KATER
Henry Herman Kater was born in 1813 in Suffolk, England, the son of Henry
Kater and his wife Mary Francis Reeve. He was baptised on 19 July 1813 at the
Church of St. Lawrence, Ipswich, Suffolk.
His parents, Henry Kater and Mary Frances Reeve, were married on 31 May
1810 at the Church of Saint Mary, St. Marylebone Road, St. Marylebone, London.
Henry had a younger brother, Edward, born in London in 1816.
At the age of 26 Henry Herman Kater decided to migrate to the Colony of
New South Wales.
Henry Herman Kater arrived in Sydney on 23 December 1839 in the Euphrates
with Durham cattle and six thoroughbred horses.
He purchased a station Bungarribee.
After eighteen months of endeavouring to make a go of it in this new and
harsh land, he faced bankruptcy, particularly in the light of the economic
collapse the Colony suffered in the early 1840s. This resulted in him having to
sell his stock. He moved to Caloola, started a cloth factory and later made
enough to retire to Sydney where he died in 1881.
The version of the story, though, given by a nephew Robert Darvall
Barton, in his Reminiscences of a Pioneer, was that Henry Herman Kater,
when he came out, to have brought about thirty thousand pounds worth of horses,
cattle and sheep. He was said to have brought out, at the time, some of the best
blood horses that had ever come to Australia, at the time, including a purebred stallion named Cap-a-pie. He also brought out machinery for a wool
factory for making cloth, but he found that it was a dead loss and brought him
nearly insolvent. He had to sell all his horse stock, and put steam machinery
for grinding wheat into his factory, operating the mill at Caloola.
By many years of hard graft and economy, he succeeded in making good
provision for his old age.
Henry Herman Kater, married Eliza Charlotte Darvall, daughter of Captain
Edward Darvall and Emily Godschall Johnson, in 1840, in Sydney, shortly after
his arrival in the Colony of New South Wales. The abovementioned nephew Robert
Darvall Barton was the son of of Robert Johnstone Barton who had married Emily
Darvall, sister to Eliza Darvall, also in 1840, and pursued squatting pursuits
at nearly Boree for a number of years.
Of the offspring of Henry Herman Kater and his wife Eliza Charlotte
Darvall, the most eminent was Henry Edward Kater (born 1841), who became a
Member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales.
Another son was Edward Harvey Kater, born 1846, who married Fannie M
Matthews in 1877 at Wellington, and had six children:
1.
Mary Eliza Kater (1877),
2.
Mary Agnes L. Kater (1879),
3.
Edward Darvall Kater (1880)(who married Vera A. Mack in 1907 at
Narrowmine
4.
Mary C. Kater (1882),
5.
Frederick C. Kater (1884) (who married Mary Harrigan in 1908 and Blanche
Abbott in 1912), and
6.
Eric S. Kater (1890), who married Evelyn Macdonald in Sydney in 1923.
Henry Herman Kater and his wife Eliza Charlotte Darvall also had two
daughters, Emily M Kater in 1855, and another daughter (unnamed in the
registers) at Orange in 1856.
An Alice Eliza Kater married a Herbert Salwey at Canterbury in 1882, and
a Mary F. Kater married a Henry Salwey at Burwood in 1889. These are either
daughters of the abovenamed, or are otherwise related.
Edward Darvall Kater and his wife Vera M. Mack, who he married in 1907 at
Narrowmine, had children
1.
Katherine D. Kater born at Warren in 1908,
2.
Darvall Edward Kater born at Dubbo in 1910 (who married Patricia Ann
Russell Glasson at Woolahra in 1942) and
3.
Vera P. Kater, born at Warren in 1912,
and there is also a Stillborn Kater who died in 1943 at Cooma with
parentage Edward Darvall Kater and Patricia.
In the year 1901, Kater Bros ran Mumblebone Station, and Egelabra
Station, at Warren in western New South Wales.
The eldest of the sons of Henry Herman Kater, Henry Edward Kater, as
abovementioned, married Mary Eliza Forster, daughter of William Forster, at Ryde
in 1870.
Henry Edward Kater became a Member of the Legislative Council of New
South Wales.
He and his wife had a son Norman William Kater, born in 1874 at Ryde.
They had another son Henry Harvey Kater, born 1872, who died in 1902 at Moss
Vale.
Henry Edward Kater died in 1924 at Woollahra. His wife had died in 1909.
Norman William Kater married Jean Gaerloch Mackenzie at St. James'
Church, Sydney on 25 February 1901 and had children:
1902 Henry E. F. Kater at Sydney, who in 1926 married Christina
A.Atkinson,
1904 Norman
H. M. Kater at Moss Vale,
1907 John B.
D. Kater, at Cargo,
1907 Mary F.
Kater at Cargo, who married Douglas Tooth in 1929,
1909 Jean G.
Kater at Cargo, who married William R. Munro at Moss Vale in 1929,
1912 Gregory
Blaxland Kater at Cargo.
All four sons and two daughters were alive at the time of their father's
death on 18 August 1965.
Henry Edward Kater is mentioned in the Australian Dictionary of
Biography:
Kater, Henry Edward 91841-1924), pastoralist and businessman, was born on
20 September 1841 at Bungarribee, near Penrith, eldest son of Henry Herman Kater
(1813-1881) and his wife Eliza Charlotte Darvall (died 1909), sister of John
Bayley Darvall.
His father had arrived in Sydney on 23 December 1839 in the Euphrates
with Durham cattle and six thoroughbred horses; he bought Bungarribee but
after eighteen months faced bankruptcy and had to sell his stock. He moved to
Caluela, started a cloth factory and later made enough to retire to Sydney where
he died in 1881.
Henry Edward Kater was educated by his mother and for a year at Clader
House, Redfern. He became a junior clerk in the Australian Joint Stock Bank at
Mudgee. In 1861 he was held up by bushrangers while carrying bank-notes to
Bathurst. In 1863 he acquired Gungalman, a cattle station on the
Castlereagh. He established good relations with the Aboriginals and learnt
bushcraft from them; he often used the local rainmaker. He sold Gungalman
and set up as a flour-miller at Wellington.
On 8 February 1870 at St. Anne's Church of England, Ryde, he married Mary
Eliza Forster (died 1935), daughter of William Forster. She had read the Origin
of the Species at 16 and studied Greek as a pastime at Wellington. In 1875
they visited Europe and Britain, where they earnestly looked at churches, art
galleries and opera, and while visiting relations Henry saw and played his first
lawn tennis.
In the 1870 Henry Edward Kater took up land in the Wellington district.
With his brother Edward Harvey Kater (died 1903) he acquired Mumblebone
on the Macquarie River near Warren. From John Smith, in 1879 they bought merinos
directly descended from the Reverend Samuel Marsden's flock. In 1881, the
brothers formed a partnership as Kater Bros; Henry had a third interest and
attended to the city end of the business. Under Edward, Mumblebone became
one of the foremost studs in New South Wales; he developed strong-woolled,
large-framed and plain-bodied sheep.
In 1879 Henry Edward Kater had bought Mount Broughton near Moss
Vale. He was a founder and president of the Bong Bong Picnic Race club and
sometime president of the Berrima District Agricultural, Horticultural and
Industrial Society. In 1889 he was appointed to the Legislative Council upon the
recommendation of G. R. Dibbs. On 9 January 1908 the Bulletin complained
that '19 years' research hasn't explained why (Dibbs) did it'. Despite such
comments, Henry Edward Kater proved a useful councilor, active on committees
and interested in rural matters. In 1911 his opposition forced the Government to
modify the Shires Bill. Edward Kavanagh, a Labour member, maintained that 'if
one could satisfy Mr. Kater that a thing was in the interests of the State,
then, irrespective of political party, one could rest assured of his support'.
In 1892-1924 Henry Edward Kater was a director of the Colonial Sugar
Refining Co. and Chairman in 1901-2. He was also vice-chairman of the Commercial
Banking Co. of Sydney and local director of the Liverpool and London and Globe
Insurance Co.
He represented Moss Vale in Anglican Synods from the 1880s and his most
charitable work was in connection with the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. A
director from 1892, honorary treasurer in 1901-16, and chairman in 1920-24, he
gave the hospital its first X-ray machine and £1000 to endow the H. E.
Kater ward.
In 1896 he had bought Egelabra near Warren, and in 1906 when the
partnership with Edward was dissolved his share was half the Mumblebone
stud and Yanganbil. About 1910 he took into partnership his son Norman
who added Eenaweena. The three properties included 72,000 acres and,
under the expert classer E. H. Wass, H. E. Kater & Son formed the well-known
Egelabra stud. The Mumblebone stud continued to develop under H. E.
Kater's descendants.
Henry Edward Kater died on 23 September1924 at his home, Headingley,
Woollahra, and was buried in the Anglican section of the Sutton Forest cemetery.
He was survived by his wife and his younger son (Sir) Norman Kater. Able in
business and a shrewd judge of men, Kater left an estate sworn for probate at
over £190,000.
His son, Norman William Kater, later knighted to Sir William, is also
mentioned in the Australian Dictionary of Biography:
Kater, Sir Norman William (1874-1965), medical practitioner, grazier and
politician, was born on 18 November 1874 at Brush Farm, Ryde, New South Wales,
second son of native born parents Henry Edward Kater and his wife Mary Eliza,
daughter of William Forster. He was educated at All Saints College, Bathurst, in
1886-88 and Sydney Grammar School in 1889-91, where he excelled at
rifle-shooting.
Resident at St. Paul's College while he studied medicine at Sydney
University, (M.B., Ch.M., 1898) he won the Haswell prize and Renwick
scholarship, and rowed for the University. He was resident medical officer at
the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1894, then worked his way to Britain as
ship's surgeon. He spent three months studying midwifery at the Rotunda
Hospital, Dublin, and his spare time hunting. Later he attended courses at
specialist hospitals in London
Returning to Sydney he bought a practice at College Street. He married
Jean Gaerloch Mackenzie on 25 February 1901 at St. James' Church. After the
death of his elder brother in 1902 he reluctantly abandoned his practice and
bought Nyrang near Molong. He was a member of the Boree Shire Council in
1906-11.
When his father and uncle divided the Mumblebone stud in 1906 he
joined his father in H. E. Kater & Son and supervised the Egelabra
merino stud, near Warren. By 1911, he had virtually exterminated rabbits there
and at Nyrang.
Late in 1915, Kater went to Egypt to assist the Australian Red Cross
commissioner Sir Adrian Knox. He soon departed for France and joined the French
Service de Sante Militaire, working at the St. Rome base hospital near Toulouse.
Unable to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force in London, he returned to
Sydney in 1917 and in October joined the Australian Army Medical Corps. He
worked at the Military Hospital at Randwick, and, promoted Captain, and
temporary Major, from January 1918 to February 1919 as A.A.M.C.
After the war Kater returned to pastoral pursuits. He sold Nyrang
in 1920 and bought a house in Sydney; in 1924 he inherited Mount Broughton
near Moss Vale, where he spent most weekends. In 1915-64 he was a council-member
of the Graziers' Association of New South Wales. As president in 1922-24, he
successfully opposed Sir John Higgin's attempt to turn the British Australian
Wool Realisation Association Ltd. into a permanent central organisation for the stabilization
of the wool industry. In 1923 he had to contend with a long and
bitter strike by shearers for shorter hours. In the summer of 1927-28 he was
chairman of the Federal Pastoral Advisory Committee. Knighted in 1929, he was
appointed to the State committee of the Commonwealth Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research that year.
With the aid of his expert classer E. H. Wass, Kater kept the Egelabra
flock pure, despite the popularity of `wrinkley' sheep in the early twentieth
century. At the Sydney Sheep Show he won the Stonehaven cup for pens of five in
1933, 1938, 1939 and 1940, and bred the grand champion merino ram in 1938 and
1940. About 1939 he took his sons into partnership and later formed H. E. Kater
& Son Pty. Ltd., with himself as governing director. He was president of the
New South Wales Sheepbreeders' Association in 1940-44. From the 1920s Kater had
developed important business interests- he was chairman of the Co-operative Wool
and Produce Co. Ltd., and a director of Colonial Sugar Refining Co (1924-49),
the Graziers' Co-operative Shearing Co. Ltd. (Grazcos) (from 1919), Globe Worsted
Mills Ltd. (from 1927), Newcastle-Wallsend Coal Co. (from 1933) and a local
director of the Liverpool and London and Globe Insurance Co. Ltd.
A member of the central council of the Progressive Party, Kater was
nominated to the Legislative Council in 1923. Elected to the reconstituted council
in 1933 and 1942, he did not seek re-election in 1954. In the Council he
spoke briefly and to the point and strongly opposed J. T. Lang's government.
`Austere in his speech and in his dress', Sir Norman was tall, handsome,
clean shaven, with smooth silver hair and `very piercing blue eyes'. Shy and
unable `to stand fools lightly', he sometimes gave the impression of arrogance.
He played polo as a young man, enjoyed tennis, golf, bowls and bridge, and loved
the theatre and ballet. His first wife died in London in 1931. At St. Mark's,
Darling Point, on 14 January 1938 he married Mary Wade, daughter of L. A. B.
Wade, but they later separated.
He was president of the Australian Club in 1945-49 and belonged to the
Union Club, Sydney, the Queensland club and the Junior Carlton in London.
Appointed to the State advisory committee of the Australian Broadcasting
Commission in 1949, he was chairman of the Institute of Public Affairs in 1951.
Sir Norman died in St. Luke's Hospital, Darlinghurst on 18 August 1965,
survived by four sons and two daughters of his first marriage, who inherited his
estate, valued for probate at £238801. Fluent in French and widely read,
Sir Norman gave outstanding service to the pastoral industry and to the wider
community.
To complete a trilogy of mentions in the Australian Dictionary of
Biography, Sir Norman's sons, Norman Murchison Kater, and Sir Gregory
Blaxland Kater, also have been written up:
Kater, Norman Murchison (`Mick')(1904-1979), grazier, medical
practitioner and air force officer, and Sir Gregory Blaxland Kater (1912-1978),
businessman and army officer, were born on 26 March 1904 at Sutton Forest, New
South Wales, and on 15 May 1912 at Cheeseman's Creek, second and sixth children
of native-born parents (Sir) Norman Kater, medical practitioner, pastoralist and
politician, and his wife Jean Gaerlock Mackenzie.
`Mick' was educated at Tudor House, Moss Vale, the Armidale School, and
Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore). He jackerooed on Tubbo station,
Darlington Point, joined his eldest brother Henry at Gummin Gummin,
Warrumbungle, in the mid-1920s, and owned Gillinghall (1927-32),
Wellington, and Colmlee (1934-37), Moree. As a young man he rode unbroken
horses and enjoyed boxing. He was a licensed civil pilot by 1928 and soon
acquired his own aeroplane- a Gypsy Moth, followed by a Hornet Moth and a Tiger
Moth (the last mentioned was bought from Army disposals for £100).
Gregory was educated at Tudor House and the King's School, Parramatta. On
3 November 1930, both brothers matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge.
Greg passed the mechanical sciences tripos in electrical engineering (B.A.,
1933; M.A., 1937). After reading economics for only one term, Mick spent several
years at Egelabra, his father's merino stud at Warren, New South Wales.
In 1932 he went on the first of three big-game hunting expeditions in East
Africa. Later he became an expert fly-fisherman. At St. Peter's Anglican Church,
Glenelg, Adelaide, on 15 May 1934 he married Margot Milne; in 1938 they bought a
house at Point Piper.
That year Mick entered the University of Sydney (M.B., B.S., 1943). He
enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on 31 March 1941, but was sent back
to University to complete his degree. Following training at Laverton, Victoria,
he was commissioned flight Lieutenant on 14 November 1944 and served with No. 2
Operational Training Unit. As medical officer (from February 1945) of No. 75
squadron, he took part in the invasion of Tarakan, Borneo, in May and was loaned
to the 2nd/48 Battalion, Australian Imperial Force
Kater twice carried out major surgery while under heavy fire; on another
occasion he silenced a machine gun post with a hand grenade, rescued a wounded
soldier and captured two Japanese prisoners. For these deeds he was awarded the
Military Cross.
Transferred to No.77 Squadron in September 1945, Kater served (1946-47)
with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, Japan, and was promoted acting
wing commander in October 1947. Back in Sydney, he commanded (from February
1948) No. 3 R.A.A.F. Hospital, Concord, before serving with No. 77 Squadron in
Korea where he helped to develop a system for transporting the wounded to
hospital by air. His appointment terminated in March 1952. Dark haired, small
and swarthy, he invariably returned from war looking like a bandit, draped in
the weapons he had souvenired for his gun collection.
From about 1954 Kater managed Egelabra and ran the stud in an
autocratic way. He also practised medicine at Warren and supported the local
hospital. Charming and kind, he was loved and respected by his patients, mainly
Aborigines whom he treated for nothing. In the absence of a veterinary surgeon
he often `doctored' animals and in 1953 had helped to perform a caesarean operation on a lioness at Taronga Zoological Park. Blind in one eye and unable
to walk properly after he and his horse had been knocked over by a bull in 1964,
he sold his share of Egelabra to his brothers. He purchased nearby Normandoon
and in 1966 bought into Wenford Mathews's Wahroonga merino stud at
Nevertire, forming Mathews, Kater & Co. (half of Wahroonga later
became Chatswood). Mick was a member
of the Early Birds Association of Australia, patron (1978) of the No. 77
Squadron and- like Gregory- belonged to the Australian, Union and Royal Sydney
Golf Clubs. Survived by his wife, son and daughter, Mick Kater died on 27
December 1979 at Grovedale, Victoria.
In the 1930s Gregory had gained practical experience with A. Reyrolle
& Co. Ltd., Hebburn, England, and the General Electric Co., Schenectady<
New York. In April 1937 he married Catherine Mary Ferris-Scott at the parish
church of St. George, Hanover Square, London. In Sydney he bought a house at
Bellevue Hill and joined Alan Crook Electrical Co. Pty. Ltd. Kater enlisted in
the A.I.F. in October 1939 and was commissioned a lieutenant. Reaching Scotland
in June 1940 he was promoted captain and sent to the 44th Light aid Detachment.
He was wounded in action at Tobruk, Libya, in June 1941, then served at the 25th
Infantry Brigade's headquarters. Back in Australia, he was promoted major in
December 1942 and performed engineering duties. He was then posted to
headquarters, New Guinea Force, and in 1944 became chief engineer, mechanical
equipment, Lae Base Sub-Area. He returned home in Nov and was transferred to the
Reserve of Officers in April 1945.
A founder (1950) and chairman (from 1955) of Electrical Equipment of
Australia Ltd. Kater moved the company from agency distribution into
manufacturing telephone equipment, transmission-line materials, electrical
motors, clocks and hot-water systems.
He took the firm into solar power by forming a joint company with the
Solarex Corporation of the United States of America. Believing `passionately
that oil exploration in Australia would succeed...years before practical
results silenced the sceptics', he was a director and chairman of Oil Search Ltd
for 24 years. Kater had succeeded his father and grandfather as a director of the
Colonial Sugar Refining Co. Ltd. (chairman 1976-78) and the Commercial Banking
Co. of Sydney (chairman 1966-78). He also sat on the boards of numerous public
companies, and of the family's pastoral holdings- H. E. Kater & Son Pty.
Ltd. and Egelabra Pty. Ltd. Although `he had a reputation for being conservative
in financial matters, he was willing to back innovative developments' and
supported C.S.R.'s entry into aluminium and iron-ore production.
Tall and thickset, Kater rarely smiled in public. Over many years he
built a huge, model electric-railway with his children. He was a member of the
Overseas Telecommunications Commission (1966-75) and of the State Advisory Board
of the Salvation Army, a vice-president of the New South Wales Society for
Crippled Children and of the local Institute of Public Affairs, a liveryman of
the Worshipful Company of Broderers and a freeman of the City of London. He was
knighted in 1974. He died in July 1978, survived by his wife, daughter and two
sons.
Henry Edward Kater, eldest son of Henry Herman Kater, married in 1870 in
Ryde, in Sydney, Mary Eliza Forster, daughter of William Forster, and therein
lies yet another story in Australia's history.
It is best told from the pages of the Australian Biographical
Dictionary entry on William Forster:
William Forster (1818-1882), man of letters and politician, was born on 16 October 1818
at Madras, India, son of Thomas Forster, army surgeon, and his wife, Eliza
Blaxland, daughter of Gregory Blaxland.
His parents married in Sydney in 1816.
They went to India in 1816, then to Wales in 1825, and then to Ireland in
1825.
In 1829 the family returned to Sydney and settled at Brush Farm, Field of
Mars, near Ryde.
William Forster was educated in India at the regimental school of the
14th Light Dragoons, in Ireland at the Reverend J. Crawford's school at
Donnybrook, and in New South Wales at W. Cape's school and The King's School,
where in 1836 he won the prize for poetry.
From his parents families of Forster and Blaxland, William Forster both
absorbed the tradition of pioneering harsh but promising lands and acquired the
financial resources to reduce the risks of squatting.
He went on one of the first overland expeditions to Port Phillip and from
1839 took up despasturing licences and leases and bought other land.
By 1840, he had a station near Port Macquarie and other property in the
Clarence River district.
In 1848 he moved into the New England district.
In 1849 to 1854 he pioneered the Burnett and Wide Bay regions in the
Moreton Bay District where he amassed runs of about 64,000 acres.
In the Port Curtis District, Gin Gin station, originally known as Tirroan,
was in 1847, taken up by William Forster and his cousin Gregory Blaxland,
youngest son of the famous Gregory Blaxland who pioneered the crossing of the
Blue Mountains with Lawson and Wentworth. Gregory Blaxland, after several
encounters with the aborigines, finally lost his life to them, and in 1850 Tirroan
was sold to Arthur and Alfred Brown who named it Gin Gin.
In 1867, when he had retired from active control of his properties, he
still leased about 80,000 acres in Queensland.
On 8 April 1846 at Parramatta, he married Eliza Jane Wall, daughter of
Colonel Charles William Wall and his wife, Ann nee` Atkinson.
When Forster quit his active country life in 1854 and returned to Sydney,
they had two sons and three daughters; three more daughters were born before his
wife died at 35 at Brush Farm in 1862.
Appointed a Magistrate in 1842, Forster was removed from the lists in
1849 after a shooting incident in which an aboriginal was wounded by Gregory
Blaxland junior.
Forster became one of the most successful squatters of the great pastoral
expansion in eastern Australia. With his wife's help and some competent
associates he overcame great problems of exploration and settlement in
inhospitable and, at times, dangerous regions. He adapted himself to the bush.
Never a friendly man, his experience consolidated his independent spirit. To a
degree he tamed his environment, but it moulded him. He remained a bushman, honorable
and unyielding, always an individual, and probably the most erudite
and literate of the squatters. His insight enabled him to see himself and his
work in a wide social framework. He argued that squatters had rights to security
of tenure because of their financial and physical risks and intellectual
deprivation; that colonial society gained economically by allowing squatters
access to land on reasonable terms. But he also acknowledged that they were
using land that did not belong to them and that vast tracts were falling into
few hands, with the result that increasing population, which strengthened
liberal opinion, would condition radical land reform. He also conceived the
political disadvantages of the connections of squatting with rule from Britain.
Forster somehow found the time to write fine poetry and prose. In the
1840s, his country work and the nature of colonial politics both dictated the
form of his writing and sharpened his political aspirations.
He defended the squatters against Governor Gipps. He found a convenient
forum in Robert Lowe's Atlas, a sardonic and satirical newspaper which
published his best-known early poem `The devil and the Governor', of which H. M.
Green said `with the doubtful exception of Deniehy's "How I became Attorney
General of New Barataria", Australia produced until the twentieth century
no satire that could compare with it'.
In 1866 G. B. Barton claimed that Forster's writings `would probably fill
several octavo volumes'. He also shone as a critic, especially in exposing the
pretensions of F. Fowler.
Much of his writing was political and he contributed to Deniehy's Southern
Cross: notably in 1859 a witty piece on `The Question of Moreton Bay
Separation' in which he described J. D. Lang as `The Great Apostle of National
Disintegration', and insisted that the Clarence river District should not be
taken from New South Wales. Forster discontinued his political essays when he
became Premier on 27 October 1859 but he kept up his poetry. In 1876 he
published the verse play, The Weir wolf, in 1877 The Brothers, and,
finally in 1884 his second wife issued Midas. To Morris Miller, Forster's
verse `is proficient and convincing', while Barton sums him up as a `pungent
writer...(who if he) had devoted himself with more attention to letters than he
has done, it could hardly be doubted that he would have gained distinction'.
Though his wit is occasionally peevish, there is an inventiveness and technical
skill in the whole of Forster's work that places it near the front rank of
nineteenth-century Australian literature.
Politics was Forster's chief love. By 1855 his squatting had given him
the means and his writing the incentive to enter Parliament. In 1856 he won the
seat of Murray and St. Vincent at the first elections under responsible
government. He differed from John Robertson in land reform, especially on the
detail of extended period of repayment for land selected before survey, and he
was sceptical that any land legislation could do more than reduce the disorder
associated with great changes in a new phase of colonial development. Though an
Anglican by birth and conviction and one who saw the advantages of
denominational schools, he considered that the great social and economic
problems of a vast and sparsely settled colony with its many kinds of Christians as well as non-believers and
Jews made it inevitable that a national system of education be established. In
wanting church and state to be separated he joined the almost unanimous opinion
of the colonial intelligentsia. Without a trace of bigotry, he could rebuke or
restrain excessive religious or patriotic zeal. In the Melbourne Review,
1881, he wrote of the extravagant `loyalty and attachment to the mother
country...which was exemplified...by a savage burst of indignation against the
unfortunate maniac (H. J. O'Farrell) who shot the Duke of Edinburgh'. The
Catholics admired him, but most were unresponsive to his liberalism. In the
1850s he also sought manhood suffrage and an elective upper house.
Forster served in all ten parliaments until his death in 1882, except the
ninth in 1876-80. He held seven different seats at various times. At several
elections he lost one seat but won another at a second attempt. In 1859-60 he
was Premier for five months and in 1863 and 1872 was asked to form a ministries;
in 1863-65 he was Colonial Secretary, in 1868-70 Secretary for Lands, and in
1875-76 Colonial Treasurer.
He served under Charles Cowper, James Martin, and John Robertson, but was
on good terms with none of them; Martin claimed that he was `disagreeable as an
opponent, dangerous as a supporter, but fatal as a colleague'. According to the Sydney
Morning Herald, in 1874, `Mr. Forster seeks no friends in public life, makes
no alliances, asks no one to help him, takes noone into his confidence, and is
sometimes evidently repentant that he has ventured to confide in himself'.
In 1861 he satirized the Chinese restriction bill and in 1868 he was one
of two who voted against the treason felony bill.
In 1875 as treasurer he transferred funds from the Bank of New South
Wales to the City Bank, of which he was a director, but no impropriety was
involved.
His durable conflict with Henry Parkes stemmed in part from his criticism
of Parkes' poetry, but more significantly from his belief that Parkes had
forestalled him with the Public Schools Act, 1866.
In 1871-76 and in 1881-82 Forster was a member of the Senate of the
University of Sydney.
In 1875 as treasurer he went to London to rectify some financial and
other troubles and was agent-general from February 1876.
In England he had a resounding quarrel with T. Woolner over Captain
Cook's statue, offended polite society with his bushman's clothes and annoyed
Parkes and Governor Hercules Robinson with an anti-federation speech to the
Royal Colonial Institute and his offhandedness with government business. In
December 1879 Parkes peremptorily recalled him.
Despite his political non-conformity Forster was a major parliamentarian.
His persistence, independence and honesty helped to check parliament's drift
into futility. He insisted that the legislature should mirror society and that
no people could prosper if they did not subscribe to the highest ethical
standards; he took it on himself to ensure that parliament's actions should be
judged on his view of what was right. He was respected and feared as well as
hated. He set am example of rectitude so seasoned with waspish efficiency that
parliament always listened and often learnt from him. He was also a leading
legislator. He introduced overfifty bills, ranging from the regulation of cemeteries
to the control of diseases in sheep.
On 8 November 1873 at Armidale he married Maud Julia Edwards. They had
three sons and two daughters.
He died on 30 October 1882 at Edgecliff and was buried at Saint Anne's
Ryde.
His estate was sworn at £30000.
The Freeman's Journal's caught some of the essential man: `The
boldest, frankest, least selfish and most honorable man who has ever taken part
in our public life has been taken away from us'.
RALPH EDWARD GODSCHALL JOHNSON