'A few honest men': Assisted Immigration and the Family Economy at Ollera Station, Guyra, 1840-c.1860

Abstract

Twenty-four year old John Everett had been in Australia for just eight months when, in July 1839, he wrote to inform his English family of the decision which would prove to be fundamental to the success of a 'family enterprise' that lasted for almost seventy years. It was written less than three months after Everett and his elder brother George trekked with their stock to their newly-claimed 'run' in virgin bushland 'forty miles further [north-west] of Armidale than any white man had previously been'. Thus, within weeks of breaking ground on their vast double 'run' the Everett brothers had already determined their solution to the colonial frontier's continuing problem: the quality, scarcity, growing independence and unaccustomed high cost of the colony's mainly emancipist labour force. They would import reliable labour from home. Significantly, the first steps in the development of this long-term policy had been taken even before these well-educated, high-minded younger sons of the landed gentry left Biddesden, their father's small but prosperous estate on the 'sheep and corn' Downlands near Ludgershall in East Wiltshire. Before their ship left London the Everett brothers had arranged to sponsor the immigration of a brother of one of Biddesden Estate's best shepherds. The successful assisted-immigration of John Cannings, thirty-five, his wife Maria, thirty-eight, and their children Sarah, eleven, and William, nine, and of Jem Mundy, the Ludgershall 'boy' who apparently accompanied them to New England, proved to be central to Ollera's success. Together, they forged the first link in a chain of shepherds and farm labourers whose immigration the Everett brothers sponsored between the late-1840 and mid-1858.