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

“Floating About on the Wide World”: William Pettigrew at Woogaroo, 1849-1853* Elaine Brown History Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland 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 Brisbane 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 Stephen Simpson, 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 Moreton Bay 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 Brisbane River 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.

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