Obituaries Australia

George Currie, n.d.

from Pastoralists' Review, 15 May 1908

Mr George Currie, of Puckawidgee, Conargo, Riverina, whose death we recorded with regret last month, was born at Howford, in Selkirkshire, in 1823, died at Puckawidgee, on 10th April, 1898, aged 85. His family have lived at Howford since 1630, and some members of it still reside there as tenants of the Duke of Buccleuch. He was educated at the Grammar School, Selkirk, arrived in Melbourne in 1848, and went to his brother John at Lara, and later to the goldfields, where he had a fair measure of success, and in 1856 bought the Mindie Station near Pitfield.

A few years later, in conjunction with the late A. H. Dufrayer, he purchased the adjoining stations of Strathmerton West and Kaarimba, with frontages to both the Goulburn and Murray rivers. The whole of these fine properties were lost by selection in the seventies, and in 1879 Mr. Currie joined Messrs. John Mackinnon and Thomas Shaw in the purchase of Puckawidgee from Mr. Robert Patterson, and turned his attention to breeding fine-wool Merinos.

Although not well known in the show ring, Mr. Currie succeeded in building up a very fine flock, and, regardless of fashion, stuck manfully to what he believed to be the true type of Australian Merino.

Warned by advancing years that it was time to give up active management, in 1906 Mr. Currie sold the station to Messrs. Oliphant and T. Turner Shaw, retaining the house as a residence, as the Riverina climate suited him better than any other. Although Mr. Currie took little part in public affairs he was a man of wide reading and culture, and was universally liked and respected. His word was his bond, and his death makes a large gap in the ever-diminishing band of sturdy honourable pioneers who have done so much for Australia.

He leaves a widow and a family of three sons and three daughters.