Archibald Meston
In 1859, Scots-born politician, civil servant, journalist, naturalist, showman and explorer Archibald Meston (1851 – 1924) migrated with his parents to New South Wales, where his father took up sugar farming on the Clarence River. At the end of his schooling at Ulmarra Public School, where he developed a lifelong love of writing and literature — other members of the Meston family had been writers — he spent several years rambling through north-eastern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland, married, and moved to Queensland in 1874.
He briefly managed Dr John Waugh's Pearlwell sugar plantation east of Oxley Creek on the Brisbane River, before moving into journalism and politics as the editor of the Ipswich Observer and the Toowoomba Chronicle and Member for Rosewood in Queensland's Legislative Assembly (1878-1882), where he supported Premier Thomas McIlwraith and acquired the nickname of ‘the Sacred Ibis’ due to his persistent use of classical and historical quotationss in his speeches.
Adjudged bankrupt, Meston lost his parliamentary seat in July 1882 and moved north, editing the Townsville Herald for several months before moving to Cairns, where he In 1881, he moved to Far North Queensland, where he edited the Townsville Herald for a short time before moving to Cairns, where he edited the Cairns Post, managed Horace Brinsmead & Co's sugar plantation on the Barron River, and took up a 65-hectare selection on the Barron River. Meston also served on the Cairns Divisional Board and his involvement with the Cairns Railway League helped secure the town the proposed line to the mines in the hinterland ahead of rival centres in Port Douglas and Mourilyan.
A brief return to New South Wales to persuade others to select land near his modest holding might have seen him emerge as one of the North's sugar barons. However, the 1885 legislation prohibiting the recruitment of Melanesian workers from 1891 rendered the scheme unviable.
Meston spent much of his time shooting crocodiles and exploring the nearby rainforest. After he led a government expedition to the Bellenden Ker Range and climbed Mt Bellenden Ker in January 1889, he returned to the summit in 1891 and 1904.
Meston moved back south, where his self-proclaimed expertise in Aboriginal matters provided an ongoing opportunity to combine his entrepreneurial skills and government remuneration.
- a quixotic, garrulous jack-of- all-trades, [and] a forceful and persuasive advocate. (Raymond Evans, A History of Queensland, p. 140)
