ON Friday, August 1, the burial at Strathmore Station, Collinsville, of Edward (Ted) Cunningham, ended the 140 year-long male Cunningham management of grazing property in North Queensland.
Ted’s only surviving offspring is his seven year-old daughter Lucianna.
Ted was born in 1950 and died of pneumonia the previous Saturday, after a series of illnesses over the past decade or so.
The original Cunningham’s to come to Australia were Murtough and his wife Frenles, whose son Edward (Ned) Cunningham was at the forefront of pastoral development in the Burdekin.
In 1861 he was part of a group who explored the upper Burdekin area and selected Burdekin Downs. Other property acquisitions and partnerships followed.
Woodhouse Station, is where Ned’s son Arthur Henry (Harry) Wickham Cunningham was born in 1879.
Then just after the turn of the century Strathmore Station was added to the aggregation, and it was said at the time, a person could ride from Collinsville to the outskirts of Townsville without leaving land controlled at least in part by the Cunningham family.
They eventually took sole ownership of Strathmore Station. Harry lived until 1942 and was succeeded by his son Edward (Ted) Cunningham, 1914-1993.
Then last Friday, on the bank of the creek behind Strathmore homestead, to Slim Dusty’s rendition of We’ve Done Us Proud and Tom Jones’ The Green Green Grass of Home, Ted was buried in the family cemetery alongside his father; son Wyatt who drowned aged four; and sister Margaret Anne, who died in 1945 aged six weeks. More than 120 relations, neighbours, friends and former and current employees attended to pay their respects.
*Full story in this week’s North Queensland Register, out Thursday.