William Cox

by Richard Cox

  William was now preoccupied with getting across the Fish River, having already built 10 bridges. The Campbell River would be the final obstacle, and he was pursuing a direct line west towards it. However, he did note on 29 December ‘A fine morning, which the birds seem most to enjoy on the banks of the river. The shrubs and flowers are also extremely fragrant.’ He wrote to the Governor ‘with the proceedings down to this period, but shall not send it away until my return from the western excursion’. This ‘excursion’, though he made it sound as simple as a trip to the seaside, was to be gruelling and the last one he described, in the longest entry of the whole diary.

  The next entry was on New Year’s Day 1815, a Thursday. William and his party crossed the Fish River at noon, leaving Gorman in charge. They headed for the Campbell, crossing the Emu Valley and then the Sidmouth Valley, ‘a most beautiful one’, where they found many kangaroos and wild turkeys. On the first evening they crossed the Campbell and camped. The next day, heading north-north-west on their horses, they ‘followed the course of the river about three miles across the O’Connell’s plains to the point where the Macquarie and Campbell rivers unite, at 11.30, where we sat down for the day’. The Macquarie had been named by Evans in November 1813.

  They were now into the lands of which Macquarie had such high hopes. William commented that ‘At Sidmouth valley I never saw finer grass, or more on the same quantity of land in a meadow in England’. This was confirmed in the secretary’s account.6 The Governor was highly gratified by the appearance of the country … gently rising grounds and fertile plains. Judging from the height of its banks and its general width, the Campbell River must be in some parts be of considerable magnitude, but the extraordinary drought which has apparently prevailed … as throughout the colony for the last three years … has reduced this river … [to] a chain of ponds. At the time this must have seemed extraordinary, in view of the torrential weather on the mountains. It also underlines that the hazards of farming have not changed in the two centuries since. Campbell noticed great numbers of ‘the water platypus mole’ in the river pools.

  Thus over three days William’s group had crossed the Campbell and ridden the whole length from the Macquarie River back to ‘where we are building a bridge in the day’ over the Fish. The Fish is the main tributary of the Macquarie, joined by the Campbell. ‘The whole of the line, about 20 miles due west, would make most excellent grazing farms,’ William wrote, explaining ‘This is the south side of the Fish River I am describing. On the north side I have not yet been.’ He had been on the south side ever since he crossed the river. When they got back he ‘ordered a bullock to be killed for the use of the people, which I had issued to them in lieu of giving them a ration of salt pork … when the men were mustered this morning they were extremely clean, and looked cheerful and hearty’.

  On 2 January William sent off letters to the Governor and the Commissary. They were 21 miles beyond the mountain, which by the secretary’s account would have been several miles short of the Fish River, and were faced by yet another difficult hill. On 3 January ‘the men finished filling in the piers at each end of the bridge’. Some of the logs had to be brought three miles (he had originally noted the lack of local timber for sawing). He further explored the south bank, but found gullies and less good land. Quite apart from the road, he constantly had in mind the future farming settlements it would serve. Next day he went with Hobby to mark the line of road from the Emu Valley to the Sidmouth Valley (both run roughly north to south) and in the evening moved the gang of 12 to the Emu. Sending so many men home had depleted his workforce. To his disappointment, the cart of provisions from Parramatta failed to arrive.

  Then on 5 January, quite suddenly, the strain of the long and punishing endeavour overtook William and he fell sick himself, the last of the team to do so. ‘About midnight I was taken violently ill with excruciating pains just above my left hip.’ Perhaps he had spent too long in the saddle. ‘In about two hours it became easier, when I got into a perspiration and slept a little. Was in considerable pain until about 9, when I again dozed, and got up at 11 considerably better.’ There was no medical orderly on the expedition, so William had to treat himself. This may be another reason why the diary ended abruptly two days later, after a brief 7 January entry.

  Some consolation was that on the day he fell ill the Fish River bridge was completed. No doubt forcing himself to write, William noted that it was ‘strong and well built’ with stone piers of 25 feet at each end. ‘The span across is 25 ft. more, which is planked with split logs. It is altogether 75 ft. long and 16ft. wide.’ On 6 January he ‘crossed the river over the new bridge with the caravan and two carts, as also our horses, and went as far as Sidmouth Valley’. He marked the road ‘from the valley to the next creek, where we have a bridge to build, as also one in the valley’. His final entry, on 7 January, recorded his ordering the men further forward and himself riding to the head of the Sidmouth Valley. ‘Returned by the hills, which are very fine. An emu and a kangaroo passed quietly along.’ These last words conjure up a vivid picture of William in his paradise, riding in the wilderness. But he was quickly back at work at home. On 15 January 1815 he submitted an estimate to government for the construction of two bridges and the road of Bridge Street at Windsor at a cost of £200. This estimate included details of the number of trees that would be needed and how many logs could be fixed in place in a day – on all of which he was now an expert.4

  The road was completed at the Bathurst plains on 14 January 1815. When the Governor arrived at these plains on 4 May he ‘remained a week, which time he occupied in making excursions in different directions through the adjoining country on both sides of the river’.5 Macquarie remarked in his own journal on 5 May that the Bathurst plains extended ‘on both sides of the Macquarie River for 11 miles and nearly three miles each side’. He was almost ecstatic about the land, which was beautiful and ‘very fit for Sheep Walks’. This was where William and his sons were to make their fortunes as pastoralists. On 7 May he fixed on a site for the future town of Bathurst ‘in honor of the most noble Earl of that name’.

  On several occasions Macquarie met small groups of ‘natives’. He observed one such group, whose members showed ‘great surprise at seeing so many strangers’, to be ‘very inoffensive and cleanly in their persons’. On 10 May he gave three men presents of ‘slops and tomahawks’ and ordered that they should be given plenty to eat from the public stores. These were members of the Wiradjuri who, only 10 years later, were to be protagonists and losers in the ‘Black War’ around Bathurst, resulting from the pressure of white settlement on their ancestral lands.

  Secretary Campbell’s account finished: ‘The road constructed by Mr Cox and the party under him commences at Emu Ford … and is thence carried 101½ miles to the flagstaff at Bathurst’. He continued: ‘The Governor cannot conclude this account of his tour without offering his best acknowledgements to William Cox, Esq, for the important service he has rendered to the colony in so short a period of time’ and ‘shall have great pleasure in recommending his meritorious services on this occasion to the favourable consideration of his Majesty’s Ministers’.6 This Macquarie did, but no honour was gazetted, although William was granted 2000 acres at Bathurst, near the junction of the Macquarie and Cudgegong Rivers. This became Hereford farm, very close to the township.

  More formally, Macquarie wrote to Bathurst on 24 June saying, ‘The … road is as good as the Nature of the Mountainous hilly Country, thro’ which it is made, Could possibly Admit … [the road] thus constructed by Mr Cox, does him and the Party, who worked under his direction, Infinite Credit’. The Governor went on to say ‘I therefore beg leave to recommend Mr Cox in the Strongest Manner to the favourable Consideration of your Lordship’. He asked authorization to pay William £300 from colonial funds and give him ‘a handsome Grant of Land in the New Country’. He further asked permission to appoint a commandant at Bathurst at a salary of £200 a year and recommended William fo
r the post, ‘he being in My Opinion eminently well qualified … Mr Cox is a Sensible, intelligent Man, of great arrangement, and the best agriculturalist in the colony’. Macquarie envisaged the job as only being necessary for two to three years and indeed William Lawson was appointed as superintendent in 1819.7

  Obelisk monument to the 1813 explorers and William Cox on Mount York. The plaque reads: ‘The first road over the Blue Mountains was completed in January 1815. The commission to execute this was entrusted by Governor Macquarie to William Cox Esq. J.P. Lieut 102nd Reg of Clarendon, Windsor, died 15.3.1837’ (Author’s photo)

  While Macquarie considered that under a normal contract the road would have taken three years, Evans had suggested three months (though with 50 men). William constructed those 101 miles in under six months and without the loss of a single life. Yet settlement on the Bathurst plains did not begin in any numbers until after Macquarie had left in 1821. The Governor had told Bathurst, in his 24 June 1815 despatch, ‘I shall not make any Grants of Land in the New Discovered Country, Until such time as I shall be honored with your Lordship’s Commands’. He did not want to put the government to the considerable expense of sending settlers there, the only expense at that moment being of six soldiers and six labourers. Other reasons for not settling the area were that he wanted to allocate all the land on the Cumberland Plain first and also feared that convicts sent to Bathurst (as farm workers) would escape. Given Macquarie’s earlier astonishment that no one had previously found a passage across the mountains, and that the 1813 expedition had been prompted by the army worm and exhaustion of the soil on the plain, this restraint made little obvious sense.

  However, Macquarie was as good as his word over the road workers’ reward. Three received free pardons, one a ticket of leave and all the rest were emancipated. The superintendents received land grants and cows. William not only made his name and earned a place in the history of the colony – to this day there many Cox roads in New South Wales – he emerged financially a great deal better off. He now had both the £300 reward and the annual £200 salary at Bathurst on top of his existing £50 a year as a magistrate at Windsor. His career as a government adviser acquired a much greater impetus than just as a contractor: he accompanied the Governor on another tour across the mountains in October 1815, was sent to explore the Lachlan River in 1817, and helped provision Oxley’s expedition in 1818.

  The price was that for the next three years William’s activity was divided between Bathurst and his home at Clarendon on the Hawkesbury, a minimum of five days apart on horseback, more in a carriage. His full career as a pastoralist did not develop until the 1820s, although he had flocks of sheep at Clarendon and could fairly be described as a landed gentleman there. But his becoming one had to wait on these years spent as an official, which themselves throw light both on William and on the way the colony was run, while the administration of Clarendon is a case study in the management of an estate, of its convict labour and of his wife Rebecca’s role in that enterprise.

  Lake Lyell on Coxs River near Lithgow. Damming the river to provide water for a thermal power station has greatly reduced the river’s flow (Author’s photo)

  7 A Family Enterprise

  Having been appointed as commandant at Bathurst, William’s life was to be divided for the next three years between the ‘New Discovered Country’ and his home estate of Clarendon. His activities were therefore more sharply split between his increasing official duties and the development of his own estates than they had been before, or would be again. So the present chapter deals with his estates, their management and to some extent with the continuing emergence of the colonial landed gentry. The next will examine his complicated official life, as magistrate and administrator, which had considerable ups and down and exposed him to much criticism, as well as compliments.

  The greatest expansion of the Cox estates, like that of most pastoralists, took place on the Bathurst plains. But in 1815 Bathurst itself was a mere handful of simple thatched houses, as depicted by Lewin, the official artist who accompanied Macquarie on his tour of inspection. Although one might have expected the opening up of the area to have been fairly immediate, in fact it was not. There was a long correspondence between Bathurst and Macquarie about this. On 30 January 1817 Bathurst reminded the Governor that ‘You cannot but be aware how much the Length and uncertainty of a voyage to New South Wales must at all times interfere with a very regular communication’.1 There is a note of aggravation in that all too true remark, foreshadowing the official discontent with Macquarie which culminated with Commissioner Bigge being sent out in 1819 to find out what was really going on.

  More immediately, as regards land grants, in July 1818 Bathurst ordered that land grants to ‘Civil and Military Officers should be altogether discontinued’, although such officers as were ‘meritorious’ and settling in the colony after retirement could be favoured.2 This crossed with a letter, which Macquarie wrote home in May 1818, about ‘poor’ settlers being permitted to come out, of whom he said: ‘the moment their Indulgences cease, they Contrive in some underhand way to Sell their Farms and take to lawless pursuits, keeping low Public Houses, or becoming itinerant Merchants, Hawkers and Pedlars’. He urged that no more should be allowed out ‘for at least three years to come’.

  Instead, only settlers who brought out with them ‘a Clear Capital of at least Five Hundred Pounds … [for] … agricultural pursuits’ should be allowed.3 A few years later Edward Cox asked for land on this basis, supported by his father’s guarantees. More immediately, the historian John Ritchie records that 56 men did so in 1818, that in 1819 applicants numbered 133, and in 1820 the number was 237, most of whom ‘wished to farm sheep’. But those were applicants. In 1819 Bathurst only approved 24, including one woman.4 Even so, this helped to increase ‘demands that New South Wales should be treated less as a gaol and more as a colony’.5 Apparently because of that, Lord Liverpool, leading the home administration, caused the move to be restrained, although the long-distance debate continued to the end of Macquarie’s rule. On 28 November 1821 he wrote to Bathurst proposing a scale of grants from 100 to a maximum of 2000 acres, however great a prospective settler’s capital might be, justifying it by referring to ‘the present Scarcity of Land within One Hundred miles of the Capital’.6 He was obviously not considering land beyond the mountains, for reasons explained below. The expansion westwards, in which William and his sons so vigorously participated, only took place after Macquarie’s departure and increased between 1825 and 1830 for a number of reasons.

  The Blue Mountains historian, Chris Cunningham, suggests that this was really due to lack of interest, although he takes no account of Macquarie’s restrictive attitude. Cunningham writes: ‘Despite a further drought in the Sydney region in 1817, there was hardly a rush to take advantage of the western lands. In 1821 there were only 287 people in the Bathurst settlement and most of these were convicts.’7 The colony’s entire population, exclusive only of the military, was only 36,968.8 There may have been a simple lack of demand, although stock was allowed to be pastured temporarily beyond the mountains in 1816 after a drought, but not every potential pastoralist was uninterested. The fortunes of William Cox and William Lawson illustrate this, while expansion formed the background to Cox’s three years as commandant.

  In any case, Macquarie’s illogical caution over settlement was a major restraint. Even though few men were needed to shepherd large flocks, the Governor feared that convicts working on the other side of the mountains might escape. From 1816 he had a military guard posted at Springwood on the mountain road. Another reason for his caution was that not all the Cumberland Plain had been taken up. Macquarie apparently discounted the floods, the caterpillars, and that the fertility of the farming land around Parramatta, based upon shale, was becoming exhausted, which had been the reason for Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth’s 1813 expedition. His reluctance to allow expansion is shown by the 2000 acre grant he gave William for building the road still not ha
ving been officially laid out when Bigge went to Bathurst in 1819. In his report Bigge wrote ‘Mr Cox occupies a considerable tract of land immediately opposite the station [government buildings] … No grant has been executed upon this land but I understood from Mr Oxley [the surveyor] that it was intended to be conferred on Mr Cox.’9 This was the farm William named Hereford.

  During this decade of 1811–20 William’s own holdings on the Cumberland Plain were supplemented in a chequerboard of ad hoc acquisitions. Several appear not have been too scrupulous. For example, James Watson, who had worked on the Blue Mountains road, sold 100 acres to him, subsequently telling Bigge, ‘He gave me £25 for it’.10 Samuel Marsden, the chaplain who was more successful as a pastoralist than as a priest, also collected land piece by piece. The complexity of William’s holdings was eventually shown by his 18 page will, which lists 29 plots of land.11

  In fact, this was misleading, since William had worked collectively with his sons in a family enterprise from as early as 1804 and the family’s Mudgee holdings alone came to 100,000 acres. As Brian Fletcher says of Macarthur, Marsden and Cox: ‘They were enterprising settlers who were constantly seeking to improve their possessions’.12 Meanwhile, nothing that William recorded up to 1819 about agriculture mentioned the plight of the unfortunate Aborigines, although he had to deal as a magistrate with a particular outbreak on the Hawkesbury in 1816. Conflict with them had begun on the Cumberland Plain from the time of the First Fleet in 1788.