The Mayne Inheritance Read Online Free PDF Page B

the effluent from it attracted sharks upstream and cast a stinking pall over Kangaroo Point and cross-river areas such as North Brisbane. The townsfolk objected frequently and loudly. Soon after the murder, R.J. Smith was pressured to move his works elsewhere. He decided to take it several miles upstream to the north-west bank of the Bremer at its junction with the Brisbane River. The area was called Moggill and the move had several advantages. Kangaroo Point land attracted good prices for homesites, whereas land at Moggill was not only cheaper, it was closer to the source of Smith’s supply from Ipswich, Long Pocket, Fassifern Valley, and Redbank where the stock route from the Darling Downs and the Brisbane River Valley converged. The surrounding scrub could provide abundant fuel for his steam boilers, and the hides and tallow could be easily barged down to the main shipping wharf at North Brisbane. In early October 1848, lock, stock, barrel and staff were moved.
    The new site was opposite the parish of Goodna, well away from the sensitive noses of complaining townsfolk—and far, too far, from the workmen’s leisure haunts in crowded hotels. Many of his employees were bonded; they hated the move. The quiet bush had no calming effect on their tempers. To them the isolation was little better than prison. Within weeks there was rebellion and violence amongst the workers. James Millar, bonded to his employer, downed tools and threatened his boss with an axe; Smith had to carry a pistol for protection until Millar’s continued violence saw him sent to gaol in Sydney.Three others absconded; once caught, they too went to gaol. Patrick Mayne, free of bond, kept his distance from trouble and maintained his low profile until it suited him to move.
    He had found lodgings at Moggill and made a new set of friends: Darby McGrath from Waterford, Ireland and his brother John, a former convict; and Patrick Pacey, an Irish tailor and political rebel who had come on the same ship as John—the Waverley. They had taken advantage of a new land regulation designed to provide fresh meat for Moreton Bay, which allowed them to squat on land there. Once the convict settlement had closed, people were encouraged to take up a square mile (640 acres) of land within the settled districts for pastoral purposes only. The rent was an affordable ten shillings a year but they could not enclose the land, build on it or cultivate it.
    The McGraths and the Paceys, none of whom could read or write, remained lifelong friends with Patrick Mayne, a friendship which included the Stewarts from Kangaroo Point. They witnessed each other’s weddings and christenings and several times in later years Mayne stood surety for Mathew Stewart when he sought a liquor licence. They all prospered, but Darby McGrath was the smart one. He became a land speculator and in fairly short time one of Moreton Bay’s wealthy men. He purchased land from Moggill to Aspley, a shop in North Brisbane, claimed brother John’s widow’s grazing land near the rafting ground at Moggill (there were no children to inherit),and then set himself up as a gentleman at Willowbank, in the Ipswich area.
    Looking at the Crown Land sales over the next ten years it seems that he was something of a mentor for Patrick Mayne’s own land deals. They often attended sales together, with Darby buying the choicest, most expensive blocks and Patrick taking up the adjoining, cheaper allotments. Patrick Pacey, the former Irish political rebel, who was ultimately declared innocent of his crime, followed the pattern of many colonial men of ambition by buying a shop in Queen Street. He also acquired some twelve hundred acres south-west of Gold Creek, in the Moggill area.
    It was at Moggill that Patrick, a Catholic, met a young Irish servant girl, Mary McIntosh, a Protestant from Kilkeshan in County Clare. Her soldier father, William McIntosh, was dead. Her mother, also called Mary, was a