The letters of John Hawdon and others from 1828 to 1837, preserved in the State Library of NSW, provide insights into colonial life in New South Wales. They highlight themes of isolation, communication challenges, economic struggles, and attitudes toward gender and Indigenous populations, alongside Hawdon's farming experiences and family connections.
Category: Dairying
Insights from the Hawdon Letters: Colonial Life in NSW, Part 2, 1831-1833
John Hawdon's letters from New South Wales (1831-1833) reveal colonial life, highlighting farming challenges, isolation from England, and the high costs of communication. These letters provide insights into market conditions, crop successes, and family updates, showcasing the Hawdons' experiences and adaptations in a new land, while retaining original spelling and structure.
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Explore History with Friends of Belgenny Farm Events
On a cloudy day in late May 2025, the Friends of Belgenny Farm held an open day attracting over 285 visitors interested in early Australian history. The event featured various stalls, historical displays, and guided tours of the historic site, which holds national significance and showcases Australia's earliest colonial farm buildings.
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Explore Belgenny Farm: A Journey Through Time 2024
The 2024 Back to Belgenny festival showcased living history at Belgenny Farm, featuring reenactments, traditional trades, and various activities such as sheepdog trials and guided tours. The event included a demonstration by Governor Macquarie’s regiment and highlighted the farm's historical significance, providing visitors with an immersive glimpse into colonial agricultural life.
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Back to Belgenny 2024, a festival of living history
The 2024 Back to Belgenny festival at Belgenny Farm in South Camden showcased living history with reenactments, traditional trades, and stalls selling arts and crafts of the past. Activities included sheepdog trials, live music, vintage cars, and guided history tours of the site. The farm represents the settler society through the generations of the Macarthur family and their workers.
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Menangle, A Historic English-Style Estate Village in Camden Park
The village of Menangle, situated within the Camden district, reflects an English-style private estate village that has evolved over 150 years. Embodying rural Englishness, it has experienced both prosperity and decline, closely tied to the history of the Camden Park estate. The village's story is intertwined with the Macarthur family's influence and the impact of industrialization and modernization.
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Camden pepper trees, a remnant of the past
In the 1890s, Camden Municipal Council started beautifying the town area by planting various trees, including peppercorns. These cultural plantings defined the local urban landscape for decades, yet only a handful remain today.
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Camden Show 2023
The Camden Show is on again after floods and Covid stopped it in recent years. The show is back with all the bells and whistles of the past with some new innovations. A must see is the 2023 Camden Show.
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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 family’s pastoral property of Camden Park. The town’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.
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Bottled milk and hygienic dairies: agricultural modernism
Camden Vale Milk was produced by the dairies of Camden Park Estate. It was promoted as ‘Free from Tubercule, Typhoid and Diphtheria Bacilli’. Camden Vale promised that its milk was ‘rich, clean’ and ‘safe’ in an advertisement for the 1931 Health and Baby Welfare Week.
