Conrad Martens's Brisbane Indigenous Peoples The Squatter Families The Natural Environment Materials and Methods Martens under the Microscope		The Squatter Families The first Europeans to settle the Darling Downs arrived in the early 1840s. By 1851, when Conrad Martens crossed Cunningham’s Gap, nearly all the land had been taken up by a small, close-knit group of young men, the squatters of the Darling Downs. Buxton Map of the Darling Downs 1864 51 x 38cm Collection: Museum of Lands, Mapping and Surveying, Brisbane Glengallan selection plan 1902 101.5 x 68.5cm Collection: Museum of Lands, Mapping and Surveying, Brisbane The squatters entered the Downs from New England, driving sheep along the route established by Cunningham which was first used as a stock route by Patrick Leslie in 1839 and 1840. The Downs pastoralists retained close links with family and friends in the south, and these helped Martens, for he knew many squatters and their wives. For instance, Patrick and George Leslie, of Goomburra and Canning Downs, had married Kate and Emmeline Macarthur; the sisters were already well known to Martens before his northern journey, as he had painted Vineyard, their family home at Parramatta. Anna Macarthur, another of the sisters, married Captain John Wickham of Newstead House, the Police Magistrate in Brisbane who was one of Martens’s old shipmates from HMS Beagle. In Sydney, Martens had taught painting to Eliza Darling, who married Arthur Hodgson of Eton Vale, and to Theresa Mort, sister-in-law of Henry Mort of Franklyn Vale. With all these friends and contacts from Sydney in the northern districts, Martens could be confident of obtaining commissions in Brisbane and the Darling Downs. Left to right: Canning Downs Station c.1859; Westbrook Station – Woolshed c.1870; Glengallan Station c.1897 Collection: John Oxley Library, Brisbane (11750; 47300; 65196) Most Downs squatters were recent immigrants. The Leslies, Robert Mackenzie and David McConnel of Cressbrook were Scottish; the Gores of Yandilla Anglo-Irish, and the cousins Arthur Hodgson of Eton Vale and Henry Stuart Russell of Cecil Plains were English. Most were younger sons, from the gentry rather than aristocrats, and many relied on family contacts ‘at home’ for financial backing. This was an incentive to buy paintings to record their property, and as gifts for absentee partners in Britain or Sydney. By 1851 the fortunes of the Darling Downs squatters were rising. They were no longer technically ‘squatters’ – legal changes in 1847 and 1848 allowed them to purchase pastoral leases. With greater security of tenure, they built and decorated fine homesteads, marking their permanence and prosperity, and by commissioning paintings from Conrad Martens the colonists invested in pictorial records of their achievements. Associate Professor Marion Diamond, History Department, The University of Queensland Contemporary images from Victoria Gill, S.T. England/Australia 1818–80 Stockman from 'The Australian Sketchbook' 1865 Colour lithograph 29 x 42.8cm Collection: Queensland Art Gallery Purchased 1962 Gill, S.T. England/Australia 1818–80 Surveyors from 'The Australian Sketchbook' 1865 Colour lithograph 29.2 x 43.2cm Collection: Queensland Art Gallery Purchased 1962 Gill, S.T. England/Australia 1818–80 Wool drays from 'The Australian Sketchbook' 1865 Colour lithograph 28.9 x 43.3cm Collection: Queensland Art Gallery Purchased 1962 Print friendly version