Month: January 2016

Aesthetics · Attachment to place · Australia · Belonging · Blue Mile Pathway Wollongong · Camden · Cultural Heritage · Cultural icon · Economy · Entertainment · Families · Fashion · Guesthouse · Heritage · Historical consciousness · Historical Research · Historical thinking · History · Holidays · Leisure · Lifestyle · Local History · Memory · Motoring History · Sense of place · Storytelling · Stuart Park Wollongong · Tourism · Travel · Wollongong

The seaside holiday

camdenhistorynotes1 Comment

The Seaside holiday for Camden families

Lighthouse Wollongong[1a]
Wollongong Lighthouse is located on the breakwater at Wollongong Harbour which has a popular spot called Brighton Beach.

Local folk from the Camden district have been going to Wollongong and the South Coast for beach holidays for generations. It is a time to relax, chill out, slow down, drop out, and generally escape the hum drum of daily existence of home and work.

The seaside holiday has been more than that. The development of the beach holiday owes much to the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s and the shorter working week and increased wages of ordinary workers. Australian’s copied the English Victorians and their interest in health and well-being and particularly cold-water bathing. The scourge of diseases like tuberculosis (or consumption as it was known) were constant threats to health and well-being of people. The inter-war period (1919-1939) saw the added influence of modernism, consumerism, movies and tourism on the mobility and spending patterns of people. All these contributed to the attraction of the beach.

Camden aquatic sports and swimming

Camden folk were influenced by all these social and cultural trends. Swimming had become popular before the First World War as Peter Mylrea found in his history of swimming (Camden History, March 2006). The Camden Aquatic Sports were held in the Nepean River in 1909 and the foundation of the Camden Swimming Club in the 1920s. But for young people the beach provided the lure of the exotic when compared to swimming in the Nepean River.

The beach attracted the attention of Camden families particularly during the Inter-war period. Local marriages were consummated with a honeymoon to Manly Beach for the weekend. Manly was accessible by steam train and ferry, and was far enough away to seem like another world for a newly wed farm labourer and his sweet-heart. The railway also provided easy access to Wollongong beaches, particularly localities like Kiama. The motor car provided mobility and the South Coast provided an escape to stay in a boarding house or camp.

Motoring

After the Second World War the boom in the motor car travel meant that Camden families could drive further for a beach holiday. One ever popular location was Kiama. Other beach localities started to draw the attention of Camden families, particularly Jervis Bay and St George’s Basin.

Wollongong Beach[1a]
Stuart Park is behind North Beach Wollongong which is lined with Norfolk Pines like many other beaches in New South Wales

Stuart Park Wollongong

Geoff McAleer reported that in his youth in the 1940s and 1950s on the annual Christmas holiday at the beach in Wollongong. The beach was Wollongong’s North Beach and the McAleers holidayed at Stuart Park Caravan Park. The McAleers were joined on the Christmas beach holidays by the Holyoakes, Dunks, Williams and the Cliftons. It was a popular location with Camden families because, according to Geoff, ‘it was close to Camden, only a 40 minute drive and it was good body surfing spot.’ There were no surf boards then according to Geoff. That would come in the 1960s. On occasions Geoff and his Dad, Hubert, would have a boys weekend away at Stuart Park. Geoff took his sweetheart, later to be his wife, Olive there for Christmas holidays with the family in 1949. The popularity of Stuart Park owed much to the presence near North Beach Wollongong. The beach was popular for swimming and surfing from the 1920s. Unfortunately for patrons the caravan park was closed in 1964 but under public pressure was re-opened in an adjacent location in 1966. It was eventually closed permanently in 1970. The park had a kiosk as well as a camping area and was popular with day-trippers for picnics.

Cheryl’s seaside holiday at Bulli Beach

Wollongong beach-side caravan parks have come under pressure to be closed and caravans evicted in recent decades. One spot where Camden families still have a beach caravan holiday is Bulli Beach camping reserve. Cheryl, who has a caravan at Bulli Beach, along with a number of other Camden families enjoy the escape it provides from ‘the rat race’. She says that a number families have had permanent vans at the park, which have been passed down between the generations. They all escape Camden on Christmas holidays and long weekends. It is a great spot for all sorts of recreation.

Steve’s holidays at Erowal Bay

Steve recalls as a child fond memories

Like our family holidays to Killarney, Erowal Bay on St Georges Basin in the 1950s. Before we had our own car Mum and Dad and six kids used to travel there in and on the back of Uncle Mel Peats work truck and stay in his house right on the water with its own jetty, boat house and row boat. Whitemans and Rickets were a couple of other Camden families I can remember who had houses there also. What great holidays they were. Might even be able to find a couple of photos.

John and Julie recall Gerroa holidays

John and Julie fondly remember seaside holidays at Gerroa on the South Coast.

In the late 1960s John and I went for holidays at Gerroa. We stayed at a simple beach cottage which had been built by hand in the 1950s by our parents’ friends. The cottage had no fridge, just an icebox, but it had great views of 7 Mile Beach and you could walk to the beach for a swim. The cottage has long gone and been replaced by a brick home.

For many years from the 1970s the painter Alan D Baker spent family holidays at Gerroa. We have a painting that Alan’s son, Gary Baker, did of Gerroa Point, which reminds us of holidays at Gerroa 40 years ago.

Where do you go to the beach?

Beach holidays have always been important for Camden district families. Do you have memories of holidays at Wollongong,  Kiama, Gerroa, Shoalhaven and the South Coast. Has your family had a beach holiday in the same spot for generations? When you go to the beach? What did you do? Where did you go? How did you fill in your time? What was your favourite spot?

Facebook Replies

Peter Hammond Camden 9 January 2016 For all my primary school days we had 2 or 3 weeks at Thirroul in January, the only dampener were the back to school sales.

Karen Burgess All along the coast. Fave spot. You can’t beat the beautiful Gerringong.  (30 January 2016)

Aesthetics · Camden · Colonial Camden · Cowpastures · Governor Macquarie · Heritage · Historical consciousness · History · Landscape · Landscape aesthetics · Local History · Place making · Placemaking · Sense of place · Storytelling · Uncategorized

Viewing the landscape of the Cowpastures

camdenhistorynotes3 Comments

The early colonists of the Sydney area viewed the landscape from several different perspectives, according to historian Grace Karskins in her book The Colony a History of Early Sydney (2009). This also applied to the Cowpastures.

Nepean River Cowpastures

Landscapes have a variety of meanings

The term landscape has a variety of meanings.

The two most common are when landscape refers to all the visible features of an area of land; usually referring to the rural features and the aesthetic appeal of neat paddocks and fields. The other meaning is one applied in an artistic sense and is its pictorial representation of an area of countryside, usually in a painting.

There can be different types of landscapes, for example, cultural landscapes and physical landscapes.

Landscapes has different meanings in different scholarly disciplines, for example,

  1. art (English landscapes of Turner and Constable),
  2. photography (American Ansel Adams),
  3. literature (the idealised pastoral scene or bucolic in art, music and literature, for example, English poet Milton, William Wordsworth; an early form is the Aboriginal Dreamtime stories; William Gilpin’s Observations on the River Wye was published in 1770, the idea of the picturesque began to influence artists and viewers and British romanticism),
  4. architecture (the term landscape architecture was invented by Gilbert Laing Meason in 1828 and was first used as a professional title by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1863), and
  5. gardening (Italian influences of an arcadia – The English garden (and later French landscape garden) presented an idealised view of nature.- The work of Lancelot “Capability” Brown and Humphry Repton and in the Cowpastures, JC Laudon).

These views of landscapes are culturally derived and depend on the viewer’s interpretation, which is the essence of landscape and its contribution to the sense of place.

View-of-the-Government-Hut-at-Cowpastures
View of the Government Hut at Cowpastures, 1804. State Library of NSW SSV1B / Cowp D / 1

Seven principles

Karskins (Karskins:242)  has presented seven principles of interpretation that she maintains were used by the early colonists of Sydney towards to new environment they took possession of the land in 1788.

All of Karskin’s seven principles are evident in the diaries and accounts of the Cowpastures by a host of Europeans who travelled through the area. They are:

  1. Utilitarian – the economic benefit – the protection of the cows and the herd
  2. Picturesque – the presentation of the Cowpastures as a result of the burning of the environment by the Aborigines –fire stick farming – the reports of the area being a little England from the 1820s – Hawdon
  3. Regulatory – banning of movement into the Cowpastures to protect the cows
  4. Political and philosophical – evils of the governors and transportation were the true corruptors of the countryside
  5. Natural history – collecting specimens and describing fauna and flora – Darwin’s visit to Sydney – the curiosity of the early officers
  6. ‘New natures’ – the environmental impact of flooding along the Nepean River and clear felling of trees across the countryside
  7. Emotional response – how the European viscerally  experienced the countryside – sights, smells, hearing – and its expression in words and pictures

How these were used in reports and diaries often depended on the written work’s audience in England or France. Often the accounts were used to promote a book and sometimes a set of paintings or sketches.

Sometimes there were just personal comments in a diary, or reports were the basis of a book published in England on the person’s return home from Sydney.

The reports of the Cowpastures in the colonial period by a host of naval officers, military personnel and surveyors have elements of all these views of the landscape.

Examples

Anyone interested in exploring some of the aspects of these types of interpretation sees other posts on this blog that mention:

1. the Cowpastures declaration  in  1795

2 the journeys of Governor Lachlan Macquarie  in 1810, 1815, or 1820

3. the views of immigrant John Hawdon in 1828

Read some of the stories in the Pictorial History of Camden and District (2015)

Read more @

Towns, urbanites and aesthetics

Yearning Longing and the Remaking of Camden’s Identity

Updated 7 September 2022. Originally posted 14 January 2016.

Camden · Colonial Camden · Community identity · Convicts · Cowpastures · Edwardian · Elderslie · Farming · First World War · Floods · Heritage · Historical consciousness · Historical Research · History · Interwar · Local History · Macarthur · Modernism · Place making · Red Cross · Second World War · Sense of place · Settler colonialism · Urban growth · Volunteering · War

Pictorial History of Camden and District

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Front Cover
Front Cover This image was taken by Charles Kerry a Sydney photographer c. 1890 in John Street looking towards St Johns Church on the hill. Kerry toured NSW taking photographs of country towns. (Camden Museum/John Kerry)

Sydney publisher Kingsclear Books recently released a new title about the Camden area. It was called Pictorial History Camden and District, written by local author Ian Willis. This is one of one of series of pictorial histories produced by Catherine Warne of Kingsclear Books over the last 32 years.

The history of the area is told in pictures and text. The images are another way to look into the past. They are a snapshot of a moment in time. They are full of meaning on a number of levels and provide a different perspective than just text. Pictorial histories satisfy a curiosity about local history and the way places and things change over time.

The book has the honour of a number of firsts. The book is the first time a complete of the local history of the Camden area has been attempted by any author. The book is the first time a collection of images like this has been put together on the local area.

Back Cover
Back Cover shows Pansy’s last run from Campbelltown to Camden in 1963. Hundreds of passengers were let off the train on Maryfields to walk up to the top of Kenny Hill and record Pansy’s last assault of the 1 in 19 grade. (Australian Railway Historical Society)

The images are primarily taken from the collection of the Camden Museum which is managed by the Camden Historical Society. Other images are drawn from the Camden Library, The Oaks Historical Society, State Library of NSW, Royal Australian Historical Society, National Library, Australian Railway Historical Society and elsewhere. A host of people assisted with the publication and they are listed in the acknowledgements.

The book has been received well locally and has met a need and a thirst by the community for a collection and story of the past of this type. The publisher has had trouble keeping up with sales during the run-up to Christmas and there is still strong demand. Congratulations of been coming in from a variety of quarters. The author have been told stories of a number of people walking away from sales outlets with up to five copies of the book.

The text of the Camden story starts with the First Australians then moves on the Cowpastures, the establishment of local villages and gentry properties, particularly the Macarthurs and Camden Park. The description follows the founding of Camden from estate village to market town, and the dairy revolution of the 1890s then into the 20th century when the story was rudely interrupted by the First World War. Modernism catches up with district in the Interwar period which is book ended with the Second World War. In the post war era coal is king, and the country town is eventually over-run by Sydney’s urban growth. All the while there has been the constancy of the river and its moods, particularly regularly its flooding.

The books is available from a number of local outlets including the Camden Museum.The good folk at the Camden Museum will supply a copy by post $24.95 plus $7 handling and postage. Contact the Camden Historical Society: secretary@camdenhistory.org.au or contact the publisher.