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AUSTRALIAN ALMANAC
NOVEMBER 5
A weekly series
by Bill Beatty
1829 Governor Darling's arrest of Ralph Fntthistle. Entwhistle was one of many men driven to outlawry by the harsh treat ment and injustice of the times. Sent to New South Wales as a boy for a tnvwl offence he was assigned as a servant to a Bathurst settler. Entwhistle was due to re- ceive his ticket-of-leave within a couple of weeks and was still a young man, stalwart, good-living, trusted by his master, and liked
by everybody.
He had volunteered to take his masters team and wool to Sydney. It was a hot and dusty day, and Entwhistle and his mate unyoked the team and rested near a ford. The two men were so grimy and fatigued that they stripped off for a bath in the Macquarie River. They had no sooner plunged in when the Governor and his party, attended by a military escort, arrived at the' ford crossing on the way to Bathurst.
Entwhistle and his mate were seen by the shocked vice-regal party, although they kept as much under water as possible. To appease the scandalised Governor, the two men were arrested, given 50 lashes each, and EntwhisUe was made a convict again.
He nursed his resentment, as well he might, and one day made his escape. With some other discontented men he formed a band of outlaws and operated mostly in the Bathurst district. They raided usually for food, ammunition, and horses, and never committed violence. However, they were eventually rounded up and hanged.
1880 The Annie Brooks destroyed by natives. The Queensland schooner was pearl fishing off Mewstone Island, south-east New Guinea, when she was attacked by natives. They killed six white members of the crew, looted the vessel, and set it on fire.
1904 Wreck of the Brier Holme. The iron barque, on a voyage from London to Hobart, was wrecked in the desolate area of Port Davey on the south-west coast of Tasmania. She had a crew of 20 men, and all but one were drowned. The survivor lived a Robinson Crusoe existence until he was found, three months later.
NOVEMBER 6
1810 Governor Macquarie signed unique contract to build a hospital. The contrac- tors, Garnham Blaxcell and Alexander Riley (D'Arcy Wentworth later joined them), offered to build a hospital in Macquarie Street, Sydney, in exchange for a monopoly on rum sales in the colony and other valu- able concessions. No money was paid, and the building became known as the "rum hospital." Two cf the wings still stand the northern wing is Parliament House, and the southern wing, later the mint building,
« used as Government offices.
1884 Commodore Erskine proclaimed pro- tectorate cn the south coast of Papua. 1914 Nauru Island captured by Australian m""arv forces. After the war, the League P N.at»ons gave a mandate to the British Ampire to administer the island, but be Ca<ïexf the conmctmg interests of Australia and New Zealand did not specify which government. This eventually was straight- ed out, and an administrator for Australia wok over in June, 1921.
Although discovered by an English cap lain and named Pleasant Island, no action was taken to annex it until 1888, when a Party from a German warship landed and s,,ff J Cd " Germ*n territory. The island unered severely during World War II, nen 11 was bombed and shelled.
¡Sj* "5* P & O steamer Arabia tor
mo«l ' steamship, carrying 720 people, ! doif y Passengers from Australia to Lon
All tK38 torPedoed in the Mediterranean, hm ii P^engers were saved in boats, Dut H of the crew died.
NOVEMBER 7
1821 Governor Brisbane arrived in Sydney. 1861 The first Melbourne Cup race at Flemington. The famous course was named after an early settler, Bob Flemington, who was a butcher and innkeeper in the locality. Vested in trustees for the benefit of the
people, the original lease of the Flemington Racecourse was for 99 years, with a yearly rental of three peppercorns. Both the first Melbourne Cup and the second, run the following year, were won by Archer.
A remarkable sequence of names of horses winning the Melbourne Cup occurred for three consecutive years. The horses not only had "titled" names but rose in sequence from the peerage to royalty Lord Nolan (1908), Prince.Foote (1909), Comedy King (1910).
NOVEMBER 8
1819 Death of Isaac Nicholls, Australia's first postmaster.
1824 Hamilton Hume sighted the Austra- lian Alps.
1836 First census of Melbourne revealed population of 186 males, 38 females.
1878 Melbourne Bicycle Club formed. This was the first official club in Australia, and the penny-farthing bicycle was used. The Sydney Bicycle Club was founded in 1879, the Tasmanian Bicycle Club in 1880.
Nine years before the formation of the first club cycle races were held by the Bone- shaker Club of Melbourne, with J. A. Clarke as captain. Heavy wooden machines with cast-iron bearings were used.
The Austral track race was started in Melbourne in 1886 as an amateur event with a grand piano as first prize, but four years later it became a cash race. The world's first women's race, a two-mile title event at Ashfield, Sydney, in 1888, was won by Miss Dot Morrell.
The great days of Australian professional cycle racing began in the 1890s. Attendances were so large that cash prizes were some of the highest in the world, and many over- seas champions paid visits.
1892 The May Newton, a three-masted schooner, sailed from Strahan, Tasmania, for Queensland, and wasn't heard of again.
NOVEMBER 9
1804 Massacre of the crew of the Union. This was the second tragedy for the ill fated vessel, which was under charter to Simeon Lord, a wealthy merchant, of Syd- ney. The first tragedy occurred after she left Kangaroo Island, South Australia, to obtain sandalwood in Tonga. There, on August 29, 1804, the captain and boat's crew were murdered. The Union was brought back to Sydney, and less than three months later sailed for Fiji. She was attacked at Koro Island by savages, who
wrecked the vessel and massacred the crew. 1825 City of Brisbane named. In De- cember, 1824, Chief Justice Forbes made an inspection of the site and approved Oxley's choice. He gave it the name of Edinglassie, but this was later rejected in favor of Brisbane, in honor of Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales.
1914 HMAS Sydney defeated the German cruiser Emden at Cocos Island. On the morning of this day a party from the raider landed on Direction Island in the Group to wreck the cable and wireless in- stallations. The Sydney arrived in response to an SOS from the island, and in the engagement that followed the Emden was set afire and forced to beach.
Continued on page 35
. Magnificent Eucalyptus delegatensis, mountain ash, frame a snow-capped view of the Southern Alps. The Alps were first sighted in 1824, by the explorer Hamilton Hume. Picture by Mr. R. Ferris, of Cooma North, N.S.W.
Australian Almanac - from page 33
NOVEMBER 10
1815 Death of Ellis Bent, Judge-Advocate of New South Wales. Bent, the first prac- tising barrister-at-law in the colony, accepted the appointment because of "family misfortunes of the severest nature." Mac- quarie provided a house and made him and his son large grants of land, which he promptly sold in defiance of the covenants.
His frequent ill health, financial diffi- culties, and personal worries seem to have unbalanced Bent's judgment. He quarrelled with officials about the nature of locally made laws, his own status, and the authority of the Governor to control his movements as a public servant and to order him to draft regulations. But, despite this, Macquarie, after Bent's death, praised his meritorious" services and did everything possible to obtain a pension for his widow.
Bent's remains were buried in three graves -first in the old cemetery in the area where toe Sydney Town Hall now stands, then on Garden Island, and finally in St. Thomas' Cemetery, North Sydney.
1867 The Clermont Gold Escort Murder, .he dead bodies of two constables, John fower, 25, and Patrick Cahill, 27, who were m charge of a gold escort from Rockhamp- ton to the Clermont goldfield, were found near the Mackenzie River, Queensland. The men had been carrying $8000 and were accompanied by the Gold-Commissioner, John Thomas Griffin. Griffin was arrested, tried for the murders, and hanged.
While he was an assistant gold-commis- sioner at Rockhampton there had been a Public petition for his removal from office.
e had misappropriated money entrusted to
mm by Chinese miners,
to h" P?011 awaiting execution, Griffin tried o onbe two warders to release him, promis
ing to reveal the place where he had hidden the stolen money after the shooting.
NOVEMBER ll
1854 Ballarat Reform League formed at the meeting of miners at Bakery Hill, with Peter Lalor and Rafaello Carboni among the leaders, before the Eureka Stockade
armed clash.
1880 Ned Kelly hanged. His mother's last words to her son were: "Mind you die like a Kelly, Ned." A halo of undeserved romance has often been drawn round the head of the notorious Ned Kelly, a Vic- torian stock-thief, bank-robber, murderer.
In 1870, while still in his teens, Ned was arrested as an accomplice of Harry Power, the bushranger, but escaped punish- ment by betraying him. Eight years later he became leader of his own gang. Three of a party of police which surrounded them in the Wombat Hills were shot by the Kelly gang, and, knowing themselves outlawed, they began a career of desperate crime.
Defiantly, and with a challenge on his lips, Ned told Sir Redmond Barry, the judge who sentenced him, that he would see him in the Great Beyond. Eleven days later, Sir Redmond died from pneumonia while being treated for a carbuncle.
1882 Sinking of the Austral in Sydney Harbor. When anchored in Neutral Bay, the steamship Austral suddenly sank be- fore the astonished eyes of many Sydneyites. While coaling, someone had forgotten to close a porthole, and water poured into her. Five lives were lost. Four months later the Austral was refloated.
1885 First cable tram in Melbourne. Cable tramways were in general use until thc 1920s, when they began to be superseded by electric traction. Electric trams wen introduced into the suburbs in 1006.