Glengallan Homestead is a heritage-listed homestead on the New England Highway, Glengallan, Southern Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1864 to 1904. It is also known as Glengallan Head Station. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992 and is open to the public.
History
Glengallan Homestead, built 1867–1868, is located on the southwestern slope of Mount Marshall at the mouth of a wide valley, running west from Cunningham's Gap, near the junction of the Cunningham and New England Highways approximately north of Warwick.
This valley was the original Darling Downs, discovered and named by explorer Allan Cunningham (1791–1839) in 1827 in honour of the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Ralph Darling (1775–1858), and the name Darling Downs was later used to identify the surrounding region of open rolling country with rich and deep soils. Cunningham found a gap in the dividing range, and the following year, while visiting Moreton Bay, he found a gap which he thought was the same one he had discovered previously, and which became known as Cunningham's Gap.
This open country had been carefully and deliberately maintained by the Aboriginal people in what has been called firestick farming, an annual pattern of controlled burns to protect certain resource areas and pasture for native grazing animals. The Aboriginal burning pattern was disrupted within the first years of the runs being taken up, and the local Aboriginal population were soon killed off.
The unsettled districts outside the nineteen counties around Sydney had been thrown open to squatters by the 1836 licence system. This system proved ineffective and in 1839 a new Act was passed. This Act provided for an annual licence fee to be paid, determined per head of stock on the run, and also provided administration by Commissioners of Crown Lands. However, the squatters still had no permanency of land tenure, and in 1847 Orders in Council were introduced which allowed further 14 year leases for established unsettled runs on payment of an annual fee per head of stock. The Orders in Council also gave the run holders the pre-emptive right to purchase the land for its fair value in an unimproved state at less than one pound per acre at the completion of the lease. Pre-emption was allowed to continue until 1868, and meant that nearly all the best land, creek frontages, water holes and portions guarding leasehold areas were pre-empted. It allowed the squatters to hold onto their land, but also plunged many of them into debt often resulting in financial ruin.
Patrick Leslie (1815–1881) born at Warthill, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the second son of William Leslie, ninth laird of Warthill and eight of Folla, had sailed from London in 1834 and arrived in New South Wales in May 1835. He gained pastoralist experience under the Macarthurs of Camden, and in 1836 went to manage the property of his uncle Davidson on the Krui River at Colleroi. By 1839 Leslie had rented Dunheved farm at Penrith, and when his brothers Walter and George arrived he decided to look for new land north of the limits of settlement. In 1840 he started with a large party for the Clarence River district, and then resolved to look at the Darling Downs. With one companion, a convict named Murphy, he followed Cunningham's trail and relocated the Darling Downs and decided on the area that was to become Toolburra and Canning Downs for his first station. Walter Leslie and Ernest Dalrymple followed with the flocks, and in 1840 the Leslies became the first settlers on the Darling Downs.
Ernest Dalrymple took up a run next to the Leslies, and all runs on the Downs were taken up by June 1841. The Leslies originally selected all the land which became Toolburra, South Toolburra, Glengallan, Gladfield, Maryvale, Warwick and Canning Downs, and had taken up a far greater area than which they were entitled under a New South Wales licence. They had to dispose of the areas that became Glengallan, Sandy Creek, and Fred (Bracker) the German's Creek (Rosenthal) to the Aberdeen Company.
The Leslies negotiated permission to bring supplies from the Moreton Bay settlement, even though it was not open to commerce. The settlement opened in 1842 however, and thereafter all the Downs squatters (run holders) were free to have supplies sent in and wool sent out to Ipswich, from where they could be transported by river to Brisbane.
In 1841–42 the Leslie brothers sold approximately to brothers Colin and John Campbell, Scottish immigrants, who named it Glengallan Run. The Leslies noted they had disposed of the buildings and the right of the lower part of the run for which they had no use and they had received for it. This description may have included Glengallan, Fred the German's Creek and Sandy Creek.
By 1844, Campbell and Co were in liquidation, but the partnership recovered and after 1844 it appears that licences for Glengallan were issued in the sole name of Colin Campbell. Another brother, Archibald, managed the property from 1845–48 and during this time the stock numbers increased considerably, but disease broke out in 1847. Glengallan was offered for sale in November 1847, but this was not successful.
The Campbell's first encampment had been at Freestone Creek, an area which has become known as Campbell Plains, but it proved unsuitable for sheep due to wooded areas and dingo habitat. The camp subsequently moved to Glengallan Creek, known as Gap Creek, near the slope of what became Mt Marshall. It has been suggested that their c.1842 residence, described as a rude but substantial hut, would have been close to the site of the present homestead being close to the creek but above flood level, with expansive views of the surrounding area and a relatively flat terrace of land, but the exact location has not been positively identified. The 1846 diary of the New South Wales Commissioner for Crown Lands, Darling Downs District, stated the run was 120 square miles with 15,000 head of sheep, 400 cattle and 30 horses. In 1848, a NSW Government Gazette noted Colin Campbell holding leases for Glengallan totalling . Glengallan was located in a pivotal position on the main roads, which have changed slightly in position, from Toowoomba/Drayton heading towards the south and from the Downs properties heading towards Cunningham's Gap.
The NSW Government Gazette published a list of transfers of runs dated 11 October 1848 recording the transfer of Glengallan from Colin Campbell to the unrelated Robert Tertius Campbell (1811–1887) with whom Colin Campbell banked, and it appears that the three Campbell brothers died in 1853. Robert Tertius Campbell, whose father was a Director of the Bank of New South Wales, was related to the Campbells of Duntroon in the Monaro district, and had been lessee of Jondaryan in 1845, gained the lease of North Branch of Swamps Run in 1849, and continued leasing Canning Creek until 1852. The NSW Government Gazette dated 30 July 1852 recorded that RT Campbell transferred his interest in Glengallan to his partner Charles Henry Marshall, who had previously been his managing clerk and whom he took into partnership in Glengallan it appears in 1849–50. RT Campbell then moved on to the newly opened Burnett District.
In December 1851 and March 1852, the artist Conrad Martens (1801–1878), who had arrived in Sydney in 1835, stayed at Glengallan during the course of his five-month trip to the Brisbane area and the Darling Downs in search of painting commissions. He travelled through the country making pencil drawings, many of which he used as the basis for water colours and oil paintings, which he executed on his return to Sydney. These drawings and paintings are some of the few illustrations of Queensland during this time, and his sketches of Glengallan show the main homestead as two timber buildings surrounded by verandahs and situated close together.
Charles Henry Marshall (1818–1874) was born in Mauritius and had a background in Leith in Scotland and Totnes in Devon, England. He came to Australia in 1842 as Bookkeeper for the Van Diemen's Land Company at Circular Head (Stanley) and was Superintendent of the company's Woolnorth Station at Cape Grim from 1846 to 1849 after which he moved to Queensland. He was appointed Magistrate in 1849–50 and took John Deuchar into partnership in 1855. Marshall was an active member of the Church of England, and in 1858 gave of land in Warwick to the church as the site for a parsonage and glebe. A parsonage, named Hillside, was built on the site for Reverend Benjamin Glennie. He visited England in 1857 where he married his wife, Charlotte Augusta Dring Drake (daughter of Sir William Henry Drake). The couple returned to Glengallan in early 1858, but left again and returned to England in 1860. Charles travelled to Queensland alone in late 1864 and arranged for Deuchar to buy out his interest. Marshall retired from the partnership and departed for England in April 1865, but was to return to Australia due to Deuchar's financial difficulties in 1870.
During their partnership, Marshall and Deuchar established the famous Glengallan Merino flock and Shorthorn stud.
John Deuchar (1820–1872) was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and with his sister Beatrice migrated to New South Wales in 1839. He gained pastoral experience in the Hunter River district and c.1842 drove sheep from Maitland to the Darling Downs for the Aberdeen Co, and later for the North British Australian Co. From 1844 he was overseer at Goomburra, and after two years with the support of Walter Grey of Ipswich, he bought Canal Creek well stocked with Talgai Merinos. In 1848 Deuchar sold Canal Creek, and succeeded Fred Bracker as manager of Rosenthal for the Aberdeen Co, and became travelling superintendent of the company's properties. In 1829 Bracker, from Mecklenburg, Germany, had brought to New South Wales a flock of Saxon Merinos of the Rambouillet family from Prince Esterhazy's Silesian flock for the Aberdeen Co. On Rosenthal, Deuchar had the first two thoroughbred Merino rams on the Darling Downs; Camden Billy from John Macarthur's stud at Camden Park, already there when he took over, and German Billy, which he brought with him from Canal Creek. A fine Merino stud was developed from a blend of Spanish Negretti Cabana and Rambouillet strains, developing long, superfine wool. Deuchar began breeding cattle, especially Shorthorns, and brought to Rosenthal Lord Raglan, the first imported Shorthorn bull to reach the Downs, and well bred cattle from the Australian Agricultural Co's properties farther south. He also developed a horse racing stud, and his stallion Grey Arab, bought from one of the Aberdeen Co's properties, sired many fine horses which Deuchar rode successfully at race meetings both on the flat and over fences.
In 1855 Deuchar went into partnership with Marshall on Glengallan, and continued his stock breeding. His overseer William Anderson had been at school with him and had come to the colony on the same ship. Deuchar insisted on building up his own teams of employees, and on taking over Rosenthal and Glengallan he dispersed the families on the properties and replaced them with other employees already known to him.
In 1857 Deuchar married Eliza Charlotte Lee, the sister of Dr Washington Lee of Warwick, in Paddington Sydney, and travelled to Europe in 1858–60 where he purchased stock which would become important in building up Glengallan's flocks. In Germany Deuchar selected ten rams and ten ewes from the flocks of Baron Von Malzahn at Lenschow in Mecklenburg, of which Marshall made a further selection of ten rams and fifteen ewes in 1862, the last time that outside blood was introduced and the Glengallan Merinos were bred up from this stock.