File:StateLibQld 1 134873 Captain Louis Hope's residence, Ormiston House, Cleveland district, ca.1871.jpg

English: Captain Louis Hope's residence, Ormiston House, Cleveland district, ca.1871

The early part of William Boag's career was spent in Sydney where he was in partnership with portrait photographer Joseph Charles Milligan. (Images made by Boag are in the collection of the Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society.). Boag arrived in Queensland in November 1871. He travelled around the south-east, along the foreshore of Moreton Bay and the township of Cleveland. He then moved into the Logan and Albert area where he captured images of local crushing mills and sugar plantations. While at Yatala, he took on a partner, John Henry Mills, and by the end of 1872, both men were in Stanthorpe where they remained for several months, producing views of the booming tin-mining settlement. In July 1873, after stopping off in Warwick, Boag and Mills extended their operations to Mackay, where they remained until October 1875. During this time, Boag made trips to St Lawrence and Cooktown, however his movements after this are difficult to trace. It is known that by mid 1876 he was at Copperfield and Clermont, and in February 1878, he inserted a notice in the Peak Downs Telegram announcing that he was leaving for the west. Then information ceases abruptly. It is possible that Boag never reached his destination, since his death certificate records that he died in 1878 at an unknown location. Louis Hope was the seventh son of John Hope, fourth Earl of Hopetoun, and a former Captain in the Coldstream Guards, who arrived in Sydney in 1843. In 1848, he moved north to the Moreton Bay district, where he purchased 800 acres at Raby Bay, which he named Ormiston, after a family estate in Scotland. Initially, cotton growing was undertaken, however Hope soon turn his attention to sugar and in June 1861, a hectare of cane was planted, which became the nucleus of his plantation. In 1863, with the help of an engineer who had worked in the Jamaican sugar industry, the first ripe stalks of white Bourbon cane were crushed and boiled to produce a sample of ration sugar.

In 1862, the first section of a grand plantation house was constructed using skilled Scottish workers and in 1865, a second wing comprising a drawing room, dining room, butler's pantry and nursery was completed. The exterior was distinguished by white Doric columns of local cedar and imposing cedar shutters, and the property was surrounded by a garden featuring water fountains and exotic plants, banks of camellias, and azaleas purchased at a cost of two thousand pounds. Louis Hope and his family lived at Ormiston for twenty years, until a legal dispute with a neighbour over crushing of cane resulted in a large financial loss. The house (and much of its furniture) was left in the care on an overseer and Hope returned to England.