Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s Bicentenary
This month marks the 200th anniversary of the swearing-in of Lachlan Macquarie as the fifth Governor of the colony of New South Wales. He served in that capacity from 1810 to 1821. Governor Macquarie was born in 1762 to a tenant farming family on a tiny island off the coast of Scotland, where he eventually was buried. At 14 he left his family to join the Army. He served in North America during the American War of Independence, and then served in Jamaica, India and Egypt before coming to the colony of New South Wales. When he arrived in the colony he was given absolute authority, as had his predecessors. His instructions were to:
Improve the Morals of the Colonists, to encourage marriage, to provide for Education, to prohibit the Use of Spirituous Liquors, to increase the Agriculture and Stock, so as to ensure the Certainty of a full supply to the Inhabitants under all Circumstances.
Governor Macquarie methodically divided Sydney into five districts, each overseen by a dedicated constable, and named most of the Sydney streets. He utilised convict labour to build roads, bridges, wharves, harbours and many other public works. He also had the convicts at work in the foundries, sawpits, limekilns, quarries, brickworks and shipyards, all contributing to his cherished vision of a prosperous, industrious and orderly state of affairs in the colony.
Macquarie instituted effective social reforms by encouraging marriage and limiting alcohol in an attempt to control rampant public drunkenness. During his time in office church attendance and marriages both increased greatly. He established the Bank of New South Wales and a convicts’ savings bank to encourage thrift and self-reliance. He was interested in the indigenous people and promoted the education of Aboriginal children. He set up an educational institution for them. He opened up the colony to exploration and settlement, founding the first inland town at Bathurst.
His supporters were many, but his critics were more powerful. The free settlers did not like his equal and fair treatment of freed convicts, whose talents he used extensively. At a time when 9 out of 10 residents were convicts, ex-convicts or the children of convicts, his treatment of people was unusually humanitarian. During his years in office he granted many thousands of pardons, conditional pardons and tickets of leave. He rewarded merit and punished vice without regard to rank or status. He was a reformer at every level. Amongst his many achievements he introduced the first coinage, the first horse races and the first botanic gardens and instituted agricultural fairs.
He was the first Governor to give official recognition to Australia Day in 1818 and decreed it a public holiday. Under Governor Macquarie the colonists acquired their first places of worship, courthouses, independent newspapers and reliable roads. He promoted cultural and civil amenities and even appointed the first Poet Laureate. Governor Macquarie was deeply concerned about the needy in society. He set up a fund to assist people in need and established the first mental health institute.
Commissioner Bigge was sent by the British Government in 1819 to investigate complaints against Governor Macquarie. Unfortunately, Commissioner Bigge sided with the critics. Bigge could not recognise the value of all that Macquarie had accomplished and wrote a report condemning him. In response to the Bigge report, Governor Macquarie tendered his resignation in 1817, although it was not accepted until 1821. Thousands of people came to his farewell celebrations, thankful that he had turned their grubby convict colony into the basic foundations of an infant nation.
He left behind him grateful people, but he returned to Britain broken-hearted, believing he had failed. He died soon after.
Some years ago, in the 1990s, my successor as president of the Rotary Club of Sydney, Mike Hodgetts, received a message from the club at Oban in Scotland, where Macquarie was buried, saying that his mausoleum was in bad repair. With Mike’s help we raised funds, enlisted sponsorship from Macquarie Bank and sent a group of people from Sydney to the Isle of Mull to renovate the mausoleum, which is visited by thousands of people each year. The tomb describes Macquarie as “The Father of Australia”. I believe that he should have been knighted for his service to this colony on his return to Britain, but the powerful friends of Commissioner Bigge prevented it.
Today we know that Governor Macquarie did not fail. We honour this man, 200 years later, for setting New South Wales on the path to greater things. It is 55 years since I first read the biography of Lachlan Macquarie and wrote my first assignment. He has grown in my estimation ever since.