James Tyson was the first native-born Australian millionaire. His mother was a convict, sentenced to transportation for theft. His father, William, and his eldest brother, also William, came with her. Receiving a grant from Governor Macquarie in the Narellan area, the Tysons set themselves up as small farmers, later moving with their growing family to East Bargo. As a youth James commenced work for neighbours such as Major Thomas Mitchell, and John Buckland who contracted him to take cattle to the north-eastern border area of the colony of Victoria. Then, with his brothers, he took up squatting licences in western New South Wales. Eventually they settled on land at the junction of the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee rivers, in the reed-beds which had defeated John Oxley's exploration in 1837. The legendary Tyson fortune was founded on success in butchering on the Bendigo goldfields. It was extended by canny buying, knowledge of cattle and of stockroutes, pastoral lending and the judicious selection of enormous leaseholds to provide a chain of supply which stretched from North Queensland to Gippsland and which fed beef to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. By the time of Tyson's death in December 1898 his name had become a byword for reticence, wealth and astute dealing. Banjo Paterson, Breaker Morant and Will Ogilvie all wrote about him. He left no will. His estate, the largest in Australia to that time, realised about 2.36 million pounds in the middle the 'big drought' which lasted until 1905.
