Patrick Durack

Patrick Durack (March 1834 – 20 January 1898) was a pastoral pioneer in Western Australia.

His family were struggling tenant farmers from the townland of Magherareagh near Scarriff in County Clare, Ireland, who moved from Ireland to New South Wales in 1853. Two months after arriving in New South Wales, his father, Michael was killed accidentally. He settled his mother and siblings, and moved to Victoria, returning 18 months later with £1000. with 100 cattle. By 1877 the Duracks had a herd of approximately 30,000 head of cattle.

Durack and his brother Michael trekked across the north of the continent from Thylungra at Coopers Creek in Queensland. They left in 1879 with 7250 breeding cattle and 200 horses, heading for the Kimberley region of Western Australia near Kununurra, arriving in 1882. The journey of cattle to stock Argyle Downs and Ivanhoe Station is the longest of its type ever recorded.

In 1885, he retired to Brisbane. Later that year he purchased gold-crushing machinery from Sydney and began mining on the Kimberley goldfields. In 1889 he learned that financial disaster had overtaken his Queensland interests. He died in Fremantle on 20 January 1898.

Kings in Grass Castles is a 1959 novel based on his life and times by his granddaughter Dame Mary Durack. In 1998 it was the basis of a TV mini-series of the same name.