Summary

James Stephen "Jim" Gilmour was a son of James Stephen Gilmour (Snr) and Eunice Gilmour (nee Forrest). After being wounded in the First World War, Jim married Elizabeth Fryer in 1919. Jim and Elizabeth were pioneering pastoralists who took up a selection on the resumed part of Meteor Downs, near Springsure in Central Queensland. They called it Mount Kelman, after the pastoralist-explorer William Kelman who had originally taken it up until foreclosure. (There is a letter included in the archive that transcribes part of William Kelman’s diary.) The young couple stocked their lease with cattle but the 1926 drought nearly broke them as they lost nearly all their breeding cattle. When the Great Depression hit shortly after, the introduction of an assistance scheme by the Queensland Agricultural Bank saved them. Their daughter Alexis, or "Lex," worked as a jillaroo on the property before training as nursing sister. These papers belonged to the Gilmour, Lear and Fryer families.