If you wander along the John Street heritage precinct, you will come across a quaint monument with a large wagon wheel reminding you of when the horse was king on the Yerranderie Road.
Before, motorised transport teams of between 13 and 16 horses pulled wagons along the Yerranderie Road that were no more than a goat track in places, up and down steep inclines, through bushfires, floods and droughts.
The Teamsters Memorial, an item of public art, is a tribute to the memory of these horses, the men who worked with them, and the district’s industrial and mining heritage.
What was a teamster?
These hard-bitten characters could handle a team of up to 16 horses pulling a wagon loaded with up to 15 tons of ore.
Wikipedia defines a teamster as someone who drives a team, usually of oxen, horses, or mules, pulling a wagon in Australia, sometimes called a bullocky. In 1912, the term carrier was used to describe the teamster.
These men, and they were only men, were skilled horsemen with a tough, dangerous job. Teamsters were out in all weather, working dawn to dusk, and some died on the job.
The Camden teamsters carried ore from the Yerranderie Myall gold & silver fields to the Camden railhead between 1900 and 1925.
At its height, Yerranderie had a population of around 3000 people, with 16 mines extracting silver and lesser amounts of gold and lead. Between 1900 and 1926, over £2 million of silver was extracted from the Yerranderie fields.
Royalty on the Yerranderie Road
In the early days of mining operations, the teamsters were at the height of their reign. They were the royalty of the district and commanded their authority over the mine owners at Yerranderie. Without their services to cart ore from Yerranderie to the Camden railhead, mining operations at Yerranderie stopped.
The teamster would load his wagon at Yerranderie, unload at the top of the Bluff (at Nattai) and go back for another load. On his return to the Bluff, he would reload the remainder and head to the Camden railhead. This process would take about five days.
The horse teams
The horse teams would be between 13 and 16 horses carting a flat-top wagon with a load of 13 to 16 tons of ore.
In 1908, there were 54 horse teams on the Yerranderie Road carting to the Camden railhead.
Bennetts of St Marys NSW built a common flat-top wagon type used by the teamsters.
The going rate for carting ore was £2/ton. (1908) The rate varied little across the years the Yerranderie fields were operational.
The high cost of cartage meant that only the highest grade ore could be sent for refining at Sulphide Corporation at Cockle Creek on Lake Macquarie via the Camden railhead.
Lower-grade ore remained at the Yerranderie mines as waste. Partial treatment of the ore was tried with varying success.
There was a serious attempt by the mine owners to bypass the stranglehold of the teamsters from 1906. The mine owners tried to have the state government build a light tramway to the top of the Bluff and, at one stage, from Thirlmere to Yerranderie (1910). The NSW Government was never really interested in any of these proposals.
In 1904, the idea of using camels to cart ore was floated. The idea did not last long.
The authority of the teamsters started to wane in the pre-war years, and there were moves to unionise and fix cartage rates by the Australian Carrier’s Union (1913)
Others plying the Yerranderie Road
The Yerranderie teamsters were not the only ones plying the Yerranderie Road.
There was a daily mail coach that ran between Camden and Yerranderie. The passenger fare was 12/6 one-way from Yerranderie to Camden (1908), which had come down from a height of 30 shillings.
Bullock teams occasionally appeared on the Yerranderie Road, carting cedar logs extracted from the Kowmung area of the Blue Mountains (1911).
A local ecology
The teamsters and the horse teams supported a local ecology of farmers growing hay, blacksmiths at The Oaks and Camden, breeding horses, wheelwrights, wagon makers, and many others.
The memorial
The memorial has a rear wagon wheel, a front axle and two hubs. These are mounted on a steel frame set in a concrete base. The wheels are timber construction with a steel rim. There are three metal information boards.
Construction was completed by Eric Henderson of Ungarie, formerly a teamster who worked for Cook & Co.
The memorial was opened in 1977 by 95-year-old Mrs Jean McCubbin, the widow of a former teamster.
The memorial was restored in 1995 and 2003.
The mythology of the horse team
The memorial is a wonderful, evocative reminder of times in the district when the horse was king.
In July 1923, the first sod was turned at North Sydney, marking the commencement of the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
When construction started after the speeches and ceremonies, there was the destruction of over 500 houses in the North Sydney area. Neighbourhoods in Waverton and Milsons Point were destroyed.
When the bridge was commissioned in the early 1920s, it was the largest construction project ever undertaken in Australia. It was a bold concept and design and captured the Sydney imagination. It joined two parts of the emerging city and crossed the picturesque Port Jackson waterway.
Historian Peter Spearritt’s The Sydney Harbour Bridge A Lifestates that the idea of linking Dawes Point with the North Shore was first proposed in 1815 by ex-convict and government architect Francis Greenway. The first bridge sketch appeared in 1857 when the NSW Commissioner of Roads and Bridges, WC Bennett, proposed a pontoon. Other ideas included a tunnel under the harbour. Meanwhile, ferries plied between both sides of the harbour carrying millions of passengers yearly.
JE Bradfield
In the 1890s, a Sydney University-educated Queenslander joined the NSW Department of Public Works. He was engineer JE Bradfield. He was an enthusiastic bridge supporter and profoundly impacted the bridge story and the Sydney transport system.
Linking Sydney and North Sydney became political in the 1880s. Between 1880 and 1909, it was the subject of two Royal Commissions and advisory board reports.
Bradfield put his first proposal for a Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1909. After a study trip to North America and England, his ideas were incorporated into the 1922 enabling legislation, theSydney Harbour Bridge Act1922 (NSW), passed by the New South Wales parliament.
In 1922 tenders were invited for both an arch and a cantilever-designed bridge, with English engineering firm Dorman, Long and Co winning the tender for their arch design. The bridge was to cost over £4 million.
Before construction began, hundreds of houses and businesses were demolished. Tenants were evicted while landlords received compensation. Construction started in 1923, and excavations began in 1925.
Nation-building project
There was great public interest during the construction of this nation-building project, with daily updates in the Sydney press and further afield. The construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was the great engineering wonder of its day.
The two arches, one each from either side of the harbour, grew in height and were visible all over Sydney. The arches were eventually joined in 1930. The bridge deck was completed by the end of the following year.
Bridge Opening
The notoriety of the bridge was assured when Francis De Groot, from the New Guard, stole the moment and cut the ribbon with his sword at the official bridge opening in 1932. Just as NSW Premier Jack Lang was going to cut the ribbon de Groot rode through on a borrowed horse and captured all the glory – for that moment, anyway.
At the time and later, the bridge was celebrated in song, poetry, stories, novels, postcards, paintings, photography, cartoons, commemorative booklets, biscuit tins, jigsaws, teapots, coffee cups, salt & pepper shakers, calendars, tea towels, cake icing, construction kits, pamphlets, brochures, newspaper supplements and even a bottle stopper.
The bridge story was recorded by photographers Harold Cazneaux, Henri Mallard and Frank Hurley, while artists Grace Cossington, Ure Smith, and Margaret Preston put a different slant on the story.
Pylon Lookout
Bridge visitors could go up the Pylon Lookout from 1934. A 1950 advertisement proclaimed:
See Sydney from the Harbour Bridge Pylon Lookout. The highlight of a trip to Sydney is your visit to the Pylon Lookout. The Pylon Lookout has dozens of attractions to interest youngsters, school-children, youths and adults. Among the many features are…unusual souvenirs…See ’The Magic Picture’ – only one in the world – amusing, historical… Open every day 9.30am to 6pm.
Few visitors realize the bridge can be crossed on foot in about 20 minutes and that the southeastern pylon is open to the public, rewarding a fairly short climb up a flight of stairs with wonderful, 360-degree views from a viewing platform. I’ve taken many visitors up there, and nobody has yet been less than enthralled.
Once inside the pylon, whether on the way up or down, one can study the fascinating displays showing how and when the bridge was constructed, what life was like for those who built it and what impact the bridge had on life in Sydney.
One of the crazy brave, and illegal activities taken up by young, energetic Sydneysiders as a rite of passage was to climb the bridge at night in the 1960s and 1970s. After scaling the man-proof fence and climbing up the inside on one of the girders, the young adventurers could walk up and along the top of the bridge arch. The result was a magnificent view of the Sydney night-time city skyline. Eventually, the BridgeClimb was opened in 1998, and everyone could legally take in the views.
Specs
One of the most unusual things linked to the harbour bridge is the official unit of measurement – one Sydharb. It is used to measure volume and is equivalent to 500 gigalitres and is the volume of water in Sydney Harbour.
And just for the pedants and the record, the bridge was opened in 1932. It contains 6 million hand-driven rivets. The bridge toll was 6d. for a car, and for a horse and rider 3d.
The bridge is the world’s longest steel arch bridge. It is 1149 metres long, height 141 metres, width 49 metres, 134 metres above sea level and 16 men died during its construction. It took 272,000 litres of paint to give the bridge its first three coats, and the four pylons are only for decoration. (australia.gov.au)
Watch a video on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Video on the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge
Iconic status
The bridge has achieved iconic status and has transcended from being a symbol of Australian nationalism in the 1930s to a Sydney and Australian brand instantly recognisable the world over.
On the Camden Town Centre edges are two white concrete posts with numbers and letters. What are they, and what do the letters mean?
These white concrete posts are mileposts from when the Hume Highway ran up the centre of Camden along Argyle Street. The letters indicate destinations and the numbers are distance in miles. These items are part of Camden’s engineering heritage.
The letters: M is Mittagong, S is Sydney, L is Liverpool, and C is Camden. The distance is a mile: an imperial unit of measure from before the time of metric measurement. The mile here is a statute mile which is 5280 feet or 1.609 km, as opposed to a nautical mile used in air and sea transport and is different.
The English mile
Mileposts dated back to the Roman Empire and were placed alongside the Roman roads. Distances were measured from the city of Rome. The mile originated from the Roman mille passus, or “thousand paces,” which measured 5,000 Roman feet.
The first mileposts along English roads appeared in 1593 and were standardised in England under the reign of Elizabeth I. The English mile was a different length from the Scottish mile and the Irish mile. These measures were not standardised in the British Commonwealth and the US until 1959. (Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1935. https://www.britannica.com/science/mile)
In the colony of New South Wales, the first sandstone milestones were located on the Parramatta, Liverpool and South Head Roads from 1816 on the instructions of Governor Macquarie. Milestones provided accurate reference marks along with the expanding public road system for travellers on coaches. (Crofts and Crofts, 2013)
Macquarie Obelisk
In the colonial period, Governor Macquarie’s Obelisk of Distances was erected in 1818 as the official starting point for all distances in NSW. It was located in what was then the centre of Sydney and is now Macquarie Place. The monument was also ‘a symbolic peg’ as the furthest extent of the British Empire in the early 1800s.
The placement of milestones in colonial NSW set a precedent. They were placed along the left-hand or southern side of the roadway, with the destination facing Sydney. The posts were meant to be seen by travellers coming from either direction to measure their distance from Sydney for the benefit of stagecoach drivers. They also ensured the driver was on the correct road, as many were bush tracks. (Crofts and Crofts, 2013)
Concrete mileposts
The two concrete mileposts in Camden were part of the road improvements by the NSW Department of Main Roads in 1934.
The decision to implement a programme of mileposting followed the first annual conference of state road authorities in February 1934 held in Melbourne. The meeting decided to adopt uniform national procedures for mileposting and road warning signs for roadworks, among other matters. It was felt that uniformity of services would help interstate travellers. (DMR, 1934)
In 1934 the department allocated £134 to the program in the Sydney area. (DMR, 1934)
The DMR Main Roads magazine stated that
In the days before the advent of the motor vehicle, when travel by road was slow and was done on foot, on horseback, or in horse-drawn carriage, few things gave greater service, or were more eagerly looked for, than the mileposts. (DMR, 1934a)
According to the Department of Main Roads, mileposting before 1934 provided signs that gave directions and the distance of important towns. Mileposts had lost their importance to the traveller because the car speedometer gave ‘progressive mileage’ stated a departmental report. (DMR, 1934a)
Road maintenance
Mileposting in 1934 was implemented with one specific aim.
The purpose of the mileposts now is to provide a convenient system of reference marks along the road for the use of those whose responsibility is to maintain the roads in a proper state. (DMR, 1934a)
The stated purpose was for the milepost to be a reference point along the road to give a precise position for any roadwork needed. Information to travellers was only secondary. (DMR, 1934a)
Mileposting to 1934 had been haphazard, with much work generated at a local level and many gaps. Road maintenance was a secondary consideration, with information for travellers paramount. Much work was ‘incomplete’. Groups of mileposts were only based around important towns, sometimes following main roads and sometimes not. (DMR, 1934a)
The 1934 mileposting project was partly triggered by the 1928 classification of all roads in NSW into state highways, trunk roads and ordinary roads.
The 1928 changes saw The Great Southern Road through Camden renamed the Hume Highway in 1928. The 1929 Razorback Deviation shifted the highway to the east, away from the former Great South Road (now Cawdor Road). (DMR, 1934a)
Different types of mileposts were used in 1934 for different purposes. Concrete posts were used in Sydney and country towns like Camden, and timber posts were used elsewhere.
There was a strict protocol for the letters and numbers on the posts, with letters and numbers incised and painted black and distances measured from the post office, sometimes not. Posts were placed on the left-hand side of roadways leading from Sydney or the coast, as they were in colonial times.
Posts were located with a clear view from the roadway of 200 feet with specific instructions on distances from roadways and locations for cuttings and embankments. On bridges, the mileposts were clamped to the handrails.
In mid-1934, the NRMA suggested the mileposts on the different highways should be painted in various colours. (Kiama Reporter and Illawarra Journal, 20 June 1934) The suggestion was not taken up.
One supplier of the concrete mileposts was the Hume Pipe Coy (Aust) Ltd. (Main Roads, August 1938)
Wooden Mileposts
In the Camden area, the Camden Heritage Inventory states there were wooden mileposts along Cawdor Road, formerly The Great South Road. They pre-date the concrete mileposts.
In a 2002 survey for the Heritage Inventory, the three Cawdor Road timber mileposts were intact.
The posts were local hardwood cut by a sawmill in Edward Street in the late 1920s and delivered to The Great South Road (Cawdor Road) site by Camden teamster Les Nixon. (NSWSHI)
In a recent search, I could only locate one intact timber milepost in fairly poor condition.
References
CROFTS, R. & CROFTS, S. 2013. Discovering Australia’s Historical Milemarkers and Boundary Stones, Sydney, Roberts and Sandra Crofts.
DMR 1934. Department of Main Roads Ninth Annual Report for the year ending 30th June 1934. Sydney: NSW Legislative Assembly.
DMR 1934a. The Mileposting on Main Roads. Main Roads, 5.
Updated on 15 August 2023. Originally posted on 13 November 2021 as ‘Capturing the distance of the past’.
Old photographs are a window into a more authentic past
Old photographs of Camden provide an entry to a world that was apparently more authentic than the present. They are a window into a captured moment in the past by local photographers.
Roy Dowle is one of the most important local photographers from Camden’s past, and his collection of glass plates. Trish Hill and Allen Seymour have outlined how The Oaks Historical Society digitized Dowle’s glass plates.
In addition Covid has prompted an increase in nostalgia for the authentic past.
In response to today’s COVID-19 crisis, we are turning to old movies, letter writing and vintage fashion trends more than ever. Nostalgia is a defence mechanism against upheaval.
One way nostalgia for the past can be satisfied is by old photographs.
The viewer of an old photograph is a time traveller into another world and is given a snapshot of a moment frozen in time. The observer has a glimpse of a world before the present.
For the viewer, observing photographs is a form of nostalgia, where they create a romanticized version of the past accompanied by feelings that the present is not quite as good as an earlier period.
Photographs provide a rare glimpse of a particular second in time, which will never again be repeated. This is especially true for events that occurred before the development of television or digital technologies.
According to Peter Mylrea Camden’s most important photographers have included: W Macarthur; JB Mummery; HP Reeves; HT Lock; W Norton; J Donnellan; C Kerry; W Jackson; W Thwaites; CA Sibert; OV Coleman; AE Cash; R Cash; HE Perkins; R Dowle; J Driscoll. (Mylrea 2005)
The photographic work of Roy Dowle has found its way to The Oaks Historical Society and his collection of glass plates negative have been digitized by the society. The following article on the Dowle collection has been written by two members of The Oaks Historical Society.
Digitizing The Roy Dowle Photographic Collection
Trish Hill and Allen Seymour
Roy William Dowle was born in 1893, the first child to Charles and Madeline Dowle (nee Dominish) and his siblings were Frank (1896), Edgar (1898) and Leonard (1904). Charles Dowle purchased their “Collingwood” property in Quarry Road, at The Oaks around the time of Roy’s birth. It is presumed that Roy lived there until his marriage to Emily J Smith in 1915.
Roy & Emily’s home was in Camden at the top of Barsden Street. Roy was a photographer and the Camden News of March 26th, 1914 records that he received an award for photography in the amateur section at the Camden show.
In 1937 he supplied photographs of Camden to the Council for use by the railways in their passenger carriages. Roy worked for Whitemans, and in 1943 he was called on to make a presentation to Charles Whiteman when the latter retired. The Dowle’s also had a holiday home at Erowal Bay – St George’s Basin.
Roy died in 1955, but fortunately, a large number of his glass and film negatives survived. These were donated to the Wollondilly Heritage Centre in 2016 by Roy’s grand-daughter. An index book came with the collection, but unfortunately, a lot of the negatives were not in their original boxes, making identification of the people difficult. The photographs range in age from around 1910 to the 1940s.
The Wollondilly Heritage Centre was successful in obtaining a New South Wales Community Heritage grant in 2019 to digitize the collection which consists of 1100 glass plate negatives and a further 120 plastic film negatives.
There was considerable work in preparing the negatives for digitizing, as they all had to be cleaned and numbered. This was done by volunteers from the centre over several weeks, and they were then transported in batches to Digital Masters at Balgowlah for digitizing. Most were still in excellent condition, and the quality of the scanned images is superb.
Roy photographed a lot of people, with weddings, babies and young children being popular subjects. He also photographed local buildings and houses, views, animals, local events such as parades or sporting events.
Buildings photographed include St Johns church (inside also), Camden Hospital (even inside shots), Camden Inn, Plough & Harrow Hotel, Narellan Hotel, Oakdale wine shop, Maloney’s store, Narellan school, Mt Hunter school, Camden railway station, Camden Milk Depot, Mater Dei and others.
The unveiling of the Mt Hunter war memorial (pictured) was also covered by Roy, along with Mt Hunter School and some beautiful interior shots which show honour boards with photos of local soldiers.
Some really fascinating photos are of children in fancy dress, and two that stand out, are of the same girl dressed firstly as a wedding cake, and then as a lampshade!! A number of the houses have been identified as still being in Camden, and other more easily identified homes include “Edithville” in Mitchell street, the former Methodist parsonage in Menangle Road and Harrington Park house.
Among the groups photographed are St John’s Choir, returned servicemen, cricket teams, football teams, Masonic dinner, the Royal Forrester’s, staff and children from Macquarie House, visiting school teachers and Sunday school groups. One photograph of a group of three male cyclists picnicking may be one of the first selfies, as we believe the centre one is Roy himself, holding a string which runs to the camera. Soldiers were another popular subject, and there are also some women dressed as soldiers. Roy also copied photos. This was done by photographing it, and a lot of the soldier photos have been copied this way.
Some of the views are of Wollongong, Bulli, Burragorang, Douglas Park, Theresa Park, Chellaston Street and some great shots taken from St Johns steeple. There are also numerous flood scenes around Camden. Animals didn’t escape Roy’s camera, and there are shots of cattle, horses, poultry, dogs. Even a camel. Some other remarkable photos are of a shop window display featuring Persil washing powder. Some of these have been dated to 1910.
A lot of the film negatives show his holidays, with some taken at their holiday home, while others are taken whilst on a trip to the north, and scenes have been identified as Cessnock, Dungog, Taree, Kew & Paterson. There are some photos of Warragamba Dam in the very early stages before any concrete was poured, and a magnificent shot of the winding drums of the overhead cableway.
Several of Roy’s photos have already appeared on the Back Page and in numerous publications on local history because his subjects were local and numerous copies of them have survived in private collections.
The scanned photos can be viewed on a computer or in albums at the Wollondilly Heritage Centre & Museum, which opens on Saturdays, Sundays & public holidays.
Check out old photographs from the Roy Dowle Collection at the Wollondilly Heritage Centre Website Click here.
References
Peter Mylrea 2005, ‘Some Photographers of Camden’. Camden History, vol 1, no 10, September.
Updated 12 June 2023. Originally posted on 19 August 2020 as ‘Old Photographs’
Oran Park Raceway was doomed in 2008 to be part of history when it was covered with houses in a new suburb with the same name. It was also the name of a former pastoral property that was part of the story of the settler society within the Cowpastures. The locality is the site of hope and loss for locals and new arrivals.
The suburb of Oran Park is on Sydney’s southwestern urban fringe just east of the history, and picturesque village of Cobbitty, and the relatively new suburb of Harrington Park is to the south.
Oran Park Raceway was a glorious thing
The Oran Park Motor Racing Circuit was located in the southwestern and western part of the original Oran Park pastoral estate. The main Grand Prix circuit was 2.6 km long with a mixture of slow, technical and fast sweeping corners and elevation changes around the track.
The primary circuit was broken into two parts: the south circuit, the original track built in 1962 by the Singer Car Club and consisted of the main straight, pit lane garages and a constant radius of 180-degree turns at the end.
The north circuit was added in 1973 and was an 800-metre figure-8. Apart from the primary racing circuit, there were several subsidiary activities, and they included two dirt circuits, two four-wheel training venues, a skid pan, and a go-kart circuit.
The racing circuit has been used for various motorsport, including club motorkhanas, touring cars, sports sedans, production cars, open-wheelers, motocross and truck racing. In 2008 several organisations used the circuit for driver training, including advanced driving, defensive driving, high performance, and off-road driving.
The track hosted its first Australian Touring Car Championship in 1971, a battle between racing legends Bob Jane and Allan Moffat. The December 2008 V8 Supercar event was the 38th time a championship was held at the track. Sadly for some, the track will go the way of other suburban raceways of the past. It turned into just a passing memory when it closed in 2010.
The Daily Telegraph noted that several other Sydney tracks that have been silenced. They have included Amaroo Park, Warwick Farm, Mt Druitt, Sydney Showground, Liverpool and Westmead speedways. The public relations spokesman for Oran Park, Fred Tsioras, has said that a few notable drivers have raced at the circuit including Kevin Bartlett, Fred Gibson, Ian Luff, Alan Moffat, Peter Brock, Mark Weber, and others.
Innovations introduced at the Oran Park Raceway included night, truck, and NASCAR racing. Tsioras claims the track was a crowd favourite because they could see the entire circuit.
Oran Park Raceway Control Tower
An integral part of the Oran Park Raceway was the control tower. It had offices for the Clerk of the Course, timekeepers, the VIP suite, the press box, and general administration.
In the early days, the facilities at the circuit were pretty basic, including the control tower. The circuit was a glorified paddock, and race organisers held mainly basic club events. The track surface was pretty rough, and there was a make-do attitude among racing enthusiasts.
The control facilities in the early days at the track were very rudimentary. The first control tower used in 1962 by the members of the Singer Car Club, who established the track, was a double-decker bus. Race officials and timekeepers sat in the open air under a canvas awning on the top of the bus at club race meetings.
The Rothmans tobacco company funded a new control tower, built around 1980. The Rothmans company was a major sponsor of motorsports in Australia then. Tobacco sponsorship of motorsports was seen as an efficient marketing strategy to reach boys and young men.
Tobacco & cigarette advertisements were banned on TV and radio in September 1976. While other tobacco advertising was banned from all locally produced print media — this left the only cinema, billboard and sponsorship advertising as the only forms of direct tobacco advertising banned in December 1989.
Motorsport projected an image of style, excitement, thrills and spills that drew men and boys to the sport. Motorsport has been symbolized by bravery, strength, competitiveness, and masculinity. This imagery is still portrayed in motorsport like Formula One racing.
According to Will Hagan, the influence of the tower’s design was the El Caballo Blanco Complex at Narellan, which opened in 1979 and was a major tourist attraction. The control tower, like El Caballo Blanco, was constructed in a Spanish Mission architectural style (or Hollywood Spanish Mission) like the Paramount cinema in Elizabeth Street (1933) or Cooks Garage in Argyle Street (1935) Camden.
The Spanish Mission building style emerged during the Inter-war period (1919-1939). It was characterised by terracotta roof tiles, front loggia, rendering of brickwork and shaped parapets.
The Spanish Mission building style was inspired by the American west coast influences and the relationship between the automobile, rampant consumerism and the romance promoted by the motion pictures from Hollywood.
According to Ian Kirk and Megan Martin from their survey of interwar service stations, the Spanish Mission building style was popular with service stations in the late 1920s and early 1930s, particularly in the Sydney area. Their survey discovered more than 120 original service stations surviving in New South Wales from the interwar years.
Some examples of Interwar garages included the Broadway Garage and Service Station in Bellevue Hill, the former Seymour’s Service Station in Roseville, Malcolm Motors in King Street, Newtown and the Pyrmont Bridge Service Station in Pyrmont. Kirk and Martin have maintained that, unlike the United States, early service stations in Australia were privately owned and did not have to be designed according to an oil company’s in-house style.
Motorsports became popular in the Interwar period and were associated with the glamour and excitement of the cars. The interwar period (1918-1939) is interesting in the history of Australia. It was a time that contrasted the imperial loyalties of the British Empire with the rampant consumerism and industrialisation of American culture and influence.
The interwar period was one in which country towns and the city were increasingly dominated by motor vehicles. It was a time when the fast and new, the exotic and sensual came to shape the style of a new age of modernism and competed with the traditional and conservative, the old and slow, and changes to social and cultural traditions.
There were many motor car brands competing for consumers’ attention, and the aspirations and desires of a new generation were wrapped up in youth, glamour, fantasy, and fun.
This was reflected in the growth of elegant and glamorous car showrooms and the appearance of service stations and garages to serve the increasing number of motor car owners.
In Camden, this period of modernism generated Cooks Garage at the corner of Argyle and Elizabeth Street, not far from the new slick and exciting movie palace, the Paramount Movie Theatre. In central Camden, the Dunk commercial building at 58-60 Argyle Street was a shiny new car showroom displaying Chevrolet motor cars from the USA. Advertisement boasted that the cars were:
Beautiful new Chevrolet is completely new. New arresting beauty of style; new riding comfort and seating; …with more comfort.
The buyer had the choice of car models from commercial roadster to sports roader, tourer, coupe and sedan, which sold for the value price of £345.
In New South Wales, motor vehicles increased from 22,000 in 1920 to over 200,000 in 1938. There was an increasing interest in motorsports in Sydney by enthusiasts of all kinds.
Dreams and development on the raceway site
In 1983 the Oran Park Raceway track was owned by Bill Cleary, and he stated to the Macarthur Advertiser that his family had owned the property for 38 years. In 1976 he put together a proposal to create a sports and recreation centre for the raceway area. The proposal was raised again in 1981 and included a themed entertainment park, an equestrian centre, a dude ranch, a motel, a health and fitness centre, a model farm and cycling, hiking and bridle trails. But it all came to nothing.
The current track was purchased in the mid-1980s by Leppington Pastoral Company (owned by the Perich family) and in 2004, was rezoned for housing. It was estimated at the time that there would be 21,000 houses. Tony Perich stated in 2007 to the Sydney Morning Herald that he planned to build almost one-fifth of the 11,500 dwellings in Oran Park and Turner Road in a joint venture with Landcom. Mr Perich’s company spokesman, Greenfields Development Corporation, stated that the first houses would be on the larger lots.
Oran Park 2008 planned housing development
In 2008 Oran Park is part of the South West Growth Centre area, which is the responsibility of the New South Wales Government’s Growth Centres Commission, which was eventually planned to accommodate 295,000 people by 2031. The Oran Park and Turner Road Development were expected in 2008 to house 33,000 people.
In an area east of the raceway, it is planned that an aged care facility will be developed for elderly and retired citizens with work starting in 2011. The project will consist of independent living villas and apartments, assisted living units, a daycare centre and a high and low-care aged facility with a dementia unit.
In 2008 the raceway made way for 8000 homes to house 35,000 people, complete with the town centre, commercial precinct, and entertainment facilities. It was planned to include primary schools, two high schools, a court, a police station, and a community centre. The suburb, Raceway Hill, was planned to have streets named after the old track.
The colonial history of Oran Park
In the colonial days of early New South Wales, Oran Park was initially made up of two principal land grants, one of 2,000 acres, Harrington Park, granted to William Campbell in 1815 and another to George Molle in 1817, Netherbyes, of 1600 acres which ran between South Creek and the Northern Road. According to John Wrigley, the name Oran Park appears on the pre-1827 map as part of Harrington Park, Campbell’s grant. Campbell arrived on the brig Harrington, in 1803 as a master.
The New South Wales State Heritage Register states that the Oran Park portion was subdivided from the Harrington Park estate in 1829 and acquired by Henry William Johnston in 1852. The Oran Park estate is representative of the layout of a country manor estate, with views afforded to and from the manor over the landscape and to the critical access points of the estate. These were representative of the design philosophies of the time.
Oran Park House was located in a picturesque Arcadian pastoral scene by using the best of European farming practices and produced an English-style landscape of a park, pleasure grounds and gardens. The house was located in a ‘sublime landscape’ with the integration of aspect, orientation, and design, drawing on influences of Scotsman JC Loudon, Englishman Capability Brown and Sydney nurseryman Thomas Shepherd.
Oran Park House
The two-story Georgian-style house was built in c.1857 and is described as having a roof with a simple colonial hipped form, windows with shutters, an added portico and a bridge to the two-story original servant’s wing at the rear. There are detailed cedar joinery and panelling on the interior. The house is located on a knoll creating an imposing composition set amongst landscaped grounds with a panoramic view of the surrounding area.
According to the NSW State Heritage Register, the house is an example of the Summit Model of a homestead sited on a hilltop with the homestead complex. The entrance to Oran Park is on an axis with the house’s southern façade, with a carriage loop with mature plantings in front of the house.
Oran Park house was acquired by Thomas Barker (of Maryland and Orielton), who sold it to Campbelltown grazier Edward Lomas Moore (of Badgally) in 1871. The property was leased and subsequently owned by Atwill George Kendrick, who had a clearing sale on the site in 1900. The house had alterations, possibly under the direction of Leslie Wilkinson (professor of architecture, University of Sydney) in the 1930s.
The Moore family sold the Oran Park House, and land to B Robbins and Mr Smith operated a golf course with trotting facilities. It was sold in 1945 for £28,000; in 1963, 361 acres were purchased by ER Smith and J Hyland, farmers. The homestead and stables were sold in 1969 by John and Peggy Cole and purchased by the Dawson-Damers, members of the English aristocracy. The Dawson-Damers undertook restoration guided by architect Richard Mann. John ‘DD’ Dawson-Damer was an Old Etonian and car collector.
John Dawson-Damer was a prominent motor racing identity and was killed in an accident while driving his Lotus 63 at a race meeting at Goodwood, West Sussex, in 2000. Dawson-Damer was the managing director of Austral Engineering Supplies Pty Ltd and was involved with the International Automobile Federation and the Historic Sports Racing Car Association of New South Wales. Ashley Dawson-Damer, his wife and socialite, was a member of the council of governors of the Opera Australia Capital Fund and a board member of the National Gallery of Australia Foundation.
After her husband’s death, she sold the house, with its historic gardens and 107 hectares of pasture, in 2006 for $19 million to Valad Property Group. The State Heritage Register describes the house and surrounding estate as an outstanding example of the mid-nineteenth-century cultural landscape with a largely intact homestead complex and gardens within an intact rural setting.
Oran Park House was renamed Catherine Park House
Oran Park was renamed Catherine Park House in 2013 by the developers of the new housing release Harrington Estates Pty Ltd (Mac Chronicle 10 Oct 2013). The name change was agreed upon by Camden Council and celebrated Catherine Molle, the wife of George Molle.
In 1815 Molle was allocated a grant of 550 acres which he called Catherine Fields after his wife Catherine Molle, on the northern bank of South Creek opposite his grant of Netherbyres.
In 1816 George Molle was granted Netherbyres, of 1,600 acres (647.5 hectares) which ran between South Creek and the Northern Road on the south bank of South Creek. In 1817 he was granted Molles, Maine, 1550 acres east of the Great South Road.
George Molle was baptized in Mains, Berwickshire, Scotland, on 6 March 1773. George joined the Scots Brigade (94th Regiment) as an ensign and served in Gibraltar, The Cape of Good Hope, India, Egypt and Spain. He was promoted to Colonel and served at Gibraltar before transferring as the Colonel of the 46th Regiment of Foot when ordered to serve in the Colony of New South Wales.
On 20 March 1814, he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, second in command to Governor Macquarie.
George and his wife played an active part in the public life of the colony of New South Wales, patron of the Female Orphan School and a member of the committee for the Civilization, Care and Education of Aborigines.
The suburb of Catherine Park was planned in 2013 to contain 3100 with 9500 residents. (Mac Chronicle 15 Oct 2013)
Oran Park, in recent times
In early 2018 the developer Greenfields and Landcom reported in their newsletter that construction of the new Camden Council Library building is progressing well. A new off-leash dog area was under construction in the new release areas around the new high school. It is the second area developed in the land release.
The newsletter detailed the road construction for Dick Johnson Drive, one of the many roads named after motor-racing greats. The street will connect with The Northern Road in 2019. Works are progressing on the latest release areas around Oran Park Public School and on earthworks associated with Peter Brock Drive. The school opened in 2014 with new staff and students adjacent to Oran Park Podium shopping centre. The shopping centre was opened by New South Wales Premier Mike Baird in late 2014 with 28 speciality shops.
New parkland was opened in a recent release area in 2018, and new traffic lights were operational at Peter Brock Drive and Central Avenue.
A new free monthly 20pp A4 newspaper, the Oran Park Gazette, appeared in the suburb in 2015. It is published by the Flynnko Group based at Glenmore Park. The Gazette started with a circulation of 3500 and is part of a stable of five mastheads distributed across the Western Sydney region.
Camden Council transferred an administrative function to the new office building in 2016. An open day inviting residents to inspect the new facilities was a huge success.
One of the more oversized items in the collection of the Camden Museum is an item that few of the current members are aware of or would know the history. The Percival wagon was located next to Macaria for several decades, the former headquarters of Camden Council.
In 2012 a group of schoolboys got the opportunity to pull it to bits and put it back together again. They did a lot of work but were unable to finish the project. The wagon has been fully restored and conserved and is now located at the Wollondilly Heritage Centre in a new blacksmith’s display.
Bennetts Wagon Works at St Marys
The Percival wagon is likely to have been built at the Bennetts Wagon Works at St Marys, which started in 1858 and eventually closed down in 1958. The Western Plains Cultural Centre at Dubbo states:
Bennett coach and Wagon works were operated by brothers James and George T. Bennett. Their tabletop wagons became famous throughout Australia; they were capable of carrying from 10 to 20 tonnes, and were regarded as the best heavy transport wagons to be bought. They were used in both rural and urban areas.
The Bennett wagon works at St Marys employed around 25 men at the end of the 19th century, with its wagons selling for between £150 to £250. The wagons were usually painted green and red or red and blue, and some had nicknames, like ‘The Maxina’ (in South Creek Park now), ‘King of the Road’, and ‘The Pioneer’.
The Penrith City Regional Library states the Bennett wagons were used by teamsters to haul silver from the Burragorang Valley. In 1904 there were 15 teams of horses and bullocks plying the road between Yerranderie and Camden railhead from the silver field from around 1900 to 1925.
The silver ore was initially forwarded to Germany for smelting, and after the First World War, it went to Port Pirie in South Australia and then Newcastle. The story of the teamsters who worked out the Burragorang is celebrated in a monument outside Macaria in John Street, which was installed in 1977 by the Camden Historical Society.
Wagon finds a home at Camden
The historical society’s wagon was among the last in the Macarthur area. It was around 70 years old when the society purchased it from Sydney Percival of Appin in 1977 using a public fundraising appeal organised by society president Owen Blattman and Dick Nixon for $200. Once the society secured the funds and purchased the wagon, it was restored by retired Camden carpenter Ern Howlett and painted red and blue.
Deidre Percival D’Arcy says:
My father, Norman Dyson Percival, owned the wagon and the property Northampton Dale. He first offered the wagon to Campbellltown & Airds Historical Society where Norman”s brother, Sydney Rawson Percival, was a member. He assisted in the move to Camden Historical Society.
Northampton Dale
The original owner of the society’s wagon was Sydney’s father, Norm Percival, who died in 1942 with the wagon passing to his son. Norm lived on the Northampton Dale property, part of William Broughton 1000 acre grant of Lachlan Vale.
John Percival purchased Northampton Dale when Broughton’s grant was subdivided in 1856 and named it after his home in England. The Percival property was used for horse breeding, beef cattle and later as a dairy farm. During the First World War, the farm was a popular venue with local people for playing tennis. (Anne-Maree Whitaker, Appin, the Story of a Macquarie Town)
Typical of Bennett wagons, the society’s Percival wagon was used to cart wheat at Junee in 1913, while around 1900, it had previously been used to cart chaff from Campbelltown Railway Station to the Cataract Dam construction site.
Wagon at Appin
The wagon was also used to cart coal in Wollongong and around the Percival Appin farm of ‘Northampton Dale’ and the Appin district. The Percival wagon had been restored by the Percivals in 1905 and was fitted with new front wheels and plied for business around with Appin area. The signage along the side of the wagon was ‘EN Percival, Appin’.
The Percival wagon was placed adjacent to Macaria in John Street in 1977 and, by 1992, was a little the worse for wear. A team of society members took to the task with gusto and contributed over 200 hours to the restoration, with Camden Council contributing $600 to the total cost of $1200.
Another decade passed, and the weather and the elements again took their toll on the wagon. Repainting was needed in 2001.
Restoration by Macarthur Anglican School students
In 2012 the Dean of Students at Macarthur Anglican School, Tim Cartwright, suggested that the wagon become a restoration project for the school boys. Cartwright, who had retrained as a teacher, had been a master carpenter in Europe before coming to Australia. The wagon was taken out to the school later that year, and the students completed some work.
Tim Cartwright stated in 2018
When the School took possession of the Wagon, the entire sub structure was affected by white-ant and dry rot. This became evident when the front wheels folded under themselves unable to steer or take their own weight.
A small team of enthusiastic Year 7 and Year 9 boys with no practical carpentry experience gathered every Friday afternoon and sometimes through School holidays, with the intention of renovating and replacing all parts of the Wagon to bring it to a point where it could be used rather than just as a display.
Over the four year period the boys learnt essential Carpentry skills often producing work that demanded great attention to detail and a skill level that would be demanding even for modern practice.
The boys included Adam Ebeling, Jack Jansen, Richard Cartwright, Henry Cartwright Tom Oliver, Daniel Pearce.
The boys took great pride in their work and were always concerned to replicate original parts instead of compromising on easier or more convenient solutions. This project has been rich in learning in many aspects and I am thrilled to have led the boys on this pathway of preserving our local heritage and introducing them to skills they will be able to revisit in years to come.
Restoration and conservation by The Oaks Historical Society
Volunteers at The Oaks Historical Society have completed the wagon’s latest restoration.
Modernism is partially revealed in the architectural style of railway buildings and other infrastructure across Australia. The now-closed Civic Railway Station on the Hamilton-Newcastle branch line is just one example of how this happens in the regional city of Newcastle.
Modernism is a form of architecture which emerged in the first half of the 20th century and became dominant after World War II. It was based upon new technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel and reinforced concrete, and upon a rejection of the traditional neoclassical architecture and Beaux-Arts styles that were popular in the 19th century. (Wikipedia)
The station building is the first Interwar Functionalist railway building in NSW to employ domestic architectural features, demonstrating the NSW Railways experimentation with new styles during the Interwar period. The footbridge is unique as the only known example of this structure constructed on brickpiers. The signal box is unique as the smallest elevated box constructed on the NSW rail system.
The Civic Railway Station and surrounding buildings were built in 1935 in the Interwar Functionalist style using dichromatic and polychromatic brickwork as a simple decorative effect.
The railway station is located between Wickham and Newcastle railway stations.
History
Originally, the station was part of the railway line built between ‘East Maitland’ railway station and ‘Newcastle’.
The line was initially built in 1857-1858 as a link between the government town of East Maitland and the river port at Newcastle.
The Newcastle station was renamed Honeysuckle and Honeysuckle Point near the river port and has several locations.
The large goods yards east of ‘Newcastle’ railway station was constructed in 1858.
The site of Civic Railway Station is significant as it was the former 1857 site of the Newcastle (Honeysuckle) terminus of the Great Northern Railway Line.
Electrification of the Gosford-Newcastle line occurred in 1984, after the Sydney-Gosford section in 1960.
Civic Railway Station was closed in 2014 by the Baird Liberal Government when the line between Hamilton and Newcastle was finally closed after much community dissent.
The Civic Railway Station site is historically significant as the location of the Newcastle terminus station on the Great Northern Railway line (1857), one of the first railway lines in Australia. The station building represents the first attempt to adapt domestic architectural styles for railway purposes. The station buildings and footbridge, are good examples of Inter-War Railway Domestic style in regional NSW.
Civic Railway Station is mainly intact and retains much of its original integrity from 1935, along with the signal box, platform shelter, footbridge and forecourt.
Updated 1 June 2023. Originally posted on 9 July 2017 as ‘Revealing Newcastle modernism at Civic Railway Station’.
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