Andrew Petrie

Who was Andrew Petrie?

Andrew Petrie was a builder, architect and Australian pioneer.

Petrie was born in Fife, Scotland and trained as a builder in Edinburgh, where he married Mary Cuthbertson in 1821. John Dunmore Lang brought him, his wife and four sons to Sydney in 1831 with other Scottish mechanics to form the nucleus of a force of free workers. Meeting much enmity from convict and emancipist workers, Petrie was glad to accept a post as clerk in the Ordnance Department. Before establishing his own business he oversaw the construction of a building in Jamison Street for Lang. The quality of his work impressed his superiors so much that, when in 1837 there was an urgent appeal from the Moreton Bay Settlement of New South Wales for a competent builder to repair crumbling structures, Petrie was sent there as Superintendent of Works.

Andrew Petrie and his family, the first free-settlers to move to the area, travelled to Dunwich aboard the James Watt and where then transferred in a pilot boat, manned by convicts that landed at King's Jetty, the only landing place that then existed, now known as North Quay.