David Reid took up ‘Carraragarmungee’ station in September 1838. He was just 18 years of age. (1) (2)
His father, Dr David Reid was appointed doctor on convict ships and made 3 or 4 journeys with considerable improvement to the health of convict passengers and with fewer deaths from scurvy etc. His success was due to his assistance of pulling into shore every now and then for fresh food. (2)
The governor was so pleased the death rate was down he asked that Dr Reid be given special privilege to help bring his wife and family to Australia and find them a position and land. (2)
He returned to Australia on the Mariner with his family in 1823 and settled in Australia. He was on the List of Surgeons of the Royal Navy unfit for service in 1841.
Dr Reid settled down to pastoral pursuits at Inverary, near Goulburn.
David Reid Jnr was born in England in 1820 and arrived in Australia aged two. He could remember his father having as many as 40 servants of various different trades on his father’s station, he said, ‘all the clothing was made by persons on the spot, there being shoemakers, tailors and tanners and weavers, besides carpenters, wheelwrights and blacksmiths.’ (1)
In January 1838, eighteen-year-old David Reid set out to deliver to Mr, Gardiner four hundred and sixty heifers. According to Ogiers, David Reid drove the cattle to Yass and Gardener, liking the young man impressed upon him the notion of possessing land in Victoria.
On the return journey, David Reid met up with Robert Brown who had been to investigate the potential of the Hume and intended to return and open an inn and blacksmith shop. (1)
David Reid believed his prospects in these newly opened lands around the Murray would be excellent so implored his father to finance him.
His father gave him 2 drays, 8 bullocks, 6 servants, 6 horses and 500 cattle and he set out in March/April 1838.
It wasn’t until four months later that David Reid crossed the Murray along with Joseph Docker who went on to take up Bontherambo.
Rev Docker lost horses crossing Murray much as Reid had lost 3 bullocks crossing the Murrumbidgee. (1)
By the time David Reid arrived at the Murray Robert Brown was building his hut with the help of another man who had a punt of a dugout canoe which he used for passengers to cross the river.
Reid continued south and passed the station of brothers, Paul and Charles Huon then Joe Slack’s station at Barnawartha.
Joe Slack took David Reid to look for land but Reid was not impressed. However, the next day he met a stockman belonging to William Bowman who showed him where Bowman had just set up a station on the Ovens. Pg 28 of Ogiers reminiscences.
The stockman’s name was Benjamin Reed (no relation) and he had been placed in charge of Bowman’s Tarrawingee station.
David Reid took up land adjoining Mr, Bowman’s run on the north bank of the Ovens River from the crossing place on the Ovens to Tarrawingee.
David Reid’s first crop of wheat was almost his last when while harvesting during December 1839 he was visited by hostile indigenous men who intended attacking his huts but decided against it due to David Reid and his men being on guard.
During the attack, David Reid fired a shot at one of the ringleaders and believing him wounded went in pursuit. But he returned unsuccessful in his hunt being satisfied his men and possessions had been saved.
The reminiscences of David Reid give an insight into the aborted attack.
He said one year later Merriman came to visit him and they sat in friendly parley recounting the tale of the attack. Merriman showed him the scar in his leg where he had been hit and told Reid how he’d hid under the water of the creek lying in the shade of a log with just his nostrils showing. Merriman believed he would be found but to his surprise, the white man failed to locate him and he made his escape.
Unfortunately, David Reid did not relate if Merriman and he had discussed reasons for the attack.
A few months later Merriman attacked David Reid’s neighbour, Dr Mackays station at Whorouly holding those inside the hut prisoner.
The aborted attack on Reid’s must have been the summer of 1839/4 because David Reid said his men were preparing to reap their wheat crop
The siege at MacKay’s was on 27th May 1840.
Dr George Mackay was in Yass but his brother John was at home with the stockman Benjamin Reid who was recently married and been allowed to bring his wife to the station.
On 29th February 1844 at Marulan, New South Wales, David Reid married Mary Romaine Barber, she was a niece of Hamilton Hume, the explorer.
Hamilton Hume’s brother, Francis Rawdon Hume married Emma Mitchell, who was Thomas Mitchell of Mungabareena’s, older sister. (3)
The marriage links between the families became more complicated when you consider that Dr George Mackay of Whorourly (David Reid’s neighbour) married Frances Dight (daughter of John and Isabella Dight) – what is significant here, is that Isabella Dight was also a sister of Thomas Mitchell, of Mungabareena. This made Thomas Mitchell the brother in law of Dr George Mackay and the uncle of David Reid’s wife, Mary.
David Reid’s Carraragamungee station extended all the way to Yackandandah, and embraced the whole of what was soon to become busy goldfields.
David Reid brought his mother and the other members of the family from Goulburn, and they lived at the new home until 1844 when he made a home for himself about 7 miles from the town of Yackandandah.
In 1845 David Reid built the first water-driven flour-mill in the district on his Yackandandah run.
In 1847 he took up a section of Woorajay (Wooragee)
In 1852 gold was discovered in the May Day Hills, and the Ovens gold rush settlements of Beechworth, El Dorado, Woolshed, Sebastopol and Reid’s Creek developed on Reid family land, ruining its pastoral value. For a time David sold meat to the miners and ran the mill, a store and a gold-buying business, but in 1853 sold his runs and turned profitably to cattle and horse-dealing and general trading between Melbourne and the Riverina and the diggings. In November 1856 he bought the lease of Barnawatha, south of Albury and built the Hermitage.
THE REFERENCES;
(1) Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on David Reid
(2) Ogier’s reminiscences of David Reid, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-52773898
(3) https://australianroyalty.net.au/tree/purnellmccord.ged/individual/I52948/Emma-Mitchell
