sketcher, author and pastoralist, was one of the four sons of Andrew and Margaret Lang of Selkirk, Scotland who came to Australia. Thomas, a doctor, and William, a farmer, came out in 1839 and took up land on the Saltwater River near Melbourne; Gideon joined them in 1841 and Patrick arrived much later. In 1845 Gideon Lang published Land and Labour in Australia which advocated far better squatters’ rights, squatting on large tracts of land being the brothers’ speciality. In 1850 Gideon and William found and then squatted on land in southern Queensland, running cattle on Heatherlea and later Narmbool, near Buninyong.
Although attributed to 'W. Gideon Lang’ in the catalogue, it was undoubtedly Gideon Scott Lang who was responsible for the original sketch which H.R. Smith worked up into an oil painting titled Mount Abundance Fitzroy Downs, Maranoa District and showed at the 1854 Australian Museum Exhibition in Sydney together with the similarly inspired View of the Hut where Leichhardt and his Party Were Last Seen . The latter subject may be related to Lang’s unrealised interest in mounting an expedition to search for Leichhardt and his party (and thus claim the £2000 government reward) after he had received information about Leichhardt’s whereabouts from some Darling Downs’ Aboriginal people.
Because of the gold-rushes the Langs found it difficult to retain employees and so overlanded their herds from Queensland to their Riverina properties, Mungadal and Pevensey. They gradually acquired adjacent runs until finally holding a 30-mile frontage along the Murrumbidgee River. They claimed to have established harmonious relations with the Narmbool Aboriginal people; on any long expedition overlanding cattle and searching for good country, Gideon and his brothers were always accompanied by Aborigines from their stations. Belonging to the 'feed and be firm’ genre, The Aborigines of Australia, in their Original Conditions, and in their Relations with the White Man (1865) is Lang’s practical book of advice to other squatters. He was a Sydney Morning Herald correspondent on the diggings in the early 1850s and contributed articles to various other newspapers.
Gideon Lang had married Elizabeth Jane Cape in July 1854 and they had three sons and a daughter. After briefly serving as member for Liverpool Plains and Gwydir in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly (1856-57), he took his family to Europe until 1862. On their return, he became president of the Riverina Association, formed in 1863 to press for separation from New South Wales, the subject of his book Independence of the Riverina District of Australia: Collection of Papers and Articles in Reference Thereto (1863). He died on 13 July 1880.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
