sketcher, naval officer, civil officer and pastoralist, was born in Mildenhall, Suffolk, in December 1813, fourth son of Sir Henry Bunbury and his first wife, Louisa Emilia, née Fox. One of his elder brothers was Henry William St Pierre Bunbury. Richard was a midshipman in the navy when, aged about fourteen, he lost his right arm at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. He was convalescing at Genoa when Colonel William Light arrived there in his yacht to spend the winter with the family (relatives of Light’s wife).
Richard Bunbury married Sarah Susanna Sconce on 19 December 1838. They came to Victoria on board the Argyle with their son Harry and his nurse, and with Sarah’s brother Robert Knox Sconce and his wife. Georgiana McCrae and her children were also on board and Richard and Sarah Bunbury are mentioned frequently in her diary, including a comment on their shipboard diversions: 'we played whist or looked at some capital landscapes painted by Captain Bunbury with his left hand, he having parted with his right one, so he said, “to feed the Turks, at Navarino”’.
On arrival in March 1841 Bunbury was appointed superintendent of Water Police at Port Phillip. Later he was harbour master at Williamstown. A member of the Melbourne Club from 1844, he owned a station at Mount William named Barton Hall after his ancestral home. He sketched this property, Barton Hall, Grampians, November 1844 (ink, National Gallery of Victoria [NGV]), as well as neighbouring homesteads, eg Bark Huts at Mr Cunninghame’s Station, Goulburn, April 1844 (watercolour, NGV).
Bunbury died in 1857. A footnote by Hugh McCrae in Georgiana’s Journal states that Hugh’s father, George Gordon McCrae, 'was present when he died at Murray’s Prince of Wales Hotel, Flinders Lane East, in Melbourne’.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
