Caroline Goward

Story

Caroline Goward (nee Chuter) came to Australia a couple of years after her husband Thomas Goward was set upon, murdered and thrown into the Thames River, London. Shortly after that murder, their eldest son Alfred set out for Australia, arriving in Brisbane in June 1887.

The whole family decided to follow. Caroline then aged 62 and a steerage passenger on the Quetta, a 2147 tons ship, disembarked at Brisbane on 10.12.1888 after a journey of more than two months. Second son, Arthur, and four daughters aged from 21 to 29 and all unmarried came with her.

It was a working class family but all could read and write. The girls were all in “domestic service”. Eldest son Alfred was a gardener in England and became a farmer in Australia. Caroline herself later bought a large area for farming in the Redlands area outside Brisbane. Whether she actively farmed it is not clear but some time after her death the farm was sold by local authorities due to unpaid rates.

Although second son Arthur had trained in the trade of “brass finisher” he too was a gardener when he left England. For several years he was a farmer near Laidley in Queensland but his main employment in Australia was at the Ipswich Railway Workshops as a brass finisher and as an instrument maker . With the technology of typewriters increasing in business offices Arthur became a typewriter mechanic at the Brisbane Technical College, one of the first in that field of work.

Caroline died in Brisbane in 1901 leaving a close knit and fiercely Australian immigrant family. Without ostentation or accolades, Caroline’s story is just one of the many who emigrated to Australia and worked harder for the sake of children, grandchildren, etc, than for themselves. Her legacy lives on, extended out by several generations now spread throughout Australia. Caroline’s descendants have gone on to great success in many different professional fields. She would be proud of them all.

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