~ THE CASTLEREAGH TALKS ~

 

A day of conversation, displays and talks about the past organised for 

History Week 2009 at Castlereagh Academy on 5 September 2009.

 

 

VENUE: The "Sacred Acre" site donated by John Lees.  Now the Castlereagh Academy.   Building at right is the meeting hall.  The

site of John Lees' house and the first wooden chapel he built would be in the water now seen behind the bell tower.  The

talk by Rev. Russell Davies treated how the chapel has been rebuilt three time, from at first besides Lees' house

to next just behind where the above sign is, and finally to just left of there where the church now stands.

A day of talks on the past was organised, with eight speakers/displayers, for Saturday 5 September - the first day of History Week 2009.  This webpage is recording about the topics of discussion and what speakers said, etc.   The talks were held at the site of the historic Upper Castlereagh Methodist Church, Hall and Cemetery.   This is also known today as the Castlereagh Academy.   NSW Corps soldier turned settler John Lees (John Leese) donated the land here (one acre) to the Wesleyans and he built a chapel here in 1817.   The chapel/church has been re-built three times, making it more substantial.    The first chapel site (1817) was besides the house of John Lees (John Leese) which had been just across the water seen behind the bell tower, and the second building was relocated to alongside Castlereagh Road.  The present church building was erected in 1847, from locally made bricks.   It was built immediately adjacent to the second church building which was where the present sign is.  A cemetery was commenced here in 1836 and the grave of John and Mary Lees was moved to here from Castlereagh Cemetery.   A Wesleyan school was operated here from 1840 so this has long been a "place of education".   The old weatherboard 'Hall' (?1864) housed the school-teaching until the school was replaced by the Upper Castlereagh Public School which opened on the opposite side of the road in 1879 and still stands.

 

At Upper Castlereagh, just north of Castlereagh Academy, looking westwards through millions of years of history.

The base of excavation is the Ashfield Shale (Triassic).   Above that is the thick sand and gravel unit of economic

 importance.   Above that is the 3-6m thick loamy "overburden" unit and soil.   On top of the soil is seen here the

historic "Nepean Park" homestead.  Behind that rises the face of the Blue Mountains (the Lapstone Monocline

Structural Zone).   The Nepean River flows between the house and the mountains face.   It is incised down

into its own alluvial plain, and may be at about the level of where the truck is.    The likely many

 'ups-and-downs' in river history presumably reflect both climate change and tectonic effects.

[ For one interesting review, see:  Atkinson 1987 re Nepean River terraces. ]

 

 

This webpage records a day of talks and displays on the past, held at the historic "sacred acre" of Upper Castlereagh (site of first Methodist chapel in Australia and now the Castlereagh Academy).   There were eight principal speakers/displayers on the day.  Links to them and their work will be added, as separate webpages (as material becomes available or is uploaded):

Russel Davies  .... link/webpage is in preparation still

Eugene Stockton  - Webpage showing Fr Stockton, his early work, and raising also his current "bio-regional" ideas on the area.

Andy Herries  .... link/webpage is in preparation still

Tessa Corkill  .... link/webpage is in preparation still

David Branagan  .... webpage is in preparation still, but this 'draft' on geology is now available, showing Dr. Branagan; and other investigators also will be added for geology. 

Ted Matthews  .... link/webpage is in preparation still

Matt Poll  .... link/webpage is in preparation still

Nepean District Historical Archaeology Group   

 

( At present, December 2009, still only few of the intended webpages giving more details on the eight or so themes raised on the Talks day have been completed.  Progress on this will continue to be slow.   There is also an overview of the talks that can be seen at the pre-meeting webpage -  A pre-meeting file, castlereagh-hist-pre-seminar.htm .   The meeting did proceed quite according to plan, and although there were few 'surprises' on the day a few things did turn up which were not anticipated or formerly known about.  One such was was that one of the attendees introduced himself as the man who first proposed the "Penrith Lakes" scheme some decades ago [i.e. Mr Warren Pinfold, who spoke briefly and brought along for viewing a curious pierced small cobble which he'd obtained years ago from the sand and gravel diggings].  Other things that were new and very welcome were how attendees pooled any pieces of 'new' knowledge.  Such is referred to herein and included note of the the 'first known' silicified wood from the Blue Mountains [by Ted Matthews, with display material he had borrowed from the collector of such], and note of outcropping silcrete boulder on western side of Nepean further downstream [this might be material at Freemans Reach, which if so was in fact an occurrence that was was previously known about].   Also discussed was that NHDAG might possibly have someone interest in continuing studies on the Lees, such as the Lees house site next to the chuch [this to be checked for follow-up]. ).   

Brief profiles of some of the speakers were made available before the meeting:

"""""

Rev. Russell Davies  - a retired Uniting Church minister, is currently General Manager and Chaplain to Castlereagh Academy.   He is working towards the 200th anniversary in 2017 of the old Castlereagh church.  This is the first Methodist chapel in Australia - and indeed the first in the southern hemisphere.   He will speak about John Lees and the origins of Castlereagh chapel, and outline its current status and plans for the future.

Fr  Eugene D. Stockton - will talk on  "The Bioregion of Deerubin"  (Deerubin is the Aboriginal name of the river).   Father Stockton is author/editor of the well-known book "Blue Mountains Dreaming: the Aboriginal Heritage" (2nd Edition, 2009)about Aboriginal archaeology and history.   Fr. Stockton first presented the ideas in his "The Bioregion of Deerubin" at a University of Western Sydney forum "Place and Culture" held at Yarramundi on 4 May 2002.  In it he focusses on the ideas associated with 'River'.  The river and its tributaries reach out to every locality and to every part of this living community.  The river reaches back through time to the early inhabitants of the region, to the ancestral life forms, to the very formations of the physical environment.

Matt Poll - is assistant curator for indigenous collections of the Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney.  Matt has a Fine Arts background and he also specialises in the recent Public Artworks and art exhibitions by Aboriginal artists throughout western Sydney.  Matt will later be working on a display of artefacts at the Macleay which will include some of the Stockton collection items.

Ted Matthews - is a former Nepean school teacher who is now a guide at Jenolan Caves.  Ted will be speaking on some of the difficulties of interpreting the ancient past, with a talk called "'The Secrets of Hidden Gravels and Cobbles".   Ted was for over 30 years a science teacher for NSW Department of Education.  For the first half of his Science teaching career he taught at Nepean High and during those years took students on excursion to places of interest such as the Lapstone outcrop of the ancient Nepean River gravels and to Jenolan Caves.  After leaving Nepean High he transferred to South Coast High schools for an extended period and then finally to Bowral High, from where he retired after another six years.   His interest regarding the Jenolan Caves goes back to his childhood. While a student at Sydney University Ted was employed as a casual Caves Guide at Jenolan.  He continued in such a position throughout his teaching career.  At retirement from teaching Ted was permanently employed by the Jenolan Caves Trust as a guide, a position which he holds to-day.

Tessa Corkill - will speak on Aboriginal use of stone, and stone hatchets (ground-edge hatchets) in particular.  Tessa is an archaeologist whose main interest is in sourcing of Australian Aboriginal stone artefact materials and landscape archaeology. She has a particular interest in silcrete, which, in many areas, was the most common material from which artefacts were made.   After graduating from Sydney University as a mature age student in 1986, Tessa worked as a consultant archaeologist, mainly in the Sydney region. Since completing an MPhil on sources of Aboriginal stone flaking materials in 1999, she has undertaken several research projects, some as an Associate of the Australian Museum. These include the sourcing of more than 300 stone hatchets from the Sydney region that are held in the Museum, and identification of stone raw materials from a number of archaeologcial sites.   (Tessa is also interested in the Tertiary river sediments at Maroota, believed to be closely connected to the greater story of the Nepean-Hawkesbury River - viz.  http://maroota.sands.googlepages.com)   Some of Tessa's work may be downloaded - viz. links at the bottom of this page.

David Branagan - is a very well know former geology lecturer of Sydney University.   He has studied numerous places, including the Lapstone Monocine just west of Penrith.  Branagan and Pedram (1990):  "The Lapstone Structural Complex forms the most prominent topographic feature in the Sydney region.  The complex consists of a number of related folds and faults, trending generally north-south, which together form a large south-plunging structure between Kurrajong Heights and Lapstone.  The east-facing escarpment of the Blue Mountains, formerly called the Lapstone Monocline, varies in its character, being sometimes a single monocline, sometimes a double monocline and sometimes a normal or high-angle reverse fault.  Faulting west of Kurrajong and at Glenbrook is part of a series of overlapping en echelon faults, west-side down, and sometimes overturned, rather than a single fault.  This fault system forms the west side of the complex.  Significant minor structures associated with major features include thrusts, minor folds, joint systems, tectonic breccias, sedimentary injections and igneous dykes.  Many of the minor structures show a marked parallelism with the major structures.  The main period of deformation forming the complex is believed to have taken place in the Early Tertiary, but the overall structure has a long and complex history. Field evidence suggests that sinistral strike-slip faulting played a part in the deformation, particularly of the near-surface rocks.  Basement block faulting was also significant, producing the Cumberland Basin and associated structures when the main Lapstone structures were formed.  Basement structural control is believed to consist of the northerly extension of the western edge of the Eden-Comerong-Yalwal Rift intersected by elements of the east-trending Lachlan Lineament."

Andy Herries -    (still to be added).

Talks related to areas in the Sydney-Blue Mountains-Jenolan range except for Andy Herries who spoke on his archaeological work in Africa and particularly about studies pertaining to the heat treatment of silcrete.   The process of heating silcrete and other siliceous rocks to improve flakability, called heat treatment, is now recognized as a strategy widely used by prehistoric knappers.   The Discovery of a heat-treatment pit on the Cumberland Plain was made in 1994.  This pit was found during an archaeological excavation near Caddies Creek, Parklea.  It was dated to around 1000 BP (McDonald and Rich 1994) .

"""""

Following the meeting it was intended to expand each of the speakers/topics into a separate webpage. 

 

 

HISTORY WEEK, AND THE 'CASTLEREAGH TALKS' AS MOVE TOWARDS A MORE "TOTAL" VIEW OF HISTORY: 

History Week is not a contemporaneous happening across all of Australia.  For example, in Victoria they have History Week as October 25 - November 1 ( http://www.historyweek.org.au ).   In South Australia, 22-32 May was History Week ( http://www.history.sa.gov.au/history/history_week/historyweek.html  ).

In NSW, History Week 2009 was set for 5-13 September.   An annual History Week in New South Wales was commenced by the History Council of NSW in 1997.   For History Week 2009, the Council adopted a theme of "Scandals, Crime and Corruption" for a "wild journey through the dark shadows of our past" to discover the "scandals, crime and corruption that have shocked us over time".

There's a little European times crime at Castlereagh mentioned hereunder, but much of the Castlereagh Talks focussed on older things (things of geology and archaeology).   As far as is known for the moment, the 'Castlereagh Talks' meeting was the first effort to expand History Week to the scope of 'TOTAL' history, i.e. treating all of the past (not just the European past which has always been the central theme; and not just the history of humans - but rather the history of all - all life and also the 'land', planet Earth).   Of course the story of how the earth was made, and all that, is far too big to even think about fully on just one day.  Nonetheless, at the Castlereagh Talks the discussion did range as far as Jenolan Caves (now asserted by some as the oldest cave system on earth).  It also got as far as the topic of all of us perhaps deriving from "Out of Africa" (the Homo sapiens story); and how study on the working of silcrete pointed the way for more readily dating the evolution of intelligence or purposeful action.  This refers to over 70,000 years ago.  Such was considered a very apt topic for presentation at Upper Castlereagh, which the meeting heard was the "mecca" for both Sydney silcrete considerations and for Australian Methodism.  The silcrete theme is generally not well known.   The Methodist theme of the place of the meeting is very strong; this being where the first Methodist chapel was built.  This is well known, as a sign out the front declares.

 

BEFORE THE EVENT: 

Stories were written in two local newspapers:

http://penrith-press.whereilive.com.au/news/story/history-in-a-wash-jug

And also one in the Blue Mountains Gazette featuring Eugene Stockton ( viz. Eugene Stockton link in list of speakers).

Prior to the event, the idea of a meeting at Upper Castlereagh to discuss the past, with a very wide ambit, was raised with as many people as possible over a period of about two months in order to try and find who might be interested. 

Various ideas on what might be considered, plus unsorted snippets of information gained at that time, are in a "pre-seminar" file ( http://www.geo-sites.zoomshare.com/files/castlereagh-hist-pre-seminar.htm ).   Much of the information within that file has been, after the meeting, redistributed into the separate webpages which now deal with each of the eight themes that actually developed on the day of the talks.   Some of the ideas and information within castlereagh-hist-pre-seminar.htm never did progress for treatment on the day of the talks, typically because nobody could be located who would like to speak on the topic.   Notable topics for which no speaker could be found include the early settlers of Upper Castlereagh.   In particular, relatives of early settlers John Lees and James MacCarthy were extensively sought for - and although none could be found during the two months of searching prior to the talks it is still presumed that they must exist.

Inability to contact or get information from historians interested in Upper Castlereagh, who definitely do exist (at least in small number) was in this instance in part due to the timing of the event - History Week.   It is known that historians further downstream, in the Hawkesbury River valley as around Richmond, are indeed interested in Upper Castlereagh but of course these people - the very ones who might be most interested - were tied up with their own local events to celebrate History Week.  Thus after the event of the Castlereagh talks it was intended to do another round of follow-ups with historians further downstream (some of which likely interest is evident in  castlereagh-hist-pre-seminar.htm ).   Also, before the event nobody in any of the Aboriginal organisations could be found who had an interest in the Nepean River valley generally, or in Upper Castlereagh in particular.  Hence Fr. Eugene Stockton who did speak on such matters was before the meeting the only contact known on such.   However in that regard somebody did turn up on the day, not from contact attempts via Aboriginal organisations but from seeing one of the newspaper articles.  This was Dharug elder Mr Colin Gale (see below).

 

AT THE EVENT: 

Those attending contributed some new or little known information, plus asked many questions of the speakers.   Mostly this was not recorded but  a few points are noted below. 

The "Castlereagh Talks" were an all-day event, held at the Castlereagh Academy, which is located at  297-305 Old Castlereagh Rd, Upper Castlereagh (and is the site of the first, 1817, Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere).

There is no record of everyone who attended or dropped in to look at displays.  However, about 50 persons were noted as being there that day and about 35 stayed for most of the talks.  Indicative of the interests of those attending is the following known interests of some  - mainly from what they recorded in an 'Attendance book' - namely:

Amanda Blanche

Hazel Fraser
Rachel and Stephen Wong
Rosyln and Peter Wright
- Nepean and District Historical Archaeology Group

 

Andy Herries
- Geoarchaeology

 

Barry Collier
- Geology and natural history

 

Chris Morton
- Geology and Geomorphology

 

Colin Gale

- Dharug history, silcrete, natural history.


David Branagan
- Geology and history of geology

 

Deanna Baird
- History (Yarramundi)

 

Elsa Speechley
- Historical Society

 

Eric and Malu Hall
- 'Very interested' in these things

 

Eugene Stockton
- Archaeology, prehistory and natural history

 

Gordon Mills
Robert Whyte and Melanie Coid
- Caves (e.g. Jenolan Caves)

 

Jan Kopenberg

- family history research, history, natural history, geography and Aboriginal culture and heritage.  

 

Jennifer and Colin Campbell
- History and geomorphology

 

John Byrnes
- general interests in the past (Castlereagh and other areas)
-- Lees and Byrnes and other family histories.

Leonie Packer
Primary School teacher, HSIE, Wentworth Falls

 

Matt Poll
- Idigenous arts, artefacts, collections.

 

Pat and Ray Curry
- History and family history

 

Pat Schwartz
- Natural history

 

Peter Adderley
- Geology, natural history, indigenous history.

 

Russell Davies  (Chaplain of Upper Castlereagh)
- History of Penrith and Castlereagh

 

Ted Matthews
- Caves, geology

 

Tessa Corkill
- Geoarchaeology

 

Colin Gale

- Dharug elder

 

 

 

Colin Gale, Dharug Elder, 1999, 2003 

 

[ At left, in 1999, Colin at the creation of the Cadigal Place, Museum of Sydney - (this) "allows me to introduce information…and try to dispel the idea that there was a separate language group called the Eora (the Saltwater clans of the Darug)."]

 

Regarding ancient river gravels Colin recommended the exposure at South Creek where crossed by Stony Creek Road, Shanes Creek (near the Pet Cemetery).  Colin also advised of a significant silcrete boulder outcropping further downstream on the western side of the Nepean River.  Perhaps that refers to the same site as discussed in 2001 in a Hawkesbury Gazette article by Gail Knox - viz. http://www.lachlanhunter.deadsetfreestuff.com/JB/geo-sitesD-F.htm ).  In that article  Colin commented on silcrete at Freemans Reach Public School.  He told The Gazette that part of the school's grounds were registered with NPWS as of Aboriginal heritage significance because it was one of the few silcrete sources west of the Hawkesbury River - "Silcrete is a very, very hard silica-based rock which my people used to flake off to make small implements .... The site contains one of the few outcrops of this rock."   Mr Gale advised there were three Aboriginal groups which should be invited to inspect the site - his association, the Deerubbin Land Council and Darug Custodians.   

 

Another unexpected visitor of note at the commencement of the meeting, but unable to stay for the duration, was Mr Warren Pinfold (George Warren Pinfold).  Mr Pinfold announced that it was he who first proposed the Penrith Lakes Scheme, at a public meeting in the early 1970s (the more exact date and reference to be added).  In 2004 Mr Pinfold received an Order of Australia Medal award on Australia Day.  At that time he was cited as the proponent of the Penrith Lakes scheme.  He was also active in the work to restore St Stephens, Anglican church.  Mr Pinfold stated that he has considerable records on history of quarrying and will in due course be donating such to Penrith Council.  Mr Pinfold also brought for showing, and for any opinions, a smooth well rounded pebble with a hole right through it.  Mr Pinfold said this curious item had come from the quarrying and he had shown it at Muru Mittigar, with the only opinion being that it was a 'fire-stone'.  Shown at the meeting nobody else had seen anything like it elsewhere or had any idea of how it could have formed.  The hole is not at a high angle to bedding and so is most unlikely to be a weathered-out natural burrow. 

 

 

No photo is available at the moment of Mr Pinfold's pebble with a hole in it, which was found at Castlreagh.  Those at the meeting favoured a natural origin, rather than anything man-made, however nobody had themselves seen anything like it.    An internet search for holes in pebbles came up with only one find, the above

photo of a cobble which has a small hole in it.    This is at at beach in the chalk at Flamborough Head, England ( http://www.eriding.net/media/coast.shtml ) .

 

Mr Pinfold's records when available will be of interest.  At the day of the meeting the exact origin date of the Lakes scheme was not known, other than "early 1970s".  Mr Pinfold (pers. comm.) said he first suggested it in "1970" (?)(did he say 'seventy' or 'seventies'? - to be clarified).  The scheme had already been proposed by 1974 as it is shown by that name in Lawrie, Montgomerie and Pettit (1974).  It was presumably discussed at a 1972 State Planning Authority conference on the area, and a working party for the scheme was established in 1973 (references needed).  This working party, the Penrith Lakes Scheme Committee, had planned in detail the conversion of the river flats area to a group of several lakes by 1975. 

 

It is noted that in 2005 Mr Pinfold gave a talk to the Association of Independent Retirees in Penrith, going back in geological time to explain how Nepean Valley happened to have its huge wealth in gravel, which has provided concrete to build almost half of Sydney. 



THE SPEAKERS AND DISPLAYS

~~~~

* Rev. Russel Davies .     - "Castlereagh Wesleyan Chapel - then and now". 

* Fr. Eugene Stockton   -  "The Bioregion of Deerubbin".   

 

* Dr. Andy I.R. Herries    -  "Hot rocks, shells and red earth - The origins  of  modern

                                                 human behaviour in South Africa".

 

* Tessa Corkill                 -  "Aboriginal stone hatchets - Medium & Messenger: double agents in the

                                              production and dispersal of stone hatchets and archaeological knowledge".


* Dr David Branagan      - "The Eastern Edge of the Blue Mountains".

* Ted Matthews               -  "The Secrets of Hidden Gravels and Cobbles".

* Matt Poll -  Display from Stockton collection, Macleay Museum, University of Sydney.

* Nepean District Historical Archaeology Group - Photos/publications.

 

Other displayed material included silcrete and silicified wood from Maroota, silcrete from Newtown, and materials from Jenolan Caves (large boulder, fossiliferous limestone, and some Tertiary silicified wood).

 

Pieces of  Megalong Valley silicified Permian wood.  Top piece shows a "knot" in the wood.

(Displayed by Ted Matthews who borrowed such from their owner)

 

Two things which were "new" knowledge (new at least to the organiser) turned up at the meeting.   One was information (from Mr Colin Gale) that there's a large boulder of silcrete somewhere on the opposite (western) side of the river, and downstream, which has been outcropping and probably was used as source of Aboriginal-used silcrete.  All the big silcrete boulders around Upper Castlereagh, or Emu Plains, have been brought up by the quarrying operations and were never exposed in known times.   The second 'new' thing of interest from the meeting is the above-shown silicified Permian wood from Megalong Valley.   It was able to be seen that this is extremely similar as Maroota silidfied wood, several pieces of which were also on display.   The Maroota wood was first noted many years ago, and it was postulated that such must have been brought from west of the Lapstone Monocline (which is draped by Tertiary gravels) by some 'great lost river'.   That theory then says in effect that there 'must' be such silicified wood at the Blue Mountains.  It was many years between that 'prediction' and actually seeing any.   That's to say, Permian silicified  wood "from" the Blue Mountains (assumed) was first seen in the geological/stratigraphic record before any was actually noted at the Blue Mountains.    That's a little bit like the Wollemi pine, similar traces to which were seen in the fossil record from west of Sydney (Talbragar fossil bed) long before somebody ran across the still-living trees of a very similar species.

 

The uppermost of the two above-shown pieces of Megalong Valley silicified wood has on the other side of it a considerable polish, which is something also seen with much of the similar Maroota silicified wood.  It has been polished either by the action of the present river or maybe during the Tertiary if perhaps it has been reworked from earlier Cainozoic alluvium(?) (the geology of the discovery site of this wood is not yet ascertained).   It might also be taken as another example for the words of Eugene Stockton, that "The river reaches back through time to the early inhabitants of the region, to the ancestral life forms, to the very formations of the physical environment".

 

 

EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT: 

 

The Upper Castlereagh area of river flats was first known, perhaps around 1800, as "Birds Eye Bend" which is the name of the westwards to northwards flow direction bend in the river at its SW edge.  A soldier settlement began there in 1803.  The soldiers were discharged as part of a temporary downsizing of Empire forces following the (apparent) cessation of Napoleonic wars in 1801.  Bonaparte was preparing to invade Britain but both countries had become tired of war and undertook the Treaty of Amiens in 1801-02

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_France ).

John Lees (Leese), the man who donated the "Sacred Acre" where the Castlereagh Academy stands, was one of these discharged supernumaries.  He ceased service with the NSW Corps in April 1803.  The Sydney Gazette (26 February 1804) noted that he was among the number of lately discharged Corps men who had "embraced the offer of becoming settlers", and had moved to the Nepean but that his first dwelling there had  unfortunately taken fire with the loss of everything, including his clothes.  The government considered his general character to be deserving and he was furnished with new articles of clothings.  He had a land grant of ninety acres.  At the time of the fire he had a young daughter, Maria Leese, by his convict partner and helpmeet Mary Stevens.  Four months after the fire their second child, Hannah, was born.  He rebuilt his house and planted the land with wheat and corn.   It was hard work for the early farmers and they had only primitive tools for clearing the land.  In March 1806 massive flooding of the river occurred, with loss of all crops and reserves.   A report to the Governor on this disaster recorded that Lees had lost his four acres of corn but retained sustenance of 5 bushels of wheat for himself, wife and three children.  John replanted after the flood - 8 acres in wheat, 6 in maize.  He also had 4 male hogs and 4 female hogs, and in that year was assigned his first convict servant.   Things were going relatively well and John and Mary married in 1809.   The later history, of how John built the first Methodist chapel and donated the presently preserved land, etc., was told to the meeting in Reverend Russel Davies' talk.  John Lees did better than some other NSW Corps men who had settled in the area.   Another, for example, was private Robert Smith (c. 1755-837).  Smith received 80 acres in 1803 but by 1822 he and his wife were totally destitute after a fire started by lightning had destroyed their house and property, followed by a flood which destroyed the crops.

The stories of some of the other early settlers was shown in the displays by the Nepean District Historical Archaeolgy Group and is available in their publications (e.g. "In Search of the Early Nepean Pioneers" 139 pp.).   

The theme of History Week 2009 was "Scandals, Crime and Corruption".   This was glossed over at the meeting, saying somewhat tongue-in-cheek that there would have been no crime in Castlereagh - a quiet rural backwater (albeit that many early residents were of convict origin and hence likely come to be there via circumstances to do with crime).   It's not, however, really true to say there was no crime at Castlereagh.  Various settlers were murdered.  Stephen Smith (Portion 52), who was another discharged NSW Corps man who'd been granted 100 acres in 1803, was murdered in 1811, Thomas Cheshire (Portion 50) was murdered in 1824.  The first wife of Michael Minton (Portion 32) was murdered in 1821 and in 1824 Michael himself was mudered.

Minton's second wife Mary was held to be involved in his murder.  Mary Minton was indicted for "feloniously, traitorously and wilfully aiding, abetting, assisting and maintaining" James Stack and John Hand in murdering Michael Minton, her husband.  Mary's defence was read to the court as a prepared statement.  It said that their house had been rushed by five men; that two of them entered the room in which were herself, her children, her sister, and two 'crown servants' (convicts).  Stack and Hand guarded them whilst the other three proceeded to perpetrate the murder.  She denied all knowledge of, or participation in, the dreadful crime which bereft her of a husband, and her children of a father. She enquired where did the inducement appear that could possibly have influenced her to assist in so terrible an act?  The statement concluded with her throwing herself upon the merciful consideration of the Court..

His Honour the Judge, told the Jury:  "The prisoner at the bar, Mary Minton, stands charged with the murder of her husband, Michael Minton - an offence of the deepest die; it is termed petty treason, from the sacred relations of private life which it violates, and is second in degree only to that higher crime, which goes at once to destroy all the relations of society."

The Learned Judge then proceeded to review the leading particulars: "that the deceased, Michael Minton, had been at Windsor, on Sunday, the 8th August, and returned home about seven o'clock in the evening, that he desired his wife to prepare his supper, which he ate, and retired to bed about eight o'clock; that shortly after, the prisoner gave Jones, one of her servants, some linen, desiring him to carry it to a neighbour called Mary Peckham, to make up; that about the same time, she also sent Wright, another servant, to another neighbour called Thomas Sell, with a dump to pay for some butter. That at the time these two servants were so sent away, the prisoner and her sister, a girl between ten and eleven years of age, her two infant children, and two other servants, Thomas Stack, and John Hand, were the only persons left in the house with Minton. That soon after the departure of the servants, Jones and Wright, the voice of Minton was heard, crying "murder" several times, and immediately after a gun was fired at Minton's house, but no dogs were heard to bark, and for many minutes all was still and silent. Jones, who was at Mary Peckham's, and heard the report of the gun, immediately set out on his return home, and on his approaching within a short distance of the house, he saw Thomas Stack and a woman going from Minton's house towards a drain, situated below the house. They were conversing at the time - he stopped for a moment, and then proceeded onwards, when he saw Thomas Stack returning up the hill from the direction of the drain. On seeing Jones, he called out, "Who's that?" and Jones answering, he said "my master is murdered." He further related, that five men, two of whom he described, one with a scar on his face and the other with a yellow jacket, had rushed into the house and made all the party there turn their faces to the wall, while they murdered the deceased. He also affected to be afraid to go into the house, and desired Jones to do so, which, after some hesitation, he did, and there found his master lying dead - in the manner described by the surgeon - the frontal bone of his head was indented, as if by the stroke of a hammer; the back of his head was also cut and fractured in three places, as if by an axe, his throat was cut, the jugular vein quite severed; and a shot from a gun or pistol had penetrated his arm and grazed his back. On the following day, suspicions being excited, a search was made for certain implements which were missing from Minton's house, and in the drain towards which Thomas Stack had been seen going were found a gun, a pair of pistols, an axe with some hair in it, a hammer also with grey hairs on it, and a knife which was stained."

Given such evidence as that it can hardly be thought there was no crime in Castlereagh.   The judge in this case deduced  that it was an inside job: "In the first place, no property was stolen, and it is not easy to believe that five persons should confederate together for the mere purpose of committing a profitless murder. In the next place, a gun was fired, and was heard by all the neighbours, an unlikely thing to have been done by a banditti, as it would be sure to give the alarm to the neighbourhood, - an act of all others, that persons bent upon mischief would most likely endeavour to avoid. Again, no dogs were heard to bark, although Minton had dogs that were used to bark at strangers; and they must have been heard, for the voice of Minton was heard distinctly by two persons who swear they heard no dogs bark, but that after the gun all was silent and still for some time. Besides, murderers going to attack a house which was armed, and where five men were known to reside, would have been furnished with arms of their own, and some marks of those arms would in all probability have been impressed upon the body of the deceased. But Minton was slain and mangled by implements of his own; the hair upon the axe, and upon the hammer, the indentation of his forehead, the blood upon the knife, all point to the fact in a manner too strong to be mistaken."

Although the Judge was lead by the evidence "reluctantly to a conclusion not reconcilable with the innocence of the prisoner", the Jury retired for about 25 minutes and returned with a verdict of Not Guilty.  Mary Minton was directed to be discharged.  In the case of the two accused men, the Jury was out for about five minutes and returned with a verdict of Guilty.  His Honour the Chief Justice passed immediate sentence, decreeing that the two men were to die that Saturday.   (Source: Sydney Gazette, 2 September 1824). http://www.law.mq.edu.au/scnsw/html/r_v_minton__1824.html ; http://www.law.mq.edu.au/scnsw/html/r_v_stack_and_hand__1824.html 

 

Other (online) information relevant to this meeting:

( Speakers' notes if digitally available will be made downloadable from the post-meeting link/URL )

 

* Presently available, T. Corkill   "Here and There"

( http://www.lachlanhunter.deadsetfreestuff.com/tc-hereandthere.htm )

 

** Presently available, T. Corkill   "Sourcing stone from the Sydney region:  A hatchet job."

( www.lachlanhunter.deadsetfreestuff.com/tessas-aa-paper05.pdf )

 

Some other local history links for this area:

 


 A FEW REFERENCES: 

 

(For local records, at Penrith Library, also see:  "The Castlereagh Files" webpage).

 


Atkinson, G. , 1982.   Soil Survey and Erosion Control Measures for the Penrith Lakes Scheme.  Soil Conservation Service of NSW. Unpublished report.

Atkinson, G. , 1983.   Soil-Stratigraphic Relationships of the Clarendon and Cranebrook Formations, Nepean River, NSW: A Multivariate Analysis.  MSc Thesis, University of NSW.

Atkinson, G., 1987.  A review of soil and geological maps of the Nepean River terraces, NSW.  Australian Geographer. 18(2):13pp.

 

Bishop, P., 1982.  Stability or Change:  A Review of Ideas on Ancient Drainage in Eastern New South Wales.   Australian Geographer.  Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 219-230.

 

Bishop, P., 1986.   Horizontal stability of the Australian continental drainage divide in south central New South Wales during the Cainozoic.  Australian Journal of Earth Sciences.  Volume 33,  pp. 296-307. 

 

Bishop, P., Hunt, P. and Schmidt, P.W., 1982.   Limits to the age of the Lapstone Monocline, N.S.W. - a palaeomagnetic study.  Journal of the geological Society of Australia.  Vol. 29, pp. 319-326.

 

Branagan, D.F. and Pedram, H. 1990.  The Lapstone structural complex, New South Wales.   Australian Journal of Earth Sciences.  Volume 37, Issue 1, pp. 23-36.

Corkill T., 1997.  Red, yellow and black: Colour and heat in archaeological stone.  Australian Archaeology 45: 54-55.

Corkill T., 1999.  Here and There: Links between Stone Sources and Aboriginal Archaeological Sites in Sydney, Australia.  Unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Sydney. 

Corkill T., 1999. The use of geological maps in archaeological research. In K.May, T. Denham and D. Campbell (Eds.).   Proceedings of the National Archaeology Students' Conference 1998.  Pp. 53-55.   Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra.

Corkill T., 2005. Sourcing stone from the Sydney region: A hatchet job.  Australian Archaeology.  Vol. 60, pp. 41-50.  (Above link - ** - to download).

 

Edds, Graham, & Associates, 1996.   "Hadley Park": RMB 113 Castlereagh Road, Castlereagh NSW: Conservation Management Plan.

 

Gyford, George F. B., 1990.   A beginner's guide to the history of the Nepean district.     Nepean District Historical Archaeology Group.

 

Kavanagh, Merle 1987.   John Lees - The Chapel Builder.   The strange story of the man who built the first Methodist Chapel in Australia. Sutherland, N.S.W. Published by the Author.  

 

Kohen, J.L., Stockton, E.D. and Williams, M.A.J., 1984.  Shaws Creek KII rockshelter: a prehistoric occupation site in the Blue Mountains piedmont, eastern New South Wales.  Archaeology in Oceania.  vol. 19, pp. 57-73.

 

Laurie, Montgomerie and Pettit Pty Ltd, 1974.  The sand and gravel extraction industry in the Nepean-Hawkesbury River valley.  22 pp.

(A joint submission to the State Pollution Control Commission by the Quarry Masters Association of N.S.W. and the Sand Producers Association of N.S.W.).

McDonald, J.J. and Rich, E., 1994.  The Discovery of a heat-treatment pit on the Cumberland Plain, Western Sydney.  Australian Archaeology. 38: 46-48.

Murray, Robert and White, Kate, 1988.  Dharug & Dungaree - The history of Penrith and St Marys to 1860. Hargreen, North Melbourne.

 

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. 

 

Oldroyd, D.R. , 2008.   River systems of the Sydney Region - Griffith Taylor, Earnest Andrews et al.:  early ideas on the development of the river systems of the Sydney region, eastern Australia, and subsequent ideas on the associated geomorphological problems.   Pp. 242-277 in Grapes, R.H., Oldroyd, D. Grigilis, A. (Eds).  History of Geomorphology and Quaternary Geology.  Geological Society, London.  Special Publications, 301., 336 pp.

 

Pickett, J.W. and Bishop. P., 1992.   Aspects of landscape evolution in the Lapstone Monocline area, New South Wales.  Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 39, 21-28.

Stockton, E. D., 2002.   The Bioregion of Deerubin.   (Unpublished talk).   A paper presented at the University of Western Sydney "Place and Culture" forum, held at Yarramundi, May 4th, 2002.

 

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.

 

Stockton, E. D. and  Merriman, J. (Eds.), 2009.   Blue Mountains Dreaming: The Aboriginal Heritage.    (Second Edition).  Blue Mountains Education and Research Trust, Lawson.  255 pp.

 

Taylor, T. G., 1958.   Sydneyside Scenery and How it Came About.  Angus & Robertson Ltd., Sydney.

 

Van der Beek, P.A., Pulford, A., and Braun, J., 2001. Cenozoic Landscape Development in the Blue Mountains (SE Australia): Lithological and Tectonic Controls on rifted Margin Morphology.  Journal of Geology. Vol. 109, pp. 35-56.