Frederic Urquhart

Frederic Charles Urquhart (27 October 1858 – 2 December 1935) was a Native Police officer, Queensland Police Commissioner and Administrator of the Northern Territory.

Early life Frederic Charles Urquhart was born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, England on 27 October 1858. His father was an officer in the Royal Artillery and his uncle was a colonel in a cavalry regiment of the British Army. He was educated at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire and at Felsted School in Essex, but left to pursue a career at sea at the age of fourteen. He obtained a second-officer certificate in the merchant navy and served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. In 1875 he migrated to Queensland, where he worked in the sugar and cattle industries. In 1878 Urquhart became a telegraph linesman at Normanton, Queensland.

Native Police career In 1882, Urquhart was appointed to the paramilitary Native Police as a cadet and was promoted quickly to the rank of second-class sub-inspector within the year. He was initially posted to the barracks near Georgetown and then to the Carl Creek camp on the Gregory River. While stationed at Carl Creek, Urquhart was ordered to go to Burketown and remove the Aboriginals residing there. He rounded them up and marched them east to the Leichhardt River where he threatened to shoot dead their traditional healer if he did not make it rain.

In March 1884 Urquhart was transferred to the Cloncurry district to replace the Native Police officer, Marcus Beresford, who had recently been killed in the ongoing conflict with the local Indigenous population. Urquhart and his troopers were soon involved in skirmishes with the resident Kalkadoon and Maithakari peoples. He established a barracks outside of Cloncurry at a locality on the Corella River now known as Urquhart. In July 1884 a well-known colonist, James Powell, was killed by Aboriginals in the region and Urquhart and his troopers were mobilised to conduct a punitive expedition. Alexander Kennedy, a pioneer Scottish pastoralist in the Gulf Country district, accompanied Urquhart in his mission. Together this armed group conducted at least two large massacres of local Aboriginal people. Urquhart later wrote a poem entitled Powell's Revenge about one of the massacres. Some of the stanzas of this poem are as follows:

Family and later life Urquhart married Annetta Atkinson in 1891 and they had three children together; Miriam, Walter James and Hope Goldie Urquhart. Miriam married George Addison who was a WWI army officer and noted architect. Walter James Urquhart became the first officer to graduate from the Australian Army officer training program at the Royal Military College, Duntroon and he fought at Gallipoli and in Palestine during WWI. Walter remained with the army after the war but his career was hampered by charges of sexual assault of children. Frederic's youngest son, Hope Goldie Urquhart, was consistently in trouble with the law particularly in regards to driving under the influence of alcohol. In 1930, Hope was the pilot of a plane that crashed into the Brisbane River causing the death of a passenger. Hope was found guilty of flying in a dangerous manner and had his licence suspended.

Frederic Urquhart retired to Brisbane in 1926. He died at St Helen's Private Hospital on 2 December 1935 and was buried in Toowong Cemetery.