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A piece of cake ‘Queenslanders thought of themselves as Britons, citizens of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, the Empire on which the sun never set. They were supremely confident that, for them, no challenge was too great, no test too stern. There was a profound sense that Britain was home and that the British Empire had created an extended family of people who shared a very special heritage, especially the heritage of the Westminster system and the rule of law that set people of the British Empire apart from Kipling’s ‘lesser breeds without the law.’ In Queensland, the Lamingtons personified the Empire and everything it had achieved, everything it stood for.’ 1 It is always difficult, even in retrospect, to confidently argue that a precise period of time was one of history’s turning points, a time after which things were never the same again. That claim can be made for the Lamington years, between 1896 and 1901. They were years when all the changes set in motion by the disturbances of the early 1890s became final. They were years when the course of Queensland’s history changed profoundly. Afterwards, things were certainly never the same again. The late 1890s were the crucible years2 when colonial Queensland was smelted into a state of the Commonwealth of Australia; years when the new twentieth century dawned to reveal a future that was going to be very different from the old century that was closing. As the colony prepared to become a state in the Australian Commonwealth, Queenslanders took stock and asked themselves ‘Who are we, where have we come from, what have we achieved?’ Their colony had been born at the height of the Victorian era; its childhood was spent wrapped in the secure blanket of the comfortable and certain progress of the British Empire as that mighty empire rose to its zenith. The Victorian period climaxed and then closed while the Lamingtons were in Queensland. In September 1896, five months after the Lamingtons arrived in the colony, Queen Victoria’s reign became the longest in British history. In the following year she celebrated her Diamond Jubilee; then she died in 1901 just three weeks after Queensland became a state within the new Australian federation. Throughout Queensland, those two events gave rise to extraordinary demonstrations of popular enthusiasm for the Queen and Empire, demonstrations that were at odds with the ‘temper democratic, bias offensively Australian’ that is often said to have been the mood of those times. In Queensland, the spirit of the era was perfectly suited to the couple who came to Government House in 1896. Although not as nobly born as the Marquis of Normanby or as illustrious as Sir Henry Norman, Lord and Lady Lamington had close links to Queen Victoria. They were young, stylish, wealthy and well-connected. They seemed to symbolise the promise of the glamour and sophisticated modernity of the coming Edwardian era.
Left: Charles Wallace Alexander Napier Cochrane-Baillie, Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland from 1895 to 1901.
When the Lamingtons arrived in 1896, Queensland had 450,000 people. It was the most decentralised of all the Australian colonies – only a quarter of its population lived in Brisbane. The majority lived in places scattered between Thursday Island and Birdsville, between Burleigh Heads and Burketown. Queensland’s community (especially in the north) was far more ethnically
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diverse than the population of any other colony; fewer of its people worked in factories and more of them worked in the primary industries than did the people of other Australian colonies. Immigration had been strong until the late 1880s and this had meant that more Queenslanders had been born overseas than was the case in any other part of Australia. Despite Queensland’s comparative ethnic diversity, the overwhelming majority of its people or their immediate forebears had been born in Britain (then including Ireland). Since 1859, Queenslanders had lived through times when the pace of change must have seemed tumultuous but, with hindsight we can see that through Queensland’s short history there had been steady progress and the consolidation of human achievement. People marvelled and wondered at the changes that had been wrought, but there was rarely any shock of the new. For Queenslanders, their world at the end of the nineteenth century remained a comfortable place where some things might change but old certainties did not. Then, as the new century loomed, the colony stood on the threshold of a very different future as a state in the Commonwealth of Australia. In 1901, there were 503,266 Queenslanders and Brisbane’s population was 119,428. Queensland soldiers had been the first Australians to be sent to war in South Africa, where they fought for the last time as Queenslanders; they came home as members of the Australian Army that was created on 1 March 1901. Electricity, telecommunications, internal combustion engines, motor cars and motion pictures were about to transform everyone’s material and social lives. In 1897, thousands flocked to see the first moving picture ever exhibited in Brisbane, a film that showed the celebrations in London for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. A year later, Thargomindah was lit by hydro-electricity generated by the town bore. Change was happening everywhere. The foundations of new institutions were being laid, institutions like hospitals, libraries, art galleries and tertiary educational facilities that would profoundly influence Queensland in the coming century. Eventually most of the change was socially beneficial, but it took time for changes to be absorbed into a new order of things. In the 1890s, employers and employees had been at loggerheads. Lord Lamington had only been in Queensland for six months when he observed ‘The division existing between the two classes [i.e. wage earners and capitalists] appears to me far more accentuated than what I have known at home … the better off class have a positive dread of the possible supremacy of the working class. Whilst from the speeches of the latter … I would conclude that they have an excessive hatred of the better off class … an old colonist declared to me that the tension will one day became unbearable and a severe struggle will ensue.’3 Happily, the old colonist’s forecast was wide of the mark. The tensions were resolved or submerged when a new political and industrial landscape emerged from the 1890s conflict. That took time; time through which the tensions often bubbled dangerously close to the surface. It was part of the governor’s role to help resolve the tensions, to remind people that although they might be at odds with each other about some things, they were all Queenslanders, all members of one great family, there was more that united them than divided them. Despite the many reasons for anxiety, the strongly prevailing mood of Queenslanders at the end of the nineteenth century was one of proud
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celebration of great achievement, of confident welcome to a new century wherein the rewards of past achievement would be enjoyed. It was a mood that inspired a tremendous welcome to the Lamingtons when they arrived in Brisbane on 9 April 1896. More than 50,000 people turned out to greet the new governor and his wife, proof that Sir Henry Norman had rebuilt the loyalty of Queenslanders. Happily for posterity, Lady Lamington recorded her recollections of her time in Queensland. Although it was later called a diary, it is more than that. It is a fascinating description of the colony as she saw it. It confirms that Lady Lamington was the most active and involved of all the governors’ wives since Lady Bowen. The Lamingtons came out to Queensland aboard the ship India. For Lady Lamington who suffered badly from sea sickness compounded by morning sickness during her first pregnancy, the voyage was a series of agonising intervals at sea, relieved by interesting, often fascinating and delightful, but all too brief times ashore at ports of call. Finally, the India reached Queensland waters. ‘I used to lie there [in the ladies’ deck cabin] and watch the shores of Queensland and Islands – such beautiful green right down to the water’s edge Below: Mary (May) Houghton Lamington, neé Hozier. Lady Lamington left an invaluable written record of her time in Queensland.
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(which I afterwards knew as mangroves) and the sea such a wonderful blue – it was very lovely.’4 At Thursday Island the Lamingtons began their five years of vice-regal service in Queensland. ‘My husband was met on the landing stage by many deputations and addresses from every kind of sect and nationality. The Chinese address was especially interesting, using much flowery language about the supposed charms of my husband and myself’ Lady Lamington wrote.5 The Lamingtons were fascinated by what they saw of the pearling industry and its polyglot people; they were learning that there was more to Queensland than wool and gold, bushmen and miners. From Thursday Island, the India proceeded down the Queensland coast toward Brisbane, with intermediate stops at Cooktown, Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton and Maryborough. The India did not put in to Bundaberg, but a basket of fruit was sent out to the ship on behalf of the people of that town. In the basket were mangoes ‘which we ate in my cabin and thoroughly enjoyed – this was my first sight of a mango.’ 6 Already Lady Lamington was a Queenslander! At last, at 4.30 pm on 8 April, the ship anchored off the Pile Light, in Moreton Bay. The next day, there was the usual transfer to the Lucinda for the last stage of the journey to Brisbane. At the Petrie Bight wharf, there was an address of welcome and then the party got into carriages ‘and drove slowly in a long procession through the whole town under arches and mottoes of welcome – every roof and balcony as well as the street being crammed with cheering people, and one got quite tired of bowing.’ 7 The procession took the Lamingtons via Queen and George Streets to Government House. Along the way ‘we saw one arch entirely covered with Aboriginals, splendid looking men, a most wonderful sight … At last we arrived at Government House …’8 where Lord Lamington was sworn in by Sir Samuel Griffith, Chief Justice of Queensland. From the time of his birth in London on 29 July 1860, Charles Wallace Alexander Napier Cochrane-Baillie, the second Baron Lamington, was destined for just such a job as this. He was descended from the great Scottish hero, Sir William Wallace, whose daughter married a Sir William Baillie. By the fifteenth century and perhaps even earlier, the Baillie family ‘of Lamington’ were substantial landholders in the highly productive farming country around Lanark, to the south-east of Glasgow. Governor Lamington’s grandfather, Sir Thomas John Cochrane, had been an Admiral; his father Alexander Dundas Ross CochraneWishart-Baillie, had been a member of the House of Commons for most of the years between 1841 and 1880. He had built the family seat, Lamington House, near the village of Lamington, in Lanark. He was ennobled in 1880 as the first Baron Lamington of Lamington. He married Annabella Drummond, the grand-daughter of the Duke of Rutland. The second Lord Lamington (as he was to become) was educated at Eton and Oxford (Bachelor of Arts 1883) and was said to have been brought up under the tutelage of his father’s close friend, Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli), creator of the Conservative Party and twice Prime Minister. Lamington then became assistant private secretary to Lord Salisbury, thrice Prime Minister for terms totalling 13 years between 1885 and 1902. In 1886, Lamington was himself elected to the House of Commons for the Conservative Party, then became the second Baron Lamington and was translated to the House of Lords
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when his father died in 1890. Politically, he was a ‘staunch Conservative and loyal Imperialist.’ His interest in Imperial matters had a practical outlet in 1891 when he was selected to travel to the Indo-China region as a member of an official party that was to suggest British territorial annexations to forestall French expansion in the region. After the party broke up, Lamington stayed in the region to travel across what is now Vietnam and Thailand and possibly into southern China, through areas said to have not been previously visited by Europeans.9 On 13 June 1895, Lord Lamington married Mary (called May by her family, friends and new husband) Houghton Hozier, daughter of Sir William Hozier, later Baron Newlands and his wife Frances Anne, neé O’Hara. The O’Haras had extensive land holdings at Raheen, in County Galway in Ireland.10 May was 26 years old at the time of her marriage. The Hozier family was also based around Lanark and had extensive rural holdings as well as lands within the city of Glasgow. For Lamington, a suitable marriage had perhaps been a pre-condition for the kind of appointment that came his way in October 1895 when he was chosen to succeed General Sir Henry Norman as Governor of Queensland. So far, Lord Lamington had trodden the career path typically followed by well-to-do members of the lesser nobility. Lamington did not need the five thousand pounds a year salary attached to the job in Queensland, but he did accept the personal obligation of public service that then came with birth into wealth and privilege. It is likely that the position of Queensland governor was designed to be a test for him, a test of his suitability for even higher office. He passed the test and after his time in Queensland he became Governor of Bombay, a considerably more prestigious appointment.
Above: Lord Lamington arriving at Cooktown’s wharf; at right: Lord Lamington (in centre) standing on a buggy to address the welcoming crowd at Cooktown.
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In several respects, the personal styles of both the Lamingtons and the ways in which they carried out their work represented a subtle shift in the emphasis given to some aspects of the roles of the governor and his consort. Queensland’s first seven governors, from Bowen to Norman, had been career colonial administrators, drawn from the British colonial service meritocracy. Lamington, the eighth and last colonial governor, was a wealthy patrician. So was his wife – if anything, she was even wealthier and better connected. If there was ever any doubt about their standing in British society, it was dispelled when it became known in Queensland that Queen Victoria had consented to be a god-parent of the Lamington’s first child, Victor. It is therefore unsurprising that during the Lamington years there was a shift away from the involvement of the governor and his wife in the mundane and practical day to day affairs of the colony, toward the more social and ceremonial roles. The earlier governors had to nurture the evolution of Queensland’s institutions of government; ministers and other political leaders were inexperienced and inevitably came under the tutelage of the early governors. However, by 1896, Queensland’s institutions and its politicians and public servants had matured. In the absence of crises, and there were none during the Lamington years, they did not need the guidance or day to day attention of the governor. On the other hand, the Lamingtons were in Queensland during the high point of adulation of the Queen and a crescendo of fervent expressions of loyalty to the Empire. Given the Lamingtons’ personal qualities and their apparent connections to the Queen, it was natural that the new vice-regal couple should be seen and treated as the local personification of the Empire and all it stood for. Lord Lamington was more than the head of government in the colony; he was the embodiment of the Queen in Queensland, his appointment was truly vice-regal. A special dignity and status attached to him and to his consort. It was perhaps ironic that the Lamingtons were the first and the last vice-regal couple in Queensland to bask in the full glow of the Empire. After Federation and the death of Queen Victoria, there was to be another shift in the role of the state governors. The Governor-General, as the Australian head of state, was perceived to be closer to the Crown and the state governors never again stood in the royal sun in quite the way that Lord Lamington had done. There was one dimension of the Queensland governors’ work that had not significantly changed since 1859. Governor Bowen was instructed that he was to tour frequently, to build loyalty to the Queen by creating a sense of continuing contact between the governor, as the Queen’s representative, and the people.11 Bowen and his colonial successors, except Cairns, had taken that instruction very seriously. Lamington was a traveller by inclination and he relished touring Queensland. Quite often, Lady Lamington travelled with him. That had important consequences. Earlier governors had usually travelled without their wives, especially into more remote places. Inevitably, in these circumstances, functions for the governor tended to become all male or male dominated affairs. Lady Lamington made it clear she wanted to meet Queensland women. Balls and other social functions suited to the attendance of women became more common during vice-regal tours, even in remote and new places.
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Above: Sketches of Aboriginal men who were members of the guard of honour to welcome the Lamingtons to Queensland in 1895. Right: Crowds lining Queen Street to welcome the Lamingtons and watch the vice regal procession through the city. Some people who had vantage points on top of a shop awning were injured when the awning collapsed and they fell to the ground.
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In April 1899, the Lamingtons toured central-western Queensland, where Lady Lamington saw things and met people that sometimes surprised her. The party went by special train to Barcaldine and then they stayed at the nearby Dunraven homestead of the Coldham family. ‘It was such a nice station house, not very big, but most comfortable, the chief sitting room being the big verandah nearly level with the ground, with squatters’ chairs and pretty plants and bits of harness and whips hanging on the big wooden pillars. … I believe now owing to drought the Coldhams have given up their station … the whole country was a mass of big deep cracks from the dryness. ‘We drove one day to see the shearers at work … not long before there had been serious strikes and fighting and they were supposed to be a rough lot. … We also went round the shearers’ quarters, great rough bunks of deal boards like the steerage in a ship and, outside, a table with legs stuck in the ground. After we had seen all round we went outside and all were photographed together – all the men were most civil and kind; I wish I could tell them now what a pleasant remembrance it is to me. ‘Next day we went to Longreach where there was an Agricultural Show. We went to the hotel13 and dressed there for a Ball which they gave to welcome us. Next day we attended the Show … that night we were told the hotel had been burned down two years running. Mrs. Stuart and I looked into some of the rooms before going to bed and our confidence was not restored by what we saw. In the middle of the night (my room was on one side of the passage and my husband’s on the other) I was woken up by a man stumbling in my window from the verandah, so drunk he could only sit on the floor propped up by the window frame … eventually the man staggered away. The bath in the morning was covered with a sort of slime which I took at first to be dirt – as everything was very dirty – but it turned out that all the water was Artesian water from the Artesian bore and that our baths were not artificially heated but were the natural heat of the water, the water leaving this slimy deposit and smelling strongly of sulphur. We later went on to see the bore, which is such a godsend to this country … we then went to see the school … We also looked in at the little house of the St. Andrew’s Bush Brotherhood.’14 It seemed that every community believed it had a right to at least one viceregal tour during the term of each governor. Every community was keen to
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Left: Longreach railway station 1899, Lady Lamington standing at centre right, holding a dark parasol and wearing a fly veil. Centre: Lady Lamington in a Cobb & Co coach at Longreach, going to the show. Right: Elderslie Street, Winton, in 1896. Three years later, Lord Lamington heard the first vice-regal performance of Waltzing Matilda in the town.
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demonstrate its progress and its industries, every community was anxious to demonstrate that it was second to none in the strength of its loyalty to the Crown. As a result, the Lamingtons saw shearing, they saw cane crushing, they went down gold and coal mines, they toured factories and they opened enterprises or laid foundation stones for things that showed progress, things like schools and hospitals and railway extensions and roads and bridges. Some of these developments were very important because they changed Queensland. The Queensland Agricultural College, opened on 9 July 1897, was Queensland’s first tertiary level educational institution; Lord Lamington also opened or identified with the beginnings of institutions that became the State Library, the Queensland Art Gallery and the Brisbane Central Technical College. In September 1896, he chaired a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (Queensland), when pastoralist and nature conservation advocate Robert Collins read a paper about the beauties of the southern highlands of Queensland. Lord Lamington showed keen interest in the area and soon afterwards he visited it, under Collins’ guidance. In 1899 the name Lamington Plateau was formally applied to the region, to commemorate the governor’s visit and to recognise his support for Collins’ conservation proposals. In 1915, an area of 47,000 acres was set aside as the Lamington National Park.15 On 29 September 1900, Lord Lamington visited the western Queensland town of Winton. The visit might have been unremarkable, except for proceedings at a dinner held at the town’s Post Office Hotel. There were many speeches during the dinner and many songs were presented, ‘capped by Mr. Ramsay with Waltzing Matilda, one of Banjo Paterson’s ditties composed in the Winton district’, reported the Western Champion.16 The local Gregory News reported that ‘toward the end, by special request of His Excellency, Mr. H. Ramsay rendered a western song, Waltzing Matilda, composed by Mr. A.B. Paterson, the well known war correspondent,17 during a stay in Winton some years ago, the company joining in the chorus.’18 It was the first performance of the song ‘under viceregal patronage.’ Perhaps Lamington knew of the Scottish connection between Paterson and himself – Paterson’s family had come from the land around the small village of Carmichael, located about eight kilometres from the village of Lamington and the Lamington family seat.
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In April 1898, Lamington began travels that were to him perhaps the most interesting he undertook during his Queensland years – he joined a party for a six week expedition through New Guinea. Sir Hugh Nelson, former Premier of Queensland, and several scientists were included in the party, which was joined in Port Moresby by Sir William MacGregor, Administrator of British New Guinea and future Governor of Queensland. The tour was by no means a jaunt, it extended to some of the most remote and difficult parts of New Guinea. One result of the expedition was the identification and collection of many new botanical species; another was that Lamington contracted what may have been malarial fever. For some years to come, he suffered recurrent attacks of the fever. Lord Lamington was a ‘man’s man,’ more interested in sports like shooting, polo, golf and cycling than in intellectual pursuits. According to Charles Bernays, he was sometimes gruff and unapproachable. According to his wife, he sometimes left her to deal with visitors who did not interest him – he simply disappeared on these occasions. He did win the respect and admiration of the people of Queensland, but he did not win their love. Lady Lamington, on the other hand, genuinely endeared herself to the Queensland community. Her full participation in her vice-regal role had to be deferred for a time after her arrival in Brisbane because she was by then approaching the latter stages of her first pregnancy. A son was born on 23 July 1896. At the request of Queen Victoria, he was to be named Victor Alexander, after the Queen’s eldest grandson and the heir to the throne who had died in 1891. The Lamingtons added the additional Christian name Brisbane to acknowledge the child’s birthplace. Victor’s christening, at St John’s pro-cathedral, gave rise to scenes reminiscent of the Lamingtons’ arrival. The streets near the cathedral were packed ‘and there was such a crowd at the cathedral gates that she [Lady Lamington] took the baby out of the arms of his nurse and held him up for the people to see and they cheered him to the echo.’19 On 14 February 1898, daughter Grisell Annabella Gem was born in Brisbane. Lady Lamington employed nurses to relieve her of the day to day burden of caring for the children and thus the interruptions to her vice-regal role were comparatively brief. One of her first tasks was to supervise the redecoration of Government House. She thought that the sombre brown tones in which the house was painted and furnished were oppressive and she ‘soon replaced the furnishings with fresh, cool chintzes and cretonnes which she had some difficulty in obtaining, together with varnished floors and basket tables and chairs in the hall and Aboriginal weapons around the walls she made it into a delightful home.’20 Lady Lamington was to supervise two other major projects at the House – extensions including a billiard room in 1899 that later served as the first meeting room for the University of Queensland Senate, then major redecorations and renovations in anticipation of the 1901 royal tour by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York. It was shortly before this tour that the lamington cake was probably devised by Armand Galland, chef at Government House from 1899 to 1901. There are many accounts of the origin of the lamington, but the most likely explanation was given in 1999 by Robert Galland, great-grandson of Armand. Robert believed that his great-grandfather ‘was asked to make some cakes for an afternoon tea and found he had not made enough so he whipped up some
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Above right: Victor and Gem Lamington, in the grounds of Government House. Centre: Lady Lamington with baby Gem, 1898. Below: Victor Lamington sitting on the leaf of a Victoria regia waterlily in Brisbane Botanic Gardens, 1897. Right: The Lamingtons in front of Government House, with baby Victor.
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French butter cake, added French-style chocolate and dipped it in coconut. Everyone loved the cakes, particularly Lord and Lady Lamington so I believe my great-grandfather named the cake in their honour.’21 Since its creation, the defiantly popular cake has been eagerly eaten at smoke-ohs and at morning and afternoon teas everywhere from shearing sheds to Government Houses. Lamington drives have probably raised millions of dollars for good causes; the lamington has featured in many recipe books; and has even been the subject of Dame Edna Everage’s satirical soliloquys. Whatever contribution she may or may not have made to the creation of the cake, Lady Lamington quickly showed in Queensland that she was a woman of practical compassion – a warm and sympathetic person who felt keenly about the plight of less fortunate people. She thought carefully about how she might best use her position to make a positive difference to the community.
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She knew that as the governor’s wife she had one powerful tool at her disposal – patronage, in the best sense of leading, encouraging and supporting. She took the lead in establishing institutions that were badly needed to provide services and facilities that otherwise would not have been provided. She lived in Queensland through a time when governments took a very narrow view of their obligations to help people who needed help, in particular the sick and the poverty stricken. Governments excused themselves by arguing that citizens should provide for their own health and welfare and if they could not, or would not, make that provision then they must rely on charity. It was a time when there was a sense of obligation on the part of people who were wealthy and influential to act charitably and support the provision of things that governments did not provide. However, that sense of obligation led to effective outcomes only when there was leadership and example set by people who were respected. Lady Lamington used her position to provide powerful leadership and to set a compelling example which resulted in the Queensland community gaining several institutions it would not have otherwise have had at that time. Her patronage gave impetus, status and direction to those institutions. In the beginning, it was not something that came easily to her. ‘At first, presiding over meetings was a misery of shyness to me and later on became such a pleasure’ she wrote.22 Before long, she was confidently making speeches to farewell soldiers bound for the Boer War and she was officially opening new organisations, such as the Cookery School at the Brisbane Technical College.23 She actually undertook classes at the Technical College, completing and passing courses in wood-carving, first aid and home nursing. She was especially proud of her nursing qualification and was later to use it to practical effect in France during the Great War.24 Her keenest personal interests were in the area of health care. In that, she was following a family tradition – her family had endowed hospitals and other health care facilities in Scotland. In Queensland, her proudest achievement was the establishment of a hospital for women. She recorded in her diary ‘I had my first meeting about my little hospital as I still heard many women bemoaning not having a place to be treated for their special diseases, so I determined to continue my efforts. The meeting was attended by many doctors and the general public and various Government ministers. … We held meetings at Government House and the doctors were elected by vote … it ended in four of the best doctors in Brisbane being on the staff, including Dr. Lillian Cooper, the only lady doctor then in Brisbane. The next business was to get a small suitable bungalow within our means and I found two little ones close together; one served as nurse’s quarters, kitchen and out-patients department, the other as wards for the in-patients. Nine or ten patients was our limit. After getting all the necessary instruments and building, a quite plain wooden operating room was joined on to the main building by a covered way, doing all as neatly and cleanly and cheaply as possible. We had our little ‘Opening’ … that afternoon, alas, we could have filled the hospital twice over, a state of things that never altered while I knew the Hospital.’25 As the Lamingtons prepared to leave Queensland in 1901, they were showered with gifts and souvenirs. ‘Best of all, the Government Ministers asked me to sign the lease of a large piece of land that they gave me, on which to build the
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Photographs taken in 1899 by H.W. Mobsby during an official tour through the Torres Strait Islands by the Home Secretary J.F.G. Foxton, Dr Roth and W.E. Parry-Okeden, Commissioner of Police. Above: Yarrabah mission superintendent’s residence. Centre right: Murray Island courthouse, Torres Strait, showing the Hon. J.F.G. Foxton presenting portraits of Lord and Lady Lamington to the island’s people. Below: The mission station at Weipa. Left, centre: The last of the native huts on Murray Island.
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Above: The proclamation of Federation at Brisbane’s Treasury building, 1 January 1901.
permanent Women’s Hospital – a gift I greatly appreciated – they had already arranged to subsidise the hospital as a State Institution.’26 Lady Lamington’s other ‘good works’, often conducted in a personal and private way, included support for a Brisbane Rescue Home for ‘fallen women’; visits to lepers confined on the Peel Island lazaret and to inmates of mental asylums, and support for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb Association. She wrote that she was always uncomfortable in Brisbane’s heat. To escape the worst of it, the Lamingtons spent several summers in Toowoomba, once at the disused Blue Mountains Hotel which the vice-regal party simply took over for several months, and in other years at Harlaxton House, which was rented for them on at least two occasions. In the ordinary course of events, the Lamingtons’ five year term of office would have ended in April 1901. It seems that the Lamingtons were prevailed upon to extend their term in Queensland until December 1901, so they would still be in office at the time of the first sitting of the new Commonwealth Parliament and the related royal tour by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York. It was agreed that the Lamingtons might take six month’s leave from late 1899, so that they could return home. While in Britain, Lamington was knighted – he was to be knighted again in 1903, prior to his becoming Governor of Bombay. During his leave, Lord Lamington often spoke in public about Queensland, invariably emphasizing the loyalty of Queenslanders as evidenced by their participation in the Boer War.27
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On his return to the colony in May 1900, Lord Lamington spoke at celebrations for the jubilee of the Presbyterian Church in Queensland. He said that he noted with approval the movement toward Federation; also the action taken by Australia to support the Empire in the war in South Africa, and the considerable achievement in work to ameliorate the lot of Aborigines.28 He had been pleased by 1897 legislation that was designed to help Aborigines by restricting the sale of opium, confining them to reserves and providing for the appointment of ‘protectors.’29 The Clerk to the Queensland Parliament, Charles Bernays, observed that ‘The period during which Lord Lamington reigned in Queensland was not marked by any disturbance of the political atmosphere, and a Governor, no matter what his capacity for dealing with such situations, is to be congratulated upon escaping them.’30 Bernays’ suggestion that the political atmosphere was ‘undisturbed’ during the Lamington period is perhaps at odds with the reality of a tempestuous environment within the Parliament. Political parties were still emerging; no one party consistently commanded a majority and most governments were based on alliances of minority groupings. As a result, ministries were formed and re-formed with a frequency that today would be alarming. Lamington had five premiers in five years – Nelson, Byrnes, Dickson, Dawson and Philp, but this instability seems to have been taken for granted. Given Lamington’s personal conservative persuasion, it is a measure of his tact and diplomacy that the world’s first Labour government came to office in Queensland during his term, without Lamington indicating any discomfort or disapproval. Under the leadership of Anderson Dawson, the history-making government held office for only six days but it was a sign of things to come. Despite some misgivings, Lamington welcomed the creation of the new Commonwealth of Australia. The great day of the birth of the new Australian nation passed without much ceremony in Brisbane. Because of uncertainties about protocol, the various governors were not invited to the huge celebrations that took place in Sydney. On the afternoon of 1 January 1901, in a short ceremony at Government House in Brisbane, Lord Lamington was again sworn in, this time as ‘Governor of the State of Queensland and its dependencies in the Commonwealth of Australia.’31 The 1901 royal tour now demanded all the Lamingtons’ attention. Planning was delayed by initial uncertainty. It was at first intended that the Prince of Wales would make the tour to participate in the inauguration of the new Commonwealth, but this proposal was suspended because of the Queen’s declining health. The Queen died on 22 January 1901 and the Prince of Wales became King. It was then thought that there should be no royal tour while the nation mourned Queen Victoria. Finally, it was decided that the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (later King George V and Queen Mary) should come to Australia to open the first sitting of the new Commonwealth Parliament and that they should then tour within Australia. The Lamingtons played a prominent advisory role in planning the tour because they were friendly with the royal couple – Lady Lamington had earlier been a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess. Government House had to be refurbished and plans had to be made to entertain the royal visitors. To make room for the royal party, most of the Lamington household was moved out of Government House and into
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Parliament House for the duration of the visit. Then, plans were thrown into disarray when Brisbane was declared a plague infected port. This prevented the entry of all shipping, including the royal yacht which was to bring the royal party to Brisbane. Eventually, the visitors came by train. The royal visitors had a crowded schedule in and around Brisbane for several days, then, on 24 May, they departed for the south by train. Lord Lamington had personally arranged a special surprise for his guests. At Cambooya, outside Toowoomba, the royal train halted so that the visitors could watch an exhibition of camp-drafting while they enjoyed a smoke-oh of billy-tea and damper. Lord Lamington is said to have participated in the camp-draft. The remainder of the Lamingtons’ term must have seemed an anti-climax. They finally left Brisbane on 20 December 1901. Their departure was reminiscent of their arrival – a levee at Government House in the morning; presentation of farewell gifts; a procession through the streets; then by train to Pinkenba and finally by the government launch Lucinda to the liner Aorangi which was anchored in Moreton Bay. There were huge crowds and genuinely sorrowful goodbyes. In 1903, Lamington was appointed Governor of Bombay. Given the size of the Bombay province and the significance of India within the Empire, it is clear that Lamington’s new appointment was a considerable promotion for him. The new office suited him – his prerogatives in India were much broader than they had been in Queensland and they were unfettered by any local legislature. India also offered opportunities for ‘big game’ hunting, opportunities that Lamington seized with enthusiasm. Lord Lamington seemed to thrive in India, but Lady Lamington did not. Due to poor health, she left India some time before his term expired in 1907. An illness had affected her hearing. ‘I realised that I was deaf and would never hear distinctly again’ she wrote. Later, after an operation, ‘a piece of bone was found to be pressing on her brain.’32 She lived with the affliction until her death in 1944. The Lamingtons retired to Lamington House, where Lord Lamington was said to have been well known ‘for his excellence as a landlord and host. One remembers him striding over the heather, upright, strong and untiring – and later riding more slowly on his white Iceland pony.’33 Their retirement was interrupted by the Great War. Lord Lamington joined an Army unit as a recruiting officer. In that capacity he went briefly to the Western Front. From 1919, Lord Lamington served for some years with the British Relief Unit in Syria. In 1916, when the Great War was not going well for the Allies, there was a call for women to go to the front to serve as nurses, drivers, ambulance officers and doctors. Lady Lamington responded to the call and she went to France with a Voluntary Aid Detachment to serve as a nurse in a French field hospital. She wrote to friends in Brisbane ‘I originally passed my nursing course at the Technical College in Brisbane … I worked in a hospital in France for some time and had entire charge of the operating theatre, and had to be at all operations and I had charge of the room where the dressings were done. … One sees some awful sights, but if one can do good, one can bear anything.
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chapter seven – a piece of cake
Above: The Lamington plateau – Lord Lamington showed a keen interest in conservation of the area and in 1915 it was set aside as a National Park.
‘In my ‘off time’ I am learning to do some of the minor work of making munitions … Victor is home on three days leave … he is with the Scots Guards at the front. Grisell is a cook in another hospital. Lord Lamington has just started five days in the trenches in France, as all officers now have to go there … If Lord Lamington’s regiment was only near London I would attach myself to a hospital for Australians, as my heart always goes out to them. They have been so splendid.’34 In later years, Lord Lamington was consistently active within the numerous organisations that existed in Britain to discuss imperial affairs and promote particular points of view about them. The underlying theme of these discussions was invariably the opportunity for the extension of British influence and trade. Lamington frequently spoke about Queensland issues in these forums. He was also President of the East India Association, an organisation devoted to the study of Indian affairs. He was somewhat frail by 1940, when he was shot during a sensational incident in London. On 13 March 1940, the East India Association conducted a joint meeting with the Royal Central Asian Society. The meeting was attended by about 170 people and, as it was breaking up, ‘a man of Indian nationality fired into a group of eminent men who had taken part in the proceedings.’ Sir Michael O’Dwyer was shot dead and three other men were wounded, including Lord Lamington who suffered a severed artery in his wrist and a shattered hand.35 It seems that he never fully recovered from these injuries and he died at Lamington House in September 1940.36 Lamington House was later demolished because the family could not afford its upkeep.37 The village of Lamington remains in Lanark as testament to the family’s former importance in that locality. In Queensland, there are warm memories of the last colonial governor and his wife, the attractive young couple who symbolised the spirit of a very special age.
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