Philip George Cornwall

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PHILIP GEORGE (P.G.) CORNWALL

Philip George Cornwall was born in January 1834 in Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, England. He grew up in Barrington, Cambridgeshire where his father James was an agricultural labourer and his mother, Jemima was a shopkeeper. By 1851 he had left to work as one of five servants in the home of the local Magistrate John Bendyshe.

England declared war on Russia in April 1854 and soldiers were being deployed to the Crimea. At the same time the NSW government advertised in England for single adult males to emigrate, as many pastoralists desperately needed workers. P.G. saw Australia as an opportunity to raise his prospects in life.

He left England on assisted passage in August 1854 aboard the ‘General Hewitt\’ arriving in Moreton Bay on 16th December 1854, unable to read or write and having no relatives in the colony. Brisbane was a raw, unruly frontier town of about three thousand made up of Moreton Bay tribesmen, garrison officers, teamsters, squatters and townsmen. Most of the Europeans were armed and there were many shanty bars. The December downpours greeted him then the heat of January. There were droughts some years and major flooding in others.

When Queensland separated from NSW in 1859 only wealthy men were entitled to vote at elections. As a stockman he earned only about £50 annually, and was unable to vote for a few years until his wages were over £100.

P.G. aged 31, married Catherine Jane Fry aged 19, on 24th August 1865 at Gayndah in the Burnett District of Queensland, according to the Baptist Rites. His best man was Thomas Clohesy, a Sub. Lieutenant in charge of Native Police based in Gayndah. Catherine was born on 18th June 1846 in the District of New England (Armidale) when her family was living just south east of the place that was to become Glen Innes. Her father was an Innkeeper on the Beardy Plains in 1846 and Lodging House Keeper at ‘Yarrowford’ (Archibald Boyd\’s station) in 1848. This territory was outside the jurisdiction of the authorities at the time so no policeman could help if there was trouble.

When he married, P.G. was the Overseer at ‘Aranbanga’, a property just south of Gayndah where they would have been given a small cottage to live in. ‘Aranbanga’ was part of the ‘Ban Ban’ holdings, the first station selected in what is now the Gayndah Shire. It remains a very large cattle station still operating today. (2004) He was the Superintendent of another property, ‘Boomerang’, just west of Gayndah in 1867. According to his descendants, he was a superb horseman and excellent marksman.

During these early years in southern Queensland new settlers, miners, adventurers and bushrangers were swarming throughout all the river valleys. Consequently, there was sporadic war with the aboriginal tribes and no-one was safe from the anguish it caused, nor was a satisfactory solution provided for either side. In Gayndah there seemed to be some tolerance of each other from c1848 as the white inhabitants were used to the local Wakka Wakka people serving as the wood and water carriers. P.G. was now living a far different life from the one in the magistrate\’s house in Cambridgeshire.

Philip & Catherine produced seven surviving children: Midford Philip 1867, Martha Alice 1869, George Gale 1871, Sylvia Jane 1873, Catherine Cecil 1876, Sarah Ann 1879 and Beatrice Feodore 1884.

Sometime after 1867 P.G. was elected Mayor of Gayndah. In 1872 he was the publican of the River Bend Hotel 12 miles north of Gayndah on the old coach road to Taroom; the publican at the Gayndah Hotel from 1879 until 1887 and later sold fruit and sweets from his shop attached to his house in Capper Street, Gayndah. The house site, near the bank of the Burnett River, is now a museum of historic farm machinery.

Despite a lifetime of work Philip & Catherine needed the old age pension to sustain them in retirement in 1908. His last surviving granddaughter Muriel Cecil Jones, aged 102 in 2004, described him as an old man with a very neat white beard and moustache, thick spectacles and ankle high boots that were shined every morning. His photograph with other pioneers taken in 1893 is displayed in the Gayndah Museum. P.G. suffered a tumour of the larynx and died from heart failure on 29th August 1912 aged 78 years 7 months. He was buried in Gayndah Cemetery the same day.

The lasting legacy of Philip & Catherine Cornwall are their many descendants living throughout Queensland and New South Wales today.

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