Capital overseer King O’Malley was a master of political evasion
Politician King O’Malley, champion of the Griffin design for Canberra, was born 160 years ago, probably in the US.
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“THIS is a proposition to establish the capital in a district which, at times is so dry that a crow desiring to put in a weekend vacation there would have to carry its water-bag,” complained politician King O’Malley in 1909. “I do not wish to see its (Australia’s) capital established in
an undesirable place.”
O’Malley, likely a US citizen ineligible for election to the first federal Parliament and his later appointment as minister for Home Affairs, favoured a national capital at Bombala in the Snowy Mountains, proclaiming “cold climates have produced the greatest geniuses”.
Ever the pragmatist, when the site for Canberra was agreed in 1908, in 1913 O’Malley was there to drive in the first peg to mark the site and stood with governor-general Lord Denman, prime minister Andrew Fisher and Lady Denman at a ceremony to lay the city’s foundation stones.
O’Malley was the longest survivor of Australia’s first federal Parliament, but his origins remained as mysterious at his death in 1953 as in 1888 when he first dazzled Melbourne business acquaintances. The tall, bearded and charismatic politician was likely born 160 years ago this week, although O’Malley gave assorted accounts of his date and place of birth. To be eligible for election in Australia, O’Malley claimed he was born in Canada, explaining that his family home was built across the US-Canadian border, and he was born in a room on Canadian soil.
Home Affairs department administrator Charles Studdy Daley, who worked with O’Malley, also heard O’Malley explain that when his birth was imminent, his father William sent his mother Ellen, nee King, into Canada, so the child would be a British subject. Later in life O’Malley reputedly told acquaintances he was an American citizen. O’Malley gave his birth date as July 2, 3 or 4 in 1854 or 1858.
He celebrated it on July 4, and publicly gave his birthplace as Stanford Farm in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada, although he was likely born at his parents’ farm at Valley Falls, Kansas, or nearby Wichita.
O’Malley said he was educated at a New York primary school, then worked in his uncle Edward’s bank, although no records have been found. As an insurance and real estate salesman, he travelled across the US, and claimed to have left after his wife Rosy Wilmott died from tuberculosis in 1886, shortly before the birth of their first child. He said he also contracted the disease and in 1888 was given six months to live.
He then sailed to Port Alma near Rockhampton, wandered the seashore and fell asleep. An Aborigine, Coowoonga, carried him to a cave at Emu Park, saving him from drowning from the encroaching high tide. With his consumption arrested by open-air camp life with Aborigines, O’Malley said he then walked 2100km to Adelaide, “meeting notabilities en route in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart”.
Canberra social historian Rowan Henderson found that O’Malley, disgraced in Oregon over fraudulent insurance sales, arrived in Sydney aboard the SS Mariposa in July 1888, and in
September travelled to Melbourne.
O’Malley prospered on West Australian goldfields, mostly at Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie in the 1890s, then went to live in South Australia where he was elected to the South Australian House of Assembly in April 1896. He lost his seat two years later and in 1901, after nearly a year campaigning for a Tasmanian seat, was elected to the first Commonwealth Parliament as an independent, then joined the Labor Party where he had a poor relationship with future prime minister Fisher. O’Malley presented parliament with a plan for the creation of a national bank of deposit, issue, exchange and reserve in 1908, and at the third ALP conference pushed for the creation of a “Commonwealth Bank”.
As Home Affairs minister in 1910, O’Malley was in charge of planning Australia’s national capital when he also revealed he belonged to the Water Lily Rock Bound Church of the Redskin Temple of the Cayuse Nation. He said he founded the church in Mexico and was archbishop for three years, leading 3000 worshippers. Later he said it was founded to benefit from land grants for churches, and he worked “miracles” by getting signs from heaven as coloured lights, set off by an accomplice on a nearby hilltop. Emulating Moses, O’Malley ascended the hill and returned, with stone tablets engraved with tenets of his religion.
O’Malley was forced to flee when his accomplice revealed their scam. He had married Amy Horton in Melbourne when he announced an international competition for the design of a national capital in April 1911. He named Chicago architects Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony Griffin as winners from 137 entries on May 23, 1912.
After losing his seat in 1917, O’Malley continued to comment on public affairs as he managed investment properties in Melbourne.
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