Obituaries Australia

Charles Fisher, n.d.

from Pastoralists' Review, 15 June 1908

Mr. Charles Brown Fisher's career has been detailed at such length in the daily and weekly press that no long article is needed in our pages. He was ninety-one years of age at the time of his death at Glenelg, near Adelaide, on 5th May, and was born in London in 1817, the second son of Sir James Hurtle Fisher. With his brother James he squatted on the Little Para in 1838, then farmed at Lockleys and the Reedbeds near Adelaide, supplying sheep and cattle to the Adelaide market. In 1854 he purchased Bundaleer, and in 1855 Hill River, and afterwards other places in South Australia, some ten or twelve passing through his hands, including Wirrabara, Mount Schanck, Moorak, and Port Crawler. In 1865 he went to Melbourne, and the ownership of some fine properties attests to his continued belief in and liking for pastoral affairs. Among other properties might be mentioned Yanga and Ned's Corner, in New South Wales, and in Queensland the Darling Downs properties Thurulgoona (now owned by the Squatting Investment Company), the group now owned by the Australian Pastoral Company in the south, Fort Constantino and Warrnambool Downs in the north, and many smaller properties, as well as places in the Western District of Victoria, and Victoria Downs and other large areas in the Northern Territory, to which he sent up 30,000 cattle in the early eighties. In the early nineties he fell on evil times, in company with so many other pastoralists, but his latter years were spent in comfort if not in riches, and he remained to the end a typical colonist, genial, kindly, large hearted, courageous, and full of hope. As a breeder his name is identified with a type of Merinos which aimed at the maximum price per sheep, and he also imported many Lincoln sheep and draught horses and Shorthorn cattle, besides the racehorses which made the name of Maribyrnong a household word. At Hill River he embarked in extensive farming operations.