In 1907 the Western Railway line was extended from Thane to Inglewood, and after it entered the Inglewood Shire provision was made for a series of request stopping and pick- up points, where the establishment of a permanent station was not considered necessary at the time.

One such place was only a few kilometres on the Warwick side of Omanama and in 1912 representations were made by local landholders, through the then Member for Carnarvon, Mr Donald Gunn, to have it made into a regular stopping station.

When this was agreed, Donald Gunn suggested that an appropriate name for the station would be "Graysholme", because the pioneering Gray family farmed nearby on the property "Arlington" which was the first to be taken up when part of "Bodumba Station : was opened for selection.

So "Graysholme" it became and the name perpetuates a family which can claim not only to have played a significant part in the settlement of the Darling Downs, but also in the very early colonization of Australia, even though it had an enforced beginning rather than one of free choice.

But the story of the Gray family deserves to be told because it mirrors the story of many well known families in Australia today, who began in far from auspicious circumstances, yet were able to overcome all their difficulties and play a full part in the development of the nation.

The Gray story begins so far as this country is concerned, with the birth of one John Gray in England in the year 1762. Not a great deal is known about his early life except that he joined the Army and saw service as a private in the 26th Regiment.

When he was 32 he fell foul of the Law in a country which at that time was in a turmoil of social upheaval. Crime and poverty were both rampant. In addition there was a penal code which by no stretch imagination could be considered just or humane. The celebrated English jurist Sir William Blackstone pointed out in 1760. When John Gray was seven years old, that there were no less than 160 felonies punishable by death. These ranged from the obvious ones of murder and rape to such minor misdemeanors as stealing a letter or being found begging if a soldier or a sailor. Whatever John Gray's crime was it saved him from the gallows but in march 1794 he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

By this time the Penal settlement at Botany Bay was already six years old and four years later, in 1798, John Gray was sent on a six months journey across the seas on the "Barwell" to serve out his sentence in Australia.

Back in England in the year 1800, two years after John had reached Australia, a young woman in her early twenties, Elizabeth Killett, was sentenced at Norwich to be transported for seven years for stealing seven ten pounds and three five pounds notes from her master, Mr John Crow of Bradwell, Norfolk. She was transported on the "Nile", sailing from Spithead on June 21st 1801 and reached New South Wales almost exactly six months later.

How John and Elizabeth met we do not know, but obviously they were both exemplary and well behaved convicts because they were free to marry in 1803 in St John's Church Parramatta, with the ceremony being performed by that pioneer Anglican clergyman the Rev Samuel Marsden.

Fortune seems to have continued to smile on them because in 1810 we find John is Lessee of the Creek Bridge, over the Hawkesbury River not far from Windsor, and presumably collecting the tolls from the bridge. Apparently at the time it cost one shilling to take a horse over the bridge, which was a very expensive toll for those days.

The year 1812 was certainly a good leap year for John and Elizabeth because on February 29th of that year, John was granted a free pardon, by which time they already had four children.

In 1814 John's association with the law turned full circle, when he was appointed a Constable, and following year took up duty at the Public Market near the Queen Victoria building in Market street in the Sydney of today. But John Gray's life with his wife Elizabeth and their seven children, the last of whom Richard, was born in November 1817 was destined to be tragically short. In the Sydney Gazette of September 5th, 1818, it was recorded that the day before, the body of John Gray, the assistant to the clerk of the Market, was found drowned in Mr Fieldgate's well. The Gazette went on to say that he was much respected as an old inhabitant of the Colony and had left a wife and seven children to lament his premature demise.

Although Elizabeth married again in 1822 to Hugh Wallace Hossack, and had two daughters, both of whom died in infancy, the marriage seems to have ended in disaster with Elizabeth leaving her husband and reverting to the name Gray. However she lived for many more years and died in 1875 at the great age of 100 years and 6 months.

Thus was the Gray family dynasty established in Australia, which after 180 years had already extended to nine generations.

But to follow the fortunes of the Gray family in Queensland and in the Inglewood Shire in particular we go to John and Elizabeth's eldest son William, who was born in 1805, probably near Windsor.

He seems to have a Wheelwright as a young man but by 1827 he was a farmer at Evan near Penrith, where he met Mary Wheeler. They were married in St James Church, Sydney, on May 7th 1827, with the witnesses William's sister Jane and his friend John Best.

The couple were later to call their only son William John Best Gray, and it's an interesting story how John Best himself came to be in Australia, because but for the wheels of fortune he would have been in America.

In England in 1783 five years before the Penal Colony had been set up at Botany Bay, the 24 year old John Best had been sentenced to seven years transportation to the Penal Colony in America for Stealing. He set sail on the "Mercury" but when the convicts mutinied when their ship called at Torbay, before she had cleared the English Channel, he escaped. He was later re-captured and sentenced to serve out his original sentence, but by this time the First Fleet was being assembled and John Best sailed for Botany Bay and into history as a "First Fleeter" on the "Friendship".

He too was a model prisoner and in 1790 was a General Overseer of Convicts at Norfolk Island. In 1796 he was granted twelve acres there and in 1801 was promoted Superintendent. By 1803 he had thirty acres but in 1805, when the settlement was abandoned, he was discharged and moved to Sydney with a grant of land there. In 1814 he was given a grant of 470 acres at Windsor and in 1817 he married Rebecca Chipman. Some time later he would have become friendly with William Gray.

But to return to William and Mary Gray. A year after their marriage William was charged with stealing a bullock and sentenced to seven years hard labour in chains to be served at the Moreton Bay penal settlement.

However he was obviously a good prisoner because after four years he was released and was back at Windsor. While at Moreton Bay his wife was allowed to join him and one of their daughters, Hannah was actually born there.

In 1842 William's brush with the law was many years in the past, and he decided to follow the first wave of settlers to the Darling Downs. With his wife and four daughters and their only son William John Best Gray, William travelled overland to Brisbane, a journey which took six months. The family then came up to the Downs, where William became the first selector in the Leyburn district and set up as a carrier, acquiring several teams of bullocks, carting wool for the Squatters from their properties all over the Downs.

The young William John Best, who was only a little over ten years of age when the family arrived on the Downs, soon became a highly proficient bullock driver, and after his father died in Ipswich in 1851 the 19 year old carried on the carrying business on his own. For many years he travelled all over the Downs and has left a fascinating account of life in the pioneering days, written when he was seventy one years of age.

In 1854 William John Best Gray married Mary Ann Clay, the daughter of a Leyburn pioneer farmer Charles Clay. Over the years they were to raise a family of eleven children, seven boys and four girls. Many of the children were to marry into well known Inglewood district families, three into the Johnstone family, two into the Donovans and two into the Slacks and one into the Batterham family.

In 1881 William John Best Gray took up his "Arlington " selection of 160 acres from excised "Bodumba" and later bought another 160 acre block for his son George Charles which was called "Netherleigh".

After 57 years of married life William John Best Gray died in 1911 at the age of 79 years. His eleven children between them gave him and his wife no less than 59 grandchildren.

It was George Charles, for whom his father had bought "Netherleigh" when he was 16 years of age, who was to outlive all of his 10 brothers and sisters. In 1951, when he was 84 years old, a newspaper report referred to him as a "sturdy pioneer" and said that he was still to be cantering along the road on horseback between his home and Gore.


"The distance is 14 miles each way, but Mr Gray is one of the hardy pioneer breed who prefer the saddle and the wide open spaces to a leather - upholstered seat in a car and the hurry and bussel of town life."

By 1951 there had been a fantastic increase in wool prices and George Charles, who was shearing 1500 sheep on "Netherleigh", which had been increased in size to more than 1500 acres with the acquisition of some adjoining freehold land, remembered the days of droughts and very low returns. In December 1950 his wool sold as high as 188 pence per pound, but he could recall how sixty years before, his father was lucky to get sixpence a pound it drew congratulations from sheepmen from all over the country.

Mr Gray told the newspaper in 1951: "Shearers in those days received 17/6 per 100 sheep and rations and there were no ham sandwiches for afternoon tea or quarters of the high standard demanded today when shearers get seven pounds eight shillings for 100 sheep and will soon be getting seven pounds fourteen shillings, the same as in the southern states. Personally I think that the present price of wool is too high and consider that it will do more harm than good in the long run. It is playing right into the hands of manufactures of synthetic substitutes. The average person will not be able to buy the cloth."

Mr Gray, who was also running 200 head of cattle on "Netherleigh" in 1951, had something to say about cattle prices too compared with those which reigned early in his career.

"We would have been lucky to get one pound a head for weaners that we are selling today for thirteen and fourteen pounds a head. You could buy them by the dozen for one pound a head. I have seen bullocks in the paddock of the late Mr W Collins when butchering in Warwick, that he paid 25/- a head for and they weighed about 7cwt. Similar bullocks today would be worth between thirty and thirty five pounds.

In a comment on the splendid weather conditions that were apparently being enjoyed in 1951, Mr Gray said he had never seen such good grass in his house paddock since 1910, forty years earlier. He also attributed the decline in dairying to the tendency to switch to vealers because of the attractive prices.

Mr Gray was able to recall the town of Inglewood in 1880 when he was only a lad, and said that it was nothing more than a small village with two public houses, a small store, a blacksmith, a bookmaker, a postmaster and two police officers, a sergeant and a constable. He said that there were only about twelve families living there at the time.

Mr Gray could also remember the coach services which operated twice weekly between Warwick and Goondiwindi before the railway line was built. There were five horses to each coach and a change of horses was made at Gray's property "Graysholm". One of the mail contractors was Jack Dallas, who lived in Goondiwindi and was noted for his expert driving of the coach.

Mr Gray could also recall the notorious south-west robbery, when three hundred sovereigns going by coach from Warwick to a bank were found to be missing on arrival of the coach at Inglewood. The mystery of their disappearance was never solved.