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The above photos were supplied by Neil McGregor [binrm-at-bigpond.com]
Charles J McGregor (1830-1921)
It is 158 years since the first white man walked through the Bega Valley. He had to walk because he was a shipwrecked sailor His name W. Clarke. His companions? Three Lascar seamen.
Bega Valley was not visited by whites for almost 30 years and early in 1829 William D Tarlington came as far south as Cobargo. Later that year he came to Bega.
The Bega Valley of 1829 was a dangerous valley. All who came to it faced the perils of complete isolation. They lived off the land until they could grow their own food. They built their huts of stringy bark and slabs because there was nothing else.
The very early settlers had blacks who were often hostile as their neighbours. They had no roads at all. There was no public transport and no mails. But always there was a loneliness. More important there was a spirit that built the Far South Coast
CHARLES JOHN McGREGOR was one of the early pioneers. Born at Perthshire, Scotland in 1830, he sailed with his parents, sisters and brothers from Dundee, Scotland, on the “John Barry” a sailing vessel of 524 tons in 1834. The ship carried 312 Scottish immigrants but 32 died on the voyage, an appallingly high death rate that must indicate the conditions aboard ship.
His father, John McGregor, settled near Manly but soon afterwards the family began the long trek southwards, and settled first at Araluen. Soon afterwards they moved to Moruya, and then to Nerrigundah.
The year is not definite, but the family commenced farming, and the house was built on the site of land that proved to be the richest claim in the goldfields. The family was on the site of both goldfields without a speck of gold to show for it. Planting fruit trees, the copper-like mineral was picked up. “Throw it away, it’s of no value” was the instruction given. Here having to live off the land, turnips were planted, but they were plundered by the aborigines, and as the few whites did not dare to stop the blacks, the McGregors moved south to Bega. There were already some permanent
Settlers here. Thomas Underhill had arrived in 1842. John Otton had come from Jamberoo. Charles McGregor arrived in Bega in 1848. The McGregors’ home was built at Corridgeree, and Charles commenced to grow wheat. They had no stock, but Charles ran in wild horses while his father manufactured the harness of tussock grass bound around with strips or stringy bark for collars, and the traces were made of green hide. This was the early equipment for the ploughing of the rich alluvial flats along the Brogo River, near Bega, then controlled by the Imlay Bros, who lived at Tarraganda
The McGregor’s primitive home was built on the flat near the river. They were soon to learn the danger. The big flood of 1851 swept away the home and drowned a number of whites and aborigines. The bullock team was used to take the household’s belongings to safety, but some settlers named Rolfe remained on a haystack for four or five days, the only food coming from two hens that were also on the stack. Charles McGregor and all his family survived the flood, just as he was cured of snakebite by his father( a Waterloo soldier) who made an incision, applied gunpowder and lit it with a match
Meanwhile Bega was growing, if few accept it as a town without a house in South Bega and three in North Bega. Charles McGregor is accepted as the first to take flour (by bullock team) to Monaro. There was no other transport.
Later as a few roads were made, he got a horse team and used to drive eight and ten horse.
Illegible….One of the horses was a racehorse Meteor which won an epic race against Pollack’s Gramalda in three heats of a mile each for fifty pounds aside Big stakes in the 1850. Charles McGregor was a horseman, and his ride from Moruya and return 160 miles in 23 hours is a record that few if any have ever bothered to better in Australia.
The Sydney Bulleton said of him:
Charles McGregor was the delight of the( illegible)..of 50 or 60 years back, when, with …….coat and top boots and huge stock…Hip, he kept the track clear for the races. No small job because everyone came mounted and there were usually about 150 to 200 blacks present, with their full compliment of dogs.
An undated “Bega Budget” says Charley McGregor was a splendid horseman and even the Governor Sir Charles Fitzroy,…who visited Bega, he got into difficulties in the river atDundindi while hunting, and it was Charley McGregor, who saved him from being drowned. He gave the distinguished visitor his stirrips and finished the hunt about them.
(there were not any rabbits) Alludes almost certainly to foxes, dingoes or wallabies.editor
To illustrate the difficulties of the period the same paper said. In case of sickness the doctor would travel on horseback with Charley’s mail team. They would leave Bega perhaps at midnight, for Moruya.
Charles McGregor lived for a time on the site of the present Grand Hotel. Later he moved to Brogo. He grew sorghum and tried to convert it to sugar.
The “Bega Budget,” hinting at a secret formula said. “The mill was erected and a quantity of cane put through but when the treacle stage was reached the man who was to carry out the treatment died, and the secret never revealed.”
He had helped to build the first Anglican Church in Bega and was married in it.
He took the first picnic party to Tathra but it rained and the party had to stay all night in the dray.
Thus life continued in the Bega Valley. Communications were hard Life was hard.
But there was a deep abiding comradeship among the early settlers.
Possibly it was this that led to the historic meeting in the Victoria Inn in 1857 when the Bega Agricultural Society was formed. We can be sure – although we have no positive record that the ploughing match of that year was a gala day. We can be certain that the entire population of Bega was there, and that in the calm of the morning there would be the sight of the bullocks with necks to the yoke bent low” as Charles McGregor drew his furrow.
It is equally certain that Daniel Gowing was an expert with his horse team, and it can never be doubted that these two pioneers congratulated each other for their skill.
Theirs was the spirit that pioneered the Far South Coast. It was the spirit that all who came here in those early days had in full measure. The story of any of the early pioneers is the story of the Bega Valley
Copied from Century of Progress by Barbara Adams [davida8-at-bigpond.com]
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