On the forecourt of the Herbarium at the Australian Botanic Garden is an artwork celebrating the heritage of Indigenous culture.
Artists Susan Grant, Natalie Valiente and Codie Leed Evans developed artwork installed in 2023 after the conceptualisation and design work. The images were sandblasted into the concrete on the Herbarium forecourt. The work was supported by the New South Wales Government.
The artwork Life Blood has been sandblasted into the concrete forecourt of the Herbarium at the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan, NSW (I Willis, 2023)
The artwork celebrates the Cumberland Plains Woodland that once covered the Cowpastures. The work directly connects science, the natural world, and the heritage of the local Indigenous peoples, the Dharawal, Darug, and Gundungurra.
The central concept and motif in the artwork is the eucalyptus tree, which becomes the Life Blood of the Indigenous peoples.
The artists were inspired by looking at a eucalyptus tree under a microscope and viewing the veins in the leaves.
In the work’s development stages, the artists held workshops and information sessions seeking input.
The site of the Australian Botanic Garden was a meeting place for the Indigenous peoples and was considered an appropriate location for the artwork.
Susan Grant writes:
We have a spiritual connection whenever we are in the botanical gardens, which influences our design and artwork, connecting us back to the land.
Reference
Susan Grant and Natalie Valiente 2023, ‘Artwork ‘Life Blood’ at The Australian Botanic Gardens’. Camden History, the Journal of the Camden Historical Society, Vol. 5 no. 5, March, pp. 225-233.
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.
A concrete milepost on the southern end of the Camden Town Centre on the road verge of the former Hume Highway, now the Old Hume Highway. (I Willis, 2021)
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.
Obelisk of Distances in Macquarie Place Sydney was designed by Francis Greenway and built-in 1818 under the orders of Governor Macquarie c1926 (SLNSW)
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)
A concrete milepost on the northern entry to the Camden Town Centre on the roadside verge of the former Hume Highway ran along Argyle Street Camden. (I Willis, 2021)
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.
Specifications and drawings for mileposts as outlined in the Department of Main Roads journal Main Roads (May 1934), where the DMR mileposting project was detailed for all roads in NSW (Main Roads 1934a)
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.
Timber milepost c1927 on the verge of The Great South Road, now Cawdor Road. (2021 I Willis)
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.
This timber milepost c.1929-1934 is located on the former Hume Highway at South Camden, now Remembrance Drive. This milepost is located on the 1929 Hume Highway Razorback deviation that moved the main road from the Great South Road, now Cawdor Road. (I Willis, 2021)
This timber milepost c.1929-1934 is located on the former Hume Highway at South Camden, now Remembrance Drive. This milepost is not on the Wollondilly Shire Council heritage inventory. The milepost is on the roadside verge adjacent to the Camden Valley Inn. (I Willis, 2021)
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’.
Public art as wayfinding, placemaking, memorial and urban development
The story of the Cowpastures is represented in public art across the Macarthur region; one example is found along the Harrington Park Lake walkway.
A pleasant stroll around the lakeside path will bring the walker to a wooded section where there is an art installation with cows hiding under the trees.
The public artwork is a mixture of elements that combine wayfinding, placemaking, memorialisation and urban development in a new suburb.
The artwork installation called Cowpastures was created by artist Jane Cavanough of Artlandish Art and Design in 2001. The signage states ‘The cows represent the history of cattle grazing in this region, formerly known as “The Cowpastures”.
Cavanough has achieved her aim with Cowpastures on the Lakeside Walk, where walkers can engage with the artwork and ponder what the real cows might have looked like over 200 years ago. The artwork has weathered well over the last 20 years and still carries the story created by the artist.
Jane Cavanough’s Cowpastures public art installation on the Harrington Park Lakeside walkway (I Willis, 2021)
<cows pic>
Public art.
The considerations in Cavanough’s Cowpastures parallel the aims of public art in the Northern Beaches LGA. Important considerations for the community and the council along the Northern Beaches Coast Walk were eight principles:
Respect and acknowledge the 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
Public Art refers to a range of artwork and art-based activities that interface with the public, including private ownership property with publicly accessible space and the public domain. Public Art can include sculpture, place-making elements, wall embellishments, art integrated into the design of buildings, artist-designed seating and fencing, paving work, lighting elements and other creative possibilities. Public Art can serve both an aesthetic and functional purpose.
The public domain means public places and/or open spaces that are situated within, vested in or managed by Council, including parks, beaches, bushland, outdoor recreation facilities, streets, laneways, pathways and foreshore promenades and public buildings, facilities or enclosed structures, owned and managed by Council which are physically accessible to the general public. (Council 2019)
Defined as any artistic work or activity designed and created by professional arts practitioners for the public domain, Public Artmay be of a temporary or permanent nature and located in or part of a public open space, building or facility, including façade elements provided by either the public or private sector (not including memorials or plaques).
Public art can….
make art an everyday experience for residents and visitors
take many forms in many different materials and styles, such as lighting, sculpture, performance and artwork
be free-standing work or integrated into the fabric of buildings, streetscapes and outdoor spaces
draw its meaning from or add to the meaning of a particular site or place
Jane Cavanough’s Cowpasture’s public art installation on the Harrington Park Lakeside walkway (I Willis, 2021)
The storyboard
To assist Harrington Park Lakeside walkers in engaging with Cavanough’s Cowpastures artwork, information signage provides an interpretation of the installation. It states:
Cowpastures
In 1788 a herd of 4 long horn cattle and 2 bulls escaped from the Government Farm at Rosehill. [sic] They were found seven years later in 1795 as a herd of 40 in a rich expanse of grassland. Later that same year Governor Hunter surveyed this region and appropriately named it “Cowpastures”. Harrington Park with [sic] the Cowpastures region.
The pastoral industry in Camden began when Governor King granted John Macarthur 2000 acres, which became known as Camden. Further land grants were handed out across the region, including Harrington Park in 1815 to Captain William Douglas Campbell.
The Davies family purchased Harrington Park from the Campbells in 1833. The Rudd family owned the property from 1902/3 to 1944 when it was sold to the Fairfax family.
It operated as a dairy in the 1920s-1930s and then, in 1946, under the Fairfax family’s ownership, it was operated as a poll hereford [sic] stud, nursery and dairy.
Harrington Park-Taylor Woodrow-Fairfax
The storyboard has a supplementary map of the Harrington Park property in the Cowpastures.
The storyboard beside Jane Cavanough’s Cowpatures on the Harrington Park Lakeside walkway (I Willis, 2021)
<info board pic>
Hidden in the past
Cavanaugh’s Cowpastures tells the story of the site and reveals the layers of the past to the viewer. Yet there is more to the story hidden in the shadows. Some of these hidden stories are hinted at, while others are still to be revealed. One example is the violence of the colonial frontier in the Cowpastures as the settler society project unfolded and Europeans took up territory from the Indigenous Dharawal. (Karskens 2015)
At Harrington Park Lakeside Cavanough has taken part in placemaking, wayfinding, memorialisation and urban development with her creation of Cowpastures. She has engaged in telling the cultural heritage and contributed to the construction of place and community identity in a new suburb, directed visitors to discover the stories of Cowpastures from the past in an aesthetic landscape setting, and celebrated the history of the site and the Europeans who farmed the land.
References
Cavanough, J. (2020). ” About Jane Cavanough.” Jane Cavanough Artlandish Art and Design. Retrieved 5 November 2021, from http://janecavanough.com.au/about/.
Council, N. B. (2019). Public Art Policy. Sydney, Northern Beaches Council.
Karskens, G. (2015). Appin Massacre. Dictionary of Sydney. Sydney NSW, State Library of New South Wales & City of Sydney.
One of Sydney city’s hidden places is Macquarie Place, just off Bridge Street. Tucked between Loftus Street and Pitt Street is a little bit of green. Rather dull, hidden from direct sunlight. A little bit tired, a little bit at heel amongst the skyscrapers and traffic congestion. A space in the city for today’s world of financial gurus, hotshots and lawyers.
Macquarie Place with Obelisk c1926 (SLNSW)
Macquarie Place Park is a triangular-shaped space that has seen the city change around over 200 years. Once upon a time, it was an open space for the colonial elite in the elegant part of town next to the Governor’s House precinct, on the high ground above the Tanks Stream.
The New South Wales State Heritage Inventory states
Macquarie Place was the first formally laid out public space in Sydney and thus in Australia. Governor Macquarie was responsible for its formal layout, befitting its important situation at the centre of the colony. The park and the memorials standing in this park outline the development of Sydney since its foundation.
On the harbour side of the park, The City of Sydney states that some of Sydney’s prominent early colonial businessmen held leases. They included Simeon Lord, Thomas Randall, William Chapman, Andrew Thompson and Thomas and Mary Reibey.
The park was formalised when the sandstone obelisk designed by Francis Greenway was erected in 1818. It was to mark Sydney’s first public square and the place from which all roads in New South Wales were to be measured.
The construction of Circular Quay between 1839 and 1847 saw an extension of several streets and took up a portion of the park. The reserve was enlarged in the 1970s when Macquarie Place (street) was closed and incorporated into the park.
Over the years, its position at the centre of its world changed. Government House was moved up to Macquarie Street. By the end of the Victorian period, Macquarie Place was surrounded by government administration and commercial offices of shipping merchants and agents.
In the eyes of many, the fate of Macquarie Place is representative of the changing faces of the city, from a working maritime harbour to part of the 24/7 global financial network which never turns off. The wheeling and dealing of today’s financial houses are reminiscent of the 17th and 18th centuries, which shaped the future of imperial London and the British Empire and appeared around the park in the late 19th century.
Macquarie Place has always had a global feel from those who passed through in the past in the Victorian and early colonial period and the international financial hotshots and hipsters of the present. It has been a transient place for those who occupied it, and the current batch of latte-sipping dealmakers is no different. The space is a site of both continuity and change.
The space was filled with monuments to the commercial pioneers (Mort), relics from the seafaring age (Sirius anchor), and the symbols of the power of colonial administrators. Macquarie Place monuments represent the changing period of the usage of the city and the world.
In 1907 the anchor and cannon from the HMS Sirius (1780-1790) were placed in Macquarie Place. HMS Sirius was one of the naval escorts of the First Fleet in 1788. The anchor was brought to Sydney after HMS Sirius was wrecked at Norfolk Island in 1790. The HMS Sirius was built in 1780-1781 as an Eastern Indian trader and named Berwick of 510 tons. It was purchased by the British Admiralty as a store ship in 1781 and renamed HMS Sirius in 1786. It was armed with 10 canons, carried 160 men and could do 10 knots with a strong wind.
There is the bronze statue of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort. The dedication on the plinth:
A pioneer of Australian resources, a founder of Australian industries, one who established our wool market.
Mort (1816-1878) arrived in Sydney in 1838 with his parents. He was a successful and flamboyant Sydney businessman, auctioneer, mine owner, pastoralist, manufacturer, horticulturalists and churchman. He lived at Darling Point, where he was a keen gardener.
Unveiling Thomas Mort Statue 1887 (Wikimedia)
There is also the 1908 domed toilet building with Edwardian Art Nouveau ironwork and an 1857 cast iron drinking fountain.
The beginning of the Remembrance Driveway from Sydney to Canberra is marked by two plane trees planted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1954.
The New South Wales State Heritage Inventory states:
Macquarie Place is now the oldest town square in Australia. Together with Hyde Park, it is also the oldest urban park in Australia and has been in continuous operation as a public space for at least 195 years.
The park provides a breath of fresh air between the city towers that now enclose it. Today Macquarie Place is a world of cafes frequented by Sydney’s financial gurus who determine the future of Australia. The Victorian edifices to colonial administration are silent, awaiting the wishes of the latest rent-seeking developers.
Camden History Notes 
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