Family: Docker Family Papers
Summary
Family and business records ca.1815-ca.1910. The collection is divided into two main sections: personal and family papers and business records. The Reverend Joseph Docker came to Australia with his wife Sarah in 1828, and served as colonial chaplain at St Mathew's, Windsor. They later farmed in the Windsor area, until 1838, when the family overlanded with sheep to the Port Phillip district where they founded Bontharambo Station. The enterprise expanded to include cattle raising, horse breeding and various forms of agriculture including wine growing, olives, tobacco and grain crops. Additional land and property was acquired in Victoria and Queensland. Joseph Docker was succeeded by his son George, who with his nephew Thomas G. Clarke and friend A.H. Smith, took up Redcliffe and Prairie Stations in the Hughenden district in 1883. After a succession of poor seasons following the depression of the 1890s, the Queensland properties were sold at a loss in 1908. George Docker died in 1910, having handed over the running of Bontharambo to his son Geoffrey the previous year. The records of the Queensland venture are filed in the business records section of the Docker papers. They cover the period 1883-1908 and constitute a valuable pastoral record. The collection includes correspondence, documents, certificates and contract agreements, financial records including bank statements, wool and general accounts, income tax returns, wages records, cash books, journals, ledgers and receipts. Station records include a register of employees, wool and shearing statistics, and an analysis of shearing, stock returns, sheep pedigrees, plant improvements and inventories, maps and meteorological records. Printed minutes of a meeting of the Federated Employers' Union of Queensland, 27 October 1890, are held, along with copies of legislation relating to the pastoral industry, newspaper extracts and a collection of printed records of the Queensland Meat Export Agency, including a prospectus, annual reports 1891-1898, 1904-1905, and memos and notices. Documents of the Estate of Thomas Clarke, former business partner with Docker and Smith in the Queensland properties are also held. These original Docker family papers now held in the La Trobe Library, will be included in the Oxley Library microfilm copying project currently underway. LA TROBE: MS.10437.