Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher, explorer, surveyor and squatter, was born in Scotland, brother of Alexander and James Archer . When Charles was 12, the family moved to Larvik, Norway, where he attended Laurvig Grammar School. He left in July 1830 to take up an office position in Tobago, one of the Windward Islands in the West Indies. He returned to England after almost dying of a tropic fever and recuperated in his Uncle John Archer’s home and with his mother in Norway. In 1840 he accepted an appointment with William Walker and Co. in Sydney. His brothers David, William, Thomas and John were among Queensland’s first settlers, taking up vast tracts of hitherto unexplored land north of Moreton Bay, an area then still part of New South Wales.

Tiring of office work and city life, Charles moved to the family property of Durandur, near Woodford, in 1843. The Archer brothers had occupied the place in 1841, and Charles made a sketch of the hut and out-buildings the morning after he arrived to send home to the family in Tolderodden, Norway (1843, RHSQ) and he continued to send sketches home from time to time 'to amuse and interest the young folks’, often accompanied by entertaining descriptions (see L. McDonald pp116-117). Charles and Alexander were the two artists of the family, Charles being proficient enough to be encouraged by brother David to send his drawings to a good lithographer, but Charles declined, believing it to have no interest beyond the family.

At the Durandur outstation of Wahroongundie he made a wash drawing, The Squatter Taking His Ease (John Oxley Library) – a self-portrait in his wooden hut. In 1848 he and Tom moved north to found new stations at Coonambula and Eidsvold in the Burnett district. Tom had 4,300 sheep belonging to himself and Willie, while Charles was in charge of 3,000 owned by David Archer & Co. Charles’s daily journal of their progress and problems has survived. In mid-June they formed the outstation they named Mundouran and erected their first primitive buildings, 'called Bandicoote gunyahs’, then moved on to reach their Eidsvold run in July. Charles, who had probably never used a construction tool before coming to Australia, erected all the buildings. The woolshed at Eidsvold, he wrote, was 'the most extensive we have ever raised, and I look on it as my chef d’oeuvre in bush architecture, both as regards solidity of construction and adaption to the purposes for which it was erected’ (McDonald 120). Two or three months later he built the dwelling hut, which became 'the best building, although I did most of the work myself. I begin to be very expert with the adze and saw and, by the time I have made the furniture, expect to be as good a cabinet maker as Willie’. As usual, he made a sketch of the new dwelling huts for the family. Tom Archer wrote of Charles: 'He had by nature the gift of making himself proficient in everything to which he gave his attention and as a swimmer, sketcher and caricaturist, chess-player and carver … he was difficult to surpass … He surveyed and made wonderfully correct and beautifully-drawn maps of much of the new country which we explored and occupied.’

Charles Archer proved an important Queensland pioneer in 1853 when, together with his brother William, he reached the Fitzroy River and located what is now known as Rockhampton. His watercolour The Sailing Ship Elida on the Fitzroy River (JOL) dates from about this time. The following year he explored Peak Downs and in 1855 assisted his brothers in establishing the still-surviving property of Gracemere, outside Rockhampton. He left Gracemere for Norway early in 1857 and died there about 1862 from the effects of a skiing accident. He had made numerous maps and drawings of Queensland and must be considered one of its major early artists, says de Vries. In 1846 he promised to make his brother William (Willie) a 'rustic armchair’ – what is now known as a Queensland squatter’s chair whose invention is credited to Charles.

Writers:

Vries-evans, Susanna De

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011