White Beech: The Rainforest Years (25 page)

Thirteen years later, on 21 September 1839, in London, twenty-two-year-old Rosalie Adelaide Dougan married thirty-seven-year-old George Russell Nixon. Their first child, George Dougan Nixon, was born in Switzerland in 1840 and died there the same year. Frank was born in Rome in 1842. A sister Angela was born in Bagni di Lucca in 1843, a brother Edward (1845) and sister Gertrude (1846) in Tenby in Wales, where their father was running a small private school, another brother, Frederick Dougan, in Verlungo (1848), another, George Louis, in Bristol (1851). Three more siblings were born in Switzerland, Arthur in Vevey (1852), and Anna (1853) and Clara (1855) in Veytaux. Clara died in infancy.

Frank was eighteen when his parents decided to send him and his brother Edward to Australia, where Rosalie Adelaide’s elder sister Mary, who had virtually brought her up, had emigrated with her husband Richard Walkden and her children and stepchildren. The Nixon boys arrived on the
Owen Glendower
in January 1860. Rather than staying and working on the Walkden farm at Pakenham in Victoria, they travelled to another Walkden property at Brungle in New South Wales where three of Mary’s sons, Frederick, Frank and George Walkden, were breeding horses for the East India Company and the British army in India.

Brungle, nestling in the lee of the Snowy Mountains, twenty kilometres north-east of Tumut, is a special place, with rolling hills, deep valleys and rushing mountain streams. The winters are bright and cold, the summers bright and hot. There Frank bought a property in the name of his family and hired a carpenter to build a split-slab house with bark roof, apparently without assistance from their father, who had come out to Australia in October 1860 to visit his brother in Hobart. By the time Mrs Nixon and the other six children arrived aboard the
Albion
in January 1862 and travelled to Brungle by bullock dray, the house was all but ready. They called it ‘Avenex’ after one of the places where they had lived in Switzerland, a hamlet on the Balcon de la petite Côte, overlooking Lake Geneva.

On the voyage out nineteen-year-old Angela Nixon, who was usually called Nina, had caught the eye of Percy Spasshat, the ship’s doctor. After a wedding at Brungle the couple went to live in Armidale, taking Frank’s ten-year-old sister Anna with them. Seventeen-year-old Gertrude Nixon soon attracted the attentions of twenty-five-year-old Joshua Bray, who with his brother James was working for his father on the neighbouring Brungle Run. Bray’s sister Mary was married to Samuel William Gray, who at a government auction in 1862 bought the lease of 16,000 acres in the Mount Warning caldera, and offered his brother-in-law a partnership. In 1865 Bray proposed to Gertrude and was accepted. He then travelled up to the Tweed, where he set about building a house on the north arm (now the Rous River), and gave it the Aboriginal name for the place, ‘Kynnumboon’.

Raising horses in Brungle may have suited Frank and his brother Fred, but their parents and siblings could not settle. In December 1864, George Nixon travelled to Sydney to visit an old friend who was rector of Christ Church St Laurence, to find that he was on the point of returning to England on sabbatical leave. Bishop Nixon was already in England on sabbatical so George decided to accompany his friend and visit his brother. When the bishop realised that his failing health did not permit a return to Tasmania and retired to Stresa on the Lago Maggiore, George went with him. He would not return to Australia until 1868.

On 19 July 1865 Gertrude wrote to Joshua from Avenex:

Frank came home on Monday and we have been having long consultations as to the future Ect. If Fred went up [to the Tweed] he might see to a little house being put up for Mama and Anna. Mama supposes you will let her build it on a small portion of your land . . . We are very glad to have dear old Frank back again – he likes your song ‘To the West’ so much we tried it over together last night. (Bray Papers)

When sixteen-year-old Fred turned up at Kynnumboon, Bray found him a good worker but ‘low-spirited’, and permitted himself to observe that ‘his Mama scolded him too much’. In fact Fred was in love with a Brungle girl called Charlie Rankin. She had promised to wait for him and the boy considered himself engaged. Meanwhile Frank, who was enjoying life in the Tumut, and the cross-country trips driving cattle and horses to market, showed no sign of joining in the rush to the north. On 14 October Gertrude wrote to her betrothed:

Nothing has been decided [about Avenex] as yet. I want them to let it or sell it – which wd be for the best, for it would be absurd for Frank to stay on. (Bray Papers)

After Gertrude’s wedding, which took place in Armidale in June the next year, her mother did not return to Avenex, but stayed in Armidale with the Spasshats. In August Bray wrote from the Tweed to assure her that a house was being built for her there. By the end of 1867 though the house was still unfinished Mrs Nixon and Anna were living in it; it was called the House on the Hill, or simply the Hill. Frank, Edward, Arthur and Louis were still at Avenex, while Frederick was working on a property outside Armidale. By 17 April Frank, Louis and Arthur had joined their mother at the Hill, because it was then that they climbed sacred Mount Warning, something that only the most senior Aboriginal elders were allowed to do.

Selections had been taken up in the names of various members of the Nixon family: George Russell Nixon had 160 acres and Arthur twenty-two, on the east bank of the North Arm. Only forty acres upstream from Kynnumboon had been taken up in Frank’s name, probably because he was hoping against hope to be able to keep Avenex.

In his diary for 29 April 1868, James Bray noted that ‘Frank Nixon came over to say goodbye’ on his way back to Brungle (Bray Papers). He stopped in Armidale and there, on 13 May, he married Catherine Elizabeth Cameron (New South Wales marriage certificate no. 1868/001527). Kate, as she was known, eldest of the seven children of Hugh and Anne Cameron, was born in the tiny fishing village of Garmony on the isle of Mull off the west coast of Scotland. The family arrived at Botany Bay on the
Walmer Castle
on 30 December 1848 and settled in Armidale. By the time Kate was wed to Frank Nixon, she had seen all five of her surviving siblings married to members of the Armidale Scottish community. She herself had been married in 1859 to a Donald Cameron, who died in 1862, leaving her childless. When she married Frank she was thirty-eight years old, twelve years older than he. They were to have no children that we know of and Kate remains a shadowy figure in Nixon’s story, to the point of being confused with his mother. They were married according to the rites of the Presbyterian Church, with Catherine’s father and her brother John as witnesses. No member of the staunchly Anglican Nixon family appears to have been present. Frank gave his occupation as grazier and his residence as Tumut. He took his wife back to Avenex where he and Fred continued to make their living as farmers and graziers. Frank was still in the Snowy in February 1870 when he stood witness for Fred, who had attained his majority and was at last free to marry Charlie Rankin (New South Wales State Records, 3504/1870).

When Avenex was finally sold, Fred stayed in the district. Frank had no choice but to take Kate north where his younger brothers had formed a company to produce sugar. More land had been taken up, and machinery for the purpose had been imported from Britain. The Tweed correspondent of
The Queenslander
reported on 11 October 1873:

Mr Gray will have over thirty acres of cane planted this season and that with last year’s planting will make a total of some sixty acres or more, almost enough to start a mill. Mr A Nixon (for Nixon Brothers) is also forming a plantation this season as fast as he is able, with the intention I have heard of erecting machinery as soon as he has cane sufficient to keep a mill going for the season. Theirs is the only plantation on the North Arm and from what I have seen it is likely to be the most successful on the river.

These sanguine expectations were not borne out. Gray and Bray knew little of sugar chemistry and never succeeded in getting their machinery to work properly. Before they could get their problems sorted out, a more efficient mill at Tumbulgum began producing the first marketable sugar.

On Saturday 13 February 1874 Gertrude noted in her diary that ‘Frank and Kate moved up to their own place’, which they had called Jijiga. Six weeks later she ‘went up to Frank’s with Mama, Anna and children’. On April Fool’s Day, ‘Frank came down to get some tea’. From the Bray diary we can see that Frank and Kate continued to live close enough to Kynnumboon to be able to walk over for Sunday prayers, long after Frank is supposed to have been living on the land he had selected on the Nerang River. The diary entries refer to the Queensland properties as ‘Numinbah’, ‘Numinbar’ and even ‘Nummingbar’; on 13 September 1874 Gertrude records ‘Frank started to Numinbar. Kate down in the evening.’ On 28 December ‘Kate and Anna went out to Numinbah’, so it seems that the Nixons made their marital home in New South Wales at least until the end of 1875. A list of Kynnumboon residents dated 1875–7 includes Frank, along with the gang of Brays, Grays and assorted Nixons. He was listed as a magistrate in New South Wales as late as 1879. Numinbah local historians do not explain why they believe that, when he settled in Numinbah, Frank brought both his wife and his mother with him (Hall
et al
., 51). Rosalie Adelaide was certainly not one for roughing it. If there was an older lady with the couple it was not Kate’s mother either, for she died in 1868. It looks very much as if the older lady must have been Kate herself, and the younger her attendant.

When the country reporter of
The Queenslander
visited the township of Nerang in 1873 it consisted of ‘two public-houses and nothing else’. He could not find anyone in the district who could identify the source of the Nerang River: ‘the government maps afford no information on the subject and it seems to be a mystery to all except some of the old timber-getters.’ (
Q
, 20 September) Joshua Bray noted in the Diary for 8 June 1874: ‘Frank Nixon returned from looking at the head of Nerang Ck – he does not like it.’ Notwithstanding, five weeks later, on 22 July 1874, Nixon rode over to Beenleigh where he applied at the Lands Court for selections on the Nerang River (
BC
, 15 August).

The land had to be surveyed, measured and given an identifying number. When the government surveyor George Pratten came up to survey Nixon’s selections, he brought with him two speculators from Coomera who had already selected land closer to Nerang. When they saw the land Nixon had selected they announced that this adjoined the very land that they had already selected, even though they could not show the marked trees that were usually taken as evidence. As Nixon told Henderson, ‘They said they were on horseback when they found it, but no horse could have got up the creek before I cut the bridle track.’ (Again we find Nixon travelling up the river rather than down.)

Nixon was convinced that the speculators who came up with Pratten ‘only took up the land in the hope of making capital’ out of him, which suggests that he was perceived to be a gentleman farmer with more money than sense. He may very well have given that impression. Though he seems to have had no formal education, he could speak both French and German, and his manners may well have been more polished than those of his fellow selectors. To hear Nixon tell it he was not afraid of hard work.

As you know I have been here some eleven years, & during the whole of that time, the whole of my rations, goods & chattels have been packed up here on horseback at a considerable expense to myself. I have now made a dray road from my homestead to the Pine Mountain, about 9 miles from here . . . as the Pioneer of the Upper Nerang I think I deserve some consideration. It was I who opened up the upper part of this creek. When I first came I made the track from the junction of Little Nerang to here. I cut through the scrubs around & I found all the crossing places in the river between here and there, & between here and the Tweed River I made 15 miles of a track over the Mac Pherson Range, on to the Casino road.

We may be sure, I think, that Nixon did none of the hard labour of opening the tracks himself, but directed his gang of Aboriginal workers from horseback. Many of the difficulties he was later to encounter could be explained by the rapid attrition of his Aboriginal workforce.

The first of Nixon’s selections in Queensland was Portion 1, a homestead plot of 120 acres at the confluence of Nixon Creek and the Nerang River; the second, of 384 acres, adjoined it on the south, along the west bank of the Nerang River. A third portion of 200 acres, which was known after his wife as Catherine’s Flat, on the other side of the Nerang River was acquired at the same time (QSA, LAN/AG17).

On the 5th September 1874 Mr Pratten came up to survey my land – John [a mistake for Jesse, or ‘Jessie’ in Nixon’s spelling] Bird & Stephen Hall followed my track & came up too – & liking the country here better than the land near the Aboriginal Reserve, said at once that my land was the land they had selected. By the act of 1868 they were supposed to have marked a tree as their starting point, but they had done nothing of the kind. Mr Pratten however considered their claim prior to mine.

The records confirm that Jesse Bird and Stephen Hall had indeed made prior selections further downstream, that these were cancelled and they were allowed to select two lots of 120 acres immediately downstream from Nixon’s homestead. Worse, Pratten surveyed 160 acres for a William Hall who had never made application. In the latter case Nixon moved at once; on 6 March 1875 before Joshua Bray at Kynnumboon he made application for the selection, which he claimed William Hall had never seen, but it was not until Hall had defaulted on payment that the selection was declared forfeit and selection reopened on 26 March 1878. Nixon, who had probably been forewarned, selected it on that very day. On 10 April he followed through by selecting Portion 14, the sixty acres that lay between the 160 acres he had just secured and Jesse Bird’s 120 acres. Dispossessing Bird and Stephen Hall was to take a little longer.