According to the 1881 English census, Charles Richard Whitting (aged 20) and his brother Frederick Beynon Whitting (25) were born in Bridgwater, Somerset, and were living and working with their widowed mother (51) on ‘Scotts Smiths Farm, Dauntsey, England’. Their siblings Lydia (24), Ernest Edward (17) and Horatio (11) were also part of the household.

Charles Richard Whitting, the son of Edward and Emma (née Beynon) Whiting married Annie Weston, the daughter of William (a merchant) and Elizabeth (née Little) Weston, at Dauntsey, Wiltshire, on 25 January 1887. Annie was born in Preston, Wiltshire.

Charles Whitting and Annie, who was pregnant at the time of their departure, travelled to Australia on the Eastern Steamship Company’s 2037-ton Duke of Argyll (Captain Prentice). The vessel, which set sail from London on 13 June 1888, called at several Queensland coastal ports before reaching Moreton Bay on 11 August 1888. Shipping records indicate that 444 passengers made the journey, that Charles (an assisted passenger) and Annie (a steerage passenger) were from Somerset, and that both were aged 27 years. An outbreak of measles caused the travellers to be quarantined on Peel Island after their arrival in the Bay.

Sadly, Annie died in the Lady Bowen Hospital, Wharf Street, Brisbane, a few months later on 3 November 1888, 12 days after the birth of her son, Weston Beynon Whitting. It has been claimed that she was laid to rest in the Cooper’s Plains Cemetery. However, her death certificate records that the burial took place in the Toowong Cemetery (1 127 32) on the day of her death. Those present in an official capacity were; John Walker (undertaker), the Reverend GL Wallace (Church of England) and Pat Doherty and Thomas H Brown (witnesses).

Charles continued his farming pursuits on a property at Oxley after Annie’s death; and on 7 June 1890 he married Maria Holmes, the second daughter of Henry and Rosetta (née Raybourne) Holmes of West Brunswick, Staffordshire, England. The wedding service, conducted by the Reverend J Stewart, took place at the Arthur Street Church, Fortitude Valley. It was Maria who had cared for Charles’s infant son Weston in the dark times following Annie’s demise.

Harry Edward Whitting, the son of Charles Richard and Maria (née Holmes) Whitting, was born on 14 July 1891 and died at Oxley on 8 December 1891. His funeral service on the following day at ‘Grenier’s Cemetery’ was conducted by the Reverend James Samuel Hassall. The undertakers and witnesses were Charles and William Lyon

Soon after the death of their first child, Charles and Maria moved to Mount Tamborine where they lived for some time in the original Saint Bernard’s boarding house before Charles acquired two blocks of virgin scrub at nearby Guanaba and established an orchard. There they raised their two daughters: Kathleen Agatha (b. 7 December 1898; m. Seth Musk, 21 April 1924), and Nancy Eleanor (b. 1 September 1900; m. John Edward Hughes, 28 April 1925).

Having placed the people in the Tamborine Mountain district greatly in her debt, Maria died on 25 April 1917; and her remains were interred in the Upper Coomera Cemetery. The local historian, Eve Curtis, pays her this tribute:

Mrs Whitting was a trained nurse and a midwife [who] … brought into the world countless children … For nearly a quarter of a century she nursed the people for miles around, often riding long miles on horseback to attend accident victims or a woman in labour. The last baby she delivered was only six weeks old when she died and at her funeral the road was lined two deep on either side by Maudsland school children whom she had brought into the world.