Patsy Trench - A Country to be Reckoned with

A COUNTRY TO BE RECKONED WITH

The true story of an Australian entrepreneur

Patsy Trench

Copyright 2018 Patsy Trench

All rights reserved

Prefab Publications, London

T his project has been assisted by funds allocated to the Royal Australian Historical

Society through the Heritage Branch of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage

Reviews

T his is an accessible approach to history and aims for a wide readership of those who want more than dry history and facts....[It] contains the stories of people to be reckoned with, along with the country itself. Good Australian stories.

Descent magazine, SAG

... a most entertaining and well-written publication. Author Patsy Trench has made it clear what her factual sources are, and where her imagination has filled the gaps, with comprehensive references and chapter notes.

History magazine, RAHS

Navigational notes for the e-reader

T his book contains no footnotes. Sources and references, and extra information especially for family members can be found at the end under References and Chapter Notes. To navigate from the text to the chapter notes, and back again, click on the chapter heading in the text (ie Prologue) and it takes you to the appropriate place in the chapter notes. Then to find your way back to where you were in the text click on the chapter heading (ie Prologue) in the chapter notes. Happy travelling.

If for some reason images dont display properly on your e-reader you can find them, and family trees, on my website at patsytrench.com/bookimages.

George Matcham Pitt (Elders Ltd)

1896 Richmond, New South Wales

O n the afternoon of Tuesday 13 October 1896 the town of Richmond came to a halt. Shops and businesses closed their doors and pulled down their shutters. A hot wind blew through the empty streets and a church bell began to toll as a funeral cortege proceeded slowly down the road from the railway station along Windsor Street to St Peters Church.

The horse-drawn hearse was accompanied by a long line of carriages containing the relatives, friends and business associates of the dead man around 150 of them in all. From behind their windows residents of the town looked on. It was the best part of 30 years since the grand old man had lived in Richmond but if they had not met George Matcham Pitt known colloquially as GM they knew him by reputation. Theyd have known he was born some 82 years earlier in Richmond and brought up on a farm near the Hawkesbury River, grandson of the early pioneer Mary Pitt, the first woman to be granted land in her own right in the district back at the beginning of the century. They may have known that as a young man he travelled on foot to the outer reaches of New South Wales to take up land in the Gwydir district, and later near Wellington, before he gave up farming to form one of the colonys earliest stock and station agents called Pitt, Son & Badgery. They may or may not have been aware that in his later life he moved from Richmond to the North Shore and served for several years as mayor of East St Leonards.

They would also, some of them, have heard stories of the great mans generosity of spirit, and of size; of how when GM took a ferry across to the city the ferryman brought along counterweights in order to balance his boat and save it from sinking beneath the mass of his worthy passenger. Of how he regaled fellow passengers with jokes and anecdotes, peppered with quotes from Shakespeare and Robbie Burns; of his readiness to dig into his pockets for those he considered less lucky than himself; his fondness for firing off sharply-worded letters to the press bemoaning the behaviour of the government; his patriotism, his enthusiasm and his limitless energy, whether it was to do with affairs of state or the local community.

However much they knew or didnt know of the man who had now brought the entire town of Richmond to a halt, there was no questioning the fact that GM Pitt had been a notable pioneer in the still young colony of New South Wales; and that his lifetime, that spanned the best part of the 19th century, had seen the most remarkable changes in the rapidly-evolving country called Australia.