Charles Brown Fisher

Charles Brown Fisher (25 September 1817 – 6 May 1908) was an Australian pioneer pastoralist and livestock breeder.

Born in London, he was the eldest son of (later Sir) James Hurtle Fisher and his wife Elizabeth. At around age twenty he spent two years on an uncle's farm at Little Bowden, Northamptonshire, before migrating to South Australia in 1836 with his parents in HMS Buffalo.

Early in 1838 his brother James, in partnership with Fred Handcock, bought some sheep and established a squatting station (Fisher and Handcock's Station) near the Little Para River. C.B. Fisher assisted his brother, droving ten of the first lambs bred there on foot to Adelaide for delivery to a Mr. Crispe.

He began by dealing in cattle in 1851, which proved to be the most lucrative business he could have chosen, as it was just before the Victorian gold rush (within 3 years the price of a fat bullock rose from £2 10/ to £15 or £17). He purchased drafts of cattle wherever he could buy them up, and drove them across to Victoria, where the diggers bought them up at high prices. He was an excellent horseman, and spent most of his time in the saddle at this period, being obliged to make many long and rapid journeys to keep up the supply of stock. He extended his operations, to supplying the Adelaide market and droving mobs of cattle and sheep into Victoria, in some of the most colossal droving operations ever known in the history of either of the States.

In 1854 he bought Bundaleer station from J. B. Hughes and the following year acquired Hill River station from William Robinson. Some 10 or 12 South Australian estates passed through his hands, including Wirrabara, Mount Schank, and Moorak near Port Gawler. In the Mount Schank station he was in partnership with Benjamin Rochfort, who, with Charles's brother Hurtle, survived the wreck of the Admella, which claimed the life of Charles's brother George.

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