Sir John Quick: founder of a nation, freemason

Every community has a history of Founders: people who worked hard to enable future generations to enjoy what they hoped would be a better life. Sir John Quick was a lawyer, Arbitration Commission judge and politician who saw the importance of the Australian colonies uniting to form a single nation. His great contribution was to cut through the tangled webs of politics and self interest, and to point the way to an appropriate conclusion.

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Sir John Quick was a key figure in getting Australian Federation underway, a self made man and a very active freemason.

He was born near St Ives, Cornwall on April 22 1852 and was only 2 when his family arrived on the Bendigo goldfields. His father died soon after and Quick's early life was hard. Leaving school at 10 he worked in foundries, mines and in a printing room for several years. He taught himself shorthand and became a junior reporter with the Bendigo Advertiser before heading to Melbourne in 1872. He put himself through university with the help of scholarships and more newspaper work, particularly as the parliamentary reporter for the Melbourne Age. He graduated as a lawyer in 1877 and was called to the bar in 1878.

Returning to Bendigo, he entered state parliament in 1880 and became a strong advocate for Federation. He married Catherine Harris in 1883 and they settled in Quarry Hill. Despite not being native-born, he was allowed to join the Australia Natives Association and used his presidency of the Bendigo branch as a platform for his efforts towards a single Australian nation.

His key moment came in 1893 at the Corowa Federal Conference when, to break the deadlocked arguments, he put the resolution that each state would pass its own legislation towards the Constitution, then a national referendum would be put to adopt it. This ensured that the decision to federate would be equal between all states, and not seen as being imposed by the stronger ones.

Quick travelled widely over the next few years to promote Federation and was the second elected of the ten Victorian delegates to the 1897-98 Constitutional Convention. His evangelism for the cause is clear in his ringing words:

"The question is whether there is to be a continuation and intensification of our separate existence as separate colonies, under which there will be antagonism, isolation, parochialism, and belligerency, with all the frightful family of evils flowing therefrom; or whether there is to be an integration and union into one people with one destiny. There can be no reasonable doubt about the magnitude of the issue, and the supreme importance and fate-begetting character of the alternative.

One will lead to national decay and ruin! the other, as sure as the dawning sun dispels the mists and gloom of night, will lead on to national life and national immortality. Well then may we say in warning tones, at the critical juncture and awe-inspiring moment of our history, 'Unite, and live'; 'Divide, and perish'. The shadow on the dial swiftly moves towards the fateful hour. Australians! quit yourselves as men, and prove yourselves worthy of your heritage!".
(Advance Australia, ANA, 1897)

With the success of the referendum, he was elected federal member for Bendigo in the first Australian Parliament in 1901, as well as being knighted at the opening ceremony for his contribution to the new country. He held the seat until 1913, was appointed Post Master General in 1909, but any hopes for higher office were frustrated by differences with Prime Minister Alfred Deakin.

He returned to the law in 1913 and wrote several key legal and historical texts (Quick and Garran's The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth is still a widely quoted standard text on the topic) before being appointed Deputy Chairman of the Arbitration Commission from 1922 to 1930. He was proud to note that all the disputes brought before him (bar one) were resolved without recourse to strike action.

The young John Quick was initiated into Lodge Judah while studying in Melbourne, with the encouragement of his future father-in-law Edward Harris, a former mayor of Eaglehawk and Master of Eaglehawk Lodge. On his return to Bendigo, Quick joined Zenith Lodge. He was their WM in the busy pre-Federation year of 1899 and was appointed Deputy Grand Master for the United Grand Lodge of Victoria in 1914.

But, whether from his need to earn a living in Bendigo (no parliamentary pensions then!), or feuds from his political career, or even his friendship with "Germans" such as WC Vahland in the hysteria of World War 1, he did not become Grand Master.

He died in 1932, in retirement in Camberwell, Melbourne, proud of the country he helped create.

by David Beagley

This biography is based on material in The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 11 1891 - 1939 (Nes-Smi), and supported by anecdotal material collected by John Balsillie.

An edited version was published in Freemasonry Victoria in July 2001.

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These pages are designed by David Beagley for the Hall Board of the Bendigo Masonic Centre.
Responsibility for, and copyright of, content (unless otherwise noted) are his and his alone.

Last updated November 2004