My Paternal Great Grandfather Stephen Patch 1824 - 1911
Stephen Patch was Baptised on 4.6.1824 in Essex, and Married Sarah Brett in Kedington on 4.1.1851. They sailed on the "James Fernie" from Gravesend on 24.10.1855 and arrived in Brisbane on 5.2.1856. Stephen Patch couldn't read or write and had no relatives in the Colony; Sarah could read but not write and had a brother in Sydney. He established a livery stable at the top end of George Street Brisbane soon after arrival, and he later worked for some time for Mr. J F McDougall in Milton Brisbane. After Milton, Stephen moved to Tucka Tucka Station on the McIntyre River, Warialda district NSW, returned for a further short time again in Brisbane, before moving permanently to the Downs. They settled about 3 miles north of present-day Kulpi, giving the surrounding district the name Evergreen. They called it Evergreen due to the presence of a creeping vine, closely resembling one which grew in Evergreen Harwich in England. At first they lived in a slab hut. They bored holes of around one inch in the walls so they could put a gun barrel through as the Aborigines used to frighten them when they came around. The prickly pear was so thick that they had only narrow lanes between on which they could walk, and how the death adders used to sun themselves on the tracks! Stephen and Sarah Pioneered the Evergreen district. When the railway line was built west across the Downs, Jondaryan was the railhead for the district,with a coach running between Jondaryan and Nanango from about 1870. There was a stopping depot at Evergreen and Stephen and Sarah ran a Stagecoach Boarding House and Shop to cater for
passengers during the stopover there, called Evergreen House, on Middle Creek. Stephen and Sarah had 11 children,one of whom was my paternal grandmother Charlotte Patch (Costigan). At the time of his death in March 1911, Stephen Patch was recognized as one of Evergreen's oldest pioneers.