John Lambie
Cooma c1842

JOHN LAMBIE was the first public official on Manaro and the first Magistrate to adjudicate in the town of Cooma. For a number of years he administered the whole of the civil work of the district. In 1838 he appears as one of the signatories to a letter addressed to the Colonial Secretary, asking for a survey for a township at Braidwood, but in 1842 he was acting as Crown Lands Commissioner for the district o f Maneroo, as is gathered from a report made by him in that year relative to the aboriginals, and elsewhere extracted. When a Court of Petty Sessions was established in Cooma in 1847 he was appointed Chief Magistrate. His residence and office were at the southern end of what is now Lambie Street and a more particular description of them is given in that part of this Souvenir entitled "Early Cooma." In 1848 he acquired a run of 1,280 acres in the immediate vicinity of and adjoining what in 1849 became the village of Cooma. In 1856 his occupancy of the office of Crown Lands Commissioner seems to have been terminated, as Mr. Hugh Hamon Massie was then filling the position. After the appointment of Mr. Robert Dawson as Police Magistrate in 1857, Mr. Lambie does not appear to have participated to any extent in the administration of public duties, his last public sitting taking place on 11th October, 1858. Mr. Lambie, by his selection of the spot where he erected his hut and established his office, was probably responsible for the establishment in the vicinity thereof of Kirwan's Inn, and round these the settlement which developed into Cooma.

Transcribed by Pattrick Mould in 2003, from the book "Back to Cooma' Celebrations" page 81