Arrived in 1790 holding the rank of Lieutenant and was appointed as commandant at Parramatta.
was the first man to clear and cultivate 50 acres, and granted a further 100 acres for doing so.
He named the property Elizabeth Farm after his wife and profitably farmed wheat and sheep.
(Acting Governor) Grose came to depend on Macarthur's administrative skills and appointed him as paymaster for the regiment and as superintendent of public works, which Macarthur resigned in 1796 to concentrate on his business and farming interests.
This resulted in Paterson challenging Macarthur to a duel in which Paterson was severely wounded in the shoulder. Governor King had Macarthur arrested then released him and appointed him as commandant on Norfolk Island to try and diffuse things. Macarthur refused to comply and demanded a court martial by his fellow officers. King, realising that this would be pointless, sent Macarthur to England for trial.
In 1796 he imported some poor quality Merinos, which being Spanish were better suited to the local climate, from South Africa and began trying to breed up the quality of his flock's fleece.
Governor William Bligh was appointed, with backing by Sir Joseph Banks, to crack down on the commercial activities of the NSW Corps, especially their trade in alcohol. Macarthur was a prime target and the pair clashed throughout 1807.
Macarthur was sent to England where he remained for eight and half years to avoid an arrest warrant for him in Sydney.
On his return to NSW Macarthur devoted himself to his farming. Wool had great advantages as an industry for New South Wales, which because of its distance from European markets needed a commodity which did not perish during long sea-voyages and which offered high value per unit of weight. Wool also had a ready market in England because the Napoleonic Wars had increased demand and cut English cloth-makers off from their traditional source of quality wool, Spain.
The export of wool soon made Macarthur the richest man in New South Wales. In 1822, The Society for the Arts in London award him two medals for exporting 150,000 lb (68,000 kg) of wool to England and increasing the quality of his wool to that of the finest Saxon Merino.
Macarthur established Australia's first commercial winemaker and was a founding investor of both the Australian Agricultural Company (London 1824) and the Bank of Australia. His Involvement in the Rum Rebellion blocked him from being appointed as a magistrate in 1822 but in 1825 he was nominated to the NSW Legislative Council where he served until 1832 when he was suspended due to his failing mental health.
Macquarie:
Lachlan Macquarie was born on the island of Ulva off the coast of the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, a chain of islands off the West Coast of Scotland.
In 1808, Macquarie's cousin, Elizabeth Henrietta Campbell became his second wife.
In April 1809 Macquarie was appointed Governor of New South Wales. He was given a mandate to restore government and discipline in the colony following the Rum Rebellion against Governor William Bligh.
Macquarie is also a very great, skilled builder whose constructions still famously stand today.
Macquarie was a conservative disciplinarian who believed, in the words of the historian Manning Clark, "that the Protestant religion and British institutions were indispensable both for liberty and for a high material civilisation."
When he arrived in Sydney in December 1809. Macquarie ruled the colony as an enlightened despot, breaking the power of the Army officers such as John Macarthur, who had been the colony's de facto ruler since Bligh's overthrow.
On a visit of inspection to the settlement of Hobart Town on the Derwent River in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Macquarie was appalled at the ramshackle arrangement of the town and ordered the government surveyor James Meehan to survey a regular street layout. This survey determined the form of the current centre of the city of Hobart.
The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought a renewed flood of both convicts and settlers to New South Wales, as the sealanes became free and as the rate of unemployment and crime in Britain rose (as they always did when armies and navies were demobilised). Macquarie presided over a rapid increase in population and in economic activity - by the time of his departure the population had reached 35,000. The colony began to have a life beyond its functions as a penal settlement, and an increasing proportion of the population earned their own living. All this, in Macquarie's eyes, made a new social policy necessary.
Central to Macquarie's policy was his treatment of the emancipists: convicts whose sentences had expired or who had been given conditional or absolute pardons. By 1810 these outnumbered the free settlers, and Macquarie insisted that they be treated as social equals.
He set the tone himself by appointing emancipists to government positions: Francis Greenway as colonial architect and Dr William Redfern as colonial surgeon. He scandalised settler opinion by appointing an emancipist, Andrew Thompson, as a magistrate, and by inviting emancipists to tea at Government House. In exchange, Macquarie demanded that the ex-convicts live reformed lives, and in particular insisted on proper marriages.
Macquarie's own contribution to Australian nomenclature was the name "Australia," suggested by Matthew Flinders but first used in an official despatch by Macquarie in 1817.
His statement, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary, that "free settlers in general... are by far the most discontented persons in the country," and that "emancipated convicts, or persons become free by servitude, made in many instances the best description of settlers," was much held against him.
He ordered punitive expeditions against the aborigines. However, when dealing with friendly tribes, he developed a strategy of nominating a 'chief' to be responsible for each of the clans, identified by the wearing of a brass breast-plate engraved with his name and title. Although this was a typically European way of negotiation, it often did reflect the actual status of elders within tribes.
Bigge generally agreed with the settlers' criticisms, and his reports on the colony led to Macquarie's resignation in 1821: he had however served longer than any other governor. Bigge also recommended that no governor should again be allowed to rule as an autocrat, and in 1824 the New South Wales Legislative Council, Australia's first legislative body, was appointed to advise the governor.
Macquarie returned to Scotland, and died in London in 1824 while busy defending himself against Bigge's charges.
His grave in Mull is maintained at the expense of the National Trust of Australia and is inscribed "The Father of Australia."
As well as the many geographical features named after him in his lifetime, he is commemorated by Macquarie University in Sydney, which publishes the Macquarie Dictionary.
Bigge:
Bigge was called to the Bar in 1806 and from 1814–1818 he was chief justice of the former Spanish colony of Trinidad.
had wanted to examine whether transportation was an effective deterrent to crime. The commissioner may also have been appointed in response to complaints to London from leaders of the community of free settlers including John Macarthur.
While Bigge was in Australia, there was noticeable friction between himself and Governor Macquarie and he spent much time in the company of the Macarthur's.
Bigge’s first report was published in June 1822 and his second and third reports in 1823. Elements of Bigge’s reports criticised Governor Macquarie’s administration including his emancipist policy, expenditure on public works and management of convicts. Macquarie answered criticisms to the secretary of state, Lord Bathurst in 1822. Bigge's reports are now viewed as not showing sufficient detachment and although there were many excellent recommendations, there were also trifling recommendations and hyper-critical detail.
n 1823, many of Bigge’s recommendations from his second report were incorporated into the NSW Judicature Act which legislated to provide for the colony’s government and judicial system. It also provided for a separate administration for Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).
suggest falsely that agriculture was drooping under Macquarie.
From 1823, Bigge was given a similar appointment to examine the government of the Cape Colony, Mauritius and Ceylon.
The arduousness of travel and climate told heavily on Bigge after he suffered a leg injury in falling from his horse at the Cape, for which, it is reported, he was treated by a doctor who turned out to be not only a quack but a woman posing as a man. In 1829 he had returned to England for the last time. He continued in poor health and was too indisposed to accept a position to report on clerical establishments in 1832. He never married and lived a solitary life in retirement until his accidental death on 22 December1843 at the Grosvenor Hotel in London. He was buried as directed by his will 'without ceremony or superfluous expense'.
Macquarie:
Bigge: