Buildings

Now a convention centre and country retreat, until 1989 Hermitage Hill was the hospital for the inland town of Wellington. This is the Heritage Listed former Main Ward building, some details are: "The Main Ward building, 1903/4, of the old district hospital is a large and impressive building sited on a hill overlooking the town and valley. ....Built ...of local red bricks from the Wellington Kiln, the main block of the hospital is designed in the Federation Queen Ann/Filigree style. Queen Ann elements can be seen in the varied roof shapes, Marseilles patterned roof tiles, terracotta ridge ornamentation, tower, gable facing street, timbered effect in gable, and Filigree elements evident in the substantial iron filigree to the verandah." HFF and have a great weekend, everyone. Explored.

What now is the Braidwood Museum was built as the Royal Hotel in the 1840s. The pink building (also in PiP) is the Braidwood Hotel, built in 1850, still operating and restored as near as possible to original condition. These buildings would have been frequented by the people in my history story and are close to the former (now removed) Braidwood Gaol, mentioned below. Continuing my bushranger story: I should give some background: back in the 1850s-60s, this was isolated and frontier territory. Travel to Sydney took several days, there were few facilities and no schools for the children of small farmers or working families on the large properties. Tom Clarke and his brothers were totally uneducated. Horse and cattle theft was common and there was an element of camaraderie between families and friends. Tom Clarke, like most of his family, was involved in stock theft and normally would have expected a local trial and a light sentence, if any, when he surrendered to the police in July 1865. Instead, he found himself on more substantial charges, including the highway robbery of three Chinese. Pending trial, likely to be tried elsewhere and with a less receptive jury, he was placed in gaol and faced a long sentence. Early on the morning of 3 October 1865 he climbed over the gaol fence and onto a racehorse that someone had tethered outside, then galloped away. A subsequent review found that several prison guards had links to the Clarke family. A reward of 50 pounds was offered for the Tom's capture. And, I guess, this is where the story really begins..... Explored.

"Bedervale" (see also PiP) is a heritage National Trust listed homestead 2km from Braidwood in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. HFF and best wishes for the weekend, everyone. Explored. John Coghill was the captain and part owner of a convict ship. He sold it and purchased some 23 sq km of land in the Braidwood area, where he built (1836-42) and operated “Bedervale”. Convict labour was part of the equation for all these large land owners and Coghill had some 70 labourers assigned to him. It is interesting that “Bedervale” still has a cellar with iron rings on walls where any troublemakers were imprisoned! The transportation of convicts to NSW ceased in 1840 and the social fabric of the colony changed forever with the discovery of gold in 1851.

St Patrick's Catholic Church is probably the most substantial building in Araluen. I wondered if it dated from the gold mining days, when Araluen had some 35,000 people (now about 170) and over 40 hotels! Though the earlier St Patrick's did indeed date from the 1860s and actually began as one of those hotels, the current building is much more modern, dating from 1940.

This Braidwood building is named "Tidmarsh". The house has been restored to its original condition in recent years, complete with a shingle roof. HFF and have a great weekend, everyone. Back in the early 1860s this was used as a police barracks. Later it became the residence of the Superintendent in charge of the local police force. With the problems caused by the Clarke gang of bushrangers, the police numbers grew to about 150, by far the largest in any country district. It is worth noting at this point that it seems there was a rather 'distant' relationship between the police and the Special Constables (details with previous image).

St Bede's in Braidwood was built from local granite in 1852. The funeral service for the Special Constables was held here, prior to them being buried in the local cemetery where a memorial column marks their grave (PiPs). Explored.

Some of our most pleasant memories of Paris were of a late afternoon organ recital in Notre Dame. What dreadful news today.

This was a country general store which opened in the 1880s when Tingha was beginning to thrive as a tin mining town. It operated until 1998, when the local Council purchased it to become a museum - it now is heritage listed and a visit inside really is a "blast from the past" (images to come). It struck me that this image could have been taken back in 1961 (the date of the newest vehicle, the Renault Floride at left), so a b/w treatment seemed appropriate. Explored.

We may have arrived in Zennor too early to visit the pub, but the nearby St Senara's Church invited a visit. On the wall was an old (and much repaired) sundial with the date 1737 (PiP 3) but the church and surrounding cemetery were clearly hundreds of years older.