sketcher, illuminator, public servant and mining geologist, was born on 27 January 1842. Appointed clerk in the Victorian Department of Crown Lands on 10 May 1859, then transferred to the newly formed Victorian Mining Department in 1860, he served in various clerical positions at the Melbourne head office and also spent sixteen years on the goldfields of Ballarat, Sandhurst (Bendigo), Blackwood, Smythsdale and other places, as warden’s clerk and clerk of courts. He resigned from the department in 1894 and practised as a consulting mining geologist, having studied geology part-time at the University of Melbourne and at the Industrial and Technological Museum.

In the Victorian Exhibition of 1861 Cairnes showed an example of 'artistic penmanship’ for which he was awarded an honourable mention. From the Mining Department in Melbourne in 1880 he sent two pen and ink drawings, Scene in Cuba and Horse’s Head (after Landseer), to the Melbourne International Exhibition. Vice-president of both the Horticultural Society of Victoria and the Geological Society of Australasia, Cairnes was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1890. He died at 6 a’Beckett Street, Kew, on 1 January 1918 and was buried in the Brighton Cemetery the following day.

Writers:

Darragh, Thomas A.

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011