Brisbane
From a Parramatta boy who came north in the 1860s to a man who dictated his whole childhood to his children before he died. The D'Arcys have been Brisbane people for a hundred and sixty years.
The family arrived in Australia as soldiers at Parramatta in 1826. Within two generations it had become something quieter and more Queensland: clerks, a railway man, an insurance manager. This page follows the four generations that made Brisbane home.
Born at Parramatta, christened at St James's, Sydney, and schooled at The King's School, Parramatta — his obituary calls him one of its oldest scholars. Pastoral work, then the California goldfields. He came to Queensland in 1863, took a place in the Colonial Secretary's Office and kept it until he died, and married Eliza Keeling at Brisbane on 7 June 1863 — five months after she stepped off the Flying Cloud at Moreton Bay. Seven children. Buried at Dutton Park.
Named for the major of the 39th Foot, and the first of the line born in Brisbane. Chief Clerk in the Queensland Railway Department. Married Ida Kathleen Atkinson at Trinity Church, Fortitude Valley, on 10 October 1888. Buried at Dutton Park beside his father.
Clerk; Brisbane Central Boys' State School. Enlisted 13 December 1915 and married Ivy Miriam Sneyd at Albion Church on 18 March 1916 — then sailed from Sydney on HMAT A64 Demosthenes on 18 May, nine weeks after the wedding. Five children. Dead at forty-three, leaving a widow with no trade and no pension.
Nine years old when his father died. Ascot State School, Brisbane State High, then Union Trustees at fifteen — the firm his father had worked for. Navy at seventeen; Thursday Island; thirty-two years at National Mutual; Townsville, Perth and home. Twenty melanomas, and the last one got him.
The death that shaped everything after it
Lindesay Atkinson D'Arcy died at forty-three, leaving Ivy with five children and, as his youngest son put it seventy-four years later, no real work skills and no decent system of social security. What she did instead is the most Queensland solution imaginable: she took in boarders.
Ivy had 5 children to support, and only Viv, Dad's eldest brother was working. Dad's Mum had no real work skills herself and there was no decent system of social security. They were in 'a spot of bother' as Dad put it. Ivy decided to take in boarders and Dad said they never really had a normal home life after that with up to 13 people around the table at mealtimes.
Kenneth was nine. Within weeks he and his brother Bill were walking to the Savoy Picture Theatre at Clayfield on Friday nights with threepence each, buying cigarettes with it and stealing the matches. He smoked from the age of nine. He died of melanoma at eighty-two.
The Queenslander at Clayfield, and the parrot
What survives of the house is a handful of details, and they are worth more than a hundred dates. Lindesay was a keen gardener — so keen that his youngest son was not allowed a bicycle (too dangerous) or a football in the backyard (bad for the garden), and was set the standing task of whacking mosquitoes off his father's bare back while he hosed in the late afternoon.
According to Dad, when someone knocked at the door their very intelligent African Grey parrot always called out "Come in" from his cage inside the house. This apparently caused confusion for many a 1st time visitor if none of the D'Arcys were actually home.
The Brisbane papers add a harder layer to all of this — an insolvency in 1926, an inquest in 1931, and an obituary that confirms five separate details of the eulogy. What the papers said →
There is also the mango tree, out of which Ken fell into his father's tub of liquid manure — and the recorded family verdict that Lindesay was upset not at his son's injuries but at the loss of the manure. The eulogy in full →
"Old King's School Boy"
George Lindsay D'Arcy's obituary in The Telegraph announces the death of "one of the oldest scholars of the famous King's School, New South Wales" — born at Parramatta in 1829, son of Major George Pitt D'Arcy of the old 39th Regiment.
It adds a decade nobody in the family had: after King's School he went into pastoral work, and then to the California goldfields. He came to Queensland in 1863 — the same year he married — took a position in the Colonial Secretary's Office, and held it until his death thirty-eight years later.
He left a widow, two sons in the Railway Department — one of them George Pitt D'Arcy, later its Chief Clerk — a daughter married to T. E. Jones, an instructor at Brisbane Grammar School, and two unmarried daughters.
The Telegraph (Brisbane), Tuesday 16 July 1901, p. 2 · nla.news-article184151762
Where they are buried
| Person | Died | Interred |
|---|---|---|
| George Lindsay D'Arcy | 1901 | Dutton Park, Brisbane |
| Eliza Keeling | 1918 | South Brisbane Cemetery, plot 8B |
| George Pitt D'Arcy | 1931 | Dutton Park, Brisbane |
| Ida Kathleen Atkinson | 1937 | South Brisbane |
| Florence Isabel D'Arcy | 1918 | Nundah Cemetery |
| Lindesay Atkinson D'Arcy | 1936 | Toowong Cemetery |
| Arthur William Hartley Sneyd | 1922 | Toowong, Portion 4, Section 35, Grave 3–4 |
| Martha Blum | 1904 | Lutwyche, Portion GP5, Section 42A, Grave 78 — with her mother-in-law Miriam Wakefield |
| Ivy Miriam Sneyd | 1979 | Mt Thompson Memorial Gardens, Holland Park |
| Kenneth Lindsay D'Arcy | 2010 | Centenary Memorial Gardens, Sumner |
| Audrey "Dell" Murdoch | 2022 | Centenary Memorial Gardens, Brisbane |
| Frederick Robert D'Arcy (the surveyor, half-brother of the line) | 1875 | Toowong Cemetery |
Dutton Park, South Brisbane, Nundah, Lutwyche, Toowong, Mt Thompson, Sumner — six generations across seven Brisbane cemeteries, and the surveyor from the other branch lying at Toowong a few sections from his half-brother's grandson's father-in-law.
The other Brisbane arrivals
Eliza Keeling, on the Flying Cloud
Born London 1837; arrived Moreton Bay 17 January 1863; married George Lindsay D'Arcy that June. She was living at West End when she died in 1918.
Paul Cole Atkinson, organist
Christened at St Mary's Cathedral, Limerick, 9 July 1832; organist at Bandon, County Cork, by 1853; emigrated to Brisbane 2 September 1862, and in 1864 installed the organ at All Saints, Wickham Terrace. Died in his bed at Graham Street, South Brisbane, in 1906. The Atkinsons →