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STURTS MEADOWS As told by the late Mrs. L. Beven of Sturts Meadows Station from a talk given in 1976 STURTS MEADOWS sheep station is situated in the Albert Pastoral District, County of Mootwingee, 80klms north of Broken Hill, adjacent to the Tibooburra road. Captain Sturt passed through this area in 1844, so the name was probably taken from his history of the explorations in the district. To tell the story of the settlement of a pastoral property, we must go back to those who came there first. Abraham Wallace was born in Clara, King County, Ireland. His parents migrated with their family and settled in the Mount Gambier area of South Australia. Abe was a hawker in that district and travelled around the Victorian goldfields. He was always a roamer, so it is not surprising that he found his way so far north. Matilda Hill came to Australia from Somerset because of her poor health. She stayed with her sister and brother at Coromandel Valley in the Adelaide hills until she met and married Abraham Wallace in 1861. Two years later, after the death of their first child in Mount Gambier, they set out via Swan Hill and up the River Darling, to take up land in Queensland. The Darling was in flood, so after great hardships they arrived at Menindee, then travelled up the river to Wilcannia. Wallace found he was not permitted to take stock across the border from another colony, so they returned to Menindee. Abe decided to go straight to Adelaide in a westerly direction and, despite dire warnings of Aboriginals and lack of water, they set out. After four hot, waterless days, when they thought they would die of thirst, Abe and Matilda Wallace arrived at Mingary in South Australia. This was in 1863, twenty years before Broken Hill was discovered, so they were probably the first white people to travel from Menindee to Mingary. Wallace looked around at the northern country and decided to settle there. So, at Christmas 1863, we find them with 25 horses, 1400 sheep and eighteen months stores on their way north of Mingary. They had two men with them as drovers. The land on the southern side of the Barrier Ranges had been taken up, so they had push across to the northern side. After a very rough trip, with Matilda driving the wagon and Abe and his men droving the stock, they came out on the northern side near where the township of Euriowie was later established. They had arrived on their land the first week in January 1864. Wallace was the first man to take sheep across the range and Matilda was the first white woman on that side. The Aboriginals showed them a waterhole in the creek and they settled down. Lack of water has always been a problem in the area. The waterhole in the creek which had supplied water for fifty or sixty Aboriginals for years, was quite inadequate for Wallace's stock. So, for four years, they roamed from one waterhole to another-Nuchia Lake, Bancannia Lake, Cobham and as far as Lake Wallace in the Tibooburra area, always returning to their old camp when the rains came. Matilda, in her diary, does not refer to it as Sturts Meadows but as "our first camp" or "old home. Matilda's's diary also tells how she shepherded the sheep on foot to keep the wild dogs away, and drank brackish water until she was very ill. Her nine pairs of Ladie's finest kid boots wore out in as many weeks and she made herself a pair from a bullock hide that Abe had tanned. Most of the time, Wallace was travelling about looking for water and better land. In 1868, the Wallaces returned from Cobham Lake to find that, during their absence, Joseph Anderson Panton had moved in on the property and registered it with the Lands Department in Sydney. It had been given the name of Sturts Meadows. This was on 27 October 1868. The rent was 1 Guinea and 6 pence and the assessment rate 60pounds per annum. Abe Wallace was furious. Relatives have described him as being six feet tall, with red beard and piercing blue eyes. No doubt they were fixed on Panton, because eleven months later, 14 September 1869, Sturts CONTINUE |
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