Thomas Hebbert Boykett
| Town/City | Bendigo |
|---|---|
| First name | Thomas Hebbert |
| Last name | Boykett |
| Country of Origin | England |
| Date of Birth | 12/16/1805 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1853 |
| Submitted by | Douglas Laidlaw |
Story
Thomas Hebbert Boykett came to Adelaide with 3 adult sons of his first marriage and 2 maiden sisters. His ship was the Gipsy, which left Southampton on 15 May 1853, and cast anchor near Port Adelaide the following 15 August. The reason he gave, in a letter home a year later, was ‘the prospect afforded to my sons of doing better than they were likely to do at home.’
During the journey, the ship encountered a storm, and the crew mutinied. On a happier note, his second grandson was born at sea. Thomas was appointed Chairman of the Passengers. During the mutiny, the Captain was his special responsibility. It took him many weeks to recover from the stresses of the voyage.
His letter describes the ladies putting on their finery on arrival hoping to find husbands in Australia, and finding only mud; the settler riding into town to buy land at an auction. ‘ That man’s house consists of two or three low rooms. There are windows, but the place of glass is supplied by cotton. Furniture indeed! A few three legged stools, a wooden table and half-a-dozen shake-downs, is pretty nearly all you will find
there!’
He describes Adelaide: ‘During the first two or three weeks of our landing the weather was exquisite. Altho’ it was about the end of winter [August], here it was warmer and more enjoyable than an English May or June in the most favored parts of England. Not a cloud, not a haze, flits under the deep blue sky. There is no wind, but a fullness of balmy air. Flowers and vegetables are in their prime. The peach, the apricot, the almond, the orange, the lemon, the citron, are all bursting into blossoming beauty and filling the air with their fragrance; whilst birds of a hundred kinds, and most gorgeous plumage, flit by on every side.
‘I have not travelled much in the Colony; but from what I have seen and heard I think the state of Religion and morals is, at least, as high as in England. Certainly, in proportion to the respective population, there are more places of worship, and more preachers, here than at home. Education is a difficult matter in many places; but in Towns and moderately populated localities there is no deficiency of either Teachers or Scholars. There are Colleges and schools in which it is said the classics and
mathematics are taught by very competent men. I know of many schools in which a good sound English Education, including Drawing and Land Surveying, is given on moderate terms.
‘The City of Adelaide is built in the basin of a vast amphitheatre formed of hills covered with timber of the growth of centuries. In the heat of Summer these woods, with the grass and other undergrowth, are generally on fire. On a dark night the spectacle is magnificent. I have seen the blazes raging over a
surface of forty or fifty miles. But the Forest still remains. The extreme hardness of the wood prevents the heat reaching the top of the trees. The bark and the boughs, the underwood, the grass, are burnt. But winter and spring repair the havoc, and prepare fuel for the next summer’s conflagration. When the fires
rage fiercely, and the wind sets in the direction of the City, the atmosphere is dreadfully oppressive. All windows and doors are closed, the rooms darkened, the floors watered. Then it is that the mosquitoes and flies settle upon you for a sumptuous repast. On such evenings as these I have ridden to Glenelg – a
village on the Western Coast about eight miles distant and altho’ my face and neck have been protected by the finest gauze, I have been marked as with smallpox or measles.’
Thomas had joined the Congregational Church in his teens, and from 1836 was secretary of the movement to abolish the rate to support the Church of England, which all citizens had to pay. In
1846 he became an English solicitor, and he was a Parliamentary Returning Officer for 6 years. His office in Adelaide was in Waterhouse Chambers, Rundle Street. He died on 27 April, 1857. His son William was the first Town Clerk of Port Adelaide. Charles went into partnership with the Government Architect,
Edmund Wright. Both moved to Victoria later. John joined the Government Survey Office, then Downer’s Solicitors. The family are ancestors of all, or nearly all the Boyketts in Australia and New Zealand. A daughter by Thomas’s brief second marriage in England has descendants in New Zealand and Canada.