Key dates

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1838 July 17

George Bracher (junior) leaves England on the S.S. Britomart

1838 December

George arrives in Fremantle aboard the Britomart

1839 Early

George establishes a grocery store in Guildford. W.A.

1841 March 10

George receives title to Lot 9, Guildford

1842

George is resident in Australind, W.A.

1840s Early-mid

George commences a butchery in Perth

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George Bracher Junior turned 21 in 1837, at which time he received some money from his natural mother’s legacy. It was probably not a large amount, but for an adventurous man, keen to explore the world beyond Wiltshire and Somerset, it was his passage to another life. Sharing the family home with six children at least 10 years younger than himself may also have been a factor driving his departure. It is also hinted that George may not have had a good relationship with his stepmother, Elizabeth, who probably ruled the household with non-conformist religious fervour. 

 

Notwithstanding any personal reasons George may have had to leave, it was also an era of major change and reform in England at the time, when hundreds of thousands of people were leaving to find what they hoped would be a better life and greater prosperity in the colonies. 430,000 people left its shores between 1832 and 1841.

The newly founded Swan River Colony, in what is now Western Australia, was being actively promoted in England as a place of great opportunity and providing an excellent return on investment. The Darling and Peel expeditions to the colony had reported enthusiastically about the colony’s potential since its founding in 1829.

Keith Halford Bracher of Sydney wrote in 1988 that “George left an England impoverished by wars, confused by changes in the Corn Laws, disorganised by changes in the banking system and to many people the industrial revolution and political reforms of the day were not all progress”. It is probably doubtful that those external political and economic forces would have had a major influence on the mind of a 22 year old.  Given the rhetoric about the colony’s future and the young man’s eagerness to forge his own destiny, it is understandable that George’s sights became set on Western Australia. The reality, however, was quite different. The colony at that time comprised just 1,700 people, who were thinly spread over thousands of square miles of virgin bushland. The colony was also deeply in debt. The sandy, nutrient-deficient soils of the coastal belt provided huge farming challenges, even for those with farming skills honed on fertile English soils.

George junior left England as a cabin passenger on July 17th, 1838 aboard the barque S.S. Britomart and arrived at Fremantle on December 5th, 1838. The ship had been chartered by William Tanner to bring out a group of Methodists. Wiltshire historical records show that in 1830 William Tanner, a Lockeridge (West Overton) farmer, had taken 50 men with him to Australia, so Tanner's 1838 expedition may have been another in a commercial venture that spanned most of the decade. The depleted economic conditions in heavily agriculturally-based Wiltshire at the time meant that emigration was encouraged as an option out of hardship. Most people went of their own accord, but there are many examples of organized parties during the era.

 

The Britomart stayed in Capetown between October 2nd and 25th. The voyage was not an entirely happy one for many of the 84 passengers. Frequent arguments occurred between the passengers and Captain William MacDonald. Some passengers claimed that the food was inedible and that MacDonald had failed to observe the terms of the contract for passenger accommodation and storage of luggage and livestock. Indeed, at Cape Town, Macdonald and several of the passengers came to blows and were taken before the local magistrate (Ian Berryman, 1988)

The passenger list included a good spread of solidly middle class immigrants: William and Hester Tanner, their children and servant Mary Ann Wells, John Wall and Elizabeth Hardy and their children, Samuel and Elizabeth Viveash, William Taunton, William King, George King, Robert Viveash, John Frederick Smith, George Bracher, William Curtois and Francis Lochee.

The diaries written during the five month voyage by Wiltshire Doctor Samuel Viveash provides us with the first glimpses of the personality of the man who started the Bracher family in Australia. George’s high spirits and practical joking emerged soon after departure.

The Viveashes befriended George and, even before departure, Samuel is recorded as taking walks along the coast of Mazarian and to the Darlington tin and copper mines with George. During the voyage Viveash makes mention of a farcical duel between George and William Curtois, using port wine in their pistols. He also records singing and performances by George, George dressing as a ghost, games of whist, and even George proposing marriage to the servant girl, Mary Wells. However, George’s personality had a less pleasant side and, as the voyage progressed, Viveash records George’s bouts of drinking, noisy and unruly behaviour, clashes with the captain, use of improper words and, on one occasion, of ‘exposing their person’. He must have contributed to a ‘colourful’ voyage, especially among a ship full of Methodists ! No doubt many of the passengers were pleased to see the back of George upon arriving at Fremantle. However, the fact that the Viveashes and George maintained a friendship for several years in Guildford indicates that his indiscretions must have been overlooked or, at least, soon forgotten.

George settled in Guildford during late January 1839. Viveash’s diary refers to walking to George’s property to view his 30 sheep and lambs, which Viveash bought from him two weeks later. George had bought the sheep at Cape Town, with the idea of selling them in the colony. Throughout most of 1839 the Viveash diaries refer to George’s sheep.

George’s days as a sheep farmer were fairly limited. By February 1839 he was advertising his shop, located near the ferry landing in Guildford, in the pages of the Perth Gazette. Several advertisements for the business promoted ironmongery and general produce. Paul Hasluck’s memories of early Guildford (printed in the centenary edition of ‘The Western Mail’) names George among the first store keepers of the important area, which had been discovered by Captain (later Sir James) Stirling on his journey up the Swan River in March 1827. The alluvial flats pleased Stirling and he returned two years later with the first settlers. Guildford housed the first vice-regal residence of the state. Today, Guildford is about 20 minutes by suburban train from Perth CBD, but in those very early days Guildford was the centre of the principal agricultural district of the colony, serving the large estates of Middle Swan and Upper Swan, as well as the new country over the hills. Guildford was the meeting place of the Royal Agricultural Society.

 

Travellers of the 1840s wrote of Guildford as a ‘scattered hamlet’ and of ‘cottages with neatly fenced fields contiguous’. However, it was a busy and important location then and, today, still has an air of solidity and prosperity. Paul Hasluck (later Governor General Sir Paul Hasluck) paints the scene in which George Bracher established himself for five years.

“The town allotments were mostly of two acres and those that were occupied were mostly cultivated as gardens or farmlets. The cottages, of pug walls and a thatched roof of the rushes from the river bank, were widely scattered and in passing from neighbour to neighbour the residents had worn tracks in the grass. The road from Perth came up from the flats, wandered in and out among the white gums and wandered out again eastward. The road to York was a rutty track winding between green trees.”

Even today, George’s riverside Lot 9 is still vacant land, adjoining the western side of the town’s recreation reserve and is currently used for horse agistment. It would have been flood prone, but the rear of the large block rises steeply and is now occupied by housing. A ferry was worked across the river in those days to serve the main road from Perth, before installation of a bridge. It was an obvious place for George to establish a business to service the growing residential and farming community. During the late 1830s his was one of four stores in the town.

George’s name regularly appeared in the local papers, mainly because of his extensive advertising, but also, in April, 1839, when it was reported that a case was heard before the Magistrate’s Court in Perth, in which Mr George Bracher charged a mariner named Arthur MacMillan “with stealing two half pipes of wine and a cask of currants, which had been sent by Mr Bracher to bring up from Perth to Guildford”. In March 1840 George’s name appears on a petition to the sheriff to convene a public meeting to consider the propriety of appointing an agent in London for the colony.

His style of advertising was unusual in its flamboyance for the era. Michael Bourke writes in his 1987 work ‘On the Swan: a history of the Swan District’…..

“ In 1839 George Bracher opened a new store on a site at the west end of town, above the ferry landing. The style of commercial advertising at this period was usually very restrained and consisted merely of a list of the items for sale, but George Bracher’s newspaper advertisements were an exception. His initial notice was headed in large letters “BARGAINS EXTRAORDINARY’. Subsequent advertisements were headed ‘Greater bargains than ever!’ “

George’s working career in Wiltshire is unclear, but it can be surmised that he had probably received some grounding in commerce and the skills of retail trading through an association with his father’s and uncle’s businesses. Most supplies for the early colony were sourced from England and, although by then his father had entered the banking business, his father’s contacts may have been useful in establishing supply channels for the Guildford business.

By August 1840 George was advertising a dwelling and garden to be let in Mangles Street, Guildford and the following month he advertised for a store. Presumably this was an additional or perhaps a replacement store, but by late that year he was again advertising a property to let and announced in the press his intention to leave the colony on January 6th, 1841. He didn’t leave at that stage, but his intention may indicate his restlessness and a desire to move on to other things. However, on March 10th, 1841 he received a fee simple title to Guildford Town Lot 9, located on the north bank of the river, near the old bridge. A couple of months earlier his name had appeared on a list of subscribers towards Perth’s first Wesleyan chapel, which perhaps reflects not only his decision to stay within the colony, but also his continuing adherence to Methodism.

A depression began in Western Australia during 1843, which was probably felt hard by those who made their livelihood from supplying farmers and country folk. George’s location during the early to mid 1840s is a little unclear. We know in 1842 that he was a resident and a merchant of Australind, just north of Bunbury, because the theft of 29 pounds in bank notes from him by a George Bennett, as recorded in the Perth Quarter Sessions. In that sparsely populated region of the time he may easily have come into contact with the Hall family, who had emigrated in 1829 and established themselves on the Peel Inlet at today’s Mandurah, about 100 kilometres north of Australind.

However, advertisements in Perth newspapers of the 1840s also indicates that he operated a butchery in central Perth. The proximity of his butchery to a shop established in Hay Street, Perth by Henry Edward Hall may have brought him into contact with the Hall family, including his future wife Sarah Louisa, after she had returned from England with her father during the mid 1840s.