John George Nathaniel Gibbes

[1][2] In his capacity as head of the New South Wales Department of Customs, Colonel Gibbes was the colonial government's principal accumulator of domestic-sourced revenue − prior to the huge economic stimulus provided by the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s − through the collection of import duties and other taxes liable on ship-borne cargoes.

Thus, he played a significant role in the transformation of the City of Sydney (now Australia's biggest State capital) from a convict-based settlement into a prosperous, free enterprise-based port replete with essential government infrastructure.

In 1844 he persuaded the Governor of NSW, Sir George Gipps, to begin construction of the Customs House, Sydney on Circular Quay in response to the port's growing volume of maritime trade.

[6] In a 'Journal in Retrospect' written around 1899 and based on his diaries, Stewart Marjoribanks Mowle (1822-1908), who knew Gibbes in Sydney and at Yarralumla in 1838-51, wrote of him as 'the reputed son of the Duke of York'.

In 1809, Captain Gibbes was called in from staff officer duties in Southern England to take part in the Walcheren campaign, but an alarming number of British soldiers collapsed and died in their camps from a virulent form of malarial fever that they had contracted after the bombardment and capture of the strategic town of Flushing.

Once Gibbes had recovered his health sufficiently, he was reinstated to the army's active-service list, and served as a staff officer at stations, chiefly in Berkshire and Yorkshire, obtaining the rank of brigade major.

In 1815, following Waterloo, Gibbes went back on the half-pay list and it was during this period that he contracted a bigamous marriage in Quebec with the daughter of a Canadian industrialist named Matthew Bell.

While in Jamaica, Gibbes and his growing family lived in a plantation house inland from the town of Falmouth, where census returns show him owning livestock and several slaves.

Gibbes enjoyed life in the West Indies but ill-health, probably a recurrence of malaria brought on by Jamaica's tropical climate, forced him to leave the island in 1827.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography said of him: "As collector of Customs at a salary of £1000 Gibbes found his department inadequate to cope with the growing demand of shipping and trade and he constantly appealed for more and better paid staff.

Following a Board of Inquiry into the fraud the Executive Council directed that Colonel Gibbes 'be called upon to show cause why he should not be discharged from his office of Collector of Customs for neglect of duty'.

Once completed, Gibbes' L-shaped residence featured a plain, yet stylish, double façade to maximise the building's magnificent, sweeping views across Sydney Harbour.

These views enabled Gibbes to monitor shipping traffic in and out of Darling Harbour and, more importantly, Circular Quay, where the Sydney Customs House was situated.

On 27 December 1851, Gibbes (who was contemplating a departure from the Customs Service at the age of 64), sold the property to James Lindsay Travers, a merchant of Macquarie Place, Sydney, for 1,533 pounds.

Colonel Gibbes subsequently changed his mind about leaving his position as head of the NSW Customs Department; instead, he leased Greycliffe House at Shark Beach, Vaucluse, from the Wentworth family and remained in Sydney for the better part of eight years.

Today, Wotonga forms the core of Admiralty House and the building's 180-degree, east-west panoramic sight-lines are even more spectacular than they were in Gibbes' day, owing to the subsequent high-rise growth of Sydney's CBD.

Colonel Gibbes took up a commission in 1819 as the Collector of Customs for Falmouth, Jamaica, but remained on the army's half-pay list, which meant that he could be recalled to active service in times of war.

[26] Earlier, in 1844, Colonel Gibbes had persuaded the then Governor of NSW, Sir George Gipps, to begin construction of the Customs House on Circular Quay in response to Sydney's growing volume of maritime trade.

The Customs Service in the 1840s had an important link with Kirribilli, because the locale afforded panoramic views of Circular Quay and shipping movements on Sydney Harbour's main channel.

[27][28][29] Colonel Gibbes also had an interesting connection in his later years to Henry Parkes, known as the "father" of Australia's Federation as a unified nation in 1901 and five times Premiere of New South Wales.

Parkes left the employ of the Customs Department during the 1840s and went into the newspaper industry and, later, the political arena; but he remained on friendly terms with the Gibbes family for the rest of his life.

Incidentally, the Colonel's second daughter, Mary, had married the prominent New South Wales parliamentarian, Sir Terence Aubrey Murray (1810–1873) who had purchased Yarralumla in 1837.

In July 1859, he sold the property to his brother-in-law Augustus Onslow Manby "Gussie" Gibbes (who had been managing Yarralumla on Murray's behalf for the past four years).

[1][2][30] They were buried initially in a family vault at Yarralumla but, in 1880, their son Augustus moved their remains to the graveyard at the St John the Baptist Church, Reid, where they were re-interred under an inscribed marble headstone which still stands.

Dulhunty died at Old Dubbo Station at the age of 51, leaving Eliza to bring up their large brood of children and run their portfolio of rural properties, many of which were lost to the banks due to the adverse effects of drought and economic recessions.

Harriet's father was Sir John Jamison (1776 – 29 June 1844), an important Australian physician, pastoralist, banker, politician, constitutional reformer and public figure.

[34] Frances "Fanny" Minto Gibbes (1822/23–1877) was born in Trelawney Parish on the north coast of the West Indies island of Jamaica during her father's term there as Collector of Customs for the port of Falmouth.

The main reason for these trans-Tasman Sea visits of Ludlam's was to do business in Sydney, which served as New South Wales' principal trading port, population centre and seat of government; but he also found time to socialise.

She and her husband spent their honeymoon relaxing at the New South Wales country property of Yarralumla (now the site of Australia's Government House in Canberra), which at that stage belonged to Fanny's brother-in-law, (Sir) Terence Aubrey Murray.

He then travelled overseas for a decade before settling down on a farming property named Braemar, near the town of Goulburn, New South Wales, in the early 1890s, with his wife and their four surviving children, all sons.