George Holt of Chuwar
A pioneer lucky enough to grow old invariably led an incredible life ...
It's notable that a lot of our district's pioneers lived until the 1920s, and within that decade the locals began to realise their link with the beginnings was slowly but surely being lost. When a pioneer died, the papers regularly presented an article about that venerated man or woman, who often could claim to have commenced taming some parcel of land or other.
If a pioneer was lucky enough to grow old, he or she invariably led an incredible life of adventure and hardship quite impossible to replicate because no-one else can ever be the first.
George Holt of Blackwall, Chuwar, was such a person. He was a pioneer of the district in the truest sense of the word. George was born at Poole, Dorsetshire (England) in 1828. When he was 21, after serving several years as an apprentice baker to his uncle, Robert Cribb, who had a large confectionery business at Covent Garden, he set sail for Queensland on the sailing ship Fortitude. For most historians that alone would be enough to secure the pioneering credentials of George, because that famous ship sailed after a pivotal lecturing campaign conducted in England by the Reverend John Dunmore Lang on the prospects of settling in Queensland.
George and his uncle sailed with the first group of Dr Lang immigrants and arrived in Moreton Bay on 20 January, 1849. These were very early days indeed. George became one of the pioneers of the river trade, being skipper of John Petrie's punt Jenny Lind carrying goods between Ipswich and Brisbane. The punt Jenny Lind was 50 tons burthen, named after a sweet opera singer of the day, and carried neither sail nor steam. She made her way to Ipswich and back reliant entirely on the tide. Attached to her stern was a large oar used to manoeuvre her into the river channel, which is just one of numerous reasons it is a blessing that Ms Lind never knew of her namesake in Queensland.
Later, George secured his bay and river navigator's certificate and invested in the Bremer Steam Navigation Company, for whom he captained the steamers Bremer and Hawke. This explains why he was known to many as "Captain".
Later again, he went back to the baking trade with his uncle in Ipswich, before taking up a piece of land near Blackwall, Chuwar, to go farming. He remained there for the rest of his life, some 70 additional years, making him Queensland's first recorded centenarian.
At the time of his death, the very Christian Mr Holt, who enjoyed a 'boast' that he could recite all words and tunes in "Hymns Ancient and Modern", had 132 descendents of whom 117 were living.
He was in every way a great pioneer - and they aren't making any more of them, you know.