In my last post, I shared the wartime story of my Uncle Archie, who was killed in action during WWI. Today, I am sharing the story of his father John, my great-great-great grandfather, who was born in Scotland but immigrated to Australia in 1857 during the Gold Rush

John’s story is interesting for a number of reasons. His life spans 94 years, from 1833 to 1927, and saw massive changes take place in Australia, from the boom and bust of the Gold Rush, to the horror and loss of WWI, which saw three of his sons enlist but only two come home.

John’s story also represents the experiences that were shared by so many Scots who immigrated to Australia during the 19th century in the hopes for a better life.

Note: To protect the privacy of John’s living descendants (including myself) I have opted to state surnames sparingly during this article and have also used a bibliography-style list of references.

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John Campbell Colquhoun was born 31 March 1833 in Williamsburgh, Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, the fourth child of weavers Flora Campbell and Alexander Colquhoun.

Paisley was an epicentre of Scottish Radicalism at the time, and John would have heard many political, social, and humanitarian ideas there, such as workers’ rights, the abolition of slavery and anti-imperialism.
But by the 1841 Scottish census, John and his family had left Paisley for Water Street, Barony, Lanarkshire (now part of Glasgow), where Alexander worked as a carter.

John’s parents and siblings vanish from written records after 1841, but John appears under the name John Campbell in the 1851 Scottish Census. He was lodging with a Johnstone family in Wilsons Close, Dalkeith, Midlothian and worked as an iron moulder (making moulds for casting iron).

Dalkeith was a market town near Edinburgh in the Scottish Lowlands. During the 1850s it underwent significant renovations but suffered from faulty drainage and a defective water supply. It is unclear why John shifted to this area but it may have been due to a blacksmith/iron moulding apprenticeship.

Scotland as a whole experienced massive political and social changes during the 1850s. Industrialisation, the Clearances and the recent (Scottish) potato famine created high rates of crime and poverty across the country, pushing many Scots to immigrate for a better life.

In 1851, Edward Hargraves found gold in Australia*, igniting the Australian Gold Rush. During the Gold Rush, approximately 90,000 Scots immigrated to Australia.

*It’s important to note here that while the Gold Rush profited many settlers, it destroyed Indigenous land and created further discrimination and dispossession of Indigenous Australian people. This is a topic that is often glossed over during discussions of the Gold Rush. I found this article very helpful and have listed it in the bibliography.

The prospect of finding gold or better work opportunities coupled with the difficult conditions in Scotland were likely the driving factors that made John decide to immigrate to Australia.

John chose to immigrate unassisted on the Black Ball Line clipper ship Marco Polo, nicknamed “the fastest ship in the world.”

The £14 pound passenger fee is worth approximately £1,276.95 today – John may have had to save up for years until he could afford to immigrate. John would have travelled by train from Scotland to the embarkation port at Liverpool and then boarded the ship. The Marco Polo left Liverpool 7 June 1857.

On the passenger list, John’s occupation is listed as a moulder, indicating that he was still working as an iron moulder.
While the passenger list does not state what type of accommodation John had on the Marco Polo, the fact that he was single and working-class means he likely stayed in the steerage of the ship in an area reserved for single males. In the Marco Polo’s steerage, six passengers slept in each berth with no saloon or cabin.
During the voyage, the passengers had many entertainments, including a ball and a crossing of the line ceremony.
All the passengers signed a letter to the captain, James Clarke, and a letter to the surgeon, Gerald H Featherstone, thanking them for their care and attention during the voyage.
The Marco Polo arrived in Australia on the 3 September 1857 at Port Phillip, Melbourne after an 89-day voyage.

After arriving in Australia, John disappears from written records for seven years, then reappears in 1865, in Creswick, Victoria, where he married Barbara, a sawyer’s daughter from Cheshire, England. They were both living at Rocky Lead, Victoria (now Rocklyn), a mining and farming community between Daylesford and Creswick in the Wombat Ranges.

The area had a high population of Scottish immigrants, which may have been a reason John settled there, along with work opportunities.
The marriage certificate states that John was an iron founder (a foundry worker who casts iron), however there were no iron foundries in the area at the time, so John was most likely a blacksmith. Blacksmiths were in high demand during the Gold Rush since they could make many items for the miners, including iron ladders, lanterns, pickaxes and other tools. If John worked near a small mine, he may have also smelted and moulded the raw gold into ingots.

John and Barbara had a devoted and loving marriage of 62 years, and adored their fifteen children, who were very close and often lived within metres of each other during their adult lives.

In 1869, an old friend of John’s, a sailor named John Johnson, placed an advertisement in the Argus newspaper, asking John to visit/contact him to “hear from old friends in Glasgow”. It is unknown whether John visited his friend or saw the advertisement but newspaper notices state that John Johnson was arrested several times over the next few weeks for drunkenness, so maybe not.

By the 1870s, John had become a gold miner in the Rocky Lead district and may have worked following alluvial surface mining methods or underground mining in shafts and tunnels.

Through the 1880s, John and his family continued to live in Rocky Lead, and once again John changed occupations, this time working as a splitter, someone who harvests and prepares timber.

During the 1890s Australian Depression, John and his family left Rocky Lead for Dry Diggings, near Daylesford, where their last child Jessie was born in 1898. John worked as a carter, then returned to mining with three of his sons until he retired in 1917.

Three of John’s children enlisted in WWI – Alexander, John, and Archibald.

Alexander and John survived the war and returned to Australia, but Archibald was killed 26 September 1916 during the Battle of Polygon Wood and his grave was never found. The Dry Diggings community was known to be tight knit, and they presented John and his wife Barbara with a framed photograph of Archibald inscribed with thanks for his service.

Soon after being notified of Archie’s death, John and Barbara left Dry Diggings in late 1917 for Graham Street, Wonthaggi, Victoria where their daughter Catherine and her family were living. Jessie also joined them.

John died ten years later on 21 August 1927, at the age of 94 in Graham Street, Wonthaggi. He had been suffering from “Senility” (a now outdated medical term for Dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease) and Chronic Myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle causing chest pain and breathing difficulties).
John was buried in Springvale Cemetery, Victoria; several of his children lived in the area.

Beloved and respected by his family and community, numerous obituaries were inserted in the newspapers. John had lived in Australia for seventy years.

John’s wife Barbara died almost exactly a year later on 19 August 1928 and was buried alongside him, their headstone’s epitaph observing that they were at last reunited with their son Archie.

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1. 1841 England, Wales & Scotland Census, Findmypast.com.
2. 1851 England, Wales and Scotland Census, Findmypast.com.
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