A QUEENSLAND PIONEER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3244, 17 May 1916, Page 78

A QUEENSLAND PIONEER.

By Jkssjk Mackay

About half-way between Brisbane and Cooktown, the beginning and the end of city life along the great perilous coast of Queensland, there stands the growing port, Mackay, situated at the n:outh of the Pioneer River on the short Lea-front that pertains to Carlisle County Mackay is one of the typical coastal 'towns of that wealthy, tonrid, and unlivable region north of Mrs Campbell Praed's happy hunting ground, "Leichhardt's Town." We do not remember that it has made any particular figure in literature, however, though it has doubtless all the fevers, Kanakas, Chinese, tdackfellows, and Japanese that give colour to most of the Louis Becke school or storywriting, and we know its harbour was formerly bad enough to give thrills to nautical records of the place. Nevertheless, Mackay is the. outlet of a singularly rich region, both as to growth and mineral products. It is pre-eminently a sugar town, the largest sugar mills in Queensland working in it vicinity, with an annual output of at least 8000 tons. Coffee and tobacco also thrive in the district; distilleries are busy, and the pastoral interests account for a fairly lively butter trade, while there is a supply of workable coal near. It is an important outlet for the mineral wealth of Queensland, being the port of the Mount Orange and Mount Gotthart copper mines as well as of the Mount Britten and Eungelki goldfields. It is a colling station for the Queensland Royal Mail steamers, and 15 years ago it had a population of over 4000 souls. This sounds a fairly comprehensive halfcentury's record for one of the mushroom towns'of Queensland, itself a giant Australian mushroom of a State, striving hard to prove itself a "white man's country," despite its 'mournfully speckled territories of the north. Reading a recent number of the Celtic Monthly, I came upon a notice of the life of the Highland pioneer after whom Mackay was named, and perhaps the facts in that notice may interest others of the clan, especially if they have seen this port that is in every way so far removed from' the green, cool ways of Strathnaver, the Land of the Mackays. John Mackay was born at Bonar, Bridge, in Sutherlandshire, in 1839, a cadet of the Strathybranch. He was not, howsver, to grow up in the scenes made .memorable in old clan records. While he was still an infant, his family removed to Dores, near Inverness, and the boy received his education at the Free Church Academy, Inverness, choosing the lines that best fitted him for a life on the sea. At 15 he wa,s a young Viking, ready to take his man's part in the family migration, which took place in 1854. Australia, land of gold and promise, was calling in the early fifties, and many another boy from the Highland glens heard the siren call. Before this he had made two voyages to Holland, over that sea-track which the exiled Mackays knew so well in the dying seventeenth century. It was Melbourne in its earliest infancy that first welcomed the young voyager; but in the following year he went to Sydney, aud from there to the New England goldfields, near which his family came to settle. In 1859 he was already a practised leader and pioneer, and his 20 years Avere no bar to heading an exploring expedition into the unknown territory of Queensland. The toils and privations of the march were many, and his little band was sadly fewer ere the party reached the river mouth where the town of Mackay now stands, the goal of their journey, as it proved. To that land of promise he returned two years later with his brother, Rainey Mackay, driving in true Highland style 1200 head of cattle and horses sufficient to stedt the station they took up. Before the middle sixties the Queensland Government had gazetted the township of Mackay a port of entry. But the call of' the sea was strong in the young man's blood. He broached a scheme for exploring the terra incognita of New Guinea, and though that fell through, he was soon embarked on a seafai'ing life, commanding one vessel after another that plied in the Pacific or South Indian Oceans. In this rich Island trade he spent the prime of his life, and was in his early forties when he first became known to New Zealand, for which he carried the mails to Fiji duiing some years. Captain Mackay and his clipper brig the Meg Merilees wore well known to fame in Auckland. He was a high authority on most that belonged to the life of the Islands, having sailed the seas between Auckland, Tahiti, Honolulu, Fiji, and the South American coast till he knew the routes by heart. Many a time his life was in danger from wild seas and wilder savages In the New Hebrides and the Solomon islands, and he had to take stern measures more than once to prevent the massacre of his ship's crew. Yet wo are told he was respected and loved by the natives among whom his lines were mainly cast in these stormy years. On many occasions his extended' knowledge of the Pac ; fic enabled him to restore returned labourers to the distant homes they hrl often left practically as slaves and scarcely hoped to see again. His speed and skill ensured him steady promotion in the merchant and mail service, it was not without warrant that Sir William M'Gregor, High Commissioner of Fiji, called him the best mariner on the Pacific in his day. But the time had come for his return to the young colonv of his pioneering youth. It was in 1883 that the gratitude of the Queensland Government for these early services Avas expressed in the offer of a grant of 1000 acres of sugar land at Mackay—an offer which an unfortunate turn of the party wheel prevented from full fulfilment. Having broken with the sea, however, Captain Mackay accepted the position of harbourmaster—first at Cooktown, then at Brisbane, and in 1902 was promoted to the highest coastal post in the country's gift, becoming chief of the Queensland" Marine

Department. In 1911 K'ng George be-sto-.-.ed on him the Imperial Service Order, amid the hearty plaudits of his fellow countrymen. In 1910 he revisited his native land, and the occasion was not lightly passed over by his clansmen, for, despite tha long years of perils, hardships, triumphs, gains and honours, the heart of the old Highland captain beat true to Strathnaver and the kindlv traditions of the White Banner of Mackay. In 1914 he died, being then within a' fortnight of his seventy-fourth birthday. In 1884 he had married Miss Marion Maclennan, and had several sons and one daughter. Two of these sons went to the front with the Australian Forces in 1914, and his son-in-law, Francis Armstrong, fell at Quinn's Post exactly a year ago. Thus strangely has been linked the name of the young Queendand poet with that old land of heroes in Sutherlandshire, and with that older land that saw Jason sail away in quest of the Golden Fleece, and, later, Alexander sail away in quest of a world-empire.