Australian Dictionary of Biography

Charles de Boos

Courtesy Peter Crabb

Charles Edward Augustus de Boos (1819–1900), journalist and public servant, was born on 24 May 1819 at Lambeth, London, oldest of seven children of Abraham Charles de Boos and his wife Mary Ann, née Baker. He had a happy childhood. His ancestors were among thousands of Huguenots who had made their homes in London after fleeing France during the ‘Religious Wars’ of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. When no more than fourteen years old, he went to school at Addiscombe, south London, most likely the East India Company Military Seminary. Still in his teens, he spent two to three years as a member of the British Auxiliary Legion fighting in the brutal Carlist Wars in Spain.

On 16 June 1839 de Boos sailed for Australia, arriving in Sydney just over four months later. He worked as a journalist for several newspapers including the Sydney Gazette, and in 1849 started his own newspaper, the Metropolitan. It was well-received, but short-lived. He spent a year or so in the Hunter Valley where he was secretary of the Maitland Jockey Club. Back in Sydney, on 17 May 1848 he married Sarah Stone at St James Church of England. With his wife and first child, he moved to Melbourne in May 1850, where he was employed by the Argus. The gold discoveries of the early 1850s resulted in dramatic changes for Victoria and marked the start of his career as a goldfields reporter, covering the rushes at Ballarat, Mt Alexander, Bendigo, and the Ovens Valley. During this period he was also employed as Government Reporter to the Legislative Council.

de Boos and his family, now including four children, returned to Sydney in mid-1856 and he began working for the Sydney Morning Herald. His main task was reporting on the debates of the Legislative Assembly, one that was greatly helped by his knowledge of shorthand. In 1857 he undertook the first of many travels for the Herald. As the paper’s ‘Special Commissioner’, he produced a series of twenty-four articles on ‘The Goldfields of New South Wales’. The following year he was sent to Rockhampton and the Fitzroy Diggings at Canoona. In 1865 he went for ‘a cruise in the country districts’ (Sydney Mail 1865, 4), to quote the Herald’s editor. From that journey came the first of six series of ‘Random Notes from a Wandering Reporter’, published through to 1874. On occasions he was glad to be away from the proceedings of the Assembly, ‘delivered from the ceaseless flow of words that in these degenerate days is dignified by the name of debate’ (Sydney Morning Herald 1866, 3). He retired from the Herald in May 1872.

On 10 December 1872 de Boos was left with the care of seven children after Mary Anne died. He did some writing for the Herald, was involved in gold mining, and helped run The Town Hall Hotel, the licensee being Susan Tighe, his sister-in-law. His knowledge of gold mining and the goldfields, together with the evidence he gave in 1871 to the New South Wales Gold Fields Royal Commission of Inquiry, led to his appointment as a mining warden and magistrate. In January 1875, he was sent to Braidwood (1875–80), followed by appointments at Copeland (1880–81), Temora (1881–82), Copeland (1883–87), and Milparinka (1887–89, with Cobar added in 1889), from where he retired.

At Temora de Boos had been the subject of complaints regarding his partiality, alleged insobriety, and use of improper language at a time when he had a heavy workload and was experiencing family and personal health problems. He also experienced a bitter dispute with one of the town’s two newspapers, and the antagonism of John Forster, a member of the Legislative Assembly. Although he was officially reprimanded, no other action was taken. These incidents apart, he was highly regarded in each of his appointments, a fact highlighted by the Chinese communities in the Braidwood-Araluen area presenting him with a gold medal as a mark of the high esteem in which they held him.

Reporting on the Legislative Assembly had provided de Boos with a rich source of material for his satirical and other writing, particularly under the pseudonym ‘Mr John Smith’ in the Congewoi Correspondence and in ‘The Collective Wisdom of New South Wales.’ These series brought him into conflict with Assembly members, especially Forster, and in August 1867 he was the subject of an adjournment debate. He wrote in a variety of genres, mostly set in the bush and later in the goldfields, almost all of it serialised and published anonymously in the Herald and the weekly Sydney Mail. The major exception was his largest work, Fifty Years Ago (1867). Like The Stockman’s Daughter (1856), it was later described as ‘the beginnings of maturity for the Australian novel’, anticipating writers such as Joseph Furphy, Miles Franklin, Mrs Aeneas Gunn, and William Hay ‘by a generation’ (Hamer 1965, 103).

Aside from his work and family, de Boos made significant contributions to every community in which he lived. Throughout his life he was an active Freemason, achieving the level of Past Grand Senior Warden at Sydney’s New Brunswick Grand Lodge. He often expressed concern for the natural environment and the damage done by gold mining. He was disturbed at widespread discrimination against Aboriginal people and questioned why they were not allowed to give evidence in court. In one instance he granted a mining license to a woman. He respected the Chinese miners, as they did him, and condemned the racial discrimination and violence they suffered (Sydney Morning Herald 1865, 4). His final years were spent in Sydney, initially in his own home with his two youngest daughters and then in the Ryde home of the youngest. He died there on 30 October 1900 and was buried in Rookwood Cemetery.

♦♦    This article replaces the original Volume 4 ADB biography, authored by L. V. Holt.