Woodhill remembrances
1 Mar 11
Views and visions
A comprehensive and entertaining book on the history of Wattamolla, Wattamolla and Bellawongarah from 1850 to the present day. The following is one of these stories presented for your enjoyment.
Copies of the book may be obtained from
Ray Price, 280 Wattamolla Road, Woodhill, Telephone 44 6426 856. Cost $30
I am a seventh generation Australian and my heritage has been farming.
My ancestors were among the earliest immigrants to Australia, arriving courtesy of the British legal system.
John Nichols arrived on the ‘Scarborough’, leaving his wife in England. He had not committed grand larceny, but the harsh criminal code that prevailed in 18th Century England convicted many of the early immigrants to for petty crimes.
John had relieved his employers, hair and perfume merchants in London, of sundry items of stock and was sentenced in the Old Bailey to seven years transportation.
Unfortunately the two years he spent in a rotting hulk ship on the Thames River did not count towards the sentence.
By 1801, John had his ‘ticket of leave’ and was granted land at Prospect Hill.
He became a farmer.
In that year Ann Pugh arrived on the ‘Earl Cornwallis’ and was ‘assigned’, as a servant to John Nichols.
Ann had been convicted of stealing from her employer and her sentence seven years.
John and Ann were married and reared a large family. They became respectable, well-established and successful emancipists.
John served as a District Constable at Prospect and was involved in business dealings outside of his farming interests. He obtained a licence to sell spirits at Parramatta and built a comfortable home for his family.
Martha, their fifth child was born in 1809 and she married William Windley in 1829 at Newcastle. He had been transported in 1818 on ‘General Stewart’ for stealing.
William was a sawyer and he and Martha moved to the Jamberoo district. A sawyer could earn good money, £7 per week, for cutting 3,500 feet of cedar between two men.
The conditions were very primitive.
The family lived in a bush hut made from timber slabs. Martha would have to cart water, tend a vegetable garden, milk a cow, make butter and take care of a young family.
She died around 1850.
William re-married, to Charlotte Arnold, in 1855. He died in 1885, aged 86 years.
William the eldest son of William and Martha was born in1829 and he married Sarah Knight, the daughter of a free settler, in 1851.
They had a dairy farm at Jamberoo and raised nine children all of whom married into pioneering families in the district.
Their 9th child, Emily Kate Windley born 1869, married Albert Yeoman Faulks born 1871.
And so to the Faulks family.
John Faulks and his wife, Mary Hannah (nee Yeoman) came from England around 1830. After moving around with the military, John and his growing family settled in the Shoalhaven around 1838. John Faulks was the first Policeman in the Shoalhaven and was based at Coolangatta. He was in charge of the district north of the Shoalhaven River.
George Faulks was the youngest son of John and Mary. Two days before he was born, the family home and all possessions were destroyed by fire. The local Aborigines helped the family by rowing them across Currumbene Creek and helping them build a “Gunyah”. It was in this Gunyah that George was born in 1844.
George married Louisa Boxsell from another pioneering family in 1867.
He was one of four brothers who all gained fame for their longevity.
George in fact lived until he was 93 and remained mentally alert with a keen memory right to the end.
It was Albert Yeoman Faulks, one of George’s sons and my grandfather, who married Emily Kate Windley bringing these families together.
My father, Albert (Bertie) Faulks [1907-2002] was born at Meroo Meadow in 1907 and acquired the Woodhill property ‘Mountfield’ on Woodhill Mountain in 1930.
He married my mother, Beatrice Griffiths in 1956. I was born in 1956, a seventh generation Australian.
Dad was a successful dairyman supplying milk and cream to the Berry Co-Op for many years. In the summer he encouraged the herd to seek shelter under the coral trees on the farm.
By ensuring they were not heat stressed, they produced more milk.
He was a member of the Berry Historical Society and the Berry Silver Band.
Genella Barrett remembers that her family would enjoy listening to his practicing.
The music would float across the valley.
The house where I grew up was built in 1902 and for some years was the Woodhill hospital.
My Grandfather bought the property in 1925 and rented to the Ingold family from 1926 to 1930.
My father lived there after that and I was born there. Unfortunately the original home was destroyed by fierce winds in 1992 and I have rebuilt.
As I mentioned, Dad was a dairyman and as a boy I helped with the farm chores, including the milking, before and after school.
I had plenty of time to enjoy leisure hours with my mates, the Barrett and Martin boys and to go rabbiting. There were lots of rabbits in the 1960s and trapping was profitable.
Dad made wire frames to hang up in the shed for the skins and I sold the dried pelts to ‘the rabbit trap man’, when he came around.
The meat went to Atkin’s Butchery in Berry.
Dad never owned a tractor, always ploughing the paddocks with a bullock then a horse team before sowing the crops to be harvested for winter feed.
The plough marks are there to this day.
Down the escarpment from Drawing Room Rocks there is a fertile flat piece of ground known as the Government Farm, next to Boyd’s Bush. Probably a soldier settlement after World War 1.
Adjoining this is Petrie’s property and that family successfully grew vegetables, grapes and pears for the Berry market.
It was easier to transport the produce by horse and slide along a cobbled roadway, through the Government farm, along a track near Brooke’s farm to the Woodhill Road and then down the mountain to Berry.
The track is overgrown somewhat now but there are remnants of farm machinery on the Government Farm which is still Crown Land.
Dad told of the timber that was taken out from under the escarpment during World War 2. Blitz trucks were used to transport the huge logs of coachwood, cedar and some hardwood.
After the 1968 fires it was possible to walk through this area and see the floating bridges that had been used to allow the laden trucks to cross the swampy ground under the escarpment.
There were 44 gallon drums with timber planks between that had just been left there after the logging operation ceased.
Some of the cedar used in the new Parliament house in Canberra came from our property.
There is also a coal seam through this part of the lower escarpment and during the bush fires the gas from the coal burnt for days.
Dad’s story of Thunderbolt, the bushranger is worth a mention.
A farmer was boiling his billy and preparing to open a can of beans for his lunch when a horseman rode up.
Being friendly he offered to share his meal with the stranger who replied, “If I told you I was Captain Thunderbolt, would you still offer your hospitality?”
The answer must have been reassuring for the bushranger stayed for a cuppa and plate of beans.
Just another of the bushranger stories from the folk lore of the mountain.
The black panther, made famous by Doris Blinman from Kangaroo Valley, has been sighted in the Brogers Creek area over the years. A close encounter with the mysterious animal was very frightening.
One evening I arrived home late and after coming through the gates shone my torch at random into the farm shed, just checking before going up to the house.
Two strange looking eyes glared at me.
I crept forward, cautiously, to investigate.
A low menacing growl sounded less than welcoming as the large black creature continued to glare into the light.
Having heard stories of the black panther, I was fairly sure this was the animal and I made a very hasty retreat.
The next day, talking to some of the farmers, I was told there had been stock killings and sightings of the panther in the Brogers Creek area during the past few days.
There are still traces of the route of the old road from Berry.
It branched out from our farm, up the steep slope to the top of Woodhill Mountain where the army had a lookout station during World War 2.
In the event of a Japanese invasion, there were plans to blow up the road so their army could not advance down the Valley.
The new road was for many years not trafficable in wet weather.
Dad used his Land Rover to tow Charlie Martin’s Chev over the worst of the mud and slush when he returned from the milk run to Berry.
Good thing Charlie only had the empty cans and a few household items for the farmers on board.
We were the last farm to get electricity in the late 1960s and our house power came from lamps and a 42-volt generator run by a Lister engine.
Growing up on the farm was a great life and I still enjoy the serenity of this picturesque part of the mountain and am happy to have shared some of my memories.