The River Boat Captain, George Holt
In May 1928, The Brisbane Courier published the
obituary of Ipswich resident George Holt.
He was 100 years old and had arrived in Australia 79 years earlier, one
of the first free settlers to arrive in the Moreton Bay District. He was to
become a pioneer of river transport between Brisbane and Ipswich.
In the early years of the settlement, Ipswich was the transit point for
supplies to the western district and the wool sent down to Brisbane. The
easiest and most proficient mode of transport was by river boat along the
Brisbane and Bremer Rivers.
 |
| Studio portrait of George Holt |
At his birthday celebration in January, he told his story to a reporter
from the Brisbane Courier newspaper.
Yesterday a representative of the "Courier" journeyed to Blackwall,
which is about seven miles by road from Ipswich, to pay a call on the veteran,
who is still residing on the farm that he selected exactly 70 years ago. The
homestead is perched on a knoll overlooking the Brisbane River - the river upon
which, in his young days, when he was "Captain" Holt, he navigated
some of the earliest river steamers in this State.[1]
Mr. Holt loves to find a good listener to his stories of
the "good old days," as he calls them.
"I'm one of the original
'Pommies,' " he declared with a smile at his own joke."I was born at
Poole, in Dorsetshire, and to this day I can remember the beautiful stretch of
river between there and Wareham. As a youth I was apprenticed to my uncle, Mr.
Robert Cribb, who was a baker in London."
 |
| Robert Cribb in old age |
Robert Cribb and others were recruited by the Reverend Doctor John
Dunmore Lang, a prominent figure in the colonies and a champion of emigration
from Britain and later from Germany. Cribb became a wealthy merchant in
Ipswich.
"The late Rev. Dr. Dunmore Lang managed to persuade Mr.
Cribb to emigrate to Cooksland, as the worthy doctor termed Moreton Bay, and
Mr. Cribb, in turn, induced me to come, also. We sailed for Brisbane in Dr.
Lang's first ship, which was named Fortitude, with about 250 other passengers,
and we dropped anchor in Moreton Bay on January 20, 1849 - 73 years ago to-morrow.
I remember that at first we were quartered in tents on a
site near the Exhibition Buildings. Brisbane was a very small place in those
days - mostly bush. There was a running creek where Finney, Isles' building is
now. The only means of crossing it was by balancing on a log which had fallen
across it."
The immigrants were not expected in Brisbane, an oversight by the
entrepreneurial Dr. Lang, hence the tented accommodation in what is now the
inner city area known as Fortitude Valley. George soon found employment in
Brisbane Town.
 |
| The emigrant ship Fortitude |
"I first worked for Mr. William Pickering, who had a wine
and spirit store on the corner of George and Queen Streets, where the Bank of
New South Wales now stands. I got a wage of 8/ a week and found, my job being
to bring water in casks from what was known as the 'Red Clay Waterhole,' near
the site of the new Brisbane Town Hall. In those days there was a large lagoon
there, caused by the drainage from Windmill Hill.
Then 'Yankee' Wilson gave me
a job in bringing down stone from a quarry near Oxley Creek for the erection of
St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Church, in Elizabeth Street."
George soon began his career piloting river boats between Brisbane
Ipswich. His first vessel was a punt, a
long narrow flat-bottomed boat usually powered by a pole-man standing at the
stern. Because of the depth of the
Brisbane and Bremer Rivers, George’s punt relied on the tides to travel up and
down river, steering using a rear mounted oar.
The experience I gained then gave me a little later the
position of 'skipper' of the punt Jenny Lind. The vessel was 50 tons burthen[2],
and was named after the famous singer[3]. The vessel carried goods between Brisbane
and Ipswich. She had neither steam nor sails. She just floated up the river
with the tide, and came down in the same way.
There was a long
steer-oar at the stern, with which I guided her course, and I can tell you that
in those days the navigation of the river was a ticklish job.
The ambitious young river pilot soon went into the transport business
by himself, finally moving from punts to paddle steamers.
 |
| Large paddlesteamer docked at the Ipswich wharves |
I managed to scrape up the money to buy a punt, and I
then entered into competition with the Jenny Lind, and the small steamers Experiment
and Raven. I carried squatters' stores up the river, and brought down bales of
wool and tallow from the four boiling down works.
I subsequently sold my punts to Captain Bobby Towns,[4] a
widely-known navigator, and in this way I had £400 in cash. By this time I had
secured a bay and river navigator's certificate, so I put the whole of my money
into the Bremer Steam Navigation Company, which had just been started, and was
appointed captain of the Bremer, and subsequently of the Hawke, which was owned
by the same company.
Unfortunately in the vicarious financial atmosphere of the rapidly
growing settlements, the Company eventually went under.
I made a great many friends while I was engaged in the
river trade. Unfortunately, the company was not well managed, and after three
years it was wound up - and I lost all the money I had put into it.
 |
| Cribb and Foote London Stores, Bell Street, Ipswich, 1850s |
I then decided to
go back to the baking trade which I had learnt as a boy. My uncle, Mr. Robert
Cribb, purchased a bakery business in Bell-street, and put it in my charge. I
worked there for three years, and then took up this piece of land here and went
farming.
George spent the remainder of his long life on his farm outside Ipswich.
His homestead stood on a hill overlooking the Brisbane River.
© K. C. Sbeghen, 2012.
