The 2018 Camden Jacaranda Festival, inspired by the local Jacaranda trees, was launched and featured live music, a Christmas tree lighting, and a street market. The festival evolved from the previous Light Up Camden festival and emphasized local history through walking tours. The inaugural event celebrated the area's rich botanical heritage.
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The Cowpastures bridge at the Nepean River crossing
Access across the Nepean River has been an issue since European settlement. The problem was solved by building a bridge with the first in 1826, the next in 1860 followed by 1900 and 1976.
Local identities, Colin and Dorothy Clark
The life and times of Colin and Dorothy Clark were examples of active citizenship. Together they shaped a future for themselves in Camden and served their community, church and family.
Macarthur Bridge
The Macarthur Bridge across the Nepean River at Camden NSW is an important engineering heritage item.
Traditional trades, the legacy of Camden’s carpenters
Carpentry, vital in Camden for centuries, began with Aboriginal bush carpentry using local materials for survival. European settlers adopted this craft, creating simple structures and relying on ingenuity. Formal carpentry evolved with guilds and apprenticeships, maintaining traditional techniques and tools, shaping Camden's architectural landscape with lasting quality.
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.
Exploring Campbelltown’s Mid-Century Modern Administration Building
The Campbelltown Council office building, completed in 1964, serves as an unrecognized icon of mid-century modernism, symbolizing the town's optimistic vision as a satellite city. Despite its structural significance and initial hopes for community development, later planning challenges undermined this vision, leaving the building's legacy complex and often overlooked.
Camden Heritage Conservation Area – an English-style village in the Cowpastures
The Macarthur private village of Camden was located in the English style countryside of the Cowpastures countryside with its gentry estates and villages. Founded in 1840 it was all part the British imperial imperative and the settler colonial project that came with it.
The Llewella Davies Memorial Walkway, a walk in the meadows of the past
The Camden Town Farm Miss Llewella Davies Pioneers Walkway opened in 2020 in the former colonial landscape of the Cowpastures. The area was part of the original grants that made up the Macarthur family's Camden Park Estate and in pre-European times the country of the Dharawal people.
The Camden district in 1939
The 1939 Camden district concept was developed in the 1990s by UOW historian Dr Ian Willis as part of his research on the effect of the Second World War on Camden township.
