WHAT’S IN A NAME- MACAUSLAND OR MCAUSLAN- AND WHO WAS HE ANYWAY?

As you go about your daily life in this district do you ever wonder why places or streets get their names? Take for instance BLACKROCK! Did you know that it was named for a large black rock which was visible on the low hills adjacent to the selection taken up by John Hull (Snr) who came to the Herbert River district in 1871? He named his selection Blackrock. So have you ever wondered about Macausland Creek? I live between it and Stone River. It is not surprising that these two waterways, so named, run adjacent to each other because Henry Stone and Duncan McAuslan (the creek name is incorrectly spelt) after whom they are named, were on more than nodding acquaintanceship. They not only both worked for the Scott brothers of Valley of Lagoons, were business partners but also, in time, Stone would marry McAuslan’s daughter Anna.

Image: Duncan McAuslan and Henry Stone. Source: Les Pearson, Henry Stone. A Pioneer with Dalrymple Henry Worsley Stone is a well-known figure. He is acknowledged to be the first white settler in the Valley, establishing Vale of Herbert station, a half-way house on the road from the Valley of Lagoons to Cardwell, on behalf of the Scott brothers of the Valley of Lagoons, and then the heifer farm, Stone Hut, on Trebonne Creek. But who was Duncan McAuslan? He was born in Scotland to Humphrey and Mary McAuslan (nee McFarlane). He migrated to New Zealand in 1859 as a 20-year-old to manage a station property owned by George Steele. There in 1864 he married Maria Evered, the sister of his employer’s wife. They were English, and their parents were Robert Evered and Ann Smith. Duncan and Maria had two daughters born in Otago, NZ, Anna Maria, born 3 December 1864 and Mary born 6 September 1866. In 1868, five years after Stone, McAuslan and his family arrived at the Vale of Herbert. They travelled by ship to Bowen and then overland, first to the Valley of Lagoons and then down over the Seaview Range to the Vale of Herbert. Duncan had been engaged to be the head stockman on that property. Maria McAuslan was to keep house and cooked for Henry Stone and Walter Scott. McAuslan was described as a fine horseman and stockman and he and his wife as good people. It appears that Mary was brought up working with her father and learned all the skills usually acquired by boys, riding and breaking in horses, mustering stock, driving a buggy, killing and butchering beasts, treating animals for injury, leather work, chopping wood and so forth. Anna too was a capable horsewoman and did a range of farm work. Both women were skilled seamstresses. The whole family was known for its integrity and high standards of behaviour. In 1869 the McAuslan family moved from the Vale of Herbert to the Trebonne area where McAuslan worked for Stone. McAuslan was a skilled thatcher and he assisted in building Stone Hut (so named not because it was made of stone but for Henry Stone). Coming from Cardwell Stone Hut was the first European built and inhabited dwelling. Stone Hut, first owned by the Scott brothers, served as an outstation to the Vale of Herbert. It was acquired by Stone in 1873 and he called the 1 000-acre property Ashstone. The hut stood somewhere between Trebonne Post Office and the flats at 10 Meyer Street.

Image: Stone Hut. Source: Queensland State Library McAuslan’s employment for the Scott brothers ended on 26 February 1879. His 16-year-old daughter, Anna Maria, became engaged to Stone in 1880 when Stone was 44 years old, the same year that he resigned from his position at the Valley of Lagoons. He was then already living at Ashstone on the Herbert. McAuslan also went into partnership with Stone around this time in a property called Wairuna on the Tablelands. Maria and Mary meanwhile, were still at the Valley of Lagoons until 17 June 1880. Wairuna was later sold to James Atkinson. After selling Ashstone to A.J. Traill to grow sugar cane (Trebonne Plantation), Stone settled in 1883 at the Grange, Stone River with his wife Anna. The Grange was a grand house sitting atop a slight rise.

Image: The Grange. Source: Queensland State Library The McAuslans were happy with the match as Stone was well regarded. Little did they know he was addicted to laudanum which he had been prescribed when he lived in the Herbert River district for the treatment of coastal fevers. The marriage, officiated by the First Bishop of north Queensland, Bishop G.H. Stanton, took place at Greenfields on 1 May 1883. It was the only marriage performed by the Bishop in the district. Greenfields was the selection McAuslan had taken up in 1881 adjacent to Stone’s Grange on the Stone River.

Image: Samuel Griffith with farmers, Lower Herbert. Henry Stone and Duncan McAuslan are in the group. Source: Queensland State Library Around the time of Anna’s marriage her father began complaining of chest pains which extended to his left arm and experienced choking fits which were so severe, he had to lie down. He sought medical advice in Townsville. On 22 July, McAuslan and his other daughter Mary set off together from Greenfields for a Sunday afternoon ride. Some time after crossing Lannercost Creek, and around five o’clock her father sent her home, exhorting her to not forget to round the bullocks up. At four o’clock the next morning his horse appeared at the stockyard with its saddle and bridle on but no rider. Stone was called and after sending a messenger to alert the police of the situation, together with an Aboriginal tracker he started searching around where Mary led them to – the last place she had seen her father. Two and half hours later they found McAuslan’s dog and then unfortunately, McAuslan dead. He was lying on his left side with his head resting on his left arm. The right hand was extended holding a white handkerchief and his stock whip was under his right hand. When the constable arrived, he examined the body and found that there was no indication of foul play so Stone as Magistrate authorized McAuslan to be interred where he was found. The Constable and Stone agreed that the time required to negotiate the rough terrain, and needing to cross Lannercost Creek, in addition to the deterioration of the body it was not possible to bring McAuslan back to Greenfields. A cast iron headstone inscribed: “Sacred to the memory of Duncan McAuslan who died on this spot. This tablet was erected by his affectionate wife and children” still stands to this day. After her husband’s death Maria acted as housekeeper for her daughter and Stone. disposing of Greenfields to William Thomas White who stocked it with Jersey cows and ran a large dairy there for some years. Mary married John Hull on 31 July 1887. Hull and his brother Robert had 28 sq miles of land at Mt Fox and were breeding horses. Sadly, on 2 January 1892 Maria was killed in a buggy accident when travelling from The Grange to Ingham. The path was still a rough track and when the buggy hit a stump she and the driver were both thrown. Maria sustained a fractured skull and died half an hour later. She was buried at the Grange as were babies that Anna referred to as her “little mites” which she had miscarried or who had died at birth. Those graves with concrete headstones are no longer there having been consumed by farmland by a later owner of the property. The grave site is thought to be a short distance east of the Johnson graveyard reserve which is located on former Grange land. Maria left £100 to Anna but the bulk of her estate to Mary who purchased a property which she called Cressbrook, at Evelyn on the Atherton Tablelands. In 1904 Stone sold The Grange to the Johnstone family and moved to Evelyn taking up land close to his sister-in-law Mary. He called the house on the property Mantacute. Just months before Anna died they moved to Cressbrook. She died on 12 July 1913. On her death Mary Hull looked after Stone at Cressbrook as he became infirm and blind. When he died he left his Evelyn property and some allotments in Cardwell to her. Mary Hull died on 31 October 1940. McAuslan as a surname died with Duncan but some descendants continued association with the name by giving it as a second Christian name. SOURCES: This content has been drawn from works by: Douglas R. Barrie, The Grave Situation. Recording Herbert River District Graves, Bemerside: Douglas R. Barrie, 2021. Les Pearson, The Hulls of “Cressbrook”, Evelyn, North Queensland. The Story of a Pioneering Family in the Herbert River Catchment, Brinsmead: L. M. Pearson, 1998 Les Pearson, Henry Stone. A Pioneer with Dalrymple, Brinsmead: L. M. Pearson, 2007.

The Herbert River Valley - home of the 'Queenslander' house

Mauritian planter Charles Leon Burguez in front of his Gairloch home, 1880. (Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Council Library photograph collection)

Bachelors' Quarters, Stone Hut 1865. (Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Council Library photograph collection) 

Why have Queenslanders living in areas prone to floods and mosquito born fevers abandoned the ‘Queenslander’ house?

Wherever Europeans built homes and even businesses in tropical areas in colonial times a noticeable adaption was to raise the structure on high stumps or piles and encase it in verandahs which provided a covered walkway around the entire structure. Interiors were accessed from the verandahs via French doors and adjustable sash windows provided additional ventilation. Kitchens were detached in order to keep the heat and danger of fire away from the main structure.

 In Queensland this came to be called the “Queenslander.” The intent was to not only raise the house out of the miasmas that were thought to cause fevers (particularly malaria) but above the threat of high flood levels. It also afforded the best way to syphon breezes through the house assisted by ‘whirlybird ventilation vents’.  Even if later more economical houses were built lower and without the enfolding verandahs they were still built on stumps.

Alan Frost who has written on the Queenslander observed that our northern sugar lands gave rise to “quintessential Queensland feature”: the Queenslander house. He goes so far as to assert that “It was on the banks of the Herbert River that settlers first set their houses high.” He claims that they did this for one particular reason: “their medical knowledge told them that they might avoid malaria by sleeping off the ground.” On the Herbert they started out on two foot stumps and not enclosed with verandahs, but with Henry Stone’s Stone Hut the trend started in the district to build houses on seven to eight foot stumps until by 1875 it was observed by a visitor to the Valley that houses “on high piles [was] a peculiarity …everywhere noticeable.” Those first Queenslanders were also built on the highest ground and away from large trees where pools of stagnant water would provide a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Bats inhabited the ceilings, eating the mosquitoes while breezes blew the mosquitoes away from the house.

As Tony Raggatt wrote in his opinion piece in the Townsville Bulletin (February 2, 2019, 39) of the high-set Queenslander he lives in: “Not only are they cooler for the ventilation they provide under the home and are raised above the jaws of the armies of termites that patrol the garden, they are designed to allow floodwaters to flow underneath them.” He observes that if the houses have not been built under there is little to be lost from water damage.

We watch with dismay the disaster unfolding in Townsville this February 2019. Ingham, this time, has not been inundated to the extent feared. Every summer we wait in trepidation knowing so well the nature of the Herbert River in flood and the havoc it causes.

Fortunately, because of a civil society, efficient government, strict structural building standards, and numerous bodies to call on for emergency services we have not witnessed in Townsville the scale of property destruction, mayhem and death that occurs when such disasters hit in less developed countries. Yet the property loss and damage, and the fear, distress and discomfort experienced by Townsville residents during this event cannot be made light of. The physical recovery will take years, and the psychological scars will linger forever.

While it is being called a one in one hundred year event it still does beg the question about where councils have allowed homes to be built, the failure of land developers to site houses responsibly and ergonomically and the style of housing that we have come to favour because of taste or economics: low-set brick or concrete boxes lined with non-durable materials such as gyprock; stifling in summer, freezing in winter, walls exposed to blazing afternoon sun, ill-placed to catch passing breezes and only bearable to live in with air-conditioners full-bore.

Whatever the answer to why Queenslanders have abandoned the ‘Queenslander’ house — why they generally fail to site houses ergonomically, continue to build low-set homes in areas prone to floods and mosquito born fevers (ie: as on the flood plains of Ingham) — perhaps it is time this “quintessential Queensland” architectural style originating in the Herbert River Valley is re-evaluated and appreciated anew.

Source: Frost, A. “The Queensland High-Set House. Its Origins, Diffusion, Refinement and Sociology.” Unpublished paper, 1992.

Frost, Alan. East Coast Country: A North Queensland Dreaming. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1996.