Sir George Ferguson Bowen

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, appointed him first governor of Queensland. Bowen landed at Brisbane on 10 December 1859. Though preparing for responsible government, for the first three months he administered Queensland virtually as a crown colony, assisted by an official seconded from New South Wales and an executive council of three. He began also a seven-year association with Robert G. W. Herbert (later permanent under-secretary in the Colonial Office), who had travelled with him from England; the latter became colonial secretary and, on the election of the parliament in April 1860, the first premier of Queensland.
In Queensland, Bowen began to display the qualities which both distinguished and bedevilled his reputation. His attention to public business was constant, his capacity for administration (so far as that was required under responsible government) clear. His public utterances were lucid and usually edifying, if orotund. He dealt comfortably with ministers in ordinary circumstances. Government House hospitality was well maintained; in this he was much helped by the personality and talents of Lady Bowen. In touring over a large territory he was acutely observant as well as sociable, and in both dispatches and private letters he made much of classical and other historical parallels and comparisons: Homer and Horace, as well as seventeenth-century Virginia, provided him with descriptions of the landscape and squatters of Queensland. Public and political affairs engaged a perceptive and enquiring mind reinforced by wide reading in modern as well as ancient works. Bowen had, however, some less edifying qualities. He tended towards the pompous and egotistic, often to a fault. Some colonists regarded him less than respectfully, especially in times of political difficulty. In the Colonial Office he became known as 'an officer who is always obtruding and exaggerating his own merits and claims' (Sir F. Rogers, November 1865, TNA: PRO, CO 234/13). Robert Herbert, who maintained a certain friendship with Bowen (and was godfather to his son, George William Howard Bowen, born in Brisbane in 1864) in Queensland and later as head of the Colonial Office, was both amused and irritated by his 'eccentricities' (Knox, Queensland Years). Bowen was notable also for his propensity to cultivate and advertise acquaintance with the great and powerful (chiefly, at least until 1874, on the liberal side of politics). For one who was absent from England from 1859 to 1875, such acquaintance could only be made in correspondence. His surviving letters are ample evidence of his ability in this regard. A certain garrulousness and sycophancy aside, they contain much that is insightful and shrewd.
Bowen's success in his first government owed much to Herbert's ability to remain in office for six years. Their accord was especially valuable shortly after Herbert's retirement. In July 1866 a financial crisis struck Queensland as a result of the failure of a London bank. Heavily dependent on borrowed money, the government was unable to meet a range of commitments. The ministry proposed measures to which, Bowen informed them, his instructions forbade him to assent. Ministers resigned, and Bowen called Herbert to form a temporary administration. The crisis was survived by orthodox means, but, though the secretary of state approved, Bowen and Herbert encountered serious popular protests in Brisbane.
Image courtesy of National Portrait Gallery

Queensland | Queensland Administrators