Robert Dulhunty - Arrival in Sydney and Early Activities

Arrival in Sydney and Early Activities

At the age of 21, Robert Dulhunty arrived in the Colony of New South Wales as a free settler on the ship Guildford. The date of his arrival was 5 March 1824. He was accompanied on the voyage from England by his brother, Lawrence Vance Dulhunty — a qualified surveyor with a sharp mind but a much less appealing manner than Robert's.

Sydney was just 36 years old at the time of the Dulhunty's arrival. It was still essentially a penal outpost operating under the decidedly non-democratic control of the then Governor of NSW, Sir Thomas Brisbane. The economy of NSW was based overwhelmingly on sheep grazing, other types of livestock production and the growing of various crops — with some additional income generated through whaling and sealing. Infrastructure projects were funded by the British Government and by the revenue reaped locally from taxes, including the collection of customs and excise duties levied on alcoholic spirits, tobacco and a wide range of imported goods. The colony possessed only a comparatively small contingent of skilled artisans, so convict iron-gangs were used perforce to build such necessary structures as roads, drains, bridges, wharves and fortifications, as well as public buildings of all kinds. Convicts quarried stone, too, and made bricks, felled trees and cleared paddocks. The more trustworthy of them were also assigned by the government to private landholders to work as agrarian labourers, shepherds or domestic servants.

On 23 March 1824, Robert Dulhunty applied for a grant of Crown land. This was at a time when the colony's hinterland was being opened up increasingly to responsible citizens for farming and grazing purposes. The governor accordingly granted him legal title to 2000 acres (eight km²) of land which he had selected previously at Cullen Bullen. In addition, Dulhunty was allocated six convict servants/labourers who were to assist him with the task of making the property a viable enterprise.

This land grant marked the beginning of Dulhunty's rise through the ranks of colonial society. Twelve years later, he would be listed as a founding member of Sydney's elite Australian Club, the first meeting of which wad held in October 1836. The club's 86 members included such prominent citizens as W.C. Wentworth, Sir John Jamison, Captain John Piper, Dr William Bland, Major Edmund Lockyer, James Macarthur, William Lithgow and John Blaxland.

But that is to race ahead of our narrative. On 4 July 1828, Dulhunty requested a ticket of occupation from the NSW Surveyor-General, Sir Thomas Mitchell. He was rather brusquely informed by Sir Thomas on 10 July that the government had, for some time, discontinued giving tickets of occupation. Sir Thomas, however, would become a friend of Dulhunty's in the coming years.

By the end of the 1820s, Dulhunty was living mainly at Claremont House in the Mulgoa Valley, not far from the Nepean River. Sometime between 1829 and 1833, he set out from the nearby township of Penrith with an escort of about 40 Aborigines. Crossing the rugged Great Dividing Range, he followed the Macquarie River down to what is now known as Dubbo. This area had not been occupied by any Europeans when the explorer Captain Charles Sturt traversed the Macquarie in 1829.

When surveyor Robert Dixon passed through Dubbo to survey the Bogan River in 1833, he mentioned that he had borrowed a dray from Dulhunty. It is therefore believed that Dulhunty took up the land which he named "Dubbo" in 1832.

Governor Sir Darling had created a zone known as the "limits of location" on 5 September 1826. Settlers were only allowed to take up land within this zone. A further government order, issued on 14 October 1829, increased the zone of approved settlement so that it now included an area called the 'Nineteen Counties'. Anyone who occupied land outside of this area were technically considered to be a 'squatter', without legal title. Among these squatters were many of the leading citizens of the colony, including Dulhunty.