Gregory Blaxland (17 June 1778 – 1 January 1853) was an English pioneer farmer and explorer in Australia, noted especially for initiating and co-leading the
first successful crossing of the
Blue Mountains by European settlers.
Early life
![Eastwood Brush Farm House](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Eastwood_Brush_Farm_House.JPG)
Gregory Blaxland was born 17 June 1778 at
Fordwich
Fordwich is a market town and a civil parish in east Kent, England, on the River Stour, northeast of Canterbury.
It is the smallest community by population in Britain with a town council. Its population increased by 30 between 2001 and 2011.
...
, Kent, England, the fourth son of John Blaxland, mayor from 1767 to 1774, whose family had owned estates nearby for generations, and Mary, daughter of Captain Parker, R.N. Gregory attended
The King's School, Canterbury
The King's School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for 13 to 18 year old pupils) in Canterbury, Kent, England. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the Eton Group. It is Britain's ...
. In July 1799 in the church of St George the Martyr there, he married 20-year-old Elizabeth, daughter of John Spurdon; they had five sons and two daughters.
The Blaxlands were friends of
Sir Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.
Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James C ...
who appears to have strongly influenced the decision of Gregory and his eldest brother,
John
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Secon ...
, to emigrate to Australia.
The government promised them land, convict servants and free passages, in accord with its policy of encouraging 'settlers of responsibility and capital'. Leaving John to sell their Kent estates, Gregory sailed in the ''
William Pitt'' on 1 September 1805 with his wife, the three children they then had, two servants, an overseer, a few sheep, seed, bees, tools, groceries and clothing.
Blaxland and his family reached
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
on 1 April 1806, where he sold many of the goods he brought with him very profitably, bought eighty head of cattle so as to enter the meat trade, located of land at St Marys and was promised forty convict servants. Soon afterwards he also bought at the Brush Farm (near
Eastwood Eastwood may refer to:
Places
;in Australia
*Eastwood, New South Wales
**Eastwood railway station
**Electoral district of Eastwood
*Eastwood, South Australia
;in Canada
* Eastwood, Ontario
*Eastwood, Edmonton, Alberta, a neighborhood
;in the Ph ...
) from
D'Arcy Wentworth
D'Arcy Wentworth (14 February 1762 – 7 July 1827) was an Irish surgeon, the first paying passenger to arrive in the new colony of New South Wales. He served under the first seven governors of the Colony, and from 1810 to 1821, he was ''great a ...
for £1500, while also displaying some of his future characteristics by commencing litigation against the master of the ''William Pitt''. A further parcel of was granted for a farm at the
South Creek.
Blue Mountains expedition
![Blaxland-map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Blaxland-map.jpg)
Early in 1813 Blaxland, who needed more grazing land, obtained the approval of
Governor Lachlan Macquarie for an attempt to cross the
Great Dividing Range
The Great Dividing Range, also known as the East Australian Cordillera or the Eastern Highlands, is a cordillera system in eastern Australia consisting of an expansive collection of mountain ranges, plateaus and rolling hills, that runs rough ...
, known as the
Blue Mountains, following the mountain ridges,
instead of following the rivers and valleys. He secured the participation of
William Lawson and
William Charles Wentworth in the expedition, which was successful (though the expedition stopped short of actually crossing over the mountains) and enabled the settlers to access and use the land west of the mountains for farming. The crossing took 21 days, and only 6 days to return.
In February 1823 Blaxland published his ''Journal of a Tour of Discovery Across the Blue Mountains'' (London, 1823) in which he wrote:
:"On Tuesday, May 11, 1813, Mr. Gregory Blaxland, Mr. William Wentworth, and Lieutenant Lawson, attended by four servants, with five dogs, and four horses laden with provisions, ammunition, and other necessaries, left Mr. Blaxland's farm at the
South Creek, for the purpose of endeavouring to effect a passage over the Blue Mountains ..."
[
In recognition of the successful crossing, all three explorers were granted by Macquarie of land west of the mountains.][
]
Other activities
Blaxland is also noted as one of the first settlers to plant grapes
A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus ''Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters.
The cultivation of grapes began perhaps 8,000 years ago ...
for wine
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...
-making purposes. He was engaged during the next few years in wine-making. He had brought vines from the Cape of Good Hope and found a species resistant to blight.
Blaxland's diaries show that he had a clear grasp of the scale upon which agricultural and pastoral activities would be profitable in Australia.[ In 1814, like many others almost insolvent because of drought and depression, he tried to persuade ]Governor Macquarie
Major General Lachlan Macquarie, CB (; gd, Lachann MacGuaire; 31 January 1762 – 1 July 1824) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Scotland. Macquarie served as the fifth Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, an ...
to sanction a scheme for the exploitation of the interior by a large agricultural company similar to the later Australian Agricultural Company
The Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) () is a public-listed Australian company that, as at 2018, owned and operated feedlots and farms covering around of land in Queensland and the Northern Territory, roughly one percent of Australia's la ...
of the 1820s. Macquarie would not agree nor would he allow Blaxland land in the interior for his own flocks. Blaxland then had to dispose of his livestock, and joined the colonial opposition to Macquarie, and in 1819 sharply criticized his administration to Commissioner John Thomas Bigge.
Blaxland visited England in 1822 taking with him a sample of his wine. While in England he published in February 1823 his ''Journal of a Tour of Discovery Across the Blue Mountains''. Later the same year, Blaxland was awarded the silver medal of the Royal Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...
for the wine he had brought to London.
Later years
His wife died in December 1826. In January 1827 Blaxland was elected by a public meeting with two others to present a petition to Governor Darling asking that "Trial by jury" and "Taxation by Representation" should be extended to the colony. Still opposed to the governor's authority, he made another visit to England, taking a petition in support of trial by jury and some form of representative government, and again carried samples of his wine, for which he won a gold medal of the Royal Society of Arts in 1828.
He successfully petitioned the Colonial Office
The Colonial Office was a government department of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, first created to deal with the colonial affairs of British North America but required also to oversee the increasing number of col ...
for a drawback on the import duty on brandy imported into the colony and 'actually used in the manufacture of wine'. Always a man of moody and mercurial character, Blaxland devoted his colonial activities almost entirely to the pursuit of his agricultural and viticultural interests.
He suffered great personal loss with the early and untimely deaths of his second son, youngest son and wife along with others quite close to him in rapid succession, which bore very heavily on his heart. He committed suicide on 1 January 1853 in New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
and was buried in All Saints Cemetery in Parramatta
Parramatta () is a suburb and major Central business district, commercial centre in Greater Western Sydney, located in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately west of the Sydney central business district on the ban ...
.
His son John
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Secon ...
was a prominent businessman. He was appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council
The New South Wales Legislative Council, often referred to as the upper house, is one of the two chambers of the parliament of the Australian state of New South Wales. The other is the Legislative Assembly. Both sit at Parliament House in th ...
and served there from 1863 until his death in 1884.
Publications
* ''A Journal of a Tour of Discovery Across the Blue Mountains'', 1823[
* ''Wine from New South Wales'', 1828
]
Recognition
* The township of Blaxland in the Blue Mountains is named after him, as is the Australian Electoral Division of Blaxland.
* Blaxland Creek runs near his land grant in western Sydney.
* Gregory, Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth Avenues are found in the Melbourne suburb of Frankston where the Blaxland Avenue Reserve runs through.Google Maps display of Frankston Reservoir
/ref>
* Blaxland Road
** Eastwood
** Wentworth Falls
In 1963 he was honoured, together with Lawson and Wentworth, on a postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the fa ...
issued by Australia Post
Australia Post, formally the Australian Postal Corporation, is the government business enterprise that provides postal services in Australia. The head office of Australia Post is located in Bourke Street, Melbourne, which also serves as a post o ...
depicting the Blue Mountains crossing.
See also
* Land exploration of Australia
* List of Blue Mountains articles
This is a list of articles about the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia.
A
* Aboriginal sites of New South Wales (includes Blue Mountains)
B
* Bargo River
* Barrallier, Francis
* Bell railway station, New South Wales
* Bell, New ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blaxland, Gregory
English explorers
Explorers of Australia
English emigrants to colonial Australia
Suicides in New South Wales
People from the Blue Mountains (New South Wales)
Burials in New South Wales
1778 births
1853 deaths
History of the Blue Mountains (New South Wales)
Eastwood, New South Wales
1850s suicides