Love on the Docks

Story: Russell Anderson [Extract] Photo: Amanda Kratzmann

One of the advantages for men of the river port in Maryborough in the mid 1800s, was the influx of young unmarried women when the immigration ships arrived. 

The docks, busy as they were, often became crowded with colonial bachelors, eagerly pursuing these ladies in courtship.

A particularly swift courtship and marriage followed the arrival of the ship ‘Ariadne’ in 1862. 

William McKintyre was on the wharf when the ship arrived distributing copies of the Maryborough Chronicle to welcome new arrivals.  

As he later recalled: “I had the pleasure of distributing copies to a good few lassies, some of whom were remarkably winsome."

"I was so smitten with the charms of one (Mary Sutherland) that I presented her with two copies, spoke to her next Thursday, proposed to her, was accepted, and married her on the following Saturday." – William McKintyre

Thirty years later McKintyre wrote to an acquaintance in Maryborough stating: “I was very young and romantic in those days, and was a child of impulse. My two days’ courtship and sudden marriage may have shocked the more delicate, but my bride is as bonny as ever, and has gone hand in hand with me over the hills and down the valleys of life for more than thirty years and we have not come to the end of our honeymoon yet.”

Artist Russell Anderson was inspired to create his imagined history artwork, the Maryborough Match Making Machine, after having heard the story of the romance of William McKintyre and Mary Sutherland.
You can discover the story’s end and test your perfect love match on this creative contraption standing proudly on the corner of Wharf and Richmond Streets in Maryborough.