Marco Polo may have visited a part of Australia in the sixteenth century. However, the first known exploration of the continent by the European explorers occurred in the seventeenth century. The Dutch made their voyage to the western coast in 1606, and made several voyages to many coastal regions thereafter, including part of the southwestern mainland. In 1642 Abel Tasman found and claimed Tasmania, and on the same voyage discovered New Zealand.

The continent was named by the Dutch, New Holland, and this name endured until the middle of the nineteenth century. Because of various reasons, but particularly because of the barren or the wild nature of the regions visited by their explorers, the Dutch made no attempt to colonize either the continent or the island of Tasmania.

The English began official expeditions to Australia in 1689, but after their exploration of the western coast, like the Dutch, were unfavorably impressed by the region. Exploration was abandoned until 1769, when the explorer James Cook traveled to the southeastern extremity of the continent.

Cook continued his voyage by sailing northward, going along the eastern coast and took possession of the surveyed territory on behalf of the British Crown. He named the territory New South Wales.

During the next fifty years the British continued a limited colonization of the continent, but it was under the control of the New South Wales Corps until 1795, when at that time a regularly appointed governor was to take control of the economy. The British then adopted a liberal policy in respect to the sale of land, and the City of Brisbane was founded in 1824. Immigrants continued the establishment of new settlements, and in 1829 the British formerly claimed possession of the entire continent.

The immigrants in Tasmania founded Melbourne in 1835. In 1836 groups of settlers began colonizing South Australia, founding Adelaide the same year. Other explorers laid the basis for expansion.

The controversy between the pastoralists with large holdings of land and the small farmers figured high prominence in the political administration, and the result was that in 1861 the government of New South Wales made concessions to the small farmers.

In the early history a Legislative Council provided the laws of the colonies. The various colonies began unification under a central government by 1852 and by 1885 an inter-colonial Federal Council was created. The representatives of Parliament of the Australian colonies convened at Sydney in 1891 for the purpose of drafting a Federal constitution. The Constitutional Convention sessions began at Adelaide on March 22, 1897. Although a draft bill met opposition in some parts of the country, the unaltered document was approved. In elections, each colony adopted the Federal constitution.

In July, 1900, the British Parliament voted on and approved the establishment of the federation in Australia. By the terms of a Royal Proclamation the British Parliament brought into existence the Commonwealth of Australia on January 1, 1901.

The natives of Australia (aborigines) in their native tribal state are a most primitive people. Large numbers live among the white Australians. Some are employed as stockman on cattle ranches, but many dwell on supervised reservations. Slightly less than one-third of the population live as nomads. These nomadic hunters and fishermen live in little more than rude shelters against the elements.

Charles Hervey Bagot was one of Adelaide's first settlers, settling there in 1840. Born at Nurney in County Kildare, Ireland on 17 April 1788, he was the youngest son of Christopher Bagot, landed proprietor, and his wife Elizabeth Clibborn. Charles Hervey saw active service after 1804 with the 87th Regiment in South America, Cape Colony, and India, where he was promoted to Captain in 1815. The same year he married Mary, eldest daughter of M. S. J. MacCarthy, who was Paymaster-General of Port Louis, Mauritius.

Bagot retired in 1819 on half-pay to Ireland where he was employed by several landowners as agent. To provide openings for his sons he immigrated with his wife and five children to South Australia in the ship Birman, in charge of 224 immigrants, and landed at Adelaide in December, 1840. He had been commissioned by Sir Montague Chapman to select and manage a special survey. He chose several sections, and in return Bagot received 1,500 acres on the River Light which he called Koonunga, working it at first in cooperation with the Dutton brothers.

In 1842 his youngest son, Charles Samuel, discovered an outcrop of copper ore on the site of what became the Kapunda Mine, and soon afterwards Francis S. Dutton did likewise. An 80-acre section was secured in 1844 at 20 shillings per acre. Francis Dutton received a quarter share which he sold in just a short time to  someone in London, England.

Charles Hervey controlled the copper mine until 1857. He then floated a company in London which worked it until flooding and low prices made it unprofitable in 1877. Hervey took shares in many other mines, but none of them succeeded like the Kapunda. The Kapunda produced minerals of an estimated value of £800,000.

Charles Hervey was a nominee in the Legislative Council in 1844-51. He was a member for Light in the part-elective council in 1851-53, and after responsible government held a seat in the Legislative Council in 1857-59.

Hervey toured the colonies in eastern Australia in 1846. He went to England and Ireland with his wife in 1853-55, and on their return they built Nurney House at North Adelaide, making a home for the widow and five children of their son Christopher, who was born in 1817 and died in 1853.

On their next journey to Europe, Mrs. Bagot died in Cairo in 1860. After her burial, Hervey again went to continue his journey in Europe, and from there he went to the United States. While in London he wrote a book, The National Importance of Emigration.

In Australia Hervey took a prominent part in the establishment of the Congregational Church there in North Adelaide before his death at Nurney House on 29 July 1880 at age 92.
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Edward Meade Bagot, pastoralist and agent, was born 13 December 1822 at Rockforest, Co. Clare, Ireland. He was the third son of Captain Charles Hervey Bagot and his wife Mary MacCarthy. Educated at Dr. King's School in Ennis, near Limerick, Ireland, in 1839 he passed the East India Company's civil service examination and acquired his outfit.

While waiting at Portsmouth for his ship he was suddenly attacked with fits resembling epilepsy and was immediately taken home. In 1840 he was surveying in Scotland, when his father decided to immigrate to South Australia and decided to accompany the family. They arrived in the ship Birman in December, and the next year the family settled at Koonunga where Edward planted the first garden and gained pastoral experience.

When copper was discovered at Kapunda in 1842, Edward acted as grass-captain and accountant at the mine and ran a store and butchery for the miners. In 1850 he became a director of the South Kapunda Mine.

Edward Meade married (first) Mary Pettman 1 August 1853 (she died in 1855) and was survived by one son. He married (second) Anne Smith 30 July 1867, who bore him six sons and six daughters.

Edward took up on the River Murray the Murthoo Run in 1846, Ned's Corner in 1854, and later, Kulnine and Wall Wall. He also held the Beefacres estate on the River Torrens in 1853-64. To stock these properties he bought horses and cattle and imported Suffolk Punch sires, Shorthorn bulls, and Berkshire pigs. After their progeny soon began to win prizes at local shows, he bred many winners along with thoroughbreds from New South Wales, including Don Giovanni, sire of Don Juan, who won the Melbourne Cup in 1873.

Edward acted as secretary of the South Australian Jockey Club when meetings were held at Thebarton, and when the Morphettville course opened he was often a judge. He was a zealous supporter of most pastoral and other rural organizations, particularly the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society.

After the railroad reached Kapunda in 1860, Edward set up as a stock and station agent. Thousands of horses and cattle (many of them overlanded from Queensland) and sheep passed through the firm of E. M. Bagot & Company, a sale yards at Kapunda.

Edward obtained a contract in 1870 for construction of a portion of the Overland Telegraph line. His section of 500 miles from Port Augusta to the Macumba River, north of Lake Eyre, was finished in the allotted time and he was paid £38,000.

Although apparently in good health, Edward failed to return home on 24 July 1886. After a long search by friends and police, his body was found in a quarry at Yatala on 2 August. A large crowd attended his burial at North Road Anglican Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, four sons and five daughters.
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Walter Hervey Bagot, architect, was born on 17 March 1880 at North Adelaide, son of John Bagot and his wife, Lucy Josephine Ayers. John Bagot, pastoralist, was a son of Charles Hervey Bagot. Walter Hervey Bagot's paternal and maternal grandfathers, Charles Hervey Bagot and Sir Henry Ayers, had been pioneer settlers in South Australia. He was educated at the Collegiate School of St. Peter and apprenticed to the architect, E. J. Woods, for four years.

In 1902 Bagot went to England where he studied architecture at King's College, University of London. He won the silver medal of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, and in 1904 he gained associateship of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

In 1905 Walter returned to Adelaide and formed the firm of Woods & Bagot (that later became Woods, Laybourne-Smith, Bagot & Irwin). He also lectured in architectural history at the South Australian School of Mines and Industries for five years. On 18 November 1908 at St. Peter's Cathedral, he married Josephine Margaret Barritt, who bore him three children.

Walter's architectural preference was for classical and traditional designs. He saw “the striving for novelty as one of the great dangers of modernism” and came to hate “the glasshouses of the modern architect.” He was the architect for Saint Peter's Cathedral in 1907-45 and for the Roman Catholic archdiocese in 1905-26. For the Catholic archdiocese he designed the chapel of the Convent of Mercy and was designer of the additions to Saint Francis Xavier's Cathedral.

As architect to the University of Adelaide in 1910-45 he designed the Bonython Hall, completed in 1936, and was the designer of the Georgian style Barr-Smith Library and associated structures. As the university grew, Walter battled for congruity in its buildings.

In 1924 the Adelaide City Council had appointed Walter as referee under the Building Act of 1923. He believed that the simplicity of Italian domestic architecture and of English Georgian offered the best models for South Australia's Mediterranean climate.

Walter was a member of the Pioneers' Association of South Australia. His wife described him as moving “perfect among the great ones.” Walter seemed to be concerned to show that in Adelaide “the Bagots knew the way to do things as well as any citizen in the world.”

Walter was a passionate traveler in Europe and Italy and lectured on Italian painting at the National Gallery in South Australia. In 1962 he was made a knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his work with the Australian-Italian Association. He was president of the South Australian Institute of Architects on his retirement in 1960.

Predeceased by his wife and survived by two daughters and a son, Walter Hervey died at North Adelaide on 17 July 1963. His estate was sworn for probate at £212,837 (about $600,000 at that time). A portrait of Walter Hervey by Ivor Hele remains.  See the Australian lineage of the Bagot family here: 

(All information on Australia came from Patrick Bagot whose native land is Australia.)

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