Charles Gordon Campbell

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Charles Gordon Campbell was born on the 14 January 1840, in Aberdeen Scotland. He is the son of Duncan Campbell, cattle driver and his wife Catherine nee Mclean. Campbell was a Colonial Australian merchant and pastoralist. Along with Frederick Grimwade, Alfred Felton and James Cuming they established one of Australia’s largest fertilizer companies. All four men are quoted as being some of early Australia’s greatest Industrialists.

[edit] Life

Campbell Migrated to the Victorian Goldfields in 1858, working at Woodend as an agent for a firm of Carriers, before moving to New Zealand, where he established a successful flour milling business at Dunedin. He returned to Melbourne in the 1860’s and entered the Lime Business, and Prospered. On the 5th of June 1861 he married Mary Ellen Smith, in Wesley Church, Lonsdale St Melbourne. They had four sons and six daughters.

In 1872 Campbell formed a Partnership, with former childhood friend, in buying an acid works at Yarraville. Campbell put up £3300 of the £4000 required, and as senior partner of Cuming, Smith & Co. led the new firm's diversification into fertilizers in 1875. In 1882 Grimwade and Felton joined forces with Campbell and Cuming forming the Adelaide Chemical Works Co. The partner’s were excellent managers, re-invested profits and easily survived the 1890’s Depression. In 1897 Felton and Grimwade merged their acid works entirely with Cuming Smith and Co and the new company became a major powerhouse in Australia’s chemical and fertilizer industries.

In 1888 Campbell teamed up with Grimwade in founding the Royal Bank, the only Melbourne Bank not to suspend payments in 1893. Campbell also founded the Apollo Stearine Candle Co and with James Service, C.E Miller and others he established the Port Melbounrne Sugar Co, which then later merged with the Colonial Sugar refining co, the company was a major survivor with the Sugar Boom Faltered. Like many of Australia’s early merchants, Campbell became a Pastoralist he invested in the Malvern Hills Pastoral Co. of Queensland and 1884, along with Felton bought a station Murray Downs some 97 thousand acres near Swan hill. The Partners spent Heavily on Improvements. The Station was to have one of the largest Water rights in Australia. Today the water alone would be worth well over A$10million. The Station is quite well known among farming groups and over time parts of it were subdivided and sold over. The homestead to is quite well known. Recently it was turned into a Golf Course. Unfortunately the Family do not have many links left with the Property and many of the Families items have been dispersed among owners of the Property and sold off and lost in time.

In 1889 the station sent 327 bales of wool down river to the railhead at Echuca, but wool prices fell in the 1890s and drought was a recurrent problem. Campbell helped to set up the Pastoralists' Association of Victoria and Southern Riverina, became its treasurer, and was thanked by its council for services (unspecified) during the great strike of 1891.

[edit] Later life

In 1885 Campbell had joined Felton in supporting Rev. Charles Strong, the charismatic preacher expelled from Scots Church, encouraging him to found another. Described by Felton as 'the ablest practical head that the confraternity can claim', Campbell helped to build Strong's new Australian Church, and in 1897 was one of four 'proprietors' who cleared the building of debt and rented it back to the Church. By then he had joined Scots Church, where a window was later installed in his memory. In maturity Campbell was bearded, bald and genial, but keen-eyed; Felton always admired his 'stubborn strength'. His family was established in Wollahra, a mansion in East Melbourne, but spent much time at Murray Downs. In 1897 Campbell and Felton bought, for £85,300, another large property, Langi Kal Kal, near Beaufort. When Felton died in January 1904, Campbell bought out his share in both stations. Campbell died of pneumonia on 13 September 1905 at Wollahra. He was buried in Boroondara cemetery, Kew; in its obituary, the Pastoralists' Review called him 'one of the ablest business men in Melbourne'. His estate, sworn for probate at £233,000 in Victoria, £115,672 in New South Wales and £24,080 in South Australia, was left in trust for his widow, surviving children and grandchildren.