How a drunk politician, his daughter and a respected surgeon link a Tasmanian town to the Illawarra

I once spent years trying to work out why there is a place near Longford in Tasmania (once the property of Edward Dumaresq) named “Illawarra”.

Originally, I began researching the life of Edward Dumaresq to find out why he was so fond of a region on the South Coast of NSW that he would name his Tasmanian property after it. At every turn I drew a blank.

Mysteriously, Dumaresq left no evidence of any connection at all with Illawarra and there was also zero indication that he had even ever visited the place.

So what was going on?

Determined to crack the mystery, I hunted for the earliest Tasmanian reference to property called “Illawarra” I could find.

But it turned out Dumaresq was not actually the original owner of the property near Longford named “Illawarra”. It transpired that a Mr James Scott owned it first.

James Scott had arrived in Sydney in 1820 as a surgeon-superintendent of convicts.

So I did a land titles search which revealed he got a NSW land grant of 324 hectares (800 acres), which he transferred to Van Diemen’s Land upon accepting appointment in Hobart as colonial surgeon and controller of medical services in the southern part of the island.

Yet, puzzlingly, I could find no evidence that his original order for “a land grant of 800 acres” in NSW had been placed for anywhere in Illawarra.

Unfortunately, it looked very much like to Tasmania I would be forced to return and leave the enduring charms of Thirroul Beach.

And then it finally hit me.

I noticed the name of the person whom James Scott married. It was Lucy Margaretta Davey.

Few would have been able to make the connection but it so happened that my favourite character in all Australian colonial history happens to be Mad Tom Davey – sometime Lt Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, Thomas Davey.

Detested by Governor Lachlan Macquarie who found Davey both “dissipated and profligate”, Mad Tom’s immediate superior even once described him as being in possession of an “extraordinary degree” of “buffoonery in his manners”.

As an inducement to get Davey to resign his position as Lieutenant-Governor in Tasmania, Macquarie promised Davey an extra grant of 809 ha (2000 acres) of land.

Mad Tom chose the southern shores of Lake Illawarra and sold it on the same afternoon it was granted to the very wealthy D’Arcy Wentworth.

It was clearly a set-up job for it enabled Wentworth to then become pretty much in control of all the vast acreage between Port Kembla and the Minnamurra River.

Cashed up with the proceeds of the land he had sold to Wentworth, Davey returned to Hobart in June 1818 and got into some heavy drinking.

Despite his detestation of Mad Tom Davey, Governor Macquarie obviously felt some sympathy for his wife and daughter having to put up with such an inebriated and uncouth goose.

Davey’s improvidence apparently aroused Macquarie’s concern for Davey’s wife, Margaret, and his daughter, Lucy Margaretta.

In 1821, hearing that the pair were distressed, he ordered Lucy 405 ha (1000 acres) and instructed the new Tasmanian Lt-Gov William Sorell to have them provided for from the public store for 12 months.

Mad Tom Davey himself that year sailed for England to settle his private affairs and to present certain claims to the Secretary of State.

Unfortunately, likely by then a dipsomaniac, Davey died intestate in London on 2 May 1823 and – hopeless to the very end – left an estate of less than £20.

The British Admiralty then decided in its wisdom that his widow had no claim to a pension.

And so his wife Margaret – “a lady of meek and uncomplaining spirit” – would have been basically up the creek without a paddle if her daughter, Lucy Margaretta, had not married Dr James Scott in June 1821.

Governor Macquarie even attended the wedding held on 25 June 1821 and confirmed Lucy’s grant of 1000 acres for her own exclusive use in the lovely Tasmanian town of Bothwell.

Colonial settlers of means like Dr Scott, however, often named their primary residences, as a gallant gesture, after the birthplaces or maiden names of the wives.

My guess is that Lucy remembered the valuable 2000 acres on the southern shore of Lake Illawarra that her drunken father had so carelessly sold to D’Arcy Wentworth.

And so the word “Illawarra” made its migration from the South Coast of NSW to the salubrious fields outside of Longford in Tasmania.

Quod erat demonstrandum – or at least as close to it as I suspect we will ever be likely to get.