When I worked in Africa as a journalist after the Second World War, I uncovered a number of cloak-and-dagger stories of how French aristocrats had secretly fled to Africa from the 1761 French Revolution to save their necks from the new Republic’s hard working and blood-stained guillotine — and later from a warring Napoleon and the infamous ‘Reign of Terror.’

After adopting heavy disguises and new personal identities, a number of these escapees travelled by various means to Africa to settle in mortal fear of being found in Senegal, South Africa, Madagascar and on Reunion Island.

Facing as they did threats of instant death; these heavily targeted French men and women of royal blood were sometimes forced to don clerical garb and other serious disguises to avoid peering eyes and possible assassination.

One particular group of aristocrats even passed themselves off as dangerous pirates so as to gain safe passage in French-built boats sailed under the much-feared Jolly Roger skull-and-crossbones flag.

History at the time of my research into the 1761 peoples’ uprising in Paris revealed that over 4,000 aristocrats had fled France to seek sanctuary in nearby Britain, Germany, Holland and the deserted plains of far-away mystical Africa. 

Although I had at the time combed through many historical references, I could not find any word about French people of rank seeking refuge in Australia, especially later in that 18th warring century of the Great French Revolution.

It was therefore with considerable surprise that I recently learned that a handful of French-speaking people of social and professional importance had arrived in Sydney by various means to escape falling into the hands of the French anti-royalist revolutionaries back home.

Whether these French escapees had ever first considered fleeing to Africa, Britain or Europe is not known. As far as I could discover, however, only one French semi-aristocrat, who escaped his country’s brutality for the peace of Australia, made it to Africa before travelling on to Australia to become New South Wales’ first professional surveyor, living in Balmain, Sydney.

Interestingly enough, most members of one group of the aristocrats to arrive in this country in the early days lived at one time or another here on the mighty Clarence River in and around Grafton.

They were supposedly led by Count Fabrielle de Milhau whose wife, Marian Adcock, had at one time been regarded as the most beautiful woman in Paris. The daughter of an Englishman, she surprisingly had no knowledge of living in Britain and at first could not speak any English.

After their arrival in New South Wales, the de Milhaus made their way by boat to the Clarence in search of their fortune. When they stepped for the first time onto Grafton soil, they were met by a horde of interested local onlookers who had never before seen people of rank dressed in the finery of the old European aristocrats and this unusual view soon became the focus of much local gossip.

Their appearance here was reportedly the talk of the town for weeks when they and their French and French-Swiss companions bought our famous Ramornie Station for 1,300 English pounds and set about working as graziers; an occupation very far from the ideals of any European aristocrat.

According to one of the de Milhau group, Etienne-Jean Bordier, a French speaking aristocrat from Geneva, the de Milhaus were reasonably wealthy but were desperate to invest their fortune to create a worthwhile income.

As a result, they did everything one can to make money by rearing 1,800 head of cattle — from selling the meat and hides and producing potted protein products.

The French settlers’ calm lives at Ramornie ended unexpectedly, however, as news of the first rich gold mining strikes at Bathurst reached the Northern Rivers. De Milhaus’ workers at Ramornie either immediately left their employer to go and try their luck or a few who remained demanded ludicrous increases in their wages.

Faced by the prospect of eventually going bankrupt by a complete dearth of farm workers, de Milhau and his fellow French associates decided to sell their beloved Ramornie to Charles Grant Tindal who, after some years, made a fortune out of the property and established it as an important beef station.

De Milhau’s years at Ramornie are still commemorated today in the names of Frenchmens’ Gully and Creek, areas now traversed by the present Gwydir Highway.

The Count and his wife then returned to Sydney and became two of the founders of that city’s Hunters Hill suburb with a road named after them for their contribution to municipal and other local affairs.

At about this time, Africa had only attracted a few more handfuls of French exiles from the previous savagaries of the French Republic against anyone of social stature and distinction. But Australia had interestingly beckoned an estimated 25,000 French emigres, with many of them having been seduced by the now world-famous gold rush.

Among these people was an Anglo Frenchman, Henry Carter Perdriau, who arrived in Sydney in 1837 and founded a family of distinction, including being pioneers of steam ferry services on Sydney Harbour, being Balmain’s principal boat builders and establishing Australia’s leading rubber manufacturers.

In 1892, Harold, a member of the Perdriau family, sold a steam launch ‘Iolanthe’ built by his Perdriau Balmain Engineering Company to Henderson and Mansfield, storekeepers in Grafton.

This well-known Northern Rivers business also did a deal with the Perdriaus to run their five steam launches plying between Grafton, Iluka and Yamba.

Harold Perdriau was also engaged to install ‘marine machinery’ in tugs to be used to tow sugar cane punts to and from Harwood sugar mill.

It took another century or so after these events in Australia before Africa experienced any further influx of French people seeking a new life outside of France away from its unsettled politics.

Unlike the French story of early migration to Australia, the big gold mining booms of Africa never attracted any more French migrants to that continent until the late 1800s. This was when the Foreign Legion made land conquests in West, North and Equatorial Africa during the Western World’s so-called mad economic ‘Scramble for Africa’ and its wealthy mining potential.

As the French historian, Henri la Voltue, once noted, “The threat of the French guillotine has always been in the air of France and was the big motivation for the first major exodus of French people from their motherland.”