Gulliver, Thomas Allen   (1848 - 1931)

Born 3 Mar. 1848, Cornwall, England; died 13 June 1931, Townsville, Queensland.

His parents, Thomas (Allingham) Allen Gulliver, aged 48, and his wife Sarah Jane Gulliver (née Day), aged c. 28, arrived in Melbourne on board S.V. Startled Fawn from Deal, England on 31 October 1856 with their four children.

Ship manifests and immigration documents listed four accompanying children: Thomas Allen Gulliver, aged eight years, Benjamin John Gulliver, aged five, Sarah Anne Gulliver, aged three and George (James) Gulliver, aged 21, Thomas' son by a previous marriage.

After arrival in Melbourne, the family went to Bendigo where Thomas (Snr) tried his luck in the goldfields and later was employed at a station on Campaspe River before settling in Melbourne in 1860.

Thomas (Snr) took employment as a gardener when the Melbourne Botanic Gardens and adjacent gardens were under the directorship of Victorian government botanist Ferdinand von Mueller.

Thomas (jnr) was employed as a gardener in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens and the Government House reserve between 1863 and 1870.

There are records that both he and Benjamin made "contributions of museum plants [ie, herbarium specimens]" in 1869.

His brother Benjamin moved to Tasmania in late 1870 or 1871 and was engaged in seed collecting/marketing and fruit cropping. He specialised in the collecting and marketing of Eucalyptus seeds. In a report of the May 1876 monthly meeting of members of the Royal Society of Tasmania there was reference to the "Brothers Gulliver" having collected seed of species of Eucalyptus from Mount Wellington, so presumably Thomas was also there.

While Benjamin (and possibly Susannah) remained in the south, Thomas (jnr), in 1873, took a position in Queensland as a telegraph line repairer after the completion of the telegraph line from Cardwell to the mouth of Norman River in 1872.

The route of the Gulf of Carpentaria line, in a westerly direction, was Cardwell, Taylors Creek, Cashmere, Mineral Springs, Junction Creek, Eva Creek, Ada Creek, Etheridge, Gilbert River, Wooleys Lagoon, Carron Creek, Francis's Lagoon, Rocky Creek, Normanton and Sandy Point. Some of these place names were used by Thomas on his field collection labels.

In 1875 Thomas took on the role of telegraph station master at Normanton, then at Thornborough from 1877-27 through to early 1882. On 1 July 1882, he was appointed manager of the telegraph office in Townsville, and in 1896 as Officer-in-Charge. In 1904, he took a position in Brisbane as assistant manager of telegraphs, but returned to Townsville in 1905 to be postmaster.

He remained at Townsville post office until he resigned in April 1911 and retired in May 1913.

Concurrent with his roles in the telegraph and postal department, Thomas pursued interests in horticulture and experimental agriculture. He developed a 40 acre (16 hectare) property at Roseneath [sometimes incorrectly referred to as Rosemead] to the west of Townsville, experimenting with tropical crops and breeding a number of award-winning mango cultivars.

He was a regular contributor of natural history articles to the Queenslander and the Brisbane Courier [1878- 1882], mostly under the pseudonym of 'Nettapus'.

Mueller (1885) indicated that Thomas was instrumental in acquiring specimens collected in New Guinea in 1884 by the naturalist Erik Gustaf Edelfelt. Mueller wrote that Edelfelt was "an emissary of Thomas Gulliver, Esq., F.L.S., of Townsville, who made large monetary sacrifices, to obtain thus some new scientific material from New Guinea". To commemorate Thomas' contribution in this regard, Mueller (1885) named a species of New Guinea oak as Quercus gulliveri F.Muell. [= Lithocarpus celebicus (Miq.) Rehder].

In 1885, Mueller, William Woolls and Robert Fitzgerald, all then fellows of the Linnean Society, London, jointly nominated Thomas as a fellow of the society. The letter of nomination stated: "We the undersigned propose Thomas Gulliver Esq. Director of the Telegraph Department, Forrestville Qld. for the honor of the fellowship of the Linnean Society, he being well deserving of this distinction by his zealous exertions for the furtherance of zoology and botany in New Guinea and Queensland".

By the late 1880s, Benjamin, in collaboration with Thomas and Susannah, and some of his children, had formed 'Acacia Vale Gardens and Nursery' into a flourishing family business.

Benjamin and Thomas made a small number of botanical collections in the vicinity of Townsville (Cleveland Bay, Magnetic Island) as well as a few other places in north-east Queensland.

Read:
A much more detailed account of the Gulliver family collecting, including birds, shells, etc in:
John Leslie Dowe & Philip S. Short,
"The Gullivers' travels: Thomas Allen Gulliver (1848-1931), Benjamin John Gulliver (1851-1938) and Susannah Gulliver (1857-1938): their contribution to Australian natural history and horticulture"
Swainsona 38: 4572 (2024)
https://data.environment.sa.gov.au/Content/Publications/JABG38P045_Dowe.pdf

Source: Extracted from:
John Leslie Dowe & Philip S. Short, "The Gullivers' travels: Thomas Allen Gulliver (1848-1931), Benjamin John Gulliver (1851-1938) and Susannah Gulliver (1857-1938): their contribution to Australian natural history and horticulture" Swainsona 38: 4572 (2024)
Portrait Photo: None known

Collecting localities for 'Gulliver, T.' from AVH (2025)

Data from 824 specimens