House of Gordon Australia

Australian History:
CONVICT PENAL SETTLEMENT : Most people know that Australia was founded as a convict settlement in 1788 when the First fleet arrived with convicts commanded by Governor Captain Arthur Phillip. A second fleet arrived in 1790 and a third in 1791. From then on there was a steady flow of ships until 1850 when transportation was officially abolished, however, ships continued to bring convicts until the last convist ship docked in Western Australia in 1868. 70% of the convicts were English and Welsh, 24% were Irish and only 5% were Scots. In all 162,000 men, women and children were transported to Australia in 806 ships. Approx 8,207 scots were convicts of whom 4.8% were male and 9.3 % were female. Many were political prisoners, the most well known being the Scottish Martyrs, of whom the most famous was Thomas Muir, an Advocate who inspired Robert Burns to write the poem, "Scots Wha Hae" The majority of these people never returned to their homeland. The first free settlers arrved in 1793. The first Scot to arrive in the Colony was Captain John Hunter second to Phillip and later his successor as Govenor. Three of the first six Governors were scots. Hunter then Lachlan Macquarie and then Thomas Brisbane. 3 Regiments of Scotish troops served here in the colonial period the 73rd foot (The Perthshire Regt) the 21st Foot and the 25th Foot (The King's own scottish borderers)

GOLD: By 1851 the California strike sent Edward Hargraves to Australia. He learned there how to find and secure Gold but was relatively unsuccessful. He recalled a similar location he had spent time at 15 years earlier in Australia and returned there and discovered Gold at Summerhill Creek, Bathurst NSW in February but in April wrote and asked the Colonial secretary for 500 pounds and he would show them where Gold was to be located. By the end of the week 400 people had set up rocker boxes along the river and it continued to draw thousands more each week and a short time later the Victorian Government set up a reward of 200 pounds for the first person to find gold in Victoria. A Mr Esmund also a former Californian miner soon claimed that with his discovery at Clunes in July 1851. This started the Australia Gold Rush with fields springing up across southern New South Wales and northern and central Victoria.By 1852, 100,000 people arrived to mine for Gold the following year 92,000 in NSW and 150,000 to Victoria many of these people were Irish and Scottish. Many Gordon emmigants to Australia were Irish as they had gone across to Ireland in military actions in the 1700s and stayed.

BUSHRANGERS: We had an era of Bushrangers with our most famous Ned Kelly who fashioned a plough to make a bullet proof mask and breatplate. Some of these were Scots, the most famous Frank Gardiner (real name Christie) who committed the largest Holdup of the time netting a huge 14,000 pounds and Captain Melville ( real name Frank McCullum of Inverness) was a nuisance in Victoria until 1857. And James MacPherson (The wild Scotsman) who terrorised Queensland and had a shootout with the head of Police Frederick Pottinger.

AUSTRALIAN EXPANTION : Poverty, famime and epidemics in Ireland and Scotland caused thousands of Irish /Scots to emmigrate between 1820-1830 by the first cencus of 1854 the Scots were the third largest group with 36,044 people and within 3 years that doubled. Many Scots had a professional backgroud and the discovery of Coal and other metals brought more to our shores. Between 1832 - 1850, 16,000 Scots were assisted immigrants and 20,000 were unassisted immigrants. Most were skilled stone masons, miners, engineers, carpenters, blacksmiths and even professors mostly from the lowlands but 10,000 highlanders were counted. Between 1852-1857 another 4,910 came from Skye after the Potato blight. In the 1920's-1930 Scots stonemasons built the piers for the Sydney Habour Bridge and After WWII 170,000 Scots left Britain to become the ten pound poms.

Many Australian towns and their suburbs are the same name as Scottish locations as the first Scots named them from their home, such as Aberdeen ( which was founded by a friend of the Duke of Aberdeen and many of the streets have scottish names including a Gordon street. We have the Grampian mountains in Victoria and the Gordon River in Tasmania and several towns named Gordon. So it is probably safe to say the Scots/Irish were probably the most influencial group on this country or at least had a lot to do with its development and character.