Robert Dulhunty
Encyclopedia
Robert Venour Dulhunty is chiefly remembered as being the first permanent white settler of what has since become the City of Dubbo, in the rural heartland of the Australia
n state of New South Wales
. The well read son of a medical practitioner, Dr John Dulhunty, and the doctor's wife, Jane Dulhunty (née Smith), he also was one of the wealthiest and most enterprising citizens of the then Colony of New South Wales during the late-Georgian and early-Victorian eras.
It was in about 1832 that Dulhunty took up the land — which he named 'Dubbo' — on the Macquarie River, just to the south of the present-day city. Consequently, he can be viewed as the founder of what is today one of the most important regional centres in eastern Australia.
, Devon
, England, in 1803. (His unusual middle name means "hunter".) The boy's mother came from West Country English stock but his father's lineage was Irish in origin. The original Gaelic form of the name was O'Dulchaointigh and Dr Dulhunty's forebears belonged to a sept of the O'Carroll clan situated in the province of Munster
, Ireland.
A Royal Navy
surgeon, Dr Dulhunty had happened to visit the port of Sydney
— the capital of the British colony of New South Wales (NSW) — during the course of his maritime career, earmarking it as a suitable place in which to live with Mrs Dulhunty when he eventually retired from the sea. In 1826, he carried out his plan, settling down in Sydney and acquiring a parcel of rural land at Burwood
, which was situated 12 kilometres west of the port's mercantile and governmental core. Two years later, he was appointed to the salaried position of Superintendent of Police by the Governor of NSW. The governor had been impressed by the cool-headed bravery that Dr Dulhunty displayed when bushrangers attacked his residence, Burwood House. Dr Dulhunty's health declined unexpectedly in the wake of his police appointment, however, and he died at Burwood House in 1828.
Robert Dulhunty, as previously mentioned, had also elected to settle permanently in NSW. In fact, he came to Sydney a couple of years before his father. Brimming with ambition, he became a successful sheep farmer and land baron. In 1837, he married into Sydney's colonial establishment (see below). He and his wife, Eliza Julia Dulhunty (née Gibbes), would have a total of six sons and three daughters, with the last three children being born in Dubbo. They were:
Another child, Emily, died as an infant in 1839 and lies buried at St Thomas' Churchyard, Mulgoa.
Sydney was just 36 years old at the time of the Dulhunty's arrival. It was still essentially a penal outpost operating under the decidedly non-democratic control of the then Governor
of NSW, Sir Thomas Brisbane
. The economy of NSW was based overwhelmingly on sheep grazing, other types of livestock production and the growing of various crops — with some additional income generated through whaling and sealing. Infrastructure projects were funded by the British Government and by the revenue reaped locally from taxes, including the collection of customs and excise duties levied on alcoholic spirits, tobacco and a wide range of imported goods. The colony possessed only a comparatively small contingent of skilled artisans, so convict iron-gangs were used perforce to build such necessary structures as roads, drains, bridges, wharves and fortifications, as well as public buildings of all kinds. Convicts quarried stone, too, and made bricks, felled trees and cleared paddocks. The more trustworthy of them were also assigned by the government to private landholders to work as agrarian labourers, shepherds or domestic servants.
On 23 March 1824, Robert Dulhunty applied for a grant of Crown land. This was at a time when the colony's hinterland was being opened up increasingly to responsible citizens for farming and grazing purposes. The governor accordingly granted him legal title to 2000 acre
s (eight km²) of land which he had selected previously at Cullen Bullen
. In addition, Dulhunty was allocated six convict
servants/labourers who were to assist him with the task of making the property a viable enterprise.
This land grant marked the beginning of Dulhunty's rise through the ranks of colonial society. Twelve years later, he would be listed as a founding member of Sydney's elite Australian Club, the first meeting of which wad held in October 1836. The club's 86 members included such prominent citizens as W.C. Wentworth
, Sir John Jamison
, Captain John Piper
, Dr William Bland
, Major Edmund Lockyer
, James Macarthur
, William Lithgow and John Blaxland
.
But that is to race ahead of our narrative. On 4 July 1828, Dulhunty requested a ticket of occupation from the NSW Surveyor-General, Sir Thomas Mitchell. He was rather brusquely informed by Sir Thomas on 10 July that the government had, for some time, discontinued giving tickets of occupation. Sir Thomas, however, would become a friend of Dulhunty's in the coming years.
By the end of the 1820s, Dulhunty was living mainly at Claremont House in the Mulgoa Valley, not far from the Nepean River. Sometime between 1829 and 1833, he set out from the nearby township of Penrith
with an escort of about 40 Aborigines. Crossing the rugged Great Dividing Range
, he followed the Macquarie River down to what is now known as Dubbo. This area had not been occupied by any Europeans when the explorer Captain Charles Sturt
traversed the Macquarie in 1829.
When surveyor Robert Dixon
passed through Dubbo to survey the Bogan River
in 1833, he mentioned that he had borrowed a dray from Dulhunty. It is therefore believed that Dulhunty took up the land which he named "Dubbo" in 1832.
Governor Sir Darling
had created a zone known as the "limits of location" on 5 September 1826. Settlers were only allowed to take up land within this zone. A further government order, issued on 14 October 1829, increased the zone of approved settlement so that it now included an area called the 'Nineteen Counties'. Anyone who occupied land outside of this area were technically considered to be a 'squatter', without legal title. Among these squatters were many of the leading citizens of the colony, including Dulhunty.
Dulhunty and his wife held their wedding party on Sydney's Point Piper, where the Gibbes family lived. They honeymooned, however, near Penrith, at a Georgian mansion known as Regentville House. The mansion belonged to Sir John Jamison and stood at the heart of the knight's showpiece agricultural estate on the Nepean River
. It was fated to play a role in the nuptial celebrations because Dulhunty and Sir John knew each other well and, more importantly, Mrs Dulhunty's younger brother, William John Gibbes, was about to marry Sir John's eldest daughter.
Not long after Dulhunty's wedding, he and Colonel Gibbes narrowly escaped being murdered by a pair of armed robbers while they were travelling in a carriage from the Sydney Customs House to a private engagement. Dulhunty was driving the carriage and their route took them along Parramatta Road
. According to contemporary newspaper reports, when they reached a toll gate located near what is now the site of Sydney University they were ambushed by the two thugs, each of whom was brandishing a single-shot pistol. The thugs got angry when their victims refused to hand over their valuables and they made ready to shoot them. Luckily, however, it had been raining that afternoon, and the damp gunpowder in the thugs' pistols fizzled when the triggers were pulled. Dulhunty then slashed at the thugs with his horsewhip, and he and Colonel Gibbes were able to speed away to safety in their carriage. The police subsequently searched the area and interviewed informants but the perpetrators of the crime were never caught. Their appearance and distinctive way of speaking, as described by Dulhunty and Colonel Gibbes, led the investigating officers to conclude that they were English sailors who had probably come ashore from a ship moored in Blackwattle Bay.
Dulhunty was appointed a Commissioner of Crown Lands by the colony's governor on 16 May 1837 and, on 5 December of that same year, he was made the police magistrate
for the Penrith District. He also took out a licence for ‘Dubbo Station’ in 1837.
On 10 December 1840, Dulhunty accepted an appointment to serve on the Committee of the Australian Immigration Association. During the early 1840s, Dulhunty — along with E. Blaxland and R.C. Lethbridge — served the Penrith District as a local councillor, with Dulhunty's brother-in-law, William John Gibbes, acting in his spare time as the district's equivalent of a town or shire clerk. Gibbes was now managing the Regentville estate for his father-in-law, Sir John Jamison, who was in poor health. Gibbes and Dulhunty became close friends during this time. They shared a love of books, good food and horse-riding, and they both accepted positions as honorary stewards at Sir John's private racecourse. When Sir John died in 1844, Dulhunty and Mrs Dulhunty attended his funeral in Penrith.
By 1839, 28 free men and 18 government-assigned male convicts had gone to work for Dulhunty on Dubbo station. Dulhunty"s reputation among the working men of the region was that of a fine bushman, a firm but fair-minded boss and an extremely able landed proprietor. Unlike some other squatters of this era, he rarely had his convict labourers flogged by their overseers when they transgressed.
Dulhunty reached the zenith of his wealth in 1839-1840, when he is listed as the owner of half-a-dozen big grazing properties throughout NSW. Unfortunately, however, a severe economic depression struck the colony in the early 1840s, costing him a significant amount of money and forcing him to shed numerous assets. This crisis lasted for several years. He survived it but many of his coevals in NSW did not, as wool prices fell, banks failed, investment schemes collapsed and bankruptcies soared.
Just before the depression hit, Dulhunty had erected a large, brick and timber homestead at Dubbo Station. Claremont, however, would remain his headquarters until 1847, in which year he decided to move permanently to Dubbo with his wife and children. This relocation proved to be an arduous logistical exercise for the Dulhuntys, who had to transport dray-loads of furniture and other belongings across rough mountain roads and along rutted bush tracks in sometimes hostile weather conditions.
In 1849, a village was laid out at Dubbo and gazetted as a residential and commercial settlement. Henceforth, Dulhunty's landed estate, situated nearby, would become known as "Old Dubbo". The following year, convict transportation to NSW ceased, while the discovery of gold in NSW and Victoria during the early 1850s would transform the hitherto agricultural-based economies of these two neighbouring colonies and help attract free immigrants to Australia in unprecedented numbers.
Robert Venour Dulhunty died on Friday, 30 December 1853, after suffering for three days from an illness that is not identified on his death certificate. His brick-lined grave lies in the Dubbo Pioneers' Cemetery, which is situated on former Dulhunty land amidst a patchwork of paddocks and enclaves of bush. He was aged only 51 at the time of his passing.
His widow Eliza fought a resolute but ultimately losing battle to hold together the Dulhunty's sprawling rural kingdom in the face of droughts, floods, outbreaks of livestock diseases, harsh bank foreclosures and various other setbacks — and all the while being saddled with the additional responsibility of raising a large tribe of children to maturity. Those who knew her said she never lost her vibrant sense of humour, cultivated manners or deep interest in music and literature, no matter how serious the latest problem besetting her.
Mrs Dulhunty never remarried. During the 1870s, she lived with one of her sons, Robert George Dulhunty, on a small rural property near Wellington, New South Wales
. Later, when she grew frail with age and was handicapped by deteriorating eyesight, she moved to the town of Bathurst
. Here she was looked after by another of her sons — John, a commission agent.
Mrs Dulhunty died at Bathurst Hospital on 13 February 1892, having outlived her husband "Bob" by almost 40 years. The "Bulletin" magazine, which was read widely by people in rural areas, published a brief but sympathetic obituary when informed of her death. She is buried in Old Bathurst Cemetery. Her headstone is still extant and photographs of her exist. Regrettably, no image of Robert Venour Dulhunty has been traced.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n state of New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
. The well read son of a medical practitioner, Dr John Dulhunty, and the doctor's wife, Jane Dulhunty (née Smith), he also was one of the wealthiest and most enterprising citizens of the then Colony of New South Wales during the late-Georgian and early-Victorian eras.
It was in about 1832 that Dulhunty took up the land — which he named 'Dubbo' — on the Macquarie River, just to the south of the present-day city. Consequently, he can be viewed as the founder of what is today one of the most important regional centres in eastern Australia.
Background
Robert Venour Dulhunty was born in the coastal township of PaigntonPaignton
Paignton is a coastal town in Devon in England. Together with Torquay and Brixham it forms the unitary authority of Torbay which was created in 1998. The Torbay area is a holiday destination known as the English Riviera. Paignton's population in the United Kingdom Census of 2001 was 48,251. It has...
, Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
, England, in 1803. (His unusual middle name means "hunter".) The boy's mother came from West Country English stock but his father's lineage was Irish in origin. The original Gaelic form of the name was O'Dulchaointigh and Dr Dulhunty's forebears belonged to a sept of the O'Carroll clan situated in the province of Munster
Munster
Munster is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the south of Ireland. In Ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial purposes...
, Ireland.
A Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
surgeon, Dr Dulhunty had happened to visit the port of Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
— the capital of the British colony of New South Wales (NSW) — during the course of his maritime career, earmarking it as a suitable place in which to live with Mrs Dulhunty when he eventually retired from the sea. In 1826, he carried out his plan, settling down in Sydney and acquiring a parcel of rural land at Burwood
Burwood, New South Wales
Burwood is a suburb in the inner-west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Burwood is located 12 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of Burwood Council....
, which was situated 12 kilometres west of the port's mercantile and governmental core. Two years later, he was appointed to the salaried position of Superintendent of Police by the Governor of NSW. The governor had been impressed by the cool-headed bravery that Dr Dulhunty displayed when bushrangers attacked his residence, Burwood House. Dr Dulhunty's health declined unexpectedly in the wake of his police appointment, however, and he died at Burwood House in 1828.
Robert Dulhunty, as previously mentioned, had also elected to settle permanently in NSW. In fact, he came to Sydney a couple of years before his father. Brimming with ambition, he became a successful sheep farmer and land baron. In 1837, he married into Sydney's colonial establishment (see below). He and his wife, Eliza Julia Dulhunty (née Gibbes), would have a total of six sons and three daughters, with the last three children being born in Dubbo. They were:
- Blanche Jane – birth date, 3 June 1838
- Marcus – 18 May 1840
- John – 1841
- Robert George – 1843
- Lawrence Joshua – 1844
- Alice – 1846
- Florence – 1848
- Hubert – 1849
- Alfred Murray – 1851
Another child, Emily, died as an infant in 1839 and lies buried at St Thomas' Churchyard, Mulgoa.
Arrival in Sydney and early activities
At the age of 21, Robert Dulhunty arrived in the Colony of New South Wales as a free settler on the ship Guildford. The date of his arrival was 5 March 1824. He was accompanied on the voyage from England by his brother, Lawrence Vance Dulhunty — a qualified surveyor with a sharp mind but a much less appealing manner than Robert's.Sydney was just 36 years old at the time of the Dulhunty's arrival. It was still essentially a penal outpost operating under the decidedly non-democratic control of the then Governor
Governors of New South Wales
The Governor of New South Wales is the state viceregal representative of the Australian monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, who is equally shared with 15 other sovereign nations in a form of personal union, as well as with the eleven other jurisdictions of Australia, and resides predominantly in her...
of NSW, Sir Thomas Brisbane
Thomas Brisbane
Major-General Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, 1st Baronet GCH, GCB, FRS, FRSE was a British soldier, colonial Governor and astronomer.-Early life:...
. The economy of NSW was based overwhelmingly on sheep grazing, other types of livestock production and the growing of various crops — with some additional income generated through whaling and sealing. Infrastructure projects were funded by the British Government and by the revenue reaped locally from taxes, including the collection of customs and excise duties levied on alcoholic spirits, tobacco and a wide range of imported goods. The colony possessed only a comparatively small contingent of skilled artisans, so convict iron-gangs were used perforce to build such necessary structures as roads, drains, bridges, wharves and fortifications, as well as public buildings of all kinds. Convicts quarried stone, too, and made bricks, felled trees and cleared paddocks. The more trustworthy of them were also assigned by the government to private landholders to work as agrarian labourers, shepherds or domestic servants.
On 23 March 1824, Robert Dulhunty applied for a grant of Crown land. This was at a time when the colony's hinterland was being opened up increasingly to responsible citizens for farming and grazing purposes. The governor accordingly granted him legal title to 2000 acre
Acre
The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...
s (eight km²) of land which he had selected previously at Cullen Bullen
Cullen Bullen, New South Wales
Cullen Bullen is located on the Mudgee Road, 168 km north-west of Sydney, 28 km north of Lithgow. At the 2006 census, Cullen Bullen had a population of 198 people...
. In addition, Dulhunty was allocated six convict
Convict
A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison", sometimes referred to in slang as simply a "con". Convicts are often called prisoners or inmates. Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences often are not termed...
servants/labourers who were to assist him with the task of making the property a viable enterprise.
This land grant marked the beginning of Dulhunty's rise through the ranks of colonial society. Twelve years later, he would be listed as a founding member of Sydney's elite Australian Club, the first meeting of which wad held in October 1836. The club's 86 members included such prominent citizens as W.C. Wentworth
William Wentworth
William Charles Wentworth was an Australian poet, explorer, journalist and politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales...
, Sir John Jamison
John Jamison
Sir John Jamison was an important Australian physician, pastoralist, banker, politician, constitutional reformer and public figure....
, Captain John Piper
John Piper (military officer)
John Piper was a military officer, public servant and landowner in the colony of New South Wales.Piper was born in Maybole, Ayrshire Scotland, son of Hugh Piper, a doctor; his family came from Cornwall. He was commissioned as an ensign in the New South Wales Corps in 1791, and sailed on the...
, Dr William Bland
William Bland
Dr. William Bland was a transported convict, medical practitioner and surgeon, politician, farmer and inventor in colonial New South Wales, Australia.-Early life:...
, Major Edmund Lockyer
Edmund Lockyer
Edmund Lockyer, – 10 June 1860) was a British soldier and explorer of Australia.Born in Plymouth, Devon, Lockyer was son of Thomas Lockyer, a sailmaker, and his wife Ann, née Grose. Lockyer began his army career as an ensign in the 19th Regiment in June 1803, was promoted lieutenant in early 1805...
, James Macarthur
James Macarthur
James Macarthur was an Anglican Bishop in the late 19th and early 20th century.Born on 7 June 1848, Macarthur was educated at the University of Glasgow and studied for ordination at Ripon College Cuddesdon. From 1878 he was Curate at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol before Incumbencies in Lamplugh...
, William Lithgow and John Blaxland
John Blaxland
John Blaxland was a pioneer settler and explorer in Australia.-Early life:Blaxland was born in Kent, the eldest son of John Blaxland and Mary, née Parker, of Fordwich, Kent, England. He was the older brother of Gregory Blaxland. John Blaxland was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, later...
.
But that is to race ahead of our narrative. On 4 July 1828, Dulhunty requested a ticket of occupation from the NSW Surveyor-General, Sir Thomas Mitchell. He was rather brusquely informed by Sir Thomas on 10 July that the government had, for some time, discontinued giving tickets of occupation. Sir Thomas, however, would become a friend of Dulhunty's in the coming years.
By the end of the 1820s, Dulhunty was living mainly at Claremont House in the Mulgoa Valley, not far from the Nepean River. Sometime between 1829 and 1833, he set out from the nearby township of Penrith
Penrith, New South Wales
Penrith is a suburb in western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Penrith is located west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of the City of Penrith...
with an escort of about 40 Aborigines. Crossing the rugged Great Dividing Range
Great Dividing Range
The Great Dividing Range, or the Eastern Highlands, is Australia's most substantial mountain range and the third longest in the world. The range stretches more than 3,500 km from Dauan Island off the northeastern tip of Queensland, running the entire length of the eastern coastline through...
, he followed the Macquarie River down to what is now known as Dubbo. This area had not been occupied by any Europeans when the explorer Captain Charles Sturt
Charles Sturt
Captain Charles Napier Sturt was an English explorer of Australia, and part of the European Exploration of Australia. He led several expeditions into the interior of the continent, starting from both Sydney and later from Adelaide. His expeditions traced several of the westward-flowing rivers,...
traversed the Macquarie in 1829.
When surveyor Robert Dixon
Robert Dixon (explorer)
Robert Dixon was an Australian surveyor and explorer, born in Darlington, England.-Arrival in Tasmania:Dixon arrived in Tasmania in May 1821 with his brother George...
passed through Dubbo to survey the Bogan River
Bogan River
The Bogan River is an inland river in the central west of New South Wales, Australia.This river rises at Goonumbla, 19 kilometres north-west of Parkes and flows in a generally north-north-westerly direction past Tottenham, Peak Hill and through Nyngan. The Bogan River is about 590 km in length...
in 1833, he mentioned that he had borrowed a dray from Dulhunty. It is therefore believed that Dulhunty took up the land which he named "Dubbo" in 1832.
Governor Sir Darling
Ralph Darling
General Sir Ralph Darling, GCH was a British colonial Governor and Governor of New South Wales from 1825 to 1831.-Early career:...
had created a zone known as the "limits of location" on 5 September 1826. Settlers were only allowed to take up land within this zone. A further government order, issued on 14 October 1829, increased the zone of approved settlement so that it now included an area called the 'Nineteen Counties'. Anyone who occupied land outside of this area were technically considered to be a 'squatter', without legal title. Among these squatters were many of the leading citizens of the colony, including Dulhunty.
Marriage
Dulhunty's marriage took place at the Anglican Church of St James, central Sydney, on 29 April 1837. His bride — Eliza Julia Gibbes (1811-1892) — was the English-born eldest daughter of Major (later Colonel) John George Nathaniel Gibbes. Colonel Gibbes (1787-1873) was a Member of the NSW Legislative Council and the Collector of Customs for NSW — a vital revenue-raising task that he would perform for the colonial government from 1834 until 1859. (The Colonel was also reputed to be the bastard son of Frederick, Duke of York, the second son of King George III.)Dulhunty and his wife held their wedding party on Sydney's Point Piper, where the Gibbes family lived. They honeymooned, however, near Penrith, at a Georgian mansion known as Regentville House. The mansion belonged to Sir John Jamison and stood at the heart of the knight's showpiece agricultural estate on the Nepean River
Nepean River
The Nepean River is a river in the coastal region of New South Wales, Australia.The headwaters of the Nepean River rise near Robertson, about 100 kilometres south of Sydney and about 15 kilometres from the coast. The river flows north in an unpopulated water catchment area into Nepean Dam, which...
. It was fated to play a role in the nuptial celebrations because Dulhunty and Sir John knew each other well and, more importantly, Mrs Dulhunty's younger brother, William John Gibbes, was about to marry Sir John's eldest daughter.
Not long after Dulhunty's wedding, he and Colonel Gibbes narrowly escaped being murdered by a pair of armed robbers while they were travelling in a carriage from the Sydney Customs House to a private engagement. Dulhunty was driving the carriage and their route took them along Parramatta Road
Parramatta Road
.Parramatta Road is the major historical east-west artery of metropolitan Sydney, Australia, connecting the Sydney with Parramatta. It is the eastern-most part of the Great Western Highway. Much of its traffic has been diverted to modern expressways such as the M4 and the City West Link...
. According to contemporary newspaper reports, when they reached a toll gate located near what is now the site of Sydney University they were ambushed by the two thugs, each of whom was brandishing a single-shot pistol. The thugs got angry when their victims refused to hand over their valuables and they made ready to shoot them. Luckily, however, it had been raining that afternoon, and the damp gunpowder in the thugs' pistols fizzled when the triggers were pulled. Dulhunty then slashed at the thugs with his horsewhip, and he and Colonel Gibbes were able to speed away to safety in their carriage. The police subsequently searched the area and interviewed informants but the perpetrators of the crime were never caught. Their appearance and distinctive way of speaking, as described by Dulhunty and Colonel Gibbes, led the investigating officers to conclude that they were English sailors who had probably come ashore from a ship moored in Blackwattle Bay.
Government appointments and later life
Dulhunty was appointed a Commissioner of Crown Lands by the colony's governor on 16 May 1837 and, on 5 December of that same year, he was made the police magistrate
Magistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
for the Penrith District. He also took out a licence for ‘Dubbo Station’ in 1837.
On 10 December 1840, Dulhunty accepted an appointment to serve on the Committee of the Australian Immigration Association. During the early 1840s, Dulhunty — along with E. Blaxland and R.C. Lethbridge — served the Penrith District as a local councillor, with Dulhunty's brother-in-law, William John Gibbes, acting in his spare time as the district's equivalent of a town or shire clerk. Gibbes was now managing the Regentville estate for his father-in-law, Sir John Jamison, who was in poor health. Gibbes and Dulhunty became close friends during this time. They shared a love of books, good food and horse-riding, and they both accepted positions as honorary stewards at Sir John's private racecourse. When Sir John died in 1844, Dulhunty and Mrs Dulhunty attended his funeral in Penrith.
By 1839, 28 free men and 18 government-assigned male convicts had gone to work for Dulhunty on Dubbo station. Dulhunty"s reputation among the working men of the region was that of a fine bushman, a firm but fair-minded boss and an extremely able landed proprietor. Unlike some other squatters of this era, he rarely had his convict labourers flogged by their overseers when they transgressed.
Dulhunty reached the zenith of his wealth in 1839-1840, when he is listed as the owner of half-a-dozen big grazing properties throughout NSW. Unfortunately, however, a severe economic depression struck the colony in the early 1840s, costing him a significant amount of money and forcing him to shed numerous assets. This crisis lasted for several years. He survived it but many of his coevals in NSW did not, as wool prices fell, banks failed, investment schemes collapsed and bankruptcies soared.
Just before the depression hit, Dulhunty had erected a large, brick and timber homestead at Dubbo Station. Claremont, however, would remain his headquarters until 1847, in which year he decided to move permanently to Dubbo with his wife and children. This relocation proved to be an arduous logistical exercise for the Dulhuntys, who had to transport dray-loads of furniture and other belongings across rough mountain roads and along rutted bush tracks in sometimes hostile weather conditions.
In 1849, a village was laid out at Dubbo and gazetted as a residential and commercial settlement. Henceforth, Dulhunty's landed estate, situated nearby, would become known as "Old Dubbo". The following year, convict transportation to NSW ceased, while the discovery of gold in NSW and Victoria during the early 1850s would transform the hitherto agricultural-based economies of these two neighbouring colonies and help attract free immigrants to Australia in unprecedented numbers.
Robert Venour Dulhunty died on Friday, 30 December 1853, after suffering for three days from an illness that is not identified on his death certificate. His brick-lined grave lies in the Dubbo Pioneers' Cemetery, which is situated on former Dulhunty land amidst a patchwork of paddocks and enclaves of bush. He was aged only 51 at the time of his passing.
His widow Eliza fought a resolute but ultimately losing battle to hold together the Dulhunty's sprawling rural kingdom in the face of droughts, floods, outbreaks of livestock diseases, harsh bank foreclosures and various other setbacks — and all the while being saddled with the additional responsibility of raising a large tribe of children to maturity. Those who knew her said she never lost her vibrant sense of humour, cultivated manners or deep interest in music and literature, no matter how serious the latest problem besetting her.
Mrs Dulhunty never remarried. During the 1870s, she lived with one of her sons, Robert George Dulhunty, on a small rural property near Wellington, New South Wales
Wellington, New South Wales
Wellington is a town in inland New South Wales, Australia located at the junction of the Macquarie and Bell Rivers. The town is the administrative centre of the Wellington Shire Local Government Area. The town is 362 kilometres from Sydney on the Great Western Highway and Mitchell Highway...
. Later, when she grew frail with age and was handicapped by deteriorating eyesight, she moved to the town of Bathurst
Bathurst, New South Wales
-CBD and suburbs:Bathurst's CBD is located on William, George, Howick, Russell, and Durham Streets. The CBD is approximately 25 hectares and surrounds two city blocks. Within this block layout is banking, government services, shopping centres, retail shops, a park* and monuments...
. Here she was looked after by another of her sons — John, a commission agent.
Mrs Dulhunty died at Bathurst Hospital on 13 February 1892, having outlived her husband "Bob" by almost 40 years. The "Bulletin" magazine, which was read widely by people in rural areas, published a brief but sympathetic obituary when informed of her death. She is buried in Old Bathurst Cemetery. Her headstone is still extant and photographs of her exist. Regrettably, no image of Robert Venour Dulhunty has been traced.