Above is a photo of four horsemen in Burragorang Valley, which I will describe below.
This is the third article about Burragorang Valley, an isolated valley west of Sydney which was flooded in the mid-1950s to make way for Warragamba Dam, Sydney’s main water supply.
Some of the photos in this article have been provided by my wife’s cousin Patsy from their late grandfather Alfred’s collection.
The four horsemen
In the photo of four horsemen, my father is in the middle.
There was a similar photo of my father, by himself, in an earlier article. In the above photo it is notable that his horse (probably a former racehorse) is bigger and seems to be taking an interest in proceedings. The other horses look thoroughly bored.
The horses would have been supplied by a guest house.
I will now tell you about some of father’s horse riding experiences in Burragorang Valley.
The horse named “Buck”
Here is Alfred Lenton’s photo of horse riders on a Burragorang road.
On one occasion my father paid his first visit to one of the guest houses and, when he said he was an experienced horseman he was offered a particular horse. He noticed that when he mounted the horse the stable hands had gathered around to watch, so, suspicious, he asked what the horse’s name was. They said it was “Buck”!
Alarm bells immediately rang for my father, however he decided to call the stable hands’ bluff. Firstly he pulled Buck’s head up with the reins so he could not get the bit between his teeth (stopping Buck from getting his head down between his legs). When Buck tried to swing his head around on one side, another ploy used by horses who were trying to buck, my father steered him along a nearby post and rail fence on that side so that he hit his head on the fence. At the end of the paddock my father turned him around and repeated the process back to the saddling yard.
The stable hands were quick to acknowledge that my father had called their bluff!
The dapper first-timer
On one occasion a smartly dressed radio celebrity was offered a horse. The chap was dressed in what he thought would be suitable attire, in an immaculate white shirt and white moleskins.
What he did not know was that the horses always liked to gallop when they turned for home. The saddling yard was very muddy, and a stable hand had lifted the yard’s sliprails into place after the celebrity had set off for a trial run, so, upon turning around, the celebrity’s horse galloped up to the sliprails and propped when he saw them, resulting in the celebrity sailing over his head and landing in the heavy mud.
The celebrity now realised why all the stable hands and other staff had assembled to watch him!
Paddling in the Wollondilly River
Here is a peaceful photo of children paddling in the Wollondilly River, with the typical background of the Valley walls.
Medical help.
The remoteness of the Burragorang Valley resulted in a lack of medical help, making the farmers rely on their own resources.
Home remedies.
There was a high reliance on rum in home remedies. George Kill’s Journal written about the turn of the 19th Century for chronic cough specified:
“One fresh egg, in cup, squeeze two lemons on eggs until dissolved. Two tablespoons of best sweet oil, three ounces of sugar candy, ¾ pint of rum. Mix and bottle up. Dose: one tablespoonfull night and morning.”
Some settlers became quite proficient at treating maladies, one prominent settler being a standout, as described in his obituary:
THE LATE MR. BERNARD PATRICK CARLON. 1925
The death took place on 3rd inst of Mr Bernard Patrick Carlon JP at his residence Burragorang at the age of 83 years. The deceased gentleman was the second eldest son of the late Patrick Carlon who over 90 years ago relinquished colonist duties at Liverpool to accept a Government grant of several thousand acres of land in the Burragorang Valley.
The late Mr Carlon was called “Doc Carlon” on account of his treatment of the ills of the people of Burragorang for a period of over 40 years, prior to the advent of telephones, motors and a resident doctor.
His abilities in the direction of diagnosis and treatment of sickness were proverbial. There are many alive today who owe their lives to his treatment, which was also given without fee or reward.
The deceased was a grand type of man in every way, and was noted for his devotion to his church. His saintly wife and one son predeceased him by several years. There are four sons and four daughters and a number of grandchildren to mourn his loss.
Midwives.
Up to the turn of the 20th century nine out of ten children of Burragorang families were born in their homes. The best-known midwife was an aboriginal lady, Mrs Longbottom. She smoked a clay pipe and often accepted her remuneration in the form of plug tobacco. She assisted birthing women, not only of her own race but also European women, using some of her tribal medicine and practices. This must have met with approval because she was in considerable demand as a midwife.
Contagious diseases
The valley’s extreme isolation ensured that contagious diseases like whooping cough, chicken pox and measles were seldom problems.
In the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1919 one of the Burragorang Carlons was very ill and when his doctor said he would die, a coffin was ordered and delivered to his house. However he survived the illness and years later he was seen using the coffin as a feed trough.
Bridges
Here is a picturesque photo of a bridge, taken by my wife Diane’s grandfather. Its height and length give an idea of the carrying capacity of the river (probably the Wollondilly River). A newspaper article referred to floodwater reaching a level of six feet above the deck of the bridge.
On one occasion guests at the nearby Yarringtonville Guest House waited a week for the floodwaters to recede sufficiently for them to cross.
Room letting
Late in the 19th Century a couple of families let out rooms to city folk who began to appreciate the valley for its natural attractions and who were willing to pay for overnight accommodation, as spartan as that might be.
Also, ad hoc situations arose when commercial travelers, government agents, stock buyers and itinerant hawkers sought the occasional lodging. Mrs Dunn applied what was almost a nominal charge of one shilling for a meal and the same for a bed.
Guest houses
This is a photo of Burragorang House, one of the largest guest houses in the Valley.
This somewhat loose system of accepting paying guests developed into a healthy growth of boarding houses which really took off in the 1920s. The simple family names like Maxwells gradually gave over to more exotic names such as Burragorang House, Mountain View, The Commodore’s Ranch, Killarney, Apple Grove Golden Cliffs and East View. There was also a hotel in Upper Burragorang (1904).
Publicity for guest houses
Here is a copy of a 1946 newspaper advertisement for some of the guest houses.
Cedar getting
I now turn to a very significant item in Australia’s history, the cedar getting industry, and the role of the Burragorang Valley region as probably the last significant source of this timber.
Cedar trees were identified as being very useful in the first decade after the settlement of Sydney. New buildings were being erected every week, and for window frames, doors and any other weather-exposed use it became recognised as the best of all the new timbers. Carpenters and boat builders were quick to discover its lasting qualities when exposed to bugs in the air, soil and sea that quickly rotted other timbers.
These qualities were put to early good use in the colony. The first boat built at Port Jackson, irreverently nicknamed “The Lump”, became worm eaten, so an outer layer of cedar planks was simply fixed on its hull.
Cedar’s obvious attraction for shipbuilding was that ship’s hulls (including naval ships) did not have to be careened (scraped) every two years, or lined with expensive copper sheathing. The result was that red cedar became known as “red gold” and was used extensively both locally and in Europe.
Large tracts of land in the northern rivers of New South Wales yielded enormous quantities of the timber, until by the late 1800s it was virtually exhausted. It was at this stage that two pockets of cedar which had been discovered in the Upper Burragorang, in the rugged Kowmung River (a tributary of the Cox’s River) came to be exploited.
Ti willa and Gingra Creeks
Here is a photo of a typical cedar tree which could be almost 40 metres tall, taking into account the size of the people standing at its foot.
There were two pockets of cedar trees on the Kowmung River, on Ti willa and Gingra Creeks. These creeks were deep gorges (about 800 metres deep) which rose in the Kanangra Walls area and access to them was very difficult. Cedar getters went to some trouble in these creeks, in the case of Gingra Creek in the short distance of six miles a rough road crossed and re-crossed the Creek nearly forty times. At some of the crossings it was found necessary to construct substantial bridges, and many extensive excavations and embankments had to be made. When I followed the road in 1970 the bridges had all been washed away but the route of the road was still clear.
In 1964 I made a descent of Ti willa Canyon with friends. Unfortunately I did not know at the time that at its lower end it had been a source of cedar, otherwise I would have looked for evidence of the cedar getting.
Cedar getters
Here is a photo of George Kill, who I will refer to later, with his typically barefoot son Mostyn.
It is difficult to establish who the early cedar-getters were. It has been suggested that Jimmy Pippen, who had a farm in the Upper Cox, was the first, as early as the 1860s. Jimmy (1818 1917) was obviously an active person, he died at the age of 99 years, killed by a rolling log!
George Kill was definitely an early cedar-getter, between c.1885 and 1908 he contracted with the Bank of New Zealand to float the Kowmung logs down the river system. The above photo was taken at his Cox’s River farm with his son Mostyn. George had the typical build of a timber-getter, with broad shoulders and large hands.
The river route
The river route
Here is a photo taken from Kanangra Walls. On the right is the High Gangerang Range, leading to Mount Cloudmaker (the highest mountain) in the distance. Ti willa Canyon has its source behind that mountain. Gingra Creek has its source on the High Gangerang Range before Cloudmaker. On the left is a range falling down into Kanangra Creek which has a similar depth to the Kowmung River, and is equally wild, giving readers an idea of the rough country in which Ti Willa Canyon and Gingra Creek occurred.
Initially the logs were floated downstream in the same method as had been used extensively in the large northern rivers, but in this instance this was a very slow method.
The first main obstacle was the stretch of the Kowmung River down to the Cox’s River, which was almost a canyon. The logs had to be shepherded through the river pools From the Cox’s Junction through the Burragorang Valley the floating was easy, however the river then flowed through the Warragamba River gorge.
Although information is sparse I rather think that the logs would have been transported by timber jinkers from the Burragorang to Camden rather than being carried on through Warragamba River gorge.
On several occasions a flood carried the logs all the way down to the Nepean River, where farmers were the unwitting recipients of the logs.
The road route
In 1907 the company of Goodlet and Smith devised an alternative route by using the stock route from the Cox’s River up to and along Scott’s Main Range, and then down a steep spur into the Kowmung River.
Although the stock route had quite easy gradients, the gradient on the spur was very steep, as I discovered in 1969. The climb was over 1000 feet in height and had no flat areas where horse teams could be rested. At the top the cedar was transferred to flat top wagons which took the timber through the Burragorang Valley and out to Camden, a total of 50 miles.
The sawyers lived in a camp on the Kowmung, where the logs were cut up using pitsaws.
It is not clear when the Kowmung supply cut out, but I would think that due to the high rate of extraction by Goodlet and Smith the stands of cedars would have been exhausted by the First World War.
My experiences with cedar
Here is a photo of a typical cedar table and cabinet.
When I was young my Uncle Jim Flower, who was a cabinet maker, restored two cedar cabinets for my parents. These are now in our dining room. He French polished them, giving them a beautifully coloured grain. My story about cedar getting therefore has a particular significance to me.
Conclusion
That is all for the time being about Burragorang Valley. In a future article I will tell you about other settlers in the upper reaches of the Cox’s River.
