Romantic Pioneering in the Tropics: Archibald Meston’s Home Life in Cairns, 1882-1888

Archibald Meston invites attention as a leading contributor to the Aboriginal Protection Act of 1897, the law which regulated Queensland’s indigenous people into the 1970s. As Southern Protector from 1897 to 1903 he helped to establish the system of reserves provided for by the Act. Meston had earlier worked as a sugar boiler and farm manager in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland.[1] From 1878 to 1883 he represented Rosewood in a brief tumultuous career in State Parliament. Following editorial appointments with the Ipswich Observer, the Toowoomba Chronicle and the Townsville Herald, he came to Cairns early in 1882 as editor of the Cairns Chronicle. He was aged thirty-one and the father of a growing family. This was the beginning of a six-year tropical interlude in which he sought to further his career through regional politics and investments in the sugar industry, then undergoing its major expansion in the north. Meston’s public life in Cairns began promisingly when he led the lobbying to secure the rail connection to the Tableland for the Barron Valley route and was elected Chairman of the Divisional Board. His reputation languished soon afterwards, but revived again in the two years preceding his departure.[2] However local rivalries and the community’s feeling that he was unreliable finally thwarted his hopes of returning to Parliament.


B. E. Minns Australia 1864 1937Archibald Meston 1921
Watercolour and gouache over pencil on cardboard 50.8 x 40.8 cm Gift of the Meston family and public subscribers through Adolph W. Albers and Chas.H.

Gough 1936
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery In the Far North in the 1880s Meston lived with his wife and children at Kamerunga, on a selection which he named 'Cambanora,' from Aboriginal words meaning 'cassowary's nest.' [5] He frequently journeyed into the bush on shooting and specimen-collecting expeditions.These were the basis of the stories, sketches, articles and poems, many concerning Aborigines, which he contributed to southern newspapers.[6] However, Meston's life at home figured prominently in his local efforts at self-promotion.On the basis of notions of the hero as natural ruler imbibed from Carlyle (Thorpe 48'50), he embellished his image with his sporting abilities, and with his status as pater familias and property-owner.Surviving accounts of 'Cambanora' offer insights into the lives of settlers in early Cairns.They also demonstrate how the class codes of a robust Victorian romanticism, transplanted in Meston's case from his native Scotland, continued to fashion settlers' understanding of themselves in their new tropical environment.
'Cambanora' was part of a 2000-acre selection, later the Freshwater Creek Estate, which Meston took up on behalf of the Brinsmead Sugar Company.[7] When the land proved unviable as a plantation, the venturers converted it to beef cattle production, marketgardening and dairying (Jones 155, 361).Meston first lived at 'Cambanora' with the 'tall Scot,' John Nairne, later manager of the Estate, whom he commissioned to build his house.
He often shot Barron-River crocodiles from the homestead verandah, where he also depicts himself, under the persona of Romantic poet, admiring the fury of thunderstorms and the river in flood.He relates in comic-grotesque mode that he once dynamited Chinese neighbours who had come to complain because he had accidentally shot their pet pig.[8] A visitor's account provides further insights into the aspirations informing Meston's life at home: A short stoppage was made at Mr. A. Meston's estate, Cambanora.The house is delightfully situated on the south side of the river, of which it commands a magnificent view, the wide deep current sweeping within a few yards of the verandah.All the country in the immediate vicinity of the house is cleared; but at the back the jungle extends for miles.To the north-west are the dark ranges which the railway is to scale with so much difficulty, and ahead the great valley of the Barron pent up between magnificent heights.Mr Cran pointed out the spot where he had seen on a former visit a tremendous alligator meet its death by a bullet from Mr Meston's rifle.From the verandah to where the alligator was floating in the stream, unconscious of Mr Meston's skill with his favourite Swinburn, is fully five hundred yards, and at that distance two bullets out of three fired went through the creature's body.
Cambanora consists of 160 acres on the south side and 200 acres on the north side of the river, the former selection having half a mile and the latter a full mile of river frontage.It is the only estate with acreage on the north side of the river immediately below the range.The soil is brown loam of great fertility, the huge trees on the edge of the jungle being perpetual witnesses of its richness independent of the wonderful growth which fruit trees and grain crops exhibit.It is entirely composed of decomposed vegetable matter, and in depth it is practically unlimited.There are thirty acres cultivated, twenty under maize and rice and five under bananas, the same quantity being set apart for fruit trees.Oranges, lemons, citrons, limes, mangoes, lichees, the whampee [sic], tamarinds, guavas, custard apples, figs, peaches, nectarines, apricots, granadillas, pawpaws, etc. flourish in the orchard, while coffee (Arabic and Liberian) shows that it has found congenial climate and soil.Vanilla may be seen clinging to huge trees at the rear of the house, and Mr Meston expects his robust plants to fruit this season.Vegetables of several descriptions grow to perfection in the garden, and cattle find ample and nourishing feed on the cleared uncultivated patches.On the edge of the jungle, at the back of Mr Meston's house, there is a fig-tree of enormous dimensions, the circumference being, by measurement, 160 feet.It is larger in circumference, though not so advantageously situated, as the giant of the same tribe which grows near the junction of Stoney Creek with the Barron.The estate is one of the most valuable in the district, the railway passing to within a few chains of the south-western boundary, which is also quite close to that bountiful and beautiful stream, Freshwater Creek.
Mr Meston very kindly exhibited some of his curios, representing numerous excursions into the jungle and along the river banks.He has a number of cassowary skins, two complete specimens of male and female, in full plumage, being, perhaps, the pick of the collection.
There are cases of butterflies of every imaginable shade of colour and shape; drawers stocked with the well-preserved skins of the birds of the district'bewildering in the magnificence and variety of plumage; boxes of strange beetles; skins of snakes and of dingoes, and of stranger denizens of the jungle.A fine young cassowary, which was caught a few months ago, and which has become the pet of the family, has a roomy enclosure to itself underneath the house.
What with the cats, dogs, and a family of remarkably healthy-looking children.'[cuttingends].[9] The sense of abundance and fertility approaching excess, seen in the protracted list of fruit trees, the 'tremendous' nature of the 'alligator,' the perfection of the vegetables and the unparalleled dimensions of the fig tree, suggest that the writer was influenced by the hyperbole which was a leading feature of Meston's journalism and public speaking.[10] The innumerable fauna collected dead or alive at 'Cambanora' imply the operation of a restless intelligence and of a drive to hoard and control, little moderated by the concern for conserving cassowaries which Meston once asserted.[11] Dominance over the natural world is unquestioned.Above all, the leisurely scientific pursuits and the aesthetic interests suggested by the 'magnificent view' of the 'sweep' of the Barron at 'Cambanora' confirm Meston's maintaining in his imagination of his family links with the Scottish aristocracy [12] and with the Australian squattocracy of his farming childhood at Ulmarra.[13] That he was also influenced to live out Carlyle's idealisation of plantation aristocracy in the American South made the small guests happy in the highest degree, a free consumption of the edibles being materially assisted by a plentiful supply of lemonade, gingerbeer, and tea.A gigantic decorated iced birthday cake was reserved as a bonne bouche, and even then more joys were to follow in the shape of oranges, and what was perhaps the most enjoyable treat of all, a scramble for the contents of a huge tin of sweets.Roars of delight testified to the popularity of this part of the entertainment, and the bigger boys, particularly, at the conclusion looked as if they were satisfied with life in general, having filled themselves and their pockets, and in instances where such an article was available, their handkerchiefs as well....Nor should it be forgotten that the grown up people who were present in considerable numbers, were cordially invited to partake of a capital luncheon at which champagne was freely dispensed in generous bumpers....Before departing the youngsters joined lustily in three cheers for Mr. and Mrs.
Meston, and the afternoon closed on what will be a red-letter day in the annals of the children of Kamerunga for a long time to come.(16 June 1888) Meston constantly sought ways to exploit the resources and improve the value of his estate.
On 21 June 1887 local people celebrated the Queen's Jubilee in a day-long athletics competition, when a track was prepared, presided over by Meston, who welcomed 'about six hundred persons, mostly from the railway' (Post 25 June 1887).He sold all suitable timber on the selection to the railway contractor, John Robb, for construction of the line, in an agreement which also provided for the erection of sawmills (Post 10 and 27 August 1887).
On Christmas Eve 1887, the Post reported that gold had been discovered opposite Hart's Hotel on Meston's land, during the sinking of a well for Robb's sawmill.The well-sinkers sought a protection order for the vicinity, and about fifty miners' rights were immediately taken out.The Post advised caution however, and on 28 December reported that the mining warden, who after testing had not found 'even the slightest indication of gold,' had concluded that the business was a hoax.Historian Dorothy Jones (278) assumes that Meston was the perpetrator, seeking financial advantage from an influx of miners, just as he was already profiting from the railway workers who made their base camp at Kamerunga.He also planned a local athletics club and a 'guerilla corps' of riflemen (Post 22 September, 10 November 1888).
Improvements at 'Cambanora' included 'several substantial five-room cottages' (Post 13 July 1887), one of which was intended to house police (10 August 1887), and a hall twenty metres long (12 November 1887).The latter quickly became renowned for accommodating, not only the birthday party described above, but also, on 19 April 1888, a meeting attended by three hundred railwaymen, in which they formed a branch affiliated with the Victorian union.On Meston himself, however, may well have regarded shooting crocodiles from his verandah an acceptable substitute for deer-hunting in the Highlands.
The fact that such personal items as books, guns, silverware and 'kitchen utensils of every description' were advertised for sale suggests that financial exigency played some part in the family's departure.Soon afterwards, 'Meston's Hall' came to be 'devoted exclusively to school purposes and no longer available for balls or concerts' (Post 2 February 1889).
'Cambanora' was purchased by a Mr Stephen Smith, 'one of the Government line inspectors,' who was a less colourful figure.[14] When his family was resettled in Brisbane, Meston recommenced Government inspection tours of sugar-growing sites.Reports place him early in the new year at Mount Buchan, a few kilometres north of Kamerunga (Post 23 and the British West Indies is suggested by a report that he paid Chinese labourers to pull him into Cairns in a rickshaw (Brisbane Courier 17 March 1884; Thorpe 49'50).The only known photographs of 'Cambanora' are shot at a distance from the homestead, and date from the 1890s, after the Meston family had left.The people in them are unidentified.However, far from validating the abundance and class superiority suggested by the newspaper description, they sustain the claim of a 'Freshwater Selector' who wrote in the Cairns Post that Meston was 'simply a homestead selector, who by writing and talking about himself has led a few people in Brisbane to the erroneous belief that he is a large sugar planter' (23 October 1884).'Cambanora' in the 1890s (Courtesy Cairns Historical Society) During 1887 and 1888, when the Post became more favourably disposed towards him after he formed a political alliance with the proprietor, Frederick T. Wimble, Meston proceeded by various other imaginative means to raise his profile as a gentleman land-holder.When his youngest son's birthday was celebrated with a school fete, the Post's description revelled in the extravagant hospitality which 'Cambanora' provided: At four o'clock a reunion took place within the hall, the platform being spread with a variety of good things which caused the eyes of the little ones to sparkle with delight; and, under the kindly supervision of Mrs. Meston, assisted by Misses Meston and Severin [daughter of the Mayor of Cairns], a generous distribution of sandwiches and cakes of all description soon

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April Meston chaired a public meeting in support of Wimble's candidature as MLA for Cook.At a concert on 18 August, his recitation of his poem, 'The Australian Marseillaise,' recently published in the Boomerang (28 July 1888, p. 13) and the Post (8 August 1888), was praised as 'a perfect exhibition of the art of elocution,'and he joined in a burlesque of the graveyard scene in Hamlet.'The Australian Marseillaise' versified Meston's vision of a united Australia heroically defying monarchy and 'all alien races.'On 28 September a special train brought guests from Cairns to a grand bachelors' ball (Post 3 October), and a second ball was held on 20 October, when a regular train service was established to Kamerunga (Post 20 October).'Meston's Hall' was also used for roller skating (Post 3 November 1888).Despite the success of the civic functions that he created at Kamerunga, the signs in the Post of his restoration to community acceptance, and his affirmation at the meeting which culminated Wimble's campaign that he 'was going to stand or fall by the Cairns district' (Post 8 May 1888), Meston shelved plans, announced in the Post of 25 April, to stand as a candidate for the mining seat of Woothakata.In December advertisements in the Post trumpeted: 'The Gigantic Sale of the Season/ Archibald Meston, Esq.Of Cambanora, Kamerunga/ To Sell by Public Auction/ THE WHOLE OF HIS VALUABLE FURNITURE AND PERSONAL EFFECTS/ On account of the projected departure of his family for the South.'The items listed for sale indeed confirm Meston's aspiration to the lifestyle of the lairds: 'Splendid Drawing Room Spring-seated Suite,' 'SUPERB PORCELAIN JARS (bought in Brisbane at a high figure),' 'Elegant Tea and coffee service,' 'Large plated Cruetstand, with cut-glass bottles,' 'Choicely cut Spirit Bottles in plated stand,' 'SUPERIOR LADY'S HACK, not to be equalled in the district,' 'Handsome Prize Side Saddle (1 st prize at Melbourne Exhibition),' '22 ft Cedar Pleasure Boat' and, incongruously for an avowed republican, '12 Steel Engravings, in oak frames (Scottish Kings, Queens, and Nobles, Exhibited by Mr. Meston at last Caledonian Exhibition in Brisbane).'Even taking into account the auctioneer's inflated language, the life-style implied by this list appears inappropriate to the physical dangers and petty political antagonisms of remote northern life.