[Index]
Richard Hind CAMBAGE (1859 - 1928)
Surveyor, botanist
Children Self + Spouses Parents Grandparents Greatgrandparents
Richard Hind CAMBAGE (1859 - 1928)

+

Fanny SKILLMAN
John Fisher CAMBAGE (1815 - 1896)











Emma Ann SMART JONES (1831 - 1916) William SMART (1802 - )



Mary JONES (1807 - 1883)



Richard Hind CAMBAGE

Richard Hind CAMBAGE
Richard Hind CAMBAGE Richard Hind CAMBAGE
b. 07 Nov 1859 at Milton, ACT, Australia
m. 11 Jul 1881 Fanny SKILLMAN at Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
d. 28 Nov 1928 at Burwood, New South Wales, Australia aged 69
Parents:
John Fisher CAMBAGE (1815 - 1896)
Emma Ann SMART JONES (1831 - 1916)
Events in Richard Hind CAMBAGE (1859 - 1928)'s life
Date Age Event Place Notes Src
07 Nov 1859 Richard Hind CAMBAGE was born Milton, ACT, Australia
11 Jul 1881 21 Married Fanny SKILLMAN Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
1896 37 Death of father John Fisher CAMBAGE (aged 81)
1916 57 Death of mother Emma Ann SMART JONES (aged 85) Ulladulla, New South Wales, Australia 71
28 Nov 1928 69 Richard Hind CAMBAGE died Burwood, New South Wales, Australia
Personal Notes:
Acacia cambagei and Eucalyptus cambageana were named after him

Richard Hind Cambage (1859-1928), surveyor and botanist, was born on 7 November 1859 at Applegarth near Milton, New South Wales, second son of Yorkshire-born John (Fisher) Cambage, blacksmith and later farmer, and his second wife Emma Ann, née Jones. His father had reached Sydney on 5 July 1835 in the Marquis of Huntley, sentenced to seven years for housebreaking. Richard was educated at the Ulladulla Public School, was a pupil-teacher there and at 18 began training as a surveyor; in 1880 he helped to survey National Park. On 11 July 1881 at the Elizabeth Street registry office, Sydney, he married Fanny Skillman (d.1897), daughter of the headteacher at Ulladulla.

Licensed as a surveyor in June 1882, Cambage became a draftsman in the Department of Lands and on 16 February 1885 transferred to the Department of Mines as a mining surveyor. He covered much of the colony on his field trips and became expert in bushcraft, with 'an intuitive sense of direction', but his professional duties became increasingly concentrated on coalmining. In 1900 he carried out a difficult and dangerous survey of abandoned Newcastle workings running under the harbour and sea-bed. While investigating the old Balmain tunnels in Sydney he managed the remarkable feat of transferring his azimuth from the surface to a point 2920 ft (890 m) below sea-level in a single operation. Promoted chief mining surveyor in 1902, he investigated the site of an explosion in the Mount Kembla mine which had killed 95 men: his evidence to the royal commission on the disaster led to the reversal of the coroner's verdict that the miners had died of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Cambage was a member of the board of examiners for licensed surveyors in 1903-18, and a foundation fellow of the Institution of Surveyors, New South Wales, of which he was president in 1907-09; he also lectured on surveying at Sydney Technical College in 1909-15. On 1 January 1916 he became under-secretary and warden of the Department of Mines and from next March was superintendent of explosives. He also chaired several boards in the public service.

A keen childhood interest in plants, birds and animals of his native district, where there were pockets of sub-tropical rainforest, blossomed during his years in the field. He made plant collections in 1880-90 for Dr William Woolls who gave him botanical lessons, and his observations formed the basis of two significant contributions to Australian botanical study. Cambage studied systematically the relationship of various Australian genera to their environment, and particularly the importance of the chemical composition of the parent rocks in the distribution of Eucalyptus species. If neither completely original nor definitive, his work in this area was remarkably perceptive. He also made a sophisticated analysis of the physiology and morphology of the widely varied Australian species of the genus Acacia, which involved years of experiment with seedlings in his garden and greenhouse. He published extensively in the journals of the local Royal and Linnean societies, often with his friend J. H. Maiden. Acacia cambagei, the 'gidgea' of the Darling River, and Eucalyptus cambageana, the 'Coowarra Box', were named after him.

A fellow of the Linnean Society of London from 1904, Cambage was very active in many local learned societies and was 'a renowned peacemaker'. He was a council-member of the local Linnean Society from 1906 (president in 1924), honorary secretary of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1914-22 and 1925-28 (president in 1912 and 1923), president of the Wild Life Preservation Society of Australia in 1913 and of the State branch of the Australian Forest League in 1928, a council-member of the Australian Wattle League from 1909, and an elective trustee of the Australian Museum, Sydney, from 1925. As founding honorary secretary of the Australian National Research Council in 1919-26, he organized the Second Pan Pacific Science Congress held in Melbourne and Sydney in 1923, and as president in 1926-28 he represented the Commonwealth at the third congress held in Japan in 1926. He attended the conference on reorganization of the Commonwealth Institute of Science and Industry in 1925. In 1928 he presided over the Hobart meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. Cambage was also a foundation member in 1901 of the (Royal) Australian Historical Society and president in 1924. He enjoyed tracing the actual paths followed by some of the early explorers, including Barrallier's attempt to cross the Blue Mountains, which he described in papers for the society.

Cambage retired from the public service at the end of 1924 and next year was appointed C.B.E. He was an active Freemason, holding high office in the local lodges, and a keen follower of Test and Sheffield Shield cricket. On 28 November 1928 he died suddenly with angina pectoris at his Burwood home, and was buried in the Anglican section of Rookwood cemetery. He was survived by two daughters and two sons who had both served in World War I.

This public tree has about 60,100 people. Every person in the tree is related by birth or marriage to at least one other person in the tree - no strays. The people in the tree come mainly from four projects.
  1. My family tree. The original project begun about 1998. ID numbers less than about 6,000
  2. Canberra and Queanbeyan Pioneers. The next 30,000 begun about 2004. Sourced almost entirely from HAGSOC's excellent 'Biographical Register of Canberra and Queanbeyan'. The project began when I decided to add siblings, spouses and parents for a relation with an entry in the Register. 12 years work.
  3. Wagga Pioneers. I moved to Wagga and thought I would extend the Queanbeyan project by adding people from Wagga Wagga & District Family History Society's 'Pioneers of Wagga Wagga and District'. About 10,300 people added over about a year.
  4. Tumut Valley Pioneers. During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, I decided to extend the above projects by adding pioneers of the Tumut Valley. Initial sources were Snowden's 'Pioneers of the Tumut Valley' and 'Relict of ... Lives of Pioneering Women of Tumut and District'. Excellent references published by Tumut Family History Group. I've also added material from newspapers of the time - especially, death records, obituaries and weddings from 'Tumut and Adelong Times'. This project is in its early stage and might take a few years. I plan to extend to the upper Monaro (Adaminaby, Kiandra, Cooma, Jindabyne).
I upload new information to this website about every 3 months. My motivation for these projects is to provide public information for people seeking to trace ancestors and what became of them. Much of the information I provide can be difficult to find.
If you find errors - anything incorrect (dates, places, wrong parents, wrong children), and you have evidence, I would love to fix them. Or, if you have information that would extend my projects, do not hestiate to contact me on the email link below. I do not publish information on living people - which means I'm not much interested in people born after about 1920, and I usually distrust material from before about 1770 without extremely good sources.
g.bell@bigpond.net.au
When you click the mail address abouve, if it does not open your email app, copy the address on the screen.
Geoff Bell, September 2020