|
| Looking across Murrurundi
and the Liverpool Plains from the crossing north of
the town |
Murrurundi (including Blandford, Timor Caves, Ardglen,
Willow Tree)
Small town at the edge of the Liverpool Range west of
Sydney
Murrurundi is a small rural town of about 1000 people
situated 327 km north of Sydney, 44 km north of Scone and
417 metres above sea-level. It is quite beautifully located
by the Pages River at the foot of the Liverpool Ranges.
Mountains loom impressively overhead, particularly to the
east and west.
Except for shale mining in the early 20th century there
has been an absence of heavy industry in the locality and
consequently change has been gradual. Murrurundi and its
rural heritage have been preserved. The main street has been
declared an urban conservation area.
It is known that the area was occupied by the Wanaruah
and/or Kamilaroi Aboriginal peoples before colonial
settlement and that the two groups had trade and ceremonial
links.
The Wanaruah favoured goannas as a food source, covering
larger animals in hot ashes and stuffing them with grass.
They also adopted burning off practices as the new shoots
which emerged after fire attracted kangaroos which they
surrounded and killed with clubs and spears (du-rane) barbed
with sharp stones. They also used stone axes (mogo) made of
hard volcanic rock bound to a wooden handle.
The Kamilaroi wore opossum clothing and, for ceremonial
or ornamental purposes, smeared themselves with red ochre
and pipe clay, scarred their bodies and wore decorative
headwear. Once one of the largest linguistic communities in
Australia their last known formal communal ceremony was held
in 1905. By the start of the 20th century there were no
indigenous people left in the Murrurundi area.
It is from the Wanaruah place name 'Murrumdoorandi' that
the town's name derives. Despite understandable local
publicity which claims that it means 'nestled in a valley'
it seems more likely that it refers to five unusual rock
formations near Temple Court (four now remain) and may mean
'five fingers' or 'meeting place at the five fingers'.
The first European in the vicinity was surveyor Henry
Dangar who passed through the area to the west in 1824 while
scouting for new grazing lands. When his party was attacked
by the Wanaruah's Geaweagal clan he retreated but settlers
still moved into the upper Hunter Valley.
William Nowland, a farmer from Singleton (then known as
Patrick's Plains), followed in Dangar's footsteps, crossing
the Range and establishing a station on Warrah Creek in the
Liverpool Plains. He searched for three months before he
found the gap just north of present-day Murrurundi in 1827.
Others soon followed his dray track which formed part of the
Great North Road. Built by 3000 convicts between 1826 and
1834 it was the first road into the Hunter Valley.
William Henry Warland established the estate of Harben
Vale to the south of present-day Murrurundi in 1829. The
village which developed nearby he named Blandford after his
birthplace in England. By 1834 Warland had built a homestead
and formed a partnership with Peter Haydon whose brother
Thomas also acquired land in the area.
When the government laid out the township of Murrurundi
in 1840 Thomas Haydon decided to create the adjacent private
village of Haydonton which serviced the local estates,
government officers and travellers. In time the name
Haydonton fell into disuse. The two, separated by Halls
Creek, were amalgamated in 1913 with old Haydonton forming
the town's commercial district.
Bushrangers in the district included the Jewboy Gang.
They were known to frequent the area known as Doughboy
Hollow (the area between Ardglen and Willow Tree). After
they murdered John Graham at Scone in 1840 they stopped at
Murrurundi, where they exchanged their horses and headed
north over the range to the hollow. There police magistrate
Edward Denny Day and his party caught up with the gang who
were captured after a shoot-out and hanged in 1841.
While the district became noted for its fine wool
production, the village acquired a somewhat dubious
reputation in the early days. Being a frontier town at the
northern edge of settlement it was full of transients, or
'many restless and disorderly characters' as it was put at
the time. In the 1840s teamsters and stockmen frequented the
Woolpack Inn and the White Hart Hotel.
A good Irish Catholic, Thomas Haydon established the
Murrurundi Race Club and a racecourse in 1841 and donated
land and funds for the town's first church the same year.
The first courthouse and private school were built in 1843
and Australia's seventh national school opened in 1849. In
1867 the population was recorded as being 350.
The railway arrived in 1872 and Murrurundi became an
active and prosperous rail centre with a repair shop and
barracks while the track to the north was under
construction.
Murrurundi became a municipality in 1890. Shale was mined
between 1911 and 1915 with the town's population peaking
around 1914. Since that time it has settled back into being
a service and transport centre. Today it is sustained by
quality sheep, beef and horse studs and by both crop and
meat production. The sheepdog trials are held in April and
the Bushman's Carnival and Rodeo in October. At Chilcott's
Creek, 15 km north, the remains of a huge diprotodon were
found. It is now in the Sydney Museum.
Things to see:
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Haydonton Inn
Mayne St, named after the Crown Land Commissioner of the
day, is the title given to the highway as it passes through
Murrurundi. At the southern end of the town, opposite the
Shell Roadhouse and still identified by a name plate out the
front, is the Haydonton Inn, made of local bricks in the
early 1850s.
A little further north, almost opposite Brook St
(so-named as it leads to the river), is a skin and wool
store built c.1856 of handmade thumb-print bricks.
Tourist Information
Continue north, past Victoria and Wade Sts and, to the left,
are the council chambers, the town's tourist information
centre. You can obtain a walking tour pamphlet here, tel:
(02) 6546 6205.
Mayne Street
Over the road is the White Hart Hotel. The original dining
room remains from the timber structure erected in 1842 by
the in-laws of Thomas Haydon. It was enlarged in 1857. The
northern end was rebuilt at the outset of the century and
the second storey added in 1936. Governor of NSW, the Earl
of Belmore, dined here in 1869.
Continue north past Adelaide St (named after the Dowager
Queen). To the right, two doors up from the supermarket
(erected in 1905 as Dooley's Store), is Bridge House (70
Mayne St) built of local bricks in 1854 for Thomas Haydon's
mother-in-law. The iron roof conceals the original shingles.
Ben Hall and Murrurundi
The first block of land to be purchased in Haydonton was
purchased by ex-convict Benjamin Hall, the father of one of
Australia's best-known bushrangers, Ben Hall. The family's
original slab cottage (1842), where Ben Hall passed much of
his early childhood, was located opposite Bridge House,
approximately on the corner of Mayne St and Adelaide St. The
family moved temporarily to the Lachlan district in the late
1840s. Ben's parents and some of the children returned to
Murrurundi in the early 1850s. There is a photograph of the
old cottage in the local history museum.
Also on Hall's original block is 'Rosebank', built in
1889 as the Joint Stock Bank which folded in 1892. It stands
at the corner of Adelaide St and Liverpool St. Nearby is
Halls Creek which is named after the family.
Hotels
The Railway Hotel, constructed in the 1880s, was rebuilt
after a fire in the 1920s. Tattersall's, opposite, also
dates from the 1880s though it is in a poor state of
disrepair.
Catholic Complex and Railway Station
St Joseph's Catholic Church. Thomas Haydon, a devout
Catholic, donated this land to the church and had a small
wooden chapel built on the site in 1841. He oversaw the
laying of foundations for a new church in 1855. The current
building, made of local sandstone, was completed in 1860. It
was consecrated by Bishop Polding. The church has a marble
altar with 1000 constituent parts. Behind the church is the
cemetery which contains the tombs of town founders Peter
Haydon (died 1842) and Thomas Haydon (died 1855) and of
Eliza Hall (died 1869), the mother of Ben Hall whom she
outlived by four years.
Next door is Murrurundi House which was built in 1880 as
a convent for the Sisters of Mercy. It is a large two-storey
building with an upstairs verandah guarded by cast-iron
lacework fencing, a hipped roof, shuttered windows and a
central gable topped by a crucifix. It is now a convention
centre. Adjacent is the handsome old Catholic school which
closed (like the convent) in 1970.
Over the road is the railway station built in 1872 when
the line arrived from Scone. Murrurundi was the terminus of
the northern line until the Ardglen tunnel was built,
allowing construction to extend northwards.
Heritage Cottage
Cross the bridge over the river and head north along Mayne
St. Just past the post office, on the left, is an old slab
cottage taken from the 'Alston' property at Timor and
re-erected in 1996.
Presbyterian Church
Continue north along Mayne St. To the right is an Italianate
building erected in 1897 as the Manchester Unity Hall, a
lodge of the Independent Order of Oddfellows. After World
War II it became the RSL Memorial Hall. On the left-hand
side of the road is the old Presbyterian Church, built
between 1886 and 1898 and now used by a play group.
|
| The Murrurundi Literary
Institute, now the local Museum |
Museum
Next door, on the corner block, is the local museum,
situated in the Literary Institute (still emblazoned on the
facade) which was built in 1913. It is a symmetrical
building consisting of two almost identical structures with
steeply-pitched roofs linked by a central hallway.
The town's first police station was erected on this site
when the township was first laid out in 1840 and the School
of Arts and Mechanics Institute were built here in 1883 but
almost entirely demolished in the 1960s.
Out the front are some stocks, a reminders of that part
of the building's history and of past systems of punishment.
There is also an antiquated iron-wheeled tractor.
The museum contains artefacts of early settlement and
local industry, and a collection of historical photographs.
The Fishburn Room contains a 1:60 scale model of the HMS
Endeavour, built by a member of the Fishburn family who are
descended from mariner Andrew Fishburn, a member of the
First Fleet. A plaque on the rock outside is in honour of
his descendant, Murrurundi-born Peter Norvill who, in 1988,
became the first Australian-born pilot to fly solo around
the world solo in a fixed-wing aircraft.
The museum is open on the second and fourth Wednesdays
and Sundays of the month from 2.00 p.m. - 4.00 p.m., the
first and fourth Saturdays from 2.00 p.m. - 4.00 p.m. and
the first, third and fifth Sundays from 12.00 p.m. - 3.00
p.m., tel: (02-6546 6142).Diagonally opposite is the old
Methodist (now Uniting) Church built in 1890 of locally-made
bricks.
St Paul's Anglican Church
St Paul's Anglican Church, designed by noted colonial
architect J. Horbury Hunt and built of local sandstone in
1872-74. The work was commissioned by the White family (of
which Nobel-Prize winning novelist Patrick White was a
member).
The roof of the nave is a timber hammerbeam construction
clad in slate while internally the ceiling is boarded. There
is a cast-iron eagle lectern and a wall surfaced with
Italian tiles behind the altar. The windows are grouped in
twos and threes between buttresses. The square bell tower
was completed in 1913 to a design of Hunt's and was
constructed as a memorial to Frederick White of Harben Vale
who pushed the original project along.
The single-storey vicarage at 3 Mount St was built of
local bricks in 1858. It has a hipped roof, French windows,
a timber verandah and ceilings of either plaster, pressed
metal or timber.
Law and Order
In Murulla Street is the law-and-order complex, combining
Gothic and Italianate elements. There are three buildings.
The one closest to the road is a symmetrical sandstone and
brick courthouse which consists of a central block fronted
by a triple-arched portico with two smaller wings,
incorporating the police station.
Next to this is the old gaol and lock-up keeper's
residence which consists of a two-storey brick block flanked
by two single-storey sandstone wings. The ground-level
verandah is a later addition. Both were designed by
Alexander Dawson and built in 1860-1861 on the site of the
original 1842 courthouse. The sergeant's residence at the
southern end of the complex was built in the 1890s.
Bridge and School
In Murulla St, just before the intersection with Mayne St,
is a suspension bridge for pedestrians over the river. The
third bridge on the site it was erected prior to 1914.
In Mayne St is the public school. The right side of the
front section is the original building designed in 1877. The
trees in the grounds are apparently registered with the
Botanic Gardens in Sydney. The 'Pink House', on the northern
side of the schoolgrounds, was made of local bricks in 1854
as a national school. It later became the Methodist
parsonage. No longer pink it is now a private residence
named 'Elouera'. The two-storey blue building just over the
road and a little further north was erected in 1865 as the
Joint Stock Bank but became the CBC from 1870-1938.
Mayne St - North
The old Royal Hotel which was built in 1863. It has a hipped
roof, upstairs verandah and quoins. Cobb & Co. used it as a
changing depot until 1867. To the rear of the building are
the old stables (best seen from Murulla St), built in 1860
of local sandstone and also used by Cobb & Co. The shingles
are now covered with iron.
Continue north along Mayne St. To the left is the old
telegraph office, built in 1861. It closed in 1913 when the
new post office opened and is now the Cafe Telegraph.
At 180 Mayne St (behind a dense wall of trees) is one of
the oldest surviving buildings in town, Bobadil House, which
was built of local sandstone in 1843 as the Woolpack Inn. It
was constructed for surveyor Henry Dangar.
Shale Works
Turn up Boyd St and drive to the T-intersection, turning
left into Doughboy St. At its end a dirt road heads up the
hill. On the right-hand side of that road it is possible to
see some relics of the old shale works (on private
property). To the left is the works manager's residence
(1912).
Return south along Doughboy St. You can see more relics
to your left. Turn right, back into Boyd St, then take the
first left into Little St which, en route to the town's new
recreation area, takes you past 'Rosedale', built 1848-52 of
timber and enlarged in the 1890s. It was once occupied by
parliamentarian Sir Joseph Abbott.
Paradise Park
Paradise Park, literally at the foot of a steep and densely
wooded hill, is a lovely picnic area with shelters,
barbecues, toilets, plenty of birds and, at dusk, there are
usually some wallabies.
At the edge of the area is a path which leads through the
'Eye of the Needle', a narrow gap between the rocks through
which you must pass to reach the summit. The trail continues
to the lookout which affords fine views across to the
mountains and the valley.
Glenalvon
One of the area's earliest properties is Glenalvon. Today it
features a single-storey stone labourer's cottage and
stables which were designed by J. Horbury Hunt in 1874 for
the White family who had, by then, come into possession of
the property.
The stables in particular are very distinguished. They
are made of rough-hewn sandstone with a brick floor, gabled
roofs and a fine ventilator capped by a pyramid design. The
sandstone homestead was built in 1916. It has a pitched roof
with integrated verandah.
Blandford
Blandford was surveyed as 'Murulla' (the Wanaruah name for
Mount Murlow to the south-west) with the first land sale
proceeding in 1856. It developed as a private village in the
1860s and the name Blandford was adopted when the railway
came through in 1872. 2.3 km from the bridge is Blandford
Public School, established in 1871.
Wallabadah Rock
Continue along Timor Rd. About 3 km from the highway, Scotts
Creek Rd branches off to the left, heading northwards.About
16 km along the road is Wallabadah Rock, the plug of an
extinct volcano. The base of the rock covers 61 hectares and
it rises to 959 m above sea-level. It is possible to climb
to the top. In October it is covered with flowering rock
orchids. However, it is located on private property so any
visit must be arranged in advance with the owners, tel: (02)
6546 6329.
Timor and Timor Caves
Timor has an attractive little timber church built of
pit-sawn timber by voluntary labour in 1883. Both the
initial construction and the centenary renovations were
financed by local families. Nearby are the Timor Caves, a
series of subterranean limestone caverns. The caves are
within walking distance of the road. The Timor Caves are
easily accessible but good shoes, a strong light and common
sense are a must. Camping is available for a fee, tel: (02)
6546 6089.
St Luke's, Blandford
300 m south of Blandford Public School, on the New England
Highway, is St Luke's Anglican Church, a small and
attractive brick building with a tower buried beneath
swathes of rich green ivy. It was another White family
commission for J. Horbury Hunt (1879-80).
The Lookout at Nowlands Gap
Just north of Murrurundi the road rises up into and over the
Liverpool Range via the Murrurundi Gap, otherwise known as
Nowlands Gap after William Nowland, a farmer from Singleton
(then known as Patrick's Plains) who discovered this route
across the mountains in the late 1820s.
Today there are truck stops at Nowlands Gap which provide
excellent views south over Murrurundi and the upper Hunter
Valley. Unfortunately the picnic tables have been stolen
twice and the council have now given up.
Ardglen
On the other side of the Liverpool Range are the Liverpool
Plains, a revelation for pastoralists in the 1830s. After
discovering the Murrurundi Gap over the range William
Nowland drove his stock northwards over this route and
established a new station at what he called Doughboy Hollow,
now Ardglen, located 6 km north-west of Murrurundi on the
highway. He was subsequently pushed off his land by the
Australian Agricultural Company which was granted the
million-acre Warrah station in 1833.
Willow Tree
Willow Tree is a pretty little village of arts and antique
shops at the northern boundary of the shire, 18 km north of
Murrurundi along the highway. Essentially a service centre
to the rural areas of Warrah and Mount Parry it is situated
at the north-eastern corner of the enormous Warrah grant
which was made out to the Australian Agricultural Company in
1833. An inn was established on the future townsite but it
was the arrival of the railway in the 1870s that
precipitated settlement. The village was surveyed when part
of the Warrah grant was subdivided and sold in 1908.
Gem Fossicking
The area around Murrurundi has some reputation as a
fossicking site for agate, naturalite and zeolite crystal,
calcite crystals, quartz, petrified wood and limestone
fossils. However it has been well scoured and many sites are
on private land.
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Murrurundi
