Thomas Hudson Beare - Pioneer Colonist

When the Duke of York anchored at Nepean Bay, Kangaroo Island, and its passengers went ashore on 27 July 1836 (now Kangaroo Island Settlement Day), the Beare family of six – Thomas Hudson Beare, his wife Lucy Ann Beare (nee Loose) and their four children – William, aged nine, Lucy Anne, Arabella and Elizabeth – were among the migrants on the South Australian Company’s first ship to Kangaroo Island, and its earliest pioneers. The Duke of York, under command of Captain Robert Clark Morgan, had left London on 24 February 1846 as part of the First Fleet of South Australia. On board the ship there was some competition as to who would be the first to land, but while the passengers were at an early lunch, the sailors, with the captain’s blessing, snuck off with the youngest on board, Thomas and Lucy’s infant daughter Elizabeth, just over two years old. She was taken ashore in the arms of a sailor, Robert Russell, who waded to the beach and placed the child’s feet onto the sand at a place now known as Reeves Point. After she collected some shells to give to her parents, they scooped her up and returned her to the ship. Soon after, the captain lowered the boats and the first two people to land were the Colonial Manager of the South Australian Company, Samuel Stephens, and the second-in-command Thomas Hudson Beare, who was employed as the Superintendent of Buildings and Labourers and the first storekeeper for the company’s pioneering trips to settle South Australia. So the Beare family were the first settlers to land and commence the colonisation of South Australia. Samuel Stephens, who later became Thomas’s brother-in-law, was the first manager of the South Australian Company in Adelaide. Shortly after arrival, Thomas Beare, William Giles and Henry Mildred imported a batch of Merino ewes from Van Diemen’s Land to Kangaroo Island, some of the first brought into the colony, although stock losses on the unusually long trip aboard the Cygnet were considerable. Thomas Hudson Beare was born on 30 December 1792, at Winchester, Hampshire, England, and baptised the following day at St Maurice Church, Winchester. His parents were Thomas Beare (born on 8 April 1745, in Twyford, Hampshire) and Martha Beare (nee Hudson, born on 10 June 1756 in Kingsclere, Hampshire). Thomas Hudson Beare, at age 28, in 1819 married Lucy Ann Loose (born 24 May 1801 in Westminster, London). Within hours of arrival at Kangaroo Island, Lucy Beare gave birth to a girl on board the ship sometime between 5 May and 27 July 1836, South Australia’s first white birth. Sadly, the baby died after only two days. Thomas and Lucy’s first two children lived for only about a year while the third also died in England, aged about 10. When Lucy had another daughter, born in Kingscote in August 1837, the daughter Mary Ann survived but Lucy died on 3 September 1837, following a difficult childbirth; the first white woman to die in South Australia. Upon the untimely death of his wife Lucy Ann, Thomas Hudson Beare left Kangaroo Island and moved with his now family of five to the mainland in 1838. Using his land orders granted to him by the South Australian Company, he purchased from the Adelaide Land Company a farming property west of the city which he named ‘Netley’ after Netley Abbey in Hampshire. The original farm consisted of 134 acres but he later purchased an adjoining plot of 80 acres to the west and the Netley property then became a 214 acre farming property. The current Adelaide Airport adjacent to this site is situated on a large section of the old Beare family farm. Sadly, his daughter Elizabeth Beare died on this property from injuries she sustained in a fire in 1846; she was only 12 years of age at the time. On 24 October 1840, at age 47, Thomas Hudson Beare married Lucy Bull (born in 1803 in London) and they had nine children – Thomas Henry (1841- 1848), Emily (1843 lived for only a day), Emily (1844-1925), John George (1846-1848), Thomas Henry 1848-1851), John James (1850-1884), Martha Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ (1852-1941), Edwin Arthur (1855-1912), and Thomas Hudson (1859- 1940). Lucy had emigrated with her brothers Joseph and John Wrathall Bull and his family aboard the ship Canton, which arrived in May 1838. Life was not easy for Thomas, and family tragedy was often close. Some extracts from Thomas’s 1848 farm journal – January: 35,000 bricks spoilt; February: All the family down with scarlet fever; March: My two dear boys John George 1½ years and Thomas Henry 6 years gone forever in 10 days – this is the severest trial I ever endured. May: My last year’s crop a total failure from the floods (from Brownhill Creek), all the fruit trees planted this season all killed. A plaque at the Myponga cemetery, commemorating his death, says Thomas Beare died on 6 November 1861 at Aldinga, and is buried at Myponga. However his death notice states that Thomas Hudson Beare died on 7 November 1861 at his residence at Myponga, aged 68 years. Thomas’s headstone at the Myponga Cemetery was removed from his gravesite when the existing church building was extended over it, and now sits atop his second wife Lucy Bull’s gravesite in the North Road Cemetery at Collinswood. A small park in Netley is now a memorial to Thomas Hudson Beare – Beare Avenue Reserve – with a plaque being unveiled at the reserve on 27 July 2018, 182 years after the Duke of York landed the first European settlers to start the colonisation of South Australia.

– Lorraine Day

Thomas Beare headstone Myponga cemetery

Hudson Thomas Bear

The Yankalilla & District Historical Society Inc. normally meets on the second Monday of the months of September, October, November, February, March at 8pm at the Council Chambers. However, due to Covid-19 guidelines, there will be no meetings until further notice.