The Cowpastures Project

The Cowpastures project is a community based collaborative research enterprise which is co-ordinated by UOW historian Dr Ian Willis.

 

It is a long term venture which aims to reveal the intricacies of the Cowpastures district from 1795 to 1850.

The Dharawal people occupied the area for centuries.

 

The district was part of the Australian colonial settler society project driven by British colonialism.

There was the creation of the government reserve for the wild cattle between 1795 and 1823. After this period the Cowpastures became a regional locality that was in common usage well into the 19th century.

 

The British aimed to create an English-style landscape from their arrival in the area from 1790s. The earliest written acknowledgement of this by Englishman John Hawdon in 1828.

 

Learn more about the Cowpastures from these blog posts and other resources: 

A colonial diarist of the Cowpastures

This blog post is a review of Janice Johnson (ed), Camden Through a Poet’s Eyes, Charles Tompson (Jnr) (2019).  Tompson was a prolific writer and observer of the Cowpastures under the byline ‘From our Correspondent – Camden’ for The Sydney Morning Herald between 1847 and 1852. In 1854 Charles Tompson described that the ‘village of Camden’ had ‘the aspect and the attributes of an English village’ (p.118) for the first time.

A contested sacred site in the historic landscape of the Cowpastures (blog post)

This blog post examine community concerns around the sale of glebe land attached to St John’s Anglican Church in Camden and highlights community sensitivities to sale of church sites. This church was largely funded by the Macarthur family and has since its foundation in 1847 has received considerable endowments from the family.

The Cowpastures Region 1795-1840 (blog post on regionalism & boundaries)

This blog post attempts to put a regional boundary on The Cowpastures for the first time and examines some of the historical evidence for this boundary.

Camden Cowpastures Bicentenary Celebrations  (Blog post)

‘Just like England’, a colonial settler landscape  (Peer-reviewed article)

Cowpastures and Beyond: Conference 2016  (Camden Area Family History Society)

Convicts in the Cowpastures (Blog post)

Governor Macquarie in the Cowpastures 1810 (Blog post)

Governor Macquarie returns to the Cowpastures 1820 (Blog post)

Mummel and a Cowpastures Patriarch (Blog post)

The Cowpastures, just like a English landscape (Presentation)

The Cowpasture, just like an English landscape (Slideshare)

Viewing the landscape of the Cowpastures (Blog post)

John Hawdon of Elderslie (Blog post)

John Hawdon of Elderslie English Origins (Blog post)

The Cowpastures at the Campbelltown Arts Centre (2017) (Exhibition)

The Came by Boat Exhibition Campbelltown Arts Centre (Exhibition Review, 2017)

John Macarthur the legend (Blog post)

Hope, heritage and a sense of place – an English village in the Cowpastures (Blog post)

This blog post looks at the historical elements that have contributed to the Camden sense of place, and ultimately its historical significance.

A walk in the meadows of the past

This blog post is about the Miss Llewella Davies Pioneers Walkway at the Camden Town Farm. The beauty of the Cowpastures landscape characterises the recently opened Miss Lewella Davies Memorial Walkway which weaves its way across the Nepean River flats on the western side of Camden’s township historic town centre.