Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher, engraver (?), surveyor and explorer, was born at Kirkham Abbey, Yorkshire, eldest son of John and Isabella Oxley. John junior joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1799 and was aboard the Buffalo 's surveying voyage in Australian waters in 1802-06. In 1806 he commanded the Estamina on a voyage from New South Wales to Van Diemen’s Land. Back in England in 1807 he was commissioned lieutenant, returning to Sydney in November 1808 to serve as first lieutenant on board HMS Porpoise .

Oxley retired from the navy in 1811 and was appointed surveyor-general of New South Wales the following year, returning to Sydney in the Minstrel . Having previously received a land grant, he took this up near Camden and erected a substantial house and stables on his property, Kirkham, presumably with the assistance of 'Pain[e]'s Plans of Architecture, 2 vols folio’, listed in the sale of his library in 1828 (the stables survive).

In March 1817 Oxley led an exploratory party, which included the botanist Allan Cunningham and the sketcher-surveyor George William Evans , along the Lachlan River and into the area south-west of Bathurst in quest of Australia’s mythical 'inland lake’ (in which Oxley continued to believe). The government awarded him £200 for 'meritorious services’ on this expedition. The following year, the same party followed the course of the Macquarie River on a journey which lasted six months; they were the first recorded Europeans to see and name the Castlereagh River, the Liverpool Plains and the Hastings River.

The illustrations in Oxley’s Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales (London 1820), the first published descriptions of the Australian interior, are mainly after Evans, together with a portrait of A Native Chief of Baturst [sic] after John Lewin . Unattributed precise and carefully sketched topographical views (somewhat generic as regards the vegetation), in particular Field Plains from Mount Amyot (near Forbes), may be after Oxley’s own sketches. A letter dated 2 September 1822 confirms that A. Arrowsmith’s map in the volume was compiled from Oxley’s survey drawing, and that same day Oxley wrote to John Macarthur stating that he was working on a further map. His papers contain a few rough landscape profiles in topographical tradition, but no finished sketches.

An 1842 review of J.S. Prout 's Sydney Illustrated noted that, when surveyor-general, Oxley 'drew, and if we recollect rightly also engraved in the line manner, or etched (we forget which) a few of the more interesting views around Sydney; and it was considered to be rather an extraordinary production to be published here under the circumstances – Mr. Oxley having had to prepare his own copper-plates and do all the artist’s work besides. They were far from being good, though they were much better than might have been expected, when the difficulties of execution were taken in to consideration’.

Nothing further is known with regard to such art work, apart from the existence of a competent pencil sketch of Vaucluse, dated 1824, attributed to him (ML). The catalogue of Oxley’s library in 1828 included a Course of Lithography but other relevant technical treatises do not appear. (A sketch by Evans and copies of the published Transactions of the Society of Arts for 1815, 1816 and 1817, of which he was presumably a member, are also listed.)

Oxley’s survey work along the east coast of New South Wales resulted in the establishment of the penal settlements of Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay (Brisbane, Queensland). He drafted regulations for the sale of land and in 1825 was appointed one of the three commissioners to carry out the survey of the colony and its division into counties, shires and parishes. He played an active part in the public and cultural life of the colony, becoming one of the members of the original New South Wales Legislative Council in 1824.

He had become engaged to Elizabeth Macarthur in 1812, but this was broken off when her father discovered that Oxley was deeply in debt. Despite generous land grants, fees for external work and considerable mercantile and property interests, Oxley remained a poor financial manager. After his death at Kirkham, Narellan, on 26 May 1828, his widow Emma, née Norton, whom he had married in Sydney in 1821, was so impoverished that the government was asked to assist. Grants of land were made to the two sons of his marriage but no pension for his widow eventuated. Before his marriage, Oxley had two daughters with Charlotte Thorpe and one with Elizabeth Marnon.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011