Francis MacCabe

Francis Peter MacCabe (1817 – 27 June 1897) was a surveyor in the colony of New South Wales (later a state of Australia) in the 19th century. He surveyed and mapped the lower reaches of the Murrumbidgee, Darling and Murray Rivers in New South Wales.

Early life MacCabe was born in Dublin in 1817. His parents were Dr James and Margaret (née Russell) MacCabe. He trained as a surveyor with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and migrated to New South Wales in 1841 at the age of 24 on the ship Florentia.

MacCabe was working in the Wollongong area in early 1853 when he met Jane Osborne. They married at St Luke's church at Brownsville on 28 November 1855. They had 14 children. MacCabe left the Department of Surveyors in 1856 to manage a mine near the "Russell Vale" house that the couple had built when they married. In later life, the MacCabe family retired to Bowral, where he died on 27 June 1897.

Legacy MacCabe Corner is the point at which the borders of the states of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales meet, and was named after Francis MacCabe.

As part of the Q150 celebrations in Queensland in 2009, the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute placed a Q150 survey marker at the Calliope River Historical Village to commemorate MacCabe and his surveys of Gladstone and surrounding areas.

The Wollongong suburb of Russell Vale arose from the subdivision of his Russell Vale estate; the house itself was demolished in 1966.