Born on this day

Sunday, January 31, 1762. :   Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, is born.

Lachlan Macquarie was born on 31 January 1762 on the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides islands of Scotland. He joined the army at age 14 and gained experience in North America, India and Egypt. In 1808, he was appointed Governor of the New South Wales colony, a position he held from 1810 to 1821. With his military training and vision for organisation and discipline, Macquarie was an ideal candidate to restore order to the colony, following the Rum Rebellion against deposed Governor William Bligh.

Macquarie upheld high standards for the development of New South Wales from penal colony to free settlement. He introduced the first building code into the colony, requiring all buildings to be constructed of timber or brick, covered with a shingle roof, and to include a chimney. As Governor, Macquarie also ordered the construction of roads, bridges, wharves, churches and public buildings. Following an inspection of the sprawling, ramshackle settlement of Hobart Town in Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, Macquarie ordered government surveyor John Meehan to survey a regular street layout: this layout still forms the current centre of the city of Hobart.

Macquarie was also a great sponsor of exploration. In 1813 he sent Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson across the Blue Mountains, where they found the grazing plains of the interior. Following their discovery, Macquarie ordered the establishment of Bathurst, Australia’s first inland city. He appointed John Oxley as surveyor-general and sent him on expeditions up the coast of New South Wales and inland to find new rivers and new lands for settlement.

Unfortunately, Macquarie’s progressive views and favourable treatment of both convicts and emancipists (freed convicts) met with disfavour among the upper-class British settlers. In 1819, English judge John Thomas Bigge was dispatched to inquire into Macquarie’s actions in the colony. Bigge felt that the convicts should be treated with stricter discipline and harsher punishment, and that the emancipists should be held in greater account. Bigge criticised Macquarie for his spending on public works and for his attempts to create an orderly colony out of the haphazard settlement that Sydney had grown into. Bigge felt that more monies should be returned directly into the economy of Sydney itself, rather than expansion beyond its confines.

Macquarie resigned his commission and returned to England in 1821 to defend himself against Bigge’s claims. He died in London in 1824.

Australian History

Wednesday, January 31, 1798. :   Australia’s first public clock tower is completed.

Governor John Hunter was Governor of New South Wales from 1795 to 1800. Present on the First Fleet, and instrumental in the development of the colonies in both Sydney and Norfolk Island, Hunter succeeded Australia’s first Governor, Arthur Phillip on 11 September 1795.

Hunter experienced great opposition to his authority, especially when Lieutenant Governor Francis Grose allowed the military to have too much control over the convicts. Regardless, Hunter sought to implement order in the colony, initiating new construction and works in Sydney and Parramatta.

In 1797, Hunter commissioned the building of Australia’s first public clock tower, after the HMS ‘Reliance’ brought the clock to Sydney on 26 June 1797. The 150-foot tall tower was erected on Church Hill, one of the most elevated locations in Sydney, and completed in January 1798. On 31 January 1798, the clock was positioned on the tower in front of a small gathering. The building served not only as a clock tower, but as an observation tower for members of the military who had an interest in scientific pursuits.

Australian History

Thursday, January 31, 1839. :   Colonial newspaper ‘The Australian’ announces that Moreton Bay is to be opened for selection.

Moreton Bay, into which the Brisbane River empties, is located in southeast Queensland. Extending approximately 80 km from its northern border of Moreton Island to Stradbroke Island in the south, the bay was first explored by Lieutenant James Cook when he charted the eastern coast of Australia in 1770. Cook named the bay after the Scottish Earl of Morton who was the president of the Royal Society, the group which had petitioned King George III to finance the scientific expedition to the South Pacific to study and observe the transit of Venus in 1769. The name was misspelled by Dr John Hawkesworth who was given the task of translating and compiling Cook’s journals in 1793, some fourteen years after the explorer’s death.

James Cook did not enter Moreton Bay as he did not discover any suitable passage to allow further exploration of the region. Lieutenant Matthew Flinders was the first European to enter the bay, doing so in 1799. However, it was not until 1824, a year after John Oxley explored the area in search of a new site for a penal colony, that settlement of the area became viable. In 1827, explorer Allan Cunningham discovered the rich grazing and pastureland of the Darling Downs. The following year, he sailed to Moreton Bay to find a way to connect his discoveries of the Darling Downs and inland rivers with the Brisbane River and the new settlement there. When he located the pass now known as Cunningham’s Gap through the mountain ranges, the discovery opened up the area for graziers from the south.

On 31 January 1839, the colonial newspaper ‘The Australian’ (which had no connection with the current national newspaper of the same name), announced that Moreton Bay was to be opened for selection, and that a party of surveyors under Robert Dixon was to proceed there to prepare the necessary surveys. Accompanied by assistant surveyors Granville Stapylton and James Warner, Dixon commenced a trigonometrical survey of Moreton Bay starting with a baseline of 3 miles which was measured on Normanby Plains, now Harrisville, southwest of Ipswich. Moreton Bay was opened to free settlement in 1842.

Australian History

Thursday, January 31, 1839. :   Gawler, South Australia’s first inland country town, is established.

South Australia is the only Australian state to have been founded by free settlers, remaining entirely free of convicts during its early history. The site of its capital, Adelaide, was originally determined by Captain Collet Barker in 1831 and subsequently surveyed by Colonel William Light five years later.

Gawler is a Local Government Area (LGA) located 44km north of Adelaide. The year after Colonel Light surveyed the capital, he and his assistant, Boyle Travers Finniss, travelled through the area north of Adelaide. Light saw the benefits of establishing a town which would be the gateway to the north, and to the Murray River, the water and transport lifeline for South Australia. Light’s recommendation for a survey of the area was initially not taken up, but Henry Dundas Murray, John Reid and a syndicate of ten other colonists noted Light’s recommendation and applied for a Special Survey of 4000 acres (1618 hectares). Following this, Light was commissioned to survey the town, making it the only other settlement he surveyed apart from Adelaide. William Jacob then laid out the town from Light’s plan. The town was officially established on 31 January 1839, and named Gawler after the then Governor of South Australia.

The first settler in Gawler was John Reid, one of those who applied for the “special survey”. He arrived in February 1839 to take up his selection near the North Para River. Reid’s property became a stopover for new pioneers to the area and overlanders from New South Wales. Gawler developed slowly until the discovery of copper at nearby Kapunda in 1842 sent its growth soaring. When the copper mines were established at Burra in the north, Gawler’s importance as a trade and stopping centre increased. The establishment of agricultural areas to the north cemented Gawler’s position as a permanent settlement.

World History

Wednesday, January 31, 1990. :   The first McDonald’s restaurant in the Soviet Union is opened.

McDonald’s is the world’s largest chain of fast-food restaurants. The company began in 1940 with a restaurant opened by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald, but it was their introduction of the “Speedee Service System” in 1948 that established the principles of the fast-food restaurant. However, the company today dates its “founding” to the opening of CEO Ray Kroc’s first franchised restaurant, the company’s ninth, in 1955.

On 31 January 1990, the Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s – and the world’s biggest – opened in Moscow. Hundreds of people queued to pay the equivalent of several days’ wages for Big Macs, shakes, and french fries. The opening of the first McDonald’s in the Soviet Union was seen as symbolic, in that a great symbol of international capitalism penetrated a nation that was once the leader of the Communist bloc. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 but McDonald’s maintained its presence in Russia, later expanding to other former Soviet states. The first Moscow McDonald’s was a joint venture between McDonald’s Canada and the Soviet government.