“Floating About on the Wide World”: at Woogaroo, 1849-1853*

Elaine Brown History Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of

Woogaroo is a placename rarely mentioned in Queensland today, although it was well-known in colonial times. It began as the Aboriginal name of a rainforested creek, which flowed from the south into the River at one of the river’s bigger bends. According to the ethnologist F. J. Watson, Woogaroo was a Yugurubul word meaning “cool”, and it probably indicated a place on the creek where there was cool water.1* 2During the convict period (1825-1842), travellers on the primitive track between Brisbane and Ipswich had to cross Woogaroo Creek, and a punt was moored there to assist them. On the Ipswich side of the creek, at a government station known as Redbank, a small number of soldiers and convicts looked after a flock of sheep.“ On the Brisbane side, before entering the river, Woogaroo Creek curves around a high, flat-topped ridge, which has splendid views upstream, downstream, and across the river to the floodplain of Prior’s Pocket. No developer has ever exploited this magnificent spot, because it has always been government land. During the 1840s, it became a police post and the residence of Dr , the Commissioner for Crown Lands. In 1865, Simpson’s unpretentious house was replaced by a substantial, two-storey, stone building — the Men’s Quarters of the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum, now euphemistically renamed the Wolston Park Psychiatric Hospital. Today, an avenue of tall hoop pine trees leads to the edge of the Wolston Park golf course, where a small, rectangular, brick building occupies the site of Simpson’s residence and the now demolished Men’s Quarters. In Simpson’s day, the golf course was a government farm, and the playing fields on the slope below were his extensive gardens. When the District was opened to free settlement in 1842, Simpson, a fifty-year-old doctor of homeopathic medicine, was one of the first officials to be appointed.3 Because he had lived in the district for nearly two years, he was fully aware of the tensions that existed between the townsfolk of Brisbane and the squatters of the Darling Downs and the Brisbane Valley, who had low regard for

* Paper given at the University of Queensland, Thursday 29 April 1999. 1 F. J. Watson. “Vocabularies of Four Representative Tribes of South East Queensland”, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (Queensland), Vol. XLVin, No. 34, 1944, p. 109. 2 J. G. Steele, Brisbane Town in Convict Days (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1975), pp. 180 and 257. J Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 2. 1788-1850 (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1967), p. 448; Sir Raphael Cilento, “The Life and Residences of the Hon. Stephen Simpson", Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland. Vol. VIH, No. 1 (1965-66), pp. 9-54; L. E. Skinner. “The Days of the Squatting Acts Districts of Darling Downs and Moreton Bay”. Queensland Heritage. Part I. Vol. 3. No. 6 (May 1977), pp. 3-24; Part H. Vol. 3. No. 7, Nov. 1977. pp. 16-31; Part in. Vol. 3. No. 8 (May 1978). pp. 15-27. 66 Elaine Brown

Brisbane and saw Ipswich as their future capital and Cleveland, on Moreton Bay, as their future port. In a clever move, he chose to live at Woogaroo, about half-way between the colony’s two main settlements — a strategy which forced everyone to come to him and be received on his terms and in his territory. He kept an open house for travellers, and for twelve years managed to carry out his official duties with a reputation for firmness, fairness and hospitality. The disadvantage for him was that these duties forced him to travel constantly, on horseback or by river steamer, back and forth between Brisbane and Ipswich. Only three months after accepting the position of Crown Lands Commissioner, Simpson wrote to the Colonial Secretary, arguing that the neighbourhood of Redbank or Limestone [Ipswich] would in every respect be a more eligible site [than Brisbane] for the residence of the Commissioner, as he would then be nearly in the centre of the District and on the great thoroughfare to all parts of it and to the Darling Downs.4 After prolonged negotiations, and pleas from Simpson and the squatters that police were needed to control and protect the Aborigines, the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, agreed to give him a small force of Border Police. In January 1843, the Colonial Secretary wrote to him: His Excellency considers that it will be proper for you to form a station for your policemen in some part of the District and that the spot pointed out by you may probably be a fit one, but it is impossible for His Excellency to allow you any pre-emption of Land as requested, nor can you be allowed to have any private interest in the Station which is to be formed.5 Thus Woogaroo came into being as a station for the Border Police, who had their own camp on the property and who existed as a force until 1846, after which Simpson was allowed to keep three troopers to support his duties as a magistrate. In April 1843, after returning from an expedition to Tiaro on the Mary River to inspect a sheep run that had been established beyond the bounds of settlement,6 Simpson took up residence at Woogaroo. At his own expense, he built a house, stables and out-buildings, established a garden and a farm, and developed, in what was then a remote spot, a self-sufficient household. There are a number of descriptions of Simpson’s establishment at Woogaroo. The Rev. Dr John Dunmore Lang, a Presbyterian minister, stayed there on a visit to Moreton Bay in 1845 and depicted the house and its garden in his promotional book, Cooksland'. Dr Simpson’s residence is in the usual bush style, a rustic cottage formed of rough slabs, roofed either with bark or shingles [...] with a verandah in front and out-buildings to match. The site, which has been selected with great taste, is on a ridge overlooking a beautiful bend in the river and Dr Simpson has spared neither pains nor expense in forming the most picturesque garden with a natural hollow, where the soil consists of the richest alluvial land intervening between the house and the river, leaving the more ornamental bush trees of the natural forest to give interest and

4 Simpson to Colonial Secretary. 8 August 1842. Col. Sec. files. Moreton Bay. 42/6111/N.42. quoted in Cilento. “The Life and Residences of the Hon. Stephen Simpson”, p. 28. According to Cilento. p. 26, Simpson, before moving to Woogaroo, resided at Eagle Farm, east of Brisbane, and in Brisbane itself. 5 Col. Sec. to Simpson. 14 January 1843. Col. Sec. files. Moreton Bay. 43/214: No. 43/8. p. 33. quoted in Cilento. “The Life and Residences of the Hon. Stephen Simpson”, pp. 31-32. 6 Stephen Simpson. “Journal of an Excursion to the Bunya Country” in “Papers Relative to the Aborigines. Australian Colonies”. New South Wales Votes and Proceedings (1843). pp. 299-303; Gerry Langevad. The Simpson Letterbook (Brisbane: UQ Anthropology Museum. 1979). pp. 6-10. “Floating About on the Wide World ” 67

variety to the scene and to contrast with the European pot herbs and other exotic vegetation of the garden.7 In August 1846, the newly established Moreton Bay Courier described a trip up the in the paddle-steamer Experiment, which had begun to carry cargoes and people between Brisbane and Ipswich: [...] Woogaroo [...] is beautifully situated in a bend of the river, and commands a fine view of a very exhaustive reach. The house is placed on an eminence and the prospect from it is very pleasing and varied: there is a gentle slope to the river side, and the soil is of the richest description, being an accumulation of vegetable matter. The gardens are very extensive and. owing to the labour bestowed upon them, have been left standing, and will, doubtless, furnish the site for an exceedingly pretty refuge from the scorching summer heats.8 9 In her Memoirs, Emmeline Macarthur Leslie, wife of the Darling Downs squatter George Leslie, recalled Simpson’s hospitality when she stayed at Woogaroo on her way to Canning Downs in 1847: Impatient to get home, we borrowed Captain Wickham's inside car and set out with two horses, sleeping the first night at the wooden house of an old bachelor friend who entertained us most hospitably — my first and last experience of a primitive establishment. We had an excellent supper. The first bottle of champagne, placed too near the fire, exploded! I had a maid with me and she shared my tiny room [...] but with every convenience [...] I recollect that [Dr Simpson’s] fowls roosted in the trees around his wooden house [...].° Mary McLeod McConnel, wife of the Brisbane Valley squatter David McConnel, remembered staying at Woogaroo on her first trip to Cressbrook in July 1849. In Memories of Days Long Gone By, she wrote: [...] although the distance to Ipswich was only twenty-five miles it took two days to cover it. and we had to stop where there was a stopping place. Halfway there was a small township called Woogaroo. now the site of an enormous lunatic asylum [...] A pretty cottage in this early township was the home of Dr Simpson, the Commissioner for Crown Lands for the Moreton Bay district. He was a man past middle life and a widower, a doctor of medicine, had travelled much, principally in Europe [...] His was my first experience of “bush" hospitality; it was delightful, his welcome so hearty. We were made most comfortable. His arrangements were simple, and with an air of refinement. In the morning he showed us. among other things, a large flock of turkeys, and told us he always had one for his Sunday dinner. No doubt he had willing friends to share it. who would not mind the ride from Brisbane to spend the day with so genial a host.10 By the time the McConnels paid this visit, William Pettigrew, a twenty-three-year- old Scottish surveyor, had made Woogaroo his base in the colony.11 12The diaries and letters1- in which he recorded his experiences there confirm some of the observations in the foregoing descriptions. Among the “European pot-herbs” noted by Lang in 1845, for example, Pettigrew mentioned thyme, sage, marjoram and

7 John Dunmore Lang. Cooksland in north-eastern : the future cotton-field of Great Britain: its characteristics and capabilities for European colonization; with a disquisition on the origin, manners and customs of the Aborigines (London: Longman. Brown and Longmans, 1847). p. 110. 8 Moreton Bay Courier, 8 August 1846. The Moreton Bay Courier was first printed on 20 June 1846. 9 Jane de Falbe. My Dear Miss Macarthur: The Recollections of Emmeline Macarthur 1828-1911 (Kenthurst: Kangaroo Press. 1988). pp. 43-44. 10 Mary McConnel. Memories of Days Long Gone By (London: 1905). p. 15. 11 William Pettigrew ’s Diary (Diary). 6 July 1849. 12 Pettigrew’s early diaries (1849-1853). together with a letterbook (1849-1845), are held at the Royal Historical Society of Queensland. Other letters and papers, and the notebook in which Pettigrew summarised his financial affairs from 1848 to 1852, are held by Allan Pettigrew. 68 Elaine Brown shallots, and interestingly, since Simpson had spent several years in Italy, garlic. As well as the fowls and turkeys mentioned by his women visitors, Simpson bred ducks and geese. His herb-flavoured turkey dinners may, as Mary McConnel suggested, have accounted for the numerous weekend guests whose presence Pettigrew, a strict Presbyterian who spent his Sabbaths resting, noted with disapproval. On his first Sunday at Woogaroo, he wrote in his diary: “At about dinner time Gideon Scott came in uncalled and had a share of turkey dinner. A low, mean fellow.”13 Gideon Scott was a squatter. The sight and sounds of numerous squatters, dining well, drinking the doctor’s good colonial wines, and talking “like magpies or jackasses”14 late into the night, did nothing to counter Pettigrew’s Langite prejudices. Pettigrew had arrived at Moreton Bay in January 1849 on the first of three ships — the Fortitude, the Chaseley and the Lima — which the Lang despatched from England during 1848-49 in an emigration scheme designed to populate “Cooksland” (Moreton Bay) with skilled, Protestant settlers. These “small capitalists”,15 as the Moreton Bay Courier described them, added a total of 56416 people to Moreton Bay’s motley population of one thousand ex-convicts, labourers, servants, squatters, government officials and free-wheeling businessmen, and from the time of their arrival they significantly influenced the development of the colony. Pettigrew, energetic, enterprising and inventive, was one of the most outstanding of the Lang immigrants. His father, a prosperous Ayrshire farmer, had left him a substantial inheritance, but he could not collect it until his youngest brother John came of age in 1853. Losing his employment as a surveyor during a period of economic recession in 1847-48, he responded to Lang’s “Cooksland” campaign, obtained a £300 advance on his inheritance from his father’s trustees, and accepted the role of Lang’s agent in exchange for a free passage on the Fortitude. Although Pettigrew was to have a long, active and influential life in the colony, the circumstances surrounding his arrival in Brisbane were most discouraging. When he attempted to carry out Lang’s instructions to select and survey land for the immigrants, it became clear that Lang had deceived them. The Fortitude had arrived at Moreton Bay unheralded, there was no agreement between Lang and the British Government regarding land grants, and Captain John Wickham, the Police Magistrate in Brisbane, had no power to assist unauthorised immigrants. At Wickham’s suggestion, however, Pettigrew decided to approach the Crown Lands Commissioner, Simpson, for permission for the immigrants to occupy whatever land they wished to acquire, and then wait for the legalities to be sorted out. Thus, only three days after arriving in Brisbane, Pettigrew and a fellow Fortitude immigrant, Alfred Slaughter, found themselves churning up the Brisbane River on the paddle-steamer Experiment to meet Simpson, whose establishment at Woogaroo they had read about in Lang’s Cooksland. At this meeting Simpson was

|j Diary’, 24 June 1849. 14 Ibid.. 1 July 1849. 15 Moreton Bay Courier. 20 January 1849. 16 By my calculations, the Fortitude landed 266 passengers, the Chaseley 214 and the Lima. 84. "Floating About on the Wide World" 69 affable, but told them decisively that the law prevented him from doing what they asked.17 Undeterred by this obstacle, Pettigrew and Slaughter, accompanied by volunteers, spent two weeks examining potential farmland at Cooper’s Plains, Redbank and Ipswich, and at Oxley, Pullen Pullen and Moggill Creeks. After exploring Moggill, which Pettigrew considered to be the best locality for the proposed settlement, they again visited Woogaroo, where they spent the night, “being kindly entertained by Dr Simpson”.18 The next morning, Pettigrew examined the crops that Simpson was cultivating and reported that maize and sweet potatoes looked best. Refusing to believe that the government would ignore them, the aspiring farmers among the Fortitude immigrants petitioned the Governor, Sir Charles Fitzroy, to grant them land at Moggill.19 When the Governor refused to grant them any land, and insisted that they could not buy it until it was officially surveyed, they sought other occupations, and Pettigrew’s career received a severe setback.20 He then awaited Lang’s second ship, the Chaseley, which arrived in May 1849, only to watch the Chaseley immigrants suffer the same fate as those of the Fortitude. With no hope of obtaining work from the Lang immigrants, Pettigrew had to find another means of making a living. His earliest surviving Australian diary, written in a surveyor’s notebook, begins on 22 June 1849, and describes two weeks of heavy, muddy work, repairing the leaking embankments of the waterholes at Woogaroo for Simpson.21 22“I put in a puddle or rather a dry rammed clay wall in the bank”, he recalled proudly in 1900, “and it has held ever since.”"“ Woogaroo was to remain important in Pettigrew’s life: firstly, because of his period of residence there; secondly, because he drew from the forests of Woogaroo the first supplies of logs for his Brisbane Saw Mills; and thirdly, because his step-son, Charles Ward Davis, died in the Woogaroo Asylum in 1895. Was Simpson simply sorry for this earnest young man when he offered him a home and a job, or had he shrewdly summed him up as a person whose varied skills and willingness to tackle any kind of work would be very useful at Woogaroo? For a wage of £5 per month, Simpson gained an experienced farmer and gardener, a labourer, an odd-job man, and a surveyor-draftsman. Although he sometimes became impatient, even testy, with Pettigrew, their arrangement was mutually advantageous. If a surveying job came up, Pettigrew was free to go and do it. Otherwise, he could stay on the farm, do whatever work was necessary, and act as supervisor during Simpson’s frequent absences. For the next three years and four months, keeping in mind the “three-fold way of health of body, health of soul and health of purse”,23 Pettigrew devoted himself to surveying and farm work. He ate well and kept good health, and on the occasions

17 Pettigrew to Lang. 27 March 1849. 18 William Pettigrew. “Report of deputation appointed to examine certain localities in the district. Feby 1849". ms. MSA 1390, Mitchell Library. Sydney. 19 J. S. Langridge to Col. Sec.. 7 March 1849, Col. Sec. files Moreton Bay. pp. 159-163. 20 William Pettigrew. "The Genealogy of William Pettigrew", ms. 1900, collection of Allan Pettigrew, p. 5; Moreton Bay Courier. 17 March 1849. 21 Diar\\ 21 June to 7 July 1849. There were three waterholes at Woogaroo. 22 Pettigrew. “Genealogy”, p. 5. 2j W. Pettigrew to Adam Pettigrew. 24 April 1850. 70 Elaine Brown when he suffered from minor accidents, swollen glands, or head, stomach or tooth aches, he was immensely impressed with the efficacy of Simpson’s homeopathic pills and medical advice.24 At a time when Brisbane had no banks, he prudently deposited £80 of his cash with Simpson as an interest-bearing loan.25 He travelled widely in the Moreton Bay District, and at Simpson’s table he became acquainted with the colony’s most prestigious men. During June and July 1849, Pettigrew advertised in the Moreton Bay Courier that he was available to undertake private surveying.26 The Assistant Government Surveyor James Warner, who was at the time overworked and unwell,27 offered him a job; but when the Surveyor-General Sir Thomas Mitchell refused to employ him officially,28 Warner had to find a salary of one guinea per week, plus rations and accommodation, from his own limited resources. In July 1849, Pettigrew began fieldwork with Warner at Moggill, surveying the farms that had been the subject of the Fortitude immigrants’ petition. In October and November, he moved to Ipswich to survey farms and town allotments, and in December he was at Yeerongpilly surveying more farms. January 1850 found him working among the mosquitoes at Oxley Creek, on the undulating land at Cooper’s Plains, and among the grasstrees at Mt Gravatt. In February he began to trace the road to Cleveland, and from mid-Februaiy to mid-April he was hard at work on the survey of Cleveland township. Then, patiently plotting his work in the Survey Office on North Quay in Brisbane, he waited for his wages. On Saturday 4 May, Warner, short of funds, paid him £5 and gave him an IOU for £25. “Certainly an easy way of paying servants”, fumed Pettigrew in his diary, “but it is a way I do not like.”29 The following Monday he finished the tracing he was working on, quit Warner’s employment, and walked from Brisbane back to Woogaroo. An unpleasant stand­ off continued until Warner had paid the debt, but the relationship eventually improved, and in 1853, in order to get money for his sawmill, Pettigrew sold Warner his theodolite and other surveying equipment for £24.30 Of his ten months working for Warner, Pettigrew later wrote that it was “of great use to me, as it enabled me to know how surveys were done here”.31 Back at Woogaroo, Simpson sought Pettigrew’s professional assistance for the difficult task of defining the sheep and cattle runs of the Moreton Bay District. Between June 1850 and May 1851, the two rode on horseback, through frosts, droughts and storms, on six “expeditions up the country”, visiting homesteads, settling arguments, and sharing the settlers’ primitive living conditions. Although a fit twenty-five-year-old, Pettigrew found all these rides tiring, and it says much for Simpson’s strength and stamina that he undertook them at the age of fifty-eight. As

24 W. Pettigrew to John Pettigrew. 21 July 1852. 25 "My father’s ledger Fail lands”, p. 89. entry in accounts. 5 November 1849. Simpson paid 10% interest. 26 Moreton Bay Courier, 16.23 and 30 June and 7 July 1849. 27 Doris Grey-Woods, With Compass, Chain and Courage (Brisbane: Queensland Women’s Historical Association. 1997), pp. 79-81. 28 Diary, 31 December 1849. Pettigrew was never registered as a surveyor in Queensland. 29 Ibid., 4 May 1850. j0 Ibid., 19 August 1853. j| "Genealogy", p. 5. 'Floating About on the Wide World " 71 well as introducing Pettigrew to the countryside and giving him confidence in the bush, the experiences of this period reinforced his dislike of squatters. He was quick to note their prosperity, but he also observed what he regarded as dishonesty and greed in the way some of them dealt with Simpson and with each other. Well- educated, and the proud son of a freeman and land-owner, he resented the way some of them, especially those who were the younger sons of Scottish lords, patronised him. At Woogaroo between trips, Pettigrew drew maps to accompany Simpson’s handwritten descriptions of the runs, and by November 1851 the task was completed.32 Pettigrew spent most of his third year at Woogaroo doing farm work for Simpson at the reduced wage of £3 per month. He was considering his options and biding his time. He carried out whatever surveying came his way, but he had already realised that the colony could not support a private surveyor.33 One option was to join the people who were leaving Moreton Bay to tiy their luck on the newly discovered southern goldfields. He decided to stay, but he wrote so enthusiastically about gold to his brother John Pettigrew, that John sailed for Melbourne with a quantity of drapery goods, sold them at a profit, and then spent some time on the Victorian goldfields before joining William in Brisbane in 1853. Another option was farming. Pettigrew especially enjoyed working with horses and cattle, and during his time at Woogaroo learned to brand, castrate and slaughter animals, to catch, break in and harness horses, and to drive bullocks. He found he had a way with horses, and could “do with them what seemingly none else could do”: I simply took them quietly [...] Spoke to them quietly. Tried to make them under-stand what I wanted them to do. and when they had done it gave them praise. At one time of the year the handling of young horses was done in the forenoon and ploughing with two horses was done in the afternoon. One of the men was to bring in the horses and go with me while ploughing [...] Sometimes he seemed to be too long in getting them in, so I asked permission to get in the horses myself, which was not readily granted by Dr Simpson. I said it might take me longer the first two or three days, but it would save time eventually, and which it did. I took two or three cobs of maize and went to a horse which I knew I could approach. Gave him some and talked to him. Went on a bit. He followed me. This attracted the attention of the other horses and some of them came and were treated likewise. The two I wanted came and got corn likewise and I put the halters on them and took them away. This might have occupied 15 minutes. There were about eight horses in the paddock. All had been so treated by degrees except one, and no one had ever been able to get that horse without running the whole into the stockyard. I therefore had my eye on him and by patience and perseverance subdued him likewise [...].j4 As with surveying, Pettigrew took every opportunity to learn how farming was done in the colony, and seriously considered taking up land for himself. Years later he wrote: “Had I not before this time taken action about a sawmill, a very little at this time would have made me a horsey and a cattle man.”35 The option with the greatest appeal was to build and operate a steam sawmill in Brisbane. Pettigrew’s carpenter half-brother David McKergow, who had j2 Drafts of the descriptions, in Simpson’s handwriting, survive in his letterbook, but the copies sent to Sydney, together with Pettigrew’s maps, have not been located. JJ W. Pettigrew to Adam Pettigrew. 2 May 1850. j4 "Genealogy", n.p. Ibid. \ Diary. 8 and 28 November 1851. 72 Elaine Brown accompanied him to Brisbane on the Fortitude, constantly complained about the problems of building with rough, pit-sawn boards,36 and only six months after their arrival, Pettigrew was writing home to his mother: Had I known last year what I know now. I would never have thought of surveying at all, but gone to some sawmill [...] and learned to work and manage a circular saw and engine [...] and with the money I expended otherwise [...] have bought one. and engaged four or six sawyers for two years and given them a passage, and 30 to 50 shillings per week [...]/7 Wherever Pettigrew journeyed in the colony, he saw possibilities in its magnificent stands of timber. As immigrants continued to arrive, more and better houses would be needed, and there were also markets for sawn timber in Sydney and Melbourne. Pettigrew had no capital, but he could count on the prospect of his inheritance, and his only worry was that someone else would start a sawmill first.38 In July 1850, he bought a suitable block of land on the riverbank in Brisbane,39 and then wrote home to another half-brother, Robert Pettigrew, asking him to arrange an advance of £700 on his inheritance so he could build a sawmill.40 At first his father’s trustees refused the request on the grounds that the colony was not sufficiently developed and the risk was too great. After the gold discoveries of 1851, however, they changed their minds, and on 5 October 1852, Pettigrew received from Robert £200 to build a shed and the promise that a set of second-hand steam sawmilling equipment would be sent by ship to Sydney. When Pettigrew left Woogaroo twelve days later to begin work on his long-planned Brisbane Saw Mills, he parted with Simpson on good terms and received from Simpson the gift of a sword.41 The day-to-day details in Pettigrew’s diaries and letters during his time at Woogaroo make it possible to reconstruct many aspects of this, perhaps unusual, colonial farm, and to view its inhabitants, their activities and their interactions, through the eyes of an intelligent, literate observer. Life centred around Simpson’s residence, identified as the home of a government official by its flag and flagpole. The verandahed, bark-roofed, slab cottage was extended, re-roofed in shingles and lined with bark as the years passed. The house was warmed by open fireplaces in the main building, and in the detached kitchen and servant’s quarters, where Pettigrew had his small room, with a stretcher bed and pegs for hanging his clothes. In a watercolour sketch of Woogaroo made by William Leigh, a visiting artist, in 1853, the house is shown in the distance, and only its gabled roofs, chimneys and verandah posts are distinct. Its large grounds are surrounded by a picket fence, needed to keep animals out of the garden. Between the house and the river the land is cleared, and a post and rail fence runs down to the river, near the wharf where the paddle-steamers tied up.42 Leigh’s sketch checks well against a site plan from the Colonial Secretary’s files, which may be based on a map made by Pettigrew for Simpson in January

j6 “Genealogy”, p. 5; W. Pettigrew to John Pettigrew. 14 January 1851. j7 Diary, 3 September 1849; W. Pettigrew to Mother, 7 September 1849. j8 W. Pettigrew to Adam Pettigrew, 8 July 1850. jQ Diar\\ 3 July 1850. Allotment No. 2 of Section near Queen's Wharf. William Street. 10 Ibid., c. 9 July 1850. 41 Ibid., 15 October 1852. 42 This sketch is held in Mitchell Library. Sydney. 'Floating About on the Wide World” 73

1853.43 According to this map, the farm was fenced on its eastern side, and was otherwise isolated by the Brisbane River on the north, and by Woogaroo Creek on the west and south. Within this area, 28 acres were fenced to contain the homestead, stables, outbuildings and garden. Simpson’s home at Woogaroo, although “simple”, was also “comfortable” and “refined”. Pettigrew, who could turn his hand to most tasks, helped to keep it so. He fixed the striking apparatus of the clock, made a weight for the pendulum, and set it going. He repaired Simpson’s desk and candlesticks, and made a sundial for the garden, an orange squeezer for the kitchen, a leather glove for picking pineapples, a wooden mouldboard for the plough, and water troughs for the legs of the meat safe to protect it from ants. He built shelves in the hut of John Morrissey, one of Simpson’s troopers, and he helped Bridget Morrissey to repair the doctor’s cushions. Bridget, an Irish girl, was John Morrissey’s sister and Simpson’s house servant. She arrived at Woogaroo in September 1850 and, after a series of crises, left on the steamer for Ipswich in July 1852. In his diaries, Pettigrew obsessively chronicled the tensions created by her presence in Simpson’s household. In spite of his prejudice against the Irish, Pettigrew liked her, wrote letters for her, picked vegetables from the garden for her on a Sunday, and, on one of his trips to Brisbane, asked his sister-in-law, Jane McKergow, to buy her a gown. For her part, Bridget teased and provoked the vulnerable young man whose room adjoined hers. To Pettigrew’s dismay, another of Simpson’s troopers, Benjamin Robinson, began coming to the kitchen early in the morning, stirring the fire, then entering Bridget’s room. Simpson, “angry at Bridget for humbugging and keeping Robinson off his work”, announced that “they must either marry or one of them must go”.44 But this did not happen, and Robinson began to clash with Pettigrew, especially when Simpson was away. In September 1851, Pettigrew discussed the conduct of Bridget and Robinson with John Morrissey, and then advised Bridget to leave. She seemed displeased, and told Pettigrew that Robinson had overheard them and was in a great rage. Pettigrew confronted Robinson, who told him to mind his own business. After a warning from Bridget that Robinson was threatening to “do for him”, Pettigrew, armed with a pistol, spent a sleepless night barricaded into his room.45 A few days later, Robinson stole grog from the store, and a few bottles were missing when Simpson returned. Robinson threatened Pettigrew, who told Simpson that if Robinson stayed, he would go. Simpson was, in Pettigrew’s words, “put about in a great degree as he has no desire of putting either away because he can get no person in Brisbane at present”.46 This was the time of the Ballarat gold rush, and people were leaving the colony in droves. So Simpson calmed Pettigrew down and kept Robinson hard at work, ploughing, planting, and shingling the leaking roof of the house. Another crisis occurred in June 1852, when Bridget woke Pettigrew early one Sunday morning, saying that a man was opening her door and would not let her

4j Ray Oliver, Wolston file. National Trust of Queensland: Diary. 7 and 10 January 1853. 44 Diary. 5 September 1851. 45 Ibid. 12 September 1851. 46 Ibid.. 16 September 1851. 74 Elaine Brown sleep. Simpson, also roused, heard Bridget laughing in her room, concluded it was a “made-up affair” to annoy Pettigrew, and told him “not to be made a buffer by such a bitch, lying prostitute etc.”.47 Matters came to a head soon after, when Simpson, annoyed with Robinson because he was loitering in the kitchen when he should have been working, decided he would have to go.48 A fortnight later, when Simpson left for Brisbane, both Robinson and Bridget refused to work, and when he returned on the steamer, bringing a new groom and servant girl, he discharged them. It was a sign of the times that the groom was so drunk that he had to be carried ashore.49 As Pettigrew became acquainted with the wide range of human beings — from ex-convicts to the sons of aristocrats — who somehow found their way to Woogaroo, he commented on them, frankly and sometimes scathingly, in his diaries and letters. He respected the humane, worldly-wise Simpson, who was “not a Christian although too well learned to be an infidel”,50 but he described Simpson’s great friend, William Henry Wiseman, who visited at Christmas, as “a broken down gentleman”.51 In November 1851, he noted the visit of Simpson’s sister, Mrs Ommaney, whose teenage grandson John, Simpson’s heir, was tragically killed in 1856 when galloping across a paddock at Wolston near the mountain that bears his name.52 As well as the Commissioner’s troopers — Morrissey, Robinson and Thomas Gee — Simpson employed other men at Woogaroo. One of these was James Wood, “Jim the Poultry Man”, an “exile” from the convict ship Bangalore, who had been transported for stealing hens and who was paid £20 per year to look after Simpson’s pigs and poultry. When Jim demanded £27 per year and that amount was not forthcoming, he left.53 In the background were the Aborigines: old Jacky, sketched by Pettigrew in his bark canoe on the Brisbane River; who described a great flood that occurred when he was a little boy;54 a “blackfellow” who called at Woogaroo and was “sent about his business”;55 and anonymous “blacks”, who helped to carry the com from the garden into the bam.56 Squatters, many of whom were associated with Simpson as Justices of the Peace, frequently dined at Woogaroo. As well as the Leslies and the McConnels, Pettigrew met the Balfour and Bigge brothers, John Ferriter, Edmund Uhr, Arthur Hodgson, Louis Hope, James Laidley, Major North, Thomas Murray-Prior, Robert Ramsay and Arthur McArthur, the last of whom he characterised as “a horrid

47 Ibid.. 6 June 1852. Ibid.. 28 June 1852. 49 Ibid.. 13. 14 and 19 July 1852. 50 W. Pettigrew to Unknown. 16 February 1851. 51 Ibid. 52 Diary. 3 November 1851: Cilento. "‘The Life and Residences of the Hon. Stephen Simpson”, p. 51. Mt Ommaney may have been named earlier, since Pettigrew several times referred to “Mt Almony" before Simpson’s sister’s visit. 5j Diar\>. 10 May 1850; W. Pettigrew to Jeannie Hunter. 23 May 1851. “Exiles” — convicts banished to Australia before their sentences expired — could gain their freedom after a period of good behaviour as hired labour. 54 Diary. 10 May 1850; Extra Diary’. 2 January 1881, note on floods. Brisbane River. 55 Diary. 26 July 1851. 56 Ibid.. 18 January 1851. “Floating About on the Wide World" 75 sinner. A Sabbath breaker, thief and adulterer.”57 He also made the acquaintance of the Rev. Benjamin Glennie, Post Master Captain John Barney, surveyors James Charles Burnett and Edward Moriarty, and doctors William Dorsey and Jacob Swift. In June 1850, the educationalist George Rusden, on a visit to Brisbane to promote the founding of a National School, dined at Woogaroo.58 Pettigrew’s touchiness about his own status can be read into his comments about other people. At Woogaroo he was an employee, who slept in the servants’ quarters and did odd jobs about the place; but he also dined at Simpson’s table and was clearly in the older man’s confidence on many matters. His outspokenness, perhaps brashness, sometimes earned a rebuke, and embarrassment usually clouded the way he recorded such incidents. In May 1850, for example, when the first judge to conduct trials in Brisbane visited Woogaroo, Pettigrew wrote: “Steamboat Raven passed up in evening with Justice Thierry [sic] and Attorney-General. Was imprudent, caused a laugh at my expense. Will not be so foolish if possible.”59 For Pettigrew, visitors were the “crying sin of the country”,60 especially if they came on Sundays, which he usually spent in his room, writing letters, searching the Scriptures and reading books borrowed from Simpson’s bookcase. No one at Woogaroo shared his belief in the absolute sanctity of the Sabbath. The Biblical imagery of his Presbyterian upbringing filled his mind one cold Sunday in August 1849, when, while taking a walk, he came upon a snake, “an emblem of the evil one”, lying asleep. He threw sticks at it until it awoke, then panicked and killed it with his staff: “My resentment was so great against it I could not control myself but was bent on its destruction”, he wrote. “I will not travel far on the Sabbath to punish even the crooked serpent by remembering to keep the Sabbath holy by God’s blessing.”61 Simpson bred horses at Woogaroo, and mares were left with him for “covering”. His stallions, Lunatic and Cyreus, were kept in the stables, which had an antbed floor and frequently needed repair. He also ran mobs of horses at Redbank and Wolston. There were horses for riding (Pettigrew rode one named Robin, which once threw him) and draft horses, with strong names like Andrew and Jack, for ploughing. Woogaroo did not have a forge, and Pettigrew sometimes took horses to the blacksmith in Ipswich for shoeing. The out-buildings at Woogaroo included fowl and duck pens and a poultry yard, cowbails, pig sties, a sheep pen, a hayshed and a bam, a tool house and a carpenter’s shop, a stockyard, a butcher’s shop, a smokehouse and a privy. These bush material buildings needed constant maintenance. Pettigrew, who was handy with tools, fitted padlocks, glazed windows, carried out repairs to doors, gates and fences, and sharpened knives and axes on the grinding stone outside the kitchen. At one stage, he borrowed a set of mason’s irons, went down to a sandstone quarry on the riverbank, and painstakingly cut two blocks of stone for the fireplace at Woogaroo. He helped with all the activities associated with the farm animals, including feeding the fowls, chasing pigs out of the com, burying dogs and

57 Ibid., 9 February 1851. 58 Ibid., 2 June 1850; Moreton Bav Courier. 8 June 1850. 5Q Diary. 19 May 1850. 60 Ibid. 23 February 1851. 61 Ibid. 26 August 1849. 76 Elaine Brown drowning kittens. He learned to preserve meat by salting, drying or smoking it, and to produce the common cooking fat, lard. At times he carried out the routine chores of bringing barrels of water and stocks of firewood to the kitchen. When there was nothing else to do, he would work in the vegetable garden, where Simpson grew English and sweet potatoes, French and Turkey peas, beans, carrots, turnips, beetroot, cabbages, onions and herbs. Keen to acclimatise plants from many parts of the world, Simpson frequently exchanged plant material with other colonists. His orchard trees included apples, peaches, figs, oranges, bananas, guavas, limes and almonds, and he also grew grapes and pineapples. Pettigrew, having an experimental turn of mind, attempted to preserve figs by drying them and bananas by sugaring them. Other plants mentioned in his diaries included ornamental shrubs, bamboo, which was used to make handles for rakes and other tools, and native trees such as ironbarks and bunya pines. Simpson had a contract with the government to grow fodder for the large number of animals he had to feed,62 and Pettigrew recorded an annual cycle of ploughing, harrowing, drilling, sewing, hilling up, weeding and chipping for crops of com, oats and millet. Hay was made in November-December, cocked in the field for drying, then made into a haystack or put into the bam. The humid climate created less than ideal conditions for hay-making, and Pettigrew systematically recorded both the progress and the often mouldy results of this major annual effort. With a farmer’s interest in the weather, Pettigrew recorded temperatures, rain, storms and winds, summer heat and winter frosts, and noted their effects on plants, crops and people. At Woogaroo, he was introduced to the extremes of Queensland’s sub-tropical climate and to the uncontrollable fires and floods that were to affect his activities for the rest of the century. Fire was used to dispose of dead horses, and Simpson burnt the grass on his run; but there were also accidental fires, and while travelling from Woogaroo to Brisbane in the very hot summer of 1853, Pettigrew observed his first bushfires.63 A flood in March 1852 covered the wharf at Woogaroo to a depth of one foot. Heavy rain in April then caused big rises in Woogaroo and Oxley Creeks, and the river brought down bales of hay and casks of tallow from Joseph Fleming’s boiling-down works at Ipswich. Afterwards, the ground was boggy for weeks, and Pettigrew learned an important lesson when his bullocks refused to cross a badly damaged bridge while there was water over it.64 At the time of this flood, he was working on a capped, post-and-rail boundary fence around Wolston, a 640 acre property downstream from Woogaroo, which Simpson had purchased in 1851.65 Pettigrew surveyed Wolston and drew plans for its first house and out-buildings before he left Simpson’s employment.66 Building

62 Simpson to Col. Sec.. 8 August 1843 and 4 April 1850 in Langevad. Simpson Letterbook, pp. 11 and 34. 6j Diary, 11 January 1853. 64 Ibid., 10 and 15 April 1852. 65 Diary, 27 June 1851: Langevad. The Simpson Letterbook. p. xx. 66 Diary. 8 August 1851. 29 January. 27 February. 15 June. 6 July. 1 and 15 October 1852. The first buildings were constructed of timber. In 1855. Simpson resigned as Crown Lands Commissioner, moved to Wolston and developed it as a horse stud. Advertisements inserted by Pettigrew in the Moreton Bay Courier on 18 and 25 April 1857 indicate that he was then assisting Simpson to build "Floating About on the Wide World" 77

the fence, which was two-and-a-half miles long, occupied Simpson’s men for six months. Pettigrew’s job was to drag in logs with bullocks for the men to cut up, and then to place the posts and rails at intervals along the fenceline, using a dray. He applied his understanding of animals to the management of his bullocks, which rejoiced in names like Bounce, Russel, Dumplin, Dusty, Grasshopper and Stupid: I only once gave the bullocks some blows with the whip because they would not pull together — never touched the leaders. After having done so. I told them to go on pair after pair — naming them — and ready with the whip to strike — but they all pulled and out of the hole came the dray [...]. On one occasion when working with the bullocks, a bit of stick got in between the hoofs of one of the fore feet of a bullock. I got a pair of pliers and tried to pull it out. He put down his horn at me. I desisted and told him if he did so I could not touch it. I looked at him and then tried again and pulled it out. This is a clear case of an animal understanding what you want him to do.67* Pettigrew, who considered sliprails splintery and inconvenient, persuaded Simpson to employ David McKergow to make proper gates for Wolston, and, to finish the job, he insisted on hanging the gates and rounding the posts himself.68 As a Presbyterian, Pettigrew did not regard Christmas Day as a religious festival, yet the four Christmases he spent at Woogaroo were memorable occasions. In 1849, Simpson’s cook had several visitors on Christmas Eve and was rather tipsy the next morning. After managing a “fairish breakfast and dinner”, the “old lady” went to bed, leaving Simpson and Pettigrew to prepare the tea.69 In 1850, Pettigrew crossed the river to Moggill to visit some of the immigrants from Lang’s third ship, the Lima, who were developing the farms which he and Warner had surveyed.70 In 1851, Simpson, Surveyor Burnett, and John and Robert Little over-indulged in claret and “colonial champain”, and Simpson “blew [Pettigrew] up” for “spoiling his maize and ruining him”. When Pettigrew “denied the charge”, he was ordered to “leave the station”, but the row blew over and he was still there the next morning.71 After moving to Brisbane in 1852, Pettigrew accepted an invitation from Simpson to return to Woogaroo for Christmas. After dining on turkey with Messrs Bigge and Little, he assessed the quantity of timber left in the Woogaroo Scrub and visited Wolston to see what progress had been made on the buildings he had designed. On his departure, Simpson presented him with some ham, lent him books and newspapers, and expressed the opinion (which, he said, was shared by “every other person he ha[d] spoken to”) that the sawmill venture would ruin Pettigrew, although a flour mill would be good.72 Each year at Woogaroo, on his birthday, 25 August, Pettigrew mused in his diary on the passing of time, usually in religious terms. The intense loneliness of the recently arrived immigrant is reflected in his birthday entry for 1849:

the stone and brick central section of “”, one of Brisbane’s oldest homes and now the property of the National Trust of Queensland. 67 “Genealogy”, n.p. 68 Moreton Bay Courier, 21 March 1857; Diary. 13 and 26 August and 13 September 1852. 69 Diary, 25 December 1849. 70 Ibid., 25 December 1850. The Lima arrived in November 1849. 71 Ibid., 25 December 1851. 72 Ibid., 28 December 1852. 78 Elaine Brown

Thought a good deal about Miss Guthrie.7" A few years ago, I can recall when I anticipated being in a farm about the age of 21 or 22. That time has passed, and I have this day completed my 24th and entered my 25th year, and [am] as far away from home as I can go. floating about on the wide world. To human ideas and calculation half or at least one-third of my days are past and gone, never to be recalled. I ought therefore to be more diligent and improve the future.* 74 In the three years that followed this entry, Pettigrew, an optimist by nature, came to terms with the disappointments that his emigration had brought, and set a new course for his life. He was fortunate to have gained the patronage of a man as wise as Stephen Simpson,75 who, during Pettigrew’s sojourn at Woogaroo, gave him sound advice and provided him with opportunities to learn colonial ways and understand colonial society. Dogged, diligent and resourceful, Pettigrew made a success of the Brisbane Saw Mills, expanded his interests in the timber industry, and involved himself in ship-building, exploration and colonial politics, spending forty years “improving the future” before losing his wealth in flood, fire and economic depression during the 1890s. Pettigrew’s diaries, letters, notebooks and papers constitute a valuable historical resource. As the profile of an immigrant, they reflect the attitudes, values and skills which he brought with him from Scotland, and reveal the personal characteristics that contributed to his success as a settler. As a record of colonisation, they detail the practical innovations and adaptations with which Pettigrew tackled the problems of developing an untried natural environment, and they disclose his reactions to the individuals from different social classes and religious denominations who, thrown together in that environment, established a distinctive society in colonial Queensland.

7j Before leaving Scotland. Pettigrew had proposed marriage to Mary Guthrie, but she had rejected him. 74 Diary. 25 August 1849. 75 Pettigrew’s view of Simpson adds weight to the proposition that Simpson’s Ufe, as a homeopathic doctor, conscientious public official and bearer of deep sorrows, warrants further investigation.