Douglas, Joseph

DOUGLAS, Joseph (1836–1907) was born at Seacombe, Cheshire, England, son of William Lamont Douglas, a mason, and Susanna Chapman. He had already left home by 1851 but arrived in Sydney with the rest of his family in September 1854. During the next half-century, he practised in all the mainland colonies including four towns across Queensland. After trying his luck on the Victorian goldfields, Douglas joined the gold rush to Canoona on the Fitzroy River where in 1861 he married Mary Ahern and was listed as an early builder and architect in Rockhampton. Despite being declared bankrupt in 1863, he remained there until 1865 when he was appointed Town Surveyor of Bowen, then envisaged as the future centre of North Queensland. While serving as Town Clerk in 1866, he compiled a map of Bowen and its environs, which was lithographed by Thomas Ham of Brisbane and said to have been “never… surpassed either at home or in the older colonies”. Douglas remained at Bowen until moving by November 1868 to Mackay where he worked as an architect and building surveyor. By November 1874 he was in Brisbane, again insolvent in 1876. Two years later he was promoting Douglas’ “Reliance” Patent Portable Gas-Making apparatus for lighting seemingly with limited success. After working in Melbourne as an architect and in Adelaide as a failed speculative builder and property investor, he moved to Perth by 1898 and experimented with prefabricating rooms for despatch by the recently completed Eastern Goldfields Railway for assembly as dwellings. He soon moved to the goldfields and worked as an architect and building surveyor at Leonora and also as an ironmonger at Morgans. When he died at Laverton, WA, in 1907, he had been living at Erlistoun for several years where he was listed as an ironmonger.