sketcher, author, naval officer and administrator, was born in Yorkshire on 16 May 1818, fifth and youngest surviving son of Rev. Thomas Cutler Rudston Read and Louisa, née Cholmley. He entered the Royal Navy in 1831 and first visited Australia as a young naval officer in 1838, his career later taking him to China, Brazil and the Pacific islands. On resigning his commission in 1849 he spent some time travelling in New Zealand; a pencil sketch of Government House, Wellington (Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW), dates from this period.
The lure of gold brought Read back to Australia in the brig Halcyon which docked at Newcastle in 1851. He spent a few months mining at the Turon, then an attack of sandy blight caused him to return to Sydney. From Sydney he went by ship to Melbourne where in May 1852 Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe appointed him an assistant commissioner of Crown lands on the Victorian goldfields. His duties, which included the issuing of mining licences, took him in turn to Mount Alexander, Castlemaine and Bendigo, until a new appointment as police magistrate sent him to Myer’s Creek in August. Forced to resign in January 1853 because of ill-health, Read returned to England and published a record of his experiences, What I Heard, Saw and Did at the Australian Goldfields (London, 1853). The book was illustrated with chromolithographs and uncoloured engravings of scenes of goldfields’ life indebted to both S.T. Gill and G.F. Angas , such as Junction of Pegleg & Sailor’s Gully. Bendigo and Chief Commissioner’s Camp Castlemaine, Escort Leaving for Melbourne , drawn by Read and lithographed in England by W.L. Walton. Read died in London the year after its publication.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
Note:
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
