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Different men, different times ‘MacGregor was able to spend a good deal of time encouraging and opening new institutions. Goold-Adams had to spend much of his time unveiling war memorials and attending services commemorating the war dead.’ 1 On 28 June 1914, the heir to the throne of the decaying Austro-Hungarian empire was assassinated in the central European city of Sarajevo, now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was the most momentous event of the twentieth century, an incident that changed the world forever. Just two pistol shots resulted in the outbreak of a cataclysmic war that convulsed the world and cost millions of lives. It was the Great War, the First World War, the ‘War to End all Wars.’ The war brought on the Russian revolution; it sowed the seeds of economic depression and made a second world war inevitable. It ended the dominance of previously great world powers and it brought new nations, including the United States, Russia and Japan, to prominence. It even brought twilight to the empire upon which, many said, the British sun would never set. Britain’s long ascendancy was over. Although she nominally won the war, Britain never recovered from the financial and human costs she had paid. She could no longer afford an empire.

Left: Sir William MacGregor made his own way in life, from abject poverty in Scotland to Queensland’s Government House. He was one of Queensland’s most notable governors.

Below: Lady Mary MacGregor, Sir William’s second wife. The couple was married in Fiji in 1883.

Right: Sir Samuel Griffith, one of the most outstanding Queenslanders of all.

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The reversal of imperial fortunes brought to an end the careers of many men who had been professional colonial governors and administrators. Some of them were great men whose lives and work had made a difference to the world. Sir William MacGregor was not the least of them, perhaps he was one of the greatest. His forty two year career in colonial service ended in July 1914, when he departed Queensland after five years as its governor. He left an indelible mark on the state, just as he had done at each of the many other postings where he had served the empire. All those places were better places because he had been there; Queensland was no exception.

On 20 October 1846 it must have seemed overwhelmingly unlikely that the newborn William MacGregor was destined to ever be anything more than a farm labourer in the Towie district, about seventy kilometres west of Scotland’s Aberdeen. His father, John, was a farm worker while his mother Agnes had also been an agricultural labourer until her marriage. William was her second child and her first son. Agnes was to bear nine children altogether.

William was working as a ‘servant cattleman’ by the age of fourteen and possibly some years before that. However, he had been to his parish school and he continued to pursue an education while working to help support his family. He was a bright and extraordinarily hard working scholar and he worked for a time as an assistant school teacher. His first strokes of good fortune came when his abilities and his character were recognised by three local men, the parish church minister, the school teacher and the doctor.

William was encouraged to think he could study for the church ministry but then the doctor interested him in medicine and science.

When William was nineteen, he left home to go to Aberdeen Grammar School to complete his school education. He paid for this out of his own savings but it is likely that he was also assisted by his three patrons. However, he had to interrupt his school attendance from time to time so that he could go back to work to earn enough money to keep going. In 1867, he passed entry examinations for Aberdeen University, winning a small bursary. He began the study of medicine in 1868 and graduated in four years. In his last year he submitted a thesis that should, according to the university’s rules, have been written on superfine paper and bound with green ribbon. MacGregor could not afford that and remonstrated with his examiner ‘Is it an examination in calligraphy?’ He won his point and the thesis won a gold medal from Glasgow University.

MacGregor achieved all this despite, or perhaps because of, his enforced marriage to Mary Thompson on 4 October 1868. Mary had earlier become pregnant; William accepted responsibility and agreed to marry her. It was not a happy marriage and William never had good relationships with its two children.

On 9 May 1872, William was registered to practise medicine. He immediately began work at the Royal Lunatic Asylum at Aberdeen. Within a year, he had agreed to go to the British colony of Seychelles, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, about 1,600 kilometres off the east coast of Africa. There he was to work for the Colonial Service as a doctor, magistrate and administrator.

He took Mary with him, but left son James in Scotland. A daughter, Helen, was born to the couple in the Seychelles in 1874.

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Top left: The former Queensland Museum building which became the home of the State Library in 1902.

Second from top: The Queensland National Bank – a fine building, but the bank fell victim to the 1890s financial crash and the manipulations of Sir Thomas McIlwraith.

Second from bottom: Holy Trinity Church of England, Fortitude Valley.

Bottom: John Stevenson and son Graham outside the Queensland Club.

Above, centre: Sir Hamilton and Lady Goold-Adams, transferring from the Bombala to the Lucinda on their arrival in Queensland.

Above right: Lady Goold-Adams wrote on this photograph ‘A photographer waiting at Government House took this picture before we had even gone inside.’

The move to the Seychelles was a critical step in MacGregor’s career because it was there that he came to the notice of the governor of the colony, Sir Arthur Gordon, a fellow Scot and a son of one time British Prime Minister, the Earl of Aberdeen. Gordon was a rising star in the Colonial Office and MacGregor was to rise with him. When Gordon was transferred to Fiji in 1875 he arranged that MacGregor should go to Fiji too, as chief medical officer and public health officer. MacGregor progressed within the Fiji administration to eventually become colonial secretary and then acting governor.2 Fiji was an eventful posting for MacGregor. His first wife died of dysentery there in 1877. He had to deal with a measles epidemic that claimed the lives of about 40,000 Fijians, out of a total population of about 150,000.3 Around that time, MacGregor performed a remarkable feat of courage and strength when he rescued a number of people after a shipwreck. A vessel bringing Indian labourers to Fiji was wrecked when it struck a rock, about twelve hours sail from Suva. The immigrants were stranded on the rock and MacGregor organised rescue efforts. When he and other rescuers got to the scene, MacGregor repeatedly clambered along a broken mast to reach the rock. Then he carried the Indians to safety on his back. A woman had been swept out to sea and two men who tried to help her were also swept away. MacGregor attached himself to a rope and then swam out to the floundering victims. He seized a man under each arm and then clamped a handful of the woman’s hair between his teeth. Then he and the trio were pulled back to safety on the rescue vessel. MacGregor made no mention of this incident in his reports but it did become known and he was awarded the Albert Medal for bravery and the Clarke medal for saving lives at sea.4 In 1883, MacGregor married Mary Jane Cocks, daughter of the Suva Harbour Master. The couple had two daughters, Alpini Viti, born in 1884,

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and Mary, born in 1886. The second marriage was a much happier one for MacGregor, although he and the second Mary had to endure long periods of enforced separation.

In 1886, MacGregor represented Fiji at a Federal Council meeting in Tasmania, called to discuss proposals for Australasian federation. There MacGregor met Samuel Griffith. The two men were kindred spirits, intellectuals with not dissimilar backgrounds and very similar interests. Their friendship lasted until MacGregor’s death. Griffith was influential in securing MacGregor’s next appointment, as Administrator of British New Guinea. MacGregor arrived at Port Moresby on 4 September 1888, proclaimed British sovereignty and then began a very effective administration under the joint arrangements between Britain and the Australian colonies. These arrangements brought him into closer contact with Australia, and MacGregor became well and favourably known in Queensland in particular. MacGregor’s term in New Guinea was distinguished by his wide ranging explorations; often where no white man had been before; his vivid descriptions of New Guinea’s people and places; his introduction of a system of law and order and his sponsorship of public health measures. In New Guinea and everywhere else, perhaps because of the insecurity he had felt ever since childhood, he relentlessly drove himself to do more and to do better. He was knighted in 1889 but never rested on his laurels.

In 1898, MacGregor was appointed governor of the west African colony of Lagos. There, he was closely involved in important research that confirmed the role of mosquitoes in the transmission of malaria. In 1904 he was appointed

Left: Sir William MacGregor, seated in centre, at a settler’s home near Tamborine. The governor was no stranger to hard and humble living.

Above right: Governor MacGregor and his party crossing Guanaba Creek, en route to Tamborine Mountain.

Below right: Waterfall at Mt Tamborine.

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governor of Newfoundland, where his deft management of several delicate issues won him praise as ‘the model of what a colonial governor should be.’5 By now, he was recognised by the Colonial Office as a very effective officer who could be relied on to handle difficult situations tactfully and well. Just the kind of man who was needed as governor of Queensland.

The Colonial Office wistfully compared MacGregor’s management of problems in Newfoundland with Lord Chelmsford’s far less adroit handling of difficulties that had arisen during his term in Queensland. When Chelmsford chose to leave Queensland, MacGregor was appointed to succeed him. News of the appointment was released in London on 27 March 1909. The Reuters correspondent in London wrote for Australian readers ‘Sir William MacGregor’s promotion is universally admitted to be well deserved. His Excellency was regarded as by far the most successful Governor of Newfoundland in modern times, having handled a series of difficult questions with rare judgement.’6 The Colonial Office was anxious that MacGregor should proceed to Queensland as quickly as possible because there had been vigorous public criticism of his predecessor, particularly from the ‘Kidstonites’ who felt that Chelmsford’s constitutional decisions had disadvantaged Kidston and favoured Robert Philp.

There was also increasingly forceful rhetoric from the emerging Labour Party which argued that the states did not need governors at all, or, if they were to have governors then those governors should be Australians. Every day that Queensland was without a governor pending the arrival of the new appointee lent support to the argument that an imported governor was unnecessary.

The British authorities were anxious to restore the situation to normal before those notions gained wider currency in Queensland. However, MacGregor had to finalise some delicate matters in Newfoundland before leaving that colony.

Then he went to Scotland for a brief holiday. He planned to leave England at the end of August 1909, so that he would reach Queensland well before the state’s jubilee celebrations began.

The departure had to be delayed. Not long before he was due to sail, MacGregor was struck down by a most painful indisposition, probably gallstones. An operation was essential. William and Mary MacGregor and their daughter Mary finally sailed in mid-October, aboard the liner Orsova. The ship reached Pinkenba, at the mouth of the Brisbane River, on 2 December 1909. After the usual welcoming formalities and procession, the new governor was sworn in by Chief Justice Sir Pope Cooper.7 It was to be the last such swearing in at Queensland’s first and only purpose built government house.

The MacGregors were not at what is now ‘Old Government House’ for very long. In July 1910, they became the first vice-regal occupants of a ‘temporary’ government house, Fernberg, in the Brisbane suburb of Paddington. Almost a century and fourteen governors later, Fernberg is still Queensland’s Government House.

For more than a decade before the MacGregors arrived, there had been plans to build a new government house. A 58 acre site was reserved within Victoria Park and about three kilometres from the centre of the city. Plans were prepared for an imposing and extensive vice-regal residence on the site, at an estimated cost of about 130,000 pounds. Site works began and proceeded to the point where foundations were laid. Then, works were suspended. At first,

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the suspension was said to be only temporary. However, the new government house project was never proceeded with and eventually the Queensland Teachers College was built on the abandoned foundations. Part of what was to have been the government house site was given over to the Victoria Park golf links.

Financial considerations no doubt influenced the decision, but it is likely that other factors included a growing perception that since federation the office of state governor was not as important as it had been in colonial times and a grand government house was therefore no longer necessary. It is also possible that the disenchantment with Chelmsford at the highest political levels created a background for decisions that might diminish the status of Queensland’s governors.

Moves to establish a university for Queensland had been gathering momentum since the idea was first seriously mooted in the 1890s. In 1902, Government Architect Alfred Brady reported on three possible sites for a university, including the Government Domain on which Government House stood. By 1908, a definite decision to establish the university had been made and it was resolved that the commitment to the new institution should be announced as a central part of the state’s jubilee celebrations in December 1909. Then it was decided that the new university should be sited in and around Government House. The university would move in and the governor would be moved out, to a temporary government house pending construction of the permanent building in Victoria Park.

On 10 December 1909, exactly fifty years since Bowen’s proclamation ‘erecting’ Queensland had been read from the balcony of Dr Hobbs’ house above Adelaide Street, Governor Sir William MacGregor stood before a gathering at Government House to inaugurate the new university, to formally hand over the keys to Government House and to formally assent to a bill that had been passed by the parliament on 7 December 1909, transferring Government House and its surrounds to the University of Queensland.8 MacGregor’s emotions were mixed. As a man of enlightenment and learning, he was delighted that the state was to have a university and he was more than willing to accept any personal inconvenience that might result from his family having to move house. However, he felt that the George Street site would be far too small for the university’s needs.

Fernberg, the MacGregor’s new home, had been leased by the Queensland government for a rental of 250 pounds a year, with an option to purchase for 10,000 pounds.9 The arrangement permitted the MacGregors to move out of Government House while the government conducted an exhaustive search for an existing grand home in Brisbane that might be suitable to house the governor for an indefinite period. Agents were appointed to look for suitable houses and a short list of about six properties was submitted to the government, in the price range of around 10,000 pounds. From many points of view, the most suitable property might have been Sir Samuel Griffith’s Merthyr, in New Farm. Griffith had little use for Merthyr since he had become Chief Justice of the High Court in 1903. He was invited to indicate if he would be prepared to sell and at what price. Griffith replied that he ‘should be much tempted by an offer of 25,000 pounds.’ The cryptic note on the government’s

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Top right: Original design for Fernberg by architect Benjamin Backhouse, about 1864.

Below, top: Fernberg in 1885, with the Stevenson family on the upper verandah. At this time, the original house was intact.

Middle: Fernberg extensions under way.

Below: Fernberg in the 1930s.

file was ‘Lead him not into temptation’10 and Merthyr was dropped from the list of sites under consideration.

The MacGregors moved to Fernberg in July 1910.11 A year later, the government exercised its option to purchase the property, despite clear advice that it was not ideal even as a temporary government house because it was too small and needed too much repair and upgrading. Brady had reported unfavourably on Fernberg in January 1909 – ‘it is a three storey brick building, surmounted by a tower, the whole covered externally with a cement plaster, colour washed.

The floor area of the Hall and Reception rooms is only 1,758 sq. feet as against 3,660 sq. feet in Government House ... if the property was purchased, very extensive additions would have to be made ... general repairs and painting would also be needed ... formation of gardens and lawns for garden parties difficult and costly ... the approaches to the house would also have to be much altered and extended.’12 No doubt, short term expediency had prevailed in the government’s decision to ignore Brady’s advice and to proceed with the purchase. Fernberg was available, the governor was already in residence there and the quick and tidy transaction enabled the embryonic university to take early possession of what had been Government House.

Fernberg might have had many inadequacies, but it had history on its side. Designed by well known architect and builder Benjamin Backhouse and completed for the prominent merchant and plantation owner, Johann Heussler, in 1866,13 the house occupied a commanding position with splendid views to the town of Brisbane. The name Fernberg meant ‘distant hill’ in Heussler’s native German. It was one of the first grand homes of Brisbane.

Heussler encountered financial difficulties and from about 1872 Fernberg had a succession of occupants before the Scottish born pastoralist John Stevenson bought it in 1882. Stevenson made very extensive alterations and additions before he in turn fell victim to financial over-commitment and the depression of the 1890s. Then Fernberg was owned by Mount Morgan gold magnates William Pattison and Walter Hall for almost a decade, before it was sold in

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1901 to Adelaide Palmer, sister-in-law of John Stevenson. Finally, Adelaide Palmer sold to the Queensland government in 1911.14 The plan that one day Queensland would build a new government house was not abandoned for many years but it was never implemented. That became more and more unlikely as each extension and major renovation increased the government’s commitment at Fernberg. New works, repairs and landscaping were under way almost continuously from 1911 through to 1936, when Governor Sir Leslie Wilson argued for a return to the old government house in George Street. The government of the day declined Wilson’s suggestion and instead, in 1937, commissioned another round of extensive works at Fernberg.15 That amounted to a commitment to Fernberg as a permanent government house and after that no more was heard of alternative proposals.

By then, the University of Queensland was on the way to its permanent home at St Lucia and the development of Sir William MacGregor Drive on the new campus was underway to honour MacGregor’s service as first Chancellor. He had been unanimously elected to the position at one of the University Senate’s first meetings, held on 22 April 1910. Although the Senate doubtless had in mind the prestige of the governor’s position when it made the appointment, a better choice could not have been made. MacGregor was a man of learning, ideas and considerable intellectual achievement. It was entirely appropriate that he should formally open the university on 26 February 1911 – there could have been no finer role model for the graduates that the university hoped to produce.

MacGregor stressed that all thinking should be rigorous and conclusions should be based on careful analysis of objective evidence. Logical thought, not comfortable assumption, was his personal method. In particular, he argued

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that more and better scientific investigation of the problems of agriculture would greatly benefit Queensland. He said that such research would especially help the expansion of the sugar industry, an industry that MacGregor strongly supported now that it was doing without the labour of Pacific Islanders.16

Above left: Sir William MacGregor (standing, centre rear, with plume on hat) and Lady MacGregor (seated, third from right, in dark dress) and Miss Mary MacGregor (seated at extreme left), following a luncheon aboard a visiting Japanese naval flagship, 15 March 1910.

Centre left: Governor Sir William MacGregor presides at his last meeting of the Executive Council of Queensland, 19 July 1914. Sir William is seated in centre at rear, then, from right (Sir William’s left) – Hons. J.G. Appel, J. Tolmie, J.W. Blair, J. White, E.H. Abell Esq. (Clerk, standing), A.H. Barlow, W.H. Barnes, W.T. Paget and Digby Denham (Premier).

Below left: A citrus farm at Mapleton, 1912 – subduing the land.

Below right: Japanese labourers from the sugar cane fields at Hambledon plantation, near Cairns, 1896.

Everywhere MacGregor had been, he took an extremely active interest in the health of the community, particularly in preventive medicine. He used his considerable personal influence with the state’s political leaders to secure support for the Institute of Tropical Medicine that had been established in Townsville on 1 January 1910. The Institute had grown out of the desire of Australians to settle their northern regions with a white population. There was a strong view that if the tropical north could be freed from disease, then white people would thrive there.17 At the official opening of the Institute in 1913, MacGregor said ‘the most careful attention to the habits of life, in respect of food, clothing, sanitation, and especially great care in looking after the interests of mothers, will be necessary to enable Europeans to become domesticated in the tropics ... but ... beyond doubt, the North of Australia is extraordinarily healthy .. it is comforting to know that the conditions for white colonisation of the tropics are unusually favourable.’18 He was less enthusiastic about a 1911 report which showed that 31.7 per cent of all Queensland children had physical defects affecting their educational performance and that 97 per cent of children had diseased teeth.19 MacGregor was therefore pleased to be able to open the new Mater Private Hospital, on 14 August 1910. He also gave vital impetus to moves to create a medical school in Queensland, joining three other medical men who were members of the university Senate, John Lockhart-Gibson, Sir David Hardie and Wilton Love, to advocate that a medical school should be established within the university. The move took a significant step forward at the time of MacGregor’s departure from Queensland, when the university resolved to establish a medical school to commemorate his services ‘to the Empire.’ At the same time, a citizens committee was raising funds for what was first intended

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to be an outright gift to MacGregor. The governor indicated that he would not accept such a gift, but that the funds should be allocated to a medical faculty at the university. A substantial amount was raised and it became the nucleus of the capital cost of establishing a medical school. However, new faculties of Agriculture and Commerce were given higher priority and the Faculty of Medicine was not established until 1935. Then, the MacGregor Fund stood at 4,230 pounds. The amount was applied to furnish and equip the Sir William MacGregor School of Physiology.20 These were keen personal interests of MacGregor’s and he pursued them very effectively. Another special interest had always been the welfare of native peoples and he showed that interest in Queensland’s Aborigines. He also showed that he was not one to mince words when he reported to the Secretary of State for Colonies that Queensland’s policy and legislation to deal with Aborigines had failed. ‘In the vicinity of towns they manage to obtain a certain amount of alcohol, or opium if there were Chinese in the district. Dirt, rags, venereal disease, hunger and exposure are hurrying the native race to extinction ... Unless some success attends the stations under the management of the several churches another fifty years will extinguish the native race in Queensland.’21 London applauded the report but Queensland did very little.

MacGregor did not neglect his obligations toward the wider concerns of the whole Queensland community. By 1911, that community comprised 605,813 people, with almost 140,000 of them resident in Brisbane.22 It was an increasingly prosperous population. Drought had given way to a run of better seasons, closer settlement in pastoral and agricultural districts was creating employment and new communities; mining was steady and manufacturing was slowly increasing.

On 28 October 1910, MacGregor was involved in the consecration of Stage One of St John’s Anglican Cathedral.23 On 21 August 1913, he chaired the meeting that resulted in the formation of the Historical Society of Queensland, a development that he had very strongly supported and publicly encouraged.24 Beyond Brisbane, MacGregor travelled around the state as keenly as any of his predecessors, taking advantage of new transport technology to do so. He was often the first governor to be seen in a motor car in some more remote regions. In 1912 he was certainly the first governor to travel by car between Winton and Longreach. While in Winton he had spoken at a dinner hosted by local Shire Councillors. During his speech, ‘His Excellency, as usual, gave his hearers something to think about’ reported the Western Champion newspaper. ‘[He] showed great interest in questions relating to the health of country school children, hospitals and agriculture. A suggestion by Sir William that a flying machine would be useful over such a large scope of country as he had seen seemed to amuse his hearers.’25 A flying machine! And this was eight years before the airline Qantas was born in Winton!

Through his term, MacGregor was able to avoid constitutional difficulties.

However, he was criticised in 1912 when he was rather too openly supportive of the conservative Denham government when it took firm action to break a general strike. MacGregor was naturally sympathetic to working people but he had no sympathy for those who denied the importance of work. He put activist trade union leaders into that category, saying that they strove for power harder than they worked for the welfare of their union members.

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The 1912 general strike.

Right: Strike-breakers assembled at Old Government House.

Below, top: Onlookers Middle: Strike-breakers with their rifles.

Bottom: Volunteers defending (Old) Government House.

He felt that true liberalism was being squeezed to death between militant unionism and the conservative reaction. The criticism of MacGregor abated when, in April 1912, Denham’s party handsomely increased its majority at a general election.26 Through all of this, Mary MacGregor stayed in the shadow of her illustrious husband. She ‘delighted in homely pursuits’ and might have been happiest when she and her husband took brief holidays at the then isolated and unfashionable Noosa.27 The MacGregors left Queensland on 15 July 1914. They retired in Scotland, where Mary died on 4 December 1919. William had died on 3 June 1919.

Many extended tributes were published in widely scattered parts of the world.

An obituarist for the Aberdeen University Review perhaps best summed up his career and his qualities – ‘He began life with no advantages except his innate ability, and rose to be one of the really great men of his time. ... He was a great administrator – always working for the good of the subject races and helping them to develop ... Contact with a world of men gradually softened a certain roughness of manner, until he became the courteous man of his later years. But he was always a great personality, a great fighter, striving continually for the cause of right and justice, and using his scientific knowledge for the good of humanity.’28 Sir William MacGregor had been a brilliant achiever; his successor in Queensland, Sir Hamilton Goold-Adams, was an unimaginative plodder. MacGregor had governed through a generally peaceful period of stability and expansion, while Goold-Adams arrived in Queensland just four weeks before Australian troops landed at Gallipoli and less than three months before Thomas (always referred to as ‘T.J.’) Ryan won an historic election victory for Labor. MacGregor had been able to spend a good deal of time encouraging and opening new institutions.

Goold-Adams had to spend much of his time unveiling war memorials and attending services commemorating the war dead.

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Goold-Adams was no stranger to war. He was yet another Queensland governor who was born in Ireland into a family that had come from Scotland several generations previously. Born on 27 June 1858, he at first sought a naval career but then chose to join the Royal Scots Regiment. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1878 and went to southern Africa in 1884. In 1885 he was promoted to captain, then to major in 1889. He led several dangerous expeditions into the interior; he fought in the second Boer War and helped defend Mafeking, where he was mentioned in dispatches. He was deputygovernor of the Orange River colony between 1901 and 1910; then became High Commissioner on Cyprus in 1911. In November 1914, he formally annexed Cyprus on behalf of the British Crown, one of his last acts before he was appointed Governor of Queensland. In 1911 he had married Elsie Riordon, of Montreal in Canada.29 He was knighted in 1902.30 Sir Hamilton’s term as Queensland’s governor was to be dominated by the Great War. He and Lady Goold-Adams arrived in Brisbane on 15 March 1915, just as the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was preparing to leave its training ground in Egypt and go into battle at Gallipoli. Recruiting for the AIF had begun on 8 August 1914, four days after the Great War had broken out.

Australia had immediately pledged to send an expeditionary force to fight anywhere they might be required by the British government. The 20,000 men who were needed quickly volunteered. They were the first of a total of 416,809 Australians (out of a total population of about four million) who enlisted for service during the war; 57,705 of them were Queenslanders. Of the Queenslanders, 6,850 men were killed and 15,590 were wounded.31 In Queensland and everywhere else in Australia the enlistment rate was very high as a proportion of the population; so were the casualty rates. Every Australian community suffered the grief and loss of war, none more than in outback places where often almost every man of military age enlisted. Those men often did more than their share of the hard fighting. By the time it was over, sorrow hung in the air over outback towns and over every homestead, stock camp and shearing shed. The war claimed family and friends from all such places.

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Below left: Lady Goold-Adams drawing the ballot for the first soldier-settlement block of land opened for selection at Beerburrum, 16 November 1916.

Middle: Governor Goold-Adams, with top hat, talking with medal winning soldiers at Enoggera, 1916.

Right: Sir Hamilton Goold-Adams.

Far right: The Goold-Adams family at Government House, with aviators Keith Smith (standing, left), Wally Shiers (standing, centre) and James Bennett (standing, right), with Ross Smith seated second from left. The men had been the first to fly from England to Australia. December 1919.

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Every Australian who went to the Great War was a volunteer. At first, the number of volunteers was more than was needed. That changed when it became apparent that the war was not going to be a glorious adventure, a chance for a free trip to exotic overseas destinations. It was confidently predicted that the war would be over in a few weeks, so young men who wanted the adventure and the overseas trip were urged to join up quickly, before it was all over.

Instead, the war dragged on for more than four years of indecisive stalemate.

Its battlefields, especially on the Western Front, may have been the closest thing to hell on earth that man has ever devised.

As the casualities mounted, there were louder and louder calls for more and more men. However, recruiting raised the very complicated issue of the attitude of the Irish community toward the war. The issue loomed large in Queensland, where the proportion of Irish people in the community was high. Ireland was in revolt against Britain and many Queenslanders of Irish background, often encouraged by their church, took the view that it was not the proper role of anyone of Irish heritage to fight Britain’s battles for it, certainly not for so long as Britain denied ‘home rule’ to Ireland. Other Queenslanders saw this attitude as disloyal, even seditious. As the war dragged on, the community became bitterly divided, particularly when the Commonwealth government strenuously but unsuccessfully attempted to introduce compulsory military service. Goold-Adams was to find himself dragged into the vortex of this division and bitterness.

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Queensland’s transition to militarism began harmlessly and good-humouredly enough for Goold-Adams in April 1915 when he opened a miniature rifle range at the South Brisbane Technical College, a facility designed to turn young men into marksmen before they joined up. The governor impressed everyone when he easily won a competitive shoot on the new range.32 Clearly, he was a man who had the sort of skills that were useful and admired in Queensland. That was reinforced before long, when Goold-Adams showed that he had a very good eye for a horse, good enough for him to be pressed into service as a judge of everything from thoroughbreds to draught horses at the many shows he attended.33 In the early stages of the conflict, when not very many others in Queensland had first hand experience of war, the governor’s opinion on all matters military was sought and respected – after all, he had been a soldier for a long time and a hero at Mafeking. He was influential when he pointed out that Queensland industry could and should do much to produce armaments;34 that Queensland people could raise funds to buy equipment such as tanks and warplanes, that returned soldiers could be settled on the land and every assistance should be given to help them achieve success there.35 He also said that ‘he could see no reason why those who could not take an active part in this great war should sit down and be made miserable by the stoppage of innocent amusements.’36

On 11 January 1916, the governor was centrally involved in a Brisbane public meeting that had consequences that have resonated throughout Australia ever since. Goold-Adams addressed the meeting, which ‘decided that the first anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli should be suitably celebrated in Queensland and that the other states should be invited to take similar action. ... The date to be observed should be April 25 ... the chief objects of the day should be the commemoration of our fallen and for the honour of our surviving soldiers.’37 Queensland took the lead in the first Anzac Day commemorations in 1916. Premier Ryan arranged that the King should send a message38 that

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was read at commemorative gatherings and church services. The message seemed to confirm that Australia had indeed made a glorious entry onto the world stage when its men landed at Gallipoli at dawn a year earlier.

Although the war overshadowed everything else, the Goold-Adams involved themselves fully in Queensland community activities. In June 1915 they undertook an extensive tour of north Queensland and for the rest of their term they travelled as widely as they could, particularly to open local shows.

Everywhere they went, they attended ‘patriotic’ meetings, called to express support for the war and to raise funds for war related organisations. They laid foundation stones for war memorials and unveiled them on completion, perhaps the first of them on 4 November 1916 at Mowbray Park in Brisbane.39 While in Brisbane, Lady Goold-Adams gave birth to two children, Richard in 1916 and Elizabeth in 1918.40 She nevertheless found time to strongly support the work of the Girl Guides, Red Cross and the Boy Scouts. On 15 November 1919, at the request of Lady Baden-Powell, she convened a meeting at Government House to form a committee to establish the Girl Guides movement in Queensland. The objective of the meeting was accomplished and then Lady Goold-Adams took an active continuing interest in the movement.41 She also went to Burketown with her husband in June 1917. The people of the isolated town of ‘goats, claypans and glass bottles’ were very grateful because she was the first wife of a governor to pay Burketown a visit for many years.42

Left: Scene in front of the Brisbane GPO on Anzac Day, 1916. A saluting base was established opposite the Post Office. Queensland led the way in commemorating the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915.

Centre and right: Anzac Day procession in Brisbane, 1917.

Later in 1917, Sir Hamilton and his wife were both involved in the establishment of the Bush Nursing Association and the Mission to Seamen.

They were also both closely associated with a major milestone for Queensland education when the Brisbane Church of England Grammar School for Boys (‘Churchie’) was opened on its new and permanent site at East Brisbane. The school had started at Toowong in 1913, then moved to a site adjacent to St John’s Cathedral before acquiring the East Brisbane site in 1917.43 Teaching commenced on the new site on 12 February 1918 and, on 18 February,

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Sir Hamilton formally opened the school. On the same day, Lady Goold-Adams opened the school boatshed.44 Hamilton Goold-Adams was a dutiful plodder, not an eloquent speaker nor a man who had the gift of being able to mix comfortably in any gathering.

He overcame these inadequacies because he was a naturally pleasant person who became moderately popular because he was genuinely interested in other people, whatever their rank or station. However, he was an instinctively conservative man. He did his best to work harmoniously with the Labor government that took office on 1 June 1915 and the new premier, T.J. Ryan, did his best to work with the governor. Despite the best intentions of both men, there were times when the relationship came perilously close to breaking down.

In 1915, in the first elections with compulsory voting, Labor had won a handsome majority and for the first time in Queensland’s history the party was comfortably able to govern in its own right. Conservatives were alarmed and would have been even more anxious had they been able to foresee that Labor would govern the state for the next 42 years, save for a brief interruption between 1929 and 1932. In July 1915, the governor’s speech at the opening of parliament foreshadowed the introduction of bills to achieve sweeping industrial law reforms, the breaking up of large freehold estates, reform of the public service, extensions of public ownership and the establishment of state owned business enterprises.45 Two matters that were not mentioned in the speech were to cause Goold-Adams particular difficulty. One was the matter of the loyalty of Irish Queenslanders to the British cause in the war and their loyalty to the Crown and to the office of governor. The other was Labor’s determination to abolish Queensland’s Legislative Council.

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chapter nine – different men, different times

Left: Not everyone was able to march on Anzac Day in 1917. Photographer Alwynne Elliott, of the Fifth Light Horse, was wounded at Gallipoli and spent time at the Army hospital at Kangaroo Point.

Right: Wounded men from the Fifth Light Horse, at Kangaroo Point hospital, 1916.

John Fihelly was secretary of the Labor caucus and Minister Without Portfolio in the Ryan government. He was therefore a member of the Executive Council.46 In September 1916, at a Queensland Irish Association meeting, Fihelly vehemently denounced the British government. Goold-Adams regarded the speech as being grossly disloyal and stated that he would refuse to speak with Fihelly or sit with him on the Executive Council.47 The majority of the Labor parliamentarians quickly disavowed Fihelly by moving a motion to censure him. Ryan persuaded caucus to withdraw the motion; Fihelly apologised and the matter was resolved but not forgotten.

Ever since the first sittings of the Queensland legislature in 1860, there had been tension between the elected Legislative Assembly and the appointed Legislative Council. After the Council had blocked some of its key legislative proposals in 1915, the Ryan government resolved to implement long standing Labor policy to abolish the upper house. There were serious strains in the relationship between the governor and the government when Goold-Adams twice refused to accept advice that the Council should be enlarged by the appointment of new members who would vote for the Council’s abolition.48 Confrontation was avoided when the government chose to suspend its plans for abolition of the Council until after Goold-Adams’ term ended.

The Goold-Adams left Queensland on pre-retirement leave, on 12 January 1920.

En route back to England, they broke their journey in South Africa so that Sir Hamilton could again see the country in which he had spent many eventful years. He contracted a chill that developed into pleurisy and pneumonia and he died in Capetown on 12 April 1920. Lady Goold-Adams survived him for many years. living in England until her death on 26 August 1952.49 Sir Hamilton had not been one of Queensland’s great governors, but he had done his duty as he saw it.

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