sketcher and property manager, was living in India in 1830 awaiting a commission in the Indian Army promised him by the Duke of York 'in consideration of distinguished services rendered by his father, Dr. A. White, of the 44th Regiment in India’, when Campbell Drummond Riddell, colonial treasurer of New South Wales, talked him into coming to the colony instead. On the strength of the testimonials he brought with him to Governor Darling, White was appointed private secretary to Sir Edward Parry (husband of Isabella Parry ), superintendent of the Australian Agricultural Company. He was stationed at Newcastle (NSW) where the company had just gained the monopoly of the coal-mines and was developing them. He made a wash drawing, 'Sophia Jane’ Steamer Taking on Coal. Newcastle. N.S.W. 1833. The First 'Coal Staith’ of the Australian Agricultural Company (sold Christie’s 1979 and Deutscher 1980), which depicts the steamer landing at the Newcastle wharf with the company’s coal works in the distance and a crudely drawn family of Aborigines in the foreground. The title inscribed below the image suggests that it may have been intended for engraving.
White then moved on to manage Sir William Verner’s Glanmire Station at Bathurst where, ironically, his rigorous moral standards led to a (harmless but illegal) duel with a fellow magistrate, after which he retired to Sydney for six months. Later he was associated with Thomas Sutcliff Mort’s pastoral enterprises, then was re-employed by the Australian Agricultural Company, this time as assistant general superintendent succeeding Philip Gidley King the younger at Stroud, Port Stephens, the company’s headquarters. His first wife Sarah Elizabeth, only daughter of Robert Hoddle by his first marriage, died at Stroud in October 1841, followed by the death of their infant son on 31 January 1842. Their other son, R.H.D. White, became a member of the NSW Legislative Council.
Afterwards J.C. White moved to Queensland where he squatted on runs for Robert Tooth of Sydney. By the 1860s he was managing Jondaryan, a large sheep-run between Toowoomba and Dalby, where he erected the famous Jondaryan woolshed, then the largest on the Darling Downs and now a major tourist attraction. He also erected an extensive boiling-down works on a run he was managing on the Mary River. When Tooth disposed of some of his leases, White purchased three in the Wide Bay district. On retirement he sojourned in Queensland with the three sons of his second marriage to Miss McCansh, in New Zealand with their daughter, and in New South Wales with his oldest son. He was on board the Wairarapa on his way to stay with his daughter when the ship was wrecked off Barrier Island on 30 October 1894. White, aged eighty-five, was drowned.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
