Donald (old Dan) Cogill
Background
Donald Cogill, known as Daniel/Dan (or as ‘Old Dan’ by his descendants), was born in Nova Scotia in 1821 and came to Australia in 1852. A timber-getter, bullock teamster and fencer, he worked with Brisbane sawmiller William Pettigrew in 1863 to establish a depot at the mouth of the Mooloolah River. Dan was one of only a small number of timber-getters who operated in the Buderim and surrounding areas in the 1860s, felling cedar and beech trees to supply the Brisbane market. He also drove the bullock teams that hauled the logs to the nearest tidal waterway for rafting to depots on the Maroochy or Mooloolah Rivers and subsequent shipment to Brisbane. In 1868, he helped build a road northwards from the Maroochy River at Dunethin Rock to provide an alternative coastal route to the Gympie goldfields.
Dan married Elizabeth Walker in Brisbane in 1867 and their first child was born there. The Cogill family moved to Buderim probably in the late 1860s.
Life on Buderim
‘Old Dan’s’ descendants believe he first built a hut on the southern slopes of Buderim in the vicinity of Cogill Road. In 1870 when land parcels on Buderim were first marked out, he selected Portion 48, a 180 acre block extending northwards from the school reserve and bounded on the east by what is now Gloucester Road. In 1871, he built a slab hut on the property just north of what is now Orme Road, possibly the first dwelling built on Buderim to accommodate a family. He was one of the first, if not the first, to grow sugar cane and arrowroot on the Buderim plateau and, by 1874, had five acres under cane with more under maize.
Dan selected Portion 63, a 100 acre block on the slopes just north of Portion 48, in 1873 and transferred Portion 48 in 1875. While trying his hand at farming, Dan continued to do timber-getting and fencing jobs. He also helped construct Joseph Dixon’s mill building in 1876.
Dan and Elizabeth had seven children while they lived on Buderim, and Dan was on an early committee to get a school there. Two of the Cogill children were among the 18 children who, in 1875, first attended the Buderim Mountain Provisional School, a single room built by parents on a site near the corner of what is now Panorama Crescent and the Buderim-Mooloolaba Road. Three years later, five Cogill children were attending the provisional school. The Cogill family may have continued to live in the hut on Portion 48 until 1881 when Dan selected Portion 139, a 160 acre property on the banks of Paynter Creek in the Diddillabah area where a further three children were born. Elizabeth and Dan died within months of each other in 1890 and were buried on the banks of Paynter Creek.
In recent years, Cogill descendants donated to Buderim’s Historical Society a brass breastplate typical of those produced by colonial authorities and settlers in the nineteenth century for ‘chiefs’ of Aboriginal tribes. In 1869, on behalf of William Pettigrew, Dan presented it to Bingeye, a local Aboriginal leader appointed by the new settlers to be ‘king’ of his people. The Cogill family believes he breastplate was subsequently returned to Dan or his family as a measure of the respect in which he was held by Bingeye’s people.
Now, Cogill Road also honours ‘Old Dan’, one of Buderim’s earliest pioneers.
Donor: The Cogill family
