sketcher, journalist, farmer and politician, was born on 12 November 1819 in Hamburg, Germany, a son of John Leake, a farmer and politician, and Elizabeth, née Bell. He came to Van Diemen’s Land with his parents and siblings in May 1823 (including an elder brother, John Travis Leake ) and they settled on a property, Rosedale, at Campbell Town, Tasmania. Charles went to school at Kirklands then worked on the family property, inheriting Rosedale when his father died in 1865.
John Leake had employed James Blackburn to turn the original Rosedale homestead into a grand Italianate mansion and this apparently became the subject of one of Charles’s drawings. In 1855 the Colonial Times reported that John Leake had received 'a beautiful representation of Rosedale … engraved as a letter head on steel, and used by Mr Leake in his correspondence, after the custom frequently used at home. The drawing, we understand was done by Mr Charles Leake, who is now travelling on the continent, and the engraving by Rock & Co., Wallbrook, London’. Charles’s sketch, however, was undoubtedly reworked by Elizabeth Hudspeth , the artist acknowledged on the letterhead. A pen-and-ink cartoon by Charles Leake relating to the Campbell Town election of 1884 is held by the Allport Library.
Like his father, Charles Leake played an active part in various local benevolent and public associations. He was a benefactor of the Campbell Town Anglican church, organised the Campbell Town water supply (the town lake was named after him) and wrote articles for the newspapers as 'J.W.’. Succeeding his father, he was MLC for South Esk in the Tasmanian Parliament from June 1882 to August 1884. Leake married Clara Jane Bell and they had three daughters. He died on 11 June 1889.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
