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Updated: May 1, 2025
We also met a man named Bob Allen, who had been located in the neighbourhood for two years or more. Allen was an ex-sergeant of police, who left Aramac about 1875 to start a store and public house on what is known as the Pelican Hole, one mile west of the site of Winton. Very heavy rains fell in 1876, and we were told he was compelled by floods to remain two days on the wall-plate of his building.
About July of this year, Fitzmaurice returned from Townsville with three horses and a light dray on which he had brought his wife and little girl. Taking a plan of the hotel with me, I started for Aramac to interview Mr. This he refused to grant until the building was erected.
William Brown Steele was a strange character. I believe he had qualified as a chemist, but followed the different gold rushes from California to Victoria, New Zealand, and Peak Downs, thence to Aramac and Winton. His delight was to be accused of being an unscrupulous gambler of the type described by Bret Harte.
Here the leader was in hopes of finding a newly-formed station, and obtaining some more supplies; but the country was still untenanted, although in one place they observed the track of a dray, and they also saw the tracks of a party of horsemen near Aramac Creek.
I was occupied a whole day pasting the pieces of the torn and damaged cheques. I then started for the nearest bank, which was at Aramac, 250 miles away. A drought being on, I had many difficulties in getting through. There were only 5,000 sheep on Vindex, and these were camped on a water-hole which had been filled by a stray thunderstorm.
It proved to be a very rowdy place, so I decided to camp on the ridge outside the town without food, and have my breakfast when passing through in the morning. I carried £600 worth of cheques in my trousers pocket. This I thought was the safest place. I was very pleased when at last I reached Aramac, after bank hours, and handed the money to Mr.
By mutual arrangement, it was decided I should buy him out, and he left Winton one of the best-liked men connected with its foundation, and as I found him, a good friend and an honest partner. The life of a hotel-keeper did not appeal to me, so I found a purchaser for the hotel at a satisfactory figure, in Mr. W. B. Steele, of Aramac, who took delivery in April, 1882.
Later in the day we were invited to the dinner to him, to celebrate the completion of the town dam and tank, which were still quite dry. Muttaburra had not had rain for nearly a year. Mr. Henderson left us here to be conveyed by private buggy to Aramac, where we again met. I travelled down the coast from Rockhampton by the old "Keilawarra," afterwards sunk in a collision.
The man was silent for a moment. Then, when he spoke, his voice was lower and there was an indescribably sad note in it. "Call me 'Injun Pete', zat me. Everybody in de beeg Woods know Injun Pete. No odder name now. Once ze good Brodders at Aramac goin' make scholar of Pete, make heem priest, too, p'r'aps. He go teach among he's mudder's people.
At this time Winton was the rendezvous of some of the worst characters of the west; fights were frequent on the then unformed streets. The rowdies threatened to take the grog in the store, and as there were no police nearer than Aramac, I deemed it best to dispose of all the liquor to Allen, the local publican, who jumped at the chance to obtain a supply.
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