>> Go Back - page - >> List of Entriess
who were not in such a strong financial position. All the vast areas of land he had taken up were accurately laid out
with the aid of a compass for the purposes of exact description.
In 1875, when two of Durack’s children, with a tutor, became lost in the bush, Costello went out with a tracker
to find them. He never anticipated danger and had the optimism of good health. He was the first white man apart
from Burke and Wills to explore some parts of western Queensland and the neighbouring areas of the Northern
Territory. In 1877 Costello sold Kyabra, taking his elderly parents to Rockhampton for comfort. They eventually
retired to Goulburn. Costello bought racing studs but, though a lover of horses, he was not interested in the racing.
He also ventured into a tobacco plantation and factory but without success.
Interest in pastoralism was beginning in the Northern Territory and Costello bought Lake Nash, a large property,
straddling the Queensland/Northern Territory border, which he stocked with cattle and horses. After an expedition
in the early 1880s he leased some 4 500 square kilometres, stretching from the McArthur River to the Roper.
Costello put a manager in charge of Lake Nash, sold his coastal properties, sent his wife and younger children on
a trip to Ireland and with his eldest son set off to establish a homestead on the Limmen River—Valley of Springs.
When his wife and children returned from Ireland he hired a boat Activity to meet them and bring them through the
uncharted waters of the Limmen River to the new primitive homestead. The Costellos lived in that isolated region
for six years, learning to cope with cattle disease, drought, malaria, hostile Aborigines and plundering prospectors
who were heading for gold in the Kimberleys. Marketing of stock was almost impossible and along with high land
rents, caused Costello to lose almost a quarter of a million Pounds. Between 1893 and 1895 Costello abandoned
his Gulf property and moved his family to Lake Nash. This station had no adequate water supply and Costello
eventually had to sink two sub-artesian bores but unfortunately went bankrupt in the process. He managed to buy
his original farm at Grabben Gullen and, after a fire in 1904 that almost destroyed the house but cleared the timber,
he sold the farm at a good price and bought Tocobil near Hillston in New South Wales. He bought the adjoining
land—36 000 hectares—and the leases were taken up for his children. He remained in New South Wales until his
death in 1923.
His enthusiasm did much to help the cause of pastoralism in the Northern Territory, his adventurous seeking
of new lands causing him to press forward in the pursuit of a vision—and he never lost his faith in the Northern
Territory, telling a parliamentary Commission in 1895: ‘It has been an unlucky country... but I have this faith; that
a time of glowing prosperity is in store for it, that the future will bring for it a measure of success counter-balancing
its many failures.’
M J Costello, Life of John Costello, 1930; M Durack, Sons in the Saddle, 1983; A Powell, Far Country, 1982.
J STEEL, Vol 1.COSTELLO, MARY nee SCANLAN (1839–1924), Territory pioneer, was born on 6 January 1839 at Scariff,
County Clare, Ireland, daughter of Michael Scanlan and his wife. She arrived in Australia in 1861 and for three years
she lived with her brother, Patrick, on his property near Goulburn in New South Wales. Two other brothers were
also close by. As a girl she became the acknowledged belle of the district and early showed the spirit of adventure
and courage that stood her so well in her later life. She gained a reputation for being a splendid horsewoman, an
efficient stock hand and a crack rifle shot, as well as a keen political observer.
On 7 January 1865 she married John Costello at Grabben Gullen, New South Wales. Her husband, a close
friend of her brothers, was born in Yass, New South Wales, in 1838, son of Michael Costello and Mary, nee Tully
who had emigrated to Australia in 1837. Costello and Scanlan siblings married into the Durack family who
pioneered in the Kimberleys.
In February 1868 Mary, now mother of two sons, accompanied her husband, his parents, and a group of
employees, to Mobell Creek in a remote area of western Queensland where the younger boy died from lack of
water. The family then settled at Kyabra Creek (a tributary of Cooper Creek) where Mary gave birth later that year
to her namesake, Mary (Jane Gertrude), said to be the first European child born in the area. The Costellos were
also said to have been the first Europeans in the area since Burke and Wills. Mary had four more children while the
family were living in Queensland and another was born while she was visiting Goulburn.
In January 1882 John Costello bought Lake Nash station, a very large property which straddled the Northern
Territory and Queensland border, and which he had leased since 1879. Two years later he also acquired another
property in virgin country on the Limmen River, in the Gulf country. In mid 1884 Mary and the family went to
Ireland for a holiday and returned a year later. John met them in Rockhampton. After leaving their four daughters
in a convent in Townsville John and Mary, their younger children and a maid chartered a boat to take themselves,
their stores and a prefabricated home, and their cattle and horses to their new property named Valley of the Springs.
In 1886 Mary wrote to her daughter, Kate, that she had only ‘seen two White women since we came here but
we see plenty of men. The Blacks are very quiet to us although other people cannot get on so well with them’.
She commented about how often and for how long John was away and then continued, ‘We have a very nice place
here. Plenty of flowers and trees. And you know what an ugly place men by themselves keep and it would be bad...
to have father here by himself and what use could we be down the country by ourselves... We have no mail running
out our way yet but we hope soon to get a mail. It is time but our Government are very slow people and do not look
to our wants.’ The closest town was Borroloola, about 90 miles away.
After six years of this isolation the family returned to the Lake Nash property about 1891, though at the time
of the census taken that year seven children were living with Mary and John at Valley of the Springs: Michael 25,
Mary Jane Gertrude 21, Kate, 18, Ellen, 15, Annie, 14, John Patrick, 10 and Patrick 8.