Page:The Dictionary of Australasian Biography.djvu/101

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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALASIAN BIOGRAPHY.
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being for a short time in that year an Acting Judge of the Supreme Court. Mr. Casey married Mary Teresa, daughter of John Cahill and Mary McNamara his wife.

Castella, Hubert de, a native of Switzerland, visited his brother Paul in Victoria, and finally settled there in 1862, when he purchased three thousand acres of land in the parish of Yering, and commenced planting the now famous St. Hubert vineyard. About 1875 he formed a limited company, under which the vineyard was carried on until 1879, when Mr. A. Rowan joined him as partner in the present firm of De Castella and Rowan. The vineyard produces an average of seventy thousand to eighty thousand gallons of wine annually.

Castella, Paul de, the pioneer of viticulture in Victoria, was born in Switzerland, and emigrated to Melbourne in 1849. In the following year he purchased the Yering cattle station, where in 1856 he planted the first vineyard in Victoria, Mr. Castella in 1859 imported plant necessary for the cellar and ten thousand vines, half of which were Sauvignon and two thousand La Folle (the grape used for making the best Cognac), the latter of which were all failures. The produce of the Yering vineyard is now well known in the Australian wine market.

Catt, Hon. Alfred, M.P., J.P., Chairman of Committees of the Legislative Assembly of South Australia, was born in 1838 at Newington, in Kent. He arrived in South Australia in 1847, and for ten years engaged in agricultural pursuits at Balhannah and Strathalbyn. After a short trial of the Victorian diggings he returned to Strathalbyn, and entered into business. Subsequently he opened a store at the then youthful town of Gladstone, and was elected to the Assembly for the district of Stanley, April 27th, 1881. Three years later, when the constituency was reconstructed, he was returned for Gladstone, which he still represents. Mr. Catt accepted the post of Commissioner of Crown Lands in Mr. (now Sir) John Bray's first administration, on June 24th, 1881, and held it till April 23rd, 1884, under circumstances of special difficulty. Disasters had fallen thickly upon the farmers of the colony, especially in the northern districts lying beyond Goyder's line of rainfall, where thirsty and often heavily timbered country had been taken up at extravagant prices by the competing agriculturists, who in some cases had offered as much as £6 6s. per acre. The attempt to grow wheat in these parts proved that the selectors could not pay the stipulated price, and the Government of the day came to the rescue with a proposal that the farmers should be allowed to surrender their land and compete for it again. The result was that they got their land back at about £1 0s. 6d., thus entailing upon the State a nominal loss of about half a million. The surrender clauses were admittedly difficult to administer, and Mr. Catt was much blamed at the time for allowing farmers holding excellent land in the lower north and south-east to come under these clauses. Mr. Catt, however, claimed that these were exceptional cases. On the fall of the Downer Ministry in 1887, Mr. Catt accepted the portfolio of Commissioner of Public Works under Mr. Playford, and held it from June 11th, 1887, to June 27th, 1889. At the commencement of the session of 1890 Mr. Catt was unanimously elected to the Chairmanship of Committees of the Legislative Assembly. In 1887 he received the royal permission to bear the title of "Honourable" within the colony.

Cavenagh-Mainwaring, Hon. Wentworth, was member for Yatala in the Assembly of South Australia from 1863 to 1881; and was Commissioner of Crown Lands, under Mr. Strangways, from Nov. 1868 to May 1870, and Commissioner of Public Works in the Ayers Government from March 1872 to July 1873. In 1887 he received permission to bear the title of Honourable. Having married Ellen, daughter of George Mainwaring, who, on the death of her brother in 1891, became entitled to the Whitmore Hall estate, in Staffordshire, he assumed the additional name of Mainwaring.

Chaffey, George and William Benjamin, are the leading members of the firm of Chaffey Brothers, who in 1887 entered into contracts with the governments of Victoria and South Australia, for the settlement by means of irrigation of half a million acres of land on the banks of the Murray River. The Messrs. Chaffey are natives of Ontario, Canada, and for a number of years carried on irrigation

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