Richard Darker
DARKER, Richard Thomas, (1837-1921)
DARKER, RICHARD THOMAS, goldminer and engineer, was born on 18 July 1837 at Kettering, England. He was educated at Peterborough and at sixteen was apprenticed as a fitter to the London and North Western Railway at Wolverton. On completion of his indenture he moved first to Turners in London, spent a short time in the tool shop at Woolwich Arsenal and then joined the London, Chatham and Dover Railway for a period before setting sail for Australia. He arrived in Melbourne by the "Empress of the Sea" on 8 August 1861 aged twenty-four. Darker was suffering from gold fever and almost immediately sailed to New Zealand where rich strikes were reported. After a short time he returned to Melbourne and worked on the Victorian fields as a digger where he had experience with winding engines and other mining machinery. After about two years he moved to Sydney and then to Brisbane intending to continue his gold search in Queensland. He passed through Ipswich in 1864 where he received an offer of work from Abraham Fitzgibbon, the Chief Engineer of the embryonic Queensland Railways, and he entered the service of the Government in September 1864, being put to work on the Bremer River rail/ road bridge. He suffered a short retrenchment when teams of men, recruited in England, arrived but was soon engaged on erecting locomotives, carriages and other rolling-stock as they arrived from England.
With the extension of the line westward, he was sent to Dalby in 1868 as leading hand in charge of the locomotive shed but was brought back to Ipswich in 1870 as leading fitter and made foreman of shops two years later. In 1875 he was sent to Toowoomba as foreman, returning to Ipswich after a year. All the locomotives had been imported up to this time but in 1878 three units were built in the Ipswich shops from spares and shop-constructed boilers and frames. This work was carried out under Darker's direct supervision.
In 1879 Darker was a witness before a select committee enquiring into the operation of the Ipswich workshops; it reported favourably on the quality of work produced and on locally-trained tradesmen but recommended greatly improved facilities and equipment. In 1883 Darker was made Locomotive Superintendent, Southern and Western Railway and in 1890, Locomotive Superintendent of Railways. In 1898 he was sent to New Zealand to study the operation of the railways and he visited workshops in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin; he was to have extended the visit to include southern Australian states but he was recalled to give evidence before a court of enquiry into two boiler explosions. As a result boiler inspection procedures were tightened and no further explosions occurred. In 1900 he was made Outdoor Superintendent and Locomotive Superintendent for the Queensland system and was transferred to Brisbane. On leaving Ipswich he was given a farewell and presentation by railway employees and by the citizens of Ipswich. In 1910 Darker was appointed Locomotive Engineer but he retired in the same year at the age of seventy-three after forty-seven years of service.
Darker took an active part in community life in Ipswich and became the first superintendent of the Ipswich Fire Brigade in 1878. He was a member of the State Schools' Committee, the Ipswich Fire Brigade Board in 1884, the Department of Mines Board of Examiners for Engine Drivers in 1906, and the Railway Appeal Board in 1910. He was associated with the Ipswich Gas Co., Ipswich Woollen Mills, Ipswich Building Society and Stafford Brothers'collieries.
In 1866 Darker married Williamina Forbes, a migrant from Scotland, and they had a family of six sons and six daughters; he died in Brisbane on 9 July 1921.
References:
Eminent Queensland Engineers Vol 1 is available here.
V&P (LA Qldl, 1879 (2nd Sess. l, Vol. 2, p. 535, 1899 (1st Sess.l, p. 627;
Qld Govt Blue Books; Qld Govt Gazette to 1910; Brisbane Courier, 11 July 1921;
Qld Times, 14 July 1910;
Information from family records, Mr J.F. Jeffcoat, Qld RalI ways, and Mr G.E. Bond, Aust. Railways Hist. Soc.(Qld Branch)
