Open your eyes to Australia
© Keri Webb
Step out of your Time Machine in downtown London in the 1780’s and it’s the smell that bowls you over! Worse, where the poorest people live, whole families are squeezed into a single room because it’s all they can afford.
Continue reading “A Convict’s Lot”
© Jim Low
We came to live at Glenbrook, in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, towards the end of 1973, just before the birth of our first daughter. Our home was in Glenbrook Road which joined Mitchell’s Pass. A pleasant walk down the Pass brought us to Lennox Bridge, the old convict-built, sandstone structure named after its builder David Lennox.
Continue reading “Staring History in the Face: A Personal Memoir of Lennox Bridge on Mitchell’s Pass”
© Jim Low
The Great North Road was constructed between 1826 and 1836. This 250 kilometre long road was to extend the northern limits of the settlement in Sydney and so take advantage of newly discovered country in the Hunter Valley. It would pass through remote, mountainous bushland north of Wiseman’s Ferry, on the Hawkesbury River.
Continue reading “The Great North Road”
© Jim Low
On Easter Monday this year I went looking for the Church of England Cemetery at Castlereagh, New South Wales. From Penrith, Castlereagh Road spears across the once fertile Nepean River flats that were divided into family farms by the first government land grants. These grants were given to former convicts and free settlers in the hope that their agricultural pursuits would provide food for the struggling, infant colony of New South Wales. Many of these early farmers are buried in the cemetery I was going to find. Continue reading “Early Settlers of Castlereagh”