When the Fraser family arrived in Binda in about 1840, the area was already the home to William and Ann Marks and their young family.

William Marks had arrived in Australia as a convict. He was from Bristol, and he had been a pig dealer. On 26 Jul 1824 he was tried at the Sussex Quarter sessions and sentenced to 7 years transportation for stealing a quantity of wool, a quantity of turnip seed, a wool poke and a sack from a granary at Sea Beach Farm. He was transported aboard the ship Asia III and arrived on 25 April 1825.  He was assigned to work as a labourer for Isaac Knight who was an auctioneer in Liverpool. By 1828 he was working as a groom and labourer for the Anglican clergyman, Rev Thomas Hassall, on his property at Cobbity (southwest of Sydney). By 1831 he was working as an overseer of Rev. Hassall’s Mulgowrie property, Salem Vale. (The Mulgowrie area is near Binda). On the 1st September that year William received his Certificate of Freedom. When the Rev. Hassall sold Salem Vale two of his men, William Marks and John Hearne remained in the district. In 1836 Hearne bought 640 acres of what is present day Markdale land, it was known then as Slete’s Gully.

On 27 December 1833 Ann Maria Lamb aged 17, arrived in Sydney as a Bounty immigrant aboard the Layton. Bounty immigrants were free immigrants whose passage was paid by the colonial government under the `bounty scheme'. Under this scheme a bounty was paid to recruiting agents in Britain to find suitable working class people and then ship them out to the colony. Under the `bounty scheme’ newly married couples, or single men and women were given preference. Ann met William Marks while she was working in Sydney and by 1834 they had entered a defacto relationship. Ann moved to Mulgowie. Their first child, Mary Ann was born in 1835 and a son, James, was born in 1836.  On 24 February 1838  Ann and William were married in the Police Office in Goulburn. On 22 June 1838 their third child, Elizabeth Jane, was born.

They had six more children:

William (Jnr) Marks - born 21 September 1841 (Died 10 Aug 1927 in Charleville, Queensland)

Martha Alice Marks - born 20 October 1842 (Died 9 Jun 1886 in Charleville, Queensland)

Richard Marks - born September 1844 

Elijah (Elisha) Marks - born 30 October 1846 

Alfred James Marks - born 13 April 1849 

Matilda Jane Marks - born 3 January 1852 

In February 1840 William (Snr) Marks purchased land at Mulgowrie. He called his property Markdale. From 1840 to 1858 he was employed at the boiling down works in Mulgowrie and he bred horses. In 1858 he bought the property Slete’s Gully from Richard Moses and renamed it Markdale also. The land was part of the deceased Elias Moses’s estate. Elias was a Jewish merchant of Goulburn who had taken over the property from John Hearne during the 1840’s depression. William Marks built the tiny slab cottage that still stands on the present day Markdale property. He owned his second Markdale property until his death.

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