Power House

April 11, 2015

There is a 1964 photo by Olive Cotton titled Power House. Far more dramatic than my prosaic view, it is taken from an angle that is now completely blocked by large radiata pines to the right in my photo and the power house that makes up half her photo has since been demolished. The stacks […]

St Johns

April 10, 2015

Small towns have long memories. My first few years of schooling were at Wallerawang primary school. When we moved to Wallerawang in 2003 we soon got involved in local heritage issues, particularly the campaign to save St Johns, a beautiful and perfectly intact small gothic style church. It was the last church designed byEdmund Blacket. […]

Lyon and Loveday

April 7, 2015

Lyon and Loveday Walker Barton were middle aged siblings who lived together at Barton Park. They were murdered one Sunday in 1948 after returning from church by a farm boy that Lyon had brought up from Sydney a few weeks earlier. He was named Harvey Bugg and had recently left a notorious children’s home near […]

Lake Wallace

April 7, 2015

Lake Wallace and the power station are now the most conspicuous features in the Wallerawang landscape. This view overlooks the spot where Barton Park stood. Barton Park was built by the Walker Bartons on the site of the earlier Wallerawong Station where Charles Darwin had stayed . There is a peculiar but meaningless irony in […]

Our Orchard

April 7, 2015

We planted over fifty different fruit trees in the garden of our Blackberry Lane house. They were planted in an area of compacted and contaminated road fill outside the shed that had once been a truck maintenance garage and a car demolition yard. After clearing it and bringing in countless truckloads of new top soil […]

Cemetery Gate

April 7, 2015

The Walker Barton private cemetery now overlooks Lake Wallace. Initially it overlooked Barton Park, formerly Wallerawong Station where Charles Darwin stayed. Perhaps in time the dam will be removed and the Coxs River returned to the platypuses.

Walker Barton Cemetery

April 6, 2015

Lake Wallace was created in 1978 to supply cooling water to Wallerawang power station. The Walker Barton Cemetery on the north side of the lake would have been flooded but the grave markers were removed, the ground level raised by about six metres and then the gravestones reinstalled. So this is not the cemetery it […]

Wallerawang Ferals

April 6, 2015

Occasionally cows, kangaroos, dogs, goats (named “Butthead” and ” Buttarse”) and local teenagers would come wandering uninvited through our garden at Wallerawang.

Darwin Monument

April 6, 2015

In January 1836 Charles Darwin stayed for several days at “Wallerawong” Station where he collected a platypus and investigated the geology of the Wolgan Valley. His diary entries contain the first written suggestion of his theory of evolution. …I had been lying on a sunny bank & was reflecting on the strange character of the […]

The Old Soft Drink Factory

April 6, 2015

Soon after we moved to Wallerawang the next door neighbours subdivided their property. We bought the back half to use for parking and because we liked the semi-derelict shed. It was locally known as the old soft drink factory because it had once been used as a soft drink warehouse until the owner ran over […]