The Mayne Inheritance (8 page)

He missed seven meetings during 1864 and the Council minutes suggest that his contribution to debate had little of the commonsense and vigour of his first term. In February 1865, when it was customary to elect the Mayor for the year, the factions within the Council began jockeying to have their man elected. The competition descended to squabbles; Mayne, determined to be heard, seemed to be in some state of confusion. He nominated John Petrie, then seconded the nomination favouring Alderman Pettigrew. The arguments ranged over two discordant meetings before Alderman Hockings was elected Mayor.

To some extent Patrick's usual rough tongue and bellicose stance and the faction-ridden breakdown of reasonable debate must have masked his changing health and irrationality. He was again elected to the Finance Committee. This lasted just over two months before it became clear to everyone that he was a very ill man. Because of his continued absence, Alderman Graham officially replaced him on the committee. Towards the end of May, a nurse was engaged for him, but he struggled to his last Council
meeting on 5 June 1865. From then on until his death on 17 August, he needed full-time nursing at his Queen Street home.

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During Patrick's busy aldermanic years his business life had surged ahead. The anti-Mayne campaign of early 1860 had dinted his ego but not his self-confidence. His last child, James O'Neil Mayne, was born on 21 January 1861. In that year he commissioned the architect Benjamin J. Backhouse to design two more brick shops; when finished they were let to the drapers Grimes and Petty and the grocer, Reuben Oliver. Politics and persecution were temporarily off the town's agenda, and he saw a heaven-sent chance to strengthen his social standing in town.

In Brisbane's isolated community, visitors were always a
source of interest. In 1861 a young gentleman from England, the guest of Colonel O'Connell, was much talked about for his charm and skill as a pianist. He was seventeen-year-old W.R.O. Hill, the son of a military officer who claimed acquaintance with Lord Palmerston. When the Colonel introduced Hill to various people in town, Mayne invited the lad to stay at his house for a few days. In his memoirs, Hill, who became a Police Magistrate and Gold Warden in North Queensland, recalled that he went in, sat down at the piano and rattled off a few lively airs to the entire satisfaction of the family. Mayne immediately made him a very generous offer of £1.15.0 a week, plus board and lodgings and a horse to ride, if he would give piano lessons to eleven-year-old Rosanna. Unfortunately for Patrick, that chance to close the wide social and cultural gap was lost. Hill declined the offer; he wrote that although he was a musical athlete, he played by ear and did not know a single note of music.

The economy of the early sixties was buoyant. Raff, Stephens, and a coterie of moneyed townsmen formed the Queensland Steam Navigation Company with a capital of £60,000. Mayne was one of the shareholders. Raff, who had once been a partner in Lamb, Parbury and Company in Sydney, had a background in merchant shipping and they planned a regular steam service between Brisbane and Sydney, upstream to Ipswich and, in the future, to North Queensland. Mayne's interest in this new company greatly widened his business horizons. Shipping meat was one of
his plans, but more opportunities kept presenting themselves.

At this time, Australia was being promoted in Ireland as a land of small farms where prosperity and political independence were available to all. Under the Immigration Regulations of 1861, new settlers who paid their own fare or those who sponsored them were reimbursed with an £18 land order. The Q.S.N. Company quickly became involved in sponsorship on a company basis and some of the major shareholders also operated individually. Under his personal sponsorship, Patrick first paid for four migrants, one of them his mother-in-law, Mary Kelly, who had remarried and was again widowed. He then paid for nine other adult migrants from Ireland, one of whom was his sister Ann. He earned land orders valued at £234 which he was granted after their arrival in 1862.

At the same time, Bishop Quinn set up the Queensland Immigration Society, which was to alleviate continued stress and poverty in Ireland and swell the numbers of his Catholic parishioners in Queensland. The Society was administered in Ireland by Father Robert Dunne, who processed the migrants and farewelled the first ship in February 1862. From then on, it was to be followed by one ship a month. In the first year three thousand Irish Catholics were sponsored by Quinn's society, but by the time the exodus to Queensland reached six thousand, Bishop Quinn foolishly remarked that the colony should be called ‘‘Quinnsland''.

Sectarian hostility was common. It grew with this big
intake of Irish Catholic migrants, and Quinn's immodest claim was the spark that caused an explosion. That, coupled with the fact that the scheme was proving too costly and the high death rate during the long voyage was causing loss of income, saw Quinn's immigration society dissolved in 1864. The scheme's importance to the life of the Mayne family lies in the fact that Fr Robert Dunne, who had processed and farewelled so many of his countrymen, arrived in Moreton Bay as Quinn's Vicar General on 10 December 1863. He was to influence most of the future life of the Mayne family, and indirectly the gifts to the University of Queensland.

Although Patrick failed in the 1862 municipal election, he must have viewed his business life with pleasure and satisfaction. Wherever he rode around Brisbane he could feel a surge of pride as his glance embraced the extensive property he owned. Confidence and commercial optimism were everywhere. Land prices were high and he had plenty of it to supply the building boom. In addition, several Government and municipal projects were absorbing labour and encouraging business. His own business plans were long-range and thorough.

The Q.S.N. Company ships plying upstream to Ipswich sought regular profitable cargoes. He and other station owners walked their stock to Ipswich, but for efficiency and maximum profits, they needed a regular fat cattle and sheep market in that town. For the buyers this had to be supplemented by reliable, regular river transport to Brisbane, which would be provided by the Q.S.N.
Company. Mayne and other Brisbane butchers, including Edmonstone, Darragh and Baynes, made a public appeal to Fattorini and Company of Ipswich to establish that regular market. This move gave some security to his plans for his new property ‘‘Rosevale''. And the fact that he currently had no council business to eat up busy hours gave him the time to devote to this, his biggest project.

Mayne always had to be a front runner. Once he had set up ‘‘Rosevale'' and the shipping project, he wanted to be back where he could have a wider say in the town's affairs. His scattered landholdings made him eligible to vote and stand in more than one ward, which was how he stood successfully for Fortitude Valley. In the jockeying to elect the Mayor, he shifted his allegiance from John Petrie to the man who had backed him in his call for the Ipswich fat stock market, George Edmonstone, another butcher. They were involved with others in business ventures and Edmonstone was a man of property, some education, and stood well in the town's hierarchy. His nomination of Edmonstone was successful. Perhaps, if one butcher could be Mayor in 1863, another butcher, the ambitious Patrick Mayne, might be so elevated a few years hence. For now, he had to be content with being nominated to the Incorporation Committee and the Lighting Committee.

Lack of water was a serious problem for everyone, but too much water was a far more serious threat. In March 1863 constant rains flooded much of Brisbane town. The river and Wheat Creek overflowed, surging through lower Queen Street so that all the premises on the west side
between Edward and Albert Streets were flooded. The Maynes, in their solid brick shop and home with its stables and coachhouse, suffered along with their neighbours. This must have caused anxiety, loss of stock and trading, and costly repairs—a new stress on a man who, as the Council minutes show, was beginning to display increasing irrationality in his actions.

With a man as belligerent and unstable as Patrick, who had no compunction about the pain he might inflict on others, it seems reasonable to accept that his behaviour within the family could be similarly unpleasant. Rosanna, now fifteen, was being taught by the Sisters of Mercy at the new All Hallows' School in ‘‘Adderton'', Dr Fullerton's former home across the way from Bishop Quinn's ‘‘Dara''. Isaac, thirteen, and William, nine, were at the Normal School at the corner of Adelaide and Edward Streets. All three were old enough to have been affected by their father's behaviour, especially his rages when he was thwarted. It is highly likely that the tragic adult life of Mayne's children, while partly hereditary, may also be attributed to his treatment of them. It is fairly significant that Mary Emelia, six at the time of her father's death, and James, a toddler of four, were the least affected of his children.

Mary Mayne, their mother, proved to be a particularly strong woman. Unschooled she may have been but she was capable and intelligent, and, if she could not do much to protect the children who were old enough to defy their
protection of the infants. There is no evidence that her mother, Mary Kelly, lived with the family or was any help to them. She died, and presumably lived, at Bowen Hills, but appeared to have no money; she may have occupied one of Patrick's houses. Ann Mayne, Patrick's younger sister, who had lived with them for barely a year, was probably reluctant or unable to stand up to the brother on whom she was entirely dependent. The man who gradually took a benevolent interest in the family was the new Vicar General, Fr Dunne. Mary Mayne remained a Protestant, but seemed to find more acceptance among the Irish Catholics than with those of her own religion. The children were brought up in their father's faith. Patrick's wealth, his lack of whole-hearted commitment to the Church, and his inclination to stray from its teaching meant there were plenty of reasons for Fr Dunne to call on them. His coming into their increasingly stressed life must have brought some comfort and strength to Mary.

Fr Dunne was very different from the other Irish colonial priests they had known. He was a stocky man with a round face given character by a sharp nose and gentle hazel eyes. After an education in Rome, followed by some years as a teacher at St Lawrence's School, Dublin, he had the strength and confidence to be tolerant and compassionate, and was also worldly-wise. He tried to solve his parishioners' very human problems by employing a common sense that allowed him to interpret Church law to suit colonial circumstance. From fragments of letters that remain it seems clear he was aware of problems in the
Mayne family, and extended what pastoral care he could. His worldly advice may well have been behind the sudden switch of fourteen-year-old Rosanna from day-student to boarder at All Hallows' in 1864. The school was only four blocks away from their Queen Street home.

For a man who was mentally and physically ill, 1864 was far too heavy a year for Patrick. If the cause of his death was porphyria, syphilis or cancer, by this time he was probably affected by it. Having been elected to the Council's Finance Committee he was involved in preliminaries for the new Town Hall project and the cross-river bridge. There were interminable arguments over the urgently needed water supply, and the people were demanding a new hospital. True, the population had risen to 12,551 which meant increased rate money, but it was never enough to catch up with the town's most elementary needs.

In his business sphere he was shipping meat, supplying other butchers, and trade at his shop was brisk. There was his hides and tallow trade, and rents came in regularly from his many houses, business premises, paddocks and farmland. His directorship of No.3 Building Society provided a fair income, and the Q.S.N. Company was doing well enough for him to substantially increase his shareholding. He was known as an astute businessman with very substantial assets. The Bank of New South Wales had readily lent him money for further expansion,
especially to stock ‘‘Rosevale'' and purchase the pre-emptive square-mile homestead block. T.L. Murray-Prior gave him credit to buy his large grazing tract at Moggill. His personal interests were now so widely scattered, so diverse and demanding that they may have been the reason that throughout the year he missed at least one Council meeting a month.

If one adds to his private workload the additional Council work, there may lie the answer as to why he now failed to keep a strict eye on all his financial affairs. That had not been his regime up until now. Perhaps business was so good that he missed the signs of downturn and believed a little wild financial gambling was nothing to worry about. But it is more likely, in such an astute man who had watched others fail by overreaching themselves, that by 1864 he was losing the concentration and tight grip that had directed the accumulation of his wealth.

The pre-dawn tragedy that had hit the business heart of Brisbane months earlier, when a large tract of Queen Street West was incinerated, had not involved loss or damage to any Mayne property. However, the cost had been enormous to town trade, insurance companies, and owners of other premises, some of which were not insured. To cap it all, the cracks in the economy were beginning to show. Prices rose and credit was tightened. Unable to afford to rebuild, some licked their wounds and quietly went bankrupt, leaving their creditors to go into deeper debt. Others patched and painted and began trading
again. For a while the scope of the financial damage was not clearly realised.