naval draughtsman, surveyor, and public servant, was born in London, son of John Tyers, a linen merchant, and Elizabeth, née Theobold. Tyers entered the Royal Navy in 1828; in 1837 his reputation as a first-rate marine surveyor led to his inclusion in the survey of the Port Essington (Northern Territory) region under Captain Gordon Bremer in the Alligator . A lithograph, The Settlement of Victoria from the Anchorage (1839), was published after his drawing, with a key identifying the major features of Captain John McArthur 's infant settlement: the battery, the hospital, 'Government House’ (a modest single-storey cottage), the store-house and, under a clump of trees on a cleared patch of ground, 'Fort & Blockhouse building '. The original watercolour from which the lithograph was taken may be that in the Mitchell Library with the Alligator in the foreground (omitted in the print).
In 1839 Captain Tyers left the navy and joined the New South Wales colonial service as a surveyor. He laid out the town of Portland (now in Victoria), surveyed the bay, and at the same time compiled a short dictionary of local Aboriginal words. In 1840 he was appointed leader of the Portland Bay expedition with Edmund Kennedy . He became Commissioner of Crown Lands for Portland Bay in 1842. Employed by Governor Gipps to fix the 141st meridian defining the boundary between Port Phillip and South Australia, his solution led to disagreements with J. Lort Stokes , Owen Stanley and his boss, Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell . In 1843 Tyers was appointed first Crown lands commissioner at Gippsland. He explored and mapped this district too (1844) and did a great deal to bring order to a hitherto uncontrollable area. He built a house at Eagle Point, on the Mitchell River near Bairnsdale, and in 1849 married Georgina Caroline Scott, daughter of a grazier. Retiring from the public service in 1867, he died at Melbourne in 1870.
Tyers’s field sketchbook for 1837-39 (Mitchell Library) contains pencil and watercolour landscapes and coastal views in the Port Essington, Geelong and Portland districts. All are drawn in typical surveyor-draughtsman style; several coastal profiles are included and the latitude has been added to landmarks in some sketches. Separate pencil, wash and ink sketches include views of Mount Abrupt, Mt Sturgeon , Lower Falls of the Wannon (12 May 1842) and an unfinished pencil and watercolour drawing, Portland Bay from Observatory 1839-40 . A letter from Robert Hoddle to Mitchell on 14 September 1842 enclosed two sketches by Tyers of the Wannon Falls and stated: 'these should have been forwarded to you with the plans but were accidentally left behind’. Only one now remains (Mitchell Library).
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
