Nicholson, Charles, 1808-1903

Sir Charles Nicholson owned extensive properties at Bringelly and on the Shoalhaven River. His early residence was Tarmons, Woolloomooloo, which he sold to the Sisters of Charity in 1856.

Epithet: Captain

Speaker of the Legislative Council of N.S.W., a founder of the University of Sydney, Chancellor and a noted benefactor of the University.

Nicholson and Serocold were important early land speculators and pastoralists in the Rockhampton district. Sir Charles Nicholson (1808-1903) arrived in Sydney in 1834, practised as a physician for several years, but later turned to significant business interests in shipping, railways and pastoral enterprises. He was one of the founders of the university of Sydney and in 1857, donated his collection of antiquities to establish the Nicholson Museum. He was the first President of the Queensland Legislative council, before returning to England in 1862. He owned a large number of town allotments and rural land around Rockhampton, and this document demonstrates that he still retained at least some of these after his return to England.

George Pearce Sercold (1828-1912) served in the Royal Navy from 1842 (at the age of 13) until 1852, saw action in the first China War, and later spent time in West Africa in the suppression of the slave trade. He arrived in Australia in 1853, spending nearly all his time in Central Queensland as a grazier and land speculator. He left Australia in 1866. Lorna Mcdonald records that Sercold was 'a noted town land speculator in Rockhampton' who sold and transferred in the early 1860s thirty runs which had been licensed to him in 1853-54. His extensive investments in Rockhampton also included the construction of rental premises on a large number of his town blocks.

His name is associated with a number of central Queensland locations - Serocold Street in Rockhampton, Mount Serocold, Serocold Creek, Serocold State Forest, as well as in a geological structure, the Serocold anticline. Provenance: both documents are from the archives of Nicholson's former solicitors and were acquired from the United Kingdom.