from distant districts and were often enthusiastic killers of Aborigines in other places. The Corps became notorious for its callous ‘dispersals’ of Aborigines on the pastoral frontier. Bowen was keenly aware of the problem and asked the British government (which had charge of military matters) to post soldiers to troubled districts to replace the Native Police. That did not happen, but in 1864 the Native Police Corps was placed under the control

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of the Queensland Police Commissioner. In addition, Bowen pleaded with British authorities to send missionaries who could create sheltered enclaves where Aborigines could be gradually introduced into white civilisation and protected from its worst impacts in the short term.32 Missionary activity and the development of plantations where Aborigines could be put to work were the keys to the salvation of the Aborigines, Bowen argued.

Top left: Jimbour House, about 1877, soon after the Bell family built the palatial homestead on their extensive Darling Downs property.

Second from top: Drawing room at The Hollow homestead, near Mackay, about 1875.

Third from top: Shearing with blade shears. Early Queensland rode on the sheep’s back – and the shearers’ toil.

Below: The library at Westbrook homestead on the Darling Downs, about 1898.

Main image: A woodcut depicting ‘village on the Darling Downs,’ 1870.

Missions were set up and so were cotton and sugar plantations. The plantations brought a whole new set of problems for Bowen and, more acutely, his successors. Cotton was promising while the American Civil War raged and cut off supplies of cotton from the southern states to the mills in northern England. However, when the war ended the demand for Queensland cotton slumped. The outlook for sugar was better, but its proponents argued that sugar could only be grown with the aid of imported coloured labour, from China or India. When labour could not be arranged from those places, Pacific Islanders, were recruited from the New Hebrides and nearby islands and put to work on plantations and on many inland pastoral stations.

Abuses in the ‘Pacific islands labour traffic’ became a matter of notoriety. By 1867, the Queensland parliament was being told that vessels plying to the New Hebrides to recruit labour were ‘manned by rough and lawless men who behaved toward the natives with injustice.’ The Islanders were being induced to enter contracts they did not understand, transported to Queensland in unspeakable conditions on grossly overcrowded vessels and then put to work for ten shillings per month, payable at the end of a three year contract. British official and popular opinion was outraged – in Britain, the South Sea Islander trade looked very like slavery and Britain prided itself on the pioneering measures it had taken to end the slave trade. British opinion was unwilling to tolerate situations in Queensland that contradicted the British stance.

Again, the problem became even more intractable for Bowen’s successors as time went by.

Bowen was able to encourage the establishment of a mission to Aborigines at Somerset, on the tip of Cape York, from 1867. From 1862, Bowen had been instrumental in establishing what was intended to become a naval base on Albany Island. The place would demonstrate Imperial sovereignty in the region and it might even become a regional trading centre, Bowen argued; it was also intended to become a coaling station and a port of refuge and rescue for mariners. In 1864, the venture was relocated to the nearby mainland and called Somerset. The place did not thrive, but it was a spearhead for the development of Queensland interests in the Torres Strait region. The mission closed down in 1868.33 Bowen’s influence was also decisive in the establishment of seaports that he saw as places that would facilitate the carriage of goods and people over more direct routes to and from the interior. Port Denison (Bowen) was one of the places that owed its genesis to him; others were Cardwell and Burketown.

Townsville came into existence from 1864 to serve the hinterland pastoral interests of Robert Towns and John Melton Black, but the new port had to wait a few years for the discovery of gold around Ravenswood and Charters Towers before it began to achieve its destiny.

Toward the end of Bowen’s term, in 1867, gold was discovered at Gympie. Gold and copper had been mined at other places in Queensland before 1867, but

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Gympie showed signs of being a far more productive and long lasting field.

It was also a sign that in the near future the revenue from mining might eclipse the receipts from wool and thus provide welcome diversification within the colony’s economy. In 1867, there was also a sign of things to come in the north-west of the colony when Ernest Henry found copper near the place that became Cloncurry.

Queensland was burgeoning. To prove it, in 1863 the parliament resolved that it should commission a handsome and imposing new Parliament House, to replace the temporary expedient of the colony’s first parliament in the former convict barracks. On 14 July 1864, Bowen laid the foundation stone for the new building, but completion was not achieved until after Bowen’s departure from Queensland.

However, there had earlier been a significant sign of the importance the Queensland community attached to the office of governor when a purpose built Government House was commissioned and completed well ahead of

Above left: ‘The encampment of blacks at Rockingham Bay’ north Queensland.

Above right: Aborigines at Mackay, 1865.

the new Parliament House. It had been the new colony’s first major public works project.

Commissioned in 1860, the new Government House crowned the achievement of separation and symbolised the colony’s golden age. Since their arrival, the Bowens had lived in Adelaide House, the residence that had been built by Andrew Petrie and completed in 1855 for one of the Fortitude immigrants, Dr William Hobbs. Adelaide House was a substantial and imposing building that had been an appropriate choice when it was selected for rental as a temporary Government House. However, the house, in Ann Street, was remote from the main town area and what was already the government precinct in William and George Streets.

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Colonial Architect Charles Tiffin was entrusted with the design and supervision of the new Government House, while Joshua Jeays was engaged as builder.

Located on a prominent site within the Domain below the southern end of George Street, the building’s design was a triumphant accomplishment for Tiffin. Fine proportions, restrained and classical design features and the skilful use of local stone and timbers achieved a handsome and dignified, but not overstated, presence for the building.34 Bowen thought it was splendid – ‘the handsome and commodious building ... erected by the spontaneous and loyal liberality of the first Parliament of Queensland. ... good public reception rooms, private apartments for the Governor and his family ... also the Executive Council Chamber and offices for the Private Secretary etc.’ The house was furnished by the government, but there were to be annual inspections by the Colonial Architect and any item found to be broken or damaged other than by fair wear and tear was to be replaced at the governor’s own expense.35

Below: ‘The Wills Tragedy at Cullin-la-Ringo, 1861.’ The painting depicts the aftermath of events at the Wills family station, when 19 white settlers were killed by Aborigines.

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The Bowens were able to take possession in May 1862. They almost immediately took advantage of the better opportunities offered by the new house for entertaining and the general reception of visitors. What is now called Old Government House quickly became the focal point of Brisbane’s social life. The first big function in the new house was the Queen’s Birthday ball, held on 16 June 1862. Despite the sombre mood of mourning for the recent death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, the ball was a brilliant occasion, ‘such as had never before been witnessed in the colony,’ according to the Moreton Bay Courier.36 Bowen announced that he would be available to members of the public once a week at his new house, and that ‘persons having business which will not admit of delay will be admitted at any hour he may be in town and disengaged’, and he hoped to make Government House ‘a neutral ground on which men of all parties can meet in harmony’. Lady Bowen made similar arrangements to receive the women of Brisbane, of whatever rank, at receptions every Thursday from noon to two pm.

The move to the permanent Government House was welcomed by Lady Bowen in particular. She was a talented hostess and the new house gave her more scope to entertain. She was a keen gardener who particularly admired the brilliant orange flowered creeper, Bignonia venusta or orange trumpet flower, which flourished in Brisbane and soon came to be known as Lady Bowen’s Creeper. She relished the opportunity to develop the Government House garden, in collaboration with Walter Hill, Curator of the Botanic Gardens. She

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also enjoyed living closer to her particular friends, especially Eliza O’Connell (wife of Colonel Maurice O’Connell, then President of the Legislative Council).

These friends lived in the nearby terrace houses, Portland Place, Hodgson Terrace and Harris Court, at the lower end of George Street.37 From 1865, the Bowens spent some of the summer months at a rented house in Sandgate. Later governors did the same, until the Lamingtons preferred to go to Toowoomba during Brisbane’s hotter and more humid months.38 Despite her pregnancies and the demands of her small children, Lady Bowen won warm popular regard for her energetic work for local charitable institutions. These institutions were not always fashionable or successful to begin with, but her involvement changed that for the better. In 1863 she consented to act as patron of an organisation that successfully established a Servant’s Home, badly needed in Brisbane to provide shelter and training for young women, many of them newly arrived migrants, who would otherwise have had to roam the streets in search of work. Lady Bowen attended weekly committee meetings and her involvement with this charity was the catalyst for its notable success.

Left: Government House, 1867. The splendid building was the first major public work to be commissioned by the new Queensland government. The Bowens moved into the building when it was completed in 1862.

Below: At Government House – Rosina Palmer and her sister Fanny Carandini. The sisters were part of a very popular family light opera troupe.

From 1864, she wholeheartedly supported the creation of what came to be called the Lady Bowen Lying-In Hospital. During the births of her own children, Lady Bowen had the benefit of attendance by midwives, as did most women who could command the midwife’s fee. However, she was aware that many babies were born in terrible circumstances, without any skilled support for the mother. Those mothers needed a place where they could undergo their confinement in proper conditions. Lady Bowen headed a management committee which rented a house in Leichhardt Street to get the institution started; in 1866 she opened purpose built premises in Ann Street. The hospital moved to larger premises on Wickham Terrace in 1887 and finally, in 1938, it was absorbed within the Brisbane Women’s Hospital.

Lady Bowen similarly supported the development of what became known as the Lady Diamantina Orphanage. The institution began in Countess Street in Brisbane in 1864 and moved to a new site in what became Greenslopes in 1883.

In 1901 the buildings became the Diamantina hospital, for the treatment of chronic diseases. The Princess Alexandra Hospital now occupies the site.39 These charities were among Lady Bowen’s special interests, but it seems that during her time in Queensland she took every opportunity to encourage and support any movement that would advance the welfare of Queensland people. She had a particular interest in music, which she encouraged and patronised whenever possible. All Hallows convent school, established from 1861, was one of the few places in the colony where music was appreciated and taught. She encouraged that and presented the school with a portrait of herself.40 She also supported her husband in his official duties, even if in an advanced stage of pregnancy as on 25 February 1864, when she turned the first sod to commence the construction of Queensland’s first railway, from Ipswich to Grandchester. It was the first stage of a proposed line from Ipswich to Toowoomba.

Railway development was a major pre-occupation in Queensland during the Bowens’ time in the colony. Parliament committed to a railway building programme in 1863, the strategy being to construct light narrow gauge lines

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westwards from the main coastal ports as quickly as possible. In 1865 at Rockhampton, Bowen turned the first sod for the line that was intended to cross the Great Dividing Range and terminate in the central interior. Twenty seven years later, Bowen’s successor, Governor Norman, was able to travel by train to the new town of Longreach, just a few months after the line opened there. By then, a start had also been made on a line west from Townsville, first to Charters Towers but eventually to Winton and Mt Isa. The railways were to transform Queensland, but the heavy borrowings that their construction required meant that the colony teetered on the edge of bankruptcy on many occasions through the colonial period. The most serious crisis erupted in 1866. It almost cost Bowen his vice-regal career.

In January 1866, it was thought that the colony’s affairs were in a stable and prosperous condition when Robert Herbert resigned as Premier and announced

Left: Lady Bowen with her children Adelaide Diamantina, top left, Agnes Herbert, lower left, George William Howard, in front centre, Zoe Caroline, at right. A son, Edward George di Roma was born in 1857 but did not survive; a daughter Alfreda Ernestine Albertha was born in New Zealand in 1868.

Right: Panorama of Brisbane, 1862. Twenty years after the area was opened to free settlement, a city was emerging.

Far right: Geraldton (later Innisfail), 1885.

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his intention to return to England. Arthur Macalister was pleased to take over as Queensland’s second Premier, but a time bomb was ticking away in the form of the colony’s huge public debt. The debt was manageable as long as the general economy remained buoyant and as long as the government could keep borrowing to meet operating expenses. However, a sharp drought, a slump in wool prices and events in the financial world suddenly caused severe problems.

In 1865, the government offered debentures on the London financial markets, hoping to raise necessary funds. The attempted fund raising failed. The government then turned to the Agra and Masterman bank, which agreed to arrange a loan of one million pounds. Then, on 11 July 1866, news came that the bank had collapsed and the loan proceeds would not be forthcoming.

The government suddenly found itself without any money, unable to pay public servants, let alone meet its obligations to railway builders and other contractors. The crisis was compounded by the continuing arrival of assisted migrants who swelled the pool of local unemployed people.

The Treasurer, Joshua Peter Bell, proposed that the government introduce a Bill for a law to permit the government to issue its own paper money to the value of 200,000 pounds. The notes would not be backed by the gold standard and they would have value only within Queensland. Bowen told Bell and the Premier that he did not approve the measure and would be obliged to reserve the Bill for assent by the Queen, pointing out that his instructions required him to do this in cases where there might be an impact on the currency of the realm. Bowen counselled an increase in taxation and the raising of money by an issue of Treasury bills.

Bowen was at loggerheads with his government. Macalister said that because Bowen was frustrating the intentions of his government regarding the financial

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crisis, he and his ministers had no option but to resign. At first, Bowen refused to accept the resignations but when they were presented a second time he accepted them, on 20 July. That night, a crowd of over 3,000 people assembled in the Brisbane Town Hall. Bowen was vilified for his apparent lack of sympathy for working class people who were suffering extreme distress because of the crisis. Bowen was seen as the person responsible for prolonging the crisis and blocking government proposals to resolve it. Passions ran high; reminiscent of the 1808 Rum Rebellion, there were calls for Bowen’s arrest and for Government House to be burned down. On 9 August, an ‘indignation’ meeting initiated a petition calling for Bowen’s recall and this was later sent to London.

Left: Stanthorpe’s first school, about 1872, when tin mining was bringing life to the town.

Centre: Logan district school, built by the local community in 1870.

Right: A slab and bark dwelling in Gympie, about 1871. Like so many early dwellings in the bush and on the goldfields, it was built entirely of local materials, with the help of some wire and a few nails made by a blacksmith.

In the meantime, Bowen turned to Herbert, who was still in Brisbane and was still a back bench member of the Legislative Assembly. Herbert and four others were appointed members of the Executive Council. Herbert was able to gather enough support in parliament for the passage of a Bill which provided for increased taxation and the issue of Treasury Bills, as Bowen had earlier advised. Bowen assented to the Bill and the crisis passed. Herbert resigned as premier on 7 August and Macalister resumed office.

All ended well, but Sir Walter Campbell and several other scholars have made it clear that Bowen acted irregularly in several respects. He was wrong to foreshadow that he would not assent to Bell’s Bill and he should have waited for that Bill to be tested in the parliament; he was wrong in arguing that his prior sanction as Governor to the course proposed by Bell and Macalister was required; he was wrong to turn to Herbert before Herbert had obtained a majority in the parliament; and in general he acted precipitately. Above all, he

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appears to have imposed his will on the parliament. He had certainly violated a number of the fundamental principles of constitutional government.41 Nevertheless, the crisis was resolved quickly and it is fair to say that it might have dragged on and become even more serious but for Bowen’s decisive, if overbearing, intervention. The Colonial Office seems to have taken that view because it supported and even praised Bowen’s actions.

Nothing more was heard of the petition for Bowen’s recall, but the episode appears to have soured Bowen’s enthusiasm for Queensland. When the crisis had settled down, Herbert wrote to his cousin, Lord Carnarvon, who had just become Colonial Secretary within the British government. ‘I quite concur in the action taken by him [Bowen], as indeed do all the more respectable and educated colonists. ... it may be as well that I should mention that Sir George would be glad to be transferred from Queensland, either to Sydney or to some other suitable government.’42 At the end of 1865, Bowen’s term in Queensland was extended, dashing his hopes that he would soon be appointed to a superior governorship in a more congenial place. He had been passed over because the Colonial Office was tired of the way that Bowen constantly pushed himself forward in despatches. Minutes made by officials included ‘It is a great pity Sir George Bowen will not leave himself alone ...’ and ‘it is very difficult to retain a just state of mind towards an officer who is always obtruding and exaggerating his own merits and claims.’43 Herbert, who was probably Bowen’s only close male confidante, and Lady Bowen had to bear the brunt of the irritability that resulted from Bowen’s disappointment. On 16 June 1866, Herbert wrote to his mother ‘Sir George Bowen’s lucid intervals are rarer than they used to be. He is very anxious to get to some other place, and astonished that he has not been promoted to one of the most valuable Governments. Lady B. still looks young and pretty but is not very strong. The summer heat and her husband’s eccentricities are trying to her health.’44 Eventually, Bowen accepted an offer to become governor of New Zealand.

Bowen was delighted, but for Lady Bowen the parting from Brisbane was sweet sorrow. She had been taken into the hearts of local people in a way that her husband never was. It was as though the community wanted to love Sir George, their governor, but when they found that impossible they lavished their patriotic emotion on the Contessa Diamantina Roma. There was also sympathy for her having to endure such a difficult husband. For her part, Brisbane was a place of special attachment. Lady Bowen could be satisfied as she departed Queensland that because of her efforts the colony was a better place when she left than when she had arrived, particularly for less fortunate people. Three of her children had been born in Brisbane and had been baptised at St John’s Pro-Cathedral; she had nurtured the garden around Government House and she had formed many close friendships in the town.

Queensland began saying goodbye to her more than a month before the departure on 4 January 1868. There were receptions and presentations, including a brooch in the shape of an Irish harp, given by the pupils of All Hallows convent school. The brooch was made from Queensland gold, pearls and emeralds.45 On the day of departure there was a levee at Government

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part two – Sovereigns and Ambassadors

House. At three pm, the Bowens walked through arches and flags, down to the landing stage where they had first set foot in Queensland eight years before.

Lady Bowen was sobbing and scarcely able to walk until she was finally carried aboard the Platypus that was to take her out to Moreton Bay, there to board a larger vessel bound for New Zealand.46 As the Platypus steamed down the river toward the present site of the Story Bridge, Lady Bowen was able to wave to the girls of All Hallows who had assembled in their school grounds to farewell her.

Bowen governed New Zealand from 1868 to 1873 and then was Governor of Victoria between 1873 and 1879. In Victoria, his career suffered another setback when he mishandled a crisis that was reminiscent of Queensland in 1866. This time, Bowen was not so lucky. He was recalled and then given the inferior posting of Governor of Mauritius. There, he seems to have regained Colonial Office favour and in 1882 he was appointed to the more coveted position of Governor of Hong Kong. He retired from that position in 1886 and returned to Britain. Lady Bowen died in 1893. In 1896 Sir George was married again, to the widow Florence White, but he died in 1899. Sir George and Countess Diamantina Roma were survived by their son and four daughters.

Robert Herbert did rather better than Bowen in the years after Queensland.

Back in Britain from 1867, he joined the Colonial Office and was its Permanent Under-Secretary from 1871 to 1892. Thus, Bowen became subordinate to his former private secretary. Herbert died in 1905. The only serious setback in his life had been a series of unfortunate investments in Queensland pastoral ventures.

Abram Moriarty, the other central figure in the ‘erection’ of Queensland, returned to Sydney in September 1860 and was immediately appointed Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands. He enjoyed a successful public service career before he retired to Goulburn in 1896. There he lived in the home he called Brisbane Grove until his death in 1918, aged 89 years.

Queensland’s first governor, its first premier and its first public servant had thus all prospered since they had combined to create Queensland as a self-governing community. They had each played a very important part in Queensland’s success, but there can be no doubt that, 150 years later, particular homage should be paid to Bowen.

Charles Bernays did that in 1922. Bernays, Clerk to the Queensland Parliament and the son of the first man to hold that office in 1860, was a keen student of Queensland’s governors through the colonial period. He fairly summarised Bowen’s contribution to Queensland when he wrote ‘His career in this State marked him out as a man of exceptional talent and well fitted as the Sovereign’s representative in a dominion then only in its swaddling clothes. Our first governor was not only a student of books but also of men, in those early days a strong man was needed to guide the destinies of the young colony and to exercise a restraining influence on the impulsive and somewhat headstrong leading politicians of the period.

‘Some people have expressed doubt whether our first Governor had quite the right conception of constitutional government and whether he did not apply the curb more as the head of a Crown Colony than as Governor of a Sovereign

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chapter three – We hail, with triumphant joy, this Glorious Event

Above: Queensland’s first train crosses Pot Gully, west of Ipswich, following the opening of the Ipswich to Grandchester line in July 1865. The colony’s railway system expanded very quickly, at the cost of huge public debt that kept Queensland on the brink of insolvency.

State. This is an entirely wrong conception of Sir George Bowen. Constitutionally, he was sound beyond all doubt, but those were the days when a governor’s responsibilities were greater than they are today – a period when foundations were being laid and precedents created and when leading public men were new to the arts of self-government and showed impatience upon being met with the most justifiable restraint. Today, these same difficulties do not arise because we have a generation born and brought up to the requirements of constitutionalism.

‘Our first Governor ... may be considered one of the great Empire builders of a great nation. He brought to our baby colony in 1859 a keen intellect and mature experience and he set a high standard in the conduct of our public affairs.’47 Bowen had been the man for Queensland’s hour.

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