Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher and settler, left Devon in December 1836, aged twenty-one, accompanying his elder brother, A.F. Bundock, to Sydney. They sailed on board the Henry Tanner , which arrived in June 1837. A single page from Bundock’s shipboard sketchbook survives in the Mitchell Library (SSV* SHIP/H Tan/1). Initialled 'W.C.B.’, the ink drawing depicts the captain and his dog sitting in the cuddy of the Henry Tanner . Bundock’s pencil annotation verso includes: '...The open door on the right is my Cabin, with drawers and looking glass. next to it Mr G’s children’s and next having windows looking forward, Mr G’s… The frame work on the table is to prevent the plates from sliding’. The sketch apparently accompanied a shipboard journal (now lost), part of which is quoted in his elder daughter Mary 's reminiscences.

From Sydney the brothers contacted Captain William Ogilvie, to whom they carried a letter of introduction. In 1841 Wellington married Ogilvie’s daughter Mary Ellen (known as Ellen ). Having spent some time working on stations in the Hunter Valley, the brothers took sheep and assigned servants up north through New England and the Clarence River districts in 1843 and settled on the Wyangarie Plain. They spent two years establishing the property and building a house for W.C.'s family, then another year rebuilding the house after it had been burnt down by Aborigines in 1845. Then Wellington’s family joined them. He and Ellen had eight children, six sons and two daughters. In the evenings after working on the property, he taught all the boys Latin before they went to boarding school.

Wyangarie became Wellington’s main station, although he later acquired a 19,200-acre run on the Richmond River, Dyraaba, which he visited regularly. He also made regular business trips to Ipswich and Sydney. No sketches are known after his arrival in Australia.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011