George Dalrymple

George Augustus Frederick Elphinstone Dalrymple (born May 6, 1826 in Elphinstone , Aberdeenshire , Scotland , † January 22, 1876 in St Leonhards, Sussex , Scotland) was an explorer , public servant and politician in Australia . With his expeditions, Dalrymple laid the foundations for the settlement of the Australian state of Queensland .

Life

George Dalrymple was the tenth son of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Dalrymple Horn Elphinstone of Aberdeenshire and his wife Graeme, nee Hepburn. He left Scotland in the 1840s and became a coffee farmer in Ceylon .

He came to Darling Downs in Australia between the years 1856 and 1858. With an expedition he wanted to reach the watershed of the Burdekin River . For this started from Rockhampton and reached the Bowen area . He undertook several expeditions: for example, the expedition to Port Denison and another, which was commissioned to found the city of Bowen, were important. He was successful and the proclamation of the place Bowen took place on April 11th, 1861. He then withdrew from state duties because he was dissatisfied with the extensive administrative tasks and new legal regulations associated with it, fell ill and the colonial government employed trained explorers.

In the following year he started his own company with several partners. The establishment of Cardwell in 1864 goes back to Dalrymple and Arthur Scott. Cardwell was to serve as a port to Bowen in the north. With a small group of expeditions he reached the Valley of Lagoons .

Dalrymple lost interest in his company, wanted to get into politics and sold his shares in the company. In March 1865 he was elected a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. He was colonial secretary from July to August 1866 and it was intended that he would be appointed governor of the new British colony of Queensland. But this did not happen. In November 1867 he was elected a member of the Royal Geographical Society . In 1867 he no longer ran for parliament, went back to Great Britain to restore his health. In 1869 he returned to Queensland. He got involved again as a businessman, which failed and he became bankrupt. In October 1871 he got a job in public administration, which helped him due to his financial situation. The following year he was commissioned to explore a route for telegraph poles over Seaview Range to Cardwell. In September 1873 he led a voyage of discovery from Cardwell and reached the Endeavor River in October . When he returned to Cardwell with a fever, he went to Brisbane . In May 1874 he fell seriously ill and returned to Scotland. There he died unmarried on January 22nd, 1876 in St Leonhards in Sussex.

Afterlife

Because of its expeditions George Dalrymple laid the foundations for the development of Queensland, so wear places or landmarks his name, for example, Dalrymple National Park , Mount Dalrymple, Dalrymple-constituency County Shire of Dalrymple and the lost city Dalrymple, the first city in the early British colony of North Australia .

literature

CG Austin, Clem Lack: Dalrymple, George Augustus (1826–1876) on adb-online

Individual evidence

1. ↑ adb.anu.edu.au : CG Austin, Clem Lack: Dalrymple, George Augustus (1826–1876) , in English, accessed November 1, 2012