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Lachlan Macquarie

Early life and career

Lachlan Macquarie was born on the island of Ulva off the coast of the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, a chain of islands off the West Coast of Scotland. Few details are known of either his father or his birthplace. His mother was the daughter of a Maclaine chieftan who owned a castle on the Isle of Mull. He left the island at the age of 14.Keay, J. & Keay, J. (1994) Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland London. HarperCollins. If he did attend the Royal High School of Edinburgh, 'as tradition has it', it was only for a very brief period because at the same age, he volunteered for the army.Ellis, M.H., (1952), p. 4
Macquarie joined the 84th Regiment of Foot in 1776, travelling with it to North America in 1777 to take part in the American War of Independence, but seeing no actual fighting. He was initially stationed at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was commissioned as an ensign five months after his arrival. In 1781, he was transferred to the 71st (Highland) Regiment of Foot, and served with them in New York, Charleston, and Jamaica. In 1784 he returned to Scotland as a half-pay lieutenant. Subsequently, he saw service with the army in India and Egypt. Macquarie became a Freemason in January 1793 at Bombay, India, in Lodge No. 1 (No. 139 on the register of the English "Moderns" Grand Lodge). He was promoted Captain in 1789, Major in 1801, and Lieutenant-Colonel, commanding the 73rd Regiment of Foot, in 1805.

In November 1807, Macquarie's cousin Elizabeth Henrietta Campbell became his second wife. In April 1809 Macquarie was appointed Governor of New South Wales. In making this appointment, the British government reversed its practice of appointing naval officers as Governor and chose an army commander in the hope that he could secure the co-operation of the unruly New South Wales Corps. Macquarie was promoted to Colonel in 1810, Brigadier in 1811 and Major-General in 1813, while serving as governor.

As Governor

The first task Macquarie had to tackle was to restore orderly, lawful government and discipline in the colony following the Rum Rebellion against Governor William Bligh. Macquarie was ordered by the British government to arrest both John Macarthur and Major George Johnston, two of the leaders of the Rum Rebellion. However, by the time Macquarie arrived in Sydney in December 1809, both Macarthur and Johnston had already sailed for England to defend themselves. Macquarie immediately set about cancelling the various initiatives taken by the rebel governmentfor example, all 'pardons, leases and land grants' made by the rebels were revoked.

Macquarie ruled the colony as an enlightened despot, breaking the power of the Army officers such as John Macarthur, who had been the colony's de facto ruler since Bligh's overthrow. He was 'the last British proconsul sent to run New South Wales as a military autocracy'.

In 1812, the first detailed inquiry into the convict system in Australia by a Select Committee on Transportation, supported in general Macquarie's liberal policies. However, the committee thought that fewer tickets of leave should be issued and opposed the governor having the power to grant pardons. The committee concluded that the colony should be made as prosperous as possible so as to provide work for the convicts and to encourage them to become settlers after being given their freedom.

On a visit of inspection to the settlement of Hobart Town on the Derwent River in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) in November 1811, Macquarie was appalled at the ramshackle arrangement of the town and ordered the government surveyor James Meehan to survey a regular street layout. This survey determined the form of the current centre of the city of Hobart.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought a renewed flood of both convicts and settlers to New South Wales, as the sea lanes became free and as the rate of unemployment and crime in Britain rose. Macquarie presided over a rapid increase in population and economic activity. By the time of his departure the white population had reached approximately 37,000. The colony began to have a life beyond its functions as a penal settlement, and an increasing proportion of the population earned their own living. All this, in Macquarie's eyes, made a new social policy necessary.

As reformer and explorer

Central to Macquarie's policy was his treatment of the emancipists: convicts whose sentences had expired or who had been given conditional or absolute pardons. By 1810 emancipists had outnumbered the free settlers, and Macquarie insisted that they be treated as social equals. He set the tone himself (some people hated it) by appointing emancipists to government positions: Francis Greenway as colonial architect and Dr William Redfern as colonial surgeon. He scandalised settler opinion by appointing an emancipist, Andrew Thompson, as a magistrate, and by inviting emancipists to tea at Government House. In exchange, Macquarie demanded that the ex-convicts live reformed (Christian) lives. He required that former convicts regularly attend church services, and in particular, strongly encouraged formal Christian (Anglican) marriages.

Macquarie was the greatest sponsor of exploration the colony had yet seen. In 1813 he sent Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson across the Blue Mountains, where they found the great plains of the interior. There he ordered the establishment of Bathurst, Australia's first inland city. He appointed John Oxley as surveyor-general and sent him on expeditions up the coast of New South Wales and inland to find new rivers and new lands for settlement. Oxley discovered the rich Northern Rivers and New England regions of New South Wales, and in what is now Queensland he explored the present site of Brisbane.

The street layout of modern central Sydney is based upon a street plan established by Macquarie. The colony's most prestigious buildings were built on Macquarie Street. Some of these still stand today. What has survived of the Georgian 'Rum Hospital' serves as the Parliament House of the state of New South Wales. It is probable that the hospital was designed by Macquarie himself, in collaboration with his wife. The building's wide verandas were evidently inspired by Macquarie's familiarity with English colonial architecture in India. The elaborate stables which Macquarie commissioned for Government House are part of the modern structure housing the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Both of these buildings were constructed by Macquarie in defiance of the British government's ban on expensive public building projects in the colony and reflect the tension between Macquarie's vision of Sydney as a Georgian city and the British government's view of the colony as a dumping ground for convicts to be financed as cheaply as possible.

The origin of the name "Australia" is closely associated with Macquarie. "Australia," as a name for the country which we now know by that name, was suggested by Matthew Flinders, but first used in an official despatch by Macquarie in 1817.

Macquarie's policies, especially his championing of the emancipists and the lavish expenditure of government money on public works, aroused opposition both in the colony and in London, where the government still saw New South Wales as fundamentally a penal colony. His statement, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary, that "free settlers in general... are by far the most discontented persons in the country" and that "emancipated convicts, or persons become free by servitude, made in many instances the best description of settlers", was much held against him.

Brass breast plate presented to the Aboriginal leader Coborn Jackey of the Burrowmunditory tribe by the squatter James White in the district of present day Young, New South Wales.

Macquarie is regarded as having been ambivalent towards the Australian Aborigines. He ordered punitive expeditions against the aborigines. However, when dealing with friendly tribes, he developed a strategy of nominating a 'chief' to be responsible for each of the clans, identified by the wearing of a brass breast-plate engraved with his name and title. Although this was a typically European way of negotiation, it often did reflect the actual status of elders within tribes.

Despite opposition from the British government, Macquarie encouraged the creation of the colony's first bank, the Bank of New South Wales (1817).

Return to Scotland, death and legacy

Leaders of the free settler community complained to London about Macquarie's policies, and in 1819 the government appointed an English judge, John Bigge, to visit New South Wales and report on its administration. Bigge generally agreed with the settlers' criticisms, and his reports on the colony led to Macquarie's resignation in 1821: he had however served longer than any other governor. Bigge also recommended that no governor should again be allowed to rule as an autocrat, and in 1824 the New South Wales Legislative Council, Australia's first legislative body, was appointed to advise the governor.

Macquarie returned to Scotland, and died in London in 1824 while busy defending himself against Bigge's charges. But his reputation continued to grow after his death, especially among the emancipists and their descendants, who were the majority of the Australian population until the gold rushes. Today he is regarded by many as the real founder of Australia as a country, rather than as a prison camp.

The nationalist school of Australian historians have treated him as a proto-nationalist hero. His grave in Mull is maintained by the National Trust and is inscribed The Father of Australia. Macquarie formally adopted the name Australia for the continent, the name earlier proposed by the first circumnavigator of Australia, Matthew Flinders. As well as the many geographical features named after him in his lifetime, he is commemorated by Macquarie University in Sydney.

Macquarie was buried on the Isle of Mull in a remote mausoleum with his wife and son.
Places named after Macquarie
Many places in Australia have been named in Macquarie's honour (some of these were named by Macquarie himself). They include:

At the time of his governorship or shortly thereafter:
Macquarie Island between Tasmania and Antarctica
Lake Macquarie on the coast of New South Wales between Sydney and Newcastle renamed after Macquarie in 1826
Macquarie River a significant inland river in New South Wales which passes Bathurst, Wellington, Dubbo and Warren before entering the Macquarie Marshes and the Barwon River

Mount Macquarie, highest point in the Blayney Shire at 1100 metres above sea level. For a time it was named Mount Lachlan'

Lachlan River, another significant river in New South Wales

Port Macquarie, a city at the mouth of the Hastings River on the North Coast, New South Wales

Macquarie Pass, a route traversing the escarpment between the Illawarra district and the Southern Highlands district of New South Wales

Macquarie Rivulet, a river 23 kilometers long which rises near Robertson, New South Wales and drains into Lake Illawarra

Around Sydney:

*Macquarie Street, one of the principal streets of downtown Sydney, home of the New South Wales Legislative Council

*Macquarie Place a small park in the Sydney CBD

*Macquarie Lighthouse, Australia's first and longest operating navigational light

*The former Fort Macquarie on Bennelong Point

*Macquarie Fields, now a suburb of Sydney but named by surveyor Evans after the governor

In Tasmania:

*Macquarie Street, one of the principal streets of Hobart

*Macquarie Street, one of the principal streets of the historic town of Evandale, a town he founded in 1811

*Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast

*, a small town named by Sir John Franklin in 1837

*Macquarie River

In New South Wales,

*Macquarie Hill, formerly known as Mount Macquarie, in Wingecarribee Shire, Southern Highlands, New South Wales

*Macquarie Pier, built in 1818 on the Hunter River for the port of Newcastle, a breakwater linking Coal Island, now known as Nobby's Head, to the mainland at South Head (now Fort Scratchley)

*The Macquarie Arms Hotel at Windsor, New South Wales built in 1815. It ceased operating in 1840, but reopened in 1874 and has been used continuously as a hotel ever since. Windsor also contains a Macquarie Street.

*Lachlan Macquarie Ward, Parramatta, New South Wales

Many years after his governorship:

Macquarie Park and Macquarie Links, suburbs of Sydney.

Macquarie Shopping Centre, North Ryde

Macquarie, a suburb of Canberra, Australia

Lachlan Street, Macquarie, Canberra, Australia

Division of Macquarie, one of the first 75 Divisions of the Australian House of Representatives created for the Australian Parliament in 1901.

Institutions named after Macquarie:

Macquarie Hospital, Sydney

Macquarie University, Sydney

Macquarie Bank, an investment bank founded in 1970

Places named after/in honour of Mrs Macquarie

Places named after or in honour of Macquarie's wife, Elizabeth (née Campbell; 1778-1835):

Elizabeth Street, a principal street of Hobart, Tasmania named after Macquarie's wife

Elizabeth Street, Sydney, one of the principal streets of Sydney, named after Macquarie's wife

Elizabeth Bay, a bay of Port Jackson and suburb of Sydney

Mrs Macquarie's Chair, a rock cut into a chair shape Mrs Macquarie's Point, a peninsula in Port Jackson, at the end of Mrs Macquarie's Road

Campbelltown, New South Wales, a town founded in 1820, one of a series of settlements south-west of Sydney being established by Macquarie at that time

Meredith Island off the coast of New South Wales was reportedly named after a friend of Mrs Elizabeth Macquarie

Commemoration of Macquarie's birthplace

Mull: The Macquarie connection is distinguished, in particular, by the extremely large number of place names in New South Wales and Tasmania whose origins are derived from locations and features on the Isle of Mull and its environs. Macquarie used his governorship as an opportunity to commemorate, through nostalgic place names, the places and personal associations that he had kept with Mull since his boyhood. Place names include:

Glenorchy, Tasmania

Hamilton, Tasmania

North Esk and South Esk rivers

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