Thomas Chirnside

Thomas Chirnside (1815 – 1887) was an Australian pastoralist who settled on much of what would become western Melbourne. He was born in Berwickshire, Scotland, the elder son of Robert Chirnside and Mary Fairs. His father was a farmer.

Background
In 1839, Chirnside sailed from Liverpool on the ship Bardaster. He arrived in Adelaide in January, and was in Sydney in March of that year. The drought of 1839 adversely affected the sheep he had bought near the Murrumbidgee River, so he joined his younger brother Andrew in Melbourne.



In April 1842, the brothers established a station in the Grampians, and that same year Thomas acquired a station on the Wannon River, where he was one of the first to employ Aboriginal People. In the mid-1840s the brothers acquired series of properties in the Western District of Victoria.

The elder Chirnside settled in Werribee, Victoria, just before the gold rushes, eventually buying 80,000 acres (320 km²) of land. He built a substantial bluestone house surrounded by a ha ha wall, and later, in the 1870s, the sandstone Italianate Werribee Park Mansion.

On 2 September 1853, he purchased, through a government grant, Section 14, in the Parish of Cut Paw Paw, County of Bourke. The allotment was 89 acre, which is now the Melbourne suburb of Kingsville.

From 1857 to 1859, Thomas Chirnside was a member of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria, and of the Royal Society of Victoria from 1860 to 1866. He was a strict Sabbatarian, allowing no work on his properties on Sundays. He donated an acre (0.4 ha) of land and £100 for the first Presbyterian Church in Werribee and, in February 1884, he laid the foundation stone of the second one. He and Andrew gave £1000 to Ormond College at the University of Melbourne.

In 1887, suffering from depression, Thomas Chirnside committed suicide with a shotgun in the garden of the Werribee Park Mansion. Andrew Chirnside inherited the property, but died three years later.

A primary school in Werribee has been named in Thomas's honour.