Frederick Isaac

Frederick Neville Isaac (1825 – 12 July 1865) was a Queensland pioneer pastoralist and a Member of the Queensland Legislative Council.

Queensland pioneer Frederick Isaac arrived in Queensland in 1840. Together with his brother, he accompanied the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt on his first expedition, on which Isaac proved himself an excellent bushman.

After that expedition, Frederick Isaac then returned to Gowrie, and went from there with stock to take up land. In 1847, Isaac and his men settled at a place called Dullacca (later the property of William Miles, Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly), but he was very soon driven from that land by the aborigines. He managed to save some of his stock but was forced to leave behind all his stores and his dray. His widow remarried in 1866, to John Watts MLA, Queensland Secretary for Public Works, and returned with him to England in 1867.

Legacy Leichhardt named the Isaac River after him. In turn, the river gives its name to the local government area of Isaac Region.

Letters from Leichhardt to Isaac are held in the State Library of New South Wales.