(Surveyor) James Meehan

**James Meehan (1774 – 1826) **

James Meehan was sentenced to transportation to NSW for his part in the Irish rebellion of 1798. He arrived in Sydney in February 1800 and, in April, was assigned as a servant to Charles Grimes, the-then Acting Surveyor General. While Grimes was on leave in 1803-06, George Evans (see above) was appointed Acting Surveyor General, but most of the departmental duties were performed by Meehan who by then had been conditionally pardoned. During this time Meehan measured farms for settlers who had been given grants of land, and explored parts of the Derwent (1803-04) and Shoalhaven (1805) Rivers.

Grimes had played a part in the overthrow of Governor William Bligh in 1808, so was sent to England and then was not permitted to return to NSW. So, Meehan was appointed Acting Surveyor of Lands on a salary of £182 10s. In 1814 he also became collector of quitrents and superintendent of roads, bridges and streets.

In 1818, Governor Macquarie sent him and Charles Throsby to look for a route from the Sutton Forest district to Jervis Bay. Meehan followed the Shoalhaven gorge upstream and then discovered Lake Bathurst and the Goulburn Plains. (Throsby is credited with having then recorded the local Aboriginal name for the area – ‘Nou-woo-ro’, meaning ‘black cockatoo’. This subsequently was adapted to become the name of the local town, Nowra.)

Meehan became one of a small group of emancipists who played an important part in the affairs of the colony during Macquarie’s governorship. Macquarie viewed Meehan’s energy and ability as an illustration that good conduct and reformation could enable a man to regain his place in society – something that, of course, had been lost upon being sentenced to transportation. Macquarie invited Meehan to Government House, and in 1821 wrote of him: ‘I have ... had an opportunity of witnessing his indefatigable assiduity in the fulfilment of his arduous duties. I believe that no man has suffered so much privation and fatigue in the service of this Colony as Mr Meehan has done ... His integrity has never, to my knowledge, been impeached; and I certainly consider him to be, both on account of his professional skill, and the faithfull and laborious discharge of his duty, a valuable man’.

In 1821, as a result of the ‘Hardships, privations and Difficulties’ he endured during his early years in the colony (Meehan claiming, in 1819, at the wide-ranging Bigge Commission of enquiry into the state of the colony, that he had ‘measured every farm in the early colony’), and in declining health, Meehan tendered his resignation. He was granted a pension of £100.