Thomas Cotter, South Australian colony's first surgeon, sacked in 1839 – replaced by Dr J. G. Nash for next 20 years

South Australia's first colonial surgeon Thomas Cotter went on to a colourful and productive life in South Australia after being suspended in 1839. 
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Thomas Cotter was was suspended from his position at South Australia's first colonial surgeon in 1839 – to be replaced by Dr J. G. Nash who held the position for 20 years. 

With a licence from the Company of Apothecaries, Cotter had been appointed to the role in London in 1835 and, after helping to promote the new colony, sailed in the Coromandel and arrived at Holdfast Bay in January 1837.

Cotter bore the burden facing the whole colony: lack of government funding. His was expected to care, on his £100 salary, for all government officers and immigrants in the appalling conditions of the infirmary between North Terrace and Hindley Street, Adelaide. 

Cotter had little patience with newcomers with imagined ailments or malingering prisoners in Adelaide Gaol. After complaints, the newspapers charged him with neglect and he was censured by a board of inquiry. Cotter, also out of favour with first governor John Hindmarsh. 

Irish-born Cotter continued to protest his dismissal in the colourful and active decades that followed.

In 1845-46, he lived at Macclesfield where he also became a census collector. In Adelaide, he served as secretary of the Mechanics' Institute and of the St Patrick's Society. He was active on the conservative side of the debate over state aid to churches and served a term as city councillor.

When G.R. Thompson discovered copper in 1843 on his property at Magill, Cotter certified that a large part of the sample contained sulphuret of copper. In 1841, Cotter had made assays of the silver ore discovered at Glen Osmond that led to the Wheal Gawler mine. Cotter even made drawings for a reaping machine which he submitted along with those of John Ridley and J.W. Bull.

Declared insolvent in 1854, Cotter became medical officer at Robe, where he provided medical services for the immigrant girls at the servants depot. He was replaced in 1856 after the death of Ann Campbell and complaints that Cotter was drunk and incapable at that time. 

In 1864, Cotter went to Nuccaleena in the Flinders Ranges as surgeon for the Great Northern Copper Mining Co.. During his time at Nuccaleena, he often acted as subprotector of Aboriginals and went out to shoot kangaroos to supply them with food during the drought.

When the Nuccaleena mine failed, Cotter moved to Port Augusta where, after a short time working with the destitute at Glenelg, he was appointed medical officer in 1870. He refused a higher salary at Blinman in 1876, having become attached to Port Augusta. Cotter won high repute at Port Augusta for his services to the widely scattered northern settlers.

He was showed some literary talent, editing the South Australian Magazine in 1842 and the South Australian Almanack for the next two years.