Australian Dictionary of Biography

Hugh Sawrey, no date

Courtesy of Alex McPhee

Hugh David Sawrey (1919–1999), stockman, artist, horse breeder, and rural heritage preserver, was born on 3 March 1919 at Forest Glen, near Buderim, Queensland, younger son of George Williamson Sawrey, an English-born labourer, and his Queensland-born wife Jane, née Edwards. After George died in 1925, the family moved to Brisbane. Hugh passed the State scholarship examination at the Windsor State School in 1934 and then studied commercial subjects to junior level at the State Commercial High School and College, Nundah.

Drawn to the outback, Sawrey worked from 1937 as a jackeroo on pastoral stations, including Babbiloora, south-east of Tambo, where his mother was employed as a cook. On the station he met George Mothers, an Aboriginal leader, who taught him bush skills; Sawrey would maintain a connection with First Nations people throughout his life. He was working on Jessievale station, near Quamby, via Cloncurry, in March 1941 when he was called up for service in the Citizen Military Forces in World War II. On 12 June he followed his elder brother, Allan (1912–1945), into the Royal Australian Air Force. Hugh performed clerical duties in RAAF units in Port Moresby (1941–42) and then back in Australia. At St Andrew's Anglican Church, South Brisbane, on 16 June 1944, he married Hilda Grace Wells, an aircraftwoman in the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force.

In 1942 Sawrey’s mother had begun a concerted effort—writing to Prime Minister John Curtin among others—to secure his discharge so he could help her on her dairy farm at Meringandan, near Toowoomba. He was given leave on several occasions and allowed early demobilisation, on 2 June 1945, for the purpose. By September the Sawreys were at Warra, west of Dalby, where in 1947 he lost his herd because of drought. Not long afterwards he and his wife travelled to Sydney and Melbourne. In the latter city he took art classes with the tonalist painter Max Meldrum. His marriage failed (divorced 1949) and later in the 1940s he returned to Queensland and began farming with his mother near Oakey. By 1950 they had moved to Holdfast, an unproductive grazing property in the Kogan district, near Dalby. For periods of some six months at a time, he worked in the outback as a stockman and shearer to supplement their meagre income.

On 5 August 1950 in a Presbyterian ceremony at Norman Park, Brisbane, Sawrey married Betty Thatcher, a nurse; they were to have a daughter, Deborah, before being divorced (1955). Gaining recognition as a painter, primarily of outback life and work but with a wide range that included portraiture, he accepted the role of instructor when the Dalby Art Group was formed in 1952. He began exhibiting, winning prizes, and gaining commissions. In 1954 he and a business partner opened at Surfers Paradise a Mediterranean-themed restaurant, Café La Frangipani, in which he hung his own work and those by local artists. Poems of the balladeers from the turn of the century—especially those of A. B. ‘The Banjo' Paterson—which Sawrey and other bush-workers recited around the campfire, became the subject of a series of eighteen murals he executed on the walls of the Kogan Creek Hotel for his friend Nelson Dwyer, the publican. Similar works appeared in other hotels.

Based in Brisbane, Sawrey painted full time from 1960. He took lessons from the traditional painter Caroline Barker and attended drawing classes held by the expressionist Jon Molvig but was largely self-taught. Sawrey struck up a connection with Lawrie Quinn, publican at the Royal Hotel, Queen Street, who provided him with studio space and commissioned him to paint murals based on Paterson’s ‘Geebung Polo Club' and ‘Mulga Bill's Bicycle' for the public bar. On 1 April 1964 at the General Registry Office, Brisbane, Sawrey married Gillian Rae Davis (1943–2021), a fellow artist. Keith Moore, proprietor of Brisbane’s Grand Central Gallery, held Sawrey’s first solo exhibition in 1965; it was sold out. He would continue to make trips to remote parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory to obtain subjects for his painting; he explained his passion: ‘I want to preserve the horse era on canvas before it goes forever’ (Chapman 1969, 9A).

Sawrey illustrated The Banjo's Best-Loved Poems, selected by Paterson’s granddaughters and published in 1985. Ansett Airlines of Australia commissioned him to produce a series of twelve paintings based on Paterson’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’ which Prime Minister Paul Keating launched at the National Gallery of Australia in 1994. The works toured Australia in one of the company’s aircraft, which was also appropriately decorated by Sawrey, to celebrate the ballad’s centenary in 1995.

At first Hugh and Gill Sawrey had lived at Southport. When his art became financially successful in the late 1960s, they purchased ten acres (4 ha) of farmland at Coomera and in 1969 built a house there. Inspired by Gill’s enthusiasm, they acquired several Quarter horses and established the Bangtail Quarter Horse Stud. They moved their operations to a much larger property outside Boonah in 1971 and took up the equestrian sport of cutting. In 1978 they relocated their stable of twenty-one horses to a property at Lurg, near Benalla, Victoria, to be close to Max McTaggart, a notable trainer. The Sawreys built an indoor cutting arena, which became the home of ‘Kelly Country’ shows. Their sons, Jon and Tony, joined them in competing at home and elsewhere. Sawrey donated two of his paintings to set up a building fund for the Australian Quarter Horse Association (AQHA). In recognition of their service and support, Hugh and Gill were inducted into the National Cutting Horse Association of Australia heritage members Hall of Fame in 1991 and Hugh, posthumously, into the AQHA Hall of Fame in 2000.

Aware of the United States of America’s National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Sawrey decided to work to establish a similar monument to honour Australia’s stockmen. In 1974 at their Boonah property, he and Gill refined the concept at a meeting with their friends Bruce Yeates and David and Mary Rose Briggs. Sawrey arranged for the outfitter R. M. Williams, the writer Dame Mary Durack, the politician Bob Katter senior, the pastoralists Ranald Chandler and Sir James Walker, and others to join a board of directors, which he would chair from 1980. He donated a painting of his local hotel, ‘The Dugandan Pub,’ to provide the base funding and in 1983 a series of lithographs to raise money for the building, to be sited at Longreach, Queensland. In addition, he participated in fund-raising Winton-to-Longreach endurance rides in the 1980s. A combined Queensland and Federal government grant of $6.5 million, through the Australian Bicentennial Authority, assured the success of the project. Sawrey became disillusioned with some of the board members, whom he considered to be grandstanding, and resigned the chairmanship in 1983. A distinctive building, designed by the Sydney architect Feiko Bouman, was erected, and Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame and Outback Heritage Centre on 29 April 1988.

Sawrey was five feet nine and a half inches (176 cm) tall and of medium build. ‘There was usually a glint of humour in the eyes behind his glasses’ which, when he was annoyed, ‘could evaporate suddenly’ (Stockman’s Hall of Fame 1999, 1). A raconteur, he enjoyed convivial occasions and yarning around a campfire. His friend Lawrie Kavanagh recorded his generosity to strangers and his large donations to worthy causes. He published books on his art and wrote verse. In 1989 he was appointed CBE and in 2000, AM (posthumously). Survived by his wife and children, he died on 10 June 1999 at Wangaratta and was cremated.

Sawrey’s paintings ‘often merge raw colour with a loose drawing style, formed from romantic, impressionist, and post-World War II Australian modernist influences, while maintaining a very close observation of the anatomy and movement of horses’ (Sawrey, Anthony, pers. comm.). His oeuvre developed a consistent profile on the secondary market, the rural-themed canvases providing a popular image of the outback. Because he was identified as a regional artist, his works attracted little interest from public institutions, except in his home State: the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Ipswich Art Gallery, and Rockhampton Museum of Art. His paintings are held in numerous private collections in Australia and overseas. He presented the Stockman’s Hall of Fame with a self-portrait. Hugh Sawrey Walkway at Kogan features bronze statues of him and Dwyer by Bodo Muche.