A pioneer of the cattle trade

by John Wells
By 1840 Port Phillip District squatters built a cattle trade with Van Diemen’s Land, with the convict administration a major client. When Strzelecki and McMillan each discovered Port Albert and saw its suitability aa a port, they opened up a trade across the Strait from Gippsland.
By about 1845 nearly all the grazing land in Gippsland was under licence to squatters, many of them coming down from the Monaro through Omeo and down the Tambo Valley. One of those was Patrick Coady Buckley, born in Dublin in 1816. He was just two years old when his parents brought him out to Sydney, and the world must have seemed a very strange place to the little boy.
In 1831 he and his half-brother (Buckley was born Patrick Coady and Buckley was his stepfather’s surname) had the Wullwye ‘run’, the site of Dalgety, and in 1834 he became the manager. He soon added to this by being one of those who came across from the Monaro to Omeo where he held the Tongio-mungie and Ensay runs.
He came down into Gippsland to look at possibilities in 1842 and in 1843 he took up the Coady Vale run, 53,760 acres, on Merriman’s Creek, more or less the Seaspray area and fronting Lake Denison. In 1844 he added the Tarra Creek run. He was on his way to becoming a very wealthy man through the cattle trade. He is not regarded by historians as a particularly good man because of his treatment of a Chinese servant and, more widely, the aborigines of the area. He wrote of hunting aborigines with the “Border Police”.
If there is truth in the South Gippsland massacre stories (and there might be) it would be safe to say Buckley was right among them. He lived a relatively isolated life on his stations, with no wife and no family in Victoria. He was a hard man and did not seem to socialise much.
In 1842 James McFarlane sent a cargo of cattle from Port Albert to Van Diemen’s Land. Two months later Angus McMillian sent his first cargo over the Strait. Both men used the schooner “Water Witch”, a small ship which had an exciting and significant history in its own right. It was a three-day crossing as a rule, but the weather was always a dangerous factor in the Strait.
Soon livestock were being shipped from Portland and Geelong as well. Some came down from Twofold Bay (Eden) but most of these had to walk from the Monaro and were in poorer condition than their Gippsland brethren.
Transportation of convicts to Sydney ended in 1840 and most were then sent to Van Diemen’s Land in such numbers that there were over twenty-four thousand of them on the island by 1845, over half the population of VDL. Some were fed by squatters and farmers for whom they worked but the government had to buy beef for the others. The trade was lucrative, especially when the economy dipped in the 1840s and many farmers ‘gave’ their convicts labourers back to the government. Just as an aside and not to put too fine a point on it, this was a form of slavery.
The Van Diemen’s Land Governor signed a bill stopping the Port Phillip suppliers because the trade was so lucrative that it was draining the VDL economy of cash. Somehow, Buckley and others exporting from Port Albert were not affected by the bill.
Fortunately for us Buckley kept a diary and this describes, albeit in prosaic terms and somewhat misspelt terms, his arrival in Gippsland. “Munday Jany 1 1844 I commence my Journal from A place called the Tambo River in the 28 years of my Age on my way from Munneroo Plains to Gipps Land in company with Mr Tingcome and two of my men named John Neal and Wm Scott we started from the Tambo River where we camped the Night before nd cam to Sappling Yard at A place caled Munky Creek with Enough to do as the cattle drove very tuff met Jack Hennessey & two of Sparkses men on our way the day very foggy & showry”. That is a very prosaic account of what Buckley had done in bringing the cattle down to the port. I assume that Munky Creek is Monkey Creek and that carries a suggestion that if this was not a spelling error then the name might have been an aboriginal one. No criticism is intended of Buckley – some squatters could barely read or write at all.
“Frid 12 Spent the day at home Mr Pearson came here to let me know when to bring my cattle down for shipment he stopped and had some dinner and then went away the day fine
“Thurs 25 finished drafting the cattle& started away with 41 head of mine and 1 of Rowley’s to send by the brig Amity brough John Neal with me to assist driving and shipping the cattle and to attend to them during the Passage over Marshall and Curtis helped us as far as the crossing Place we stopped for the night at Masons… “
The cattle were in the Amity’s hold and there was a deck load of sheep above. This must have been difficult because after loading the livestock on the 29th there was a wait of three days for a favourable wind to take the Amity over the bar. There was a glut in the market when he got to Hobart and his price was a little disappointing. The passage took six days, landing on the 8th. The glut was not a major or long-term problem – it was just that three ships carrying cattle arrived at Hobart at the same time, with a fourth going to Launceston.
Buckley was among Gippsland’s real pioneers at a time when there was money to be made, and he was very much a pioneer of the lucrative trans-Strait cattle trade. 
His holdings included Tongeo Mungie (1839) and Ensay (1839-45) from where he started his Gippsland movement, then, in chronological order, Coady Vale, later called Prospect East and Prospect West, on Lake Denison (1843-1873), Tarra Creek (1844-51), Woologoramerang (Wulgulmerang) (1851-59), Maryville (Maryvale, 5 miles north of Morwell (1861-72), Neoyang, just north of Bruthen (1862-67), Benambra (1862-75) and Gelantipy (1864-75). He died in 1872, a very wealthy man with no issue.
It is ironic that Buckley never had a family of his own despite his wealth. When he died he left no will and the government tried to divide his estate among distant relatives. This eventually achieved, but not before nearly 40,000 pounds, more than half the estate, had been taken up by legal costs.