Mary Annie Mackay, whose portrait appears in the memories section of this site, was born at Bullamon in 1865, shortly after her parents Duncan and Leonora Mackay, had added it to their family’s existing runs on the Moonie River. The Mackays were among the earliest pastoralists in this part of Queensland. 

When Duncan and Leonora (known in the family as Nora) came to live at Bullamon homestead, they already had two children: Ada, born in 1861 and Duncan Forbes Junior (known as Forbes) born in 1863. Three other children were born at the homestead: Lewis Bryden (known as Louis or Lou) in 1866, Agnes in 1868 and Alma in 1971. The youngest child, Ethel Amelia, was born in Sydney in 1873, after the family left Bullamon. 

Portraits of the Mackay children, including this one of Mary Annie and one of her brother Lou, were painted in Sydney, probably around the mid-1870s. The portrait of Mary Annie was passed down through the family to her great-nephew, Rees Mackay (grandson of Lou), who has kindly provided this image of it. Lou’s descendants do not know what became of the other portraits over the years. It is possible that some are no longer with family members and the identity of the subjects may therefore not be known. The accompanying photographs of Forbes and Lou as boys may help to identify their portraits.

Forbes and Lou were closely associated with Duncan Mackay’s other Queensland stations, Tilpal near Rockhampton and Iffley in the Gulf Country, which they managed on behalf of the family after Duncan’s death. Ada and Ethel were the only Mackay daughters who married, and both died quite young. After Ada’s death her husband, Denis Peele, and their children moved to Queensland and he bought a property named Dahra near Longreach, where their daughter Lucy was tragically killed by a bushfire in 1918. Their son Dugdale Guy (“Tim”) Peele, who served with the Australian Light Horse in the First World War, returned to Dahra shortly after the war and remained there until 1953, when he and his wife left the district. Ethel married Robert Gamble Brown of Rockhampton, and it was their son Robert Mackay Brown who recorded Mary Annie’s recollections of her childhood at Bullamon, some of which appear in the Memories section. 

Lou’s grandson Jonathan Rush, who called at Old Bullamon Homestead in 2018 during a visit from England, said “It would be great to be able to see the portraits of my grandfather and his other siblings as children and for images of all of those portraits to be displayed at the homestead and on this website.”
Rees, Jonathan and their cousins Bill and David Ash (also grandsons of Lou) are delighted by the progress that has been made to conserve Old Bullamon Homestead and its history. They hope that the website will not only connect more family members with this part of the Mackay family history but may also help to locate the other portraits.