Author Archives: Karen B

Amateur historian and writer.

A Cure for Everything.

A brief guide to the patent medicines advertised so relentlessly throughout Old Queensland’s newspapers. Holloway’s Pills. Undoubtedly the greatest man of the day as an advertiser is Holloway, who expends the enormous sum of twenty thousand pounds annually in advertisements alone; his name is not only to be seen in nearly every paper and periodicalContinue reading “A Cure for Everything.”

Bowerman’s Board, Trial, and the Aftermath.

Board of Inquiry Above – left to right: the Board who heard Frank Bowerman’s charges. Left: Auditor-General Frederick Orme Darvall, Surveyor-General Sir Augustus Charles Gregory, Collector of Customs William Thornton. The official Board of Inquiry into three charges of misconduct against Frank Sydney Bowerman was convened with a speed modern public servants would find astonishing.Continue reading “Bowerman’s Board, Trial, and the Aftermath.”

Dalby, Leyburn and Infamy – Frank Bowerman’s Turbulent 1868.

Until October 1868, as far as the public knew, Frank S Bowerman was a minor civil servant on the Darling Downs. He was appointed as Police Magistrate at Leyburn in March. The first hint that all was not as it should be came with a story in the Dalby Herald on 10 October, in whichContinue reading “Dalby, Leyburn and Infamy – Frank Bowerman’s Turbulent 1868.”

The Bowermans in Queensland.

The first member of the Bowerman family to venture into what is now Queensland was Henry Boucher Bowerman in 1835. In the 1850s, his sons Henry, and later Frank took up residence on the Darling Downs, both keen to improve their prospects. Henry Bowerman and Coorangah Station. Henry Bowerman junior was a respectable, rather modestContinue reading “The Bowermans in Queensland.”

The Bowerman Inheritance.

Assistant Commissary Bowerman and family. The Bowerman family arrived in Sydney in 1825, where Henry Boucher Bowerman had been assigned as Assistant Commissary General. He spent time working at Port Macquarie, then Parramatta, where Frank Sydney Bowerman joined the family on 7 March 1828. Henry Bowerman senior became part of the colonial gentry, with goodContinue reading “The Bowerman Inheritance.”

The Attempted Assassination in Brisbane.

FS Bowerman. Part 1. 24 November 1868 At 9:30 in the morning of 24 November 1868, Arthur Simmonds, a storekeeper in Albert Street, Brisbane had a slightly unusual customer. A tall, thin auburn-haired man, with the dress and manner of a gentleman, who bore a rather distracted air. After looking around the store, the gentlemanContinue reading “The Attempted Assassination in Brisbane.”

A Group Photo for the Ages.

It gives us a date and a place – Mount Victoria on 18 September 1892. The setting is a quite charming cottage with a brick chimney, somewhere in the countryside. The edges of the photo are blurred, there are 30 figures posed in front of the house, and the silhouette of a woman indoors. ThereContinue reading “A Group Photo for the Ages.”

Panoramas of Old Brisbane.

Windmill Hill, or as it became later, Wickham Terrace, afforded townsfolk an outstanding view of Brisbane Town. Several photographers stood more or less on the same spot and recorded the view through the 19th and early 20th centuries in a series of panoramas. In the process, they recorded enormous growth, historic buildings under construction, andContinue reading “Panoramas of Old Brisbane.”

The Mackay district in glass plate negatives.

One of the many glass plate negative series in the State Library’s digital collection shows people and scenery in the Mackay area around the 1870s-1880s. There aren’t many pictures, and some are badly damaged. Others depict First Nations people, and I’m uncomfortable about uploading those, given cultural sensitivities, and the fact that the photographs wereContinue reading “The Mackay district in glass plate negatives.”