By Phil Jarratt
Dath Henderson Road
When people pass by the signpost for Dath Henderson Road, home to some of Noosa’s finest hinterland estates, the question often asked is, who was Dath Henderson?
The answer is that he was in fact two people, Robert Dath and William Henderson, whose partnership figures large in the history of the timber industry in Noosa Shire and beyond. From the very beginning the complex and convoluted company structures of a group of shrewd Glaswegian mates defies historical accuracy, but let’s have a crack.
Robert Dath was a Glasgow-born builder who soon after his arrival in Brisbane in 1862, erected the first Corporation Markets. William Henderson, also born in Glasgow, arrived a year later, but left Brisbane for Gympie at the first news of the gold rush, where he became machinery manager for William Ferguson’s Ferguson and Company timber mill at nearby Chatsworth. Ferguson, another Scot, saw that the market for milled timber would become huge as the gold town developed, and was looking for partners.
By the end of 1869, Robert Dath had joined his countrymen in Gympie and partners Ferguson, Dath and Henderson began building their Union Sawmill in what would become the heart of Gympie. Yet another Glaswegian, Thomas Bartholomew, was briefly a fourth partner, but he left to manage the Cootharaba sawmill of McGhie, Luya and Co.
In the early 1870s, a company known as Dath, Henderson and Co (seemingly without Ferguson’s involvement) established a milling operation on the Noosa River, employing 50 men, and soon had a fleet of steamships, including their flagship Adonis, operating between the Tewantin wharves and Brisbane, where in 1876 they opened two riverfront mills and a huge wharf.
By the late 1880s, Dath Henderson owned more than 700 feet of Brisbane riverfront which housed a major timber opertation. Their 1887 output was 1.9 million super feet of hardwood, 2.8 million of softwood and more than a quarter million of cedar, representing about 10 percent of the colony’s output. But their Noosa operations remained an important part of Dath Henderson until the end of the century, with timber-cutting extending across many sections of the hinterland, including Cooroy.
Robert Dath made his home in Brisbane where his family developed extensive business interests, including a vast real estate portfolio in Fortitude Valley and Tenerife. Robert Dath was a Justice of the Peace and he involved himself in civic affairs. He became the mayor of Booroodadin Council and was also an alderman on the Brisbane Municipal Council. He died in 1905.
Of William Henderson’s later life, little is known, other than the fact that in 1911, the family of Robert Dath bought out the interests of the Henderson family in Dath Henderson, while the Hendersons bought out the Dath interest in Ferguson and Co.
I warned you that this was complicated, but it seems no one died poor.
