Obituaries Australia

John Fagan, n.d.

from Pastoralists' Review, 15 October 1912

The death on the 16th ult. of Mr. John Fagan, of Sunny Ridge and Breakfast Creek Stations, as well as the Mulyan Estate at Cowra, has removed from the Carcoar district of New South Wales a veteran pastoralist and a prominent personality of the west. Few men were better known or more widely esteemed than Mr. Fagan. In addition, his familiar figure was specially in evidence at the many shows, where he acted as a valued judge, and delighted to chat over old times and past coaching days.

Of Irish parentage, he was born at sea on the voyage of his father and mother to Australia, so the parish of Stepney could claim him for its own. For a lengthened period he was a driver on Cobb and Co.'s coaches across the Blue Mountains from Penrith and Parramatta. Subsequently, he himself owned lines between Carcoar, Blayney, Cowra, Forbes, and Grenfell. Success attended all his ventures, and with natural shrewdness and apt judgment he rapidly made money and accumulated wealth from the first step of the ladder.

With the completion of the railway from Blayney to Cowra, coaching for him automatically ceased, and he sold the Royal Hotel at Carcoar, the whole of his attention thereafter being concentrated on grazing and agricultural pursuits. Tenandra, one of his favourite properties, was almost the first resumed by the Liberal Government under the Closer Settlement Acts

He was one of the first aldermen of the Carcoar municipality, a councillor of the Lyndhurst shire to the time of his decease, a prominent member of the various stock or pastures boards, a trustee of the Carcoar Hospital, and a justice of the peace. An incident in his career that has often been alluded to is the circumstance that when driving the Eugowra coach it was stuck up and robbed by the notorious Ben Hall gang, his hat being pierced by a bullet.

The squire of Sunny Ridge, as he was familiarly called, was at the time of his death seventy-three years of age, a widow and two sons surviving him. All who knew him liked him, and those who knew him best loved him most.