Freemasonry in Australia

18 June 24

Colonial Foundations - By RW Bro Ted Simmons

The history of Freemasonry in Australia, when it started and where has been the subject of many scholars and students over the years. It is also a question often asked by candidates and the following articles, touching on this history, may be of assistance to mentors and others in search of knowledge.

In a minute book of the Grand Lodge of Ireland it is recorded that on 6 July 1797, a petition was received from George Kerr, Peter Farrell and George Black praying for the issue of a warrant to be held in the New South Wales Corps then serving at Port Jackson.

Action was deferred and nothing more seems to have occurred. Lodge St John No 1 was apparently formed on Norfolk Island sometime prior to 1800. Documentary evidence that the lodge was meeting on Norfolk Island in 1800 appears in records of the Department of Lands.

Norfolk Island was settled in 1788 by a party from Port Jackson under lieutenant (later Governor) Philip Gidley King, who was appointed commandant of the island. He complained that settlers and others on the Island had entered into an association which it seems they called the Fraternal Society of Norfolk Island. It is likely that this Fraternal Society later emerged as Masonic Lodge of St John No 1. This lodge was apparently an irregular one as no trace of it could be found in the records of the Grand Lodges of England, Ireland and Scotland.

In a bundle of papers which came from Tasmania there was found a Masonic Certificate, issued under the Grand Orient of France in 1802 to Captain Anthony Fenn Kemp by some officers of a French Exploration Fleet when in Port Jackson. This certificate is not that of a Master Mason but the Rose Croix.

It is also known that as early as 1802, Masonry was practised on board HM Ships Glatton and Buffalo, at the time moored in Port Jackson

Left: An article from the 9 September 1804 issue of the Sydney Gazette’s Norfolk Island section describing the Masonic funeral of a settler by the name of Charles Wood.

Right: Governor Philip Gidley King, commandant of Norfolk Island.

Images courtesy of the National Library of Australia

Extracted from the Freemason June 2019