Frederick Augustus Hely

Frederick Augustus Hely (1794 – 8 September 1836), a public servant and settler of colonial Australia, was born in County Tyrone, Ireland. He was the son of Colonel Forbes Francis Hely.

Place in New South Wales

At eighteen years of age, in the year 1812, he married Georgina Lindsay Bucknell. While there is no evidence of the actual time when Hely came to Australia, it is known that he was given the post of principal superintendent of the convicts in New South Wales sometime in early 1823, but it was later in the year that he arrived in Sydney, with his wife and children, to actually take up the post (a post he would hold throughout the entirety of the rest of his life). Hely held several other additional places of public and social influence. He became a justice of the peace in 1825 and became president of the Board of Magistrates in 1826. The year following, he became acting superintendent of police, and, in 1831, he was appointed a member of the Assignment Board. Later, in 1832, Hely applied for an appointment as stipendiary magistrate at Brisbane Water, but, to induce him to stay as superintendent of convicts (an office in which he had been quite successful in the past), he was offered a salary increase of £100 from the £200 he was already earning. Two years later, however, Hely became a foundation director of the Commercial Banking Co. of Sydney.^[1]

Land ownership

Hely established a farm, which he called Wyoming, after he was granted almost 550 hectares of land at Narara, Brisbane Water in 1824, and, in doing so, became the first man to settle there permanently and to grow a citrus fruit orchard garden. In 1829, Hely's land was expanded to approximately 4,000 acres (16 km²), or a little over 1600 hectares, after further grants in the districts of Ourimbah and Tuggerah. The land Hely was granted in Tugerah incited a fierce conflict with William Cape, a free settler who did not report his selection of land to the government before clearing around 100 acres (0.40 km²) of land and building a barn on the land which was later granted to Hely.

Death

In 1836, Hely began to suffer periods of bad health, and he was recommended for retirement, with a pension to live on. However, before the pension could be approved, Hely died of apoplexy in Sydney. He was survived by his wife and his five children (three daughters and two sons).^[1]

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