The memory of the Cowpastures: the Cowpastures Bicentennial and the Appin Massacre

December 30, 2022January 13, 2023 camdenhistorynotes

Representations of the memory of the Cowpastures

The Cowpastures was a vague area south of the Nepean River floodplain on the southern edge of Sydney’s Cumberland Plain.

The Dharawal Indigenous people who managed the area were sidelined in 1796 by Europeans when Governor Hunter named the ‘Cow Pasture Plains’ in his sketch map. He had visited the area the previous year to witness the escaped ‘wild cattle’ from the Sydney settlement, which occupied the verdant countryside. In 1798 Hunter used the location name ‘Cow Pasture’; after this, other variants have included ‘Cow Pastures’, ‘Cowpasture’ and ‘Cowpastures’. The latter will be used here.

John Hunter, Second Governor of New South Wales 1795-1800 and Royal Navy Officer (Wikimedia)

Governor King secured the area from poaching in 1803 by creating a government reserve, while settler colonialism was furthered by allocating the first land grants in 1805 to John Macarthur and Walter Davidson. The Cowpastures became the colonial frontier, and the dispossession and displacement of Indigenous people inevitably led to conflict and violence. The self-styled gentry acquired territory by grant and purchase and created a regional landscape of pseudo-English pastoral estates.

This is a portrait of Governor Phillip Gidley King, the third governor of the British colony of New South Wales from 1800-1806. He saw service in the British Navy with the rank of captain. (SLNSW)

Collective memories

According to Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton, collective memories are ‘all around us in the language, action and material culture of our everyday life’,[1] and 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.

Material culture

This material culture represents the multi-layered nature of the Cowpastures story for different actors who have interpreted events differently over time. These actors include government, community organisations, storytellers, descendants of the Indigenous Dharawal and European colonial settlers, and local and family historians. Using two case studies will illustrate the contested nature of the Cowpastures memory narrative.

Case Studies

1995 Cowpastures Bicentennial

Firstly, the 1995 Cowpastures Bicentennial celebrated the finding of the ‘wild cattle’ that escaped from the Sydney settlement by a party led by Governor Hunter in 1795.

Following the success of the 1988 Australian Bicentenary and the publication of histories of Camden and Campbelltown,[2] local officialdom decided that the anniversary of finding the ‘wild cattle’ deserved greater recognition. Camden Mayor HR Brooking stated that the festival events’ highlight the historic and scenic significance of the area’. A bicentenary committee of local dignitaries was formed, including the governor of New South Wales as a patron, with representatives from local government, universities, and community organisations.

In the end, only 10% of all festival events were directly related to the history of the Cowpastures. Golf tournaments, cycle races and music concerts were rebadged and marketed as bicentenary events, while Indigenous participation was limited to a few lines in the official programme and bicentennial documentation.[3] The legacy of the bicentenary is limited to records in the Camden Museum archives, a quilt, a statue, a park and a book.

The Camden Quilters commissioned a ‘story quilt’ told through the lens of local women, who took a holistic approach to the Cowpastures story. It was the only memorial created by women, and the collaborative efforts of the quilters created a significant piece of public art. Through the use of applique panels, the women sewed representations of the Cowpastures around the themes of Indigenous people, flora and fauna, ‘wild cattle’, agriculture, roads and bridges, and settlement.[4] The quilt currently hangs in the Camden Library.

A postcard produced in 1995 at the time of the Cowpastures Bicentennial of the Cowpastures Quilt produced by the Camden Quilters. (1995, Camden Museum)

Statue of Governor Hunter

In the suburb of Mount Annan, there is a statue of Governor Hunter. The land developer AV Jennings commissioned Lithgow sculptor and artist Antony Symons to construct the work to coincide with a residential land release. The statue has a circular colonnade, supporting artworks with motifs depicting cows, settlement, and farming activities.

According to Alison Atkinson-Phillips, three trends in memorial commemoration have been identified since the 1960s, and Hunter’s statue is an example of a ‘representative commemoration’ – commemorating events from the past.

The statue of Governor Hunter in the suburb of Mount Annan. Land developer AV Jennings commissioned Lithgow sculptor and artist Antony Symons (1942-2018) in 1995 to construct the work. Officially opened by the Mayor of Camden, Councillor FH Brooking, on the 6th April 1995. (I Willis, 2022)

Two other types of memorialisation identified by Atkinson-Phillips have been ‘participatory memorialisation’ instigated by ‘memory activists’ and place-based memorials placed as close as possible to an event.[5]

On the northern approach to the Camden town centre is the Cowpastures Reserve, a parkland used for passive and active recreation. The reserve was opened by the Governor of NSW on 19 February 1995 and is located within the 1803 government reserve, although the memorial plaque states that it is ‘celebrating 100 years of Rotary’.

The NSW Department of Agriculture published Denis Gregory’s Camden Park Birthplace of Australia’s Agriculture in time for the bicentenary. The book covered ‘200 years of the Macarthur dynasty’. It demonstrated the ‘vision and determination’ of John and Elizabeth Macarthur to make ‘the most significant contribution to agricultural development in the history of Australia’. Landscape artist Greg Turner illustrated the work with little acknowledgement of prior occupation by the Dharawal people.[6]

Commemoration of the 1816 Appin Massacre

Secondly, commemorating the 1816 Appin Massacre has created a series of memorials. The massacre represents a more meaningful representation of the Cowpastures story with the loss of Indigenous lives to the violence of the Cowpastures’ colonial frontier. The commemoration of these events is part of Atkinson-Phillip’s ‘participatory memorialisation’ and includes a place-based memorial.

European occupation of the Cowpastures led to conflict, and this peaked on 17 April 1816 when Governor Macquarie ordered a reprisal military raid against Aboriginal people. Soldiers under the command of Captain James Wallis shot at and drove Aboriginal people over the cliff at Cataract Gorge, killing around 14 men, women and children[7] on the eastern limits of the Cowpastures.

The Winga Myamly Reconciliation Group organised a memorial service for the Appin Massacre in April 2005 at the Cataract Dam picnic area.[8] By 2009 the yearly commemorative ceremony attracted the official participation of over 150 people, both ‘Indigenous and Non-Indigenous’. Attendees included the NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and representatives from Wollondilly Shire Council and the NSW Police.[9]

In 2007 Wollondilly Shire Council and the Reconciliation Group commissioned a commemorative plaque at the picnic area. According to Atkinson-Phillips, plaques are often overlooked and analysing the words gains insight into the intent of those installing them.[10] The inscription on the Cataract memorial plaque leaves no doubt what the council and the reconciliation group wanted to emphasise, and it states:

The massacre of men, women and children of the Dharawal Nation occurred near here on 17 April 1816. Fourteen were counted this day, but the actual number will never be known. We acknowledge the impact this had and continues to have on the Aboriginal people of this land. We are deeply sorry. We will remember them. Winga Mayamly Reconciliation Group. Sponsored by Wollondilly Shire Council.

The memorial and remembrance service have given the descendants of Indigenous people a voice in telling the Cowpastures story.

The plaque at the Cataract Dam picnic area. The memorial was placed at the picnic area in 2007, jointly organised by Winga Myamly Reconciliation Group and Wollondilly Shire Council, following the memorial service started in 2005 by the Reconciliation Group. (Monuments Australia, 2010)

In 2016 the Campbelltown Arts Centre held an art exhibition with an international flavour commemorating the bicentenary of the Appin Massacre called With Secrecy and Dispatch. The gallery commissioned new works from ‘six Aboriginal Australian artists and four First Nation Canadian artists’ that illustrated ‘the shared brutalities’ of the colonial frontier for both nations.[11]

Appin Massacre Cultural Landscape

In 2021 an application was made to Heritage NSW for consideration of the Appin Massacre Cultural Landscape, the site of the 1816 Appin Massacre, for listing on the State Heritage Register. The Heritage NSW website states that the Appin Massacre was ‘one of the most devastating massacre events of First Nations people in the history of NSW’. It is ‘representative of the complex relationships between First Nations people and settlers on the colonial frontier’.[12]

The application was approved in December 2022.

Conclusion

In conclusion, these two case studies briefly highlight how the contested meaning of memorials commemorating aspects of the Cowpastures story varies for different actors over time. At the 1995 bicentenary, only European voices were heard telling the Cowpastures story emphasising the cattle, Governor Hunter, and settlement.

Voices of Indigenous Australians

In recent years the voices of Indigenous Australians have been heard telling a different story of European occupation emphasising the dire consequences of the violence on the colonial frontier in the Sydney wars.[13]

Endnotes

[1] Kate Darian-Smith & Paula Hamilton (eds), Memory and History in the Twentieth-Century Australia. Melbourne, Oxford, 1994, p 4.

[2] Alan Atkinson, Camden, Farm and Village Life in Early New South Wales. Melbourne, Oxford, 1988. Carol Liston, Campbelltown, The Bicentennial History. Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1988.

[3] Cowpastures Review and 1995 Calendar, Bicentennial Edition. Vol 1, 1995, p3

[4] Cowpastures Review and 1995 Calendar, Bicentennial Edition. Vol 1, 1995, p2

[5] Alison Atkinson-Phillips, ‘The Power of Place: Monuments and Memory’ in Paul Ashton & Paula Hamilton (eds), The Australian History Industry. North Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2022, p.126.

[6] Turner, Greg. & Gregory, Denis. & NSW Agriculture, Camden Park, birthplace of Australia’s agriculture. Orange, NSW, NSW Agriculture, 1992.

[7] Karskens, Grace, Appin massacre, Dictionary of Sydney, 2015, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/appin_massacre , viewed 09 Oct 2022

[8] Macarthur Chronicle, 12 April 2005.

[9] The District Reporter, 20 April 2009.

[10] Alison Atkinson-Phillips, ‘The Power of Place: Monuments and Memory’ in Paul Ashton & Paula Hamilton (eds), The Australian History Industry. North Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2022, p.127.

[11] Tess Allas and David Garneau (Curators), With Secrecy and Despatch. Exhibition at the Campbelltown Arts Centre, 9 April-13 June 2016, Campbelltown. Online at With Secrecy & Despatch | Campbelltown Arts Centre (c-a-c.com.au) Viewed 9 October 2022.

^[12]Heritage NSW, Appin Massacre Cultural Landscape (Under Consideration), Heritage NSW, Sydney, 2022. Viewed 10/10/22. Online at

https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5067855

[13] Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars, Conflict in the Early Colony 1788-1817. Sydney, NewSouth, 2018.

Initially published in The Federation of Australian Historical Societies Newsletter, December 2022, No 54. Online at https://www.history.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/FAHS-Newsletter-No-54-2_page-0001.pdf titled The memory of the Cowpastures in monuments and memorials

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Camden, a Macarthur family venture

September 19, 2022September 19, 2022 camdenhistorynotes

The private English-style estate village of James and William Macarthur

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.

John Macarthur on the cover of Australia’s Heritage 1970. The original oil painting of John Macarthur is held in SLNSW (I Willis, 2022)

The site of Camden was within the 5000 acres granted to John Macarthur by the 2nd Earl Camden [3.2], the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, in 1805, while Macarthur was in England on charges for duelling. Macarthur was a fractious quarrelsome self-promoter who arrived in NSW with his wife Elizabeth and family in 1790 as paymaster of the New South Wales Corps. The Corps (sometimes called The Rum Corps) was formed in England in 1789 as a permanent regiment of the British Army to relieve the New South Wales Marine Corps, which had accompanied the First Fleet to Australia in 1788 to fortify the colony of NSW.

The town’s site, as part of the Macarthur grants, was located on some of the finest farming country in the colony in the government Cowpastures reserve on the colonial frontier. The grants were part of the dispossession of traditional lands of the Dharawal people by the British settler colonial project and inevitably led to conflict and violence. Macarthur claimed that the town’s establishment threatened the security of his landholdings at Camden Park and opposed it during his lifetime. On his death in 1834, his sons had a different worldview and moved to establish an English-style estate village dominated by a church.

A fine Gothic-style church

The ridge-top location of St John’s Church (1840) on the southern end of the town meant that it towered over the town centre and had a clear line of sight to the Macarthur family’s Georgian mansion at Camden Park 2.6 miles to the southwest. The fine English Gothic-style church was funded mainly by the Macarthur family and has been the basis of the town’s iconic imagery. There were a number of large gentry estates built on convict labour in the surrounding farmland, the largest being the Macarthur family’s Camden Park of over 28,000 acres.

St John’s Anglican Church in its hilltop location at the top of John Street Camden. This image is by Charles Kerry in the 1890s (Camden Images)

Many immigrant families came to the area under Governor Bourke’s 1835 plan and settled on the gentry estates as tenant farmers, some establishing businesses in Camden. The first land sales in the village occurred in 1841, which stifled the growth of the existing European settlements in the area. The population of Camden grew from 242 in 1846 to 458 in 1856, although the gentry’s estates still dominated the village. Camden Park, for example, had a population of 900 in 1850.

English-style gentry

The English-style gentry practised philanthropy in Camden to maintain its moral tone. Elizabeth Macarthur Onslow, John Macarthur’s granddaughter, encouraged the maintenance of the proprieties of life, moral order and good works, as well as memorialising her family by donating a clock and bells to St John’s Church in 1897. She also marked the memory of her late husband, Captain Onslow, by providing a public park in 1882 named after her husband (Onslow Park), which is now the Camden showground.

Transport hub

Camden became the district’s transport hub at the centre of the road network, primarily set by the pattern of land grants from the 1820s. The earliest villages in the district predated Camden and then looked to Camden for cultural and economic leadership as the district’s major centre. The arrival of the Camden tramway in 1882 meant that silver ore west of the district (1871) was shipped through the Camden railhead to the Main Southern Railway from Sydney.

The Camden Branch Line Locomotive Crossing the Nepean River Bridge 1900 Postcard (Camden Images)

Progress assured

Combined with rail access to markets, the town’s prosperity was assured by a series of technical and institutional innovations that transformed the dairy industry in the 1890s. In the 1920s, the Macarthur family set up the Camden Vale Milk Company and built a milk processing plant at the eastern end of the main street adjacent to the rail line. Whole milk was railed to Sydney and bottled under its label until the mid-1920s. Milk was delivered daily to the factory by horse and cart until the 1940s from local dairy farms.

Camden Milk Depot, trading as Camden Vale Milk Coop Ltd located at the northern end of Argyle Street adjacent to Camden Railway Station. (Camden Images)

Camden’s progress saw the construction of a new bank (1878), the commencement of weekly stock sales (1883), the formation of the Camden Agricultural, Horticultural and Industrial Society and the first Camden Show (1886), a new post and telegraph office (1898), the foundation of two weekly newspapers (Camden Times, 1879, Camden News, 1880), a new cottage hospital (1898), the formation of a fire brigade (1900), the opening of a telephone exchange (1910), the installation of reticulated gas (1912), electricity (1929), town water (1899) and the replacement of gas street lighting with electric lights (1932), and a sewerage scheme (1939). By 1933 the population of the town had grown to 2394.

First local council

The first attempt at local government in 1843 was unsuccessful. A meeting of local notables formed the municipality of Camden at a public meeting in 1883. Still, it was not until 1889 that the municipality was proclaimed, covering 7,000 acres and including Camden and the neighbouring village of Elderslie. Nine townsmen were elected aldermen at the first election that year, and the first meeting was held at the School of Arts. In 1993 the Camden Municipal Council eventually became the Council of Camden.

In 2014 this is the head office of Camden Council in the former Victorian gentleman’s townhouse built by Henry Thompson. (Camden Images)

Street names

Camden’s 1840 street grid is still intact today, with streets named after members of the Macarthur family – John Street, Elizabeth, Edward Street – and NSW colonial notables – Oxley Street, Broughton Street, Mitchell Street. The main highway between Sydney and Melbourne (the Hume Highway) passed along the main street (Argyle Street), until it was re-routed in 1976. The town’s business centre still has several Victorian and Art Deco shopfronts.

Some charming Federation and Californian bungalows in the church ridge-top precinct were the homes of the Camden elite in the early 20^th century. The precinct is the site of Macarthur Park (1905), which was dedicated to the townsfolk by Elizabeth Macarthur Onslow and contained the town’s World War One cenotaph (donated by the Macarthur family).

John Street heritage precinct

John Street runs north-south downhill to the floodplain from the commanding position of St John’s church. Lower John Street is the location of the Italianate house Macaria (c1842), St Paul’s Catholic church and the government buildings associated with the Camden police barracks (1878) and courthouse (1857), and Camden Public School (1851). This area also contains the oldest surviving Georgian cottage in the town area, Bransby’s Cottage (1842). Lower John Street has the Camden Temperance Hall (1867), which later served as Camden Fire Station (1916–1993), and the School of Arts (1866), which served as the Camden Town Hall, while the rear of the building was occupied for a time by Camden Municipal Council.

Camden School of Arts located in John Street PReeves c1800s (CIPP)

Volunteerism

Community voluntary organisations have been part of Camden’s life from the town’s foundation. In the late 1800s, they were male-dominated, usually led by the landed gentry, and held informal political power through patronage. James Macarthur sponsored the Camden School of Arts (1865) and Agricultural, Horticultural & Industrial Society (1886), later called the Camden Show Society, while the non-conformists sponsored various lodges and the temperance movement. A small clique of well-off local women established several conservative women’s organisations after Federation. Their social position supported their husbands’ political activities, and the influence of the Macarthur family was felt in these organisations, for example, the Camden Red Cross and Country Women’s Association.

The women of the Camden Red Cross at their weekly street stall in Argyle Street Camden in the 1920s. The women ran the stall for decades and raised thousands of pounds for local and national charities. (Camden Images)

Many men and women from Camden and the district saw military service in the Boer War and later World War One and Two when residents set up local branches of national patriotic funds and civil defence organisations. On the outskirts of the town, there were active defence establishments during World War II, including an airbase, army infantry, and training camps.

Coal mining

Economic prosperity from coal mining in the district’s western part challenged old hierarchies in the postwar years, replacing the old colonially-based rural hegemony. New community organisations like Rotary and later the Chamber of Commerce fostered business networks in the town. The Camden Historical Society (1957) promoted the town’s past and later opened a local museum (1970).

Camden Museum Library building in John Street Camden, where the Blue Plaque with being located, recognising the efforts of the Camden Red Cross sewing circles in both World War One and World War Two. (I Willis, 2008)

Urbanisation

The New South Wales state government decreed that the town would become part of a growth area in the form of ‘new cities’ under the Macarthur Growth Centre Plan (1973), modelled on the British Garden City concept. Increasing urbanisation threatened the town’s identity and the number of community members formed by the Camden Residents’ Action Group (1973).

Mount Annan suburban development, which is part of Sydney’s urban sprawl c2005 (Camden Images)

In 2007 Camden was the administrative centre of the Camden Local Government Area, which had a population of over 51,000 (2006) and an area of 201 square kilometres. The Camden LGA became part of the state government’s Sydney South West Growth Centre, planned to house 500,000 new residents, and is one of Australia’s fastest-growing urban areas.

Wave of nostalgia

Increasing levels of Sydney’s urbanisation have continued, threatened the loss of rural landscapes around the town, and awakened a wave of nostalgia. The NSW state government created the Camden Town Conservation Area (2008) based on the mid-20^th century country town that aimed at preserving the town’s integrity and material fabric.

Macarthur Regional Tourist Promotion by Camden and Campbelltown Councils

Posted 19 September 2022

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The memory of the Cowpastures in monuments, memorials and murals.

August 22, 2022January 1, 2023 camdenhistorynotes1 Comment

A landscape of memorials and memories of the Cowpastures.

Many memorials, monuments, historic sites, and other public facilities commemorate, celebrate and just generally remind us about the landscape of the Cowpastures.

In recent decades there has been a nostalgia turn around recovering the memory of the Cowpastures landscape. This is cast in terms of the pioneers and the legacy of the European settlement.

An applique panel on the Cowpastures Heritage Quilt shows Belgenny Farm, which was part of Camden Park Estate. The quilt is hanging on display at the Camden Library (I Willis, 2022)

Memorials and monuments can be controversial in some quarters, especially in the eyes of those interested in Australia’s dark history.

Apart from monuments and memorials to the Cowpastures landscape, the most ubiquitous form of memorialisation across the Macarthur region are war memorials. Most Macarthur regional communities possess a monument of some kind, dating to the early 20^th century commemorating the memory of those killed in action in the First and Second World Wars and the Vietnam War.

The heyday of building monuments in Australia was in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when the new and emerging nation searched for national heroes. These heroes were overwhelmingly blokes – pale males.

Some of the most significant memorials to the Cowpastures landscape are historical sites, the built environment, and cultural heritage. Many of these are scattered across the Cowpastures region dating from the time of European settlement.

Most of the monuments and memorials to the Cowpastures in the local area date from the mid-20th century. Several have been commissioned by developers trying to cast their housing developments in nostalgia for the colonial past. Only one of these memorials was commissioned by women.

The monuments and memorials can be considered part of the public art of the local area and have contributed to the construction of place and community identity.

The memories evoked by the monuments, memorials, murals, historical sites, celebrations, and other items mean different things to different people.

The Cowpastures Landscape

So what exactly has been referred to by the Cowpastures landscape? In this discussion, there are these interpretations:

A set of principles for viewing The Cowpastures landscape

The Cowpastures landscape and seven principles of interpretation:

Utilitarian – the economic benefit – the protection of the cows and the herd
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.
Regulatory – banning of movement into the Cowpastures to protect the cows
The political and philosophical – evils were the true corruptors of the countryside.
Natural history – collecting specimens and describing fauna and flora – Darwin’s visit to Sydney – the curiosity of the early officers.
‘New natures’ – the environmental impact of flooding along the Nepean River and clear felling of trees across the countryside.
Emotional response – how the European viscerally experienced the countryside – sights, smells, hearing – and its expression in words and pictures. (after Karskins 2009, The Colony)

Examples of memory evocation for The Cowpastures

Monuments and memorials

The Cowpastures Heritage Quilt was commissioned by the Camden Quilters Guild commemorating the Cowpastures Bicentenary in 1995.

2. A public artwork called Cowpastures Story in the forecourt of Narellan Library was commissioned by Narellan Rotary Club.

3. A statue of Governor Hunter was commissioned by a land developer at Mount Annan.

Statue of Governor Hunter in the Governors Green Reserve at Mount Annan (I Willis)

4. A collection of bronze cows in the Cowpastures Wild Cattle of the 1790s was commissioned by a land developer at Oran Park.

5. At Harrington Park Lakeside, public artworks memorialise the Cowpastures commissioned by a land developer.

6. At Picton, the Cowpastures mural is completed by a local sculptor and local school children.

The Cowpastures Memorial Bronze mural at Picton (I Willis, 2021)

7. Camden Rotary Pioneer Mural was commissioned by Camden Rotary Club in the mid-20th century and is located adjacent to Camden District Hospital.

Camden Pioneer Mural was commissioned by Camden Rotary Club in the mid-20th century adjacent to Camden Hospital on the Old Hume Highway (I Willis)

8. A different type of memorial is the Cowpasture Bridge at the entry to Camden, spanning the Nepean River.

Information plaque for the 1976 opening of the Cowpasture Bridge located adjacent to the bridge in Argyle Street, Camden (I Willis, 2022)

9. Memorial to the Appin Massacre at Cataract Dam.

10. The Hume and Hovell Monument on the Appin Road celebrates the departure of the Hume and Hovell expedition to Port Phillip Bay in 1824.

11. Parks and reserves, e.g., Rotary Cowpasture Reserve, opened in 1995 By Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair
Governor of NSW, celebrating 100 years of Rotary.

The Camden Rotary Cowpasture Reserve was opened on 19 February 1995 by Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair, Governor of New South Wales. The reserve is located at Lat: -34.053751 and Long: 150.701171. and the address is 10 Argyle Street, Camden. The reserve is on an original land grant within the boundaries of Camden Park Estate from the early 19th century, which was part of the Macarthur family’s colonial pastoral empire. Camden Park Estate was a central part of the Cowpastures district. (I Willis)

12. In Campbelltown’s Mawson Park is a statue of Elizabeth Macquarie. The bronze statue honours the wife of Governor Macquarie, whose maiden name was Campbell, and Campbelltown was named in her honour. The sculpture was created by sculptor Tom Bass in installed in 2006.

The statue of Elizabeth Macquarie in Mawson Park Campbelltown was created by sculptor Tom Bass and installed in 2006.

Cultural Heritage

1. Cowpastures Bicentennial celebrations occurred in 1995 and were a loose arrangement of community events.

Postcard of the Cowpastures Heritage Quilt commissioned and sewed by Camden Quilter’s Guild members in 1955. The quilt is currently on display at Camden Library. (Camden Museum)

2. An art exhibition at the Campbelltown Art Centre in 2016 called With Secrecy and Dispatch commemorates the Appin Massacre’s bicentenary.

3. The Appin Massacre Cultural Landscape, which is the site of the 1816 Appin Massacre, is being considered for listing on the State Heritage Register.

4. Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations Annual Fair and Conference in 2016, called Cowpastures and Beyond, was held in Camden with exciting speakers and attended by various delegates.

*Cowpastures and Beyond Conference* held in Camden in 2016 (CAFHS)

5. An art exhibition at the Campbelltown Arts Centre called ‘They Came by Boat‘ in 2017 highlighted many aspects of the landscape of the Cowpastures and its story.

6. Paintings by various artists, e.g., ‘View in the Cowpasture district 1840-46’ by Robert Marsh Westmacott.

7. Campbelltown-born architect William Hardy Wilson wrote The Cow Pasture Road in 1920, a whimsical fictional account of the sights and sounds along the road from Prospect to the Cow Pastures.

A fictional account of The Cow Pasture Road written by William Hardy Wilson in 1920 with pencil drawings and watercolours. (I Willis, 2022)

8. Macarthur ‘Bulls’ FC is a football team founded in 2021 named after the Wild Cattle of the Cowpastures and has a training facility established at Cawdor in the centre of the former 1803 Cowpasture government reserve.

Historic sites

1. The Cowpasture Road was the original access route to the colonial Cowpastures Reserve in the early 19^th century, starting at Prospect and ending at the Nepean River crossing.

2. The historic site at Belgenny Farm is one of Australia’s earliest European farming complexes in the Cowpastures. The farm was part of the Macarthur family’s Camden Park Estate and is an example of living history.

3. Camden Park House and Garden is the site of John Macarthur’s historic Regency mansion and was part of the Macarthur family’s Camden Park Estate.

A Conrad Martins 1843 watercolour, ‘Camden Park House, Home of John Macarthur (1767-1834)’ (SLNSW)

4. Other colonial properties across the Cowpastures region (in private hands), eg, Denbigh.

5. Indigenous paintings of polled cattle by the Dharawal people in the Bull Cave at Kentlyn

Updated 1 January 2023. Originally posted 22 August 2022.

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A Cowpastures memorial quilt

August 16, 2022August 26, 2022 camdenhistorynotes4 Comments

Camden Country Quilters Guild Cowpastures Heritage 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.

A panel in the Camden Cowpastures Bicentennial Quilt showing a map of the Cowpastures using an applique hanging in the Camden Library (I Willis, 2022)

The Cowpastures Quilt is a fascinating historical document and artefact and tells an interesting story of the district.

The Cowpastures Review stated:

The Cowpastures Heritage Quilt, which is featured on the front page, is unique. It is a product of the Camden Country Quilters Guild. It was unveiled by His Excellency, The Governor of New South Wales, Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair on the 19^th of February 1995, as part of the opening of the Cowpastures Bicentennial. It was given by the Guild to the Camden Council, which has it displayed in the Camden Civic Centre.

Cover of Cowpastures Review displaying the Camden Cowpastures Bicentennial Quilt Issue Vol 1 1995. (I Willis)

The Cowpastures Bicentennial Committee created postcards and notepaper featuring the quilt that was sold at Gledswood Homestead and the Camden Library.

Postcard of Cowpastures Heritage Quilt 1995 (Camden Museum)

Quilts were practical items with social value

Quilts have sentimental or commemorative value and are examples of needlework skills and techniques, and the use of specific fabrics used in their designs.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London states on its website:

As a technique, quilting has been used for a diverse range of objects, from clothing to intricate objects such as pincushions. Along with patchwork, quilting is most often associated with its use for bedding.

Quilting first appeared in England in the 13^th century, reached a peak in the 17^th century and can be traced back to 3000BCE. The word quilt means a ‘bolster or cushion’.

According to the V&A museum, a quilt is usually a bedcover of two layers of fabric with padding or wadding in between held together by lines of stitching based on a pattern or design. Very fine decorative quilts often become family heirlooms and are passed down through generations. In a domestic situation, women made quilts to celebrate ‘life occasions’ like births and weddings.

The V&A states that quilts are often quite large and associated with social events where people share the sewing. In North America quilting was a popular craft amongst Dutch and English settlers and quilts were made as part of marriage dowry for a young woman.

Quilting is often associated with patchwork where the quilt was made of scraps of fabric or ‘extending the life of working clothing’.

Convict women and quilting – The Rajah Quilt

In the National Gallery of Australia is a quilt made in 1841 by convict women transported on the Rajah from Woolwich to Hobart. According to blogger Bernadette, a descendant of one of the women who made the quilt, it is one of the most important textiles in Australia and world history.

The textile is called the Rajah Quilt and was organised as part of the scheme organised by prison reformer Elizabeth Fry’s British Ladies Society for promoting the reformation of female prisoners. The quilt is made up of over 2000 pieces of fabric and it has been described as

a patchwork and appliquéd bed cover or coverlet. It is in pieced medallion or framed style: a popular design style for quilts in the British Isles in the mid 1800’s. There is a central field of white cotton decorated with appliquéd (in broderie perse) chintz birds and floral motifs. This central field is framed by 12 bands or strips of patchwork printed cotton. The quilt is finished at the outer edge by white cotton decorated with appliquéd daisies on three sides and inscription in cross stitch surrounded by floral chintz attached with broderie perse on the fourth…

On the Rajah’s arrival in Hobart, the quilt was presented to the governor’s wife Lady Jane Franklin by the 29 women who sewed it on the voyage to Van Dieman’s Land. Lady Franklin sent the quilt back to England to Elizabeth Fry and then it was lost. It was rediscovered in a Scottish attic and returned to Australia in 1989 and placed in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.

The quilt’s story is one of hope at a time of despair and disempowerment from a group of women hidden in the shadows of history. A type of radical history.

Cowpastures Quilt tells a story

Quilts often told a story and in the V&A collection, there are a number of significant quilts telling Biblical stories, scenes from world events and the 1851 Great Exhibition.

The Cowpasture Quilt tells the story of the Cowpastures on its Bicentenary. The story was represented in the different panels in the quilt created by the Guild members who were part of the project. The quilt’s construction was a community effort and each sewer has their name sewn into the quilt.

Camden Cowpastures Bicentennial Quilt hanging in Camden Library in John Street Camden (I Willis, 2022)

The significance of the individual panels in the quilt was explained by the Cowpastures Review and it stated:

The central pane – the discovery of the Hottentot cow. The left pane – The Aboriginal influence, mining, the map of the ‘Cow Pastures’, representing flora and fauna and the Stonequarry Bridge at Picton. The right panel – St John’s Church, John and Elizabeth Macarthur, Camden Park Estates, Belgenny Farm, Gledswood Homestead and merino sheep and vineyards. The bottom panel – John Street, Camden, including ‘Macaria’ and representations of horticulture venture in the area. Not visible in the photograph in the names of the ‘quilters’ and some surprise ‘first family’ names.

Title panel in Camden Cowpastures Bicentennial Quilt hanging in Camden Library (I Willis, 2022)

Fashion quilting

According to the V&A quilting fell into decline in the early 20^th century under the influence of modernism. It found a revival in the 1960s as part of the hippie culture and the art community and is firmly part of the art space.

Quiltmaking as art

Artist Isis Davis-Marks writes on the Artsy website that

Quilts’ inherent associations with warmth, nostalgia, and community make them particularly appealing now, in the midst of the pandemic and widespread division and inequity. Perhaps this fraught reality can account for, at least in part, why contemporary artists are drawn to quilting as a means to express themselves. The tactility of quilted fabric inevitability conjures domesticity, and every stitch—every precisely placed patchwork—brings us back to that feeling of the comfort and safety of home

Davis-Marks writes that contemporary American artists are engaging with the craft of quilting and building on the ‘enduring and complex history of quiltmaking’. In the US context quilting was practised by slaves, Indigenous Americans and other marginalised peoples as a form of expression and craftwork for the everyday.

An applique panel of the Cowpastures Quilt shows the Regency mansion on Camden Park still estate built in the 1830s. The panel uses figures to tell a narrative about the foundational story of Australia and the Camden district as part of a settler society. The Cowpasture Quilt is on display at Camden Library (I Willis, 2022)

Davis-Marks writes that the ancient craft of quiltmaking has resonance for contemporary artists in the age of social media and illustrates a broader appeal of working with traditional mediums of textiles, ceramics, knitting and other crafts.

In a January 2020 article for Artsy, writer and curator Glenn Adamson reflected “At a time when our collective attention is dangerously adrift,” Adamson wrote, “trapped in the freefall of our social-media feeds and snared in a pit of fake facts, handwork provides a firm anchor. It cannot be spun. It gives us something to believe in.”

Artists are using quilts as a lens to look into the dark history of the past. Sometimes these are called ‘story quilts’ where they tell a story in a narrative and figures. Artist Faith Ringgold‘s work often explores notions of ‘community and ancestry’ and said that she bonded through the experience of jointly sewing quilts with her mother.

The Cowpastures Quilt is a ‘story quilt’ and tells the story of our past as part of a settler society and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. The quilt uses figures and narrative to examine the past through the lens of the women who constructed the quilt in 1995. More than this the Cowpasture quilt is a public statement and an affirmation of community through the collective efforts of local women who undertook the sewing project. The collaborative efforts of the Camden Quilters created a significant piece of public art and a narrative statement of who we are through the use of history.

A panel of the Cowpasture Quilt shows the Henry Kitchen cottage from 1819 still standing today as part of the Belgenny Farm complex which is one of the most important colonial farming complexes still intact in Australia on the former Camden Park estate of the Macarthur family. The quilt is on display at the Camden Library. (I Willis, 2022)

Updated 26 August 2022; originally posted 16 August 2022

Attachment to place · Belonging · Biography · Colonial frontier · Colonialism · Community identity · Cultural Heritage · Cultural icon · Family history · Farming · Gothic · Heritage · Historical Research · History · Landscape · Local History · Local Studies · Myths · Placemaking · Sense of place · Settler colonialism · Settler Society · Stereotypes · Storytelling · Uncategorized · Victorian · Women's history · Women's Writing

A great yarn of the bush from colonial New South Wales

June 1, 2022June 27, 2022 camdenhistorynotes

Preview

Jeff McGill, Rachel. Allen & Unwin 2022, Sydney. ISBN 9781760879983.

Tonight I had the privilege of attending the book launch for local author and raconteur Jeff McGill’s Rachel at Mary Sheil Centre, St Patrick’s College at Campbelltown.

McGill’s Rachel tells the story of Jeff’s great-great-grandmother from the Coonabarabran area of NSW. Rachel Inglis (Kennedy) was known as Rachel of the Warrumbungles.

McGill’s Rachel had been brewing for about 40 years and it was only in the 2020 lockdown when Jeff’s freelance work dried up that he got mobile on writing the book.

A friend advised him to send a couple of chapters to two publishers. He sent the work to Allen and Unwin and a small publisher in Melbourne. Allen & Unwin got back to him in two days and wanted to know if he had more material, so he sent off chapters 3 & 4. The rest is history.

Jeff often visited Rachel Kennedy’s farm at Box Ridge and listened to local storytellers at Coonamble and Coonabarabran. He is the sort of writer who walks the ground and soaks up the ghosts of the past. He allowed the landscape to talk to him and embedded himself in the spirit of place.

Remarkable woman

Rachel Kennedy was quite a woman and the Mudgee Guardian and North West Reporter wrote an extensive obituary in 1930 on her death. It stated in part:

The late Mrs. Inglis was one who rarely gave a thought to herself, her one object in life being to help others. She was always to be found at the bedside of almost every sick person in the Warrumbungle district, and has been known to have ridden as far as 20 miles in the middle of the night to reach some sufferer, even when far from well herself. Considering that all her grand efforts were done in an age when motor cars were unknown, it stamps this fine old pioneer as one of the world’s best — a race that is fast vanishing from our midst. The deceased lady had reached the great age of 85 years. (MG&NWR, 11 April 1930)

Rachel’s obituary was also published in the Gilgandra Weekly and Castlereagh (10 April 1930).

At the time of Rachel’s death, it was usual for the country press to publish any sort of obituary of a woman unless she was white and from an influential rural family. The country press was a very white-male institution.

The obituary published in the Mudgee press was an acknowledgement that Rachel was a true local identity and bush character well known in the area. A rare feat indeed. The bush was a male-dominated landscape where women remained in the shadows.

Rachel did not fit the stereotypical 19th-century woman. Yet, she did not seek recognition for her community work and never received it in any public fashion.

The local community understood Rachel’s contribution to their lives and when she was buried in the Presbyterian section of the Gulargambone Cemetery, it was

in the presence of one of the largest gatherings, ever seen at the cemetery. The Rev. G. Innes Ritter, of Coonamble, performed the last sad rites at the graveside. (MG&NWR, 11 April 1930)

Family History

McGill’s Rachel represents the genealogical genre of family history as it should be written. The book shows how such a story can be approached and can generate an appeal to a wide audience. Others who have achieved this goal include Nick Brodie’s Kin, A Real People’s History of Our Nation, Graeme Davison’s Lost Relations, Fortunes of my Family in Australia’s Golden Age and Peter FitzSimons’s A Simpler Time.

Rachel Inglis’s (Kennedy) family and home at Box Ridge near Coonabarabran in NSW c.1890s (Jeff McGill)

It was very common for women from the rural under-class to disappear into the shadows of history without any acknowledgement of their existence. The lives of some of these women are probably best reflected in stories like Henry Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife (1892), a piece of Australian Gothic fiction. Author Samantha Leersen writes:

‘The Drover’s Wife,’ and the fears felt by its protagonist, presents a fictitious account of the real concerns experienced by settler Australians.

‘The Drovers Wife’ by Russell Drysdale (1945) and the author Henry Lawson 1902 (1867-1922) (UoS)

Rachel’s story has many parallels with Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife.

Female Biography

McGill’s Rachel is another addition to the popular genre of female biography which has seen a number of publications about colonial women in recent times. These include Michelle Scott Tucker’s Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World, Elizabeth Rushen and Perry McIntyre’s Fair Game, Australia’s First Immigrant Women, Larissa Behrendt’s Finding Eliza Power and Colonial Storytelling, Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell’s Searching for Charlotte, The Fascinating Story of Australia’s First Children’s Author, Anne Philp’s Caroline’s Diary, A Woman’s World in Colonial Australia and others.

The cover notes for McGill’s Rachel state:

Rachel Kennedy stood out on a wild frontier dominated by men… her extraordinary and unputdownable pioneering story is told for the first time
‘Just a girl, but when it came to chasing wild horses nobody questioned Rachel Kennedy’s skill in a saddle. What raised the eyebrows was the type of saddle she used: a man’s.
Rachel Kennedy was a colonial folk hero.
She also built rare friendships with Aboriginal people, including a lifelong relationship with her ‘sister’ Mary Jane Cain.
Meticulously researched and written with compelling energy, this is a vivid and at times heartbreaking story of a pioneering woman who left a legacy that went well beyond her lifetime.

Emerging from the shadows of history

The book is a ripping yarn about the colonial frontier and the role of women in early New South Wales. Another woman emerges from the shadows of history and we are allowed to understand their true contribution to the settler story of our nation.

Updated 2 June 2022. Originally posted 1 June 2022.

Agriculture · Attachment to place · Belonging · Cawdor · Cobbitty · Colonial Camden · Colonial frontier · Colonialism · Cowpastures · Cowpastures Estates · Cowpastures Gentry · Cultural Heritage · Denbigh · Economy · Elderslie · England · Harrington Park · History · Kirkham · Landscape · Local Studies · Picton · Place making · Sense of place · Settler colonialism · Urban growth

The Englishmen of the Cowpastures

May 28, 2022 camdenhistorynotes1 Comment

A certain type of Englishman

These Englishmen were also known as the Cowpastures gentry, a pseudo-self-styled-English gentry.

All men – they lived on their estates when they were not involved with their business and political interests in Sydney and elsewhere in the British Empire.

By the late 1820s, this English-style gentry had created a landscape that reminded some of the English countrysides. This was particularly noted by another Englishman, John Hawdon.

There were other types of English folk in the Cowpastures and they included convicts, women, and some freemen.

Estate	Extent (acres)	Gentry (principal)
Abbotsford (at Stonequarry, later Picton)	400 (by 1840 7,000)	George Harper (1821 by grant)
Birling		Robert Lowe
Brownlow Hill (Glendaruel)	2000 (by 1827 3500)	Peter Murdock (1822 by grant) then Alexander McLeay (1827 by purchase)
Camden Park	2000 (by 1820s 28,000)	John Macarthur (1805 by grant, additions by grant and purchase)
Cubbady	500	Gregory Blaxland (1816 by grant)
Denbigh	1100	Charles Hook (1812 by grant) then Rev Thomas Hassall (1828 by purchase)
Elderslie (Ellerslie)	850	John Oxley (1816 by grant) then Francis Irvine (1827 by purchase) then John Hawdon (1828 by lease)
Gledswood (Buckingham)	400	Gabriel Louis Marie Huon de Kerilliam (1810 by grant) then James Chisholm (1816 by purchase)
Glenlee (Eskdale)	3000	William Howe (1818 by grant)
Harrington Park	2000	William Campbell (1816 by grant) then Murdock Campbell, nephew (1827 by inheritance)
Jarvisfield (at Stonequarry, later Picton)	2000	Henry Antill (by grant 1821)
Kenmore	600	John Purcell (1812 by grant)
Kirkham	1000	John Oxley (1815 by grant) then Elizabeth Dumaresq (1858 by purchase)
Macquarie Grove	400	Rowland Hassall (1812 by grant)
Matavai Farm	200	Jonathon Hassall (1815 by grant)
Maryland		Thomas Barker
Narallaring Grange	700	William Hovell (1816 by grant) then Frances Mowatt (1830 by purchase)
Nonorrah		John Dickson
Orielton	1500	Edward Lord (1815 by grant) then John Dickson (1822 by purchase)
Parkhall (at St Marys Towers)	3810	Thomas Mitchell (1834 by purchase)
Pomari Grove (Pomare)	150	Thomas Hassall (1815 by grant)
Raby	3000	Alexander Riley (1816 by grant)
Smeeton (Smeaton)	550	Charles Throsby (1811 by grant)
Stoke Farm	500	Rowland Hassall (1816 by grant)
Vanderville (at The Oaks)	2000	John Wild (1823 by grant)
Wivenhoe (Macquarie Gift)	600	Rev William Cowper (1812 by grant) then Charles Cowper, son (1834 by purchase)

This Charles Kerry Image of St Paul’s Anglican Church at Cobbitty is labelled ‘English Church Cobbitty’. The image is likely to be around the 1890s and re-enforces the notion of Cobbity as an English-style pre-industrial village in the Cowpastures (PHM)

Private villages in the Cowpastures

Village	Founder (estate)	Foundation (Source)
Cobbitty	Thomas Hassall (Pomari)	1828 – Heber Chapel (Mylrea: 28)
Camden	James and William Macarthur (Camden Park)	1840 (Atkinson: Camden)
Elderslie	Charles Campbell (Elderslie)	1840 – failed (Mylrea:35)
Picton (Stonequarry in 1841 renamed Picton in 1845)	Henry Antill (Jarvisfield)	1841 (https://www.aussietowns.com.au/town/picton-nsw#:~:text=Origin%20of%20Name,at%20the%20Battle%20of%20Waterloo.)
Wilton	Thomas Mitchell (Parkhall)	1842 – failed (https://www.towersretreat.org.au/history/park-hall-east-bargo-1841-1860)
The Oaks	Mrs John Wild (Vanderville)	1858 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oaks,_New_South_Wales)
Menangle	James and William Macarthur (Camden Park)	1863 – arrival of railway (https://camdenhistorynotes.com/2014/02/16/menangle-camden-park-estate-village/)

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Making Camden History

February 6, 2022February 6, 2022 camdenhistorynotes3 Comments

A brief historiography of the Camden District

The story of the construction of the history of the Camden area. There are many versions and they are all correct. They all put their own spin on the way they want to tell the Camden story. Some good, some indifferent, some just plain awful.
(Facebook, 23 November 2015)

View of the farm of J. Hassel [Hassall] Esqr. Cow Pastures, New South Wales by Augustus Earle, c. 1825. State Library of NSW PXD 265, f. 2

Tourist history of Camden

The official story of the township as told to tourists is shared in the brochure for a historic walk around the Camden town centre published by Camden Council. It is reflective of the pioneer legend that has pervaded the Camden story and the legitimising narrative that is part of the nation-building story of a settler society. In many ways, it hides as much as it reveals. It states:

The historic town of Camden, less than an hours drive south-west of Sydney, is the cultural heart of a region that enjoys a unique place in our nation’s history.
The earliest developments of the Australian wool, wheat and wine industries are associated with the town following the original land grant from Lord Camden to John Macarthur in 1805.
The town is home to a large number of heritage listed attractions that reflect its strong links with the history of colonial settlement in Australia. Camden is rich in rural heritage with live stock sale yards, vineyards, Equestrian Park and dairy facilities.
The township reveals in its built heritage an interesting and varied range of architectural styles that reflect the town’s evolution from the earliest days of European settlement through to the modern era.
The walking tour brochure portrays Camden’s rich historical and cultural legacy and affords a valuable opportunity to both visitors and the local community to experience the town’s unique character and charm and appreciate some of its history first hand.
(Camden Heritage Walking Tour Brochure)

A similar heritage walking brochure exists for the Narellan area, which tells the story of European settlement of a planned government village that pre-dates Camden. Here there is also silence on many aspects of the past that are yet to be revealed to readers.

This short historiography is one of the few that has been attempted to illustrate the construction of the history of a rural community. One that has been recently published is included in the history of the gold-mining community of Linton in Victoria (2015). The author, Jill Wheeler, examines the broad range of influences that shaped the writing of that community’s history.

This paper should be read in conjunction with the Camden Bibliography, which is a list of published and other sources on the Camden District. It was my first attempt at compiling an authoritative list of sources on the local area and it has been pleasing to note that a host of researchers have found it to be a useful start.

This construction of the story of Camden history can be divided into a number of identifiable stages. Each stage reflects the values and attitudes of those who created the writing of the period, and the social and cultural filters that shaped their version of the story.

The Cowpastures frontier

From the beginning of European settlement in Australia curiosity drew those with an interest in wider issues to the local area. The first expeditionaries were naval and military officers who were trained to observe the landform and surroundings and record the detail in their logs and diaries. While providing a detailed account of their journeys they also recorded their observations and contact with Indigenous people. They recorded their observations of a managed landscape that was regularly burnt by the local Indigenous people. Prominent amongst these were Englishmen Watkin Tench (1790), Governor John Hunter (1795), David Collins (1795), George Bass (1796) and Lachlan Macquarie (1810, 1815, 1820), and Frenchmen Francis Louis Barrallier (1802) and Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1826).

Then there are the letters of settlers like John Hawdon of Elderslie in the 1820s who wrote back to England of his experiences in the Cowpastures and dealing with ‘the government men’. [convicts]

Amongst other writings, there are the reminiscences of Barron Field (1825), Thomas Mitchell (1836) and William Pridden (1843), while there are the journals of colonial women such as those of Annabella Boswell (1848).

Naming landform features gave the new arrivals a legitimacy of possession. For example on Governor King’s excursion to the area, he named the locality the Cowpastures because of the escaped cattle.

Villages and beyond

The earliest records of settlement in the Cowpastures describe the conditions in the villages that were scattered across the area – Cawdor, Cobbitty, Elderslie, Narellan and then later Camden (1840).

The earliest accounts of Camden village, its planning, its establishment and development are carried in the Sydney newspapers – particularly The Sydney Morning Herald. During the 1840s the Camden Clerk of Petty Sessions Charles Tompson was a regular correspondent to the newspaper.

Even by the 1880s the changing nature of the Camden village and the district prompted nostalgia for the pioneering days of the early colonial period. The Camden Times and Camden News printed reminiscences of the town and district of JB Martin in the early 1880s and 1890s and RH Antill in the late 1890s, Richard Todd (1895 and 1896) as well as the stories from Obed West in the 1884 and 1885 in The Sydney Morning Herald. These stressed the progress and development of the town. Martin, the Camden Clerk of Petty Sessions for a period, made the point in his 1883 (Camden Times) reminiscences that the history of several English counties had been written by local history associations and he felt that a similar venture was worthwhile in the Camden district.

Further reminiscences were Thomas Herbert (1909) in the Town and Country Journal and Samuel Hassall’s (1902) In Old Australia and there are the unpublished reminiscences of Camden businessman Samuel Thompson (1905).

Wartime writing

The Boer War, then the First and later the Second World Wars provide a period of reflection for local folk who are away soldiering in foreign lands. They are amongst the first to write about the Camden District as home in nostalgic terms from far away places where they are under traumatic conditions.

These letters were published in the Camden News and during the Second World War the Camden Advertiser. Some have found their way into recent publications particularly on the centenary of the First World War.

John Kerry's view of St Johns Church in 1890s (Camden Images) — John Kerry’s view of St Johns Church in 1890s (Camden Images)

Camden Aesthetic

An important theme in the Camden story is the development of a Camden aesthetic based on romantic notions surrounding the colonial properties of the landed gentry and the landscapes that were created by the Cowpasture patriarchs.

This first appeared in Andrew Garran’s highly successful Picturesque Atlas of Australasia (1886) and portrayed an idyllic English village at Camden surrounded by an ordered farming landscape. The engraving was accompanied by GB Barton’s account of the exploits of John Macarthur and the foundation of the colonial wool industry. This was a narrative that evolved into local and national mythology and was further advanced by Sibella Macarthur Onslow’s Some Early Records of The Macarthurs of Camden (1914), a collection of family papers.

1934 Australian Commemorative Postage Stamp

The legend of John Macarthur gained further momentum in the 1930s on the centenary of John Macarthur’s death in 1934 when Australia was in search of national heroes. He was the subject of stories in the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society (1929) and biographies. His image appeared on a series of postage stamps and later on the new decimal currency in the 1960s. His character was the subject of a novel (1941) and a new Federal electorate of Macarthur (1949) was named after him. In 1960 the Camden community held a four-day celebration of the legend of the John Macarthur and the 150th anniversary of wool production in Australia called the Festival of the Golden Fleece (22-30 October).

The early 20^th century also witnessed a shift in history writing identified by Graeme Davison from ‘pioneer’ to ‘patriarchal’ history writing and the development of the Camden aesthetic was part of that agenda.

There was William Hardy Wilson’s The Cow Pasture Road (1920) and Ure Smith’s watercolours and etchings in his Old Colonial By Ways (1928). Whimsical descriptions of Camden’s Englishness were published in Eldrid Dyer’s ‘Camden, The Charm of an Old Town’ (1926) and articles in The Sydney Morning Herald like ‘The Beauty of Age’ (1934).

The Royal Australian Historical Society published articles on the Camden District in its journal. The first appeared in 1928 on the Cowpastures, Cawdor and Cobbitty, which were followed by the Burragorang Valley (1934), Camden (1935), Narellan (1936), and the Cowpastures again in 1939.

Newcastle based journalist JJ Moloney, a former Menangle resident, published his reminiscences of Early Menangle in 1929. In Camden two local journalists, George Sidman and Arthur Gibson, each separately marked the golden jubilee of the foundation of the Municipality of Camden (1889). Sidman, the owner of the Camden News, published the memoirs of J. B. Martin in a series of newspaper columns. While Gibson, owner of the Camden Advertiser, commissioned James Jervis from the Royal Australian Historical Society to write The Story of Camden.

The end of the Second World War created an air of confidence in the Camden District, which by this stage was prospering from the wealth created by the Burragorang Valley coalfields. In 1948 the newly formed Rotary Club and Camden Community Centre commissioned the University of Sydney to conduct a sociological survey of the town to provide a foundation for ‘future development’. This was followed up in 1952 by an American sociologist from the University of Kansas City, ML ‘Jack’ Mason and his wife Elizabeth ‘Beth’. They surveyed the town and established that there was a five-tier social structure, which had its origins in the colonial period and the Cowpasture patriarchs. Both studies were suppressed from public gaze by vested interests until recent times.

Memorials of loss

As historians Graeme Davison and Gail Griffiths have noted the loss of local icons and ‘loved places’ creates a deep sense of insecurity and a desire by some for the ‘good old days’. The grieving process was triggered in the Camden District community from the loss of Burragorang Valley after the state government decided to build a dam in the 1930s. In the early 1960s, the New South Wales Government closed the Campbelltown to Camden rail link as part of a state-wide rationalisation process.

WW1 Memorial Gates at Macarthur Park (Camden Remembers)

There were five seminal events during this period, firstly, in 1957 the number of teachers from the newly established Camden High School formed the Camden Historical Society and held lectures, conducted field trips and outings.

Secondly, there was the erection of civic monuments celebrating the Burragorang Valley. The first monument, erected in 1962, was the Camden Rotary mural at the southern entrance to the town. The mural has designs celebrating Indigenous culture as well as the area’s farming and mining heritage. The stone for the wall came from the St Paulinos Catholic Church in ‘the Valley’.

Thirdly, a wagon wheel was erected by the Camden Historical Society outside the council chambers in 1977 to celebrate the teamsters who brought silver ore from Yerranderie through ‘the Valley’ to the Camden railhead. A heavy horse-drawn farm wagon was located outside the council chambers in 1978 to memorialise farmer workers and the horse. Each of these monuments recalled the values of the frontier; tenacity, stoicism, ruggedness, individualism, adaptability and Britishness. An 1899 water trough was added to these civic monuments in 1979 celebrating the town’s modernity when the town was connected to reticulated water; a sign of progress and development.

Camden Library Museum in John Street Camden

In 1970 the Camden Historical Society opened a folk museum in a room in the old council chambers encouraged by the Royal Australian Historical Society. The museum used simple displays of local ephemera, artefacts and other collectables supplemented with rudimentary signage to tell the Camden story.

The memorials of loss across the district extended to the numerous war memorials scattered throughout the Camden District that mourned the loss of men who never came home after the Great War. These monuments were added after the Second World War and in recent times with the centenary of the First World War, and have shaped and re-shaped the Camden story in ways that are still hard to identify. Their meaning is a statement of collective memory that is expressed in April and November every year by local communities.

Elsewhere in the district, The Oaks Historical Society was formed in 1979. It has contributed much material to the storytelling of the western part of the Camden District, particularly the Burragorang Valley and the silver mining fields of Yerranderie.

The rural-urban fringe and other threats

The role of loss in the Camden story acquired new meaning after 1973 when there was an identifiable shift in the interpretation and representation of ruralness in Camden. The release in 1973 of The New Cities of Campbelltown Camden Appin Structure Plan as part of the 1968 Sydney Regional Outline Plan triggered a wave of invaders from the city. Urban planners envisaged three regional centres on Sydney’s outskirts at Camden, Campbelltown and Appin with the ambitious idea of stopping the city’s urban sprawl.

These events strengthened the role of the Camden aesthetic. There was the re-making of place centred on the decline of the country town of Camden as the hub of a thriving rural economy to an idealised country town, a country town of the imagination.

Romantic representations of Camden’s rurality, especially St John’s church, became an important part of the contemporary consciousness. They found their way into official council policy and have been used in literature, publications, tourist and business promotions, websites, artwork, music, museum displays and a host of other places. In 1999 Camden Council’s strategic plan Camden 2025 adopted the language and imagery of Camden’s rurality when it outlined ‘the traditional qualities of a rural lifestyle’, ‘the historic nature’ of the area and the ‘unique rural landscapes and vistas’ in a country town atmosphere.

There was also the influence of the national bicentennial celebrations in 1988 and the publication in the same year of Alan Atkinson’s Camden, Farm and Village Life in Early New South Wales (1988) which examined the early decades of the township. The dust jacket used a romantic watercolour (1850s) attributed to Emily Macarthur which looks ‘across Camden Park to the north-west, with St John’s Church and the distant Blue Mountains closing the view’, with the Nepean River flowing across the vista, similar to the 1886 Garran engraving.

This period also the emergence of the local histories of the area written by keen amateurs with the most notable example being John Wrigley, who has put together several publications the first published in 1980 called A History of Camden. The Camden Historical Society started a small journal in 2001 called Camden History, which the society continues to successfully publish specialist local histories for a local audience.

The 21^st century saw the evolution in the Camden story to a new generation of writers, most notable amongst them was this author. My work started with a local wartime study of a women’s voluntary organisation and has extended across a range of local themes including the rural-urban fringe, urban history, place, identity, philanthropy, the wartime homefront and local government. Most recently I have told the Camden story in a publication of a pictorial history of the district.

Cowpastures memorial, Oran Park

November 8, 2021March 7, 2022 camdenhistorynotes2 Comments

A celebration of a landscape of cows at Oran Park

As you wander around the administration-library-shopping precinct at Oran Park, there is a sense of anticipation that you are being watched. If you look around, several bronze bovine statues are guarding the site. They are a representation of the Cowpastures Wild Cattle of the 1790s.

The bronze herd of horned cattle consists of six adult beasts and one calf wandering in a line across the manicured parkland landscape. The bovine art connoisseur can engage with the animals and walk among them to immerse themselves in a recreated moment from the past – a form of living history.

The Cowpastures public art installation at Perich Park in Central Avenue at Oran Park (I Willis, 2017)

The bronze cattle dramatically contrasts with the striking contemporary architecture of the council building across the road. Opening in 2016, the cantilevered glass-boxed and concrete Camden Council administration building was designed by Sydney architects GroupGSA.

This bovine-style art installation is the second memorial to the Cowpastures, the fourth location of European settlement in the New South Wales colony. The artwork is found in Perich Park, named after the family that endowed the community with the open space.

The herd of bronze cows in Perich Park in Central Avenue at Oran Park (I Willis, 2017)

The story of the Cowpastures is told on the storyboard located adjacent to the artwork. It states:

The Wild Cattle of the Cowpastures
There are several versions of this story. There seems to be a consensus that two bulls (one bull calf) and five cows were purchased at the Cape of Good Hope and landed at Sydney Cove with the First Fleet in January 1788. The cattle were black and the mature bull was of the Afikander [sic – Afrikander] breed.
Shortly after the arrival of the First Fleet the two bulls and five cows could not be found and it was not until seven years later in 1795 that a convict reported sighting a herd of cattle in the bush.
Governor Hunter dispatched Henry Hacking to report on the cattle. Hunter resolved to inspect them himself and in November 1795 with a party of mainly Naval officers he found a herd of sixty-one cattle near the Nepean River near what is now known as Menangle.
Governor Hunter named the area The Cowpastures Plains. He wrote ‘They have chosen a beautiful part of the country to graze in…and they may become…a very great advantage resource to this Colony’. They were rather wild and inferior but bred rapidly.
By 1801 the herd had increased naturally to an estimated five or six hundred head. In 1811 they were estimated to be in their thousands.
The bronze cattle here have been kindly donated to the Community by the Perich Family.

Information board for Cowpasture art installation at Perich Park in Central Avenue at Oran Park (I Willis, 2017)

The bronzed-bovines in Perich Park on Central Ave were installed in 2016 to coincide with the opening of the new council building.

The Perich Park art installation is preceded by an earlier artwork that depicted more bovines just up the street. The other animal sculptures were a set of concrete cows that were represented wandering around in a small reserve opposite the Oran Park development sales office in Peter Brock Drive.

The reserve is located between Peter Brock Drive and Moffat Street, and this batch-of-bovines were installed around 2010. The reserve and open space is not designated parkland, and signage indicates that it is destined for housing development.

A concrete cow in the reserve in Moffat Street Oran Park (I Willis, 2010)

A concrete cow in the reserve in Moffat Street at Oran Park (I Willis, 2010)

Placemaking

The use of public art is one approach to placemaking that is employed by urban planners and designers, architects, and others. The authorities responsible for creating the Oran Park community and the new suburbs within it have used public art for placemaking.

What is placemaking?

Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces. Placemaking capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, with the intention of creating public spaces that promote people’s health, happiness, and well-being.

In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts states that creative placemaking.

integrates arts, culture, and design activities into efforts that strengthen communities. Creative placemaking requires partnership across sectors, deeply engages the community, involves artists, designers and culture bearers, and helps to advance local economic, physical, and/or social change, ultimately laying the groundwork for systems change.

Storytelling promotes the concept of place and the process of placemaking. One of those stories is the Cowpastures and the Wild Cattle history from the days of colonial New South Wales.

Understanding the past through storytelling contributes to the construction of community identity and builds resilience in new communities. The cultural heritage of an area is the traditions, ceremonies, stories, events and personalities of a place. There are also dark and hidden stories of the Cowpastures that need telling, such as the frontier violence of the Appin Massacre.

The Cowpasture art installation uses a living history approach to tell the story of the European occupation of the local area that is part of the history of colonialism and the settler society project in New South Wales.

Agricultural heritage · Art · Colonial frontier · Colonialism · Cowpastures · Cultural Heritage · Dharawal · Education · Frontier violence · Heritage · History · Local History · Local Studies · Memorials · Memory · Monuments · Picton · Pioneers · Place making · Public art · Schools · Sculpture · Settler colonialism · Storytelling

Cowpastures Memorial, Picton

November 4, 2021March 7, 2022 camdenhistorynotes2 Comments

The first Cowpasture memorial in the Picton region

The Picton Village Square is the first dedicated memorial in the Picton region to the Cowpastures by local sculptor Joan Brown and local school children. (Council 2019)

The memorial has been placed inconspicuously at the front of the rotunda that is easy to miss as you walk to the shops in Argyle Street from the Davison Lane carpark.

This is only one of three memorials celebrating the Cowpastures in the Macarthur region. The other is located at Perish Park at Oran Park and Harrington Park Lake Reserve.

The Cowpastures Memorial mural by Joan Brown and a number of school children located in the Picton Village Square (IW 2021)

Information plaque

The information plaque, with the wrong date, has an explanation of the Cowpastures story by the artist and reads:

Cowpastures Memorial
This mural commemorates the early history of our land and pristine waterways, from the Dreamtime beginnings, to the 1895 [sic] discovery of the escaped First Fleet wild cattle in this area. These cattle were later destroyed to make way for the pioneering of the district, the introduction of dairy and beef breeds that formed the basis of a wealthy agricultural industry. The spirit of our early setters lives on through the recording of visual history in this beautiful valley.
By Gifted/Talented History Students from Picton, Camden South, and Mawarra Schools.
M Armstrong, E Bristow, T Clipsham, H Eriksson, S Esposito, L Greco, M Gordon, L Harley, L Mulley, K Parker, P Reynolds, E Savage, C Wotton, N Young.
Bronze Sculptor Joan Brown 2012

Information plaque placed below the Cowpastures Memorial mural. Note: the date should be 1795. (IW 2021)

Terry O’Toole reports that after representations to Wollondilly Shire Council, the date error on the plaque above was corrected in February 2022. A new plaque has been placed in position, replacing the old one in the photograph above. (Terry O’Toole. Facebook Messenger, 7 March 2022)

A new plaque was installed in February 2022 by Wollondilly Shire Council after representations from Terry O’Toole (Terry O’Toole 2022)

Sculptor Joan Brown

Sculptor Joan Brown is a fifth-generation member of a ‘local pioneer family’ growing up on her family property of Abbotsford at Picton. She was surrounded by ‘grazing and dairying properties in the valleys of the Razorback Range’.

Joan is ‘passionate about the preservation of the ethos and heritage of the local area’ and has developed an understanding of the local landscape. She has used local landscapes, historic sites and heritage buildings as subjects of her artworks. (Brown 2021)

Joan was part of the community that initiated the Picton Bicentennial Village Square, where the mural is located, and the restoration of St Mark’s Church and Pioneer Cemetery. (Brown 2021)

Joan has an ongoing passion for the ‘preservation and heritage of the local area’, including the ‘unique heritage village’ of Picton. (Brown 2021)

The Cowpastures Memorial mural is located at the front of the rotunda, which is adjacent to Stonequarry Creek at the rear and Davison Lane carpark. Behind the rotunda is the St Mark’s Church cemetery. (I Willis, 2021)

Public art

The Picton Cowpastures Memorial is one part of the public art scene of the Macarthur region. Other public art installations across the area include:

the Camden Rotary Pioneer Mural created by mural artist WA Byram Mansell which depicts colonial New South Wales and the Cowpastures

2. the sculpture park on the campus of Western Sydney University at Campbelltown.

3. The statues of local boys celebrating the St Andrews Boys Home at Leppington are located in the gardens at Emerald Hills Shopping Centre and Belltower Park in Emerald Hills Boulevarde.

4. the Australian Botanic Gardens at Mount Annan

5. Art Installation, Oran Park Library, Oran Park.

7. Forecourt, Narellan Library, Narellan

8. Camden Valley Way Forecourt, Food Plaza, Narellan Town Centre.

9. The Cowpasture Cows, Perich Park, Oran Park

10. Campbelltown Arts Centre

11. The Cowpasture Cows, Harrington Park Lake, Harrington Park.

The Wedding Knot sculpture by Geoff Duggan at the Australian Botanic Gardens Mount Annan (I Willis 2021)

Public art is an essential part of a vibrant community and adds to its cultural, aesthetic and economic vitality. Public art promotes

‘a sense of identity, belonging, attachment, welcoming and openness, and strengthening community identification to place. [It creates] a tangible sense of place and destination’.

The Cowpastures Memorial mural is a visual representation of the dreams and aspirations of its creator.

Principles of public art

Many local government areas have public art. In the Northern Beaches Council LGA, the aims of public art on their coast walks are:

The need for art to be sympathetic to the natural setting and context.
A need and opportunity for Aboriginal heritage to be better integrated along the Coast Walk.
Art was not always seen as physical and permanent with a desire for temporary and activation based experiences that enhanced the Coast Walk.
Views and vistas are important and they should be preserved or enhanced.
A desire for the Coast Walk to be an educational experience.

Supporting these aims are eight fundamental principles, and they are:

Respect and acknowledge Aboriginal cultural heritage
Celebrate and conserve significant natural and cultural values
Connect places and people along the coast
Foster artistic and cultural expression and encourage creative collaboration
Enrich places through high-quality art and design
Interpret the history and significance of the coast
Value artistic and cultural diversity and be inclusive
Create a distinctive and recognisable Northern Beaches Coast Walk identity.

From The Northern Beaches Coast Walk Public Art.

Cowpastures Mural

A metaphor full of meaning

The Picton Cowpastures Memorial is a metaphor for the settler society and represents the past. The artwork depicts four-horned cows of the Cowpastures Wild Cattle grazing on the steep country around the Razorback Range.

The depiction of the Wild Cattle on Dharawal country hints at the arrival of the colonial frontier in the Cowpastures, the fourth locality of European occupation in the New South Wales colony.(Willis 2018) The horned cattle represent the possession of territory by the Europeans and their settler-colonial project.

The landscape illustrated by the mural is devoid of vegetation, hinting at the environmental desolation caused by European occupation and the dispossession of the Dharawal people. The dead tree depicted in the mural landscape is a sad reminder of European exploitation of the natural resources of the Cowpastures and threats to Cumberland Plain Woodland and other ecological types across the Macarthur region.

The story the mural tells is full of meaning with many layers that can be peeled back to reveal many hidden corners in the narrative of the local area. The stark outline of a dead tree might be regarded as a metaphor for the frontier violence of the early colonial period and symbolic of the Appin Massacre, which took place in the Cowpastures in 1816. (Karskens 2015)

References

Brown, J. (2021). “Joan Brown Biography.” The Sculptors Society. Retrieved 2 November 2021 from https://sculptorssociety.com/sculptors/joan-brown/.

Council, W. S. (2019). Historic Picton Walking Tour. Picton NSW, Wollondilly Shire Council.

Karskens, G. (2015). Appin Massacre. Dictionary of Sydney. Sydney NSW, State Library of New South Wales & City of Sydney.

Willis, I. (2018). “The Cowpastures Project.” Camden History Notes https://camdenhistorynotes.com/2018/03/16/the-cowpastures-project/.

Updated 7 March 2022. Originally posted 4 November 2021.

1920s · Architecture · Attachment to place · Camden Park House and Garden · Camden Story · Carpentry · Colonial Camden · Colonial frontier · Colonialism · Cowpastures · Craft · Cultural Heritage · Cultural icon · Economy · Engineering Heritage · Farming · Heritage · History · Industrial Heritage · Lifestyle · Local History · Local Studies · Lost trades · Memory · Modernism · Pioneers · Place making · Ruralism · Sense of place · Settler colonialism · Stereotypes · Storytelling · Traditional Trades

Camden’s carpenters

April 5, 2021April 5, 2021 camdenhistorynotes

A local traditional trade

Carpentry was an essential craft in all communities and has been practised for centuries. In the Camden area, the traditional trade of carpentry as it was practised had a variety of forms. Traditional trades were part of the process of settler colonialism on the colonial frontier in the Cowpastures.

In pre-settlement times, the first form of bush carpentry was practised by the Aborigines. They stripped bark from trees and used it for shelters that kept them from the natural elements and made weapons.

At the time of European settlement, many on the frontier had no formal trades skills and learnt bush carpentry from watching the Aboriginal people or experimenting themselves. The bush carpenter was a practical make-do pioneer who innovated with naturally occurring products from their local environment. They practised sustainability in a period when it was a necessity for their very survival and relied on their ingenuity, adaptability and wit.

A rudimentary vernacular domestic style architecture typical of frontier settlement constructed from available local materials. The farmhouse Illustrated here is the home of V Kill and his family in the Burragorang Valley in 1917 with some intrepid bushwalkers. The cottage is slab construction with a dirt floor and no electricity. The cottage is surrounded by the vegetable garden which is carefully tended by the family. (Camden Images)

Some of the bush carpenter’s spirit and tradition arrived with the early European settlers and owed some of its origins to the English tradition of green woodworking. This traditional practice dates back to the Middle Ages and is linked with coppicing, a traditional form of woodland management. The craftsmen led a solitary existence in the woods and made a host of items from unseasoned green timber, including furniture, tools, fencing, kitchenware and other things.

The bush carpenters were amongst the first in the Camden area to erect building structures. Like other rural areas of Australia, the Camden area’s landscape has been defined by the bush carpenter’s huts and sheds. One example was illustrated in Peter Mylrea’s Camden District (2002), the so-called Government Hut erected at the Cowpastures in 1804.

This view of the Government Hut in the Cowpastures at the Nepean River crossing illustrates the rudimentary form of construction on the colonial frontier in 1804. (State Library of NSW SSV1B / Cowp D / 1)

The early settlers who built these basic shelters did so without the manufactured products of the Industrial Revolution. Either through cost or just a make-do attitude, they built rudimentary vernacular buildings that lasted for decades. In later times settlers’ structures were improved with the introduction of galvanised iron after the 1820s.

There were many examples of huts and farm sheds being erected in other parts of the Camden district, remote from major centres, like the Burragorang Valley. Post-and-rail fencing and a host of other structures put a defining character on the rural landscape. There is still evidence of bush carpentry in and around Camden.

The former farm shed c1900-1910 apply renamed the barn is popular with weddings and other activities at the Camden Community Garden. This farm shed illustrates the rudimentary type of construction practiced as a form of bush carpentry in the local area. (I Willis, 2018)

The bush carpenter’s tool kit usually did not have specialised tools and would have included saws, axes, adze, chisels, augers, hammers, wedges, spade, and other items. Their kit was meant to cope with all the contingencies of the rural frontier that were typical of the remote parts of the Camden district.

The formal trade of carpentry and joinery has a long history going back centuries centred on the guilds. Guilds appeared in England in the Middle Ages, and according to the website London Lives 1690-1800, their purpose was to

defend the interests of the trade, regulate the quality of workmanship and the training of new members, and provide support and welfare for their members.
https://www.londonlives.org/static/Guilds.jsp

In London, they were established by charter and regulated by the City authorities. Guilds in London had considerable political power and were one of the largest charitable institutions in the City. Carpenters were organised in the Carpenter’s Company, one of 12 powerful London guilds. Guilds were a mixture of apprentices, journeymen and master craftsmen, with no women.

In the colony of New South Wales, carpenters were formally trained artisans have examples of their work in colonial mansions of the grand estates and the many local towns and villages across the Camden district. These artisans used milled timber and other manufactured products of the Industrial Revolution that were readily available and that their clients could afford.

Camden’s carpenters were a mixture of journeymen and master craftsmen, who had served their apprenticeship in Camden and elsewhere. John Wrigley’s Historic Buildings of Camden (1983) lists 38 carpenters/builders who worked in Camden between the 1840s and 1980s.

The pre-WW2 tradesmen used hand tools and traditional construction methods, which is evident in any of the town’s older buildings and cottages. Take particular notice when you walk around central Camden of the fine quality of artistry that has stood the test of time from some of these traditional tradesmen.

The hand tools used by the Camden carpenter changed little in centuries of development and refinement. The tool kit of the mid-1800s would have included hammers, chisels, planes, irons, clamps, saws, mallet, pincers, augers and a host of other tools. It would be very recognisable by a 21^st-century tradesman. Master carpenter, Fred Lawton’s tool kit, is on display at the Camden museum (TDR 19/12/11)

A display of hand tools at the Camden Museum. This display illustrates the range of tools that made up the carpenter’s toolkit for his job. Shown here is a range of saws, hammers, augers, planes, adze, and other tools. (2021 KHolmquist)

Hand tools were utilitarian, and some had decorated handles and stocks, particularly those from Germany and British makers. By the early 19^th century, many hand tools were being manufactured in centres like Sheffield, UK, and these would have appeared in the Camden area. Carpenters traditionally supplied their own tools and would mark on their hand tools to clearly identify them. Many of the hand tools became highly specialised, especially for use by cabinet-makers, joiners and wood-turning.

The Camden carpenters listed in the 1904 New South Wales Post Office Directory were JP Bensley, John Franklin, Joseph Packenham and Thomas Thornton, while at Camden Park, there was Harry ‘Herb’ English. According to Herb’s nephew Len English, Herb English was one of a number of generations of the English family who were carpenters in the early years of the 20th century in the Camden area. It was a family tradition for the sons to be apprenticed in the trade to their father and work at Camden Park. This practice followed the training principles of English carpentry guilds under a system of patrimony.

Camden carpenter Herbert English working at Camden Park in the 1920s. This image illustrates the use of hand tools here showing the use of the chisel, mallet, handsaw and square. English is cutting a rebate with the chisel after marking the cut out with his square. He would have supplied his own tools and kept them sharpened at the end of the working day. (Camden Images)

Len English’s grandfather, William John English,e was apprenticed to his father, James, and worked at Camden Park between the 1890s and 1930s. William lived in Luker Street, Elderslie, where he built his house and had his workshop, where Len recalls playing as a lad. William’s son, Jack Edward English, was apprenticed to his father (William) in the family tradition, also worked at Camden Park and later in Camden and Elderslie during the 1930s and 1940s. During this period, Jack and his brother, Sidney, both worked with local Camden builders Mark Jenson and Mel Peat (TDR19/12/11).

Representations of the memory of the Cowpastures

Collective memories

Material culture

Case Studies

1995 Cowpastures Bicentennial

Statue of Governor Hunter

Commemoration of the 1816 Appin Massacre

Appin Massacre Cultural Landscape

Conclusion

Voices of Indigenous Australians

Endnotes

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The private English-style estate village of James and William Macarthur

A fine Gothic-style church

English-style gentry

Transport hub

Progress assured

First local council

Street names

John Street heritage precinct

Volunteerism

Coal mining

Urbanisation

Wave of nostalgia

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A landscape of memorials and memories of the Cowpastures.

The Cowpastures Landscape

A set of principles for viewing The Cowpastures landscape

Examples of memory evocation for The Cowpastures

Monuments and memorials

Cultural Heritage

Historic sites

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Camden Country Quilters Guild Cowpastures Heritage Quilt

Quilts were practical items with social value

Convict women and quilting – The Rajah Quilt

Cowpastures Quilt tells a story

Fashion quilting

Quiltmaking as art

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Preview

Jeff McGill, Rachel. Allen & Unwin 2022, Sydney. ISBN 9781760879983.

Remarkable woman

Family History

Female Biography

Emerging from the shadows of history

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A certain type of Englishman

Private villages in the Cowpastures

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A brief historiography of the Camden District

Tourist history of Camden

The Cowpastures frontier

Villages and beyond

Wartime writing

Camden Aesthetic

Memorials of loss

The rural-urban fringe and other threats

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