DISCLAIMER:  The information on this page almost certainly does contain

errors.  It is largely of DRAFT quality intended for private study, by

members of a cooperative for the study of the Lachlan/Sydney/Hunter

regions.  If you would like to join this cooperation and/or contribute

information, please contact LachlanHunter at john.mail@ozemail.com.au

or telephone (Sydney) 02 9747 3701.

 

 

 

ABBOTSFORD

 

Werrell Reserve, Abbotsford Point.   Sandstone quarry and various cuttings, and early stone work.  There are good examples of slump structures in the sandstone.  The Great North Road, commenced ca. 1829, left the Parramatta Road and headed north through Five Dock Farm to this point.  Travellers crossed the Parramatta River here by punt to Bedlam Point on the northern side of the river (named from Bedlam Asylum, later Gladesville Mental Hospital).  The punt was operating by 1832.  This crossing point was superseded in 1881 when the Gladesville Bridge was built nearby.

 

The current car park at Abbotsford Point is a former sandstone quarry; and sandstone blocks forming seawalls, and retaining walls atop of cuttings east of the wharf, may all have been locally quarried here from the immediate vicinity.  

 

Discernable from sandstone at this place are three slices of history; very recent, centuries old, and the oldest being of Triassic age.  The most recent is the disintegration of sandstone back to sand, seen to be prominent atop of the sea wall at one place.  Next oldest structures comprise the many pickblow markings, the stone block face lifting pits, and the masonry constructions, as were made presumably by men who worked here on the public works - the making of the Great North Road and the wharf surrounds for the punt that provided crossing of the river to Bedlam Point.  Much older are the Triassic structures which occurred during or shortly after depostion of the sand, before it was lithified to sandstone.  These include cross-bedding, slumping, and several saucer shaped subsidence structure which likely at a level above the main thick sandstone bed with internal slumping.

 

 

Old sandstone work.  The pits on the faces of the blocks were made for

lifting them.  The incision of lower blocks to fit in higher ones, as seen

here, was not often practiced.   Both massive sandstone and finely

cross-laminated sandstone has been used for making the blocks

in the stonework at Abbotsford Point.  The lamination in some

of the blocks is seen to be strongly slump deformed.

 

 

Deformed lamination in sandstone of one of the wall blocks, due to slumping

in the sand soon after deposition.

 

 

Abbotsford wharf postcard pre 1927.  (Broadhurst studio)

 

 

Same view today looking up the river (2007)

 

 

 

Old cutting in Hawkesbury Sandstone at Abbotsford wharf.  The thick sandstone bed, to the left of this view, shows internal slump structures.  In this view a laminated interval near the top is seen to have subsided into the thick sand, forming several

symmetrical basin shaped structures.  This suggests that some event (earth tremor?) may have caused

liquefaction and loss of load-bearing strength.

 

 

Similar structure in Permian strata at Reids Mistake (Swansea).   Photo by Peter Buckley

 

 

Close-up of basinal subsidence structures.   The pickmarks on the stone show that this cutting 

was made by hand, perhaps part of the original 1830s convict road works.

 

 

Portion of seawall, constructed of large sandstone blocks likely quarried right at this Point,

showing an occurrence of unusually strong breakdown of the sandstone back to

sand.  The cause of this is not immediately apparent, and seawall sandstone

is seldom seen to disintegrate this severely.

 

 

 

AGNES BANKS

A sizeable deposit of Pleistocene sand has been quarried by Readymix and other companies for a number of years just south of Agnes Banks on Castlereagh Road, on the eastern side of the Nepean River.  Over 300,000 tpa was being extracted from this area by 1991 with a projected 10-15 years life of operations.   The unit, up to 7m thick, covers approximately 9 square kilometres and is deposited atop of the Tertiary Londonderry Clay formation.  Originally the surface of this sand deposit was a series of east-west trending parallel dunes with and average amplitude of 2.5-3.5m and wavelength of 350m, described by Simonett (1950.  Australian Geographer, 5[8], 3-10; Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 84,71-79).  Although the top of the deposit had undergone had strong aeolian scupturing by westerly winds, the sand itself cannot have carried there by wind, as the deposit has many small lenses and pockets of pebbles thoughout it.  The sand is only poorly crossbedded.  Data on current or channel directions as might help understand how the Agnes Banks Sand was deposited is not known of.  Agnes Bank is opposite the mouth of the Grose River, which may be of some significance.  The uppermost sand is leached white but most of it is 'fresh' orange sand which could hardly be from anywhere other than out of the Blue Mountains.  If it were outwash from the Grose then to have 'crossed' the Nepean that River must in the Pleistocene have been at similar elevation.  If so then a remarkable volume of valley sediment has been moved to sea out of the river valley since that time.

 

[(Not yet seen) Whittle, R. A., 1977.  The nature of the podzols at Agnes Banks, NSW, and the origin of the sands in which they are developed.  Department of Physical Geography.  Macquarie University.  B.A. Hons. Thesis (One copy held in Library, Ref S598.W57).]

 

 

 

AIRLY MOUNTAIN   

 

The Three Hundred Sisters.  "Like islands lost in geological time, or the prows of ships rising above the stony waves, Genowlan Mountain and Mount Airly rise above the flat dry Capertee Valley. They are ships which have carried an amazing variety of plants and animals through to the present day, surviving the worst of aeons of weathering and the withering blast of ice ages. Genowlan Mountain and Mt Airly are majestic mesas that rise to over a 1000 metres from the Capertee Valley. The years have carved the Genowlan mesa into a breathtaking wealth of hundreds of spectacular iron-stone banded pagodas, into gorges and into slot canyons. People make much of the Three Sisters at Katoomba, but on Genowlan one finds the 'Three Hundred Sisters', a host of spectacular rock formations that make it the 'jewel in the Crown' of the Capertee Valley. The names express the area's wonder ... City in the Sky, Valley of the Kings, Hidden Valley, the Great Wall of China. This is a landscape which cannot be beaten by any I have seen in more than 20 years of walking in Australia and overseas."  (Haydn Washington,  National Parks Journal, Oct. 1998, p.20).   [The area is part of the 'Pagoda Country' National Estate listing (Indicative Place No. 18258), and was the northern part of the Gardens of Stone National Park nomination by the Colo Committee, the Colong Foundation and the Federation of Bushwalking Clubs.]

 

The call these conical tips "pagodas", and as seen here they cap joint blocks.  And a

large cleft cave near cliff base shows some carbonate flowstone coatings.

(Photos: Chris Collier.  Bushwalking and canyoning; bushwalk of 5-6 July 2003)

More photos and text of their July bushwalk are found at http://www.gerkinpress.com/Bushwalking/AirlyPlateauJuly2003/indext.html

("We spend an extremely cold night camped in a small clearing off the side of the road to Glen Davis, about 8 km in from Capertee.  Waking to tents covered in ice ...").

 Other "pagodas", Wogan Tops area (Wogan/Capertee divide)

Airly oil shale - From 1883 to about 1913, kerosene shale or torbanite was mined in the vicinity of Airly village.  From 1896 the New South Wales Shale Oil Company developed mines in the Genowlan Creek area to the north of Airly.  

Map showing Airly Mountain and Airly Village, in "The Shale Railways of NSW" by G.H. Eardley

and E.M. Stephens.  Australian Railway Historical Society NSW Division.

 

All the residents and miners of Airly abandonned the place when the mines along the eastern 

face of Airly Mountain closed, and oil shale production was became concentrated

at Newnes and later Glen Davis.  (Photo:  Brian Ayling)

 

 

View from atop Airly Mountain, overlooking area of the old Torbane oil works.  Note the rilled lower slopes.  These more easily eroded sediments are the Permian, including the coal measures with 

the torbanite seam; overlain by cliff-forming Triassic sandstones.  (Photo:  Brian Ayling)

 

Airly gold and diamond diggings - Alluvial gold and diamonds (to be added).  Gold recovery continued into the early 1980s and diamonds have been found sporadically in the same alluvium.  Brian Ayling, investigating industrial heritage remains at Airly found evidence of "mines atop Mount Airly, evidenced by low rock embankments and at least one unprotected mine shaft ... I have thus far been able to find any information about these workings!"  Ayling was investigating shale mining relics at Airly whereas any remains on the mountain top would likely be from gold prospecting.  Brian is a technican surveyor and analyst programmer living in the Blue Mountains - whose main interest is railways history.    

ALLANDALE

 

Quarry on  a basaltic plug.

 

 

 

APPIN

 

Appin Colliery.  Large underground coal mine.  

 

Quarry in shale lens in Hawkesbury Sandstone.  Owner J.E. Burke.  Extracted 4.978 tonnes in 1990/91.

 

 

 

ARCADIA

 

Arcadia Road - Small early clay pit and brick kiln site.  [Lot 1 or Lot 14?].  See under "Galston".

 

 

 

ASHFIELD  

 

Green's brickpit. 

 

 

This square building complex is over the suspected site of W.R. Green's 1841 brickpit, possibly

the earliest know Inner West brickpit.  It is just southeast of  Ashfield railway station.

 

Located west of Murrell Street.  Bricks were being made at Ashfield in or before 1841.  This is known from a land sale near Ashfield station, advertised in The Australian on 23/7/1841, which remarked that there were plenty of building materials at hand and that "Mr. Green, on the adjoining property, is already brick making there".  This would have been Mr William Richard Green who had built the Ashfield Cottage Inn on Liverpool Road about where Murrell Street is now.  The area also had an orchard once.  In advertising land at Murrell's Orchard in 1882(?), the Richardson & Wrench company described it as being at Ashfield Station, bordered by Murrell Street and Orchard Crescent and one minute from the station ("such a chance will never occur again in getting land so near such a Railway Station as Ashfield".  It is West of Murrell Street and south of Orchard Crescent (streets since modified, with street continuity extended north from Holden Street across Liverpool Road).  In this area, north of Liverpool Road, East of Holden Street (and west of Murrell Street) there used to be, behind the shops along Liverpool Road, a low steep drop which the young boys of Ashfield had worn deep billycart ruts down the face of.  This place, which existed up into the 1950s, was thought by some older inhabitants to perhaps been the remaining side of an old clay pit.  That is unlikely, however, as still earlier air photos and records show that the whole area was even before then once built over (and has been entirely redeveloped at least once).  Thus the area in the ?1950s may have been temporarily clear awainting some next intended development?   It was used for a time as a rough games area, then still later on for vehicle parking, and finally the new road went through there and it was again entirely built over as above.  If there ever was a clay pit area it is likely one of the earliest for making brick, and further land tenement research (or building excavation records) might provide more detail.   An old kiln and a well occurred on the northern side of the railway line.  Some historians have associated this kiln with the making of the railway line (post 1850) although there seems to be extremely little known of it.  Perhaps it was there before the railway line and is where Green's bricks were made?

 

On the opposite side of Liverpool Road was another large open space behind shops.  This later became the present Ashfield shopping mall, and in the car parking space excavation for below that there was revealed some quite good white clay seams in the weathered Ashfield Shale, perhaps of such quality as would have been of interest to potters if hand picked.   Further excavation in this area is planned for more civic centre development, perhaps in 2008.

 

Ashfield old kiln site (at immediate northeastern side of current railway precinct).

 

 

A well and an "Old brick kiln", of about house area size, along with a well, existed at about

the northern end of the overpass structure built over the railway tracks, or maybe just a

little east of there.  This is recorded on an 1857 railway plan, the kiln already then

marked as 'old'.  This could fit with being the kiln of Green's early brickmaking

 activities, although others think it might have been used in connection with

the building of the railway line and associated structures.

 

An old State Railways map of Ashfield railway station for 1857 depicts on land just north of the station an "Old brick kiln" and also a well just to the south of the kiln.   Some consider that the early station buildings at Ashfield may have been made with bricks from that kiln.  At that time, with the line constructed west as far as Homebush, Ashfield was the only station to have a stationmaster's house and may have been a key location for the line's construction.  The railway from Sydney to Parramatta was commenced in 1850 and William Randle was chief contractor for the eastern end.   The railway would use hundreds of thousands of bricks for its stations, culverts, viaducts, bridges and retaining walls.  By 1854 work had commenced on one of the main elevated valley crossings needing to be constructed, the Long Cove Viaduct.  Some 250,000 bricks were assembled at Long Cove Creek alone to build the viaduct.  Randle opened quarries and commenced brickworks to supply the need for construction materials.   Where material was brought from to use in the kiln at Ashfield station is unknown.  Local historians have thought that the kiln near the station was William Randle's.  Why Ashfield station area would have been selected to build a kiln is not known.  If William Randle have been behind it then a more logical place for a kiln might have been at the Lane Cove Viaduct over Long Cove Creek, since this was the point where many bricks would only have to be transported to after manufacture, if made elsewhere.

 

Seen subsequent to the above is a mention in Preston (1980, p.49.): "Brick kilns, a feature of the areas for some years, were listed as being 83 ft from the line behind the up platform in Wood Street".   Wood Street is the street perpendicular to the line, at right in photo above.

 

New Street, "Ashfield Shaft" sunk for Sydney Water.   On the west side of Queen Street, just north of New Street, a 25m deep large diameter shaft was sunk in 2007 down to the century or so sewerage tunnel (Western Branch Main Sewer), in order to drop in to the tunnel the distal end of a new Liverpool to Ashfield pipeline.  

 

Ashfield Brick Co., Whitfield Avenue - This was adjacent to Whitfield Avenue, entered via Yabsley Avenue off Milton Street.  It is the site of the present W.H. Wagener oval.  Construction commenced 1912 and production in 1913.  It ceased production in 1959 and the pit was filled with household rubbish from both the Canterbury and Ashfield Council areas during the period 1960-1966.  In 2003 a stormwater pit in the reserve was emitting ammonia odours from the leachate.  The owner, Canterbury Council also had the pit fill evaluated for methane gas production capability (13 boreholes detected only negligible methane).  In 2004 two 30m deep holes were drilled to facilitate gas and leachate sampling and monitoring (beginning 2004 ca. 7,500 litres per day of leachate was been collected, and removed from the site at a cost of ca. $300,000 per year). 

 

Ashbury Hill brickworks (Peace Park) - The once well-known Ashbury/Canterbury Brick Pit in Trevenor Street, Ashbury. This  was one of the last Ashfield area brickworks to be demolished and some residents did endeavoured to save the most heritage-worthy portions of it, especially the kilns located near Tevanor Street, but ultimately without success.

 

 

And the kilns came tumbling down - Demolition commenced.  Jenny Hall and the late Mrs Blisset in front of the rubble.

Mrs Blisset was a strong factor in a local campaign for the retaining the site's heritage.  ( Photo courtesy of Jennie Hall)

Had there been any chance of the brickpit here remaining open (which there was not) this would also have been a logical type locality for the Ashfield Shale. 

This is the highest hill in the Ashfield area, topped by a water tower.   The corners of three early properties originally granted in the 1790s met at this crest.   The South Ashfield Brick and Tile Company operated the South Ashfield Brickworks (also later called the Ashbury Brickyard) here, excavating a large quarry into the side of the hill.  The Company was incorporated in 1910 and set out to manufacture and sell "brick tiles, drain pipe and all kinds of pottery ware".   The seven intial subscribers, who each took up one share were:

• W. J. Loudon
• H. E. Pratten
• H. G. Spencer
• George Holland (builder
• C. H. Crammond (estate agent)
• David Abel (plumber)
• David Aiken (solicitor)

In 1924 the Suburban Land and Investment Co (who purchased the property in 1911) began selling off strips of land along King, Holden and the eastern end of Goodlet Street's to three builders.  It is most probably this team who erected the houses that now front onto these streets around Peace Park.   Just prior to the purchase of the works property by Brickworks Ltd in 1938, two young boys, Charles Dunn and his brother William aged nine and six, who lived nearby in Holden Street, drowned in the pool at the bottom of the unused pit.

The disused brickyard was eventually bought by the NSW Government in 1978 and 15 years later Peace Park, which features a ceremonial paved area flanked by trees symbolising international peace and goodwill, was opened.   

The date brick production ceased is unknown, however, the quarry was still providing shale to the company's works at Burwood in 1965. The disused brickpit was purchased by the NSW Government in 1978 for use as open space.

The surviving single stack and kiln were demolished in 1987 by Canterbury Council and the site was later named Peace Park  in recognition of the International Year of Peace.  More  could have have been done to retain brickworks heritage as the local group had urged but this was not to be so.  Very little of the actual remains of the kilns finally remained.  At the kiln site there was laid a new "ceremonial paved area" declaredly to 'pay tribute to the site's previous history of brick manufacture' but arguably retaining some original fabric of the kiln would have been a better tribute that imported pavers from elsewhere.   Trees, noted as features symbolic of peace in both Eastern and Western cultures, were planted by students of Canterbury Girls High School during 1992.  Peace Park was declared officially open during 1993 - South Ashfield Brickworks R.I.P.    From the top of a rotunda towards the upper limit of the park, near the water tower, good vistas over the surrounding suburbs can be had.

 

ASQUITH 

 

Quarries east of Asquith are on opposite sides of Spring Gully Creek and are possibly on the same or similar horizon.

 

Baldwin Road - Terra cotta clay extracted by Turramurra Industries, commencing 1972.

 

Queens Road - Quarry at a shale lens in Hawkesbury Sandstone, operated by PGH Ceramics mainly for brickclay but some stoneware clay also obtained.

 

Chelmsford Road - Quarry at a shale lens in Hawkesbury Sandstone, operated by Satchell and Linigen, and later by Turramurra Industries.  

 

Lodge Street - The present "Storey Park" used to be a brickpit and former pottery kiln site.  

 

 

 

AUBURN 

 

In 1905 the Auburn Brick, Tile and Pottery Company was set up in Princes Road, taking over the business of the Duck River Brickworks. The new company pressured the railway department for a railway to Regents Park, particularly since it wanted a line to allow better access to markets.  Initially successful, the company went out of business in September 1935.

 

Other works included Mashman's pottery, on Parramatta Road, near Hampstead Street, in 1914.

 

The Clyde Brick Company was incorporated on 12 January 1911 and operated on a site bounded by Beaconsfield, Newton and Carnarvon streets.

 

 

 

AWABA 

 

Coal mining and exploration.   See also entry under Toronto.  Exploration reports for around the Awaba State Coal Mine and Newstan Colliery holding are indexed under 'Awaba' at State Archives (CR/85/2153, CD/80/0841, CR/82/0840, CR/81/0839, CR/81/0838, CR/80/0837, CR/81/0836, CR/81/0835).  

 

 

BADGERYS CREEK

 

Martin Road.  Bringelly Shale quarry.  Boral Bricks.  The amount extracted in 1990/91 was 62,520 tonnes and the reserve then remaining was 10.5 Mt.

 

Elizabeth Drive.  Silcrete.  Silcrete masses, some quite large, are seen just east of Badgerys Creek where the main road crosses it.   Some have been formerly dug up and are in a garden.   One boulder size rounded clast is in the road cutting in ironstone gravel.  This boulder has circular impact marks on its surface.

 

 

The boulder of silcrete that was in ironstone gravel at the road cutting face was,

in August 2008, pulled up to onto the bank top, to relative safety, as there

 was some concern that it might be lost in further roadside grading work.

(Photo:  Tessa Corkill)

 

 

Boulder in situ in face, some months before moving it, and before the fresh edge

re-grading seen above was done.

 

Elizabeth Drive (north from).  Clay and shale quarrying area of 17 Mt reserve.  Extraction ceased at the original pit and later on the area was converted to a major waste disposal burial area, with near areas opened further  northwards.  Extracted material may be partially sold but is largely re-used for waste coverage.  Pacific Waste Management acquited the site around the time of major clay-shale extraction cessation.

 

 

 

BALMAIN

 

 

Balmain was the site of the first deep coal mine (of very limited success and ultimately unpayable), significant commercial production of coal measures methane (during WWII), and the first drilling attempt to go well below the coal measures to probe Permian marine strata for hydrocarbon reservoirs (not successful in finding anything).

 

 

Birthday Shaft headframe, 1940s  

 

Balmain coal mine -  

 

The surface works were just north of Birchgrove Primary School, located in an area that is now the Hopetoun Quays townhouse complex (eastern end of Gow Street, Birchgrove).   From the bottom of the shaft, a decline led down extract from a leasehold block of coal situated under the harbour between Ballast Point and Goat Island.

The mine was at first known as the Sydney Harbour Colliery.  It started operations in 1897 and closed at the Depression, 1931.  Gas was produced from the site until 1945.  Ten people lost their lives in these operations.  The property was sold in 1955 and the shafts filled in and sealed two years later.

 

This mine was the deepest ever worked in Australia and later on it was also used to produced methane gas.  

In 1890-1891 the Sydney and Port Hacking Coal Company bored at Cremorne and at 2 800 feet reached a 10 foot seam of coal.  At this point the seam was cindered by a sill or dyke.  A second bore put down in 1892-1893, also at Cremorne, reached the seam and a lease to mine under Sydney Harbour was granted in 1898.  That was the year the "Mr Eternity" (Arthur Stace) later recorded that he went to work with a coal mine, i.e. presumably gained work with the Balmain company (he is famous for having, for 37 years following the Great Depression, walked the streets of Sydney chalking the word "Eternity"). 

It took several years to sink to the coal measures.  The sinking of the first shaft, named the Birthday Shaft, started in June 1897 and and coal was struck at a depth of 2880 feet on the 21st November, 1901.  This and the second shaft, the Jubilee Shaft, were both 18 feet in diameter and fully lined.  They used over four million bricks.  On 17 March 1990, during the sinking of the Birthday Shaft, as the team of six workers were being lowered in the bucket, it snagged on the side of the shaft and tipped over, spilling out the men.  One managed to hang on but five fell 400 feet to their deaths at the shaft bottom.   As a result of this occurrence, the Mining Act was amended to provide that there must be guide rails in shafts to prevent bucket swinging or overturning.

Unfortunately the coal struck at 2800 ft was not a good ten foot seam as the drill had found at Cremorne nearby.   Instead, at this point it was split into several thin seams, the largest being only 2 feet 4 inches.  This was a great disapointment to the English company, which lost faith in the property.  The largely English owned company was 'sold' or reconstructed as a NSW company in 1903.

A decision was made to head towards the successful Cremorne bore in the expectation that the split seams should join. The situation did improve in that direction, the coal increasing to a seam 6 foot thick in places, and an average of 4 foot 6 inches thick.   A ‘longwall’ method of mining was commenced, instead of bord and pillar.  For had bord and pillar method been employed at depth of 2880 feet some 90% of the coal is needed to remain in order to support such overburden.   A long, continuous face was advanced extracting all of the coal, and the roof allowed to fall behind.  The access roads were kept open with stone pack walls gained by ‘brushing’ the low roof.  With such a thin seam much stone would have had to be removed anyway, so that the roof was high enough in the access road to allow passage of men, horses and coal.  Such conditions are very onerous and the cash flow was insuffienct to sustain the operations.  It was hot, dusty and gassy. The roof tended to break away and the floor heaved up. Coal being worked on the face broke away unevenly.  The dust could not be laid by water spray because the humidity would have been unbearable at the working temperatures of over 90°F.   By 1908 coal was being mined under Simmons Point, Balmain.  After a brief shut-down in 1909 the mine workings began to extend to under Goat Island.   The ventilation needed urgent upgrading, and extracting the coal was increasingly uneconomic. The mine was forced to shut down in 1915.

A new company was formed and recommenced mining in 1924 but was hardly any more successful in making a profit.   Workings extended further under the harbour, and by the end of the twenties had reached Balls Head.  With continuing financial difficulties, the mine was was reorganised in 1928 on a tribute basis with the miners becoming contractors.  The miners, operating as the Balmain Coal Contracting Company Ltd, agreed to supply the new company with coal at a certain price. There was opposition from the Miners Federation in the other coalfields at the use of such contracts.  Continuing industrial and financial troubles caused the Sydney Collieries Ltd to go into liquidation in February 1931.

One of the miners recorded in 1924: - "When we step on the cage to go into this living tomb, we do not know but that the day may be our last.  Much of our risk could be remedied, but profits stand in the way.  A few yards from the shaft bottom we have several minutes to get our eyes accustomed to the dungeon-like darkness of our surroundings.  Then we start in single file - a stream of men, about 70 in number. The dust begins to rise from under our feet and we are in a cloud due to horse refuse and stone dust.  There's no side-stepping the foulness of it.  After the best part of an hour's walk under beautiful Sydney Harbour we reach, in a half-dazed state, the coal face.  Dripping with perspiration we began to get our drapery off.  ’By gee, Scotty,' a mate of mine will say, 'She's hot – a regular furnace.'   The work on this longwall face is so dangerous a man is always on his guard. Broken roof is the most awkward feature of this particular job.  This means that it is always broken in the face. Every miner knows how much more this difficulty adds to his work of cutting coal.  Apart from watch your life and limbs, the miner has to see that none of this stone get in among his coal. If it does you are treated as not trustworthy and rewarded with the boot."

"All my family were Balmain born and bred. We lived near the coal mine. The house was converted into flats and we had two or three coal mining families that lived in the house. When the Depression came, they couldn't pay their rent, so they were living rent free. They promised to pay if they ever got work, but there was only one that ever came back and paid my mother any money " (memories in a Colgate Palmolive book, perhaps of Peter Waterman who started work there as an office boy aged 15, in 1936.  Colgate Palmolive was at Colgate Avenue, Balmain).  

In 1932 the Natural Gas & Oil Corporation Ltd issued a prospectus which stated that it expected to find gas or oil if a bore was put down a further 3000-4000 feet below the bottom of the mine shafts.  This plan proceeded, and as two men were preparing to install the drilling rig at the bottom of the mine, or getting it started, in January 1933, a methane explosion occurred.   The men were fatally burned, dying in hospital.  Because of this, the drilling rig was set up on the surface.  By 1937 it had reached 4937 feet (1480m) from the surface but no reservoir of gas was found.  

During WWII gas was drawn off from the mine from 1942, compressed, and sold as an industrial and motor fuel.  In the peak year, 1944, over 11 million cubic feet of gas was drawn from the mine.   After the war, in April 1945, it was decided to seal the Birthday shaft but in testing the gas it ignited, killing the company manager and two men, and injuring two others.   Natural Gas and Oil Exploration did little at the site after 1950 and had it for sale.

The property was sold in 1955 to Grascos Cooperative Ltd.  Each shaft was totally filled with fly ash from White Bay Power Station and concrete seals were placed on the shaft heads in 1957.

 

REFERENCE:

 

Sayers, P. and Bashford, A., 1988.  The Sydney Harbour Colliery, Balmain.  AusIMM Mineral Heritage Seminar, 2nd.  Sydney.  pp. 37-42.

 

 

 

BANKSIA

 

 

Chinese market garden at 212 West Botany Street.  (Photo: by Sally)

 

Low lying land near Riverine Park at Banksia, prior to reclamation, was swampland along the western shore of Botany Bay.  This is one of the last few Chinese market garden areas left in Sydney.  It was first worked by Sun Kuong-War, Lee How and Sin Hop Sing in 1892.  It is now owned by the Department of Planning but is still being cultivated by Chinese people.   Despite enormous surrounding change and an ever-growing international airport nearby, this site has been in continuous use for market gardening for over a century.

 

 

 

BATHURST (REGIONAL listing)

 

Abercrombie Caves, Caves Road, Abercrombie River 
Australian Fossil & Mineral Museum, Howick Street, Bathurst 
Bald Hill Mine, Warry's Road, Hill End 
Copperhannia Nature Reserve, Colo Road, Trunkey Creek 
Cow Flat Copper Mine, 737 Cow Flat Road, Cow Flat 
Devil's Marbles, 2396 Ophir Road, Rock Forest 
Fernbrook Marble Quarry, 369 Mount Horrible Road, Limekilns 
Golden Gully and Archway, Tambaroora Road, Hill End 
Granite Escarpment, 1846 Ophir Road, Rock Forest 
Hill End Historic Site, Hill End 
Limekilns Roasting Pit, Mount Horrible Road, Limekilns 
Little Oaky Mine Remnants, Sofala Road, Wattle Flat 
Mine Shaft, Heritage Lands, Wattle Flat 
Rockley Marble Quarry, Lachlan Road, Caloola 
Sofala Diggings, Upper Turon Road, Sofala 
Sofala Dredging Monument, Denison Street, Sofala 
Solitary Mine, Heritage Lands, Wattle Flat 
Sunny Corner Mine, Austral Street, Sunny Corner 
The Lagoon at The Lagoon 
Trunkey Creek Gold Diggings, Via Fire Trail off Trunkey Creek Road, Trunkey Creek 
Wallaby Rocks, 557 Hill End Road, Sofala 
Wambool Nature Reserve, Timber Ridge Road, Wambool 
Wimburndale Nature Reserve, Wimburndale Dam Road, Napoleon Reef 
Woolpack, Granite Outcrop, Brucedale, Peel 

Aphabetical listing from Bathurst Regional Council ( www.bathurst.nsw.gov.au ) as at May 2009.

 

This list is of those sites investigated as part of the Bathurst Regional Heritage Study 2007.  Council intends to undertake an Archaeological Management Plan (AMP), for the region, commencing later in 2009, and this will potentially add other things of interest.

 

 

BAULKAM HILLS

 

Burton's Quarry  -  Quarry in NW corner of Portion 152, Parish of Field of Mars.  Close to the Windsor Road and accessed via the road to the Rifle Range.  Sandstone quarry 200 feet long, 50 feet wide and 40 feet deep.  Originally commenced on hardened and prismatised sandstone adjacent to a basalt ?dyke.  Dyke strikes 030 degrees magnetic, and dips steeply east.  It is less that 3 ft thick.  The prismatisation of the sandstone occurred only on the eastern side of the dyke.  Prismatisation is restricted to certain beds of the sandstone.  (Ref: Mine Record MR 39867; formerly Mine Record 4200; formerly GS1960/086 "Northmead metal and sand quarry", by C.L. Adamson on 20/1/1960.)

 

 

 

BEECROFT

 

Large dyke exposed in railway cutting near Beecroft station.

 

 

 

BIG HOLE

 

( Deua National Park, east of Gundillion Cemetery )

 

    

 

The Big Hole - This was seen in 1832 by Thomas Mitchell who wrote concerning it:  "But still further southward and on the range separating the country at the head of the Shoalhaven river from the ravines on the coast, I was shown an antre vast which, for aught I know, may involve in its recesses more of the wild and wonderful than any of the deserts idle which I have since explored.  - Vast subsidence on a mountain there - A part of the surface of that elevated country had subsided, carrying trees along with it to the depth of about 400 yards, and left a yawning opening about 300 yards wide resembling a gigantic quarry, at the bottom of which the sunken trees continued to grow. In the eastern side of the bottom of this subsidence a large opening extended under the rock and seemed to lead to a subterraneous cavity of great dimensions"  (THREE EXPEDITIONS INTO THE INTERIOR OF EASTERN AUSTRALIA.  Vol. 2.).

 

The remarkable Big Hole lies in the Berlang section of Deua National Park. It is thought to have formed when the overlying Devonian sandstone collapsed into a subterranean limestone cavern, creating a chasm some 96 m deep and 50 m wide.   Big Hole is thought to be an exampe of "subject karst", karst developed in limestone or other soluble rock underlying other rock formations that are far less soluble.

 

 

Enlargement showing trees at base   (Photo: J. Evans ) 

 

 

 

 

BENTS BASIN

 

Tertiary sand.   Well consolidated clayey sand with faint crossbedding, and weak ?lateritic weathering restricted to red brown mottling, occurs 200m downstream from Bents Basin.  

 

 

 

BEROWRA HEIGHTS

 

Currawong Road - In 1948 Geoff Scarrott discovered fossil footprints of a labyrinthodont in his sandstone flagging quarry near Currawong Road.  Also of interest nearby are aboriginal carvings at the southern side of the junction of Currawong Road with Berowra Waters Road.  Also, somewhere along Berowra Waters in 1942 blasting uncovered a fossil fish.  (Local information - The Berowra Valley Regional Park Trust had undertaken to identify all geological features, in its draft plan of management, "All significant geological and landscape features in the Park will be identified ..." [Plan Reference 4.1, Table 6], however the progress on this is unknown and the NSW government dissolved the trust on 30th June 2004.  This priority remains in the adopted plan of management, now administered by NPWS.).

 

The precise precise location where a fossil fish was found on Berowra Waters Road has not been learned of but it was apparently found after blasting to prepare a place for blocking the road in case of feared Japanese invasion from the north.  At about that same time, in the year 1942, a small tunnel was driven above the Woy Woy end portal of the Woy Woy tunnel to be packed with explosives to blow the tunnel and stop the Japanese dead in their tracks - viz.  http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/locations/woywoyrailtunnel.htm (there described as only a suspected demolition tunnel but since confirmed via Australian War Memorial records as definitely such).  

 

Perhaps the fish-yielding works at Berowra were in the nature of a tunnel driven under the road?   Demolitions works which were begun in 1942 to protect Sydney from advance from a landing on the south coast included both small tunnels for explosives above railway tunnel and under a major roadway.  Exposives were apparently placed in at leas one under-road tunnel, and wired for detonation, whereas the railways demolition tunnels apparently never had their explosives placed in them.  By 1943, with the American/Australia onslaught on the Japanese advance, such precautions were discontinued.

 

It is locally assumed that the works at Berowra may have been in the lower portion of the road close to some of the overhanging cliffs which explosion might have been able to bring down.

 

In an article by P. Willis, 1997 "Sydney Fossil Treasures", Nature, Vol 25, No 11, pp 28-29 there was further information on fossils in the
area, and the Australian Museum might hold further information on the fossils.    The museum has the original set of slabs bearing the labrynthodont footprints from Scarrott's quarry and palaeontologist H. O. Fletcher wrote up the discovery of them in the Australian Museum Magazine (1948, Vol. 13, pp. 247-251).   Part of the collection was loaned to the Newcastle Regional Museum in the 1980s. 

 

Mr Bob Salt of Hornsby Conservation Society Inc. has written on the local geology, in the 2001 "Guide to the Berowra Valley Regional Park", in turn quoting from Mick Joffe's 1992 "Yarns and Photos, Old Berowra" and "Hornsby to the Hawkesbury Sandstone".

 

No futher work on the aim 'to identify all geological features' is thought to have taken place since the Minister dissolved the Trust in 2004.

 

This aim (part of the formulated management plan) is very praiseworthy and should now fall under the aegis of NPWS.   However, with subsequent cuts to that Service's budget and looming 30% reduction to its middle management personnel, there is no further action anticipated soon on the matter.

 

 

 

BLACKTOWN

 

Richmond Road.  Shale quarry.  PGH.  Discontinued.

 

Richmond Road.  Shale quarry and brickworks.  State Brickworks.  Discontinued.

 

 

 

BLAKEHURST

 

Columnar sandstone.

 

 

BONDI

 

Ben Buckler point.  Diatreme, possible small plug (just offshore), dyke and columnar altered sandstone.

 

 

 

BOTANY BAY

 

Old Pumping Station - Off Ross Smith Avenue.  This pumping station ran from 1859 till 1886 and was for that time the major water supply for the expanding city of Sydney.  A stream east of the mouth of Cooks River,  Mill Stream, was dammed by Simeon Lord in 1815 to drive a water powered mill.  Lord established the first privately run woollen mill on the banks of Mill Stream.  A short distance away, he also built a flour mill. The two ponds he created are known as the Mill Pond and the Engine Pond.  Lord established Australia`s first worsted woollen mill, driven by two water wheels on the stream and a wool scouring and wool manufacturing industry.  The flour mill, with an undershot wheel, was later erected nearer the edge of the Botany/Lachlan swamp. The flour mill operated until 1847 and the woollen mill until 1855.    In 1855, 75 acres of Simeon Lord's land was resumed, including the Mill Pond. The new pumping station for this water supply scheme was located on the western side of the Blackwater Creek, near Simeon Lord`s old flour mill which was demolished in 1857 to make way for the new building project.  The Pumping Station was in operation by November 1859 and in its first year (1860) it pumped 326,008,080 gallons of water through the 30 inch mains to the Crown St Reservoir. Additional embankments were built through the Lachlan Swamps to increase storage capacity and the Lachlan Embankment paralleling Randwick (Alison) Road was built. The Engine Pond Dam was raised and strengthened during 1873-74 and the water level raised a further 6ft 6 inches. 

 

A period of torrential rain in 1874 destroyed No`s 1,2,4 and 5 dams in the Botany Swamps.  These were repaired and rebuilt to a higher level, to give, by mid-1875, an estimated total of 464 million gallons storage. In addition, 7 dams were built in the Lachlan Swamps Reserve to improve supply to the Busby`s Bore; these dams are now the ornamental lakes of Centennial Park.  During this decade, additional pumping capacity was provided by the opening of the Crown Street Pumping Station, the new Woollahra Reservoir was built and the Bunnerong Dam was built across Long Swamp to augment supply to the Botany reserve. This dam was subsequently reclaimed and levelled in 1930`s and beca,e the site of the Bunnerong Naval Stores and Migrant Hostel.  The maximum amount of water pumped from Botany to the city of Sydney was in 1886, when it was 1,864,123,400 gallons.  This was also  the year in which supplementary water from Prospect Reservoir was supplied to Botany by Hudson`s Emergency Scheme.  In 1888, water was provided through a direct pipeline from the Upper Nepean system into the Crown Street Reservoir and the Botany Scheme was progressively relieved.  The pumping station intake was from the Engine Pond which had been built earlier by convicts, in1838.  Even after the Nepean scheme took over the job of supplying Sydney's water, the fires at Botany were kept banked in case of emergency. the Pumping Station was kept in full working order until 1893.  Finally, in 1896, the machinery and boilers were dismantled and sold at auction.  Randwick Council states "Most of the Botany pumping station was dismantled in 1896 although the stump of the chimney stack still remains" ( http://www.randwick.nsw.gov.au/default.php?id=72 ).  However, Engineers Australia (pers. comm.) believes the building still stood and was in use during WWII, and was probably demolished in 1950.  The extensions to Kingsford Smith Airport between 1947 and 1954 is what caused the old pumping station to be reduced to a ruin. General Holmes Drive was built through the former Engine Pond and Mill Pond and a new weir was built across the Mill Pond.  The chimney of the pumping station was used as a ventilation stack for the Southern and Western Outfall Sewers system from 1916 until 1949.  The upper portion was removed at some unknown time in the late 1940s because it was considered a possible hazard to aircraft as the airport activity increased.   The Botany/Lachlan Swamps are now the premises of the Lakes Golf Club, and are also known as Eastlakes.   Little subsurface study of the Mill Pond and upstream golf course areas has been made.  There could be structural remains of dams subsurface dating back possibly to the early 1800s. There are some overgrown  brick lined spillways in the lower reach of the system.

 

A hypabyssal syenite has been recorded from a drill hole immediately north of Botany Bay (otherwise syenite is prominent at the Gib near Bowral).

 

Peat, Quaternary, intersected in boreholes.

 

 

 

BOW WOW GORGE

 

( For more on Bow Wow Gorge see under MULBRING )

 

An article describing Bow Wow and a visit there is in the Greta and Branxton Gazette of Saturday 31 May 1890.  Some extracts: "With the Scientific at Bow Wow:  On Saturday morning last a number of members of the Maitland Scientific Society ... met at the Post Office, West Maitland .. and proceeded to West Maitland, where they were joined by Mr. David, Geological Surveyor, Mr. Dunn, a gentleman in the same department, and the Rev. J. Lamont.  The party were well equipped with bags for carrying trophies ...".   For three hours they journeyed on.  Mr. David was full of information.  And it was a wonderful tale he had to tell.  How that long, long ages ago immense forests, that never dreamt or axe or saw mill, existed all the way from Richmond River down to Illawarra.  They existed for ages.  Their weight gradually pressed them down, to below sealevel.  They became the bottom of the ocean.  Shellfish mulitplied and died, and left their shells; fishes swam above, who died and the lime of their bodies sank to the bottom.  The immense forest is now the Greta Coal Seam, 450 feet deep at Maitland, 4000 feet deep at Newcastle and 8000 feet under Sydney.  All this David told the party as they went along (who took notes and sent to the newspaper is not recorded).  He told how the temperature of the earth increases one degree every 50 feet and the interior of the earth therefore must be a molten mass.  Volcanic action at Lochinvar had risen through the Greta Seam, breaking it in two and thus revealing its existence.  By and bye (sic) the road got bad and the party alighted to proceed on foot and ease the horses.  The notes of the bell bird were heard.  A carpet snake 7 feet 9 inches long was met with sunning itself on the road.  The snake was hit on the head and put into spirits to add to the collections of the Maitland Scientific Society.  Eventually the party left the road and struck off through the bush along a creek dense with ferns and lichens, tall trees, decaying wood covered with moss, and immense vines.  A pause was made to boil the kettle and make tea.  Already here fossil shells were being found in sandstone by members of the party.  It is what the geologists call the 'Upper Marine Bed' [the article mentions spirifer, productus, encrinite plates and coral]..... A little 'Geeko' lizard hiding under one of the stones was also captured.  A much harder stone which was an erratic and had very much older shells (?Devonian quartzite) was also discovered and it was mused if that had been carried there by a 'glazier' (sic) and iceberg.  But time flew.  Before starting for home, Mr Butterworth conveyed to Mr. David the thanks of the Society for the manner in which he had led the excursion, and called for three cheers which were most lustily given.  Mr David, in responding, said what he had done had been a service of great pleasure.  Three and a half hours later the gas lights of East Maitland were discerned through the tall trees."  (The Maitland Scientific Society referred to is perhaps the same as the Maitland Scientific and Historical Research Society which is mentioned by D.F. Branagan in "Words, Actions, People: 150 Years of Scientific Societies in Australia.  Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol. 104, pts. 3-4, pp. 123-141.  1973.)    

 

 

 

BOWRAL

 

(34.5°S, 150.4°E)

 

Bowral brickworks - A long established brickworks.  The quarry works the Ashfield Shale and visitors from the South Australian Museum are understood to have found a fossil fish there (from local inform, 2007, pertaining to 'some years ago').

 

Anslow's Marbles & Terrazo -  The details of this "Bowral" 1960s/70s enterprise are unknown but it is believed to have operated a quarry somewhere, with headquarters in Bowral.

 

Oxley Hill basalt quarry - First operated previously by O'Neill Brothers, the Beaumont's crushing plant was moved to here in 1963, closer to Bowral (Pt. Por. 361, Parish Berrima).   The quarry was in steady production during the 1960s, e.g. 80 tons per day roadbase and 150 tons per day of better stone as aggregate.   In 1967 a Ready Mix concrete plant was proposed for the site.  It is not known if this was built or not (although Ready Mix does today have one address as "Oxley Hill Road, Bowral, Contact 48611266".   Bitumen pre-coating of aggregate was also trialled.   By 1969 crushing capacity was up to 300 tons per day.   The operation was offered for sale in 1979 and bought by Hi Quality Quarries.   (Mine Record 5035).   Despite the Bowral area being rich in building stone the first house on Oxley Hill, "Wingecarribee", the home of the Oxley family, was entirely pre-fabricated and shipped from England in 1865.

 

Mt Gibraltar tunnel and cuttings - Ashfield Shale or Mittagong Formation.  Remains of a labryinthodont and some fossil fish where recovered during the railway works.  The strata there have since been obscured by 'shotcreting'.   A volcanic neck is also close by.

 

Mt Gibraltar  microsyenite ("trachyte") intrusion - This has been a very important intrusion for quarrying.   It consists of rock that takes a good polish and became popular as a decorative building stone, especially in Sydney.  It was also used as kerbing stones, and less often as flagging stones.   Unfortunately, when last checked for, the file of mine records (1939-1977) by various mines inspectors (Department of Mines, MR 4050) for Mount Gibraltar had gone missing.   Another lesser scope report (GS 1940/052) by I. Jones is also missing.  Also missing is the mine record for Gosford Quarries Pty Ltd operations at Bowral (MR 3874)(Bowral, Ph Mittagong Lot 17, Co Camden)..

 

The syenite underlies a triangular shaped area with its apex pointing north (see mines department map below).   This irregular shape for an intrusion, and the lack of any surrounding coal measures or Narrabeen Group strata along the straight western and southern sides of the outscrop area early suggested that these sides are fault scarps.

 

Both the Gibraltar Microsyenite and the Gingenbullen Dolerite, a sill at Mt Gingenbullen near Moss Vale, were emplaced during the second of three major phases of igneous activity that affected the southern Sydney Basin and they are K/Ar dated at 178 Ma and 172 Ma respectively.  The Gingenbullen Dolerite records two opposed components of magnetization, above 100 °C.  The lower blocking temperature component (between 150 and 400 °C) and is of normal polarity and is believed to be  related to the initial opening of the Tasman Sea at about ninety million years ago.  The higher blocking temperature component ( 450-580 °C) is of reverse polarity.  There is no evidence of this reversal in the Gibraltar Microsyenite, showing that this intrustion had solidified and cooled before the reversal took place.  (REF:  D. N. Thomas , D.N., A. J. Biggin, A.J. and P. W. Schmidt, P.W., 2002.   A palaeomagnetic study of Jurassic intrusives from southern New South Wales: further evidence for a pre-Cenozoic dipole low.  Geophysical Journal International, vol. 140, issue 3, pp. 621 - 635).

 

 

 

 

Bowral trachyte quarrying locations.   Actual quarry faces are the arcs shown near letters.  

(Compiled by M. Scotland, Wingecarribee Shire Council, and used in a June 2000

"Assessment for Historical Significance" by the Design & Project Team.)

[NB: This map faces east, north being to the left.]

 

Strong interest in the stone began rather late, in the 1880s.   In 1886, T.R. Dunwoodie, who some regard as the principal father of Bowral trachyte quarrying, saw samples of the stone that a Mr Leggat had sent to Sydney for assessment.  Dunwoodie went to Bowral to help Leggat & Co. establish "The Gibraltar Rock Quarries" which began operations on Eli Beer’s paddock.   The Government Geologist, C.S. Wilkinson, reported in 1888 (Annual Report of the Department of Mines) that a visit to the site showed that very little quarrying had actually been carried on by 1888, stone to that time having been got from breaking up boulders of the rock.  Wilkinson's notes state:

 

"""""

Very little actual quarrying or excavation has as yet been carried on, for the large solid masses lying loose upon the surface have afforded good material ready to hand for cutting up...The stone cleaves with a straight clean fracture in any direction when skilfully struck and consequently may be readily shaped into rectangular blocks of all sizes down to cubes for street-paving... When its durability and other important qualities become more widely known there will be an increasing demand for it, especially for the construction of works subject to severe exposure, such as piers and retaining walls in sea-water; also for kerbing, door-steps, pillars, &c…

 

Loveridge and Hudson became the main quarrying company at Bowal.  Thomas Loveridge lived in Lynthorpe, Gladstone Road, Bowral and his daughter Dorothy became Lady Hoskins, wife of Sir Cecil Hoskins.   In regard to the mining and construction industries this is an interesting connection.  Sir Cecil Hoskins was knighted for services to industry.  His company Hoskins Iron and Steel Co Ltd, became in 1928 Australian Iron and Steel Co Ltd, and in 1935 merged with The Broken Hill Proprietary Co Ltd (now Bluescope Steel). He also pegged out the limestone quarry at South Marulan which is used as a basis for Southern Portland Cement (now Blue Circle Southern Cement Ltd).  He was also a director of Southern Portland Cement. His sons Donald and Kenneth set up the Southern Limestone Co at Moss Vale. Donald was also an executive in Blue Metal Industries which amalgamated with Melocco Brothers.

 

In 1888 Loveridge and Hudsons took over William Charker’s quarry (Quarry D) and over the succeeding years this became their main quarrying point.  The company also acquired or operated under agreement several of the other quarries.  Their greatest work was the 1893 Equitable Life Building at 350 George Street, Sydney.  

 

 

Sydney's Equitable Life building, built 1893.  Note the main arch of 21 blocks.   It has been written about this arch:

"There is no question that the great arch has a most dramatic quality with its span of 46 feet and twenty-one huge

voussoirs, each of which weighs between three and four tons.  Thus, excluding its own weight of some sixty tons

and  carrying the superimposed loads above of over 700 tons, there was no settlement whatsoever, this being

attributed to the skilful cutting of the blocks and to the fact that molten metal was poured into the joints, thus

providing an unyielding mass" (D Hoskins, 1996)  [Photo: R Baker, Technological Museum]

 

 

Sydney's Equitable Life building today

 

In 1953,  Loveridge and Hudson closed their Bowral quarrying operations for two years, citing fallen demand as the reason.  In 1960 Concrete Ready-Mix was established on what may have been some of its land beside Oxley Drive.  This plant later became Specified Concrete Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Blue Metal Industries.

"""""

 

Quarry A - In 1888 Loveridge & Hudson opened their Bowral operations at this site, at the top of Oxley Street on Mr Angus’s property.  This is the site is at the south-eastern point of the Gib, where the rock was exposed prominently in a large area of rounded outcropping faces.  As reported, it was "producing a material 'far preferable to Melbourne bluestone'.  A specimen of the trachyte was described as being free from honeycomb and vents, and able to take a polish equal to any Scottish or Australian granite".  (Australasian Builder & Contractor's News, 24 November 1888, p 462; 17 December 1888, p 553; 6 April 1889, p 318).   The land was later owned by Melocco Bros.  After permission  to quarry had been refused, the land passed to Wingecarribee Shire Council in 1999.   Melocco Bros acquired the quarry in 1980.  In 1982, the company wished to quarry 200 cubic metres of stone for extensions to the National Library in Canberra.  This was opposed by some local residents under the group name of "Save The Gib Committee".

 

Quarry C -  This was started by a John Thompson but the major operations may not have begun till it was acquired by F.R. Raward and Co.   Later on it was also run by F.J. Pope and Sons.    Frank R Raward who was the best known quarrymaster there was a building contractor in Bowral, an active member of the Methodist church, and also a Freemason and alderman.  He painted his name "Frank Raward - Builder" in huge white letters on a prominent Mount Gibraltar cliff face and the paint lasted for many years before it weathered away.   Frank leased the site from John Thompson in 1889.  The paving for the Flemington sheep pens, and stone for many major building works, came from here- such as the stone for the Queen Victoria Markets building .  Mr Raward also ran a brick yard in Shepherd Street and had built the Glenquarry Public School.   In 1912, Francis Pope leased, operated and later (in 1928) purchased the quarry land.  In 1930 the quarry filled a major contract for stone for the Commonwealth Bank in Sydney.   In 1966-1967 Gosford Quarries Pty Ltd worked a small quarry site at the end of Tulloona Avenue, under the cliff near the old Government quarry. Only a few blocks were ever were taken, and these are believed to have been from loose boulders.  This was not very successful and the firm instead then decided to purchased their stone from F.J. Pope and Sons rather than win any themselves.   In 1971, F.J. Pope and Sons leased their quarry to Granite Ware Pty Ltd.   In 1975 the quarry was acquired by Bowral Municipal Council who leased it back to Granite Ware Pty Ltd  with a royalty of $1 per cubic foot of any dimension stone removed, but the Council's intention was to close down quarrying and this happened finally in 1980.  Council stated that it was acting to support a growing community wish to conserve the mountain for its landscape and environmental value.

 

Quarry D - Started by William Charker in 1885, at the top of Cliff Street.  Charker formed the NSW Trachyte Stone Quarrying Co. on a sub-division of land originally granted to J.N. and H.M. Oxley in 1855.   This quarry was afterwards acquired by Thomas Loveridge and his associates (viz. Loveridge and Hudson Pty Ltd / Melocco Bros Pty Ltd).   

 

Quarry E - Amos Bros Pty Ltd had began this quarry in Soma Avenue by 1888 and was producing stone for railway ballast.  Soma Avenue is Amos spelled backwards, and perhaps began as a new road put in for purpose of the quarry(?).   The Railway Commissioners resumed land from the Amos Brothers and Eli Beer near the railway in 1890 in conjunction with the Government Ballast Quarry (Quarry F), but after a court case (1894)  Alexander Amos got the land back.  Eli Beer also went to court for damages, and won.  When Eli Beer died in 1917 his descendents gave the inherited land to become the Mount Gibraltar Boys Home, from their connections with the Salvation Army. It is now Gibraltar Park.  In 1927, the Union Trustee Coy of Australia Ltd sold the quarry and lot 16 adjoining it in Soma Avenue to Anna Russel Ingeborg.  She leased the site and in 1930 the quarry was operated by the Haines family, trading as Mascot Granite Works.  It then mainly worked the boulders at the base of the cliff.    The older work had developed an exposed face 100ft high and 100ft and the stone was largely dressed for kerb and guttering, as well as for tramway borders. It also crushed and processed aggregate for local Council road works and likely sold to other buyers.  The railways may also have taken stone from here.

 

 

A Department of Mines map showing the government resumed land.  Compare with the

government quarry position "F" as on recent map.   Only the resumption date

of 1891 (instead of 1890, when the government quarry opened) is curious.

( Plan 1213 DA126 - plan date uncertain )

Quarry F - The Government Quarry.  This was opened in 1890 to produce railway ballast.   It had a design capacity of  850 tons per day.    A double train line was built from the crushers to the quarry, a distance of about a quarter of a mile.   The quarry planned to employ 50 men, and the crusher 15 men.

Saunders Quarry -  This quarry, on the Mittagong side of the mountain, has not been shown on the above map of quarry sites.  In 1894, Robert Saunders ran a quarry here for producing kerbing stone and "road setts" (pavers).  The site is near the present railway bridge in Mittagong, and where a Private Township of "Gibraltar" had been laid out (but never built).  Robert was a son of the Charles Saunders who had started and developed the massive sandstone quarries at Pyrmont and who ran a large building company in Sydney.

 

Mascot Granite works  -  Mascot Granite was conducting operations at Bowral in 1959, producing trachyte street kerbing.  The manager was J.H. Hulme and men were employed to hand shape the kerbing blocks.   Face stone for the University of NSW was also produced.  The name of their quarry is uncertain, possibly "Pinnacle quarry"(?), but believed to have most likely been Quarry E abovementioned, the old Amos quarry.   By 1962 the Mascot works were noted as abandonned (QR 178). 

 

A campaign to close down the Bowral trachyte quarrying industry began about 1973.

 

 

Threat to the Mt Gibraltar quarries recognised in 1976 (Geological Survey NSW, Quarterly Notes No. 25, page 5 )

 

 

Letters to the Bowral Municipal Council from Lynne Hayes and Rachel Roxburgh of the National Parks Association were followed by Council writing under  its Town Planning Ordinance to the State Planning Authority that it intended to change all the land then zoned as Extractive Industry on The Gib to Open Space reserve category.

 

 Negotiations were commenced with the still current operators,  F.J. Pope and Sons and R. Watson of Granite Ware Industries Pty Ltd to permanently close them down.

 

After Bowral Council was 'abolished' or replaced via amalgamation into the new Wingecarribee Shire Council,  Melocco Bros (which had been acquired by Blue Metal Industries) applied in 1983 to the new shire council to newly amalgamated Wingecarribee Shire to recommence extraction (as owner of  Quarry D).   They specifically wished to extract 200 cubic metres of dimension stone for extensions to the National Library in Canberra.

 

The  Works and Town Planning Committee of the new shire council recommended approval, but equally the community campaign to close the quarrying industry was stepped up - with the formation of a  "Save The Gib Committee" (comprising Susan Webb, Rowan Cahill, Colin McPhedran, Patrick Wilde, Stuart Kyngdon and Maurice Bratter).

 

The outcome was a deal for Melocco Bros to sell its 11 acres of quarry land, as well as a concrete batching plant, to the Council for $2.

 

This deal gave Melocco,  in exchange, approval to quarry for four years and extract a further 1450 cubic metres of stone.

 

This deal was reached in 1984 and hence 1986 became the last year of trachyte quarrying at Bowral.

 

Lands rezoned from extractive purposes (quarrying) have been added to "community" lands and generally intended for open space reserve usage, the main area of which is the Mount Gibraltar reserve or 'park'.   However in 2008 the Council was required to hold public meetings as it proposed selling off some community land, including some small reserve areas.  Two evening public meetings were held in Bowral in February 2008 on this matter.  Some 109 persons attended, the vast majority against the proposed sellings and various presentations were made (e.g. "Don’t let us be remembered as the generation that approved of funds being raised by the sale of public lands, or remembered as the generation that permitted its elected representatives, our Councillors, to carry such a proposal" and " Previous Council’s opposed a proposal to establish a quarry on this site due to its significance as a ‘wonderful green backdrop’ - why has Council changed its attitude. This site is of exceptional scenic beauty. Views are breathtaking and capture the entire Shire [referring to public reserve land on Oxley Hill Road]" or "The extraordinary vision of the previous Bowral Council in acquiring this site for the residents of the Shire should not be lost. ..... ot correct to say it is expensive to maintain as Council previously refused an offer from a Landcare/Bushcare group to look after it for free".    The presenting individuals or groups at these meetings has generally not been noted specifically but attendance list is given.   The attendance included one representative of the Mt. Gibraltar Landcare & Bushcare Group representing over 500 people who were against the proposed selling of Part Lot 16, Soma Avenue.   This lot was part of the original Amos quarry holding .... "The geotech report obtained by council states it should not be developed, so why sell it" ; "Have spent years producing a book to inform the community and council about its importance for Ecological Endangered Communities and the local Heritage. This importance cannot be ignored" (Jane Lemann, the editor of the book on Mount Gibraltar has her name in the attendance list and maybe this comment was her's or one of the other contributors to the book?); "It is nominated for Heritage Significance currently under consideration by National Trust of NSW and NSW Heritage office".   Also Lot 20, Oxley Drive, had its sale objected to by 

Mt. Gibraltar Landcare & Bushcare Group and most of those attending (10 for disposal, 96 against) .  This site was part of the quarrying area purchased by Council 1983 for $2 and at that time said to be for the purpose of adding to public open space land.   This is apparently the site of the former concrete batching plant.  It had also been envisaged by Mt. Gibraltar Landcare & Bushcare Group, and perhaps formerly by Council, as a good site for the main entrance, safe parking and trail heads for the "Heritage Quarry Walks" and the bushwalking tracks in the Reserve .... "Was acquired by Bowral Council in 1983 through the active lobbying of The Save the Gib Committee. The sale agreement required Council to dedicate the land for the purpose of public recreation"; "Council has a potential asset in potential sale of quarry spalls from within the quarry complex.  It is unwise to impede access to this asset (Mr Ron Powell, Department of Commerce, Office of Public Works - see Council documents 6.2.02 and 17.1.03)".

. 

"I speak for the Mount Gibraltar Landcare and Bushcare group on behalf of the convenor Dr. Richard Hanbury who apologises as he has a hospital meeting to attend. We believe we directly represent 500 people - bushcarers, neighbours of the Reserve and recreational users of the Reserve with whom discussions have been held.  As this is a very emotional issue for us we will do our best to maintain our decorum as we object to the re-classification and re-zoning of this land to enable subsequent sale ..... To demonstrate our concern I invite the people here today who support our objection to quietly stand" (not noted how many stood).

 

"Following closure of the Amos/ Mascot Granite Ware quarry to which it had been attached this Lot was purchased by Bowral Municipal Council in 1979 from Mr P K Loveridge when his DA for the currently proposed sale site on Lot 16 was rejected on safety grounds".  This says "Mascot Granite Ware", whereas other references are to "Mascot Granite Works".  Interesting too if Loveridge had acquired it for possible quarrying as otherwise the quarrying interest in this site was thought to have ceased in or before 1962.

 

Also stated or tabled at these 2008 meetings was further information on the heritage assessment, namely "The Assessment of Heritage Significance was carried out through WSC Local Heritage Grants and expanded after research for the book ‘The Gib: Mount Gibraltar, Southern Highlands’ 2007."

 

What provision or planning the Council made for the supply of future stone needed for restoration/maintenance of heritage structures is not known but the Council was asked about this in 2009.

 

In or before June 2000 Council had begun its heritage assessments of the quarries, and the above map dates from that time.   Later on the Assessment of Heritage Significance was guided by Assoc. Professor Ian Jack and other Council heritage advisers.  Finally in 2004 there was a nomination of the quarries to the NSW State Heritage Register.   By that time however Council had already knocked down and buried most of any remaining industrial archaeology materials, and had filled some of the holes that were considered potentially dangerous.   In 1989 "Mount Gibraltar Quarry", at start of Scenic Road and end of Oxley Drive and King Street, was in the Local Environmental Plan for Wingecarribee.  The State Heritage database notes that there was some scattered metal debris but such  appeared to be relatively recent dumping.   It also notes "Removed from the Australian Heritage Commission listing".   The same is in the Illawarra REP No.1 which was Gazetted on 11 April 1986.

 

In 2003 the Department of Public Works had removed some loose quarry blocks, in order to secure these for use in repairing the City of Sydney's public structures made of Bowral trachyte.  At the time the immediate need was to effect some repairs to the NSW State Library steps.

 

REFS:

Baker, R.T., 1909.   Building and Ornamental Stones of New South Wales.  2nd ed.Technological Museum, Sydney  NSW Government Printer.

Bruzzone, S.M., 2005.   Pegmatites of the Mount Gibraltar Microsyenite: Minerology and Origins.   University of Wollongong.

Hardy, B., 1970.  The Work was Australian: The Story of the Hudson Family.   Halstead Press.

Hoskins, C., 1969.   The Hoskins Saga.   Halstead Press.

Hoskins, Donald G., 1996.  Foundation stones : the contributions of the Loveridge, Ritchie, Hudson and Hoskins families to Australian industry / Donald Geoffrey Hoskins  Donald Geoffrey Hoskins, [Mittagong, N.S.W.]:

Hoskins, D.G., 1995.  Iron Master: The Life of Charles Hoskins. University of Wollongong Press.

Jones, L.T., 1939.  Blue Metal Quarry Sites, Moss Vale District - The Gib, Bowral.   Department of Mines NSW Annual Report 1939-1945

Lemann, Jane, (Ed),  2000.  The Gib: Mt. Gibralter: Southern Highlands. Mt. Gibralter Landcare and Bushcare: Moss Vale. ISBN 978 - 0 - 646 - 46740 - 5.

Mawson, D.  The minerals and genesis of the veins and schlieren traversing the aegirine-syenite in Bowral Quarries. Proc. Linn. Soc. NSW. vol. 31

Pittman, E.F.  Comparative values of Hawkesbury Sandstone and ‘Bowral Trachyte’ for building purposes.  Dept. Mines 1894

Stevens, R.D., 1990.   Observations on Mt Gibraltar NSW.  Proc. Royal Society NSW.

Taylor,T.G. and Mawson, D., 1903.  The Geology of Mittagong.   Read before the Royal Society of NSW October 7 1903 by T.W. Edgeworth David.

Wallace, I., 1968.  Studies on the Natural Building Stones of New South Wales.   UNSW Department of Industrial Arts.

Wilkinson, CS, 1889.    On the Syenite Granite Quarries ‘Gib Rock’ Bowral.  Department of Mines NSW, Annual Report  1889.

 

 

BRINGELLY

 

Greendale Road.  Bringelly Shale quarry.  Boral Bricks.  The amount extracted in 1990/91 was 32,300 tonnes and there was a large remaining reserve of 57.8 Mt.

 

 

 

BURRAGURRA   (Near Wollombi)

 

A rock outrop on Bala Range about 5 km SSE of Burragurra Trig. Station and about 8 km WSW of Mount Simpson.

Burragurra rock is accessible only by four-wheel drive (or by walking). It is located along the Boree track, south of its junction with the Mt Simpson track.   This rock provides excellent views of Mt Yengo and Mt Wareng. The rock is covered with aboriginal rock carvings, including the spirit footprints of Wa-boo-ee (or Baiame), to some the creator of heaven and earth.  In aborignal legend, he stepped from here to Mt Yengo in one stride and then ascended back into the sky.  Or "Devil's Rock, there are dozens of engravings.  The most mysterious are the footprints leading to the cliff edge in the direction of far off Mt Yengo.   These are the footprints of the Dreamtime Creative Spirit, Biamie.  After his creation tasks were accomplished, he stepped off the cliff, then flattened the summit of Mt Yengo with his next step as he returned to the heavens." (Hunter Valley Bushwalks, by Greg Powell).

 

A similar account, but with no souce given, is found in the 2001 "Assessment of the Yengo Wilderness by NSW NPWS:  "The Aboriginal ‘Dreamtime’ story recounts the departure of the ancestral being, Biaime, from the top of the mountain into the sky when he had finished his creative tasks in the Dreamtime. For this reason it is believed that many of the other Aboriginal sites in the region are related to Mt. Yengo. Many of the components of the sites are orientated towards it, such as rock engravings including sets of footprints aligning with Mt. Yengo."  The same reference refers to it as a historical initiation site.  

 

 

Burragurra rock surface, which may be incipient polygonal weathering.

Mt Yengo is in the distance.   (Photo: Tessa Corkill).  

 

 

Sun touches the horizon

and on the slab of sandstone where I crouch

the carving leaps out and confronts me:

Baimie's footsteps stride from peak to peak.

All roads lead to Yengo.

 

Ancestral instincts, and the confrontation

of my own unknowing make me make the journey.

Uninitiated, I lift my head and look

straight at the holy mountain.

 

Baiame sees me

and in the rustling of the dry green leaves

I hear the wind begin to hum,

the mounting rhythm of a million cicadas,

the slipping of a thousand snakes,

and in the penetrating sunset glare

all the marks of my secret scars

stand up and block my blessing.

 

Hilary Elfick  ( portion of her poem "Mt Yengo")

 

 

 

Sname-like shallow circular dishes.   (Photo:  Tessa Corkill)

 

 

Close up of two of the small regular circles.  Note that the right hand one is a concretion

showing concentric lamination.   (Photo:  Tessa Corkill)

 

 

Concretions in relief.   (Photo:  Tessa Corkill)

 

R. Goddard and ohters in 1935 when on their way to Burragurra met with a "raised circular knob twelve inches in diameter" (Goddard and Slater, 1937).  It was elevated about five inches above the surrounding sandstone and ferruginous at the periphery  (cf. the concretions photographed above).  They passed it by without speculating on what it was, but it was unusual enough that they did note it.  They later found circular pot holes up to two feet in diameter.  They found at Burragurra another raised circular knob similar as the one they first observed.  They also referred to four circles as being "carved".

 

REFERENCES:

 

Needham, W.J., 1981.  BURRAGURRA - WHERE THE SPIRIT WALKED: The Aboriginal Relics of the Cessnock-Wollombi Region in the Hunter Valley of N.S.W.   Adamstown: Dobson & McEwan.

 

Goddard, R.H. and Slater, F., 1937.   Certain observations of Aboriginal rock-carvings in the Wollombi district ( by R.H. Goddard);  Interpretation of the drawings at Burragurra and Yango (by Frederic Slater)..   "A paper read before Australasian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science. Auckland Meeting. 14th January, 1937. Section F."  Includes bibliographical references.  15 pp, 2 folded leaves of plates.

 

Slater, F.,  undated. Boondoba Burragurra: All about the writing on the rock/ translation of the picture writing on Devil’s Rock discovered by Messrs, Enright, Goddard and Greenwell. Original manuscript, UNSW, Sydney.

 

 

 

BURWOOD

 

Diatreme, Livingstone Street.   As early as 1866 most of the basalt had been quarried (Clarke 1866).  Herbert (1983, p. 101) stated the site is between Livingstone Street and Woodside Avenue and today covered by housing.   However Preston (1980, p.83) wrote of it being on the opposite, northern side of Livingstone Street when referring to Burwood in 1866: "Apparently the quarry established on the north side of Livingstone Street to exploit a plug of basalt has closed before this report".  When later disused and water had filled the pit, it is said that Council used this is a supply for a water carter to lay the dust along Burwood Road in early times, until a boy was drowned there and site was later infilled [unconfirmed].  Local residents today have no knowledge of the site's past.

 

Longbottom Brickyard.  The Longbottom Brickyard was in Lucas Street, and was managed by Thomas West who operated a brickworks at Croydon.  This is recorded in late 1880s Sands Directories but nothing is know of the nature of the operation or its precise location.  West was its manager in 1886-1888.

 

 

 

CAMDEN

 

Brickworks - The town of Camden had a number of brickworks (locations at present not known).  More than one brickworks apparently operated in Camden.  The Post Office directory for 1905 cites J.W. Cross and Richard A. Cross (Richard Albert Cross) as brickmakers in Camden.  The Camden Museum files online list cites for 'Bricks': Richard Biddle, Peat, Peters, Cross, Clinton, Camden Bricks and Nixon.

 

 

 

Unidentified location.  The work of artist Lionel Lindsay (1874-1961).  A print now in the 

collection of the National Gallery of Australia (IRN 92451).  Believed (for reasons

currently unknown) to be a brick kiln in Camden in 1925.  

in Camden.  Signed "Lionel Lindsay" but not dated.   

 

Soils of Camden Park - Koppi, A.J., Davey, B.G. and Birmingham, J.M., 1985.  Soils in the old vineyard at Camden Park Estate.   Australasian Historical Archaeology.  Vol. 3.  [not seen].

 

 

Extractive sites (from Australian Mines Atlas), mainly for sand and soil.

 

 

Elderslie, Collins Soil Pit - 1981.  Soil extraction by M. Collins & Son Pty. Ltd, at Macarthur Road.   Company head office is 121 Sydenham Rd., Marrickville.

 

Sand mining, Spring Farm - Sand mining has taken place in various places in the area known as Spring Farm, such as adjacent to "The Poplars" at 240 Macarthur Road, Spring Farm.  This is near the end of the road, on the river side.   Other sand mining sites are Lot 13 in DP 1081753 and Lot 2 in DP 816858, both leasehold from Landcom.   The Spring Farm area, between the Camden Bypass and the Nepean River, has formerly been characterised by poultry farming and sand mining, and other agricultural activities (including the Camden Estate Winery and the Collins Turf Farm).  M. Collins and Sons (Contractors) Pty Ltd also engaged in sand and soil extraction, besides turf farming.  They named their site, at Macarthur Road, the Spring Farm Quarry, which commenced in 2005.  Their turf farm production is nearby in the same area.

 

Springs Sand and Soil, Pty Ltd., Elderslie - 1981.  Raymond Marlin manager.

 

 

Collins & Sons' Spring Farm Quarry.

 

From the late 1950s on, Spring Farm area was also regarded as an epicentre of chicken and turkey farming in Australia.  The Tegel family, as A.A. Tegel Pty Ltd, owned eight farms and a hatchery in the area.  Facilities were later acquired by Ingham family.  The sandy area is also the home of the endangered Spring Farm Banksia Scrub Forest Community.  It has been described by Urban Bushland Management Consultants in 1988, for NPWS.  The high level alluvium it is on has been described as 'Tertiary' in age in the few available reports but any evidence for age determination is unknown.   In 2001 Harvest Scientific Services on behalf of client David Kingsell, the General Manager of Nepean Quarries Pty Ltd applied for development approval for sand extraction at 279 Richardson Road (Lot 20 of DP 632825), which was land owned by Springvale Sands Pty Ltd.   The site is opposite the Ingham Hatchery at the junction of Springs and Richardson Roads [shown as "Elderslie - Richardson/Springs Roads" on the map above].  It is on the eastern side of the intersection, bounded by the road to Jack Gully waste management centre on the north and the Glenlee Road on the south.  A development application for the same land had been received in 1996 from Menangle Sand Soil Pty Ltd for removal of 48,000 cubic metres of sand and soil over 5 years.  That applicant had been then required to prepare an EIS but did not proceed.  The 2001 application, accompanied by EIS, proposed extracting 60,000 cubic metres, for screening and washing at an adjoining site.  It was also considered to extend extraction westwards, for a further 2,000 cubic metres, and that both Springs and Richardson Roads thereabouts might be relocated to remove sand under them.  Council refused the application, being concerned about survival of the threatened banksia population.  However, continuing from immediately west of this place there is today extensive recent sand excavation evident, with piling up of topsoil and forest fines presumably for re-application [see several sites shown on map above].   

 

Sand mining, Woodgrand Quarry -  The Woodgrand Quarry is on the Nepean River in the Spring Farm area (see map above).  Also, in 1999 Woodgrand Sand and Soil applied for development approval to construct a greenwaste composting and material blending facility on land owned by Indaal Pty Ltd at No. 110 Springs Road (Lot 61 of DP 810692).   

 

REFS:

 

Sankey, R., 1982,  Camden and the Coal Industry.  B.A. (Hons.) thesis.   Department of History, University of Sydney.

 

 

 

 

CAMELIA

 

Tertiary clay.  Camelia is underlain by likely Tertiary clay.  This was formerly extracted by Wunderlich for use in their ceramics works.

 

 

 

CAMMERAY

 

Willoughby Falls

 

 

Willoughby Falls, by an unknown artist, 1881.

 

This image, from a wood engraving, first appeared in the Australasian Sketcher, February 12, 1881.

The Power House Museum holds a glass negative of the falls, looking very similar as the above, which can only be dated to the time range 1884-1917, probably by Charles Kerry (cat. no. 85/1284-197).  Another painting image of it, 1840-1846 by J. Prout, seeminly less accurate, is held by the State Library (No. PDX 75 f.14).   Macleay Museum holds a 1860 photographic print of it (Nos. 811060002,811060267) by pioneer photographer Robert Hunt.  Another good image of it, a chromatolithograph dates from 1878, by C. Troedel & Co.  The waterfall is on Willoughby Creek, a.k.a. Flat Rock Creek, which flows into the head of Long Bay, Middle Harbour.  The area today is known as Primrose Park, named after a local mayor, H.L. Primrose.  Before being dedicated as a park in 1930 the area was Sydney's first sewerage works.  Surviving buildings became the Primrose Park Art and Craft Centre.  The falls are located near the eastern end of Fall Street, at Grafton Street.  Some Aboriginal rock art occurs in the vicinity.  

 

 

Hunt's early photo, 1858, of the falls (Macleay Museum 811060002)

 

 

 

CAMPERDOWN

 

NB: For "Camperdown cemetery" (St Stephens church hill) see under NEWTOWN

 

 

Location of discussed features left to right: O'Dea Reserve west of Ross St was brickpits, and Fowler's Pottery; Camperdown Park had pits in the SW corner of this block and its eastern side is Mallett Street; north along Mallett Street into Booth Steet and the triangular that comes to an eastern point against Orphan School Creek is the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children Site; south of eastern tip of that

is possible former pits for the London and Sydney Potteries located thereabouts (just guesswork

at present); and south of there is seen the Catholic school land, Santa Sophia and St John's 

colleges and oval, all east of the NW trending section of Missenden Road (this orientation

reflects former presence of an unnamed tributary of Johnson's Creek running parallel to

Orphan School Creek (compare with old 1841 plan below). 

 

 

Camperdown was an early estate located between Grose Farm (along Orphan School Creek, which was earlier called Grose Farm Creek) on its eastern side, and Johnson's Creek to the west.  The hill to the east side of Orphan School Creek, upon which the building of the University of Sydney was commenced, was early known as Petersham Hill.  At the southern part of the original Campertown the town of Newtown began to grow.  That is where the highest part of the topography occurs, at St Stephens church hill.  At this small rise there is a little Tertiary sediment preserved which has silcrete clasts, one of which showed evidence of ancient fracture (Newtown Telephone exchange excavation at southern side of hill).  This was likely the main Aboriginal silcrete working site for the vicinity of Sydney City.  The extent of the Tertiary sediment has not been mapped here but is likely very small.

 

The general area, especially the southern Newtown end, is probably what was referred to in the 1790s as the Kanguroo Ground, and the adopted symbol of Newtown is the Kangaroo.

 

Some of the first settlement was along Orphan School Creek valley in 1793, when nine huts were built for convict laboured who began felling trees for timber production for use in Sydney town.  By 1819 the enlarged government 'stockade' here (perhaps near the position of  the "watch house" shown on the below plan, or near where St John's College now stands) was able to accomodate over 100 convict workers.  After 1801 the Female Orphan Institution of Sydney was granted leaseholding income provision from much of this land.  The western portion was granted to William Bligh after his arrival as new Governor in 1806 and Bligh named his grant Camperdown.

 

An informative early plan (below) was prepared for the subdivision auction by Mr. Samuel Lyons on Wednesday 21st April 1841 by Order of Charles Hallett and Felix Slade, who were the trustees of the late Rear Admiral William Bligh.  This shows that brick kilns were in existence there in 1841.   Who built these or when has not yet been learned of.   This is the earliest documentary evidence so far found of where brickmaking was located but it may not represent the first pits opened as the commencement of brickmaking in the area likely was well before 1841.  Another known early area of brickmaking was just east of St Stephens church hill, around what is now Victoria Street.  Local knowledge is that this had been used by brickmakers since the 1830s.  Victoria Street had first been known as Brick Street.  In 1834-1835 bricks supplied possibly from this area were used to build Lyndhurst house in Glebe (others believe these bricks came from a pit on Mr William Bucknell's 5 acre property on the Surry Hills side of Cooks River Road [later King Street] near Elizabeth Street).  Also, in the Powerhouse Museum collection (cat. number H5539) are three bricks by unknown convict maker, from "Old Grose Farm", Camperdown.  There is probably, however, no evidence of where these were made.

 

 

 

 

View eastwards along Parramatta Road overlooking Grose Farm, and showing Sydney University's St. Paul's

and St. John's colleges.   The view point might be near the "Watch House" on the below map(?).

 (Painted by watercolour by F. C. Terry ca. 1862-1869.  State Library ML 315).

 

 

Portion of an 1841 auction plan for Governor William Bligh's Camperdown Estate land.   On this plan

Orphan School Creek is labelled as Grose Farm Creek, the large sandstone quarry at the present

Harold Park appears to be called "Tims" quarry, the old and new (straightened) alignments of the

road to Parramatta are shown.  There is seen to have been two other NW-flowing small creeks

present , besides Grose Farm Creek, all three of which flowed to Johnson's Creek.  On the 

northern side of the westernmost of these NW-flowing waterways, and in the NW corner

of the land portion marked as number "10", there is depicted a pair or buildings with a

label "Brick kilns".  This plan has not yet been accurately matched to any current map

but the position of the kilns looks to have been around the SW corner of the present

Camperdown Park near the junction of Fowler and Australia Streets.

(Repository: National Library of Australia, Map number F566)

 

 

Old map of ca. 1890  (From the "Newtown Project").

 

City (Council) brickworks? - Edwin Tooth (1822-1858) of the Tooths brewery family on 17 April 1853, Edwin Tooth wrote to the City Commissioners (Sydney City Archives item 26/16/387):  "I beg to offer you my land you at present occupy as a Brickfield situate at New Town and part of the Petersham Estate in the following terms ...".   It is not yet known where this Sydney City owned brickworks was.  Could it have been the kilns shown in section 10 at Camperdown, within the area that is now Camperdown Park?   Possibly one might think, if Tooths bought any land there?  And indeed there was a Tooth's Place and Tooth lane (at right angles to each other) south of Fowler Street, between Mallett and Gibbens Street - named after Robert Tooth apparently.   However, that site would not fit the 1853 words of Tooth about " situate at New Town and part of the Petersham Estate" - the St Peters area, however, would fit that.

 

  

 

Edwin settled in Sydney in 1852 but left the Colony in December 1855.  He withdrew from the

business altogether in 1857 and died in 1858.

 

 

DEVELOPMENTS AFTER 1858 - RESIDENTS AND WORKERS (for possible clay/shale connections?):

 

SURNAME	Other names	ADDRESS	DATES	Directory
Allen	John (Brickmaker)	Camperdown Rd	1869	Sands
Allan	John (Brickmaker, ?John Allen)	Charles St (now cf. Lennox?)	1871	Sands
Allen	J.	Ross St, Parramatta Rd	1873	Sands
Allison	James (Potter)	Prospect St (Auckland Terrace)	1882	Sands
Allison	James (Potter)	Hordern St (nr Prospect St)	1883	Sands
Baldock	Frederick & Henry (London Pottery)	Lyons & Parramatta Rds	1877; 1882	Sands
Baldock	J. (J.H. Baldock & Co)	George St	1879, 1880	Sands
Barr	George (Sydney Pottery)	George and Lyons Rds	1884-1889	Sands
Barr	George	Ross St	1883	Sands
Blackman	James (Potter)	Denison St (Clifton House)	1882	Sands
Blackmore	J.	Denison St	1883	Sands
Briggs	T.	St Mary's St	1871	Sands
Carter	N. J., William Joseph	Camperdown Rd / Church St	1879-1880	Sands
Chamberlain	Charles (Brickmaker)	Camperdown Rd	1858	Sands
Croft	Frederick (Brickmaker)	Burton St	1861; 1863-1868;1877;1880	Sands
Downs	Alfred (Brickmaker)	Denison St (Doon Cottage)		Sands
Doyle	John, Michael (Camperdown Pottery)	Elizabeth St	1851; 1863; 1865-1869;1873;1877	Sands
Fowler	Enoch	Parramatta Road	1865;1867;1871;1875-1877; 1879; 1883	Sands
Fowler	Robert	Ross St, Parramatta Rd	1873	Sands
Fowler	Robert	George & Australia Sts	1880;1882-1889; 1905	Sands, PO
Grimley	Arthur, Charles	Campbell St	1871; 1877; 1879	Sands
Harris	Charles (Brickmaker)	Camperdown Rd	1858	Sands
Hill	Joseph (Brickmaker)	Australia St	1861;1864;1865; 1867	Sands
Howe	Henry (Brickmaker)	Susan St	1863	Sands
Howe	Frederick (Brickmaker)	Missenden Rd	1876	Sands
Kelly	Edmond (Brickmaker)	Egan St	1869	Sands
Kennedy	William J. (Brickmaker)	Regent St (nr. Lennox)	1884	Sands
Lawson	Peter (Potter)	Regent St (at Kent Lane)	1882	Sands
Le Clerc	Francis (Brickmaker)	Downing St	1861	Sands
Le Clerc	Francis (Brickmaker)	Stephen St	1863	Sands
Lemon	William	Lambert St	1864;1865;1866;1867;1871	Sands
McArthur	Gilbert (Clyde Pottery)	123 George St	1858;1861;1863-1864	Sands
			1867-1869; 1871; 1876-1877	Sands
			1878-1880; 1882-1886; 1887-1889	Sands
Mobrian	W. (Brickmaker)	Camperdown Rd	1858	Sands
Neeves	Elias (Brickmaker)	Grose St	1863	Sands
Ward	J. (Brickmaker)	Denison St	1863; 1867	Sands

 

Assorted information in old directories that is suggestive of the extent of clay/shale industry in the 1800s.

(The "Camperdown Road" in these records was renamed Church Street in 1878.

 

 

The information from Sands directories as above show that a number of potters and brickmakers lived, and probably worked, in the Camperdown area.  There are five clusters discernable.

 

1)  The best known and main centre was around the northern ends of Denison and Australia Streets, likely working pits to the west of Denison Street, such as at the present O'Dea Reserve (Ross Street).  The principal associate with this area are the Fowlers.    

 

2)  Northern end of Mallett Street, south of Parramatta Road, possibly working land which is now Camperdown Park.  The main associate of this area was likely McArthur's Clyde Pottery.

 

3)  Lyons Road at Parramatta Road.  This is the address of Frederick and Henry Baldock's London Pottery and George Barr's Sydney Pottery.

 

4)  East of St Stephens.  This is the area E-W between Horden and Susan streets, and N-S between Raper and Victoria Streets.  James Allison (Potter) and some brickmakers are in this cluster.  There almost certainly were pits here.  Local knowledge is that the area had been used by brickmakers since the 1830s and that Victoria Street had been renamed in 1878 and before that was known as Brick Street.

 

5) West of St Stephens.  Clustered here, around the southern end of Denison St between Bishopgate and  Lennox streets were the potter James Blackman and a number of brickmakers.  There might or might not have been extractive/manufacturing activity here; or perhaps some of these people simply resided here but worked at the centre further north along Denison St.

 

Some individuals were likely associated with more than one of these apparent centres of activity.  George Barr for example may have moved from (1) to (3) in 1883-1884 or may have been associated with both, as they are not far apart.  His main association seems to have been with (3) and indeed there is a street next to Lyons Rd which is named Barr Street.

 

John and Michael Doyle's Camperdown Pottery at Elizabeth Street was long-lived (1851-1877) but was very close to the main thoroughfare (King Street) and seems unlikely to have been an extractive site.  It may have been obtaining its clay from St Peters area rather than from the Camperdown, although it is possible that it also used clay from the nearby Brick Street (later renamed Victoria Street).  Also just south of there across King Street there may have been a pit somewhere (based on belief that bricks for Lyndhurst came from a pit on Mr William Bucknell's 5 acre property on the Surry Hills side of Cooks River Road [later King Street] near Elizabeth Street).  Also confirming extraction in the vicinity of the small hill of St Stephens church and graveyard, the 1866 Select Committee that lead to the reduction of Camperdown Cemetery made reference to brick pits being dug at two places.  One was on Charles Street (now Lennox Street) between Church Street and Mary Anne Street.  Mary Anne St is presumably the present Mary St and the site would be roughly opposite the present Dendy car park.  The other place was the near the present low point on the Federation Street frontage.  This latter place may have been an original topographic declivity and head of some small stream.  There are also records from the Select Committee that the topsoil from the upper part of the cemetery was scraped back (an original hill flattening exercise?) and used, along with pauper coffins (so the scraping was a little more than purely superficial), to partially fill in this hollow along Federation Street.  Denis Gojak (pers. comm. 2007) has recorded at this area (now Camperdown Park) a distinct layer of very hard-setting "upcast clay" which he inferred was transferred artificially from further up the slope.  Ground management personnel find great difficulty with getting grass to grow over such clay areas and it was therefore considered that it should again be removed elsewhere.  Denis Gojak also pointed out in a record by W.S. Jevrons in 1858 regarding his walk from Camperdown to Newtown (presumably along Church/Australia/Denison St route) and then along the Cooks River road from Newtown High Street he mentioned there were "many market gardens & brick fields" and that "As a whole the appce [appearance] of the Newtown neigh [neigborhood] district is pleasing compared with either Redfern on one side or Camperdown on the other".   His reference to "many" brickfields however might be specifically to the later St Peters area rather than to the district as a whole?
   

The Clyde Pottery, Parramatta Road -  The Clyde Pottery was estabished in George Street (= road to Parramatta, Parramatta Road or Great Western Highway) at Camperdown, between Orphan School Creek and Johnson's Creek (date of commencement unknown).  It was established by Gilbert Macarthur, who died from cancer at his residence there in 1899.  He had lived in the Camperdown area for over sixty years and was a former member of Camperdown Council.  After his death the pottery business was continued by his wife Louisa, and relocated in 1903 to Boomerang Street in 'Ashfield' (since known as Dobroyd, Haberfield or Dobroyd Point).  According to old Directory entries it is found that Clyde Pottery is listed as such at 123 George Street at Camperdown in 1887.  "Gilbert McArthur" was listed as the owner, and there are entries under his name from 1858 onwards (1858-1864 at 123 George Street), later on as George Street or Parramatta Road to 1887.  If the street numbering then was similar as now this would be west of Missenden Road and not far from Camperdown Park (the history of Camperdown Park being currently unknown).

 

Lyons Road at Parramatta Road - A known potter, Frederick Baldock, had a address at the corner of Lyons and Parramatta Roads, Camperdown (Sands Directory, 1877).

 

Australia Street at Parramatta Road - The "Camperdown Pottery" of R. Fowler, also known as Fowler's Potteries.

 

Fowlers Potteries was established by Enoch Fowler.  Enoch Fowler established a small kiln at George Street, Brickfields Hill, in 1836.  The pottery moved to Glebe in 1848 (first to Queen Street, then Bay Street).  By 1857 it had moved from Glebe to a five acre (2 ha) site in Camperdown.  This was between the present day Australia, Denison and Derby Streets.  The works there were soon turning out half a mile of pipes each week, as well as bricks, tiles and all sorts of pottery.  Bricks were also made here.  Evidence given in the Supreme Court in 1883 by Henry John Goodsell mentioned that before 1879 there were five brickmaking machines in the Colony, two at the Goodlet works and one each at the works of Goodsell, Fowler and Gurney.  The company possibly operated the first steam powered brickmaking machinery in the Colony (The Clay Products Journal of Australia, Nov.1, 1935, p. 13).  The company later opened another works at Bankstown and acquired an existing one at Longueville.  In 1912 it relocated to a 17 acre (6.8 ha) site in Fitzroy Street, Marrickville.   At Camperdown, clay was likely extracted first in the southwest of the present Camperdown Park area, and later on in the current O'Dea Reserve area, west of Ross Street.  Brickpits were in existence at Ross Street by 1880 or earlier and during the 1880s there was reference to Fowler's Pottery and Brickworks in Camperdown.  Some references list O'Dea Reserve as being formerly Fowler's Pottery.

 

Childrens' Hospital redevelopment site and the re-naturalisation of Orphan School Creek gully - This 5.6 ha site, redeveloped with the maketing name "City Quarter", is the former Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children.  It is bounded by Orphan School Creek (canal) and Johnstons Creek (canal) on the east and north, Booth Street on the west and Pyrmont Bridge Road on the southeast.  A hospital began here in 1880 as the Sydney Hospital for Sick Children, at the corner of Wigram and Glebe Point Road.  It changed name to The Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in 1904, under patronage of Queen Alexandra, and moved to the Camperdown site in 1905.  The hospital's functions were moved to Westmead in 1995.  The NSW Government sold the site in 1997 and it has been redeveloped into a high density housing area ("City Quarter") by Frasers Property Group (work began in 2001 and the initial developer was Sterling Estates Development Corporation Pty Ltd which used Rainbow Excavations for bulk excavation work.  Sterling built about 600 units on the site but was in receivership in 2006, and the site (with a remaining capacity for a further 400 or more units) was then bought by Frasers Greencliff Developments Pty Ltd.  Barclay Mowlem was a major builder on the site.  

 

 

The Childrens' Hospital site in 1943.  

 

 

The Childrens' Hospital site converted to highrise housing, ca. 2006.

(Sydney hi-res airphotos, via the government SIX server)

 

 

An earlier aerial photo than the previous one, showing the redevelopment of the Hospital site proceeding from the east to the west.  A seen here in the NW is parking basement for the "Altro" block.  This is a

part of Council's seeking of consultation over public space changes planned.  The area circled, at the

end of Wood Street, is a flat top area of built-up demolition rubble fill which had prograded westerly

into the creek valley, and which later had the buildings on it demolished and is now (2007) planned

to become a childrens' playground.  A second possible progradation area on the opposite side of

the creek is seen directly west of it.  If this bulge is man-made too then it was sourced probably

from the original changes for the Hospital building, as old records show it predates the recent 

development phase.  (Source: City of Sydney, Ophan School Creek gully restoration project)

 

 

Close up of the above areas of infill almost filling the creek valley from both sides.  The possible man-made lobe on the west side of the creek is seen at left edge of scene, in an early stage of revegetation - note the deposition of a layer of near-continous large sandstone blocks (perhaps

from the on-site basement excavations).  This is directly opposite the front of the progradation

 lobe that came from the east (probably dumped via Wood Street truck entry in the past.  The coloured-over land has since been acquired by Council for a "re-naturalisation" project and

 it is planned to convert this land into a park-like setting for increased public land access.

(Source: City of Sydney Council, Ophan School Creek gully area enhancement works)

 

 

Two lines of large sandstone blocks were laid to form the sides for reconstructed stream appearance.

 

 

Nepean River cobbles were then laid between the two lines of sandstone blocks and the whole effect

provides a quasi-natural stream bed appearance.  The continuing flow of the former old Orphan

School Creek plods on somewhere down below, where it was encased in concrete many years

ago by the Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board.

 

In 1803, land in the Camperdown area, including the whole of Grose Farm along Orphan School Creek  was granted to the Female Orphan Institution of Sydney (in order that they might lease it to generate some income).  Grose Farm Creek thereafter became known as the Orphan School Creek to some (although the 1841 plan shown above still called it Grose Farm Creek).  The Orphan School held most of Grose Farm until the 1820s.  The head tributaries of Orphan School Creek were near St Andrews and St Johns Colleges in the grounds of Sydney University.  The creek ran north then northwest, to join Johnstons Creek.  The lower valley of Orphan School Creek may have been significantly infilled.  It has been infilled recently with some more earth on the southeast side as part of the hospital area housing development.  On the opposite side of the valley where planned remoulding of the surface has not yet occurred it is easy to see that it has there been infilled in places with up to several metres depth of demolition rubble (as between the ends of Hereford and Foss Streets, via Wood Street).  Spoil from the City railway construction was first used for fill over the upper flats of Orphan School Creek in 1866.  Where the creek crossed the original Parramatta Road there was once a weir on the creek, on the southern side of the road, which held back a large dam of water for use at Grose Farm.  At this point the land along Parramatta road may now be built up about 20ft above the original level (Sydney University archives).  Significant landfill tipping into the lower valley may have began about 1925.  The lower valley or gully possibly was flanked by small sandstone cliffs or outcrops prior to the infilling (but this is not definitely known). 

 

 

The new stream appearance created at present in the gully of Orphan School Creek.  The actual continuous stream flow from the past is enclosed a short distance underground.  This work aims

to encourage increase in the diversity and habitat of native flora and fauna.  If some surface 

water flow was re-established then it would be small and a reed bed at the lower end might

be built to absorb the water.  The area was earlier on under Leichhardt Council, and earlier

Leichhardt Council planning for it (plan DCP 23) envisaged that an area of native grasses

or ground cover plants could be in a swale at the bottom of the gully to absorb water.

(Photo:  Council of the City of Sydney)  

 

The valley axis has been landscaped (in 2006 by ESD Land Management) to be stream-like.  The work has been described variously as aiming to "reclaim" the creek area, to "re-naturalise" the area, or to make a "quasi-natural" stream course along the gully.  The bed of the made stream consists of Nepean River cobbles (and may be a convenient place to examine typical Nepean bedload rock types without leaving the City).  The present nicely landscaped "creek" however is a 'fantasy creek' and part of the general "re-naturalisation" of the creek valley.  The real stream level flows in a subterranean canal a short distance underground.  The artificial creek is a created "naturalistic creek line" according to the Council plan for the area.  Indigenous plant species have been established along it, and the gully has long been noted as a bird habitat.  Sydney Water has installed on it a SQUID (Stormwater Quality Improvement Device), underground at the end of Creek Street.   In this vicinity, along the southern side of Johnstons Canal, some digging done during the time of the Hospital was in material bearing many common estuarine shells.  Such material could be very early filling, or else could have been original spoil thrown aside during the construction of Johnston's Canal.  If not human-transported fill it may indicate that estuarine deposits extend this far up the former head of the bay.  It is not know if there has been any drilling near here. The small valley is also loosely known as 'Glebe Gully' and a community interest group associated with it is FRROGS (Friends Residents/Ratepayers of Orphan School Creek Gully - formed ca. 1994, coordinator Roberta Johnston).   The area was formerly under control of Leichhardt Council which in    acknowledged this gully as being "one of the few" opportunities in the inner city to establish bushland which provides re-introduced former habitat for birds and small animals.  Such was adopted in Development Control Plan No.23 "Orphan School Creek, Forest Lodge", which was adopted by Council on 26 March 1996.  In DCP 23 it is stated that the development of an open space corridor along the former water course of Orphan School Creek had been a longstanding Council aim.  After takeover by the City of Sydney the same general vision for the gully was advanced.  

 

[Other Refs:  1) JBA Urban Planning Association, ?date.  Orphan School Creek.  Report to NSW Health;  Johnston's Bay Reclamation.  2) Leichardt Library, Local History file LHSP A4/3 (this has mention also of a 'ballast dyke', which may be of interest).]

 

Most of the hospital ground by 2007 had been converted to highrise housing, as eight multistorey (7-11 floors) blocks, mainly around an internal new road (Sterling Crescent).   Not yet built on is the corner of Booth St and Pyrmont Bridge Rd.  As at October 2007 this is a deep pit, preparing for a large construction block (planned to hold about 400 apartments).  The pit (2-50 Pyrmont Bridge Rd) is quite deep, so as to provide parking spaces as the area is very congested.   The block to be built here might be as high as 16 stories.  The newly created roads on the site are heavily overparked already, ignoring all non-parking signs.  Extra parking for the whole precinct under the new tower may help remedy this situation.  The construction signs read "Trio Living Spaces designed for the time by Frasers.  www.triosydney.com".  Excavation works are by Watpac (www.watpac.com.au, Adam Jasczyk), certifier Tom Misovich & Associates).  The the final pit walls are circular saw cut.

 

In the SE corner of the pit there is 2-3m of Mittagong Formation showing above the Hawkesbury Sandstone; topped by about 1m of very weathered material or soil, which grades upwards into a distinctly ferruginous top.  This is the highest edge of the pit and elsewhere over the pit are the sandstone is just below surface and the Wianamatta Group is eroded off.   The sandstone has a bleached zone at the top and below that is saturated with ironstaining.  Besides the even ironstaining there is also weak development of Leissergang-like  secondary iron oxide banding, both undulose (some convex-upwards) and mildly anastomosing.   This is a thing but particularly strong ferruginisation band in the sandstone immediately below the Mittagong Formation.   The general orange or yellowish stained cut sandstone has everywhere a bleached top zone, 4-5m thick, with irregular base.  The base of the bleached zone declines slightly towards the north end of the pit, falling in parallel with the landsurface slope.

 

The topmost sandstone, just below Mittagong Formation, at the eastern wall has large scale planar cross-bedding, dipping ?eastwards.  Generally, however, the sandstone is devoid of prominent crossbedding and is an inferior (ironstained) freestone.  Large rectangular blocks have been cut from it, ca. 2.5x1.5x1m, for further use.

 

[NB:  Pit locked, viewed on a Sunday, 14 Oct 07,  and all above pit observations are interpretations made without benefit of being up close to the faces.]

 

 

 

CANADA BAY

 

Unidentified clay formation.    Exposed in foundations work of first home in Lyons Road west of Regatta Road, No. 559 Lyons Road.   Possibly Tertiary but this is by no means certain.  Alternatively it might be an unusually severely weathered shale lens in the Mittagong Formation.

 

 

 

CANOELANDS  (See also Maroota, south of)

 

Canoelands (Google Earth -33.509861, 151.024306) is a small 'hamlet' concentration of settlement which comprises about 160 persons and 65 houses or buildings.  It is located along the Old Northern Road (Great Northern Road) between Forest Glen and Maroota.  According to Wikipedia it was so named because early timber-getters found that many of the trees there had the bark cut off them for canoe-making.   The vicinity was first settled about 1834 for agriculture or farming.   The main industry of the area today is four commercial plant nurseries and three large stonefruit orchards.  Visitors may note that there is extensive use of netting cover to keep out flying foxes.  Fruits grown are currently peaches, nectarines and plums.   It was formerly a citrus growing area, before free trade killed the industry from cheap imports from Hawaii and elsewhere.  The Wikipedia article states "there is an aggregate quarry and a sandstone quarry in the area".  It also states that some "some lenses of white and blue shale" are present, and that the former had been used in manufacture of blonde house bricks.

 

Drainage to the north from Canoelands Road is into Layburys Creek and Geoff Buchan wrote of a "Maroota Springs" which feeds into Layburys Creek (In the book "River to Ridge", p.50, Maroota Public School, 1991).  The exact site of this spring, which presumably can have no relationship to the other better known springs in the Maroota Sand area, is not available at present.  Quite a number of Aboriginal cave paintings and stencils are in the area and have been recorded by various writers, from the Australian Museum etc.

 

 

Northern side along Canoelands Road (Google Earth view showing areas of extractive activity)

 

 

Canoelands.  Same area as above, tilted view looking east.  The extractive activity is seen to be along

the edge of the flat-top plateau remnant.

 

Canoelands Road extractive area.   Lots 2-4 DP 802951 and Lot 1 DP 621564 (No. 19-25) Canoelands Road, Canoelands.  Owner (2002), Len Jones, Country Life Improvements Pty Ltd.  Site operations also in some connection to business office at 1455 Old Northern Road, Glenorie.  Site worked prior to mid 1990s, now perhaps discontinued or converting to a filling operation, but this is unchecked.  The area available for quarrying has been 73 ha, on the northern side of Canoelands Road, Canoelands Ridge.  Site works of a dwelling/office and a large storage shed.  Old equipment and suggestions of continuing quarrying seen but site not yet visited or owner contacted.  Some of the earlier quarrying hereabouts is reported to have been for flagging stone.  Shale and crushed sandstone are also recorded to have been produced from this site.  Enquiry has been made to Hornsby Council as to the number of extractive sites along Canoelands Road as there is the possibility of both shale lenses within the Hawkesbury Sandstone and Ashfield Shale also having been quarried.  [Ref:  Hornsby Council Report Nos. PLN161/02, PLN414/02 ]

 

Quarry in shale lens in Hawkesbury Sandstone.  Owner H. Jolly.  An amount of 8,570 tonnes was extracted in 1990/91.  

 

Colo Trig. pit - Southern side of Canoelands Road, 200 m east of the Colo trigonometric station.  Operators have included G.L. Cromie Pty Ltd.  This is a shale lens in Hawkesbury Sandstone.

 

Hidden Valley pit - This is about 4 km east of the Colo Trig. and at one time was also operated by G.L. Cromie Pty Ltd.  It too is a shale lens in the sandstone.

 

Mount Blake - This lies some 2 km east of the eastern end of Canoelands Road.  At 270/3m a.s.l. it is the highest point between the Nepean River and the Pacific Ocean.  The peak is named for John Blake who settled in 1835 on Marramarra Creek below Mount Blake in 1834.  The nature of the peak (is there anything of geological interest there?) in relation to the general plateau surface (why is it any higher?) is not known.  Darwinia biflora, a shrub (Myrtaceae) which favours the edges of shale-capped ridges, is recorded from Blakes Trig vicinity which suggests there may be a residual shale capping there. 

 

 

 

CANTERBURY

 

In 1840 the Australian Sugar Company (soon afterwards becoming the Australasian Sugar Company) entered into a relationship with major landowner Robert Campbell, gaining a strip of land from Campbell in return for a shareholding (24 shares) in the company.  Before the sugar company's arrival there, to commence building the impressive five stories high "Sugar House" which was the centrepiece of the sugar works, the place was known as Canterbury Bush.  The sugar company foresaw it becoming a sizeable village and predicted that a railway line would come to it.  Over a hundred men were employed by the company at the start of its operations and there were soon workers' cottages and huts in the vicinity.  The sugar company began works at the southern end of the purschased strip, besides the river, intending to subdivide the rest to sell off for income and to encourage working men to the district.  The plan of that land sale is shown below.  This is an 1841 land sale plan for allotments adjoining the Australasian Sugar Company's works at Sugar House Road on the Cook's River at Canterbury.  According to this plan there existed land for quarrying, indicated by the word 'quarry', one block south of Tincombe Street.  This is near the railway line and north of the present Canterbury Bowling Club.  The 'quarry' annotation is written both west and east of Minter Street, which at that time extended south to where Cup and Saucer Creek joins Cook's River.   The map of allotments for sale showed landholders and listed presence of brick kilns, quarry and 'coalmining'.  The latter is quite curious, and the shed where coalminers were at work is shown as a circle.  It would have been a prospecting shaft, under the present bowling green area.  The depth of the shaft is unknown.  Being collared in Hawkesbury Sandstone, there was no possibility of striking coal at any reasonable depth.

 

 

 

Plan of 95 allotments for auction sale, by W.H. Wells, Land Surveyor, 1841.  Preserved as Map F559 at National Library of Australia.  Indexed as map of allotments for sale "showing landholders, brick kilns, sugar works, sketch of sugar house, quarry and coalmining".  Many references refer to the building

as constructed of sandstone "quarried on the site", although the contemporary view of the mill by Frederick Garling in ca. 1842 (below) does not suggest the presence of any sizeable quarry.

There is a sizeable quarry along the northern side of the river a little downstream at Foord

Avenue, Hurslstone Park, and signs of quarrying elsewhere but the dates are unknown.

 

 

Position of the later developed railway line.  For some unknown reason Church Street 

(a.k.a. Sugarhouse Road) was given a small westwards deviation to position where

a road bridge over the railway line was constructed.

 

 

The Sugar House - The "Sugar House" at Canterbury is one of Australia's finest preserved early sandstone factory buildings, and the oldest surviving commercial building in Sydney. 

 

 

The sugar mill ca. 1895, photographer unknown

 

 

View of the sugar mill painted by Frederick Garling ca. 1842 (State Library NSW)

 

REF:  Edward Higginbotham & Associates, 2000.  Historical and archaeological assessment of the Australasian Sugar Company Mill, Sugar House Road (formerly Church Street), Canterbury, NSW.

[for Gold Abacus Developments & Woodhouse & Danks Pty Ltd.].

 

This sugar mill was constructed in 1840-42 (date on facade is 1841).  It was built for the Australasian Sugar Company by Scottish stonemasons under the direction of David MacBeth, using locally quarried sandstone.  The sandstone walls were built three feet thick.  Although commonly called a mill, the sugar works factory was probably more a refinery than a mill for sugar cane (although some references do state that the company imported sugar cane).  It refined raw sugar imported from the Phillipine Islands. The sugar mill ceased operating in 1854.  This was said to be due to the gold rush depleting the workforce.  It was not revived in 1855 when the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) was formed by some of the management, workers and shareholders to restructure and replace the former ASC.  The new CSR company intended to concentrate its operations closer to the City and the old Canterbury mill was let stand idle and eventually disposed of by the company.  The mill building was later used as a bacon factory, and finally acquired with a view to major residential style redevelopment by Nick Scali in 1983.  The Council and local community were not initially in favour of intensive residential redevelopment of the site but eventually this did take place.  Meanwhile, in 1996 the building caught fire, causing severe damage to the roof and the interior, but not seriously compromising the fine thick sandstone walls which withstood the fire and remained sound.  In 1997, Nick Scali and Company Pty Ltd commenced an appeal action against Canterbury City Council over its deemed refusal (developer-perceived inaction) concerning  its development application over the site (proposed for internal conversion of the mill building to 20 residential units, and to construct 8 townhouses adjoining to the west and a block of 14 residential units immediately to the northwest).  The Minister refused this appeal, however the project did finally go ahead under Gold Abacus Developments, part of the large Asian property developer known as TIANTONG Group.  Gold Abacus began conversion of the factory into luxury apartments in 2000, and other intended townhouse buildings were added to the site, the whole forming a gated community known as the sugarmill apartments.  Stage 1 was completed and offered for sale in 2003, as 39 townhouses and apartments.  Stage 2 consisted of a further 83 apartments and townhouses and in 2006-07 the site stood as completely redeveloped.  Some additional cutting of sandstone was carried out during construction of new apartments, along the frontage closest to the railway line.

 

   

 

LEFT: The railway cutting at Church Road bridge.  Looking southeast with the mill

out of sight down the slope but the chimney showing.  The hillside in the distance,

across the opposite side of the Cooks River, is in Earlwood, and then (ca. 1914)

had few houses.   RIGHT:  View southeast in 2006, over the river to the

same hill which is now densely covered in housing

 

 

Sugar House Road footbridge at high tide, looking downstream.   The mill had formerly built a 

dam here.  This point is now where upstream cement canalisation of the river commences

and at low tide a marked shallowing is observed to occur here.

 

 

This photo (per Canterbury Council's history pages) was taken in 1901 of dam and tannery

at Cooks River.  If the same site as above it shows extensive sandstone outcrop which

is no longer visible at the site today.

 

Sandstone, distribution - A wedge or elongate triangle of Hawkesbury Sandstone outcrop can be evisaged as extending up both sides of Cooks River, narrowing till the sides close to a point somewhere upstream of Canterbury.  The furthest west that sandstone has been noted outcropping in the river is on the northern side at Foord Avenue, Hurslstone Park.   A sizeable sandstone quarry is developed there.   At the eastern end of Kilbridge Road there may also be traces of very old quarrying (pick-marked cuts in sandstone) that much predate the more modern railway cutting which is also there.

 

 

Quarry face at the end of Karool Avenue, 2005.  (Photo:  City Plan Heritage)

 

Karool Avenue, sandstone quarry - On the opposite (southern) side of the river in Karool Avenue is an old sandstone quarry.  Quarrying commenced here ca. 1870s. The sandstone was used in many city buildings and was reputed to have supplied the stone for Sydney University Medical School.  

 

Church Street (Sugar House Road), shale-sandstone contact, sandstone, laterite (imported) - When the railway arrived it made deep sandstone cuttings.  The entrenched railway line truncated the northerly-trending roads of the 1841 Canterbury village subdivision promoted by the sugar company.  Minter Street, which perhaps never continued strongly to the river, was truncated.  The next east street, was Sugar House Road.  This was for some reason renamed as Church Street by Council in 1883 (curious because the first church, was at land shown on the 1841 plan in Minter Street, which was purchased by the Wesley Street and by the time the village numbered some hundreds of persons about one in four identified as Wesleyan).   Church Street did build a crossing over the railway line, but for some reason as a small distance to the west of the street alignment.  The brickwork pylons of the road crossing bridge (seen in a photo above) still stand, but the bridge itself is now removed and replaced by a smaller footbridge structure, which also carries the MWS&DB small diameter sewerage pipe.  South of the railway line the southern section of Church Street was re-named back to Sugar House Road in 1998.  This re-popularised the Sugar House precincts at the time of its proposed redevelopment for luxury multistory dwellings.  

 

Proceeding uphill along Church Street, quite old diamond-drilled sandstone exposure (which appreciable dark patina effects in places) extends uphill as far as Tincombe Street.  Somewhere upslope of here the commencement of the Wianamatta Group was likely found by the sugar company, and the construction of brick kilns was possibly with a view to drawing clay from thereabouts.  Yet if that were the plan why would ALL of the 95 allotments have been offered for sale in 1841?  It is not known if the brick kilns ever did go into operation.  At No. 61 Kilbridge Road, spoil from the foundations of a new house built in 2007 had delicately cross-bedded (in 1-3 cm thick sets) very fine gained sandstone.  The weathered material seems typical of Mittagong Formation, or less likely laminite facies of the Ashfield Shale.  Eastwards along Kilbridge Road, Hawkesbury Sandstone outcrops but where the top of the formation is cannot be picked precisely.   

 

Sandstone, iron oxide forms - Most of the sandstone in the vicinity is fairly free of secondary (late diagenetic or weathering time) iron oxide concentrations.   Iron oxide presence is also able to be examined  at the quarry alongside the river at Foord Avenue, Hurlstone Park (q.v.).   Towards the top of the Hawkesbury Sandstone, just below the Wianamatta Group, there may be pervasive iron oxide staining.  Such was exposed in excavation directly below No. 31 Acton Street.  A vertical cut flush with the front of the house here showed that it had been built directly over sandstone, with virtually no soil present.  The sandstone cut vertically for 1-2m showed pervasive colouring, with a horizontal bleached white streak to 30cm thick, and also small equant white mottles towards the surface.  Slightly higher, at the crest of Acton Street, at No. 20 Acton, excavation brought up friable coarse salt-and-pepper dark ironstained sandstone.  This particular form of softening of the original sandstone cementation (sometimes later re-hardened by continued iron oxide deposition) may occur preferentially along joints?).

 

 

 

CARLINGFORD

 

Railway cuttings exposing the junction between the Hawkesbury Sandstone and Wianamatta Group.

 

 

 

CARLTON

 

Dyke and altered sandstone.

 

 

 

CASTLECRAG

 

 

Castle Rock in Tower Reserve, the highest point on the Castlecrag peninsula.

 

 

Former starkly apparent nature of cliff lines of Hawkesbury Sandstone along Sailors Bay Creek valley,

near the Palisade and The Outpost (street names), Castlecrag, in 1943.

 

 

View of same area today, with outcrops not at all apparent from above.

The rugged area of  Castlecrag is associated with the ideas of architect Walter Burley Griffin.   By the time the Griffins moved to Castlecrag, they had developed a reverence for the natural Australian landscape and its preservation was a dominant theme in their ideas for the community environment .  To ensure this preservation a system of covenants was imposed over the residential allotments within the estate. These covenants controlled building, so as to prevent unsympathetic development and protect the flora and fauna.  An open-air amphitheatre meeting or performance space, the Haven Valley Scenic Theatre, was established by the Griffins and their associates in the 1920s-30s.

The Haven scenic theatre in 1936.  (Photographer:  Unknown; Walter Burley Griffin Society) 

Walter and his architect wife Marion Mahony Griffin came to Australia with Walter already a world-renown planner and architect.  He conceived planning a city not like any other city in the world, not just a new city for a new nation - but a democratic city for a democratic nation (Weirick 1998, p.63).   Their immediate inspiration for this was Louis Sullivan, whose saw democracy as the highest form of emancipation of life.  Walter was in the audience for Sullivan’s celebrated address ‘To the Young Men in Architecture’ in June 1900.

Both Marion Mahony and Walter Griffin were imbued with an enthusiastic appreciation of nature. Mahony grew up in Hubbard Woods, a far northern suburb of Chicago. As a young girl she would venture into the forested ravines and woodland dells that extended down to Lake Michigan. Walter Griffin grew up in the western ‘prairie’ suburbs of Chicago with their open grasslands dissected by tree-lined streams. For both Mahony and Griffin, nature was to be their great source of inspiration.  They combined this with ‘a search for pure form – a geometric, abstract ideal – inspired by the patterns of Nature.  This love of nature was evident not only in their work, but also in their lives. They both became passionately involved with early conservation groups in the Midwest.

The beliefs that shaped the early lives of Marion Mahony and Walter Griffin were dominated by the liberal ideals of transcendentalism - based on the 1830s teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Effery Channing, Theodore Parker and others.  They were also later interested in Theoscopy and Rudoph Steiner's antrhoposcopy (which originated as an independent current of thought within the German Section of the Theosophy Society).

Walter and Marion founded the Greater Sydney Development Association (GSDA) in 1920, and set about establishing a residential development that was sympathetic with the natural environment, and in sharp contrast to the grid streets typical of Sydney at the time.  In 1921, the GSDA purchased 650 acres at Middle Harbour, including the south west part of Castlecrag.  Griffin designed the Castlecrag Estate, as it became known, in sympathy with the natural environment, creating bushland reserves that preserved the major landforms and rock outcrops.

The works of man submerged in the works of nature.  Fishwick House, The Citadel, Castlecrag.

Designed by Griffin and built in 1929.

 

Both the public and his collegial audience were poorly receptive to Griffin's core themes.  To the popular point of view, the Castlecrag houses that submerged the works of man in untamed bush were a denial of architecture and human progress; and the retention of the natural rocks and shrubs was the antithesis of landscape design at the time.

In the end, after seven years without the progress he'd hoped for, Griffin left the Castlecrag project apparently a disillusioned man who felt he had been thwarted at every turn.  It was as if the Griffins’ idealised vision for Australia had been totally destroyed and it was evident that what they brought with them as their American ideas for "civil religion of democracy and freedom" would not readily take root in this land, at least not in their lifetimes (fide Weirick 1988).

 

REFERENCES:

 

Walter Burley Griffin Society, The Griffin Legacy: Castlecrag Heritage, (brochure pdf 752kb). Sydney, Walter Burley Griffin Society & NSW Heritage Office, 2004.

 

Weirick, James, 1988.  Spirituality and symbolism in the work of the Griffins.  In Anne Watson (Ed), Beyond architecture: Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin in America, Australia, India. Sydney, Powerhouse Publishing, 1998, pp 56-85.

 

(James Weirick is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He has written and lectured extensively on diverse aspects of the Griffins’ works and lives. His interest in the Griffins was initiated through his uncle, Colin C Day, who worked as Walter Burley Griffin’s last articled pupil and who lived with the Griffins at Castlecrag in the 1930s.)

 

 

 

CASTLEREAGH

 

Upper Castlereagh - Ancient Aboriginal site?

 

Upper Castlereagh is a famous but debated ancient Aboriginal site (but are the objects indicative of this artefacts or mere 'geofacts'?).

 

Below is some of the latest-available (Stockton and Nanson, 2004) consideration of this.

 

[Cranebrook Terrace revisited:  Archaeology in Oceania, publication date 1 April 2004, authors Eugene and Gerald Nanson.]

 

"""""""""

"Cranebrook Terrace revisited"

 

"Recent publication of revised dates for the Cranebrook Terrace, near Penrith NSW, invited renewed attention to the archaeological finds in the quarries beside the Nepean river. The original find was a pebble chopper found in situ at the base of the gravels, when pumping allowed inspection below the water table and the discovery of bog-preserved logs nearby (Stockton and Holland 1974:65). These were then dated to about 30,000 B.P. Subsequent work on the geomorphology of the terrace by Nanson and Young showed that the dated samples had been contaminated with younger carbon in the ground water (Nanson et al. 1987).

"The 1987 report discussed the major expansion and revision of the previous investigation. Thirteen [C.sup.14] and TL dates were published, indicating the basal gravels were deposited between 43,000 and 47,000 years ago. Further artefacts were found in the tumble of gravel at the foot of the quarry wall at the original site 11 and were described in detail. It was explained why the finds though not in situ could only have come from the gravel unit. A postscript of the report recorded further finds from sites 7 and 8 by a party of University of Sydney students, with Peter White, in February 1987. It was noted that, apart from effects of age pitting and use damage on the first find, the flake ridges of the arfifacts were fresh and undamaged, suggesting discard at of near the find spots, rather than being rolled from a distance upstream. 

"Understandably, caution has been expressed at such antiquity for signs of human presence in southeast Australia. The finds are dismissed by Mulvaney and Kamminga (1999: 138) as 'simple flakes found in a cobble stream . there are some serious doubts about their identification as artefacts'. However, the previous reports provided detailed descriptions according to archaeological norms, with some illustrations and photographs. Some twenty items were displayed at the Department of Geography, University of Sydney, to a group of archaeologists and geologists and were graded to range between certain and uncertain artifacts. Eight of the former were published (Nanson et al. 1987: 74-5,78). They are now in the Macleay Museum. 

"In a major revision of this story, more recent luminescence determinations by Nanson et al.(2003) put the age of the gravel deposition in the eastern part of the terrace at about 110 to 75 ka (Penrith Unit), and the basal gravels in the western portion where the artifacts were located at 40 to 50 ka (Richmond Unit). Four new TL samples were obtained from sand lenses within gravels of the Richmond Unit near where the artifacts were found. Close to contact with overlying flood plain fines these gave ages of 41.9+/-5/5 ka (W390), 43.0+/-6.3 (W394) and 45.1+/-8.8 (W937), while near the gravel base was a date of 50.4+/-8.9 (W935) (Site 13, Figure 1). The original in situ pebble chopper would be dated at or near this last date. 

"While evidence of considerable antiquity is mounting in other parts of Australia, the Cranebrook Terrace dates are the only ones found so far on the eastern seaboard. 

""""""

REFERENCES: 

Mulvaney, J. and Kamminga, J., 1999.  Prehistory of Australia. Allen and Unwin, Sydney. 

Nanson, G. C., Young, R. A. W. and Stockton, E. D. 1987.   Chronology and palaeoenvironment of the Cranebrook Terrace (near Sydney) containing artefacts more than 40,000 years old. Archaeology in Oceania 22: 72-8. 

Nanson, G. C., Cohen, T. J., Doyle, C. J. and Price, D. M. 2003.  Alluvial evidence of major late-Quaternary climate and flow regime changes on the coastal rivers of New South Wales, Australia. In K. Gregory and C. Benito eds, Palaeohydrology: understanding global change: 233-58. Wiley, Chichester. 

Stockton, E. D. and Holland, W. N. 1974.  Cultural sites and their environment in the Blue Mountains. Archaeology and physical anthropology in Oceania 9: 36-65.

 

 

Upper Castlereagh river flats (Penrith Lakes) and closer settled area of greater-Sydney

 

 

Castlereagh is a very historic place.  The present City of Penrith was predated by the farming settlement of Castlereagh, which it was hoped would grow into a town.   The town of Castlereagh never developed, however, and development shifted to the nearby Penrith site after the discovery directly west of there of a suitable route across the Blue Mountains for vehicle traffic.

 

The Upper Castlereagh river flats area has changed greatly since the following early description of it for national heritage consideration:

 

"""""""""""

List:	Register of the National Estate
Class:	Historic
Legal Status:	Indicative Place
Place ID:	101338
Place File No:	1/14/029/0031

Nominator`s Statement of Significance:

Castlereagh was the earliest official settlement the Nepean River. Settlers were present from the early 1790s. Produce from Castlereagh ensured the survival of the Sydney colony. Governor King made land grants to settlers, mainly from the military, in 1803. Castlereagh Road, surveyed by James Meehan at this time, is one of the oldest in Australia and still follows its original alignment. It was the only road into the Evan District until the building of the Western Road (now Great Western Highway). Castlereagh was the site of many early confrontations between Aboriginals and Europeans. Aboriginal artifacts dating back 90,000 years have been found in the Castlereagh gravel beds. Governor Macquarie visited in 1810 and established Castlereagh as one of his five towns, the others being Wilberforce, Pitt Town, Windsor and Richmond. He planned Castlereagh on the ridge ( Church Lane) away from the flood plain. He included a church, cemetery and school. It is the only Macquarie town to fail as it was too far away from the water supply with settlers staying on the flood plain. Castlereagh has changed little since early settlement. Many early buildings, as well as original land grants remain. Castlereagh has been described as the last remaining remnant of early settlement on the Cumberland Plain. It is unique in that building styles from more than 200 years of European settlement have survives. It is of national importance as a site of early colonization. Buildings range from Colonial times to present day. Churches, schools, pioneer cemeteries, trees and fences also remain. Several lanes named after early settlers survive, as well as Jackson`s Mill, the only know remaining mill site on the Nepean River.

Official Values: Not Available

Description:

Castleragh is situated on the floodplain of the Nepean River in the Penrith area and was one of the earliest established areas in the colony of New South Wales. Castleragh Road, which runs the length of Castleragh on a north/south axis is one of the earliest roads in Australia, possibly being the third oldest. Castleragh is distinctive for the number of houses built before 1810 still surviving in the area. The area is predominantly a farming area and supplies much of the Sydney markets vegetable produce.

History: Not Available

Condition and Integrity: Not Available

Location:

About 300ha, bounded by the Nepean River, Private access road - 250m north of Castlereagh Equestrian Centre, Castlereagh Road, and the western boundary of Portion 301Parish of Castlereagh, Upper Castlereagh.

Bibliography: Not Available

"""""""""""

 

The above is now highly "outdated", e.g. "Several lanes named after early settlers survive, as well as Jackson`s Mill, the only know remaining mill site on the Nepean River" - but even at some earlier time it could be doubtful it that was true, i.e. that Jackson`s Mill was surving as the only know remaining mill site on the Nepean River.  Hard facts on these things are proving difficult to find (see more below about the mills along the river).

 

Castlereagh is not only a European place of history.  A former well known anthropologist and stone tool expert referred to the great Castlereagh axe factory, somewhere there along the Nepean, and later on an amateur archaeologist, Father Eugene Stockton, discovered in gravel what he believed was clearly the oldest evidence of mankind in Australia.   Not all agreed with him and the following is a review of the matter by a present practicing archaeologist.

 

""""" ( Notes on Fr Stockton's discovery by Tessa Corkill, pers. comm.)

Although the early dates for Aboriginal settlement of Sydney suggested by Father Eugene Stockton and others have not been generally accepted, I don't believe they have been ignored. A brief precis of the history of this topic supports my reasons for this belief.

In 1974 Sydney University's Eugene Stockton and W. Holland published data in Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania, on various sites in the Blue Mountains. The report mentioned that "a dozen ... implements" were found in gravels of the Cranebrook Terrace, Castlereagh. Wood found near a "possible pebble chopper" was dated to around 25Kya.

In 1987 an article in Archaeology in Oceania, by geomorphologists Gerald Nanson and Robert Young, and Father Stockton, published new TL dates for the Cranebrook Terrace sediments and revised radiocarbon dates for the wood. These suggested the artefacts were more than 40,000 years old. The report stated that four of the original five artefacts found in one area in the 1970s had been found in a "tumble at the foot of the quarry wall", but the authors were certain they did not come from the "fine overburden" originally above the gravels. A re-evaluation of the 5 proposed artefacts decided that only 2 were definitely "humanly made and a third may have been". A Postscript said at least five more artefacts had been found within the exposed lower gravel faces more recently.

Around that time I attended a Quaternary Association meeting of archaeologists and geomorphologists at Sydney Uni's Geography Dept. The meeting discussed the dating of the Terrace and inspected the collection of suggested artefacts. From my recollection a number were rejected as artefacts by all archaeologists, some were accepted by some but not all, and several were generally accepted. There was much discussion (?but no overall agreement) about whether any of the artefacts could be definitely related to the gravels (rather than the overlying finer sediments).

In 1994 archaeologist Jim Kohen gave a paper at the Australian Archaeological Association annual conference, in which he announced that further TL dating of the sediments had pushed the gravel dates even further back, in some areas of the Terrace to perhaps 100kya. However, he also reported that during his ongoing monitor of the quarry faces, all the artefacts he saw appeared to be coming out of the upper, much younger, sediments.

For some reason it seems this updated dating of the Terrace was not published in archaeological literature until a paper by Stockton and Nanson appeared in Archaeology in Oceania in 2004. This stated that the dates for the basal gravel, where the original "pebble chopper" was found [supposedly in-situ] were around 50kya.

The archaeological community still debates the issue, and the various papers are referred to constantly in books and reports by academics and consultants (myself included). 

"""""

 

 

BIRD'S EYE BEND AREA

 

Sites of early water mills shown in Penrith heritage study done for Penrith City Council  (by Fox & Associates, 1987). The "Kinghorn's mill" is here shown on the southern side of the river, but other information is that it was on the

river's  northern side.  Locally it has also be called Jackson's mill (maybe because of proximity to
Jackson's Falls?).   The mill shown on this map as Jackson's mill is also uncertain.

 

Bird's Eye Bend - The writer was drawn to this spot in 2008 to look for sandstone in the river, first heard of about 2005.   At that time he was told by someone that he (informant) had seen there the old foundations of Kinghorne's mill and that such were anchored into "sandstone".  This seemed most unusual as the bedrock at this place would be expected to be Ashfield Shale.  Later one another person told the writer that there were slabs of sandstone showing in the river there, which seemed to confirm the earlier report.   However, on going there (2008) it was found that there was plenty of sandstone to be found along the south bank but it is all loose blocks that apparently have been taken there.  Two large blocks close to the river bank were observed to show drill marks, one with a drillhole going right through the block.   About where the star is shown on the above figure in the Penrith Heritage Study there is a considerable pile of these large sandstone blocks.   It may be that this pile was mistaken for remains of Kinghorn's mill.   However the writer instead thinks that the sandstone blocks were taken there most likely with a view to constructing major weir works which never went ahead.

 

Kinghorne's/Jackson's Mill - This is the oldest grinding mill on the river.   It was located near Jacksons Falls.    Another later mill was established upstream of it, a little below the Penrith Weir, the McHenrys mill.   The mill is seen on the north side of the river on Alexander Kinghorne's 1826 map of Emu Plains (State Records of New South Wales Map No. 2661).  There is likely connection to the fact that in March 1825, Governor Brisbane wrote to Under Secretary Horton to inform him of a bed of millstone having been found on Cox's River.  This may relate to some exploration party at just before that time (check).   Apparently this stone was then quarried, for trialling a pair of millstones at Emu Plains.

 

Hyacinthe de Bougainville also visited Emu Plains in 1825 and may have noted such development (check).  James Kinghorne when he became superintendant at Emu Plains in 1826 recorded that the two millstones were there.  It was not until 1828 that a government mill was planned for Emu Plains.  This was possibly/presumably constructed in due course (check) but in fact the ?private mill on the other (Castlereagh) side of the River may have existed by 1826 (unless the annotation there "New Grinding Mill" only shows a proposed location for such?).  It is thought that Kinghorne's son, Alexander Kinghorne Junior, may have in fact constructed that mill as early as 1825 on land owned by William Bowman of Richmond.  This mill was later known as Jacksons Mill, but it is not known if that if because the  Jackson family owned/operated it or only because it was situated near Jacksons Falls.  The mill is thought to have still been operating when McHenry of Lambridge built his mill upstream of it and closer to Penrith Weir in  1831.  The old mill near (?downstream of)  the falls may have continued operating into the 1860s.   In January 1832 James Smith wrote to the government (Colonial Secretary) complaining how McHenry's mill and dam had diverted the course of the river and raised the height of the water to such an extent as to ruin the convenience of the river crossing there.  

 

References for the above are not yet collated and only extracts have been seen.   One of the latest references to the area is SA (2007) has been perused in full:

 

Stedinger Associates, 2007.   Construction of a bridge over the Nepean River at Bird's Eye Corner.   Historical Archaeological Assessment.  23 pp.   [For Penrith Lakes Development Corporation Ltd].

 

SA (2007) on their Fig. 2 term a ford at the end of Jackson's Lane "Jacksons Ford (RES 62)" but in Fig. 1 of the same report "Jacksons Ford" is alternatively shown at the end of Sheens Lane, Bird's Eye Corner.    According to this report the ford at the end of Sheens Lane was built in the 1830s.   Regarding Kinghorne's mill, this report (p. 22) states that 'Kingshorn Mil' (ca. 1826-1860s), if surviving, would be a rare industrial site.  They, however, did not find any trace of it.  :

 

A pile of many large sandstone blocks is present on the south bank of the river.   The SA (2007) survey must have found these but that is not clear.   SA (2007) mentions "Indeed a stockpile of river pebbles and concrete rubble in the survey area suggests that maintenance of Sheens Land Ford and that to the west continue today".    Their Plate 3 suggests that they are referring to the pile abovementioned but if so  the blocks are not concrete, rather sandstone.    Also these sandstone blocks look old, not like anything to do with continuing maintenance.   Two separate sandstone blocks on the south bank of the river, a short distance east of the pile, show drill holes right through them.  

 

 

Cranebrook Formation - The Upper Castlereagh river flats are the area of the Cranebrook Formation and Cranebrook terrace.

 

The Cranebrook Formation had been equated by earlier soil writers with the Clarendon Formation further down the river valley.  Geologists later on correlated it instead with the Lowlands Formation.  The Upper Castlereagh (Cranebrook) terrace is 22m above sea level and 14-16m above the level of the Nepean River.  It is 20m below the adjoining Tertiary terrace.  The Cranebrook Formation almost certainly extends south through Emu Plains, although there has been little compilation of drilling records, and may be traceable as far south as the Mulgoa area.  If so it may be pictured as a former braidplain that extended from the mouth of the Nepean Gorge near Mt Portal to the Castlereagh Neck at Castlereagh village.

 

The Cranebrook Formation is 8-14m thick.  It consists of a basal layer, averaging 7m thick, composed of lenses of clean sand and clast-supported polymictic gravel.  The sand lenses are up to 5m wide.  This layer is sheet like and is believed to be of braided stream deposition.  It rests on a remarkably flat surface of fresh Ashfield Shale.  No erosion of channels into the shale has been noted.  The gravels are not cross bedded but in places flat pebble imbrication fabric is moderately well developed, and confirms the expected palaeocurrent direction as parallel to the current Nepean River.  The basal sheet-like gravel layer is overlain, non-gradationally, by a similar thickness (5m or more) of finely but indistinctly bedded red yellow medium grained clayey sands and silts (known as the 'overburden' layer to quarry operators).  The base of the 'overburden' layer is generally planar and sharp but undulates over a broad area.  Various palaeochannel features have been observed in the 'overburden' layer during quarrying.  Palaeochannel fills extend from and to various levels in the 'overburden' layer and rarely also down into the underlying gravel layer.  Channel and palaeocurrent data have not been recorded for these smaller scale bodies but some of the channels are thought to have been trending northwesterly.  On a coarser scale there appears to be something of a north-south elongated pinchout of the gravel layer across the area of the Upper Castlereagh river flats.  It may be that the gravel sheet is not a single continuous body of all the one age but rather consists of two northerly-elongated lenses of different ages.  The first radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating of the formation was by Nanson and Young (1985.  Geological Society of Australia, Abstracts, 13, 25-27) and suggested an age of 37-42 ka BP.

Much of the Upper Castlereagh terrace has been removed by quarrying to serve mainly the Sydney market, and quarries filled with water forming the artificial "Penrith Lakes".   The gravel comprises pebbles and cobbles of many rock types - quartz, quartzite, porphyry, granite, hornfels, sandstones, hard claystones and chert, etc.  About 50% of the clasts are igneous rock types, of which Devonian porphyry of 'Bindook Porphyry' type is the most abundant.  

Silcrete - Remarkable large silcrete bodies, the largest known anywhere near Sydney, have been recovered in the quarrying operations at Penrith Lakes.  By mid 1980s ones as large as 2m across had been recovered and larger ones may have been enountered since.  Anecdotally these bodies were found usually at the base of the Cranebrook Formation.  However no photos of any of them in situ exist and later attempts to find anybody actually involved in having exposed any of them, or any notes made at the time, have been fruitless.  The bodies were seen by visiting geologists and the first theory was that they could not have travelled very far (because of large size) and probably were derived locally by the erosion of some nearby silcrete horizon.  However, since that theory was formulated no such silcrete horizon has been located anywhere in the region.  Marsden Park (q.v.) was for a time considered to have a possible remnant of such a horizon but that did not get confirmed in any way.

Sandstone (east of river) - West of the Nepean River, and the N-S Lapstone structural zone, the edge of the Blue Mountains is virtually all sandstone.  East of the river, however, the bedrock of the river sand and gravel deposit is usually the Ashfield Shale.   Sandstone underlies the gravel north of Hadley Park, indicating a north-side-up fault there.  Also, it is reported that the foundations of an early water mill at Birdseye Bend (where the 1826 map of Emu Plains, State Archives map no. 2661, shows a "New Grinding Mill") are in sandstone.  If so (unconfirmed) this probably indicates additional faulting.

 

BMI plant (photo: Stedinger Associates)

The BMI plant remains - An archival recording of the remnants of the BMI plant besides the Nepean River has been carried out by Stedinger Associates.

 

 

 

CATTAI

 

Cheesemans Road - Sand deposit.

 

Ref:

Sand Management Associates, 1992.  Environmental impact statement for sand extraction and processing plant at Cheesemans Road, Cattai, N.S.W.   For Western Sand Mining Pty. Limited, Cammaray, N.S.W.  (Accession Number 42191282, Dewey 333.76514 - National Library of Australia)

 

 

 

CECIL PARK

 

Cecil Road.  Bringelly Shale quarry.  Zacuba Brickworks.  The amount extracted in 1990/91 was 107,986 tonnes, with a remaining reserve of 1 Mt.

 

 

 

CESSNOCK LGA

 

From the "Draft LEP 2009 Written Instrument" - http://www.cessnock.nsw.gov.au/resources/file/OnExhibition/LEP/Cessnock_Final_Draft_LEP.PDF

 

* CESSNOCK, I54 - Obelisk to Greta Seam (1340862), Charlton Street, Cessnock. (Lot 2, DP 1013378. Local significance).

* GRETA, I101 - Mount Molly Morgan (1340896), Camp Road, Greta (Lots 101, 102 & 104, DP 1083950, Lots 7 & 8, DP 868722, Lot 1, DP 430997, Lot 41, DP 1079692, Lot 2, DP 874323, Lot 16, DP 1078153, Lot 1, DP 874323, Lot 2, DP 1092560 and Lot 2, DP 865109. Local significance).

* MOUNT VINCENT, I171 - Bow Wow Creek Gorge (1340110), Sandy Creek Road – 6.0 km south-west of Mulbring. (Multiple lots - the extent of the item is shown on the Heritage Map. State significance.)

* MULBRING I172 - Mulbring Road Fill Quarry (1340115). (Cessnock Road, Mulbring. State significance.)

* NORTH ROTHBURY I179 - Sandstone Quarry, Littlewood Road (1340079). (Littlewood Road, North Rothbury. Lot 8, DP 755211. Local significance.)

* WOLLOMBI I246 - Finchley Aboriginal Area (1340109). (13km west - south - west of Wollombi. Local sigfnificance.)

 

CHATSWOOD

 

Crown Plastic Brick Works.   This occupied a NE elongated 2 acre block of land running between Archer Street and Neridah Street a little north of Victoria Avenue.  Presently occupied by a Citzens Centre.   This annotation is on an undated land sale plan (?1870-1889).

 

 

 

CHERRYBROOK

 

Woodlark Place.  Pyes Creek quarry (Pt. Lot 163, DP 775483).  Behind Woodlark Place and at south end of David Road.  GR 175E,665N to 9130-IV-S.  An overgrown old sandstone quarry; history not located but believed to be quite old (perhaps 1825-1850? period and perhaps worked in association with the Mitchell's 'New Line' improvement to the Great North Road).  Abutments of a small masonry bridge of ca. 1830 occur at Woodlark Place, and convict hewn rock faces and stone gutters of the original line of the the 'New Line Road' remain off Daintree Place, Dural.

 

 

 

CHULLORA

 

West of Marlene Crecent - Exposures along west of railway embankment, near two large electricity transmission line pylons.  A soil profile, that deepens with the rise of the low hill here, overlies pallid Wianamatta Group strata.  Floaters of fine-grained sandstone in the profile over the pallid zone sometimes display smooth limonitic coatings.  One small area of soft ironstone occurs in the profile overlying the pallid zone, suggesting that the 'soil' profile might also contain pond deposits(?).   From along this escarpment or in an excavation immediately back from it, a weathered dyke fwas recorded in the past (late 1900s).  From the rock's somewhat granular texture it was thought to possibly be a clastic dyke, rather than weathered  basalt.  Looked for subsequently, this feature has never been relocated.  

 

 

 

CHURCH POINT

 

Close to the point at Church Point, both to the west and east of the point, are exposures of remarkable close-set vertical jointing.

 

Sand extraction - Sand (N.S.W.) Pty Ltd in 1962 was extracting sand from McCarr's Creek.   A six inch sand suction pump on a barge delivered sand to shore where it was processed in two cone classifiers.   The operation produced 200 tons per week or more of silty sand.  The operation was acquired in 1963 by the Readymix group (or at least Readymix entered into a partnership for buying the output) which considered constructing improved plant for beneficiating the sand, as otherwise the product was suitable only as filling sand.  Davidsons Washed Sands Pty Ltd of 25 Victoria Road, North Ryde, also had early interests in the area and supplied processing plant for a joint operation.    By 1996 a washed sand operating capacity of 1000-1200 tons yards per week had been achieved.     The plant continued to employ four or more men up till 1974, at which time the manager was Mr. L. Hammond. 

 

 

 

CLARENDON

 

Clarendon Formation.  The village of Clarendon is the type area of the Clarendon Formation and Clarendon terrace level that extends along the Hawkesbury (Nepean) River from Clarendon upstream as far as Agnes Banks.

 

The terrace surface of the Clarendon Formation is lower than the Tertiary terrace (the uppermost formation of which is the Londonderry Clay) and height than the next lower terrace, that of the Lowlands Formation.  A steep scarp of 10m height descends from the Clarendon terrace to the Lowlands Formation.  The Clarendon Formation generally fines downwards, from red to fawn clayey sand at the top to dense clay at the base.  As the base of the formation is thought to rest of eroded Tertiary deposits, any gravels encountered at depth by drilling down from the Clarendon terrace are difficult to differentiate as being either the top of the eroded Rickabys Creek Gravel or reworked gravels within the Clarendon Formation.   The Clarendon terrace is undulating and much younger thin deposits would also be expected to be present in its depressions.  The fact that the formation is thought to generally fine downwards might reflect its geographic situation as being erosional into the Londonderry Clay.   

 

 

 

COBBITTY

 

An unnamed creek 5 km NW of Cobbitty has the base of the Bringelly Shale exposed including a carbonaceous claystone unit, close above the Minchinbury Sandstone, which contains a thin tuff band.

This horizon, named the Cobbity Claystone Bed by Herbert (1979.  NSW Geological Survey, Bulletin 25, 203 pp.) is the only tuff ever identified in the Bringelly Shale.  Herbert recognised it as widespread from drill core, but this is the only area where it is known to outcrop.

 

 

 

CONCORD

 

Queen Elizabeth II Park.  Here there is probably some almost undisturbed land surface preserved, as well as small remnant of the original open forest vegetation.   Fine maghemite gravel is plentiful over the surface, in which the clasts are strongly flattened.

 

   

 

COWAN

 

Pacific Highway - Cowan Quarry.   This quarry is at 10 Pacific Highway, north of Cowan.  It lies just west of the Pacific Highway and quarry floor is about 20m below the highway level.  The entrance to the area is immediately before the railway bridge north of Cowan. (Mining Lease 10, M6391).  It borders Kimmerikong Creek.  A shale lens in the Hawesbury Sandstone was worked for pipe-making material by a contractor for Industrial Clay and Shale Pty. Ltd.  Overburden stripped off the shale was sold to the Department of Main Roads for use in construction of the expressway sides where the expressway crosses small valleys and needs extensive side reinforcing with blocks of sandstone.  The shale thus exposed began being stripped in 1974.  After that operation there was a hiatus, followed by another period of extractive activity from 1981 till about 1993.  A mention of the quarry in Northern Suburbs Advocate (12/8/87/) stated that it was operated for sandstone and shale by Industrial Clay Shale Pty Ltd.  Sand and sandstone landscape rock extraction, however, has a much longer history in the area.  There was formerly early dimension stone production from Cowan.  Operations commenced as early as ca. 1920, or perhaps as early as 1900, and Council was also obtaining sandstone ballast from the area in the 1930s (Advocate 5/6/1930, p. 11).  Two quarries and the ruins of a stone house exist.  The house is where the quarry owner Mr Max Duffy formerly lived (in Portion 359).  Mr Duffy took the lease in 1923.  In 1990 the area was considered for use as a rubbish tip by Hornsby Council, as a 'rehabilitation' option.  G. and H. Todd became applicants to conduct a landfill depot there (North Shore Advocate 13/12/1990, p.3; 7/3/1991, p.3; 21/3/91, p.8; 11/7/1991, p.10).  Establishment of a tip there was recommended for approval by Council staff but met with considerable opposition from local residents and Hornsby Conservation Society (North Shore Advocate op. cit.) and no tip eventuated.  In 1998 it was suggested that the quarry site be used for a water treatment works.  According to the "Latham Report" (fide National Parks Association) it has been a proposed addition to the Muogamarra Nature Reserve, and also that there was a successful Aboriginal Land Claim in 1996 over Cowan Quarry, yet  also that it was still "subject to a Mining Lease (for extraction of clay shale and sandstone)".   A TD Duffy of Pacific Highway, Cowan, was a respondent to the National Building and Construction Industry Award 2000.  Despite the opposition to a tip in 1990-91 such must have eventually gone ahead, with loss of most geological exposure from the quarrying, because currently (2008) the sign on entrance gates reads "Closed for tipping".  Signage also indicates that latest work done there, probably tree plantings, was by Planet Earth Support Company Pty Ltd of Kariong.  Phone directory listing for this company, as a management consultancy service, gives 58 Wideview Road, Berowra Heights, as the address (which is nearby).  Other points of interests in the area include a waterfall and aboriginal engravings at a spot above the quarry.  

 

 

 

CREMORNE

 

Early bore holes for coal prospecting.   Drilling was done here to prospect for coal for the Balmain coal mine (summary still to be added), by the Sydney and Port Hacking Coal Co.   Cremorne No. 1 bore was drilled in 1890-1891 and Cremorne No. 2 bore in 1892-1893.  Cremorne No. 1 bore at 854 m depth struck a 2.14 m thick seam of coal which had been cindered by 'dolerite dykes'.  The No. 2 bore reached the seam as 3.06 m of unaltered coal at 889 m depth.  A plaque commemorating the drilling exists today at the corner of Cremorne Rd and Hodgson Ave.  Portions of the core have likely been preserved; three samples, and one thin section of "andesite", are held in the Geological Survey collection [TS 722 from Cremorne Bore No.1 at 2846 feet (867.5m), andesite].

 

 

 

CROYDON (North Croydon) - ASHFIELD (north Ashfield)

 

Excelsior Brickworks.   This sizeable quarry and brickworks was along the northern side of Queen Street (then called Jones Street) and along Lang Street to Church Street West.  It was first run by William Keen ( the 'grand old man of Ashfield brickmaking') in 1874-1888.  Keen bought the land in 1873 and at the time if was on the banks of a small stream running into Iron Cove Creek.  This stream, which ran in an appreciable gully, is no longer apparent.  It had its commencement in the vicinity of the Croydon Brickworks and ran through the Excelsior works land.   As for other brickworks, the first bricks were made from clay and loam along the creek banks, and only later on would the underlying Ashfield Shale be exploited.  Keen was a Baptist and donated from his brickworks the bricks for the construction of Ashfield's first Baptist Church which was built in 1885.  The church still stands but is today obscured behind a later shop facade, at 27 Holden Street, Ashfield.  From a rear laneway the church and its bricks from Keen's brickworks, can be observed.   In 1887 Keen intended converting the brickworks to a steam-driven dry press plant, which move was opposed by nearby residents.  Residents also objected to blasting at the quarry.  The steam conversion apparently went ahead because by 1888 Keen's bricks were advertised as produced at a steam brickworks (i.e. made by the very latest and most advanced technology).  With the 1890s depression the consumption and demand for bricks fell (from 224 million in 1886-1887 down to 92 million in NSW in 1894).  Keen went insolvent and eventually lost the property.  It was renamed by creditors as the Exceslior brickworks.  The name Excelsior was a company name created in 1890 by some of the creditors.  It became applied to the Keen brickworks, which was sold as such in 1893 to Henry George Downton for 8,500 pounds.  In that year the works are believed to have had five of the latest brick stamping machines, with rated capacity of 1,200 bricks per hour.  The works were using significant amounts of both gas and coal by the 1890s, the coal bought from either the South Bulli and/or Lithgow Zig Zag collieries.   Downton ran the works profitably.  He was a man of 'rigid economy' and stipulated that when he died he was to have the most economical and simple funeral possible, with no friends invited and no headstone.  He died childless in 1898 and management of the works passed to a brother.  The Excelsior works supplied many bricks for new housing on the subdivision developments at Haberfield in particular.  In 1918 the brother died and the works were bought by William Charles Benjamin Bush who was known as a quarrymaster of Enfield.  Bush however did not continue to run it.  He proceeded to demolish the buildings and sold the land to Ashfield Council in 1921.  Council established a garbage incinerator there, and later on began filling the pit with garbage in the 1930s or earlier.  The area was eventually filled, or over-filled, by 1971.  Levelled off and grassed, it was named the Ashfield Centenary Sports Area.  A William Henry Nicholls, who had some association with the Excelsior brickworks in Croydon, and had lived in a house alongside the works, in 1920 resurrected or carried on the name by forming a new Excelsior Brick Company Limited.  This company commenced a brickworks at Penshurst Road, Lakemba.

 

Thomas West brickworks.   Thomas West commenced a brickworks in the 1880s at a site which was probably only a few hundred metres east of Keen's brickworks, on the eastern bank of Iron Cove Creek.  This was south of the western end of Henry Street (three acres, Lot 19, Section 2 - with the exact position therein of the kilns or pit being uncertain).  He first leased this land and later on purchased it.  He eventually came to own a total of nine acres in the area.  Iron Cove Creek (now a concrete storm water channel) at that time had a swampy creek flat extending some distance upstream beyond West Street (named after West).  Two brick semi-attached houses at 2-4 West Street which were built by West in 1883, and likely used bricks from his kilns, now have the walls painted over and the bricks cannot be seen.  However West erected six cottages in all along Croydon Road and in West Street, quite likely using only his own bricks, and all may still survive so that exposed original bricks that he made might occur somewhere in the area (his other brick cottages being at 227-229 Croydon Road, built in 1883, and 219 Croydon Road, built in 1885).  As least some of these houses may have been for employees in his brickmaking and quarrying activities.  He was a contractor who maintained a builders' depot at Fivedock, where he also later opened the Fivedock quarry.  He was also, in 1878-1879, connected with brickmaking activities around Cumberland Brickworks at Dobroyd Estate.  West at first had purchased land on the western side of Iron Cove Creek adjacent to Croydon Road, around about 217 Croydon Road where one of the houses built by West in 1881 still survives.  There he ran a depot and gravel yard.  It is quite likely that this was where there is still a hardware and contractor's yard running down to Iron Cove Creek storm water channel behind Nos. 217-219 Croydon Road, now known as Impal Hardware.  West's brickworks apparently thrived in the boom years of the 1880s and he opened another kiln, or else a distributing yard, in the Crescent (now Heighway Avenue) on the southern side of the railway line.   He also, in the late 1880s, operated a brickpit at Druitt Town (Enfield).  West's Croydon brickworks, like others in the district, floundered in the 1890s depression.  Thomas West by insolvent by 1894 and his assets at Croydon were offered for sale in that year, the Sydney Morning Herald advertisment mentioning "an old brick kiln and a drying shed".  There was no buyer.  

 

Boehme and Hopping's kiln.  Henry Boehme and Benjamin Hopping in 1877 operated a kiln at a location which is now No. 28 Lucy Street.  Little is known about this kiln or who built it and when.  The first record of it is in the 6 October 1877 sale offering of land thereabouts, which reserved Lot 1 of Section 1 from sale because of the kiln there.  The vendor at that time was still unfinished in the business of demolishing the kiln, but expected to complete this soon.  It is assumed that an earlier owner of the land, Boehme, likely had the kiln constructed.  After selling his Ashfield land (ca. 1876) he moved to Stuart Town (check Boehme's battery).  Benjamin Hopping lived in one of Boehme's two houses and Sands Directories indicated that he was a brickmaker by trade.  Benjamin's brother, Thomas, also later moved there, and worked at the nearby Thomas West brickworks. 

 

 

 

CROYDON PARK

 

Brighton Brook and Hampton Street, brickpits - Brickpits are thought to have existed along the small valley depression of Brighton Brook, now a concrete canal.  Brighton Brook rose around Mitchell Street, Enfield, and flowed easterly to join the Cooks River at a lagoon.  The course of the river has since been altered.  The area south of Albert Road used to be a northwards loop of the river, through the present Croydon Park on east side of Brighton Avenue and Picken Oval and Croydon Bowling Club on western side of Brighton Avenue.  This area, the former high water mark area of Cooks River, was partially infilled in 1881. The large loop tip was eliminated during the 1930s.  Much dumped infilling can be seen particularly along the northern side of the canal, constructed in the 1920s, to take the drainage of  the Brighton Brook.  Up to 5m of fill appears to have been placed almost up to the edge of the canal between Hampton Street and Brighton Avenue.  Members of the Cottle family began operations somewhere hereabouts, as revealed from Sands directory records (no other geographic or operational records yet located):

 

Cottle (family)	Boundary Street	Croydon	1879	OP
Cottle Bros	Hampton Street	Croydon Park	1884	Sands
Pendlebury, Elijah	Hampton Street	Croydon Park	1884	Sands
Cottle & Sands	Hampden Street	Canterbury	1886-1887	Sands
Cottle & Sands	Hampton Street	Canterbury	1888	Sands

 

The Cottle family brothers (Israel, William, George and Elijah) are known to have made a business move from Balmain to Croydon in 1879 to take up the lease on a brickworks (later known as Croydon Steam Brick) at Boundary and Webb Streets, on land owned by Anthony Hordern.   Brickmaking activity had begun at that site in 1876 or earlier (by persons unknown), and a "factory" was already under construction there in 1879 (Burwood Council rate book)  which the Cottle brothers took a lease over from Anthony Horden.  The company taking the lease were the Cottle brothers in conjunction with William Worsley of Croydon.  The lease was over land on which there were engines, boiler and partially finished building.  The first two year lease was followed by another for five years lease agreed to in 1881.  In that year the Burwood rate book recorded four huts, a tent, and the brickworks buildings on the land.  The 1882 indicate that the Croydon brickworks was in that year being managed by a Mr J. Oxley, and thus it seems that the lease was broken somehow.  It is also known that the Hordern's land was offered for sale in 1882 including a "complete brick making plant" (actual sale of land was completed in late 1884).  Probably in association with these events, the Cottle brothers, likely together with Elijah Pendlebury, relocated all brickmaking endeavours to Hampton Street, Croydon Park.  It is thought that their works were on the northern bank of Cooks River at the end of Hampton Street, but that there were also clay pits up the valley of Brighton Brook which cuts the same street.  The Elijah Pendlebury who was at Hampton Street in 1884 may have been a younger relative (seeing that one of the Cottle brothers was named Elijah).  Note also that the business later became known as Cottle and Sands.  This is likely the same Sands who also in 1886 was, as "Ayles & Sands" business, at Blaxland Street in Ryde; and who may have moved in that year from operating at Ryde to Croydon Park (as Sands directory in 1887 shows the Ryde listing as changed in 1887 from Ayles & Sands to Ayles and Saunders).

 

There is nothing today remaining to obviously suggest where brickmaking may have been located.  Picken Oval which is an area with some features (slight depression) would be suspected were it not for the fact of its known history involving river diversion.  Picken Oval had a development application in 1970 by G.J. Coles to build a K. Mart complex there.  This was opposed by Council, which requested to State to buy the land and preserve it as open space.  Such purchase finally took place in 1990.   

 

 

 

 

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