THE YOUNG STOCKMAN

My father about to head out on a mustering trip from the main station, Mount McConnell. It looks like he has to look after the pack horse. Taken in the early 1930's when he was about twelve.

LIFE ON A CATTLE STATION

The following photographs are of the family cattle station, taken in the 1930's.

Stockmen.

Jack Bell, breaking in a horse.

Cattle getting moved across a river.

Stockmen saddling up.

FACES FROM ACROSS THE AGES

I've finally solved who these people are in the following photographs and also in what time period the photographs were taken. I did this by researching the studios where the photographs were taken. Both photographs were taken in Sydney; one at Robert Stewart photography in Pitt Street and the other at B.C. Boake photography in George Street. Both were taken in the early to mid-1860's as the studios moved after that.
For many years, these photographs had the wrong names attributed to them and the wrong time period. I can now safely say who they were. 
One is of John Clark, my great grandfather and the other is his first wife, Jane Farrell. At the time they were living in Bowen, Queensland and must have been in Sydney visiting family. 

THE OLD CATTLE STATION.

Lornesleigh Station was my first home and was so until the family sold up in the late 1960's. It was founded by my great grandfather, John Clark in 1870. Sadly, the new owners were a multi-national and let it go to ruin, so these photographs are the only reminder of what it used to look like. 

Upstairs verandah with father's gun cupboard and my bed.

The wood stove. Great to be around on a cold morning.

The lounge. A few parties in here.

Downstairs. It was the coolest part of the house. There were no fans or air-conditioners then.

Dad in the kitchen.

Rain water tank. 

A bedroom. Note the pistol hanging off the bed.

THE SPORT OF KINGS AND FAMILY. PART TWO.

Precocious in front, 1933 Grand National. Photo: jumps heroes of yesterday. 

My father’s first cousin, Simon Lynch became a jockey mainly competing in steeple chase events in Melbourne. Simon’s  greatest racing triumph was riding the winner, Precocious, in the 1932 Grand National Steeplechase at Flemington, Melbourne.

 The Grand National is Australia’s most  prestigious steeple chase race and Flemington is Australia’s most prestigious race course. The events surrounding this win were highly controversial, and history making.

Precocious was owned and trained by twenty-two year old, Miss Dorothy Shiel. Since World War One, women had been permitted to nominate themselves as horse owners. This entitled them to train their own horses without first obtaining permission from the Victoria Racing Club. This is what Miss Shiel had done with Precocious.

When she won the Grand National, Dorothy became the first female trainer to win a race at Flemington. Although the win was very popular with the public, the V.R.C committee refused to allow her into the mounting yard to accept the trophy. A few days later, the V.R.C committee advised that owners henceforth would need to obtain a permit to train their own horses, and that such permits would not be granted to women.

The Chairman of the V.R.C, Mr L.J.S. MacKinnon declared, ‘horse training was not suitable for women. The engagement of jockeys and other duties connected with training were essentially jobs for men- simply it was not thought to be women's proper sphere.' The restrictive measures were not lifted until the early 1970's.

Tragically, Simon was killed at age twenty-five on the 2nd May 1935, at Flemington while schooling a horse.

THE SPORT OF KINGS AND FAMILY

My uncle, Jack Bell,as an amateur jockey.  

The Bells and the Clarks were devotees of the sport of kings. Describing them as devotees is too mild; they treated horse racing as a religion. They would have gladly raced horses full time rather than run cattle stations.

I think I’m the only one of my family that never owned a race horse.  Even my father raced a horse and he once told me that the racing fraternity were the lowest form of human life. My father and all of his seven siblings (three females and four males) owned horses.  Then it was my grandparents, Jane Florence and Richard Bell who raced horses, largely in North Queensland. 

My grandfather had an unfortunate incident with one of his purchases from Melbourne.  The stallion had raced in several major races in Melbourne including an unplaced in the Melbourne Cup. On its arrival in Charters Towers from Melbourne, he was showing it off down the main street when it grabbed him by the seat of the pants, lifted him up and dumped him in on the ground.  The resulting injury was enough to put him in hospital.  My grandfather still kept the horse and it lived a long life.

My great grandfather, John Clark, regularly attended the Sydney and Melbourne yearling sales and raced winners in North Queensland.  My grandfather’s brothers and cousins were also heavily involved in the racing industry as owners, jockeys, farriers and stewards.  It even goes down to the present day when my father’s first cousin, Doctor Kevin Bell (Veterinary Science), founded  the Australian Equine Genetic Research Centre in 1986. It is located at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

Some of the most notable family horses and racing wins are:

Grosvenor Downs ( owned by Minnie and Cosmo Gordon. Minnie was a sister of my grandmother) owned  My Man who was a grandson of Assyrian. Assyrian won the 1882 Melbourne Cup. They also owned Nonette who was bought as a breeding sire. During his racing career, Nonette won the equivalent of seven million dollars in today’s money.

My grandfather’s brother, John Bell, who owned Cardigan Station, bought Eastcourt as a breeding sire.  During Eastcourt’s career he won the equivalent of five million dollars in today’s money. Some of his wins are the VRC Handicap and the Sydney Tattersalls. Eastcourt also ran second in the Sydney Cup and a third in the VRC Derby and the Australian Cup.

Eastcourt.

A first cousin of my father named Simon Lynch, won the Grand National Steeplechase in Victoria in 1932.

As you can see, horse racing is in the blood.

  

THE BLOODY FRONTIER

http://www.australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/index.php/conflicts/chronology/qld

I have been looking at the above website which details the list of massacres of Indigenous Australians in my home state of Queensland. Many are focused from 1860 onward in the northern region of the state which is where I was born and raised. It's a sobering and heart- breaking read.
 If you don't know much about Australian history, Indigenous Australians were locked in conflict with Europeans soon after settlement in 1788. It is estimated that the pre-1788 population of the Indigenous people across Australia was between 500,000 to 750,000. At the start of the twentieth century, the population had been markedly reduced to about 93,000 due to European diseases, massacres and conflict.
Why I took particular interest in this website, is that it mentions the cattle station of Grosvenor Downs as an area of conflict in 1868. No details are mentioned.
I knew that Grosvenor Downs belonged to my great grandfather, John Clark and prior to that his half-sister, Isabella Clark and her husband, Alexander McDonald. John Clark later gave the station to his daughter as a wedding present.
I was hoping that my family weren't involved in such a heinous crime. Further research indicated that in 1868 a Frank Bridgman owned the cattle station. It was sadly a massacre of local Indigenous people; sixty in total.  No reason is given why this massacre occurred. I can only surmise that a European or cattle were speared causing the settlers to retaliate.  
Sadly, it was not an isolated incident. The list of conflicts between Indigenous people and Europeans in Queensland goes right up to 1929.
 It is history that was conveniently overlooked. I don't think that should be the case anymore.

HOW TO MAKE AN ENTRY

Thomas James Bell.

Here's another story about my wild great uncle, T.J. Bell. T.J. was staying at the Queens Hotel in the early part of the twentieth century. The Queens Hotel was located in Townsville, Queensland. It was the grandest hotel in the north, the place to stay for dignitaries and graziers who were the power elite of the time. It was the snob centre of town.

Queen's Hotel, Townsville. Foyer entry is to left of photo. Photograph from Townsville City Libraries.

So it all probably started with T.J. getting into an extended drinking bout with his cronies then a bet. It progressively went downhill from there.  The dare was to bring a four in hand carriage into the front foyer of the Queen’s Hotel. A four in hand is a carriage drawn by four horses positioned with two at the front and two behind.

Well, you have to admire T.J.’s pluck because he nearly did it. He did manage to get the two front horses into the foyer before being stopped by irate hotel staff.  I’m not sure if he won the bet or got permanently banned from the hotel.   

CATTLE DUFFING

Just to set things right, we call it cattle duffing in the outback not cattle rustling.  Cattle duffing is regarded as Australia’s second oldest industry.  I’ll let you figure out which is the oldest.

Cattle duffing is still as relevant today as it was in the wild colonial days. In fact, it is on the rise in rural Australia despite the fact that it is harder to steal cattle now then one hundred years ago.  The Australian state of Queensland has a police unit specifically devoted to stock theft which is aptly titled, The Stock Squad.

Apparently, ice-addicts in rural towns are duffing livestock from farms in their desperate desire to fund their addiction. I read one recent story about a grazier who left his cattle station for a week to attend a wedding and returned to find that nearly one million dollars of his live stock had been stolen. At one thousand dollars a head, cattle duffing is seen as a lucrative criminal activity.

My father once told me that Uncle Jack and he were once boundary riding around our station when they caught the next door neighbours helping themselves to our cattle. Uncle Jack and dad blew their stacks and actually pulled rifles on them. Uncle Jack threatened to shoot them if he ever caught them again.  I dare say he would have.

In the outback, cattle duffers will meet with swift justice, if the law is looking the other way or the law is a hundred miles away. Cattle duffing is taken very seriously in the outback..  

PAY BACK

I recently found this rather gruesome story about a relative I didn’t know anything about. The relative in question was a George Williamson Clark who was a half-brother of my great grandfather, John Henry Clark. My great grandfather’s family were largely unknown to me until now.

The following story about George Clark is fairly indicative of the brutality that occurred on the outback frontier in the nineteenth century. It was a time of European expansion into Aboriginal land with total disregard for Aboriginal traditions and lives.  Of course, Aborigines fought back but the odds were stacked against them. Over the years, massacres of Aborigines occurred frequently, right up until the 1930’s.

In 1892, George was working at a remote outstation at Cresswell Downs in the Northern Territory, a place that is still an isolated part of Australia.  

A visitor by the name of Charles Fox was in the kitchen of the outstation with a Charles Deloitte and two other men. He noticed that George Clark wasn’t there and decided to look for him at the branding yard nearby. The first thing he noticed when he got to the yards was an arm sticking out from under a blanket.  When he peeled back the blanket, George was dead with a smashed in skull as a result of a tomahawk blow.

Fox was then attacked by five Aboriginal men throwing spears. He was able to get away and raise help. When they returned, Deloitte lay dead in the outstation kitchen.  What would follow was the police leading two ‘punitive expeditions’ against the local Aborigines that year. There are no figures on how many Aborigines were massacred.

Years later, local Aborigines told researchers that the reason why Deloitte and Clark were killed was because they were raping the Aboriginal woman. According to Aboriginal law, they had broken a strict taboo and had to be killed. It had been pay back.    

  

FAMILY PLACE NAMES IN AUSTRALIA.

Statue of Benjamin Singleton. Singleton.

Various family members were early European settlers in Australia, largely in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Here are some of the place names that bear their names:

Paternal Side

Geary's Gap - Near Canberra. Named after my great, great, great grandfather, Daniel Geary, who used to run a pub there.

Mount Clark - A mountain in North Queensland. Named after my great grandfather, John Clark.

Lornesleigh Street - Townsville. Named after an old family cattle station.

Packer Street - Canberra. Named after a great, great uncle.

Maternal Side

Singleton - A town in the Hunter Valley. Named after Benjamin Singleton, a fifth great uncle.

Kingaroy - Named after two Markwell brothers who first settled the area.

Brisbane - There are six Markwell streets in various suburbs including Hamilton, Daisy Hill, Auchenflower.

Surfers Paradise - Markwell Street  is named after my great grandfather, William Markwell, who was one of the first settlers. Right near the beach.

SACRIFICE

Australia, my family and many others, gave everything to defeat tyranny. It wasn't just the "big" countries that did everything.

From my maternal family, twenty Markwell cousins served including my grandfather and his brother. Seven were killed. 

The Markwell cousins won; two Military Medals, one Distinguished Service Order, one Croix de Guerre, one Military Cross. Two were promoted to the rank of Major.

In World War Two, twenty-eight Markwell family served, including my mother who was in the Signals Corps. One of the Markwell cousins had already served in World War One. A Markwell cousin won the George Cross ( second only to the Victoria Cross). 

Another Markwell became a Major. Only my great uncle, Lenny, was killed out of those who served. He was killed in New Guinea. Lenny was also a Rat of Tobruk. When his fiance received the terrible news, she committed suicide.

Not finished yet. That's only the Markwell side. Two Bells, cousins of my grandfather, served in the Light Horse in World War One. 

In World War Two, my two uncles were both severely wounded at El Alamein which was one of the most crucial battles in history. My Uncle Jack later took his life due to the severe injuries he had received.Uncle Dick had severe PTSD.

 " I always smell blood and lime."

 Dick was in bitter hand to hand fighting against the Afrika Korps. He saw a close mate's head blown off. He bayoneted to death a German.

And not to forget my Grandmother Bell's massive monetary contribution to the war effort. Probably around a small fortune in today's money. Her large family residence, Mornington, was turned into a hospital during the war, run by Irish nuns. 

Countries like Australia, Greece, Canada, New Zealand gave everything and more.

John Clark: Forged Steel.

My great, grandfather, John Clark in the centre with grandfather Bell and my grandmother. Circa, 1915.

In this picture, John Clark is an old man; a very old man in those times. Clark was ninety-five when he died in 1917. At this time of his life in 1915, Clark was blind and was cared for by his daughters. I wonder as he poses for the camera, if he is reflecting on his life; a life forged by hardship and heart break but also blessed with huge monetary reward.

From humble and tragic beginnings in Scotland, Clark was placed in the care of a tyrannical uncle at a young age. Unable to bear the harsh treatment any longer, he ran away at the age of twelve to make his own way in life.
 Clark never received a formal education and  he remained illiterate throughout his life. Clark's education instead, came from the school of 'you have to fight for everything'.  From humble beginnings, John Henry Clark would become one of the largest land owners in Australia. His land holdings were so vast that they would have covered nearly seven per cent of his former homeland, Scotland.
But it all came at a huge price; his first wife and their child died tragically of disease as did two of his children by his second marriage.
He was renowned a tough and wily man; he had to be. But when a lot of European settlers were taking Aboriginal land with acts of genocide, Clark worked in with the local Aborigines. I also think, he was a man ahead of his time.
Clark would kill cattle for the local Aborigines to eat and he employed them on the cattle stations. One of Clark's most trusted employees was an Aboriginal man named Roddy Clark. Roddy is apparently buried next to Clark. One of his grandchildren was even delivered by Aboriginal mid-wives at Lornesleigh Station.

 As for vices and dislikes? Clark did like whiskey but he was never a heavy drinker. He did have an immense dislike of Catholics. Why, I do not know. Clark disliked Catholics so much that he refused to attend my grandmother's wedding to my grandfather, Richard Bell.

As John Clark had only two surviving daughters, he left all of his land holdings to them. No son in laws were put in charge which caused friction within the family. I haven't found any other women of that time operating a large pastoral company in Australia. Yes, he was a man ahead of his time.

A mountain is named after him on one of the former family properties but I think John Clark should be memorialised more; after all, if it hadn't have been for people like him busting their guts, Australia would not have become the prosperous country it is today.
 

Kathryn's Inbox: Review: Blurline by TW Lawless

Kathryn's Inbox: Review: Blurline by TW Lawless: Larrikin Aussie journalist Peter Clancy is back and this time around he

MY LATEST BOOK: BLURLINE

As you probably know, I mainly write thriller books about a hard-living Aussie journalist.    

My latest book is Blurline which is set in London's Fleet Street, in the early 1990's. 

Blurline has been inspired by recent and real events occurring in the media world, particularly in London. You may have read about the phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom.  Phone hacking is only part of the dark arts of news gathering.

Would you be surprised that newspapers have employed private detectives, paid bribes to members of the police force and public officials, and even had journalists go in disguise?  It’s ruthless and merciless. No prisoners here. Members of the public are fair game.

All this was a revelation to me. In fact, it made me unwell. You’d  think  a press council would have power to stop it? It would have teeth?  Not so.  Where are the ethics, you’re thinking? 

As an infamous English editor once said, ‘ Ethics?’ Isn’t that a county east of London?  

The line between being ethical and unethical are blurred. Thus the title, Blurline. 

THE GALLOPING POET.

Adam Lindsay Gordon Monument. Melbourne.

Two things stand like stone;

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in one’s own.

Adam Lindsay Gordon was more the bush poet and outback horseman than the English gentleman he was meant to be.

Gordon was born in 1833, in the Azores to privileged English parents. He attended all the right schools, but had a reputation for running up debts and leading a reckless life. After been expelled from his last school, his frustrated father decided that Gordon should start over in Australia.

He took to the Australia, like a pig to mud. He broke in horses, rode in steeplechases, was elected to the South Australian parliament and became a published poet. But it is for his riding feats that he is most remembered for. The most famous occurred in 1864, when Gordon made his famed leap on horseback over an old post and rail guard fence onto a narrow ledge overlooking the Blue Lake many metres below and jumped back again onto the roadway.

In the late 1860’s, he decided to move to Melbourne where he continued to publish his poetry and ride in steeplechases. In one day, he won three races. It was here, that he developed a friendship with Thomas Lawless who was a jockey at the time. It was later on that Thomas joined the Victorian Mounted Police.

The men developed a friendly rivalry, each trying to outdo each other with their riding skills. I was once told by an elderly relative, that the duo jumped their horses over a bark hut for a dare. I can’t find any reference to the story and I'm surprised that it would be possible. I’ll have to do some more digging.

Sadly, it didn’t end well for Adam Lindsay Gordon; after his latest book of poems didn’t sell well and afflicted by injuries sustained by several falls off horses, Gordon shot himself in 1870.

He is the only Australian poet to have a bust in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.    

SYDNEY TOWN

San Francisco. 1850.

‘It was the end of the continent, nobody gave a damn.’ Jack Kerouac.

This blog comes as a footnote to a previous one, A Free Man, in which I talked about my great,great grandfather, Patrick Bell, taking off to San Francisco. Further research indicates that Paddy may have been a member of a criminal gang called the Sydney Ducks.

The Sydney Ducks  were one of the more violent criminal organisations ever set up in America. They had the dubious honour of been California’s first criminal gang.  The majority of them were Irish who had arrived in Australia during the Irish Famine. Many were labourers. Paddy Bell certainly fitted that demographic. A few were ex-convicts who had served their time in Australia.

When news of the gold discovery in California hit Australia, they were on the next boats to San Francisco.  However, the Australians soon found that mining for gold was for idiots and decided that a life of crime was more lucrative.

The gang set up shop in an area of San Francisco that became known as Sydney Town ( renamed The Barbary Coast in the 1860's). Sydney Town soon became a cesspit of saloons, gambling dens and brothels.  Assaults, murders, looting, robberies and arson happened on a daily basis all over the city.

Arson attacks on businesses was the big earner for the Ducks.  While people were distracted trying to put out the fire, the gang was be looting others.  In one major arson attack, the criminals nearly burnt out central San Francisco. The gang always made sure Sydney Town never burnt;  only lighting a fire when they knew the winds wouldn’t blow in that direction.    

In a few months, a hundred people were murdered. The authorities were either incompetent or corrupt; probably both. The gang members were never prosecuted.   

As Herbert Ashbury, says in his book,' The Barbary Coast'; ‘the nearest approach to criminal anarchy that an American city has yet experienced.’

But the good citizens of San Francisco had had enough. A vigilante committee was formed and soon after, the lynching’s and deportations started. It was all over for the Sydney Ducks.

 Their two year reign of terror that had lasted from 1849-1851, was over.  

THE HUNT FOR NED KELLY. PART TWO.

Police party. Thomas Lawless, far left.  Hare in the middle.  Courtesy of Victorian Police Archives.

When you read of the hunt for the Kelly Gang, it appears that the police were going around in crazy circles.  They were up against it from the start.

The policemen lacked any knowledge of the bush and the large numbers of Kelly sympathisers kept the gang updated of police movements. Only later, did Hare decide to use Aboriginal trackers from Queensland.

The seven policemen who were in Hare’s party lived rough.  They were unable to pitch tents or build a campfire, so as to avoid attracting attention. In the bitter cold of the Warby Ranges, a campfire would have been a welcome relief.  They woke up every morning, usually covered in frost. Their food consisted of potted beef, biscuits and sardines.  They lived like this for weeks on end. Morale wasn’t good.

As Superintendant Hare later admitted, ‘Ned Kelly knew all of our movements in the Warby Ranges. He told of all our movements and described the men.’

After his capture, Kelly told the police that he knew even which police officer used to get the horses in the morning. He said it was always Thomas Lawless. If they had wanted to, the gang probably could have wiped out the police party. It would have been easy. 

  

The hunt continued. In one incident, the police rode across a house known to contain a group of Kelly informers. As they approached, the people rushed out of the house calling the names of the Kelly Gang. When the police got closer, the sympathisers realised it was the police and rushed back inside.  

Lawless approached the house from a different direction, and in doing so, came across an informer who wasn’t in the house. The man called out to Thomas Lawless, calling him Steve initially. The man had mistaken Thomas for Steve Hart, who was a member of the Kelly Gang.  Thomas and Hart apparently had a similar physique.

  

Thomas Lawless was able to get out of the sympathiser that the gang would be coming to the house that night. The police settled in for the night, telling the people  to stay in the house. The sympathisers were warned that if they tried to leave the house they would be shot. The people complied but decided to have a party. The noise created, probably warned the Kelly Gang to stay away. Once again, the bushrangers had evaded capture.

The police continued to go around in circles for sixteen months and the Kelly continued to rob banks until the famous shootout at Glenrowan.  Thomas Lawless was in another search party when Glenrowan occurred, but in the aftermath of publicity, he became known as one of the best horse riders in Australia.  

When British peer, Earl of Clan William, visited Melbourne, Lawless and several other officers did a riding exhibition for him. The Earl was so impressed that he presented Lawless with a gold watch ( sadly, later stolen).

Lawless was shortly afterwards discharged from the police for being drunk on duty and assaulting a superior officer. Well, the officer had called Lawless an Irish Catholic bastard.

 Thomas continued doing riding displays but while preparing for one, he was thrown from the horse and killed. He was only thirty-two. 

  

THE HUNT FOR NED KELLY. PART ONE.

‘Such is life.’- Ned Kelly’s final words before execution.

 Ned Kelly remains a controversial figure in Australia; was he a murderer ( his gang murdered three police officers and an informer) or was he a Robin Hood character?  More books have been written about him than any other Australian and three movies (one starring Mick Jagger, another starring Heath Ledger) have been made about the Kelly Gang.

 I can proudly say that my two Irish great, great uncles, Thomas and Richard Lawless, as members of the Victorian Mounted Police, were involved in the hunt for the Ned Kelly gang. The two brothers were not at the final shootout at Glenrowan but they were in the police parties hunting for the gang.

The two brothers had emigrated to Melbourne in the early 1860’s with their mother and siblings (including my great grandmother)  from Castlecomer, Kilkenny, Ireland. The family had barely survived the Irish Famine and were keen to start a new life in Australia.

  Thomas and Richard, from an early age, were renowned for their riding skills and both joined the Victorian police force where they became horse breakers at Richmond Barracks in Melbourne.

The police hunt through the Wombat Ranges.

After the murder of three police officers at Stringybark Creek by the Kelly Gang in October 1878, Superintendent Francis Augustus Hare assembled a group of police officers to head to the town of Benalla in North East Victoria to capture the Kelly Gang. The Lawless brothers were picked to be part of the contingent, because of their riding skills.

Hare remains a controversial figure also. He was an unpopular character and notorious self- promoter. Augustus Hare would later write an account of his hunt for the Kelly Gang called, The Last of the Bushrangers.  Hare was at the final shootout at Glenrowan and was wounded in the hand.

   

In Benalla, acting on a tip-off by an informer, Hare and three men (including Thomas Lawless) went undercover at the Whorouly race meeting. Whorouly was a small town near Benalla.  The informer had told Hare that the Kelly Gang would be at the meeting. The police officers mingled with the crowd and in the case of Thomas Lawless, set up a table and performed card tricks for the punters.

After performing card tricks for some time, Lawless decided to enter one of the races hoping to get a better view of the racecourse. Lawless rode in the race and won it!  Of course. It was the only exciting event that happened to the police that day. 

 Aided by their many sympathisers, The Kelly Gang did not make an appearance at the racecourse. Apparently, they had watched the races from a hill at the rear of the racecourse.  To be continued….

     

A FREE MAN

A FORTY-NINER PANNING FOR GOLD.

‘I came here a free man, under Hugh Glass.’

Those are the distant words of my great, great grandfather, Patrick Bell who arrived in Melbourne after a tragic sea voyage from Ireland.  

Unlike many people coming to this country at the time, he was not a convict but a free settler. He had arrived here under what was called the assisted migration scheme. All you had to do was work off your passage for seven years for an Australian sponsor. In Patrick’s case, that sponsor was Hugh Glass.

Hugh was an interesting character.  He had arrived from Ireland as a poor immigrant in 1840. By the time Patrick stepped ashore, Hugh was one of the largest landowners and best political manipulators in Australia.  As a monument to his wealth, Hugh built Flemington House in Melbourne in the 1850's for 60,000 pounds (now about ten million dollars).  It boasted its own artificial lake, stocked with white swans imported from Ireland. Sadly, he died later, aged only fifty-five and flat broke.

Patrick had left Ireland with his pregnant wife and one child.  Just days out from arriving in Australia his wife went into labor and had a baby boy. The celebration was short lived. Patrick’s wife died from dysentery soon afterwards.

So Patrick was now a widower with two children in a strange land working for Hugh Glass. He wasn’t alone for long.  He soon met an Irish servant girl named Anastasia Grace, got her pregnant and married her. But Patrick couldn’t settle and when he heard of the gold rush in California in 1848, he deserted his expanding family and headed to California. California here I come.

Patrick had an interesting time in California. One night in a saloon, he was playing cards when he noticed that one of the players was cheating. In true Wild West style, he drew his pistol and shot the man in the leg. Violence and death were common on the goldfield. So common, that one in five miners would die from violence, disease and accidents within six months of arrival.

He didn’t get rich but I guess he didn’t die there. He returned to Melbourne and reunited with his wife and family. It didn’t end well as you would have wanted it to. Once, in a drunken rage, he tried to kill Anastasia. The judge ordered him to stay away from Anastasia permanently.  Not long after that, he died from the effects of alcoholism and was buried in an unmarked grave. Patrick was aged only thirty-eight.

His grave is next to the Elvis Presley Memorial; a fitting place to rest for a man who tried to make the big time in America.