On Saturday 31 October 2026 descendants of William Grieve, who emigrated from Orkney in 1857, will gather together in New South Wales, Australia. In this series of articles, David Grieve, his great great grandson tells the story of William’s emigration and legacy.
Part One : William Grieve Leaves Rousay.
The descendants of William Grieve and Jane Flett will be attending a Grieve Reunion on Saturday 31 st Oct 2026 in the small rural town of Walcha, NSW Australia. Any Orkney linkages living in Orkney are most welcome to attend.
Walcha is situated in the Northern Tablelands of NSW, 425 kms from Sydney and has a population of approximately 1,400 residents. It is in the centre of a rich pastoral area famous for its fine wool, fat lambs and beef cattle. The area was settled by Europeans in the 1830s when squatters set up ‘squatting runs’. This was where early settlers entered an area and settled on crown land beyond the limits of early settlement that evolved into the booming wool industry.
William Grieve and Jane Flett were married on 11 th November 1856 in the Mayfield Parish in Kirkwall. They left Liverpool on the “John Bunyan” on 9th July 1857, arriving in Sydney on 27th October 1857. Their eldest daughter Mary was born on the voyage on 20th September 1857 before the ship arrived in Cape Town.
William was born in Rousay on 31 March 1828 on a croft called “Outerdykes”. His parents were Robert Grieve and Ann Work. Jane Flett was born in Stromness on 3rd June 1833. The Flett’s apparently lived at Harray. Her brother was James Ferguson Flett who was the Bailie of Kirkwall and whose sons were Peter Copeland Flett OBE who was a former Provost of Kirkwall and Sir John Smith Flett, the famous geologist.
The Rousay Clearances.
The Clearances in Rousay commenced in the 1840s and continued into the 1880s. The Grieves were crofters and subject to the whims of the Laird. William had three older brothers so probably his future was uncertain. His brother James (born in 1826) had already left for Victoria, Australia to join the Gold Rush and in correspondence probably said Australia was a “land of opportunity”. James returned to Rousay in the late 1860s, and it was claimed by Grieve descendants that he had money and never really worked as a farm labourer or though he was a subtenant to his father on Outerdykes. In 1875 he married Mary Mainland, a Rousay local and maid to the Laird General Borroughs.
At the Napier Commission into the Clearances, James appeared. The Chairman of the Napier Commission said to him:
‘You have heard the statement read by the Rev. Mr MacCallum and the verbal statements made by James Leonard and George Leonard: do you concur with them?’
James replied: “I do.” – and those two words were sufficient to result in his eviction from Outerdykes.
He found accommodation at Mount Pleasant in Frotoft, which was situated on land outside General Burroughs’ (The Laird) control.
Emigration to Australia.
It is believed that William was provided with an assisted passage with the promise of work on a ‘squatters run’. In the 1860s William was recorded as a shepherd on the squatters run “Bergen-op-Zoom”. It was named after a city in the Netherlands where some of the original squatter John McLean relatives had fought there during the Napoleonic Wars. These “runs” unlike Orkney were not fenced as they were so vast (tens of thousands of acres) and shepherds were employed to look after the sheep. They were provided with a hut and ‘keep’ (i.e. rations) and would watch over the sheep, protecting them from dingos and ensuring that they had adequate water and feed. Whilst on ‘Bergen-op-Zoom’ Jane Grieve met the infamous bushranger Thunderbolt. In a later posting in this newspaper we will publish the story of the meeting.
In 1861, the NSW Colonial Government passed the Robertson Land Acts that allowed working class settlers (known as selectors) to legally buy and live on crown land. The aim of this legislation was to break up the wealthy large-scale pastoralists or ‘squatters’. Under Free Selection, anyone could select and conditionally purchase a minimum of 40 acres for one per £1acre. To prevent land speculation, selectors were legally required to live on their property for three years and make improvements worth at least $2 (or £1) per acre. The Acts resulted in fierce, sometimes violent rivalry between squatters and selectors. They also accelerated the dispossession of Aboriginal people from their traditional lands.
Bordering on “Bergen-op-Zoom” was another squatter’s run called “Aberbaldie Station” and in 1869, after only living in Australia for just over 10 years, William selected 40 acres on the Aberbaldie Run. Something he would not have been able to achieve on Rousay.
William named his property “Brickwall”. It was initially thought that the property was named after a farm in the island of Westray in Orkney called “Breckowall”. However, William came from the island of Rousay not Westray, so this was unlikely. A niece of William’s, May Grieve who had lived on “Brickwall” as a young child claimed that she thought the property was named after a geological formation in the McDonald River, which formed the border of the property. May and her sister Gladys visited Orkney in the late 1950s which we believe is the first instance of a Grieve from Australia ‘returning’ to visit their roots.
Over the ensuring years, William selected more land that adjoined his original 40 acres and by the time of his death in 1913 it had grown to over 700 acres, over 1000 sheep, 3 head of cattle, an old horse which according to the probate was worthless, a buggy (horse drawn carriage) and harness and over £200 in the bank. His estate was worth £3,500, a princely sum in 1913. Following his death, William’s property was managed by his son Alick Grieve.
In Part 2 : The Family and The Farmstead Grows.
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