Active citizenship · Agency · Agricultural heritage · Attachment to place · Belonging · Camden · Camden Show · Camden Showgirl · Camden Story · Community identity · Cultural Heritage · Festivals · Local History · Local Studies · Myths · Pageant · Place making · Ruralism · Sense of place · Showgirl competition · Volunteering · Volunteerism · Women's history · Young Woman Competition

Young Woman trumps the Showgirl

In late 2022 the Camden Show Society announced that Rubey Williams had been named the Camden Show 2023 Young Woman of the Year. The competition had been rebranded by the Royal Agricultural Society in 2019.

20th century · Architecture · Argyle Street · Built heritag · Business History · Camden Story · Camden Town Centre · Colonial Camden · Cultural Heritage · Cultural icon · Heritage · History · Hotel History · Hume Highway · Lifestyle · Local History · Place making · Sense of place

The Plough and Harrow Hotel: an early colonial Camden inn

The Plough and Harrow Hotel is the second oldest pub in the Camden town centre and was built in the early 1850s. The hotel is still on its original site located on the former Great South Road, later the Hume Highway, now relocated.

1920s · 1930s · Architecture · Attachment to place · Built heritag · Business History · Collective Memory · Community Health · Cultural Heritage · Design · Edwardian · Film · Foresters Hall (former) · Heritage · History · Interwar · Leisure · Living History · Local History · Local Studies · Memory · Modernism · Movies · Narellan Military Camp · Placemaking · Second World War

The former Forestersโ€™ Hall, a marvellous Edwardian building

In Camden NSW the former Forestersโ€™ Hall occupies one of the most prominent sites in the Town Centre on Oxley Street and Argyle Street at 147 Argyle Street. On its opening in 1908, the hall was considered the best in New South Wales by the Order of Royal Foresters.

1920s · 1930s · 1932 · 20th century · Adaptive Re-use · Aesthetics · Architecture · Argyle Street · Attachment to place · Belonging · Built heritag · Business History · Camden Story · Camden Town Centre · Collective Memory · Colonial Camden · Community identity · Cultural Heritage · Cultural icon · Design · Economy · Governor Macquarie · Historical consciousness · History · Interwar · Local History · Local Studies · localism · Macarthur region · Mid-century modernism · Modernism · Place making · Placemaking · Sense of place · Storytelling · Streetscapes · Town planning · Uncategorized · Urban growth · Urban history · Urbanism

ย The former Bank of New South Wales building in the country town of Camden

In central Camden is an empty bank building of understated significance at the intersection of John and Argyle Streets. This building was the premises of Westpac, formerly the Bank of New South Wales, and was the second banking chamber on that site. Constructed in the 1930s by a prominent firm of local builders and designed by one of Sydneyโ€™s top award-winning architects. It is a building of much architectural merit, and few know its history.ย 

Appin · Art · Attachment to place · Belonging · British colonialism · Campbelltown Art Centre · Collective Memory · Colonial frontier · Colonialism · Commemoration · Community identity · Cowpastures · Cowpastures Bicentennial · Cultural Heritage · Dharawal · Governor Macquarie · Heritage · History · Landscape · Landscape aesthetics · Local History · Local Studies · Memorial · Memorialisation · Memorials · Memory · Monuments · Place making · Placemaking · Public art · Sculpture · Sense of place · Settler colonialism · Settler Society · Stereotypes · Storytelling · Uncategorized

The Cowpastures Bicentennial, Governor Hunter and the Appin Massacre: the memory of the Cowpastures

I often wondered why the cultural material representative of the Cowpastures appeared to have been 'forgotten' by our community. The list of cultural items is quite an extensive include: roads and bridges, parks and reserves; historic sites, books, paintings, articles; conferences, seminars, and workshops; monuments, memorials and murals; community commemorations, celebrations and anniversaries.

20th century · Adaptive Re-use · Aesthetics · Architecture · Attachment to place · Belonging · Burra Charter · Camden Story · Church History · Churches · Collective Memory · Commemoration · Community identity · Cultural Heritage · Elderslie · Families · Family history · Farming · First World War · Genealogy · Heritage · History · Living History · Local History · Local Studies · Memorial · Place making · Placemaking · Sense of place · St Mark's Church Elderslie · Urban development · Urban growth · Urbanism · Village · Wartime

St Markโ€™s Church Elderslie, the little church on the hill

St Mark's Church Elderslie tells the story of a small farming community that has disappeared through the mists of time. The history of St Markโ€™s church is the history of Elderslie, and the church was a special place of community celebrations and commemorations along with family celebrations, traditions, and events. The church has been a gathering place, a sacred site.

Argyle Street · Camden · Camden Council · Camden Historical Society · Camden Museum · Camden Red Cross · Camden Show · Churches · Coal mining · Colonial Camden · Country Women's Association · Cultural Heritage · Dairying · Elizabeth Macarthur · Farming · First World War · Floods · Heritage · History · Living History · Local History · Local newspapers · Local Studies · Macarthur · Macarthur Park · Nepean River · Philanthropy · Place making · Placemaking · Railway · Red Cross · Schools · Second World War · Sense of place · Settler colonialism · Settler Society · Silver mining · Storytelling · Sydney's rural-urban fringe · Uncategorized · Urban development · Urban growth · Urban Planning · urban sprawl · Urbanism · Volunteering · Volunteerism · Wartime · World War One

Camden, a Macarthur family venture

The establishment of Camden, New South Wales, the town in 1840, was a private venture of James and William Macarthur, sons of colonial patriarch John Macarthur, at the Nepean River crossing on the northern edge of the familyโ€™s pastoral property of Camden Park. The townโ€™s site was enclosed on three sides by a sweeping bend in the Nepean River and has regularly flooded the surrounding farmland and lower parts of the town.

Aesthetics · Art · Artefacts · Colonial Camden · Cowpastures · Cowpastures Bicentennial · Craft · Crafts · Cultural Heritage · Fashion · Heritage · Leisure · Local History · Local Studies · Memorial · Memorials · Memory · Place making · Placemaking · Public art · Quilting · Sense of place · Settler colonialism · Sewing · Storytelling · Women's history

A Cowpastures memorial quilt

Hanging on the wall in the Camden Library is a quilt, but no ordinary quilt. It is a hand-made quilt that had previously hung in the foyer of the Camden Civic Centre for many years. The quilt celebrated the Cowpastures Bicentenary (1995) and was made by members of the Camden Country Quilters Guild.

Charles Cowper · Colonialism · Cultural Heritage · Economy · Heritage · History · Lost Sydney · Maryland · Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences Powerhouse Museum · Railway · Sydney Railway Company · Technology · Thomas Barker · Transport · Uncategorized · Wivenhoe

A Camden connection to the first railway line in New South Wales

26 September 1855 A forgotten anniversary of Sydneyโ€™s Central Railway Station On 26 September 1855, the first train left the Sydney terminus, a โ€˜tin shedโ€™, with great pomp and ceremony and thus began the great railways of New South Wales. The โ€˜tin shedโ€™ was replaced by two further buildings, one opened in 1874, and the current grand Victorian edifice of brick and sandstone in 1906.

Art · Cowpastures · Cultural Heritage · Heritage · History · Local History · Local Studies · Memorial · Memorials · Memory · Monuments · Parks · Place making · Public art · Sculpture · Storytelling · Streetscapes · Uncategorized

Cowpastures Memorial at Narellan

In the plaza outside Narellan Library there is an item public art called the Cowpasture Story.