Cressbrook Cemetery

General

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Also known as

Cressbrook Cemetery-Evelyn

Classification

State Heritage

Register status

Entered

Date entered

17 June 2003

Type

Burial ground: Cemetery—private

Theme

1.4 Peopling places: Family and marking the phases of life

Architect

Melrose & Fenwick

Construction period

1913–1940, Cressbrook Cemetery (1913 - 1940)

Historical period

1900–1914 Early 20th century

Location

Address

off Jonsson Road, Evelyn

LGA

Tablelands Regional Council

Coordinates

-17.49964096, 145.45009269

Significance

Criterion AThe place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland’s history.

Cressbrook Cemetery is a small private cemetery containing the headstones of four early Herbert River settlers. It is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history, in particular the development and decline of rural properties.

Criterion DThe place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places.

The cemetery demonstrates the principal characteristics of rural homestead cemeteries, where members of extended families were buried in small private cemeteries on the property. Two of the graves in the Cressbrook Cemetery are marked with typically elaborate marble headstones, made by stone masons in regional centres, and imported into the district.

Criterion HThe place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland’s history.

The place has a special association with Queensland's history because it is the burial place of important pioneers of North Queensland. Explorer and pioneer Henry Stone surveyed blocks on the headwaters of the Burdekin in 1859. He was the first manager of the Valley of Lagoons and first settler of the Upper Herbert, establishing the Vale of Herbert Station in 1865. Anna Stone and Mary Hull were also important early pioneers of the Upper and Lower Herbert districts, arriving as children at the Valley of Lagoons in 1868.

History

Cressbrook Cemetery contains the headstones of four people, Henry Stone, Anna Stone, Mary Hull and Alexander William Fraser. The graves are marked with three marble headstones set into concrete. Some of Hazel Hull's ashes are interred at the base of Mary Hull's grave.

Henry Stone was born in England in 1835. He came to South Australia aged 16 and began working on various pastoral properties. In 1859 he joined George Elphinstone Dalrymple on his expedition from Rockhampton to north Queensland in search of rich pastoral country. Pastoralists and Sydney businessmen funded the expedition after enthusiastic reports from Ludwig Leichhardt's 1844/45 expedition from Port Essington to the Darling Downs. Stone, who was the surveyor on Dalrymple's expedition, marked out large runs for members of the party and their financial backers.

Dalrymple, Robert Herbert and the brothers Arthur and Walter Scott purchased an area known as the Valley of Lagoons in 1861 and installed Henry Stone as manager. Stone stocked the property with 25,000 head of sheep and cattle. It became essential to establish easier access to the coast. Stone was in the first expedition with Dalrymple, Scott and Farqurharson that crossed the Herbert Valley in search of route from the Valley of the Lagoons to the coast. On this expedition a route was not found.

On March 8, 1864 Dalrymple, Stone and others departed from the Valley of Lagoons in another attempt to locate a route to the coast. They intended to build a road to Rockingham Bay and the newly settled port of Cardwell. The team included 12 European and 4 Aboriginal people, 3 bullock drays, 61 working bullocks, 63 fat cattle and 18 horses. Despite problems such as flood and loss of supplies, the first of the party arrived in Cardwell on 24 April and a dray route was soon established.

Stone was given the responsibility of constructing the Vale of Herbert station, a half-way house between Cardwell and Valley of Lagoons. This was successfully completed in 1865 and Stone took up new runs on the Herbert River. The house constructed at the Vale of Herbert was known as Stone Hut.

Scottish setters, Duncan and Maria McAuslan, had arrived in Queensland from New Zealand with their 2 young daughters, Anna and Mary, in 1868. They traveled overland from Bowen to the Valley of Lagoons, where Duncan worked as Head Stockman for the Scott Brothers, under Henry Stone's management. In 1873 Duncan McAuslan acquired 292 acres across Trebonne Creek from Stone hut, and 1280 acres known as `Greenfields'. Henry Stone owned the adjacent property, 'The Grange'.

Duncan McAuslan made two unsuccessful trips to the Palmer River Goldfields in 1879 with a large number of cattle fattened at Vale of Herbert. In this year McAuslan and Stone became partners in another run known as `Wairuna'. In 1880 Duncan McAuslan replaced Stone as manager of Vale of Herbert station.

Early in 1880, 44 year old Stone announced his engagement to 16 years old Anna McAuslan. The first Bishop of North Queensland, Dr GH Stanton married them at Greenfields on 1 May 1883. They settled at The Grange until 1904, when they moved to Montecute at Evelyn.

The McAuslans returned to Greenfields on the Lower Herbert catchment after the sale of Wairuna in 1881 where they ran cattle and a slaughterhouse. Duncan McAuslan died here while out riding on 22 July 1883. Greenfields was subsequently sold in 1885 to Thomas White, the surveyor who, in 1881, had laid out the town of Herberton. Maria and Mary McAuslan moved to Alston's, where Mary met her future husband, John Hull Jnr.

John Hull Jnr was born in England in 1865, one of eleven children. In 1871 John Hull Snr and his family, along with five other families, came to the Ingham area, to a property called Blackrock, to grow tobacco and later run a dairy farm. This was sold in 1887 and the parents retired to Epping in Sydney.

Rev. Biddolf-Clive, of the Church of England, married Mary McAuslan and John Hull Jnr in Ingham in 1887. After their marriage they went to live at Gilldale, an outstation of the Valley of Lagoons.

While at Gilldale Mary is said to have learnt the local Aboriginal dialect and the medicinal properties of some native plants. In 1888 a heavily preganant Mary travelled on horseback to Stoneleigh, near Ingham, to be with her mother for the birth of her first child, Winifred Jane. This journey through Valley of Lagoons and across the Seaview Range to the coast would have taken at least a week. Mary returned to Gilldale alone with her newborn baby in the saddle.

Mary and John Hull had seven children between 1888 and 1905. They were Winifred Jane (2/4/1988), Rhoda Maria (20/8/1889), Anna (23/2/1891), Elsie McAuslan (28/8/1892), Rowland Evered (13/3/1894), Kenneth Beven (10/12/1899) and Hazel Edith (2/7/1905).

Mary and John Hull moved to Herberton in 1889 and went into the cattle business, butchering and breaking in wild bullocks. They also ran an unsuccessful dairy run. After Maria McAuslan's death in a buggy accident in 1892, Mary inherited money which she used to purchase Portion 157 at Evelyn. Mary named the property Cressbrook. The property was extended to include Portion 140 in 1905. It is believed that John Hull did not reside at Cressbrook for any length of time.

Mary built a new house at Cressbrook out of locally pit sawn red cedar. The house was said to have survived the 1927 cyclone that destroyed many nearby houses. Mary operated Cressbrook as a dairy farm and a butcher/slaughterhouse, selling produce 20 kilometres away at Herberton. Mary supplied construction workers with fresh meat during the construction of the Herberton to Tumoulin railway. She also provided produce to the timber workers who worked along the timber tramway connecting Evelyn to the Herberton railway at Turulka which operated between 1912 and 1924.

Early in 1913 Anna Stone, Mary Hull's sister, moved from Montecute to Cressbrook so that Mary could assist with a wound on her arm which needed to be changed daily. The injury led to Anna's death on 12 July 1913. Anna Stone was the first person to be buried at Cressbrook cemetery. After her death her husband Henry Stone moved to Cressbrook, suffering from failing eyesight, alcohol and laudanum addiction.

Rhoda Maria Hull, Mary Hull's daughter, married Alexander William Fraser on 15 July 1914. They lived at Cressbrook after their marriage. Alexander Fraser was buried at Cressbrook cemetery after his skull was crushed in a timber felling accident on 13 April 1915. He was 22 years old. His father and brother-in-law attended Alexander's funeral. Fraser's family brought the marble headstone from Townsville. Rhoda was pregnant when Alexander died.

Henry Stone died on 11 October 1919 leaving his property, Montecute, to Mary Hull. He had been living at Cressbrook for five years. He shares a marble headstone, made by Melrose and Fenwick in Cairns, with his wife, Anna, in the Cressbrook Cemetery. Mary sold Montecute and used the money to purchase property for her sons, Rowley and Kenny, in East Evelyn. The property was one mile south of Evelyn, in an area with high rainfall. It was able to provide feed for Mary's stock when Evelyn was dry.

Mary used Cressbrook as a boarding house after Henry's death, taking in people from Cairns with 'coastal fever', school teachers for the local Evelyn Scrub State School and visiting officials. She was a leading figure in the Evelyn area, being the local contact for childbirth, medical and police matters.

Mary Hull suffered her first heart attack in 1924, and her second in 1936. She died three weeks after her third heart attack, on 31 October 1940. She had lived at Cressbrook for forty-eight years and was buried beside her sister, brother-in-law and son-in-law.

Cressbrook was left to Mary's youngest daughter, Hazel Edith, who had married Don Fardon in April 1924. Hazel Edith Fardon and her family lived on the property until it was sold to Otto Jonsson in 1948, whose family owned the neighboring Evelyn Station. The buildings and fences were removed and Cressbrook was incorporated into Evelyn Station. In 2003 the property used for growing potatoes and grazing cattle.

Hazel Edith Fardon was buried in Townsville with her husband after she died in the Blue Mountains on 21 August 1991. Some of her ashes were interred at the foot of Mary Hull's grave in 1992.

Description

Cressbrook Cemetery is located in a paddock of Evelyn Station used (in 2003) for grazing cattle. The paddock slopes downwards slightly to the north, to an intermittent creek. Eucalyptus and acacia species are present on the boundaries of the paddock and a row of mangoes marks the approximate site of the Cressbrook Homestead. The four marked graves are enclosed within a barbed wire and timber post fence with a metal gate on the eastern side. A jacaranda tree and eucalypts are present within the enclosure. These trees do not appear to be part of a structured planting arrangement. The total area enclosed by the fence is 20 metres by 25 metres.

The four graves are positioned side by side and face an easterly direction. They are constructed from concrete and each grave measures 1.5 metres wide by 3 metres long. There are three marble headstones, as Anna and Henry Stone share one. Two of the headstones, the Stone's and Alexander William Fraser's, are approximately 1.2 metres high with lead lettering and decorative elements. These were made by stone-masons Melrose and Fenwick, in Cairns and Townsville respectively. Mary Hull's headstone is a square piece of marble set in concrete, measuring approximately 50 by 50 centimetres. The ashes interred at the foot of Mary Hull's grave are not marked.

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