Pioneer, pastoralist, and novelist Frederick Archibald Blackman was born on 8 August 1835, in Sydney. His parents John Blackman and Sarah Goodall immigrated to Sydney from London in 1834, and John established himself as an estate agent and auctioneer. After the death of his father in 1846, Blackman moved to Queensland with his elder brother Robert to explore and stake a land claim. In 1861, Frederick Blackman married Ellen Lilla Ryder Bell, with whom he had at least 13 children. Blackman died in 1906 at his residence in Bulimba at age 70.
At age 17, Blackman led an expedition from Maryborough to Gladstone, a route that was not yet established and passed through “wild and unoccupied” territory. By 1885, the brothers had tendered five leases each of 16,000 acres in the Gladstone region, where they kept sheep and cattle. Blackman became one of the foremost Queensland pastoralists of his day and was dedicated to innovating new practices for the raising and keeping of livestock. In one article published in the Rockhampton newspaper Capricornian Blackman provides details, specifications and plans for a new type of stockyard. In 1886, a model of Blackman’s stockyard was sent to London to be displayed in the Indian and Colonial Exhibition as an example of pastoral innovation in the colonies. At the time of his death, Blackman owned the Warroo and Barron-park stations in Queensland. During his sojourn in Hobart, Blackman become an active and influential member of the Southern Tasmanian Agricultural and Pastoral Society.
Although Blackman contributed to local newspapers and scientific journals in Queensland, it was not until his seven year stay in Tasmania that he began his literary career in earnest. In 1979 his first major work Adventures in Queensland began appearing in serial form in Hobart’s Mercury under the alias “Australian.” The text was published in full thereafter, with a second edition published in Brisbane by Watson Ferguson in 1884. It combined Blackman’s real experiences as an explorer with other historical incidents and locations, serving as both an adventure novel, a history, and a “guide to adventure.” While Blackman tentatively acknowledged that Europeans were “usurpers of [the Indigenous] homeland,” his treatment of them in the novel is generally callous and mirrors the overall attitude of squatters during that time. For example, one scene reads: “Three of them were imprudent enough to climb up trees, whence they were picked off like squirrels, falling with a dull thud.” In 1884, his second novel Ronald Walton: A Tale of Early Squatting Life in Moreton Bay was published in serialised form in The Morning Bulletin and The Capricornian.
2180953462845341844.png
