We will travel through Parishes of Hartley, Kanimbla and Ganbenang. This series of caches aims to show you some beautiful countryside.
The caches have been placed with safe places to stop.
The caches are mostly micros but they are not difficult.
Our objective is to show you some special places.
Here is some history
Some History of the Parishes of
Hartley, Kanimbla and Ganbenang
By H.C. Dalziell
Presented to
Nepean & District Historical Society
3.6.1949
Naturally, the first settlers secured land as near as possible to the main highway, provided it was suitable for their requirements. Those who acquired land in the back swamps concentrated on the production of dairy products and carried it up Centennial Glen to Blackheath; others took theirs by pack horse up the little zig-zag to Mount Victoria. At both places there was an unlimited demand for all foodstuffs from travellers going east and west. Those who secured land further out on the Cox River and beyond, and produced corn, hay and potatoes, had it carted to Jervis's store at Little Hartley, then the mecca of seller and buyer.
A few of those who settled on the land with larger areas made bacon, cheese and butter. Their butter was made in the summertime and salted in casks, and in winter was carted to the goldfields on the Turon and Hill End districts. Those farmers who grew wheat had it cut with a sickle and thrashed with a flail, then carted to Brown's Mill at Bowenfels, for gristing. When this mill was converted to the manufacture of woollen cloth, the nearest flour mill was Smith and Black’s at O’Connell. Those persons who employed convicts gave them wheat, which they ground in a small steel mill for their own use, and baked into a ‘damper’, in the evenings.
The cultivation land was fenced in with logs removed from the land to be ploughed; this was usually done with bullock teams. The roads were little more than clearings through the timber and were almost impassable for all but heavy teams, until they were placed under the control of a ‘road trust’, which consisted of three local residents having a defined length of road under their control, with a small annual government grant for maintenance and improvement.
To overcome the difficulty of small creeks and wet places, before the introduction of earthenware drain pipes, saplings, with the bark removed, were placed as close together as possible across the road; this was known as ‘corduroying’. The trust was forbidden to make a road within half-a-mile of their own residence. These trusts were dispensed with when the public works department undertook the whole management of roads and bridges.
With the opening of the railway in 1868, and the decreased demand for their products from road travellers, the majority of small settlers abandoned or sold their holdings and went west and acquired larger areas, or found employment on stations being developed on the western rivers.
Kanimbla estate, an Aboriginal name derived from ‘kanim’, the head of one tribe, and ‘bula’, and the head of another, both of which roamed these valleys. [Kanimbla was the name of the local Aboriginal band of the Gundungurra tribe and apparently means camping or fighting ground]
On the highest point of Tinker's Hill, adjacent to the road leading through these valleys, there is an Aboriginal burial ground. The last two natives buried there were George Miranda and his wife Black Bet.