sketcher and settler, was born at Manar, Inverarie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. In 1836, for reasons of health, he came to Sydney where he was shown great kindness and found a new family in that of Hannibal Macarthur at The Vineyard, Parramatta. In 1839 he embarked on a trip to Lombok, East Indies, having first become engaged to Macarthur’s daughter, Mary. In 1841 they married and he bought Redesdale, near the present town of Braidwood, from Dr Mathew Anderson. When writing to Mary he described the cottage as 'comfortable inside and nicely furnished and painted outside with a small verandah and vines growing up the posts etc … a very nice cottage for a visit of a few months but not for a settled residence’.
His new wife did not have to live long in the original cottage for soon he extended it, renamed it Manar, and tried as far as he could to recreate the home of his childhood with a garden of English trees and plants. The results of his efforts were described by J. Edward Hodgkin in 1896 when he stayed the night at Manar: 'This garden the family are very proud of and rightly so too as not only is it really beautiful and very tastefully arranged but it is one of the oldest in the colony … there are specimens of nearly every English and many other imported trees and in one little corner of the house I came upon a little bed of common primroses’. Hugh and Mary had nine children; he lived at Manar until his death in 1857, aged forty-two.
A record of his life is left to us not only in his diaries and letters but by his sketchbook. Most of his drawings were done when he was in Scotland and Lombok, obviously the periods when he had most time. Only two are of New South Wales: one of the original cottage at Redesdale and one of the finished house. His method was to use a simple pencil outline, filling in the detail with fine shading and line work. In Scotland his subjects were trees, lochs and castles, salmon fishing and, perhaps finest of all, a view of the Vale of Ballater. He sketched the ships in which he travelled and drew the outline of islands he passed. In the diary he drew detailed pictures of funeral pyres in Lombok and in the sketchbook vivid scenes of quayside life in an unidentified Eastern city. His work has value not only for its workmanship and for illustrating his life, but for showing details of customs at Lombok in the nineteenth century.
- Writers:
- Gordon, Joanna
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
