Copyright © Harry Dillon and Peter Butler 2010. All Rights Reserved. No

Copyright © Harry Dillon and Peter Butler 2010. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. A William Heinemann book Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060 www.randomhouse.com.au First published by William Heinemann in 2010 Copyright © Intermedia International Pty Ltd and Harry Dillon 2010 The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www. randomhouse.com.au/offices. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry Butler, Peter Brian, 1948– Macquarie/Peter Butler; Harry Dillon ISBN 978 1864 71030 4 (pbk) Includes index Bibliography Macquarie, Lachlan, 1761–1824. Governors – New South Wales – Biography New South Wales – History – 1788–1851 – Biography Other Authors/Contributors: Dillon, Harry James, 1953– 994.402 Typeset in 13/16 pt Mrs Eaves Roman by Post Pre-press, Australia Printed in Australia by Griffin Press, an accredited ISO AS/NZS 14001:2004 Environmental Management System printer 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Long before white settlers came to Australia, Europeans referred to an unknown southern landmass, or ‘Terra Aus- tralis Incognita’. Dutch explorers of northern and western parts of the continent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries conferred upon it the name ‘New Holland’. When Captain James Cook claimed the east coast for Britain in 1770 he called it ‘New South Wales’. Captain Arthur Phillip’s com- mission for the settlement of New South Wales designated its western limit as the 135th meridian, about midway between the continent’s east and west coasts. In 1814 the great navigator-explorer Matthew Flinders published A Voyage to Terra Australis, an account of his 1802–3 circumnavigation of the mainland. Therein he said: ‘Had I permitted myself any innovation on the original term, it would have been to convert it into Australia; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.’1 Flinders also sug- gested this name avoided linking the new continent directly to either Britain or Holland, thus minimising any cause for disputation.

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Major General Lachlan Macquarie, governor of New South Wales, 1810–21, was familiar with Flinders’ book and shared his preference for the term ‘Australia’. In correspond- ence with the Colonial Office in London, Macquarie began to refer to ‘the Continent of Australia, which I hope will be the Name given to this country in future, instead of the very erroneous and misapplied name, hitherto given it, of “New Holland”, which properly speaking only applies to a part of this immense Continent’.2 Macquarie’s adoption of ‘Aus- tralia’ spurred on the popularity of the name, which came to be generally accepted. When Britain claimed the continent’s western portion in 1829 it became ‘Western Australia’ and the nation’s identity was fixed. It is fitting that Macquarie initiated official usage of ‘Aus- tralia’ because he was among the first to see the country’s potential at a time when British politicians were continu- ing to regard it as a remote jail. Macquarie’s successes as governor precipitated changes in British policy that allowed colonies of free settlement to formally begin developing in Australia, although their penal function actually intensified for a time. Ironically, Macquarie paid a high personal price for his achievements, which were not fully appreciated at the time because they did not coincide with British priorities. However, he presided over an era during which Australia as a real geographic entity and a fit place in which to live came into existence. The national pride and independent outlook of the first generations of white Australians were a direct out- come of Macquarie’s policies. The Macquarie family’s stone mausoleum, located on the Isle of Mull in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, bears the inscription:

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major general lachlan macquarie of jarvisfield who was born 31st january, 1761 and died at london on the 1st of july, 1824 the father of australia

This is an apt title for a man whose unique contribution to Australia’s development deserves the highest recognition.

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The Macquarie Heritage

May this, thy last born infant, then arise, To glad thy heart and greet thy parent eyes; And Australasia float, with flag unfurl’d, A new Britannia in another world.

William Charles Wentworth, ‘Australasia’, 1823

In 1823, Australia was a lusty young offspring of Britain ready to answer a call to greatness in emulation of the parent’s noble historical role as ‘freest of the free’, or so W.C. Went- worth envisaged.1 Fear not, the Australian poet urged, for if the Britannic lion should ‘no longer roar the terror of the fight’ and find herself kneeling on ‘vanquished knee’ before a conqueror, Australasia would be ready to fill the breach as a ‘new Britannia’ rising in the antipodes. Dedicated to Lach- lan Macquarie, whose governorship of New South Wales had recently concluded, the poem just missed being awarded the chancellor’s medal at Cambridge University in England, where Wentworth had been studying. Motivated by partisan zeal for his southern homeland, the verse was a literary rally- ing call for Australia to achieve her potential as an exemplar of Britain’s heritage and institutions. At this time the name ‘Australia’ (or ‘Australasia’) was not

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fully established in common and official parlance and it thus represented a novel topic for the annual poetry competition at the esteemed campus. Patriotism among Australians was equally novel, given that they inhabited a ‘thieves’ country’ into which Britain was pouring a seemingly endless stream of criminal exiles. As well, New South Wales remained under the control of a British military governor armed with autocratic powers, while the colony’s civil institutions were barely formed and more than one-third of its citizens were serving sentences for offences committed in another country. All the same, significant changes had taken place in the settlements of eastern Australia, which finally bore the stamp of permanence and were increasingly regarded as ‘home’ by their inhabitants rather than as a temporary site of reluctant sojourn. In dedicating his work to Macquarie, Wentworth rightfully recognised the former governor’s crucial role in fostering these important changes during his 12-year term of office from January 1810 to December 1821. In his dedication, Wentworth praised Macquarie for pre- siding over the colony ‘with the warm solicitude of a parent’ and guiding it through ‘the helplessness of infancy to the first dawn of youth and independence’. The poet compli- mented the ex-viceroy’s construction works – ‘the forests you levelled, the roads you formed, the bridges you built, the pal- aces you erected, and the towns you founded’ – but reserved his greatest approbation for ‘that high tone of feeling, that great moral reformation’ which Macquarie had engendered. Wentworth went on to reassure the former governor, who was at the time facing strident criticism of his administration, that the British government would eventually recognise his (Macquarie’s) ‘zeal, ability and integrity’.

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. . . I am anxious at a period when a few privileged and das- tardly calumniators have dared, not openly, but by insidious implication, to impugn the leading measures which char- acterised your administration of the government of my country, to testify my gratitude for the services which you have rendered to that country . . .

Wentworth, born in the colony to a convict mother and transported father, soon afterwards headed back to Sydney where he commenced a brilliant political career promoting trial by jury, press freedom, representative government and an end to convict transportation. In dedicating his poem to Macquarie he signalled an intention to carry on the old governor’s progressive work in the colony and to represent the interests of his favourites, the reformed ex-convicts (‘emancipists’) and their native-born offspring (‘currency lads and lasses’). Wentworth’s poem was printed just prior to important reforms to the administration of the colonies, which the British parliament passed in 1823. This new Act established a Legislative Council appointed by the Crown to assist the governor in New South Wales, as well as a new Supreme Court. Although it fell well short of approval for self-government, the legislation foreshadowed the eventual demise of the autocratic military style of government that had presided over Australia for 35 years. The new system also implied an intention to finally allow the Australian settlements to begin developing as free colonies, although they were to retain their British penal role for several decades more. This new era in Australia’s development was built upon the progress achieved during the enlightened governorship of Lachlan Macquarie, who at this time should have been able to enjoy the fruits of his labours from the vantage point of comfortable retirement.

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Unfortunately, his potential triumph had turned to tragedy due to a change in British colonial policy that undermined the successes of his administration and left his reputation in tatters. As Wentworth implied, Macquarie was the victim of a vicious and insidious campaign that was not warranted for a man who had served the Crown diligently and wisely for so long. The old governor never recovered from this blow to his self-esteem and was still demoralised at the time of his death in July 1824. The tale of Lachlan Macquarie’s governorship is well worth telling because in many ways it is the central story of early Australian history. Certainly no other governor etched his identity so indelibly on his times nor left his name and the names of his associates so well represented on Austral- ian maps. More importantly, Macquarie’s 12-year term, the longest served by any nineteenth-century vice-regal representative in Australia, encompassed the key events of the country’s crucial third decade of existence. During the age of Macquarie, the colony’s population growth grew dramati- cally, land exploration commenced in earnest, the country’s vast pastoral potential was confirmed and the arrival of free immigrants started to become a significant factor. At least as important is the fact that his governorship accelerated key ongoing trends, including Australia’s progress from jail to colony of settlement, and from despotism to democracy. In addition, Macquarie’s progressive policies and oft-stated affection for Australia helped to foster for the first timea distinctly Australian outlook that Wentworth embodied and many other emancipists and currency folk had begun to share. Finally, the personal story of Macquarie’s rise and fall is an absorbing tale of aspirations initially realised, followed by an unexpected fall from grace. An ordinary man in many ways,

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he was propelled to success by an exceptionally good match between his particular talents and the task at hand, only to have his successes turned against him in the end. While controversial at the time, Macquarie’s term of office has been largely vindicated by posterity, which has tended to judge his governorship positively. In any case, the achievements outlined above are the true measure of his worth and in this he is unsurpassed by any other political figure in Aus- tralia’s colonial past. While the title of ‘Father of Australia’ has been bestowed all too tritely at times upon various men, no governor deserves it more than Macquarie, who in retrospect must be included in any list of the influential political leaders of Australian history along with the likes of Arthur Phillip, William Charles Wentworth, Henry Parkes, Alfred Deakin, John Curtin and Robert Menzies. Macquarie’s impact is all the more remarkable given that he was the despotic ruler over a scattering of fledgling eastern Australian settlements with a total population of less than 40,000 at the time of his final departure for England. Despite their small scale and tenuous grip on the fringe of a Europe-sized continent, the governor’s stewardship helped the settlements to grow rapidly during his term of office. The progress he achieved on so many fronts made an outsized contribution to the country’s future and these days his sound reputation appears unshakeable. Such is the veneration in which he is held today that his name has become a byword for strength, honesty, solidity and sagacity. In light of his latter-day renown, there has been a tendency to portray Macquarie as a hero and attribute his downfall to fac- tors beyond his control, especially the purported self-serving dishonesty of prominent people who influenced his fate. It is indeed possible to depict him simply as the champion of poor, downtrodden convicts and settlers, who was felled by

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the calumnies of his enemies in the colony and the duplici- ties of his political superiors in London. While there is some truth in this simplistic view of complex events, it is important to bear in mind that all the players in this drama were caught up in a long-term dilemma over the nature of Australian settlements that troubled every early governor, although it came to the fore in Macquarie’s era. This problem devolved upon the inherent contradiction between a jail and a colony of settlement, an issue that defied lasting resolution while the convict transportation system continued. Broadly, Macquarie was condemned over his handling of convicts and emancipists, his public works spending and alleged policy inconsistency. But underpinning these matters was the fact that New South Wales was an uneasy jail–colony hybrid, initially founded in 1788 as a bedraggled camp of captive criminals. Despotism in the form of an all-powerful military governor may have been suitable for a settlement of that type, but when Macquarie was sworn in 22 years later the circumstances were quite different while the governor’s executive powers remained in place. There were now many more free (voluntary immigrant) and freed (ex-convict) citizens, who increasingly resented the colony’s arbitrary government and lack of civil institutions. The result- ant tensions worsened markedly during Macquarie’s term of office, triggering many problems in New South Wales and a flurry of complaints by discontented colonists to their influential associates in England. Given this context, perhaps the level of success Macquarie’s key policies achieved is more surprising than the fact that they were eventually deemed to have failed.

The age of Macquarie began on the first day of 1810 when Lieutenant Colonel Lachlan Macquarie was sworn in as the

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British government’s supreme official within its territories in the eastern half of New Holland. His investiture as the fifth Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of New South Wales and its dependencies gave him nearly absolute control over a mainland area more than a dozen times larger than the United Kingdom. In addition to the whole continent east of the 135th meridian, passing north–south through the arid centre – then totally untouched by Europeans – Macquarie ruled over the dependent colony of Van Diemen’s Land, as well as New Zealand and a clutch of adjacent Pacific islands, including Norfolk Island. This was a dauntingly massive kingdom, although he had no effective means of control over the vast majority of this terra incognita; his main efforts were initially focused upon a narrow strip of coastal land around Sydney bounded by Broken Bay in the north, Botany Bay in the south and the Blue Mountains in the west. Although notionally constrained by English laws, Macquarie held wide powers under which he could build towns and forts, send out explorers, grant extensive lands, assign convict labourers, pardon criminals, confer punishments, control terms of trade, set rations, determine work hours and overrule local officials. Lacking any direct background in politics and with administrative experience restricted to the military sphere, he was definitively the ‘Minister for Everything’ in his new southern domain. The disreputable colony of New South Wales owed its existence to the English government’s reckless decision to dump convicted criminals on the other side of the world from their homeland in a forbidding outdoor jail from which they probably would not return. While utterly dubious as a means of enforcing justice or reforming criminals, this form of exile relieved Britain of excess felons who did not go to the gallows

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under the draconian criminal code of the era. It was also a convenient means of attaining a potentially useful strategic stronghold near the great trading centres of Asia amid intense competition with other colonial powers, especially France. One of the wildest experiments in the history of penology, the New South Wales colony succeeded to the extent that it survived its desperately difficult early years and by 1810 had achieved a patchy self-sufficiency in basic food production, sustaining settlements whose inhabitants lived tolerably well, if in fairly primitive conditions for the most part. The steady influx of newly transported convicts was managed reason- ably well up to this time and, with most convicts remaining in the colony after being emancipated or serving out their sentences, only about one in three local people were current convicts, in contrast with the first years when they made up virtually the whole non-military populace. The deterrent impact of this remote jail upon pickpockets in London and poachers in the British countryside was unclear, but must have been diminished by the fact that many a transportee was materially better off in New South Wales than he or she would have expected to be back home amid the deplorable conditions of an early nineteenth-century city slum or rural hovel. Depictions of starving convicts slaving away in chains under threat of the lash and in the shadow of the gallows are not baseless, but nor do they typify conditions for most trans- portees during the first decades of settlement. During this period, a well-behaved convict could with a little luck escape corporal punishment, obtain a pardon, readily find work and live a relatively comfortable life. A minority of former convicts had exploited opportunities in trade and farming that were not available to them in the old country to attain previously unimagined affluence. All the same, the ‘land of thieves’

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had a generally vile reputation in London, where people such as the literary luminary Charles Lamb mused jocularly about what the inhabitants of New South Wales did ‘when they aren’t stealing’.2 Contrarily, there was a commonplace view that the colony was finally showing some potential after outgrowing its doleful function as a distant penitentiary. Installed as the new ruler of this peculiar society, Macquarie arrived in Sydney as the first in a new line of army-officer governors, with specific instructions to re-establish rule by law following the overthrow of Governor William Bligh in January 1808. The rebellion, led by a clique of military officers and John Macarthur, a former officer turned rich landholder, was the culmination of a protracted power strug- gle that Bligh’s irascible personality had exacerbated. The old sea captain had attempted to curtail the exploitative trading ring that the officers had been conducting since a period of military rule following the departure of the first governor, Arthur Phillip, in 1792. In common with two previous naval governors, John Hunter and Philip Gidley King, Bligh was an outsider who found it difficult to impose his will upon the very military officers whose corruption he set out to curtail. After ousting the governor, the military oligarchy had ruled illegally and ineffectively for two years until Macquarie’s arrival as replacement governor with his own regiment – the 73rd – to act as a power base in place of the ousted New South Wales Corps. While managing to smooth over the factional strife left in the wake of the rebellion, Macquarie could not stifle the hunger for wealth, power and social prestige that had fuelled it. Nor could he alter the underlying jail–colony conundrum that would aggravate problems later in his term of office. The long timelag between the coup against Bligh and Macquarie’s

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arrival emphasised both the vast distance separating the colony from the British administration to which the governor was answerable, and the generally lackadaisical approach of the Colonial Office in London, whose officials were not par- ticularly concerned about New South Wales. Information, inquiries, decisions and instructions originating at either end of the tenuous communication channel via ocean sea lanes frequently took a year or two to elicit a return message. With a voyage of up to 14,000 miles either way, there was latitude for dissembling, mistakes and misunderstanding. While this tended to bolster the governor’s capacity for initiative, it also made him vulnerable to attack by hostile colonists who could secretively send missives attacking the viceroy to influential lobbyists and parliamentarians in Eng- land. In addition, the governor could never neglect the most important limitation on his power imposed by British government control over his spending: Macquarie learned only too well how the Colonial Office could curtail expenditure by refusing to fund his pet projects no matter how essential he deemed them to be. Though his experiences with the British army, especially in India, had taught him to live like a nabob with a squad- ron of servants, Macquarie was essentially a plain man whose first years of life were spent in an earth-floored cottage on the Isle of Ulva, in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. Though he was related to Highland lairds, Macquarie’s own family was poor and he never lost his common touch or sympathy for the downtrodden. On arrival in Sydney he was nearly 49 years old and still suffering from regular fevers derived from nearly two decades of service in India. A tall, solid figure with dark, deep-set eyes and greying, sandy-coloured hair, he conveyed an air of authority and was generally

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regarded as more impressive than handsome. He intended to govern the colony for a few years before returning with his wife, Elizabeth, to the Isle of Mull, where he owned an estate. His heartfelt ambition was to become a great laird whose lar- gesse and generous property improvements would win the allegiance and admiration of his tenant farmers, labourers and villagers. Though he had spent most of his adult life away from them, the Highlands retained their hold on him and influenced his style of governance in New South Wales. While not a plum appointment, the job of ruling a primitive penal colony offered inducements to the ambitious, upwardly mobile Macquarie for whom it represented a late- career opportunity. Here he could make his mark, perhaps gain a knighthood in recognition of his achievements and, if he stayed for eight years, there was the prospect of a life pen- sion. This meant a lot to the proud new viceroy, who craved praise from his superiors and was acutely sensitive to criticism, a weakness that brought him grief in later years. Nearly everyone he met found Lachlan to be engaging, civil and respectful albeit somewhat bluff, a little tactless and not well endowed with humour. Innately humane and sympathetic towards anyone facing difficulties, he was nonetheless a high- minded moralist with authoritarian tendencies and a capacity for steely opposition when crossed. His initial impressions about people and issues were likely to soon become obsti- nately fixed attitudes, a tendency that did not always serve him well. While neither a brilliant military officer nor a deep thinker, his exceptional diligence, penchant for good order and organisational capacity were inordinately well matched with the contemporary needs of New South Wales. He was what these days might be termed ‘a good hire’ and this fact underpinned the success and longevity of his governorship.

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In the process of restoring dignity to the position of governor, Macquarie readily developed policies and approaches that were to typify his 12 years in office. Beyond the tawdry realities of 1810 Sydney, he foresaw a gracious Georgian capital with fine buildings epitomising the civic pride he wanted its inhabitants to feel for their community. With the instincts of a benevolent landlord, he began to install better roads, bridges and wharves, and to provide settlements with churches, schools and barracks. A staunch public moralist, he sought to counter the colony’s turpitude by promoting the virtues of marriage, churchgoing, temperance and respectabil- ity. He encouraged good citizenship and laid the groundwork for sound administration by modelling efficiency and order in governance. While an idealist, Macquarie was more an ambitious achiever than an imaginative visionary, and his practical approach towards civic improvement achieved outstanding results given the limited resources at his disposal. Building upon the achievements of a flurry of activity during the first year or so of his governorship, Macquarie presided over a range of developments that were to have long-lasting impacts upon the colony. He encouraged exploration and expanded settlement during a decade that saw the colony’s known land resources expand fiftyfold. He founded townships and fostered their development as viable centres with good facilities for local people. He encouraged small farmers to improve their productivity, look after the fertility of their land and build solid houses for their own comfort and the betterment of their locality. Intuitively grasping the ben- efits of engaging former convicts as full citizens, he fostered an egalitarian social inclusiveness that has been interpreted as a germinal form of Australia’s ‘fair go’ ethic. His conviction that New South Wales needed a sound economic base

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led to the establishment of the colony’s first domestic bank, the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac). He introduced standard coinage to supplant the disordered system of barter, promissory notes and payment with rum that had previously held sway in the colony. In keeping with his conviction that health care should be readily available, he did his utmost to provide hospitals for all citizens. His faith in education as a key to social betterment led to the opening of schools and expansion of education to include greater numbers of children from poor families. Displaying serious concern for the welfare of Aborigines, he set up a school for native children, along with Aboriginal farms and native villages. He also sought to gain favour with Aboriginal leaders and use them as intermediaries in a bid to incorporate natives into white society. While his policies did not transcend the customary European condescension towards native cultures, he at least recognised that Aborigines were suffering because their country was being taken away from them and sought to remedy this in the best ways he could devise. At his peak, during the years 1810–15, Macquarie strode the colonial landscape like an energetic colossus who was interested in, and concerned about, virtually everything. Issues great and small, decisions major and minor were his daily bread, and little of importance happened without refer- ence to the viceroy and his staff at Government House. His incessantly busy approach was ably assisted by his wife and loyal supporter, Elizabeth, an active and practical first lady of the colony with whom Lachlan enjoyed a close relationship. Aged 31 on her arrival in Sydney, she perhaps appreciated the expanded horizons offered by vice-regal life as much as Macquarie did. With russet hair, blue eyes and clear, pale skin, Elizabeth Henrietta Macquarie (née Campbell) was a

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Highlander like her husband and distantly related to him via inter-clan ties. The couple had met through family connec- tions on Mull in 1804 and married three years later when he was a 46-year-old widower and she 29. A year hence they had a daughter who died at three months of age, and thereafter Elizabeth suffered a traumatic series of miscarriages prior to the birth in 1814 of a longed-for son, Lachlan junior. Strong-willed, tactful, generous and capable, Elizabeth maintained a degree of independence to the extent that this was possible in her position. She made her own mark on the colony, especially in promoting the welfare of orphans, Aborigines, convict women and poor settlers. As patroness to the Female Orphan School, the Native Institution and the Benevolent Society, Mrs Macquarie assisted the development of what were effectively the first social services in New South Wales. Often she accompanied her husband on long inspection tours of farms and small settlements around Syd- ney, across the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, south to Van Diemen’s Land and north to the Hunter River. An effective organiser, she helped to arrange the hectic public events and social occasions inherent to vice-regal life, in which the Mac- quaries participated enthusiastically. Maintaining an interest in architecture, Elizabeth brought to the colony a collec- tion of books that were used as design guides for some local projects. She also pursued an active involvement in garden- ing to the extent that her landscaping and plantings in the government domains at Parramatta and Sydney paved the way for what became Parramatta Park and the Royal Botanic Gar- dens. Together with Lachlan, she sought to transform Sydney into an elegant, well-appointed city. While the Macquarie heritage has many facets, it is most commonly encountered through a number of celebrated

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buildings dating from the era that are located in central Syd- ney and some outlying townships. Many people are therefore aware that Macquarie was responsible for the first truly permanent public buildings in Australia, the remnants of which form the exalted core of Australia’s colonial architectural heritage. However, fewer people are aware that beneath its glass and concrete towers, the modern heart of Sydney – from Bridge Street southwards to Goulburn Street and from Mac- quarie Street to Darling Harbour – retains essentially the same street pattern established by Macquarie two centuries ago. Nor do they generally recognise that Lachlan’s regime of construction and civic improvement was not undertaken purely for practical and aesthetic reasons, but rather with a view towards elevating the standard of civilisation in the colony. Macquarie believed the makeshift, down-at-heel nature of the settlement as he found it was not conducive to good behaviour or high moral purpose, whereas a properly laid out town with fine buildings and well-made roads was an outward sign of inner virtue that would serve as an induce- ment towards high ethics and sound morality. Macquarie’s construction heritage is most evident around Macquarie Street, which he named with no false modesty, in the precinct east and south of old Government House in Bridge Street, a site now occupied by the Museum of Sydney. This area – Macquarie’s official Sydney – includes the Domain, the Royal Botanic Gardens, the old Government House Sta- bles (now the Conservatorium of Music), Hyde Park, Hyde Park Barracks, St James’s Church and the southern and northern wings of the old Rum Hospital (now the Mint Museum and State Parliament House). Macquarie turned official Syd- ney into an architectural showpiece that is still evident today despite overshadowing by twenty-first-century towers.

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Hyde Park, named after a much larger open space in Lon- don, owes its existence to the governor’s 1810 decision to turn a tract of wasteland on the town’s southern fringe into a green recreation area open to everyone in the colony. By official decree, the original park rules included:

No gaming, no drunkenness, swearing, quarrelling, boxing. No cows or goats to be pastured. No pie selling. No erection of booths for the sale of liquor.

However, people could stroll, picnic, play sport and, on occasions, cheer on their favourites at a horseracing track installed in the park with Macquarie’s approval. The first festive race meeting, held in mid-October 1810, ran for three days and the governor set something of a trend by declaring each of these days a public holiday so that everyone could attend. Mr and Mrs Macquarie were patrons for this great community recreational event, which brought together convicts, emancipists, merchants, officials and soldiers. The redheaded W.C. Wentworth, then aged 20 and not yet famous, rode his father’s outstanding horse, Gig, in several races. At the northern end of Hyde Park is Queens Square, where the southern end of Macquarie Street meets the curve of St James Road. Fronting the square to the east is the Hyde Park Barracks, one of Australia’s foremost heritage buildings and a monument to both Macquarie’s public works program and the talents of his head architect Francis Greenway, a former convict transported for forgery. Amazingly, when completed on 4 June 1819, the sandstock brick building was the first large-scale accommodation for male convicts in the colony. Until this time, convicts doing government work finished up

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in mid-afternoon to allow them to undertake private employ- ment and find their own lodgings. Convinced that barracks accommodation would minimise disturbances, improve the men’s moral character and make them more productive workers, Macquarie instructed Greenway to design a three- storey building for which the foundation stone was laid on 6 April 1817. The result so impressed the viceroy that, upon its completion, he granted Greenway a full pardon. Intended to accommodate 600 men, the barracks at times had to squeeze in up to 1400, and between 1819 and 1848 it housed up to 30,000 convicts. The barracks was not intended as a jail and many men were happy to be provided with a place to sleep in one of the hundreds of hammocks hung in cramped rows. The cessation of transportation to Sydney in 1840 reduced the number of convicts in the barracks and in 1848 the few men still housed there were removed to Cockatoo Island in the harbour. The building’s colourful life continued with its conversion into a temporary shelter for single female immigrants. In later times outbuildings sprouted around the original barracks and the site was used by various courts and government departments. In 1981, a permanent conservation order was placed on the building and a decade later it opened as a museum. In its assessment of the Hyde Park Barracks, the Heritage Council noted the building’s outstanding heritage value and the fact that it is regarded as one of Greenway’s best works.

. . . the barracks was one of the first substantial buildings in a colony previously consisting mainly of makeshift construc- tions. In its scale, siting, elegance and quality of construction, the barracks reflect Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s vision for

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Sydney and the growing colony as a permanent and thriving settlement.3

Directly across Queens Square from the barracks is another Greenway design, St James’s Anglican Church, which has been in continuous use since 1824. This church was important to Macquarie’s town plan for the eastern part of Sydney, but when its foundation stone was laid in October 1819 it was intended as a new courthouse. Macquarie was obliged to change his plans at the behest of John Thomas Bigge, a commissioner of inquiry sent by the Colonial Office, who recommended that it be converted to a church after a hold was put on plans for a grand cathedral in George Street. This change was effected with the addition of a square tower and steeple that remains in place today at the western end of the building. The first sermon in the uncompleted church was held in January 1822, and it was consecrated on 11 February 1824, after Macquarie’s departure, by one of his key enemies, the Reverend Samuel Marsden, the colony’s principal chap- lain. St James’s was for many years the city’s most fashionable church and its steeple was clearly visible from the harbour during Sydney’s low-rise nineteenth century. Although com- promised by its cramped position, St James’s retains the outward look of a Georgian town church and is a treasured element of the Macquarie heritage with a unique place in Sydney life. North of Hyde Park Barracks in Macquarie Street is the Mint Museum, originally the southern wing of the old general hospital – or Rum Hospital – built by Macquarie to replace the colony’s decaying first hospital located to the west of Sydney Cove. Its two-storey colonnaded verandahs are echoed by the State Parliament building, located further north in Macquarie

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Street, which was once the hospital’s northern wing. The hospital, which opened in 1816, once stretched for 600 feet along Sydney’s eastern ridge, mirroring the military barracks that was then located on high ground west of George Street on the other side of town. The original main building that divided the two wings was demolished in 1879 and replaced with the current Sydney Hospital. When the British government refused to fund construction of the hospital, Macquarie approved a dubious scheme under which three local business men, including W.C. Wentworth’s father D’Arcy, agreed to build the facility in return for a three-year monopoly over rum imports. Not by any means a masterpiece, the hospital had structural faults and was oversized for its purposes, while lacking adequate kitchens, lavatories and medicinal storage space. Nonetheless, the two remaining sections of the old hospital are a remarkable testament to Macquarie’s somewhat mercurial approach to building. In this instance, suggests the architectural historian James Broadbent, the governor may have focused too little on practicalities:

. . . it is debatable whether shade or ventilation or the per- ceived grandeur and symbolic import of a noble range of classical buildings crowning the seat of government were uppermost in Macquarie’s mind when he laid the hospital’s foundation stone.4

While the hospital’s southern wing became the Sydney branch of the Royal Mint before its recent conversion into a home for the Historic Houses Trust, the northern wing has long been closely associated with the government of New South Wales. In 1829, the Legislative Council moved in to share the building with surgeons’ quarters and, from 1852 on, the

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legislature occupied the whole building, adding substantially to its scale over the years. Prominently sited in Macquarie Street at the eastern end of Bridge Street is the extraordinary Conservatorium of Music building, originally constructed at Macquarie’s behest to accommodate Government House horses, servants and offices. If His Excellency had had his way, the fixture would have complemented the proposed new governor’s residence that was overruled by London. The Greenway-designed ‘pal- ace for horses’, featuring parapets, towers and ornate windows, originally enclosed a quadrangle with a fountain.5 Macquarie ordered the demolition of a bakehouse and mill to clear the site and laid the foundation stone in December 1817. Con- struction began in 1819 and two years later the extravagant building was completed. In 1914 a roof was constructed over the quadrangle to create a performance space and since then the site has been home to the conservatorium. To the east of the conservatorium are the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Domain, key features of Macquarie-era Syd- ney that date back to early settlement when Governor Arthur Phillip’s servant Henry Dodd planted an ill-fated grain crop near Farm Cove. Each early governor sought to reserve this area as a private domain attached to Government House but Macquarie did so most diligently and created the basis for future development of the site. He cleared buildings that had been constructed within the acreage, built surrounding walls and completed the road system. Sections of Macquarie’s walls can still be seen within the gardens although the roads have altered. Over three miles in length, the original road around the inside of the Domain was planned by Mrs Macquarie, who envisaged the area as an English parkland setting suitable for a grand house. Completed on 13 June 1816, a looping section

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of the road named after Elizabeth still runs down to the natural sandstone shelf, known as Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, where she reputedly enjoyed resting while taking in the harbour vista. During the latter Macquarie years, the current botanic gardens site began to be developed by the botanist Charles Fraser, whose work created the foundation for what became a cherished Sydney institution. On the opposite side of Sydney Cove on Observatory Hill stands a solid, two-storey building, now part of the National Trust complex, which began life as a military hospital that Macquarie ordered to be built in 1815. Stripped of its original verandahs, its exterior altered in the 1840s, the structure – which once housed the Fort Street School – is a rare survivor from the military precinct on the far western side of old Sydney that extended from a battery on the harbour at Dawes Point through to the barracks and parade ground that were located near the current Wynyard. A humbler relic of the Macquarie era – Cadman’s Cot- tage – stands unobtrusively on the western side of Sydney Cove and is the sole survivor of the hundreds of small, nonde- script buildings that once lined old Sydney’s streets, although unlike this building, most were not made of sandstone. Built in 1815, the two-storey residence served first as a barracks and then as the residence of the coxswain, the officer responsible for government boats and crews. The boats were used to transfer supplies between ships and the shore, transport convicts to and from worksites, and carry commodities such as timber and shells for lime mortar. Now set well back from the water, the cottage was once adjacent to a small beach that was eventually buried beneath extensive land reclamations around the cove. John Cadman, a pardoned convict, was superintendent of government boats in the period 1827–45.

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South of modern Circular Quay at the intersection of Bridge and Loftus streets, a diminutive park encloses one of the most important and evocative relics of the Macquarie era. Cramped by office blocks, the triangle of Macquarie Place Park has lost its original significance as the hub of early Sydney, Australia’s oldest town square and possibly the only unal- tered remnant of the central city’s original, pre-European colony landform. In Macquarie’s time the site was the geographic and official centre of the colony, located between the Government House gatehouse to the south, the Govern- ment Wharf to the north, the Domain to the east and the Tank Stream to the west. Situated close by were homes of the colony’s elite officials and leading merchants. Designated as a public space in the governor’s 1810 town plan, in 1818 the park acquired further significance when Macquarie installed a Greenway-designed obelisk from which all public roads were to be measured. The sandstone obelisk lists distances in miles to key locations: Bathurst 137, Windsor 35, Parramatta 15, Liverpool 20, Macquarie Tower (on the south head of the entrance to Port Jackson) 7 and Botany Bay North Head 14. The obelisk commemorates an important symbolic link between Macquarie’s newly planned and renovated Sydney and the townships he had established or improved, which were now accessible by good roads. Of all the remnants of its era, perhaps Macquarie Place most effectively encapsu- lates the governor’s conviction that he was engaged in nation building through civilising improvements. The Heritage Council accords it the highest significance.

The(se) qualities of the Obelisk and Macquarie Place symbolise Macquarie’s vision for a permanent planned settlement, which provided the genesis for the development of

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the nation, and which far exceeded the views of the British Government of the colony as simply a penal settlement.6

Like a landlord surveying his flourishing estates, Macquarie took pleasure in the expansion of the colony made manifest by the obelisk. Each place name etched on its sandstone face was touched by Macquarie, and in each location significant reminders of the old viceroy’s presence are still much in evidence today. On windswept South Head, for example, stands a replica of Greenway’s elegant lighthouse, completed in 1818 and a Sydney landmark ever since. The first lighthouse built in Australia, its flashing light could be seen up to 22 miles away on a clear night. The graceful tower combined beauty with functionality in guiding ships approaching the entry point to Port Jackson, in an era when navigation at sea could readily turn to disaster. In 1883, the tower was replaced due to decaying stonework but retained its original form. In Sydney’s west, within the green oasis of Parramatta Park, formerly the government domain on the banks of the Parramatta River, stands Old Government House, a key Mac- quarie landmark. Australia’s oldest public residence and the country abode of ten New South Wales governors, it was originally built in 1799 under Governor John Hunter. Although each governor made his mark upon the home, its current interior re-creates the taste and style of Elizabeth Macquarie. Characteristically, the Macquaries tripled the size of the original house, possibly to a design based on the Scottish home of an uncle of Elizabeth’s, and with assistance from Lieutenant John Watts, the governor’s aide-de-camp who was an amateur architect. The Macquaries loved to visit this residence and enjoy the quiet country atmosphere away from their hectic

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life in Sydney. In the early 1790s the farming settlement at Parramatta temporarily eclipsed Sydney in size and due to the large volume of traffic between Sydney and the township, Macquarie linked the two settlements with the colony’s first turnpike (toll) road, to markedly improve travel times on the 15-mile route. Situated a few blocks away from Old Government House, in Church Street, Parramatta, is St John’s Cathedral, closely associated with the Reverend Samuel Marsden. Macquarie undertook improvements to the 1803 church, including the addition of two massive towers modelled on a village church that Elizabeth had seen in Kent and which were built to a design by John Watts. The towers remain although the current church building dates only from the mid-1800s. In the neighbouring suburb of Rosehill, the Macarthur family’s original 1793 homestead nestles on the remaining block of what was once the Elizabeth Farm acreage. Managed by the Historic Houses Trust, the homestead magnificently pre- serves the style and atmosphere of the Macarthur family seat, the scene of much of John Macarthur’s relatively tran- quil domestic life. His public life, by contrast, was an epic of ambition and intrigue that spanned three decades of New South Wales history and reached one of its peaks in the Mac- quarie era. Although not itself a Macquarie building, the farmstead is a remarkable backdrop to the life of a tempes- tuous man whose ambitions were instrumental in reshaping English policy towards Australia in the early 1820s. A remarkable Macquarie-era remnant, the Female Orphan School, still stands on the University of Western Sydney campus at Parramatta. Australia’s oldest three-storey masonry building, the school was also the first purpose-built chari- table institution in Australia. The Palladian country manor

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design was originated by the Macquaries and may have been modelled on Elizabeth’s family home of Airds in Appin, Scotland. Exemplifying the Macquaries’ support for social welfare and educational initiatives, the three-section building was constructed between 1813 and 1818. Located about a mile from Parramatta’s centre, it was the new location for an orphans’ school that had previously operated in George Street, Sydney. In 1888, it was taken over by a hospital for the insane that operated for 90 years. The premises were vacant when incorporated by the university in 1997 and have since undergone extensive restoration work. At another Par- ramatta site the remains of Macquarie’s female factory and barracks are still in evidence. Completed in 1821, this building replaced inadequate earlier premises and was the subject of much controversy because the absence of proper accommodation was deemed to be a cause of crime and immorality among convicts in Parramatta. The building housed unas- signed female convicts and served many purposes, including cloth production. From 1848 the building became the Par- ramatta Lunatic Asylum and it was demolished in 1883. Parts of the original complex, including a clock tower and walls, can still be seen within a precinct of historic buildings around the current Cumberland Hospital. Another high-priority turnpike built by Macquarie linked Parramatta with Windsor, then the main township of the fertile Hawkesbury River farmlands which provided the bulk of the colony’s food supplies. On a tour of this region late in 1810, Macquarie announced the establishment of five townships, including Windsor, located above areas subject to frequent river inundations that fertilised the soil but created havoc for settlers. Today the region contains houses, churches and other buildings dating from Macquarie’s time, as well as

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streets laid out and named by him. The most notable building is St Matthew’s Church at Windsor, widely regarded as one of Greenway’s masterpieces and located upon high ground specially selected for the site. In the centre of Windsor is Thompson Square, a now-rare example of its type that was established by the viceroy and named after one of his eman- cipist friends. Situated on the perimeter of the square is the Macquarie Arms Hotel, billed proudly as ‘the oldest pub in Australia’ and built by another of the governor’s ex-convict favourites, Richard Fitzgerald. Just north of the square is a bridge spanning the Hawkesbury, which at this point is a fine, broad river and a reminder of the days when the area’s vital produce was shipped to Sydney. Navigable from Broken Bay to Windsor, the river was a true lifeline for the colony because moving goods by road was slow and cumbersome. Windsor and the region’s four other Macquarie towns – Richmond, Pitt Town, Wilberforce and Castlereagh – recall an era when the colony was still hemmed in by the western wall of mountains and dependent upon local food supplies. Another Greenway church, St Luke’s, is located in the old settlement of Liverpool, bounded by the Georges and Nepean Rivers in Sydney’s south-west. As in the Hawkes- bury region, crop farms developed on the fertile alluvial soils of the Liverpool district which were often covered by floodwaters. Macquarie proclaimed Liverpool a township in 1810, just prior to announcing the Hawkesbury settlements, and for similar reasons. In common with the Hawkesbury townships, Macquarie intended Liverpool to have a planned centre with amenities such as a school, jail, church, soldiers’ barracks and plots of land to which farmers could retreat in times of flood. Bathurst, at the western edge of Macquarie’s kingdom, is

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by far the most distant township marked on the Macquarie Place Park obelisk. Located 137 miles west of Sydney Cove, the township was established soon after the 1813 crossing of the Blue Mountains that opened up western parts of New South Wales to settlement. The road over the mountains to Bathurst still essentially follows the original track built in Macquarie’s time. At Mount York on the mountains’ western escarpment, an eroded section of the original track can still be accessed on foot. Long abandoned in favour of the current Victoria Pass route, the precipitous track evidences the difficulties faced by both the builders and users – including Governor Macquarie’s 1815 party – of this first road into Australia’s interior. Further west on the banks of the Macquarie River, the governor proclaimed the city of Bathurst and laid out his customary township plan. Macquarie reserved the western side of the river for government use and restricted settlers to the other side. One privilege of governorship that Macquarie clearly enjoyed was the right to name natural and manmade features in Australia after himself, his family, his associates, his superiors and favourite locations in his homeland. Often his planned townships contained a George Street (after the English monarch), a Macquarie Street and a range of other streets whose names were chosen from the above categories. During his extensive travels in new territory, he distributed such names with great enthusiasm across the landscapes he encountered. Even after his time, the process continued as other people named various things in his honour, to such an extent that today ‘Macquarie’ is probably the most-used name to emerge from Australia’s colonial era, especially in New South Wales and Tasmania. Examples include: Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean; Lake Macquarie between

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Sydney and Newcastle; Macquarie and Lachlan Rivers in inland New South Wales; the city of Port Macquarie on the New South Wales north coast; Macquarie Fields in Sydney’s south-western suburbs; Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast; and the suburb of Macquarie in Canberra. Such is the prestige attached to his name that we can find it attached to streets, parks, suburbs, waterways, buildings and businesses. While he is not quite a household name, the per- ceived credibility connoted by Macquarie has probably never been greater and is set to grow with the 200th anniversary of his governorship. For example, the restaurant at Old Government House in Parramatta is named after him and nearby are office blocks, a barristers’ chambers, a dental practice and a real estate agency – all with the Macquarie marque. Institutions that have utilised the name include the Macquarie Radio network and Macquarie University, which opened in 1964 as Sydney’s third university. Located near the university are the new Mac- quarie Park railway station, the Macquarie shopping centre, the Macquarie ice rink and the Macquarie Park cemetery and crematorium. When Macquarie Bank was formed as a major private trading bank in 1985 it adopted a name that implied both innovation and financial reliability. This derived from Governor Macquarie’s foundation of the Bank of New South Wales in 1817, signalling an end to the chaotic, unstable financial conditions that had plagued the colony. Macquarie Bank’s symbol is a stylised version of the ‘holey dollar’ that Macquarie introduced in 1813 as the colony’s first domestic coinage. He did this by purchasing Spanish silver dollars and punching out the centres to create two new coins, in the process dou- bling the number of coins and increasing their overall value. Venerable old buildings, a plethora of place names,

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marketing credibility – these all help to bolster Lachlan Mac- quarie’s ‘presence’ in modern Australian culture. Along with Arthur Phillip, William Bligh and perhaps George Arthur, Lachlan is one of the few colonial governors whose name people are likely to know and whose career highlights are relatively common knowledge. However, his story deserves to be still better known for many reasons, not least the genuine affection he felt for Australia at a time when this was not the fashion for British officials. He summed up his feelings during a farewell speech at the close of his term of office.

The length of time I have governed this Colony, the progress it has made in improvement during my Administration and more especially the fond recollection of my only surviving Child being born in it – all combine in attaching me most strongly to it, I shall not fail to cherish the same sentiments of attachment in my Son – who, although yet so young, feels, and already expresses, the strongest affection for his Native Australian Land.7

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