This Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh was born in Ireland in 1837 and immigrated to Australia in 1853 at the age of 16. Various aspects of Cuthbert’s life have been documented by a range of journalists, poets and writers, whose viewpoints supplement those that have also been written by his own hand. Cuthbert’s own writings range from sermons published during his time as both a minister of the Church of England and as an non-sectarian minister1,2 , to articles for newspapers and magazines such as The Australasian Pastoralist’s Review and, more famously, to his own memoir written towards the end of his life at age 81. Cuthbert’s memoir ‘After Many Days‘3 is a 414 page combination of rich stories of his and many others’ personal and pioneering adventures set over much of eastern Australia, and is an important record of those early pioneering days.
By all accounts, Cuthbert has been shown to be a complex man and, in his own way, as famous as his father Cuthbert Snr, The Governor and his sister Lady Frances Colvin. As a young man and jackeroo, he was described as a wild Irishman, known for his ‘sheer red-blooded courage, his recklessness as a buckrider and horseman‘ 4 … and as a ‘ball of enthusiasm’ 5. Although remaining famous throughout his life for his great feats of horsemanship, Cuthbert was also known for many other accomplishments, most notably as a pastoral leader, a title he held after a long life on the land. Cuthbert in his time had been a surveyor, stock and brumby drover, explorer, station manager (where he was famous for his encounter with the bushranger, Bluecap), clergyman, station owner and grazier, state land tax valuer, and agricultural and pastoral writer. He died at the age of 88 and was described by his contemporaries as one of the most interesting pioneers of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland5. Cuthbert’s story is a long one as I have tried to give his life voice through many of his own words, as well as through the words of others. Consequently, the story of his life will be split into this page, which will cover his first 30 years, and a second page describing his remaining 58 years.
The Young Cuthbert 1837 – 1856
Cuthbert had auspicious beginnings; being born on the day Queen Victoria came to the throne. He was the 7th of nine children and the youngest son of Cuthbert snr and Susan Fetherstonhaugh of Dardistown in Ireland. He spent his early years there, where no doubt his love of horses had its birth in the famous stables of his grandfather’s home at Mosstown, which at that time reputedly housed 40 blood (thoroughbred racing) horses. Cuthbert’s later writing abilities and his religious and egalitarian leanings would also have their roots in his Irish family, under the strong influence of his mother, a devout Christian, classical scholar and accomplished musician.
Cuthbert’s time at Dardistown was short as when he was seven his father moved the family to Germany, where they lived for four years. Cuthbert’s memories of Frankfurt were of a “kindly, sociable and thrifty people … steeped in music … (and) where they had a happy and cheerful life” 3,p9. He went to a German school, and when they returned to Ireland Cuthbert said he spoke German better than he did English. His memories were fond ones of a school master who took “us schoolboys on a never-to-be-forgotten, and delightful, summer holiday walking excursion” 3,p12. However, Germany is no doubt where he also learnt his rough-housing ways, as he wrote in his memoir: “the German boys could not fight for ‘sour apples’ … I remember one of many street fights in which six of us retired unbeaten though set upon by some 15 German lads” 3,p10. At this time, Cuthbert’s great ambition was be a circus rider … or to join the navy.
The family returned to Ireland in 1848, due to the political revolution taking place in Germany. The worst of Ireland’s potato famine had passed but sectarian violence was widespread, so at the age of 12, Cuthbert was sent to school in Wales where:
“all I learned was to fight and be a blackguard…I was generally in trouble, and had enormous impositions to write out, and once (deservedly) had to spend one whole vacation at the school by myself. I spent much of the time trapping sparrows and eating them. I had no books and saw no-one. I was, in fact, a prisoner” 3,p14.
After a year at this school Cuthbert was brought home and went to school in Belfast, where there was no fighting (at least not in school!), and he thrived, receiving a prize for writing. It was during holidays while staying with an uncle at age 13 that he first learned to ride well and thereafter received his first ‘pony’, quickly developing skills in overcoming challenges that saw many another horse and rider falter or fail. Then when the family moved to Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) Cuthbert approached sailing in the bay there in the same daredevil manner as in his horse riding.
After Cuthbert’s father, two of his brothers and a cousin sailed to Melbourne in 1853 to try their hand at the goldfields, Cuthbert spent most of his time at home in Ireland either with his mother and sisters, or at his uncle’s. He was asked whether he wanted a profession or to be a businessman, to which he said he chose the latter so he wouldn’t have to further learn Latin and Greek. He did nevertheless very much enjoy reading contemporary literature of the time such as Dickens, Thackery, Elliot, Longfellow, James Cooper, Frederick Marryat, Tom Cringle (Michael Scott) and George Sand (Amentine Dupin). Twelve months after his father’s departure Cuthbert persuaded his mother to allow him, at the age of 16, to join another five of his relatives who were sailing to Australia to make their fortune. He left his home believing Ireland should be given the opportunity of home rule3.
Cuthbert’s ‘Colonial Experience’ 1853 – 1863
Cuthbert sailed with his relatives to Australia aboard the clipper the Sussex, leaving in May 1953 and arriving three months later. All six fellows occupied a cabin that measured ten by eight feet and about seven feet high. There were no portholes and in heavy weather they had to be battened down, making life hellish. But Cuthbert remembers:
“I dropped into the billet of cook because no-one else would take it on, and had I not also cleaned out the cabin it never would have been… (and) I may say that I was complimented on my plum duffs (pudding)!” 3,p22.
Cuthbert called the voyage “a great breaking-in experience for fellows intending to rough it in Australia” 3,p23 . Together, they also spent too much money on brandy bought from the saloon passengers, and so Cuthbert arrived in Port Phillip Bay “stone broke and thin as a whipping post… my father thought me a scarecrow … I was in seventh heaven at finding myself with my father and brother in a nice comfortable house with good food” 3,p23.
Within days of arriving in Melbourne, Cuthbert had a position as a wharf clerk where the £2/10 he earned each week was entirely consumed by his board. Cuthbert observed that a man driving his own dray and horse could earn £12 – £15 a week and persuaded his brother to purchase, with a friend, four horses, drays and harnesses; a business that Cuthbert managed for £5 a week. Cuthbert got to know many people in Melbourne and tells of many adventures he had in the course of his work, “and even though I happened to be driving a dray my lady friends always bowed to me” 3,p27. When his brother sold the dray business Cuthbert went up to the Dandenong Ranges with friends who were quail shooting there. He got work there at the Dandenong Pound, where there was a great deal of impounding due to properties having no fences and lots of stray stock. Here Cuthbert did a lot of riding and had many falls increasing his skill and confidence:
“I got a little knowledge of cattle and horses and thought myself quite the thing when I rode into Melbourne in breeches and boots and cabbage tree hat” 3,p58 .
After the Dandenong Pound, Cuthbert then took on surveying work, and when that was finished, he assisted the owner of Doogalook Station on the Goulbourn River in the capture of Brumbies. It was now 1855 and Cuthbert was 18, “light, spare and wiry, and fast becoming a good horseman” 3,p77. In 1856 his mother and sister arrived from Ireland, and while Cuthbert wanted to stay with his friends, the owners of Doogalook, his mother’s influence led him to accept a position as a ‘colonial experiencer’ (jackeroo) with Edward Henty, who was then manager of Muntham. Muntham was an impressive property of 77,000 acres, 55,000 sheep, 8,000 head of cattle and 500 horses, a stud that Cuthbert believed to be one of the best in Australia at the time. There, he shared a big comfortable house and had kitchen help and a housemaid. There was also:
“a five-acre garden full of beautiful fruit trees of every kind, with two gardeners in charge. The garden was watered by never-failing springs… we had several stud horses, in fact four or five, and several grooms, so we felt ourselves to be quite important” 3,p91.
The country around Muntham is still very beautiful although it is now a much smaller property, with a good deal of it having been broken into post war settlements. However, a road that bears Cuthbert’s name is still there.
In 1859 at the age of 22 Cuthbert was given charge of all the cattle and horses at Muntham. During these years he earned a reputation as the fearless Irishman who conceived the sport of wild cross country buggy rides and the man who, with Tom Clibborn the secretary of the Australian Jockey Club, laid out the famous Great Western Steeplechase course at Coleraine (below)
One of Cuthbert’s rivals in the steeplechase, and someone Cuthbert greatly admired for his poetry and his horsemanship, was Adam Gordon Lindsay, whose story Cuthbert tells, and whose poetry he quotes at length in his memoir 3,pp165-175.
Many writers describe Cuthbert as having sustained over 700 falls from horses, 20 fractures and six or seven dislocations over his lifetime. On this topic Cuthbert himself wrote:
“I fear some of my readers will think I am ‘romancing’ when I state that I have had over seven hundred falls with horses. I kept tally of five hundred in five years, and out of the five hundred I was only thrown six times without the saddle going too, and in most cases I had a horse on top of me, for I never could learn the knack of getting clear of a falling horse” 3,p120. He wrote of one such time: “He (my horse) came down at one fence, and I sustained a fracture of the head of the thigh bone, (femur). Old Wyman and Dr. Molloy fixed me up. I had a pretty bad night at Coleraine, and a worse time being driven home next day (nine miles). The dear old doctor drove me himself, and chaffed me all the time to keep his spirits and mine up, for he thought then that I was lamed for life. Eight weeks, however, saw me off my back, and I had rather a good time of it on the whole” 3,p149.
Cuthbert striking out on his own (1863 -1866)
In 1862, after six years at Muntham, Cuthbert struck out on his own at age 25. He made his way through Melbourne, to Sydney and then took passage to Brisbane and arrived in January 1863 at Ban Ban station near Gayndah, 230 kms north of Brisbane. Here Cuthbert met up with his brother Alfred, and a new partner Gerald Raymond (“the boss”), an experienced sheep farmer from NSW. With Raymond putting up half the capital and Cuthbert and his father contributing £700 each they purchased a property at Burton Downs in North Queensland.
“We started oft’ gay and hopeful and in good heart. Had we only given the matter a little more thought we would never have embarked on the venture …the lure was to take up a big area of country; then in three years, when our sheep had increased, to sell out at a good big price and repeat the performance. Nobody ‘croaked’ and nobody warned us that ‘pioneers’ never make money. Almost always they go down, and it is the men who follow them who make the money…. Victorian money was poured into Queensland like water in the sixties (1860s), and was lost as is water in a sandy desert. This was chiefly through want of knowledge… the pioneers of a new country for the most part ‘go down’“ 3,p194,204.
Thus, their venture was troubled from the outset, with borrowing start-up money at 12.5%, compounded by high wages and carriage for wool and stores, in addition to droving stock across flooding rivers and creeks and inhospitable country. Cuthbert relates stories of his many swims in flooded areas 3,pp258-263, in both remote and populated areas, such as his crossing the flooding Fitzroy River (with his horse) at Rockhamptom just to visit a friend on the other side.
“When I got ashore, (one magistrate) threatened to have me arrested for attempting my life, and a great fuss was made over the swim, and I had difficulty in keeping it out of the papers. I was afraid my mother would hear of it. I really think that all Rockhampton turned out to see me cross, and for years I was known as the man who swam the Fitzroy in the big flood” 3,p260.
Despite Cuthbert’s aversion to publicity and his worries about his mother finding out his exploits, he was often the topic of many a journalist’s tales, as the article below depicts:
The recklessness and ease with which Cuthbert overcame flooded areas as he traveled north saw him develop into a strong swimmer. Reports have it that Cuthbert once swum nine miles on the winding Burnett River 3,p263.
“When we reached the Burnett (River) it was in flood, and we had to camp for a week, and even then had to swim the sheep across and float our dray over on casks… January we had ten days and ten nights incessant rain. We were all wet for the whole time, but it was summer. If there was a break in the rain for a bit when I was on watch at night, I used to peel off all my clothes and hang them up to dry while I continued my watch with nothing on but my boots” 3,p205.
Burton Downs Station
Cuthbert and his companions finally reached Burton Downs in 1863. Droving stock across Queensland during the wet season had carried multiple risks for the group, including disease and injury:
“Fever and ague (malaria or other flu like illness), Moreton Bay rot (skin scurvy), Belyando Spue (vomiting), pyrosis or water brash (heartburn), sandy blight or bungy eyes (trachoma), and dysentery … within a month of leaving Ban Ban I suffered from all these ailments at the one time, excepting fever and ague, and I had a broken rib into the bargain… I always carried quinine in a loose pouch, and took a pinch pretty often when fever or ague were about” 3, p205, 216, 241 .
Cuthbert also often used aconite very successfully, on himself and others, to cure dysentery; a treatment many risked death from if the dose was inadvertently too high. Sandflies also posed a significant problem to the health of both Cuthbert and his companions, their livestock, horses and dogs:
“It is customary when the sandflies are bad to make fires for the horses to come to, and they come in from miles away — even brumbies come ; and if there are no fires, horses will come into the stockyards and paw up the dust in order to baffle the sandflies. I have seen 1000 sheep huddled up so that they looked like 200, trying to get away from the sandflies, and the wretched insects killed one of our dogs” 3p209.
Once at Burton Downs Cuthbert and Raymond leased additional property at Vine Creek (The Hermitage). Cuthbert reflected on his photo (left) of Burton Downs, saying:
“My idea was that it was a very fine homestead, and so it was by comparison with many other Queensland homesteads of the early sixties. Alas, this photograph conveys the impression of a building that would not pass now-a-days for a shearers’ hut”, and ‘The Hermitage “was little more than a small slab hut with a bark roof and earthen floor, and two brush yards” 3p267.
Cuthbert tells many harrowing tales in his memoir of the hardship he and his companions endured at Burton Downs, along with the stories of many other early pioneers. However, despite he and his companion’s inability to ‘make a go of it’ he generally had fond memories of this time:
“The savings of nine years hard work in Victoria, and of my three years pioneering in Queensland, had thus resulted in the total loss of my savings and of my labour. Still I had gained valuable experience, and had made some good staunch friends, and though my health was considerably impaired, I was young and still hopeful, and did not consider that I had any reason to complain or to be downhearted” 3, p280.
Cuthbert had many encounters with, and even worked closely alongside, some of the Aboriginal people from groups living around the Burton Downs area, and also more generally in North Queensland. He described them as “naturally kindly and friendly, and that on the whole, in North Queensland where he was, he felt “they had not been treated judiciously” and that “we (Cuthbert and his companions) had expressed to the local ‘native police‘ that we strongly objected to the Aboriginals being ‘hunted up’ on Burton Downs, and we had never mentioned about the steers having been speared, as it was probably done by some of the young “bucks” out of flashness”… Neither we, nor our own immediate neighbours ever interfered with the Aboriginals, nor did any of us ever send for the native police” 3, p228.
However, against the back drop of earlier Aboriginal killings of pioneer families at the Hornet Bank massacre and the massacre of the Wills family, Cuthbert then lost two of his good friends, who were both killed, and one mutilated, by Aboriginals. Cuthbert writes that as a result he “felt real ugly” 3,p272. He waited for the ‘native police’ and together they set out “on a punitive expedition” 3,p272 Having tracked the Aboriginals over 100 miles, they shot all twelve men in the group they believed responsible. Evidence Cuthbert found at the site confirmed for them they had tracked and avenged those responsible. Cuthbert’s frankness surrounding this and one other reprisal killing makes difficult reading.
In general, Cuthbert’s accounts of Aboriginal people are often depicted through a colonial lens, sometimes acknowledging their skills and resilience but also reinforcing stereotypes common in settler narratives. On one hand we see Cuthbert’s writing reflecting a paternalistic and Eurocentric viewpoint, characteristic of many settlers who justified the dispossession of Indigenous lands. On the other hand Cuthbert showed significant insight for a man of his time, into what was occurring to Aboriginals as a result of colonisation. He wrote:
“The advent of the white man has greatly hastened the end of the Aboriginals, for they easily succumb to the diseases introduced by the whites. In addition the Aboriginals soon acquired all the vices of the whites, and took to smoking and alcohol, and of late years in North Queensland to opium. All these things have helped to carry them off. The number of Aboriginals actually killed by the whites cannot amount to much as compared to the loss from disease. I use the word killed, the Aboriginals themselves would call it murder, and in many cases the “killing” was murder. I do not call the killing of whites by the blacks murder; … in many instances they had great provocation” 3, p294.
Years of drought and financial difficulties finally saw Cuthbert and Raymond having to sell Burton Downs and The Hermitage.
“What had happened to us was happening all over North Queensland, and went on till almost every station had become the property of the mortgagees. The latter sold whenever they could get a buyer, even if it were at a loss, and often the mortgagees had to foreclose a second, and at times, a third time before they got clear of their possessions” 3, p279.
Cuthbert reflected that just prior to selling The Hermitage, sometime in 1865, “My eyes seemed to be suddenly opened. Up to that day I had been living … just for the present, living to make money, living to get on in the world – I became a new man. It was as if scales had fallen from my eyes. I then and there wrote to my mother:”
“Your prayers have been answered. I now see, with your eyes, what you have so often tried to get me to believe. I do believe and know that Christ died for me, and that great sinner as I am, I am saved.” … – It may have been, and I think it was, that my mother (whom I loved beyond all in the world) was at that very moment thinking intensely of me, and praying for me, as she would herself have said, “on the knees of her soul,” and that “telepathically” her thoughts reached me, and worked that wonderful change in me. I say it may be, but I firmly believe it was thus that I was converted, for converted I was just as surely as Paul was converted” 3, p282.
Alternatively, it may not have been his mother’s telepathy, but the isolation, hardship and finally the brutality of his life as a colonial frontiersman that led Cuthbert to his ‘religious experience’. After selling his leases Cuthbert and his long term Aboriginal companion, Dick, had a work offer to improve and stock some country at Tinwald Downs. Although he had the assistance of Dick, two shepherds and well sinkers, life remained tough:
“There was no water at all in the country, so my first job was to get a well sunk. While sinking the well I had to cart water over twenty miles. Even after heavy rain no water was left, the rain all soaked away into the virgin soil. I succeeded in getting water at about 120 feet; most of the sinking was through rock” 3, p287.
“It was a beautiful piece of country, and I looked forward with much pleasure to working it up into a good going concern. I put up a little hut for myself of round stuff, stopping the breaks with mud. A few sheets of iron roofed it in, and I used another sheet for a bed while I was there. A sheet of corrugated iron makes a much better bed than anyone who has not tried it would suppose. There is a great deal of “give” in the iron, and one’s hip fits nicely into a corrugation” 3, p287.
Finally in 1866, after four years absence, Cuthbert was given the opportunity to travel back to Melbourne to conduct some business. Whilst his initial intentions would have been to return to Queensland two things occurred to change the course of his life. The first was he met up with his future wife:
“I was one afternoon walking along Swanston-street from the railway station with a cousin, when she said to me, “Did you notice that girl who just passed us?” I said, “No.” She said, “That was the pretty Miss Murchison.” I looked round and the “pretty girl,” evidently expecting someone, had stopped and turned round, and I had a good look at her. “Why,” I said, “I am sure I knew that girl when she was a little kiddie… Many years ago when I last saw good friends Captain and Mrs Murchison and their little girl she and I used to have great rows, and she used to brush my hair with the hearth broom in their hospitable old Kerrisdale home on the King Parrot Creek... I’ll look her up” 3, p303.
After Cuthbert made contact with the Murchisons:
“Miss Murchison and I became great friends. From the first it was more than friendship on my part, but not being in a position to even think of marrying, I kept my own counsel for many years; in fact it was not till after seven or eight years that I made bold to declare my love, and it was not till the 16th November, 1876, that Miss Murchison rewarded my constancy and did me the honour to become my wife“. 3 p303
The second occurrence, which initially separated Cuthbert from the ‘pretty Miss Murchison’, was that whilst in Melbourne, he was offered the management of Brookong Station in the Riverina, which he set off to undertake on his 29th birthday. This experience and his life that followed are described on the next webpage.
- Fetherstonhaugh, C. (1874). Our Father: A sermon by Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh. Melbourne: Samuel Mullen. https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE1574492&mode=browse
- Fetherstonhaugh, C. (1876) Truth & Freedom: A sermon by Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh. Melbourne: George Robinson. https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/468970
- Fetherstonhaugh C. (2017). After Many Days. Sydney: E. W. Cole, Book Arcade, Accessed Online Oct 2022 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7197560M/After_many_days
- Photocopied magazine pages: author and source unknown: Cuthbert Featherstonhaugh p28-31
- Newspaper clipping: author and source unknown: All Jobs Man – Career of Mr Cuthbert Featherstonhaugh.