The jolly Hobart parson

This affable bloke is on my list for a more detailed treatment at some stage.  One of the reasons that it won't be too soon is that another book has been given the green light.  More on Australian Backyard Earth Scientist in my next post.  Probably.  It's written, I am cleaning up the 5th draft, so there are probably only three more to go before I get back to playing.

When Robert Knopwood was 8, his father died, leaving massive debts which required that part of the family estate be sold. He went to Cambridge to study for the ministry, but got in with the “hunting and shooting set”. By the time he was ordained as a priest, he was heavily in debt, and had to sell half of his property in 1789, and he must have continued in those ways, because in 1795, he had to sell the remainder.

With no income, he served wherever he could, and was in the West Indies before becoming David Collins’ chaplain as Collins set out to establish a colony in Port Phillip Bay. This was not a success, and Collins took the whole colony off to the Derwent River, establishing Hobart. Knopwood remained in Van Diemen’s Land until his death in 1838.

They were not all happy years, because in spite of getting a number of land grants, Knopwood had no money sense at all, and he was continually hounded by creditors. His diary reveals that he was genuinely ill for many years, but his capacity for liquor was such that people usually assumed his frequent indisposition was alcohol-related.

All the same, until 1819, he ministered to a parish that stretched all the way to Port Dalrymple (Launceston), and his life was by no means horrid. Manning Clark said that Knopwood “… drank wine, smoked a pipe, hunted, fished, and enjoyed the world hugely …”.

Clearly, he fitted in well in a colony where the governor (Collins) had a convict mistress. In Sydney, Lachlan Macquarie had a low opinion of Knopwood.

There was one affair which may have accounted for this: it involved a ship called Argo, 19 barrels containing 2800 gallons, about 12 700 litres, of spirits referred to as “arrack”, and probably made from rice. This had been smuggled ashore, and when it was seized, Knopwood in his role as magistrate, became officially involved. This may have hurt him, because the common gossip at the time was that Knopwood had a hand, and perhaps an interest, in the affair.