Edward Nucella Emmett (18 February 1817 – 18 March 1874) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

born

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

and politician, briefly a member of the

Victorian Legislative Council The Victorian Legislative Council (VLC) is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Victoria, Australia, the lower house being the Legislative Assembly. Both houses sit at Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne. The Legislative Co ...

Career

Emmett worked as an

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...

eer in Adelaide, South Australia. He lived in

Bendigo Bendigo ( ) is a city in Victoria, Australia, located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital. As of 2019, Bendigo had an urban population of 100,991, makin ...

from 1852 to 1870, first as a gold digger and then an auctioneer.Parliament of Victoria, former members Emmett, Edward Nucella
/ref> He was said to be the first discoverer of the Hustler's Reef near Bendigo. With Hugh Smith, he established the Bendigo Bank (subsequently purchased by the then Bank of Victoria). He later started a brewery and a number of mining companies. To secure Bendigo's future, Emmett worked to establish a reliable water supply, and was the main promoter of the Bendigo Waterworks Company (now part of

Coliban Water Coliban Water is a regional water corporation in Victoria, Australia, established on 1 July 1992. It manages, maintains and operates more than 50 reservoirs and water storage basins across North-Central Victoria. The service area includes 55 town ...

), established in 1858. Given the financial problems of the Victorian colonial government, and the lack of local government funds, he worked to privately fund the new water supply. The Sandhurst (Bendigo) council controlled a 22-acre water reserve site along the Bendigo Creek at

Golden Square Golden Square, in Soho, the City of Westminster, London, is a mainly hardscaped garden square planted with a few mature trees and raised borders in Central London flanked by classical office buildings. Its four approach ways are north and sout ...

. With funding from wealthy investors in Melbourne he formed the company which was incorporated by parliament. Joseph Brady was the first engineer for the project, which made use of water from the

Coliban River The Coliban River, an inland perennial river of the northcentral catchment, part of the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the lower Riverina bioregion and Central Highlands region of the Australian state of Victoria. The headwaters of the C ...

. He went to Sydney after 1870, where he was a broker, legal manager and mining agent.

Government

Emmett was nominated as a Member of the

from 29 August 1853 to September 1853, but resigned in early September, after being rejected by a gold diggers' meeting and may never have taken his seat. He was first chairman of the Sandhurst (Bendigo) municipal council and, subsequently, of the municipality of Raywood, of which he was also the first chairman. After the sale of the bank, he acted in a number of official roles, including town valuator, and conducted first government land sales. He was a member of first local court (1855), and mining registrar at Raywood (1863).

Family

Emmett was the son of

Henry James Emmett Henry James Emmett (1782–1848) was an English born public servant. He was in the War Office in England for seven years before emigrating to Van Diemen's Land in 1819 where he filled a number of roles in government. He and his family travelled ...

and Mary Elizabeth Thompson Emmett (''née'' Townsend) who immigrated to Van Diemen's Land from England with their young family in 1819 fifteen years after the establishment of

Hobart Town Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-smalle ...

(1804). He had two families in South Australia, abandoning his

common law wife Common-law marriage, also known as non-ceremonial marriage, marriage, informal marriage, or marriage by habit and repute, is a legal framework where a couple may be considered married without having formally registered their relation as a civil ...

, Sarah Ann Dolby, and their three children before the end of 1856, he had married Sarah Spottiswood Blackham in 1849 and moved with her to Bendigo (then called Sandhurst). After his death, his widow and their only surviving daughter, Bertha, returned to Bendigo, where in 1876 it became known that they were in straitened circumstance with a number of gifts made to them. Later in that year she married

Archibald Forsyth Archibald Forsyth (10 March 1826 – 15 March 1908) was a Scottish-born Australian politician. He was born at Garmouth in Morayshire to carpenter John Forsyth and Helen Young. He worked on the railways and in the timber trade before migrati ...

.Martha Rutledge
'Forsyth, Archibald (1826–1908)'
Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed 18 December 2012.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Emmett, Edward Nucella 1817 births 1874 deaths Australian gold prospectors Australian auctioneers Australian bankers Members of the Victorian Legislative Council English emigrants to colonial Australia 19th-century Australian politicians 19th-century Australian businesspeople