Person:Stephen King (18)

1839 - Stephen and his wife and daughter arrived on the 11th January 1839 at Holdfast Bay (Glenelg), South Australia, aboard the 648 tons barque "Orleana", from Liverpool. There were 95 passengers on that voyage (63 adults and 32 children). Of the passengers, forty were cabin passengers. The vessel left Liverpool of the 5th October 1838. It was constructed in 1835 on the Isle of Man, using Elm, Red Pine, Pitch Pine & Oak planking. It was sheathed in copper in 1838.

Stephen, Martha and their daughter Matilda spent their first weeks in Adelaide camped in a tent on the north parklands. Life was fairly primitive as the colony was only just two years old and King William Street wasn't a street at all, just a Hotel and a few scattered houses.

On the voyage from England, Stephen made friends with two other passengers, John REID and Henry Dundas MURRAY. Two weeks after landing, Stephen and eleven other men (two of whom were REID and MURRAY) received a "special survey" of 4,000 acres (1620 ha) at the junction of the North and South Para Rivers, for the purchase price of £2,422. The land was divided amongst them and some of the land was set aside for the town of Gawler. King Street and Orleana Square were included in its nomenclature. (In 1837 Colonel William Light had viewed the future site of Gawler with favour and recommended that the South Australian Company take up the first Special Survey but they declined.) Gawler is reputed to have been the first country town established in South Australia. The syndicate enlarged their holding to 20,000 acres (8100 ha) and Stephen settled on his portion about five miles (8 km) further up the North Para at a place called Nuncalta. It was here that he established the estate known as Kingsford. With the assistance of only one man, whom he brought out from England, Stephen built his first house at Nuncalta. The house on "Kingsford" is only a few miles from Gawler off the Greenock road. Eventually he built a replica of an English manor house and it is built of stone brought out as ship's ballast from Britain.

1840 - At "Kingsford", the station was "stuck up" by the bushrangers CURRAN, HUGHES and FOX. Many of Stephen KING's employees had been convicts themselves, and his overseer, realising that the bushrangers only wanted food, offered no resistance. The three convicts stayed the night, before galloping to Crafer's next day, where they were captured by the police, and taken to Adelaide for execution. Stephen had extensive squatting leases north of and adjoining "Kingsford" - near Sheoak Log, Templers and the River Wakefield near Rhynie. Stephen had great difficulties in procuring stock for his stations with all classes of stock being very dear. Official records credit him with the ownership in 1840 of 3,250 sheep and a few cattle. This was at the time when South Australia was only three years old and the number of larger stockholders in S.A. could be counted on the fingers. The first saddle horse he bought cost £80, while good broken-in cattle fetched £20.

1845 - Wheat growing extended to the east of Gawler, so in 1845 Stephen built the first steam flour mill in the Colonial Athens (Gawler) and named it Victoria Mill after his second daughter (she married Edward Regia Hallett of Winnininnie). It was in this mill that the first Church of England services at Gawler were held (St. George's). He sold the mill two years later. The mill has since been destroyed by fire (actually it burnt three times).

1851-1856 - In 1851 it was recorded "... we walked out and noticed a substantial stone building in progress, as Mr King's future dwelling, of two floors ..." The year AD1856 is carved, in relief, on the stone wall. The cedar for the woodwork was imported from Borneo. The house has slate and granite floors, a chute for rolling kegs of beer and wine into the network of cellars plus a 10 foot (3 metres) long cedar sideboard bench which is the entrance hall, with a liftup hatch and door, leading to the cellars. The walls are 24 inches (600 mm) thick and it is built on a bluestone reef. The roof of the house is of slate. There are five bedrooms with three bathrooms which lead off from a large hall on the second storey. Downstairs the main reception rooms are built on a large scale. In addition to grazing Merino sheep, Stephen bred Cashmere goats (which he initially imported from India) and grew wheat, maize and tobacco. Between 1851 and 1853, nearly all the able-bodied men left the station and went to the Victorian goldfields. Gawler was almost deserted by men and the natives were employed to look after the sheep. They did it very well but had to be supplied with "plenty flour, tea and sugar" and as much "sheepy" as they wanted. In the 1850s men returned from the goldfields and could afford to pay good prices for land. In order for Stephen KING to expand he looked for cheaper land, where he could afford to run sheep. He leased the Baldina run from the Burra Company for a time. Then he launched into the risky sheepfarming undertakings principally on the Eastern Plains. His runs included Outalpa and Weekeroo (both west - north west of current day Olary). He had 189 square miles (490 sq km) at Weekeroo, 77 square miles (200 sq km) north of there, 202 square miles (523 sq km) at King's Bluff and 60 square miles (155 sq km) east north-east of Kooringa. For this "big lump" of 528 square miles (1368 sq km) he paid a total of £258 ($516) per annum. He also had an interest in Winnininnie (between Yunta & Olary) as per the obituary of his son in-law Frederick William VICKERY.

1860-1863 - Stephen was still at "Kingsford" when his son Stephen embarked on the 1861-1862 exploration party north from Adelaide through the centre of Australia to Darwin with John McDouall STUART. They were the first settlers to cross Australia from the Southern Ocean to the Indian Ocean. The big drought of the 1860s hit Stephen so hard that he was forced out of the squatting business, "Kingsford" and all. (The crippling drought began in 1863 and continued through to 1867. As a consequence of this drought, it was in 1865 when the Surveyor-General George Woodroofe GOYDER plotted "Goyder's Line", the division between farming and grazing land.) Outalpa and Weekeroo stations (468 square miles) were leased to Walter DUFFIELD and Arthur HARROLD. "Kingsford" went to John Howard ANGAS, but he did not live there.

1864-1865 - Martha KING and her children stayed on for a while at Kingsford while Stephen KING snr made a fresh start as storekeeper and superintendent of stock at Escape Cliffs, Adam Bay, Northern Territory. His appointment, on the 23rd March 1864, was made by an officer in the Finniss administration of the first settlement at Adam Bay, Northern Territory. On the 29th April 1864, he and his staff transported stock on the ship "Henry Ellis" from Port Adelaide to the N.T. for Colonel FINNISS. The conditions for the stock were bad, with insufficient provisions causing huge stock losses. Certain charges were afterwards made against Mr. FINNISS in the enquiry which followed. Stephen gave evidence claiming that the behaviour of Mr. FINNISS was very soldierlike and not so gentlemanly as it might have been. "I did not like it myself exactly, for as I told him, I had never had a master before, and I hoped I should never have one again." The privations that endured undermined Stephen's health and he was invalided home. Stephen left the Northern Territory in May 1865.

1865-1882 - On the 16th November 1865 Stephen received the appointment of Special Magistrate and Stipendiary Magistrate at Port Augusta and Melrose, South Australia. Three years later his office was abolished in a policy of civil service retrenchments. His last appointment under the Government was as Inspector of Timber. His duties kept him in Fremantle, Western Australia for several years, shipping a good many cargoes of the renowned jarrah or West Australian gum timber for the South Australian railways. After his return, he followed a life of retirement at Kensington, where he died on the 15th January 1882. This was 43 years after arriving in this new colony. He was described as, having been in all things, a thorough old English gentleman. His wife predeceased him by six months. Stephen and Martha are supposed to have had eleven children, being one boy and ten girls. (So far details of ten children have been identified but there are sufficient gaps in the birth of the first four children to support the claim of an additional child. Civil registrations did not start in South Australia until 1842.) It was their only son, Stephen KING (born in 1841), who travelled in the 1862 exploration party north from Adelaide through the centre of Australia to Darwin with John McDouall Stuart. They were the first settlers to cross Australia from the Southern Ocean to the Indian Ocean. Stephen received one pound ($2) per week for the nine month journey plus a one hundred pound ($200) bonus on his return. This party was commissioned by the same Mr. Finniss as described above with Stephen (jnr.) acting in a minor capacity. Stephen (jnr.) went through the middle and then Stephen (snr.) sailed with the stock around the coast.

"Kingsford" was subdivided in the 1990s from 600ha, with the house on 55ha being purchased by the TV station CHANNEL 9, to become the production set for the series called "McLeods Daughters." It went back on the market in 2008 after the TV Series ended.

(Information from descendant, Grantley Hutchens)