Summary

The Cutten family were early European selectors in the Mission Beach area. Frederick and Margaret Cutten and their eight children came to Queensland in 1870 for the economic possibilities of the new colony, and its health benefits. In London, Frederick was a lawyer and the family was well off. They took up land on the Darling Downs for wool growing and then expanded into a sheep station in central Queensland, near Emerald, but that failed because of drought and poison bush.

Two of the brothers, Leonard (Len) and Sidney, went to the Etheridge goldfield and set up a pit sawing business, supplying timber for Georgetown. They did so well that the other two brothers, James and Herbert, joined them. They aimed to finance a farm and in 1884 they took up a group of selections at Clump Point, Bingil Bay, naming the plantation Bicton. The brothers continued to work on the Etheridge, timber sawing and tin mining, until 1885 when they began work on the homestead. When that was finished the rest of the family joined them and they began to grow tropical fruits, tobacco, tea and coffee using local Djiru people and South Sea Islanders as labour. They processed their own coffee and exported mainly pineapples and citrus fruit south.

James Cutten's diary was written in a Lett's Diary, Almanac and Gazetteer. The opening pages tell you lots of interesting things like phases of the moon, members of the Royal Family, postage rates to everywhere and when the mails sail overseas, dates of important days like Ember Day and when to get your gun licence, tables of measurements (for example 12 sacks = 1 chaldron), how to make a will, the readings for Church of England services, the important towns in each Australian colony, and much more.

James' diary entries are more prosaic. The diary begins when the brothers were tin mining at Fossilbrook near Mt Surprise along with 'Fred' and 'Bob'. James spends a lot of time on the horses – searching for them, looking after them, breaking them in, getting them out of bogs or gullies where they had fallen, and making and repairing horse gear. Other days are spent washing, writing letters, helping out on the alluvial tin mining claim, or riding to nearby cattle stations for beef or Junction Creek Telegraph Station for mail and telegrams. The men supplemented their diet by shooting and fishing. As you would expect for people dependent on surface water for mining, household needs and the horses, there is a lot of attention to rain – or the lack of it. The wet season supplied it in plenty but also washed away some of the miners' heaps of tin dirt before it could be washed and bagged, and made the country difficult to travel. The diary records and describes Native Mounted Police patrols and passing travellers, some of whom camped with the Cuttens, including James Venture Mulligan and party out prospecting and 'the man who burnt his toe to cure deaf [death] adder bite'. Occasionally the Cuttens and their mates took tin out to Port Douglas by dray, meeting with misadventures due to the terrible state of the roads. They were more successful when they took packhorses as well to relieve the load on the dray on steep climbs.

After their last load of tin to Port Douglas in August, the Cuttens gave up tin mining. James visited Cardwell to take up the selections at Bicton, though his discussions with other selectors and visit to Mourilyan seems to indicate he was considering other possible sites for settlement, along with gaining information about farming in the tropics. In October the Cuttens went back to timber sawing, shifting their camp to Georgetown, not altogether a happy experience. The river was dry and they had to dig a hole in the river bed for water, the heat and flies were ferocious, and six of the horses died. Most days were spent felling and barking trees and pit-sawing the logs but they were unable to get a large order for their timber. They also dug a garden to grow corn, sweet potatoes and melons. James complains of the 'Barcoo rot' (dysentery) and trachoma, no doubt from the flies. The wet season was a relief, but the saw-pit was flooded for a day, a better result than the 'opposition' sawyers whose pit was washed away by the river. The new year ushered in a storm with hail which brought down the tent. It is not surprising that the brothers went to Bicton the next year to work their plantation.

Bicton was initially successful, particularly coffee, but it eventually failed due to a series of cyclones, the loss of the import duties on coffee so the plantation had to compete with cheap overseas produce, and shipping being diverted for the war during World War One. James, a surveyor, went back to that occupation and died in Brisbane in 1935, the last of the Cutten brothers. Len, Sid and Herbert all died in Innisfail and are buried in the plantation cemetery along with their father, mother and sister Jessie.

Summary written by Dr Jan Wegner.