George Bowen (colonial settler)
Lieutenant George Meares Countess Bowen (1803–1889) was a military officer and colonial settler of New South Wales, Australia.
Leaving England in October 1826, he arrived in Sydney in February 1827, on the Midas, leading a detachment of the 39th regiment, guarding convicts.
[4] Also arriving was Bowen's superior officer, Captain Charles Sturt, with another detachment of the 39th and more convicts, aboard Mariner.
His retiring allowed Bowen to be granted land in the colony, something not permitted to serving military officers.
Hoddle wrote a report, in November 1823, that praised the rich soil around Mt Tomah and concluded that Bell's route was a superior way to reach Bathurst.
Based on Hoddle's report, Bowen made a request to Thomas Mitchell to have a road developed along Bell's route.
Mitchell was strongly committed to his own preferred route for the Bathurst Road, using the Victoria Pass, and sent a scathing report to Governor Darling on Bowen's proposal.
That seems not to have dampened Bowen's enthusiasm for the area around Mt Tomah, and his advocacy of a new road was likely motivated, at least in part, by self interest.
[12][18] Mitchell's promotion and the end of the Darling administration in 1831, undoubtedly curtailed Bowen's career as an assistant-surveyor.
[19] Although most of the high parts of the Blue Mountains are sandstone country and relatively infertile, Mt Tomah and the surrounding area has deep, rich, volcanic soil.
Bowen himself received a land grant of four square miles, nearby, at what is now Berambing, and he established a farm named 'Bulgamatta'—said to be from Aboriginal language for 'mountain and water'—there in 1831.
The land at Mount Tomah—together with Bowen's later landholding at 'Bowen Mount'—was operated as orchards, for cattle raising, and as a dairy farm.
[27][28] His religious views proved unorthodox, leading to controversy and opposition to his ordination, to such an extent that he was denied the sacrament at his local church in Windsor.
[33] Her death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald, was accompanied by one for Bowen's mother, who had died earlier in 1840.
[36] Bowen heard the confession of the bushranger and serial killer, John Lynch, made on the day before his execution at Berrima Gaol, in April 1842.
However, to overcome the legal fact that their Anglican marriage was void, the couple then reportedly married for a second time, at Wandsbek—then a Danish-ruled exclave of the Duchy of Holstein—in a Lutheran ceremony, under a letter of permission given by the King of Denmark.
He had an announcement notice, with details of both wedding ceremonies, inserted in the Sydney Morning Herald, three years later in 1846, after his return to New South Wales.
It would become his family's home, once he returned to New South Wales and built a substantial timber house, on the highest ridge.
[44][21][45] Not content to let his disputes with the church die down, Bowen authored another theological work, with his authorship thinly disguised, under the pseudonym of Aposynagogos.
However, he did not achieve the honours and social status that he craved, largely due to his querulous, argumentative, and stubborn personality.
The land was subjected to subdivision from 1960, although issues with handling sewage have limited the extent to which the area has been developed for housing.
[21] His later house, 'Keston', at 31 Carabella Street, Kirribilli, was later the home of the politician and High Court judge, Richard Edward O’Connor.
[49][50] The State Library of New South Wales contains a number of photographs of the Bowen family, in the pictorial material from the papers of Rae Else-Mitchell.
