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)