Chapter One
Over the Seas and Over the Land
It was a time to consider; a time to decide; a time to act. The 1830’s were a time of tumultuous change in England and this change was imposing unprecedented strains upon the civil society of the day. As a consequence of the retention of the outdated Settlement Laws, and with the means of mass passenger transport still in its infancy, labour in the south of England had no ready access to the more plentiful work opportunities of the industrializing north. The consequence was a considerable disparity in labour demand between the north and south of the country with an accompanying divergence in wage payments. Industrial areas in the north of England, such as those in Lancashire, prior to the construction of the railways, drew their workers from the local countryside and this workforce could be supplemented by seaborne labourers from the nearby north of Ireland, at little cost, when required. The developing industrial areas of the northern and midland regions also required increasing amounts of farm produce to feed their workers but this was of no help to the agricultural areas of the south-western shires, such as Somerset, the location of the Adams family, again due to transportation limitations.
In 1815 duties had been imposed which inhibited the importation of foreign grain into England. These restrictions had remained in place up to the 1840’s, effectively protecting the English agricultural landowners from price competition and forcing the consuming population to rely on expensive, home-grown bread-making materials. However, in 1846, the English landowners were to experience similar crop failures to those that were having a devastating effect in Ireland.
Over the Decade 1840 to 1850 Some Significant Occurrences in the Home Country Were:
The entire British garrison of 16,000 men stationed in Afghanistan was wiped out except for one survivor. Women and children had been allowed safe return to India;
The legislating for ‘Free Trade’ was enacted by the government of Prime Minister, James Peel, Baronet, with Benjamin Disraeli acting as a thorn in his side; the younger William Ewart Gladstone acting as a loose cannon on the deck and with Karl Marx offering his criticisms of all of their governing systems;
The disastrous wet season in 1845 was a significant factor in crop failures and in the consequent repeal of the Corn Laws of England. This wet season may also have contributed to the occurrence of the Great Famine of Ireland when one-third of the crop of Ireland’s staple food, the potato, failed in 1845. This initial failure was followed by a failure of three-quarters of the crop in 1846, and virtually no crop production at all in 1847, owing to the sheer necessity to consume that which should have been the year’s seed stock;
Charles Darwin’s impact on the religious establishment with the publication of his Origin of the Species by Natural Selection;
The art of Mesmer (mesmerism) became popular; and
The fears of a civil rebellion by the working class, inspired by Chartism, or by the ongoing abuse of the Irish population, abated largely due to a rise, both in the number and in the prosperity, of the English middle class.
AND - Over the Decades 1820 to 1850 Some Significant Occurrences in the Vicinity of the Lower Reaches of a River Unnamed Until 1847, and then to be called the Burnett Were:
In 1823-24 Richard Parsons of the timber-getting, ticket-of-leave and shipwrecked group Finnegan, Pamphlet and Parsons most probably passed between the future site of Bundaberg and the seafront twice, on his trek north and on his return, in a misguided attempt to find an existing settlement;
In 1830 James Davis (Duramboi), an escaped convict sheltered by aboriginal tribes, travelled the seafront east of the future location of Bundaberg and claimed, probably correctly, that he had explored for 60 miles up the then unnamed Burnett River;
In 1846 Deputy Surveyor-General, Captain Samuel Perry together with Assistant-Surveyor James Charles Burnett (1815-1854), travelling overland, encountered the mid-reaches of an unnamed river which is now called the Burnett but was then assumed to be the Boyne;
In 1847 a second expedition, ordered by Governor Fitzroy and led by James Burnett, explored the land from this river’s mid-reaches to impenetrable growth on the banks of Saltwater Creek. Burnett’s subsequent report on the area discouraged settlement in the lower reaches of the river for some years;
Later in the same year James Burnett returned in a small boat and, on entering the watercourse through its mouth, conclusively proved that the river was a newly discovered stream in its own right and was not the Upper Boyne, as had been assumed by an 1842 expedition, led by Henry Stuart Russell and guided by Duramboi. This expedition had been searching for suitable grazing country for their herds of sheep and;
Later in the year 1847 the New South Wales Governor, Sir Charles Fitzroy, named the newly discovered stream the Burnett River in honour of the Assistant-Surveyor;
Gregory Blaxland and his nephew William Forster settled in what is probably the Gin Gin Creek area in 1848. They arrived in the company of three Pegg brothers, with their own servants and with a flock of 30,000 sheep. They took up a very large tract of land across the south of what is now the Kolan Shire and called the station Tirroan, later renamed by Forster to Gin Gin and still later, under Thomas M’Ilwtaith, Gingin station. Gingin remained part of the McIlwraith estate until 1942; and
In 1849 Dr. J. and Archibald McMurdo set up Walla Run on the Burnett River, George Rankin settled Wonbah and Molangool station was also settled in this year. Walla was later owned by A. A. Johnston and was repossessed by the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney in 1887.
It is impractical, if not impossible, to detail the backgrounds of the many settlers of different nationalities attracted to the Queensland colony. In a limited attempt to compensate for this discrepancy a brief description of the experiences and conditions encountered by the family of one such settler from Somerset which, in the mid-nineteenth century, gambled on the prospect of a better life on the other side of the world, is provided in this chapter
On the 2nd of September 1849 this Church of England family, leaving only one son behind in England, landed at Sydney, in the colony of New South Wales, from the ship Victoria out of Plymouth. Prior to passage George Adams, the nominal head of the family, was described as a 43 year old leather-dresser from Limington, Somerset, who could read and write and whose parents, John and Mary, were both deceased. His wife, Sarah, was described in official papers as a 42 year old house servant from the market town of Yeovil, Somerset, who could read. Sarah’s father Giles Fudge had died but her mother, Susan(na) née Taylor, was still living at Langport, Somerset.
On the voyage to Australia George and Sarah were accompanied by their seven younger children namely Walter, described as an eighteen year old farm labourer, Matilda as a sixteen year old housemaid, both of whom could read and write, fourteen year old Emily and eleven year old Jane, the latter two being described as farm servants who could read. The ages of the three youngest children were Henry, nine; James, four and Edward, two. Walter and Matilda’s descriptions as ‘farm labourer’ and ‘housemaid’ may have been adopted to meet the requirements for migration to Australia. The two oldest children, Alfred Adams and Sarah Sams, née Adams, then 26 years and 22 years of age respectively, did not accompany Sarah’s parents on their voyage to Australia.
On his arrival in Australia George’s trade was given as that of leather dresser which was probably correct as the family came from a district well known for its leather-glove making facilities. There is no evidence that George ever practiced this occupation during his time in New South Wales, probably because this type of manufacturing industry had not yet been established in the colony. At various times he was listed as a labourer and gardener and, in his later years, as a farmer on Muscle Creek near Muswellbrook where his wife Sarah died on the 4th of March 1871, and George on the 14th of May the following year.
In England the elder son, Alfred Adams, set up a business as a painter, glazier and decorator in the town of Street where he and his wife Ann Caroline, née Fisher, whom he had married in Langport in June 1846, lived in Glastonbury Road with their children. These were Ann Amelia, born in 1850; Kezia, born in 1854; George Henry, born in 1857, who became a painter and decorator; John Alfred, born in 1863, who became a printer and Emma born in 1866. Another child, an earlier John Alfred, was born in 1852 and died whilst very young. Alfred Adams was still practicing as a painter and glazier in 1881 and died in July 1890, aged 67, having acquired a respectable estate from his business activities. Ann Caroline was to die twelve years later aged 75 years. The occupations of those remaining in England, in adapting to the changing commercial and civic environment, had become dissociated from the older, agricultural style occupations and entered the expanding service and manufacturing industries of the era.
A stained glass window situated above the residence's ground floor in Glastonbury Road advertising “A. Adams and sons” and a photograph, preserved by the local Historical Society, of Albert’s son George in the Street fire-fighting crew are the only remaining traces of the Adams family’s residence in Street as there is no known descendant of Alfred Adams remaining in the township. Alfred’s decision to remain in Somerset may have been influenced by his wife’s dedication to the welfare of her parents John and Kezia Fisher. No records of any visit by Alfred to Australia have been discovered, and he was well established in England by the 1870’s. The reminiscences of Sarah Sams, née Adams, as recorded in Maitland during her later years, raise the possibility that Alfred may have visited Australia on several occasions, though searches have not uncovered any documentation of these visits.
Sarah Adams, the second child of George and Sarah, was born on 13th of February 1827 at Somerton, Somerset where, on the 11th of April 1847, she married Jehoiada (christened Jehoida) Sams at St Michael’s Church. Jehoiada was the fifth child and the fifth son of Thomas Sams and Elizabeth Woods and had been born on the 6th of April 1823 at Knole, Somerset. Knole is a hamlet two and three-quarter miles north-west of Ilchester; somewhat removed from the Sams family’s Somerset base which was Long Sutton, a village two and three-quarter miles south-west of Somerton.
Sarah and Jehoiada’s first child, Ellen, was born at Somerton on 18th of April 1848 and eight months later, when 21 years of age, Sarah left England with her husband and daughter, sailing to Australia on the passenger vessel General Palmer. Following departure from England they had no further contact with land until their arrival at Port Phillip, as Melbourne was then called, on 10th of April 1849. Their voyage to Port Phillip, which took four months, had set a record for the quickest passage from England to Australia up to that time. On their embarkation the board list described Jehoiada as an Episcopalian labourer who could read whilst Sarah was recorded as having the ability to both read and write. Their landing in Port Phillip preceded the arrival of Sarah’s Adams family members in Sydney by five months.
The first official report of a gold discovery in Australia was in February 12th 1851, when a miner who had recently returned from the California gold rush, Edward Hammond Hargraves, discovered over four ounces of the precious metal when panning the banks of Summer Hill Creek, a tributary of the Macquarie River between Bathurst and Orange in the colony of New South Wales. Hargraves named this area “Ophir” after the region of great wealth described in the Bible.
Shortly thereafter, and following the offer of a 200 guineas reward for gold discoveries, reports were received of discoveries in the Victorian colony at Clunes, Andersons Creek, Ballarat, Bendigo, Buninyong and Warrandyte by prospectors such as William Campbell, L. J. Michel, T. Hiscock and H. Frencham. These discoveries were reported upon in the London Times of the 2nd of September 1851. The seeds had been planted for the advent of the great Australian gold rushes which later included the Gympie rush of 1867, the Palmer River rush of 1873 and the Kalgoorlie rush of 1893.
Following five years residence in Port Phillip’s Collingwood the Sams family joined the Victorian gold rush and relocated to the newly discovered Castlemaine goldfields located midway between the Ballarat and Bendigo discoveries. The gold rush of the 1850’s was to provide sufficient exports of gold to Britain to meet all of the Victoria colony’s foreign debt which, in turn, helped to lay the foundation for the colony’s dramatic commercial expansion in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Victoria’s greatest annual yield of gold occurred in 1856, when 3,053,744 troy ounces (86,572 kg. valued at approximately $3,500 million at 2018-dollar prices) of gold were obtained from the diggings. Over the period of the rush the population of Victoria rose from 75,000 people in 1851 to over 500,000 in 1861. This event, that boosted both Victoria’s population and its economy, was to be followed ten years later by the Gympie goldfield’s rush which, in turn, gave a vital boost to the Queensland colony’s economy.
Following eight years on the Castlemaine goldfields the Sams, together with their growing family, which by then included six surviving children, found life on the diggings had become somewhat onerous and so the expanded family decided to take their departure. The family then consisted of Ellen - born in Somerton in 1848; John - born in Port Phillip in 1850; George - born in Tarrangower in 1855; William - born in Maldon in 1857 and Alfred and Edward who were born in 1859 and 1861 respectively. Another daughter Mary Ann had been born in Collingwood in 1853 and had died as an infant in 1854. In 1862 the family joined Sarah’s father, mother, three brothers and three sisters in the Hunter Region of New South Wales where their fifth son, Edward, died in 1864. A further two children, Henry in 1863 and Matilda Jane (1865 to 1866) were born in East Maitland. It will be noted that this family experienced the high infant mortality rate - in this case 331/3 percent - typical of the pre public sanitation, antibiotic and preventive immunization era.
The voyage from Melbourne to Sydney took four days and was made on the Rangitara. By 1920 Sarah had become East Maitland’s oldest resident, her husband having predeceased her by 30 years. Sarah had arrived there before the incorporation of East Maitland and maintained this residence for a tenure that exceeded sixty years. During the course of an interview with a representative of the Mercury newspaper some years prior to her death in 1923 Sarah described Port Phillip, at the time of her family’s arrival, as being only a village with a population of ten men to one woman. There were no streets and the early town layout had no similarity to that prevailing by the time of the Maitland interview. In her narrative Sarah described her own and Jehoiada’s five year residence in Collingwood and their subsequent relocation to the gold diggings of the Castlemaine district. She described the presence of many different groups and nationalities at the diggings, black and white people, Turks and many others; how the different groups largely kept to themselves and, though riots were often predicted, none ever eventuated.
In proceeding with her narrative Sarah went on to describe the family’s voyage from Sydney to Newcastle on the Collaroy and the subsequent train trip between Newcastle and Maitland when there was only one train, a combined passenger and goods train, running each way between Newcastle and Singleton. She described how her parents, George and Sarah, having departed England three months subsequent to her own and Jehoiada's departure, had then travelled directly to New South Wales. “I would also have come to New South Wales,” Sarah said during the interview “but was told it was a convict settlement. However nearly everyone in Port Phillip in those days was a ticket-of-leave man or a man who had served his sentence. One man I met had been sent out from England as a convict, and all they had up against him was the killing of a rabbit.”
Walter, the 18-year-old “farm labourer”, on his disembarkation in Sydney was recorded as being a member of the Church of England’s extended congregation and able to both read and write. He had been born on the 22nd of November 1830 at Yeovil, Somersetshire and had been educated at Somerton a short distance to the north. Yeovil was a medium sized market town containing architectural remnants of its old feudal village origins and from whose elevated northern boundary one can look northwards, over the long since drained swamp lands, towards the Glastonbury Tor approximately fourteen miles distant. From the northern boundary ridge the streets of the town slope downwards into the extensive Blackmore Vale. It is a pleasant place in these days but living there was perhaps not so pleasant in the 1840’s. At the completion of his formal education Walter accepted a position in a machinery factory, located in the Street/Yeovil area, reportedly owned by one of his cousins.
Over the Decade 1850 to1860 Some Significant Occurrences in the Home Country Were:
Joseph Paxton presented the design of the Crystal Palace for the Great London Exhibition of 1851 to Prince Albert;
The death of the poet William Wordsworth and of the past Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel;
England comes under the political leadership of Lord Palmerstone, a dedicated imperialist;
William Ewart Gladstone replaced Benjamin Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Aberdeen’s government;
The chronic overwork and poor health of the English workers comes under criticism by the popular writers and others;
Very unpleasant odours emanated from the heavily polluted River Thames in London and water borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid and typhus fever were rife; one disease epidemic followed another;
The Brotherhood of Pre-Raphaelite Painters flourished with the famous art critic, Ruskin, as their defender and promoter;
The Crimean War occurred making famous such names as Balaclava and of Florence Nightingale who had organised the ministration of nursing services to the war’s casualties. A third of these casualties were acquired in battle with disease causing the remaining two-thirds. The hot-headed A.D.C., Captain Nolan, headed the Light Brigade in its catastrophic charge;
Having acquired the smoking habit from Russians in the Crimea the Scot, Robert Gloag, introduced England to the smoking of cigarettes;
The advent of the Enfield military rifle, with its ammunition greased by domestic animal fat, was in part to blame for the Indian sepoy’s rebellion; and
Following this rebellion, the East India Company had its Indian administration, together with its military force of 350,000 soldiers, placed under Westminster administration in 1858.
AND - Over the Decade 1850 to 1860 Some Significant Occurrences in the Vicinity of the Lower Reaches of the Burnett River Were:
Gregory Blaxland was killed in 1850, probably under payback by the aborigines and William Forster, most likely still troubled by his uncle’s death, sold out to Alfred and Arthur Brown in the early 1850’s with the official notification of transfer not being recorded until a considerably later date. Note 1 He returned to New South Wales and was elected to its parliament where he was later to become Premier. Nugent Wade Brown arrived at Gin Gin in 1859 to become overseer for the Brown brothers. He had been educated in Kings School, Parramatta and his sister married William Henry Walsh of later mention.
Kolanga was taken up by J. Blackman in 1850 and the Landsborough brothers took up Monduran on the Burnett and Tenningering station near the Goodnight Scrub. When James Little and family arrived in the area, thinking that they had title to the Monduran station and finding it already occupied, they took the Landsborough brothers’ advice and claimed the station that they named Rosedale. William Landsborough later sold Monduran to Edward Mullett and William Henry Walsh, the owner of Degilbo station, to further his interest in exploration. Following his accidental death in 1888 Mr. Walsh’s share of Monduran became the property of his partner Edward Mullett
Owing to unfavourable reports concerning the navigability of the Burnett River mouth produced by Mr. R. B. Sheridan, the Maryborough Harbour Master, and by Lieutenant Heath R.N., the Brisbane Port Master, the lands adjacent to the lower Burnett River were initially settled by cattle grazers arriving in the area by inland approaches. In the period 1851 to 1854 Mr. R. P. Marshall, previously the lieutenant of the Native Police, lodged his applications for runs in the Bingera area and became the first lessee of Bingera station which was later taken over and stocked by Alexander Walker in 1863;
In 1856 leased the Brown brothers, Arthur and Alfred, the then owners of the Gin Gin (later Gingin) Note 2 sheep station, the first run located in the immediate vicinity of the future Bundaberg settlement, the Electra run adjacent to Bingera; also
In 1856 Messrs. William Howard and Forbes, two squatters from Doongool in search of new grazing land took up land in the area which they named Woongarra;
Shortly thereafter Messrs Hassall and Ogg established the Tantitha station; and
By 1859 settlements described as being close to the Bundaberg town’s future location were Henry Palmer’s Eureka station and Mr. Little’s Rosedale station, formerly owned by Mr. Foster.
Note 1: The dates given for the acquisition of land title for the early stations should be regarded with some caution. Settlement and title acquisition were, as often as not, quite separate events partly due to the remoteness of government in Sydney prior to 1859, the nature of communications at the time and the rapid expansion of settlement.
Note 2: It was reputed that the name of this station was changed by a later owner, Sir Thomas M’Ilwraith, a true Scot, from the dual word Gin Gin to the single word, Gingin, to save on the cost of sending telegrams that incorporated the station's name.
Walter’s initial ventures into the business life of Australia were unsuccessful and he was compelled to adopt the trade of a blacksmith eighteen months after the Sydney landing. By November 1851 he had moved to Maitland and was in the employ of the Australian Agricultural Company. It may be relevant to note that, in those days, the trades of leatherworker and blacksmith, together with woodworker and teamster, were of critical importance to the young colony.
The Australian Agricultural Company was formed in London in 1824 to raise sheep with a fine fleece on a proposed one million acre New South Wales land grant and, by February 1826, it had established a base at Carrabean, the present-day Newcastle suburb of Carrington. The company had operations at Booral and Stroud and sheep were being pastured in the valleys stretching north of the Gloucester River. The Company’s land grant arrangements were finalized in August 1833 and its pastoral grants issued over areas between the Manning River and Port Stephens and on the Liverpool Plains west of Murrurundi and north-west of Tamworth. The Company was also the operator of a coal mine at Newcastle. These operations and holdings were in place in 1851 and offered work opportunities for both apprentice and tradesman blacksmiths. The Company remains in business up to the present day.
There is on record an entry indicating that Walter appears to have entered into a form of marriage with an Elizabeth Parnell in the Church of England in West Maitland on the 22nd of November 1851, his twenty-first birthday. The witnesses to the marriage, if such it was, were his sister Emily and Richard Savage who were themselves to marry in the same parish on the 24th of February the following year. However the circumstances of this event remain shrouded in mystery as the most likely, and possibly only, candidate for the role of Elizabeth Parnell that occurs in the contemporary records is the daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth, née Griffiths, Parnell who resided in the Richmond/Windsor area of New South Wales.
The younger Elizabeth was born in 1827 and was therefore of an appropriate age for marriage, being twenty-four years of age at the time, three years older than Walter. There is evidence of some links between the family of Thomas and Elizabeth Parnell and the Hunter region, and later an association between James Adams and the Parnell family. The mystery deepens, however, as the Elizabeth Parnell under consideration is recorded as having married a Henry Baker in the Church of England at Richmond, in 1853, under the name of Elizabeth Parnell. Was there an earlier marriage that was later annulled? The records examined provide no clarification on this issue and, as there is no available evidence of the couple ever having lived together, it is not unreasonable to assume that this may have been a ‘marriage of convenience’ the reason for which has been lost in the mists of time.
Walter’s position with the Australian Agricultural Company proved to be of short duration and, whilst the rest of the family remained in the Hunter Valley, Walter had relocated to the remote town of Gayndah, in Queensland’s Upper Burnett area, where he arrived in 1854, five years after the town’s establishment. Gayndah is located on the banks of the wide Burnett River whose sandy bottom is the result of periodic and massive flooding. Flooding also occurs in Barambah Creek, a major tributary of the Burnett River, which joins the Burnett a short distance downstream from the township.
Exploration of the Gayndah area was first undertaken, in 1847, by Surveyor James Charles Burnett and explorer Thomas Archer. The Archer brothers, Thomas and David, were the sons of a Scottish timber merchant with Norwegian connections and they acquired the holdings of Eidsvold station, near the township of Eidsvold, and Coonambula on St. John’s Creek, a tributary of the Burnett River south of Eidsvold. Eidsvold was named after the municipality of Eidsvoll in Akershus County, Norway.
Captain Maurice Charles O’Connell, the Land Commissioner for the Burnett, was appointed in 1848 and established his centre on the opposite side of the river to J. B. Reid’s station of Ideraway. This quickly became the Burnett squatter’s centre. In 1848 the first settlers arrived in the Norton’s Camp, later Gayndah, area 6.5 kilometres from Ideraway and the township was established the following year with the post office being opened in 1850, thus making Gayndah the oldest Gazetted town in Queensland. Alexander Walker, who constructed Gayndah’s fourth building, the town’s first general store, assumed the duties of the district’s postmaster. Gayndah’s first horse races were held there in 1852 and, by 1853, its population had risen to 92 persons.
The Wetheron property, 12 miles from Gayndah, was taken up by William Humphrey in 1845. From Mr. Humphrey it transferred to two sons of the Earl of Ducie, the Hon. Berkeley Basil Moreton (the future fourth earl) and Hon. Seymour Moreton, to pasture their sheep. The brothers had joined the limited number of squatters then on holdings along the Burnett River. These squatters were mainly from families who had a ready access to the services of banks and other financial institutions.
Later events of some significance in Gayndah’s history were the arrival of the newspaper editor, Thomas White, of later mention, who began publication of the Burnett Argus Gayndah and Central Queensland Advertiser there in April 1861, and the acquisition of a municipal council in 1866.
The regional towns of Gayndah and Ipswich were of a comparable size and, for a time, they were in competition with Brisbane to become the Queensland capital when this colony separated from NSW in 1859. However, Ipswich was inaccessible to the larger ships and Brisbane subsequently received preference over Ipswich owing to its suitability for use as a port of entry.
Gayndah’s bid to be considered for the capital of Queensland was also lost to Brisbane partially because the Burnett River at Gayndah and downstream, though at the time navigable to smaller craft, did not have the capacity to allow cargo and immigrant ships of adequate capacity to reach the town. Also of relevance was Brisbane's more rapid expansion both in area and in population.
By the close of 1825 the future Brisbane’s first settlement had consisted of 47 convicts with guards and was made up of 45 males and two females. On relocation from Redcliffe their settlement was re-established on the north bank of the Brisbane River in what is now North Quay. Further transportation of convicts to the Brisbane settlement, which was initially called Edenglassie, followed but this transportation ceased in 1839. The termination of transportation preceded the closure of the Edenglassie penal settlement in 1842 and free settlement of the district then followed. The name of Edenglassie soon fell out of favour with many of the settlement’s new residents and the present name of Brisbane was adopted in honour of Sir Thomas Brisbane, the Governor of New South Wales.
It was also in 1842 that Andrew Petrie reported favourable grazing conditions and good forest lands to the north of Brisbane and, as a consequence of this report, settlers gravitated to the Fraser Island - Cooloola coast region. Later, in 1848, the first immigrant ship, the Artemisia, arrived in Moreton Bay. The Municipality of Brisbane was proclaimed on 6th of September 1859 and polling for the first council was conducted in the following month with John Petrie being elected as the mayor. By 1868 Brisbane had acquired a population of 15,240 making it the largest town in Queensland; however, it was not until 1902 that Brisbane was officially declared a city.
In 1851 a public meeting was held to consider Queensland’s separation from New South Wales and the result of this, and of the meeting’s consequential activities, was to culminate in Queen Victoria signing Letters Patent to form the colony of Queensland on the 6th of June 1859. The subsequent proclamation was read by George Bowen on 10th of December 1859 whereupon Queensland became formally separated from New South Wales. George Bowen was appointed as the first Governor of Queensland and Robert Herbert was appointed as its first Premier. Queensland had thus become the only colony in Australia to have been proclaimed with its own parliament rather than having to spend time as a Crown colony under a Governor appointed by The Crown.
Prior to the 1890’s there was no rigidly defined party-political system as such in Queensland and consequently a candidate’s political definition was an indication of the individual member’s personal preferences. Set out in Appendix 1 is a listing of the early Queensland premiers, from 1859 to 1893. This information can be of considerable use in understanding the political manœuverings in the Queensland colonial parliament during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Walter’s presence in Gayndah would seem to indicate that his long journey from the Hunter Valley northwards was overland and by coach, or more probably horseback, rather than by the more comfortable, though expensive, seaborne route to Maryborough. Gayndah, in the early 1850’s, being of very recent establishment was, in fact, a genuine frontier town in every respect. It was strategically located on an inland route to the north as well as to Hervey Bay (overland across Barambah Creek to the Maryborough area) and Lower Burnett (down the Burnett River to the Bundaberg district).
Whilst in Gayndah, on the 20th of March 1854, Walter married Mary Shannon under the auspices of the celebrant, the Rev. Edward Tanner, who was then the rector of St. Paul’s Church of England in Maryborough. In the same year the young couple relocated to a residence in Albert Street, Maryborough where, in May 1855, Mary was to provide Walter with an heir, George Manus. The Maryborough settlement was established in 1847/8 and became a municipality in 1861. In 1855 the town proper was surveyed and consolidated in its current location adjacent to a deep, navigable river channel which created the opportunity for settlers to acquire the newly surveyed town allotments at favourable prices.
The first place of worship for members of the Church of England’s St. Paul’s Parish in Maryborough was a slab hut in the “Old Township” with the first officiating minister being the Reverend Edward Tanner who had arrived in Melbourne as a nineteen year old member of a group of missionaries on the ship Stag in January 1848. Shortly after officiating at Walter and Mary’s marriage, ill-health forced the Reverend Tanner to resign and he was succeeded by the Reverend Mr. Dodd. In 1856 Mr. E. T. Aldridge, with other parishioners, purchased an acre of town land in Adelaide Street, and presented it to the church on the condition “that it should be the site of the best church in Maryborough, and for school buildings in connection with its teachings” and, toward the close of 1856, the existing church building was removed from its “Old Township” site and relocated onto the Adelaide Street site. For ten years this humble edifice was to house the worshippers under the successive ministries of the Reverends Dodd, Postlethwaite, Mackenzie and Poole. In 1866 a new wooden church was built as a replacement and opened for Divine service on the 27th of May 1866 by the Reverend H. J. Poole, who was to depart for Tasmania early in 1867. His successor was the Reverend H. C. Claughton, brother of the Bishops of Rochester and Ceylon. who retired due to ill health following a tenure of just over one year. The Reverend G. G. Danvers was then appointed but, as he left for a curacy in England in 1872, the Reverend Edward Tanner was induced to return to the Maryborough rectory on a short term appointment.
Following his early Maryborough ministry, the Reverend Tanner had accepted a position as officiating minister in the Winchelsea, Victoria parish and served there until the middle of 1864. Subsequently Edward moved to locations in northern Queensland, including Port Denison (Bowen), where he engaged in various activities including, in 1872, the appointment as Government Agent to serve on South Sea Island labour vessels operating under the Polynesian Laborers Act of 1868. Following his last appointment to St. Paul’s parish, the Adelaide Street church building which had become too small for the congregation was enlarged to make room for 400 worshippers. In 1875 Edward Tanner resigned from his second St. Paul’s ministry to relocate to, and to reside on, his plantation The Grange near Bundaberg where he died on the 1st of January 1888.
On registration for her voyage to Australia Mary Shannon claimed to have been born on the 6th of January 1833. She was the Catholic daughter of Manus and Mary, née Finn, Shannon of Ennistymon, County Clare, Ireland and was a girl of direct gaze and slim, upright appearance. Mary’s father had been dispossessed of his agricultural land, and her mother had died prior to Mary’s departure from Ireland on her migration to Australia. Mary’s voyage was on the Joseph Somes that departed Plymouth on the 21st of October 1851 and arrived in Sydney on the 1st of February 1852. The landing records indicate that Mary paid £1 for her passage and was described as a “20-year-old housemaid” who could neither read nor write. As it appears that Mary had been born in 1836 (not 1833 as stated prior to her departure) it seems that she was only sixteen years of age, not the nineteen years as claimed, on her embarkation for Australia. The flexibility displayed in her declaration presumably resulted from an understandable desire to vacate the Ennistymon Workhouse, the prospect of a new life in a faraway land being relatively attractive when compared with the unfortunate circumstances prevailing in Ireland following the Great Famine.