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Fire at Capertee 1894

Fire at Capertee 1894

What became known as Shervey’s Hotel in Capertee was built in 1862. By 1894 this hotel was considered to be the oldest landmark on the Mudgee road. In that year the building was owned by Mr Shervey and the licensee was Mr Phillipson.
 
The hotel was a regular stopping place for people travelling to and from Mudgee. One night in November 1894 the hotel had as a guest one Mr Fleming, brother-in-law to Dr Nicholl of Mudgee. Mr Fleming was riding his bicycle from Sydney to Mudgee and stopped overnight at Capertee. Mr Fleming found the night warm enough to leave the window open. He placed a lit candle near the window while he left the room. It was believed the curtains may have blown over the candle and caught fire. The resultant fire caused great damage in the town. Not only was Shervey’s Hotel completely destroyed, but so too was the neighbouring general store belonging to Mr Paton.
Ref: RDHS Research & Writing Group Newsletter Spring 2010

Capertee Royal Hotel

Photo: Capertee Royal Hotel collection

This photo shows the Capertee Royal Hotel which was rebuilt in stone in 1884 after the previous timber building was totally destroyed by fire on the night of 14th January, 1884.
Ref: SMH - 16 November 1894, p.9

The late Mrs. Jamison - The last of a Great Family

Mrs. Jamison Senior, whose death was reported in last Thursday's Guardian", 1st September, 1921, was the third daughter-of the late Mr. JOHN MacLEAN of GLEN ALICE STATION, Capertree Valley. By a strange coincidence John MacLean early in the nineteenth century married an Isle of Skye girl who bore the same surname - Marion Effie MacLean - but who was no way related to him. About the year 1820 Mr. John MacLean, born at Coudrae House, Isle of Skye, Scotland, came to Australia and with him many of the fine old Scottish families who afterwards settled in the Nile and various parts of the Rylstone district. A few years subsequent to his arrival in New South Wales Mr. MacLean acquired the Glen Alice property by purchase at auction, from the late Sir James James, for whom a highly lucrative appointment had been found by the British Government in India.

Glen Alice in the heyday of Mr. MacLean’s ownership held 25,000 sheep, in addition to several thousand head of cattle and horses. The old homestead, modelled on English lines, was widely known because of its comfort, beauty, and the hospitality of its Highland Chieftain. It was said of Mr. MacLean that he never permitted a swagman to travel past his home with empty ration bags, or tattered boots or clothing. Glen Alice retained bootmakers and tailors, and the wants of the needy at the request of the owner, were invarioubly made good.

In these days there were no railway lines, motor cars, telephones, or telegraph lines; not even distant centres of country civilisation. The requirements of a property supporting seventy odd shepherds and station hands had to be met by the services of the early gig and bullock dray, having contact across the Blue Mountain chain, nearly 200 miles away, with Sydney. Sugar and flour, and other requisites cost more than was ever paid during the submarine crisis in Britain in 1918. Wild blacks were numerous, and bushranging episodes were not infrequent.

Upon one occasion Mr. MacLean was returning from Sydney with over £200 in cash in his possession to pay his servants, when riding back back he was accosted by a horseman in wild bush garb. The stranger drew a pistol and levelling it at John MacLean's head cried angrily - "Hands up, or I’ll blow your brains out”. The old man, who latterly wore a glowing white beard, obeyed the command. McIntyre, the bushranger, hesitated for an instant then broke in sternly - "What's your name"? "John MacLean", was the reply. "of Glen Alice"? asked the desperado. "Yes”. said Mr. Maclean. "Then you can go on, I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head. I thought you were Billy B . . . and if it had been I'd have shot you as dead as a crow and then scalped you - But mind I warn you, don't look back".

The temptation was too great, and before dipping the range a backward glance was made. McIntyre shook his fist in the air and roared an injunction, but did not fire.

Mr. MacLean was renowned for his physique and strength. In the early sixties at Glen Alice (recorded in Australian, "Men of Neath") for a wager of £5 he carried a spade pressed bale of wool weighing 553 lbs. a distance of 150 yards on his back. It was a usual feat to take a full sized merino wetter in each hand and cast both with comparitive ease in the wash pool.

Between the years 1860 and 1880 wild horse chasing and bull shooting were amongst the outdoor sports. Old hands - like Mr. Samuel Nicholson of Glen Alice, well remember the heroic feat performed during the seventies by the late owner of Glen Alice, when with his old horse pistol he destroyed an infuriated wild bull on the Blue Rock Flat in close proximity to the old Crown Station. He was walking across the flat with the bridle of his pony upon his arm when the bull broke from a mob of cattle nearby. Turning like a flash to mount his charger Mr. MacLean was amazed to find that the bridle, had been slipped and the pony was not there. Wonderful presence of mind stood him in good stead and calmly drawing the horse pistol from its holster he levelled the weapon at the charging moster, which fell in a lifeless heap at his feet. The home of Mr. MacLean was open to all comers and strict Presbyterian as he was, Monsignor O’Donovan was always hospitably entertained at Glen Alice.

Mrs. Jamison's maiden name was Margaret Effie MacLean. She married William Henry Jamison, youngest son of Sir John Jamison M.D. of Regentville, Penrith. Sir John Jamison was a son of Dr. Thomas Jamison, surgeon of the Royal Navy who landed in Sydney Cove with Governor Phillip in 1788 and was the first medical officer of the City of Sydney. He came to Australia as Assistant Surgeon of H.M.S. Sirius (1788). Sir John was the first president of the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales, Deputy Grandmaster of the Masonic Lodge, and was the organiser of the first race meeting ever held in the State. Binnalong, his blood sire, received the first award given by the Royal Society.

Sir John left two sons, Robert Thomas, Member of the first Parliament of the Nepean, and William Henry (husband of the late Mrs. Jamison, of Warrangee) who owned Baanbaa and Ingelobah Stations in Queensland and Warrangee in New South Wales.

Some years after Mr. and Mrs. John MacLean were living at Glen Alice, two of Mrs. MacLean's brothers came to Australia. These were Jonathan and J.D. MacLean. The former was Curator of the Sydney Botanical Gardens in approximately 1833, subsequently becoming Administrator of Newfolk Island. The latter became the owner of the famous 'Westbrook" estate on the Darling Downs. Before his untimely decease at Westbrook, Mr. J.D. MacLean was premier of Queensland, and upon one occasion lent £300,000 to the Queensland Government to tide it over a period of financial depression.

Mrs. Jamison's brothers were the late Donald Martin MacLean of "The Crown" Station; the late George MacLean of Sydney: the late Alexander MacLean of "Co Co Creek"; the late Jonathon MacLean of Mungrabambone Station. There were two sisters, Kate, who was married to Murray Davidson (son of the Surveyor General of New South Wales) and Jessie, whose husband was a professional man named Marshall.

Mrs. Jamison was born at old Warrangee Station in the year 1846. Her husband died at the Globe Hotel, Rylstone in 1891, as the result of an accident, leaving seven young children and a station of 16,000 acres in extent, who were to become the charge of his widow. The business acumen and ability of the late Mrs. Jamison may be gauged by the fact that she personally controlled her interests with success, only relinquishing the actual management of the Warrangee Station a few years before its sale to take up residence on the Blue Mountains and later in North Sydney. During the days of its late owner, Warrangee may have been likened unto an elastic house for it was always possible to find room for the visitor and traveller as well as a pleasure to dispense hospitality.

The removal of one of the most picturesque figures in the social and industrial life of the Rylstone District takes place with the decease of Mrs. Jamison, and moreover, it means the entire disappearance of the last Australian link of a grand old Scottish Pioneering family. There are many good people within the precincts of the old home who will long remember her neighbourly propensities and kindly humanitarianism acts. For many years in the Capertee Valley were the homes of the sick and afflicted visited by the late deceased at all hours of the day and night, and it was always a great pleasure to her to be able to administer or bring comfort to suffering humanity.

Like her late father, whose memory is reverred at Glen Alice today, she never permitted a poor swagman or destitute wayfarer to pass the door of her home without dispensing whatever aid lay within her power. Eloquent testimony of a sorrowing and grateful community to this was borne by the graveside at the Glen Alice Cemetery by the large number of residents who came to pay their last tribute of respect last Tuesday afternoon.

The cause of the decease of the late Mrs. Jamison was cerebal haemorrhage. The end was doubtless hastened by war anxiety, but specialists agreed that the life could habe veen prolonged for another 15 to 20 years but for the cerebal rupture.

The end came peacefully in the presence of members of her family at North Sydney, her last wish being that her remains be interred in the old cemetery at Glen Alice. The children surviving are six in number :- Marion E. Ashe; Mary R. Jamison; Kathleen Jamison; Duart MacLean Jamison; William James Jamison; Lyndon G. Jamison - Deceased H.J.C. Jamison.

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An alternative crossing: Bells Line of Road

Rylstone people going to Sydney may well go via the Bell's Line of Road and experience the same magnificent scenery as a hundred years years ago, without knowing the history behind this development. 

The article below by Dr Ian Jack is well worth reading.

An alternative crossing: Bells Line of Road 
 Part 1: Alexander Bell junior 
by Ian Jack

Introduction

THROUGHOUT 2013 there has been a bicentennial preoccupation with the genesis of the Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains.

The development of a viable road along the high ridges south of the Grose River to the plains beyond had powerful consequences which were gradually realised over the decades following 1813.

The recent and continuing commemorations of Blaxland, Lawson, Wentworth, Evans, Cox and Macquarie have contributed to a welcome appraisal of the events of 1813 to 1815.

It is worthwhile, however, to recall that another ridgeway to the north of the Grose gorge had also been explored by Europeans and was surveyed as a viable road in 1823.

Bells Line of Road was a real enough alternative to the Western Road, although, for a variety of reasons, it has always played second fiddle to the southern route.

But when Archibald Bell and Robert Hoddle created the alternative road in 1823, the descent from Mount York was still a challenge for the traveller on the Western Road and Thomas Mitchell had not yet arrived in the colony to make autocratic determinations about the best lines for all three main roads, north, south and west.

Mount Tomah proved to be Bell’s Mount York, but in 1823 the northern route promised much.
 
Whereas the southern route ran from the lower Nepean at Emu Plains, the new route started on the upper Hawkesbury adjacent to North Richmond, climbed the escarpment through Kurrajong to Kurrajong Heights with deviations over the years, then descended onto a singularly equable ridgeline until the great obstacle of Mount Tomah presented generations of road-users and road-makers with dangers and dilemmas.
 
Once over Mount Tomah, the road followed the only practicable ridgeline until it turned south at the Darling Causeway, where the Grose River had its source.
 
Halfway down the Darling Causeway it turned west again down a viable creek gully into Hartley Vale (the route still in use today as Hartley Vale Road).
 
Once safely down in Hartley Vale, it passed the inn that Pierce Colletts had established in 1821 and joined the Western Road (Figure 1).

Macquarie rode up to Kurrajong Heights

With the development of farming in the Hawesbury Valley from 1794 onwards and the granting of land on both sides of the river, there was a natural likelihood of furthe early exploration.

 The only written account to survive from these first years is by Matthew Everingham, a First-Fleet convict, who set out from his Hawkesbury farm in 1795 with two other Europeans ‘to cross the blue mountains of this country’, climbed up to Kurrajong Heights as Tench had done, though his exact route is uncertain, and then went beyond as far as the eminences of Mount Wilson/Irvine or Mount Tomah.2
 
In 1804 the naturalist George Caley travelled from Kurrajong Heights to Mount Tomah and Mount Banks by a very difficult route, still remembered by names such as the Devil’s Wilderness and Dismal Dingle (Figure 2).3
 
Because of their proximity to the Hawkesbury River, the Kurrajong hills and the North Richmond area were settled and developed quite early, including the Bell family’s Belmont in 1807.
 
James Meehan surveyed North Richmond in 1809 and Kurrajong in 1811.4

With the development of farming in the Hawkesbury Valley from 1794 onwards and the granting of land on both sides of the river, there was a natural likelihood of further early exploration.
 
The only written account to survive from these first years is by Matthew Everingham, a First-Fleet convict, who set out from his Hawkesbury farm in 1795 with two other Europeans ‘to cross the blue mountains of this country’, climbed up to Kurrajong Heights as Tench had done, though his exact route is uncertain, and then went beyond as far as the eminences of Mount Wilson/Irvine or Mount Tomah.2
 
In 1804 the naturalist George Caley travelled from Kurrajong Heights to Mount Tomah and Mount Banks by a very difficult route, still remembered by names such as the Devil’s Wilderness and Dismal Dingle (Figure 2).3

Because of their proximity to the Hawkesbury River, the Kurrajong hills and the North Richmond area were settled and developed quite early, including the Bell family’s Belmont in 1807.
 
James Meehan surveyed North Richmond in 1809 and Kurrajong in 1811.4

This story does not imply that local Aboriginal people did not know how to cross Kurrajong Heights, but it makes it clear that they did not expect to go to the Bathurst Plains directly from Kurrajong .

The evidence of George Bowman, who lived at Berambing, near Mount Tomah,in the 1830s, is categorical:

‘The Aboriginal natives never lived in [that part of] the mountains, but there was a tribe who wandered over the neighbouring lowlands [i.e. the plateau between Kurrajong Heights and Mount Tomah] and occasionally paid me a visit.7
 
The evidence strongly suggests that the Darug people had some knowledge of the area as far as Mount Tomah, but that no regular Aboriginal thoroughfare from the Bathurst Plains to the Cumberland Plains existed immediately to the north of the Grose River.
 
Archibald Bell junior and his three expeditions in 1823 Archibald Bell junior spent almost his entire early life in the Kurrajong district.
 
Born in England in 1804, he had arrived in New South Wales with his parents and eight and a half siblings in 1807.

Archibald senior a member of the Rum Corps

His father, Archibald Bell senior, a member of the Rum Corps, was given 500 acres [200 hectares] on the north bank of the Hawkesbury at North Richmond by Governor Bligh, built his house of Belmont there, expanded his landholdings during the interregnum and under Paterson and, despite his complicity in the fall of Bligh, was in 1810 confirmed in his acreage by Governor Macquarie.8
 
Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie visited the Bell family at Belmont in November 1810 and took tea on the verandah.9
 
Belmont was already a comfortable home in 1810, and Archibald Bell senior and his wife Maria developed the property between 1826 and 1834 into the delightful house drawn by Conrad Martens in 1838 and painted by Henry Fullwood in 1892 (Figure 3) .10 

Young Archibald was still living at home in 1823, a lad of nineteen. Three years before he had been stimulated by his elder brother, William, who enterprisingly followed John Howe’s newly blazed route to the Hunter Valley via Bulga Ridge but Archibald had been too young to a join William on this expedition.11

In 1823, the incident of the Aboriginal woman returning by the northern route to Kurrajong and Belmont from her abduction by a group from Wallerawang, inspired Archibald to mount an expedition of his own.
 
He mustered his small party at the water-mill on Little Wheeny Creek on August 1, 1823, and left with two settlers, one of them the local blacksmith, William McAlpine.
 
In the diary which Bell kept while on his expedition and carefully copied out on his return in a notebook which luckily survived in the family library, he makes it clear that he had ‘Native Guides’ but does not identify them.12
 
Sam Boughton, who knew two of Archibald’s sisters, was quite sure that the abducted Aboriginal woman went with Bell, while Alfred Smith, another local identity, claimed in 1910 that on Bell’s first or second expedition there were only ‘two blackfellows “Cocky” and “Emery”’, men who are known in other documentation and were about 27 years old in 1823.13 

The first expedition reached Mount Tomah, but the horses were unable to proceed beyond because of the extreme hazards of the western exit from the mountain.
 
With a larger group Bell returned in September, found a viable route half-way up Mount Tomah and went on farther than Everingham or Caley had done, turned south onto the Darling Causeway and then down to Hartley Vale.14

When Bell returned to Belmont, he quickly spread the news of his success and gained publicity for the argument that the new line of road was shorter and easier than the Great Western Highway, with better feed for stock.15 

Hoddle was to climb every ‘remarkable’ mountain

John Oxley, the surveyor-general, was impressed and at once sent his new assistant surveyor, Robert Hoddle, freshly arrived from the Cape of Good Hope, to survey Bell’s route.
 
Hoddle was to describe the country, estimate the amount of cultivable land, climb every ‘remarkable’ mountain and mark the direction of every creek.16
 
On October 6, 1823 Hoddle set out from Kurrajong accompanied by Bell, two Aborigines, five European men and three horses. The field- book which Hoddle maintained throughout the fortnight taken to reach Collett’s Inn survives, along with the more polished account that he sent to Oxley on November 4, 1823.
 
Hoddle compiled a workmanlike map, showing the whole length of around fifty kilometres surveyed.17

Hoddle shows that the existing road from the Hawkesbury to Kurmond followed a line very close to the modern Bells Line, but this road then went north of what is now Kurrajong village: Hoddle suggested on his map a deviation through Kurrajong, the road known today as Old Bells Line of Road through the village.
 
Kurrajong Heights was named ‘Bell’s View’ on Hoddle’s map and along the relatively easy road to Mount Tomah the surveyor marked, as instructed, places where there were ‘plenty of water’, ‘good soil’ and ‘fine timber’.
 
After the descent from the Darling Causeway, Hoddle showed two possible end-games once the road levelled out, with a preference for the more easterly route, making a beeline for Collett’s Inn .
 
Otherwise the road as surveyed in October 1823 represents the route established by Bell’s second expedition in the previous month.18
 
Archibald Bell was an able publicist for his new route. Not only the Sydney Gazette in 1823 but also the English Morning Herald of June 21, 1824 compared the old and the new roads and believed Bell’s propaganda about the new: ‘Besides considerably reducing the distance, the road will be comparatively level, and free from nearly all the obstacles which render the bleak and barren one now used so uninviting to the traveller, and ill adapted for the passage of carts and driving of cattle.19
 
But the advent of Thomas Mitchell as surveyor general, the continuing intransigence of Mount Tomah and the building of the railway in the 1860s ensured that Bells Line remained subsidiary to the Western Road for the rest of the nineteenth century.

(END NOTES)

1 W. Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Sydney, 1979, pp.234-235, 324.
2 The Everingham Letterbook, ed. V. Ross, Sydney, 1985. This contains, in addition to the text of Everingham’s letters which describe the expedition, an excellent account of various attempts in the early 1980s to reconstruct the actual route taken.
3 M. Hungerford, Bilpin the Apple Country: a Local History, Bilpin, 1995, pp.9-17.
4 State Records New South Wales [SRNSW], Surveyor’s Field-Book 70, Reel 2622, SZ 891, cover, pp.3-7, 26-29. Meehan’s survey notes on Kurrajong, although in his own list of contents, are missing from the volume.
5 Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales: Journals of his Tours in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land 1810-1822, Sydney, 1979, pp.24- 25.
6 ‘Cooramill’ [S. Boughton], ed. C. McHardy, Reminiscences of Richmond: from the Forties Down, Windsor, 2010, p.107.
7 Quoted in Hungerford, Bilpin, p.35.
8 Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol.1, pp.78-79; SRNSW, Primary Applications, 10/26656/7816, items 8, 9. 9 Macquarie, Journals, p.24.
10 Three dated stones survive from old Belmont, evidence of building works in 1826, 1830 and 1834. The Martens drawings are now in the State Library of NSW, PXC 295 fos.85-88, DL PX 27 fo.72. One of the five Fullwoods is still at Belmont Park, while a colour photocopy of another is in the Small Picture File of the Mitchell Library, mis-filed under ‘Newcastle Suburbs, Belmont’.
11 A. Macqueen, Somewhat Perilous: the Journeys of Singleton, Parr, Howe, Myles & Blaxland in the Northern Blue Mountains, Wentworth Falls, 2004, p.117.
12 R. Else-Mitchell, ‘The Discovery of Bell’s Line, 1823: a Note and a Document’, Journal of Royal Australian Historical Society [JRAHS], 66, 1980-1, pp.92-3. The manuscript notebook is now in the Mitchell Library, ML MSS 1706 Add-on 1071, pp.5,,7.
13 ‘Cooramill’, ed. McHardy, Reminiscences of Richmond, p.106 ; A. Smith, Some Ups and Downs of an Old Richmondite, Emu Plains, 1991, p.27; Hungerford, Bilpin, pp.19-20. 14Hungerford, Bilpin, pp.21-23.
15 Sydney Gazette, 9 October 1823, p.2. 16 J. Jervis, ‘Robert Hoddle, first Surveyor-General of Victoria, and his Early Work in New South Wales’, JRAHS, 23, 1937, pp.42-45.
17 SRNSW, Surveyor’s Field Book 258, Reel 2626, 2/4894; Surveyor-General’s In-Letters, 4/1814 pp.109-114 (partly published in Hungerford, Bilpin, p.24); Map SZ 422.
18 SRNSW, Map SZ 422.
19 Cutting from Morning Herald, 21 June 1824, in Miscellaneous Papers collected by H.F. Garner, Mitchell Library, ML 1493, reel CY 907, p.390b.

Honeysett family of Rylstone came from Sussex (UK)

The Honeysett family of Rylstone are descended from John Honeysett (1729-1780) who lived in Sussex (UK).

The first 4 generations are shown below.


.Generation 1
John HONEYSETT (1729-1780) lived in Sussex (UK).

He had a son Thomas Honeysett (1770-1842).


Generation 2
Thomas HONEYSETT (1770-1842) became a miller and worked with his half-brother John Honeysett at Dudwell Mill in Sussex (UK).

He had a son Thomas Honeysett (1811-1880).
   

Generation 3
Thomas HONEYSETT (1811-1880) married  Eliza Ann (née RUSSELL) and they had 12 children.

Thomas, Elizabeth and their four children, at the time, sailed to Australia as assisted immigrants on the ship ‘Lady Raffles’ arriving on the 12 September 1839. The shipping records appear to show that both Thomas and Eliza could read and write. They first settled in Maitland NSW where from 1843 Thomas ran a flourmill in Elgin Street. On 21 June 1848, he was granted a publican’s license for the ‘Gorgon Arms Hotel’ at nearby Lochinvar. He then became the first licensee of the “Cricketer’s Arms” on the riverside of High Street, Maitland, in 1851. He is known as “The Father of Cricket in the Maitland District” and was clearly an important figure, being mentioned in many articles in the Maitland Mercury and other books and publications.

During 1850-51 Thomas and a number of Maitland entrepreneurs were sent to help locate gold in the Hunter Valley as a means of attracting new pioneers to the Maitland District. During the trip to the upper reaches of the valley, Tom stayed with his cousins of Weston at Cassillis. He and his party then searched throughout the frontier areas near Gulgong and Mudgee. When Tom returned closer to home he spent time fossicking an land where his wife’s uncles and cousins were located around Branxton and Lochinvar. Tom and Eliza’s relatives were the Danns, Russells, Balcombs, Mephams, Testers, Lloyds, Horders, Osbornes and Westons. Tom and his men found no substantial gold in the Hunter Valley but his trip led him to make a move to Mudgee. Tom sold his mills and inns at Maitland and moved to Mudgee before 1853. James Weston and his wife Lucy (nee Hyland) – Lucy being Thomas Honeysett’s older half-sister - purchased the mill in Elgin Street Maitland and they purchased some land near Kurri Kurri, which is nowadays the township of Weston.

In 1852 Tom moved to Mudgee where he was miller and had several hotels. In 1853 he paid £50 for the license of the “Rose Inn” and between 1863 and 1871 he ran the “Cricketer’s Arms” and the “Courthouse Hotel”. He also owned “Honeysett Hotel” later the “Railway Hotel”. In 1856, he is listed as living at Honeysett’s House’ c/o Wilton’s Mill, Mudgee and in the same year, he purchased a large farm called “Broombee”a few kilometers south of Mudgee near Apple Tree Flat. In partnership with his son John, he also owned a goldmine at Gulgong and flour purchasing business to complement his flourmills in Mudgee. In 1861, he had several winning racehourses from his stables at “Broombee”. From 1860 to 1877 there were numerous articles in the Mudgee Guardian about his prowess at foot racing and cricket, both of which he continued to pursue as an elderly gentleman.

Thomas died in Mudgee on 17 July 1880 aged 69 and is buried in an unmarked grave in the original C of E cemetery, now a leafy park in the middle of Mudgee. Eliza died on 20 January 1896 and was buried in “John Honeysett’s Presbyterian Cemetery” on her son John’s farm.


Generatin 4
The children of Thomas Honeysett (1811-1880) and his wife Eliza Ann (née RUSSELL) were:
Eliza (1832-  )
Mary Honeysett (1834-  )
Thomas (1836-  )
John William (1837-  )
Anne (1840-1842)
Elizabeth (1842-1913)
George (1845-1853)
Charles (1847-1859)
James William (1849-1934)
Jane Frances (1851-1925)
Lucy (1853-  )
Caroline (1855-1917)

Pastoralism in the Rylstone Shire

This article is an Extract from Dr Ian Jack's RYLSTONE SHIRE HERITAGE STUDY in 2003.  


The earliest roads over the Blue Mountains were directed towards Bathurst and did not touch Rylstone Shire. The successive building of Cox's Road in 1814, Lawson's Long Alley in 1822-3, Bell's Line of Road in 1823, Lockyer's Road in 1828-9 and finally Mitchell's new road down Victoria Pass in 1832 potentially opened up the country west of the mountains to graziers, great and small. Bathurst town was inaugurated by Governor Macquarie in 1815; William Lawson brought cattle to the Bathurst area in the same year; in 1818 ten young men, including James Blackman junior, took up 20-hectare (50-acre) blocks of arable land at Bathurst; Robert Lowe and Samuel Hassall began the stocking of large grazing properties south of Bathurst.

After Brisbane succeeded Governor Macquarie settlement was encouraged on a larger scale outside the Cumberland Plain, but still not to the west. Macquarie had declared the huge area west of the Macquarie River (including what is now Rylstone Shire) a government stock reserve. This reserve was retained by Brisbane and only under Governor Darling in 1826 was much of the area finally opened to legitimate settlement. But it took time to survey the nineteen counties which were now to constitute the 'limits of location' and the counties were not proclaimed until 1835 when Mitchell's surveyors had completed their initial work.

Rylstone Shire includes parts of three of the nineteen counties; Phillip, Roxburgh and Wellington, all formally created in 1835, but the area had already for more than a decade been settled by hungry pastoralists. Darling in 1826 had laid down interim regulations allowing would-be farmers to select Crown Land before purchase or grant and in the next two years 272 colonists applied under these provisions in areas including Rylstone. These initial selectors were men of capital, taking up substantial acreages, but from 1829 onwards smaller settlers were'bble to apply for properties as small as 20 hectares (50 acres). At least 680,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) of Crown land were alienated in this way before Darling left in 1831 .

This is the context in which Rylstone's pastoralism developed in the 1820s and early 1830s, although the actual grants confirming the new holdings were not issued until 1835 and subsequent years, some as late as the 1840s: and if a holding were sold by the occupant before the grant was finalised, there is no official record at all of the first grazier's presence on the land. Accordingly the register of land grants for Rylstone, as elsewhere, gives a rather misleading impression of the realities of early pastoralism there. 

Dabee, the most celebrated of Rylstone's properties, with a homestead and out-buildings of high state significance, was not granted to Richard Fitzgerald until 1837, but Fitzgerald had expanded northwards from his Bathurst property  early in the 1820s. By January 1823 he was running 600 cattle and six flocks of sheep and employing eleven stockmen at Dabee.

William Lee similarly settled at Bathurst in 1821 but moved after two years to Capertee Valley (now largely in Lithgow City). From there, as Sir John Jamison secured title to Capertee, Lee moved his stock nofth to Bylong, just in time to prevent Fitzgerald from expanding into that area also. Fitzgerald therefore took his surplus cattle on to Wollar (now in Mudgee Shire). By 1828 Lee and his family held 1 100 hectares (2750 acres) in Bylong, had cleared 320 hectares (800 acres) with 44 hectares (110 acres) under cultivation and ran 2700 sheep, 320 cattle and fifteen horses.

The prime land along the Cudgegong, which had been so attractive for Aboriginal camps, was also sought after by the earliest settlers. Fitzgerald enlarged his Dabee holdings to 1200 hectares (3000 acres) by promise and ultimate grant in 1837-8. Nearby in 1824, at the junction of the Cudgegong with what immediately became known as Cox's Creek, Edward Cox, son of the original road-builder and entrepreneur, claimed the 600 hectares (1500 acres) later named Rawdon by his celebrated master of sheep-breeding and wool- classing, John Thompson. By 1B3B Cox's estate round the Cudgegong had increased to 2800 hectares (7000 acres).

The establishment of these key properties in the 1820s and 1830s created a nucleus of a few prominent families controlling wide acreages. Family linkages created informal empires. John Thompson, Cox's manager at Rawdon, established his own dynasty, analogous to the Coxes. John bought land either in his own name or in the name of his son, William Barber Thompson, over the 1840s and 1850s. As a result most of the well-favoured high plateau of Nullo Mountain became a Thompson horse-stud and sheep-run, while the rest was owned by a son of Edward Cox. ln the 1850s the Thompsons came to dominate also the Widdin Valley around Oakleigh and Baramul, while from the 1840s the Thompsons also owned Olinda, a major property on the Cudgegong marching Dabee on the east. Very substantial blocks of prime Rylstone land were dominated by the Cox-Thompson group.

Bathurst was a common staging-post for families seeking broader acres. James Nevell (or Neville), transported in 1810, had obtained a conditional pardon and acquired 36 hectares (90 acres) at Bathurst where he was running 500 sheep and 103 cattle by 1828. His overseer, James Vincent, who was also his father-in-law, explored the Turon and Upper Cudgegong, saw the potential of Carwell in the 1830s and purchased it for himself, his daughter and her husband. Once settled at Carwell the Vincent-Nevell family continued to buy in the area, acquiring Riversdale on the Cudgegong in 1837. Three years after Vincent's death in 1848, his daughter and John Nevell built the present stone homestead at Carwell. With large sheep-flocks, many shepherds, a major woolshed and a cemetery which was the de facto general cemetery for the south-western part of the shire, Carwell was a highly significant complex. The Vincent-Nevell family also built the stone house (Portion 1, Mead Parish, Co. Roxburgh) which survives at Flatlands.

The south-eastern sector of Rylstone centres on Glen Alice. Here the principal early pastoralists were the lnnes family from Caithness who had taken up land for a cattle station when they moved from Bathurst about 1828. The most vivid impression of life on a remote properly comes from Annabella Boswell, the eldest lnnes daughter. Her father bought Umbiella, but in 1828-9 the family used the modest accommodation at Glen Alice adjacent, owned by another member of the lnnes family. After a time in Parramatta and Sydney from 1829 to 1832, Annabella and her parents returned to Glen Alice, but sold Umbiella to Sir John Jamison and built a new homestead on a third property, Warrangee. 

It was built of weather-board and shingled, and consisted of three rooms in a row, with three small rooms or skilleens. The old house or hut stood at right angles, built with slabs and covered with bark, and had three rooms also, but no Skiileen. These rooms were a kitchen with a huge open fireplace, store, and the women-servants' room. The men lived in huts by the [Capertee] river some distance off. The end room of the house was the only room with a fireplace, and the only public room; the centre room was my mother's, and we two children occupied the little room off it; my uncles had the other room. We had at this time a very nice servant, who had been my sister's nurse, and our cook was a clever lrish woman, Kitty Comer by name, the wife of an old soldier, who was then constable there.

By 1841, when the lnnes family finally left Glen Alice, the head gardener for the Botanic Gardens in Sydney had created a beautiful garden in front of the house, but not too near, and the ground between was prettily laid out with lawn and shrubbery.

This idyll in an incomparable natural setting was developed further under John Mclean from the lsle of Skye, on the other side of northern Scotland from lnnes' Caithness. McLean came to Australia in 1837 and built up a major pastoral enterprise in Capertee and Glen Alice, in succession to the lnneses and to Jamison, employing over 100 men and, it is said, breeding annually 500 foals, 700 calves and 7000 lambs. lnvesting in land elsewhere in the district, Mclean in the course of his long life (he died in 1876 at the age of 86) became not only the laird of Glen Alice but also the principal proprietor of the north-western part of Lithgow City from Palmers Oakey to Sunny Corner, while he leased Wolgan Valley from the Walkers and Cullen Bullen from the Dulhuntys.

James Walker, who owned Wolgan Valley as well as his homestead at Wallerawang, is a highly significant figure in the development of western Rylstone. So is Walker's friend and neighbour Andrew Brown of Cooerwull, although he did not acquire land in Rylstone. Brown and Walker had come to Australia together in 1823 and established themselves at Wallerawang. Brown, who initially had little capital, worked for the first few years as Walker's overseer. ln the 1820s and 1830s both built up enormous sheep-runs in the unsurveyed west, on the Castlereagh River around Gulargambone and Coonamble. Walker also had a station at Lue on Lawsons Creek. His sheep grazed over 8000 hectares (20,000 acres) which straddled the later shire boundaries of Mudgee and Rylstone, but the Walker homestead at Lue (now called Monivae), begun in 1823, is in Rylstone Shire, although its woolshed and the new Lue homestead are now in Mudgee.

The Suttors were, like Walker, major landholders within Rylstone but with their main residence and head station elsewhere, in the Suttors' case at Brucedale in Evans Shire. William Henry Suttor developed his 1835 grant of Warrangunyah south of Crudine Road on Warrangunia Creek and his 1837 grant at Tabrabucca Swamp to the north of the Crudine road into a 4000- hectare (10,000-acre) sheep station. A slab house remains on the property as well as the 1912 homestead built by William Henry's son Walter Sidney Suttor, a prominent member of the new federal parliament, who made Warrangunyah his primary residence.

The large grazing properties such as Dabee, Rawdon, Canvell, Glen Alice and Lue, together with horse and sheep studs on Nullo Mountain and the Widdin Valley and other properties belonging to major graziers such as the Suttors and Walkers whose head-stations lay outside Rylstone gave the area its essential character in the nineteenth century. Most of these properties, moreover, had a long continuity of ownership, Dabee until 1999, Riversdale to the present day. As a result of this continuity, the major homesteads and their out-buildings have a special heritage value. None of these grazing properties is, however, included in the list of heritage items in the 1996 Rylstone Local Environmental Plan.

Grazing produced hides, which were sent to Sydney or Bathurst for tanning until 1870 when a Bathurst tanner, William Henry Hawkins, moved to Rylstone, expanding to engage a staff of five, mainly producing saddle leather.

As well as sheep, horses and beef-cattle, there were also herds of dairy cattle in Rylstone. lt is not always clear to what extent dairying, with its concomitant butter- and cheese-making, was pursued on a commercial as opposed to a local scale. At Glen Alice in 1840, the lnnes family had a small dairy herd and butter and cheese were made for home use, and occasionally for the Sydney market.30 Similarly John and Marion Davis, former servants of John Mclean at Glen Alice, took up land of their own at Kelkoola near Rylstone in the 1840s and took butter and cheese to Sydney. Such sporadic commercialism was probably the norm on the early properties.

The small butter factory which still stands next to Warrangunyah woolshed is said to have 'serviced the immediate area only, although cream was taken there for churning from llford and Crudine herds.

Once the railway arrived in 1884, Rylstone was the best situated centre to exploit a broader market, but there seems to have been no commercial dairying in the town until Booth and Paddison opened a butter factory not long before 1910.

ln the 1880s Edward Cox's eldest son Standish Cox took over the Tailbys' 1850s property of Fernside and established a substantial butter factory, attracting milk for many small farmers and supplying dairy products on a wide scale.

At the new town of Kandos, there seems initially to have been no commercial dairy. When Taylors' general store opened in 1920 Henry Taylor milked his own cow in the commercial main street'without a bail', but during the 1920s J. Lloyd and W. Connell ran much needed dairies for the growing industrial town. One dairy was on the outslcirts of Rylstone and the Dabee road; the other dairy was on the Sydney Road.'" Back in the 1860s John Lloyd had owned the land on which Kandos was later built. On the Lloyd property down the llford Road his wife had run sixty or seventy head of cattle, kept thirty for milking and had manufactured butter and cheese.over a long period before the town of Kandos was created.36 At Crudine the storekeepei dwen Raftery (who also ran the llford store) was operating a butter factory in 1923 for local needs. A butter factory at Bows Crossing in the same Crudine area was run at some stage in the twentieth century by F. W. Clarke and A. F. Heath.

ln the north at Bylong, which is fairly isolated, a cheese factory was operating in the 1920s. Since cheese is less vulnerable than butter to damage in transit, the Bylong cheeses were taken by road to Rylstone railway station for transport to Sydney market.

The Nevell homestead at Flatlands
 {photograph, Ian Jack, 2001)