Chapter 8.2
Farquharson family 2
Farquharson Coat of Arms
“Fidelity and Fortitude”
“Fidelity and Fortitude”
George Farquharson (1837-1886) and some of his family led chequered lives. George was the youngest of a large Scottish family and at age 16 he arrived in Australia with his widowed mother and some of his siblings on 2 September 1853.
At age 26 in 1860 George marries 20 year old Christina Gordon who was born at sea in 1839 on the way to Australia from Scotland. They move to Tamworth and start a family of 11 surviving children. The eldest boys are named to acknowledge their Mosman and Gordon family connections.
- Archibald Mosman “Archie” Farquharson is born in 1861,
- Henry “Harry” Gordon Farquharson is born in 1862 with his mother’s maiden name, and
- Hugh “Hughie” James Gilchrist Farquharson is born in 1866. He is named after Archibald Mosman’s best friend and business associate.
George moves his family to the Tamworth area where he is Superintendent for the Peel River Company. One of shepherds he employs is Johann Meinscheim newly arrived from Germany with his family, with a tempting young daughter Amelia Louisa. From 1867 to 1871 George has three illegitimate children with Amelia at the same time as Christina continues to give birth to his legitimate children!
The situation gets so bad that Amelia’s mother takes George to court for desertion of two illegitimate children. After very descriptive evidence of George’s dalliances, the court ordered him to pay child support of 5 shillings per week for each child. That’s £26 per annum, a considerable sum in those days. Maybe this is the reason he is declared insolvent a few years later and the insolvency carries over to his wife after his death.
Despite this George continues to have a successful career. In 1872 he is appointed Superintendent for the Australian Agricultural Company at their Goonoo Goonoo station near Tamworth, in 1883 he is appointed Magistrate at Tamworth, and in 1884 he is selected to become Sheep Director for the Tamworth district. When the main north railway opens in 1885 a small station near the village of Limbri is named “Farquharson Siding”.
At these times gold is found at several places in the Tamworth region including Swamp Oak Creek. While there is no evidence that George or his eldest sons were gold miners this photograph, taken around the mid 1880’s, is suggestive that they work together, possibly in the gold mines. The older man on the left could be George, with the Farquharson trio of Archie, Harry and Hughie on the right. and younger brother George jnr at the front.
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| George Farquharson and sons? Circa 1865 |
The baton now moves to the Farquharson brothers, Archie, Harry and Hughie. They have already shown their rural skills. In 1885 two of them drove 200 saddle horses from Manila NSW to Charters Towers in Queensland. One wonders if they make contact there with their great uncle Hugh Mosman who started the gold rush at Charters Towers.
Six weeks before their father’s death in January 1889 the brothers are reported on the train to Queensland. It’s several years until we find them again buying the lease of 2,500 square mile Inverway Station in remote north of the Northern Territory on the border with Western Australia. They stocked the property by overlanding cattle from Inverell in the New England area of NSW. That’s 3,500km which would take 37 hours driving today! One wonders if they had got the money to buy the Station from gold mining in NSW and Queensland.
“That awful lancewood and bulwaddy, and 1,000 thirsty bullocks walking through the night, a hair breadth from disaster. As they rode they talked to the bullocks as only a cattleman can. They talked to their horses, too, and cursed the scrub and the dark and the failing waterholes, and they prayed: perhaps there was a God somewhere.”
Perhaps there was as out of the 1,000 cattle only five were lost on the 200 kilometre journey that took five days!
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| Inverway Station |
In the 1930’s a newspaper journalist asked Archie if there was anything he needed for the Station. His wish was for a road to be built to the property which was still really remote even in those days.
The Farquharsons remained, all unmarried, at the property until the 1940s. One wonders if they had similar arrangements with local indigenous females to Archibald Frederick Mosman who also lived off the beaten track in northern Australia.
Archie was the sole remaining owner in 1946 when he sold a large portion of the station. He remained on the property living in the log homestead he had built with his brothers until his death in 1950. He is buried at Inverway along with one of his brothers.
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| Inverway Station today |
Next Chapter - 9. GEORGE MOSMAN'S FAMILY