Macquarie Vision
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
20 Jun 2010
Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810-1821, was our first great champion. On his tomb in Scotland he is justly described as "The Father of Australia".
This year is the 200th anniversary of the appointment of Macquarie and every night, except during the heavy rain, good crowds, have followed the route of the Macquarie Visions.
The light show on the front of St. Mary's Cathedral illustrating his 268 projects is the most spectacular. This Neo-Gothic building has an intricate and detailed design, but the multi-coloured and changing light patterns fit exactly, as they do on the other buildings such as the Hyde Park Barracks and the Parliament, the oldest surviving parliamentary buildings in the English-speaking world.
It was good to see so many youngsters being introduced to the accomplishments of the man who began the transformation of a rebellious convict colony into the spectacular and beautiful city Sydney is today.
In those days Paul Keating's quip that "if Australians are not living in Sydney they are camping out" was literally true, until Macquarie built the first road across the Blue Mountains, opening up our vast continent. Closer to home he founded the towns of Liverpool, Windsor and Richmond.
He realised that to build a decent city, a civilized community rather than a prison camp, Sydney needed fine buildings, churches, schools, hospitals, barracks. And despite the costs and the protests of his parliamentary masters in Britain he set out to build what was needed. He established the Bank of New South Wales and introduced our first coinage.
He laid the foundation stone of the first St. Mary's Church in 1821, not opened until 1834, and destroyed by fire in 1865.
More importantly Macquarie was determined to treat the aborigines justly, to work for their improvement and held an annual meeting with them at Parramatta.
And most important of all, he was a champion of the ex-convicts, the emancipists, appointing them and indeed convicts to important positions of authority. Francis Greenway, the chief architect of Macquarie Street was an ex-convict and so was the local poet laureate M.M. Robinson. The deeply held Australian conviction that everyone has "a right to a fair go" finds its local roots in Macquarie's policy.
He was an autocrat, strongly opposed by the free settlers and returned home in disgrace.
He died a disappointed man, but later Australians have recognised him as one of theirs, a local champion who deserves to be thanked and remembered.
