Skip to main content

Hartley


Just over the mountains to the west is the town of Hartley -- a wonderful assortment of sandstone buildings dating from convict times. In those days, when it was a three to four-day horseback ride to Sydney, Hartley was designated as a future regional centre. Farms like those in yesterday's photo were developed in the area and the settlers were assigned convicts. Quite often, though, the convicts got out of hand and by the 1830s there was a need for a police station and court house. The Hartley Court House, one of the standstone buildings, was built in 1837, mainly to cope with these unruly convicts.

Today the town is heritage listed. While it is lively enough during the day with visiting tourists, there are just two families left actually living in the town.

Musing:
From Old Botany Bay by Mary Gilmore
"I was the conscript
sent to hell
to make in the desert
the living well;

I bore the heat,
I blazed the track-
furrowed and bloody
upon my back.

I split the rock;
I felled the tree:
The nation was-
Because of me!

Old Botany Bay
Taking the sun
from day to day...
shame on the mouth
that would deny
the knotted hands
that set us high!

Comments

  1. JE, I like the line of these buildings. They look like they might be very cool inside on a hot day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ...I'm sorry I have a kitty on my lap and got distracted...The poem is very intriguing; the contrast between the lovely buildings (including the church) and the harshness in the life of the narrator is intriguing. When does an artist become a mere craftsman/woman and visa versa?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Virtually a ghost town ... how sad to be mainly populated by tourists. I agree with PJ that the line of the buildings give the impression of vision. Is it cynical of me to say that the convicts built rougher versions and that this has been considerably tempered by nowadays craftsmen.

    Quite lovely ...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coolibah?

Is that a Coolibah tree beside the abandoned house? Every Australian knows about Coolibah trees because the bush ballad Waltzing Matilda is nigh on our unoffical national anthem but most of us live nowhere near the inland where they grow. Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a Coolibah tree, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me. Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.

The end

I retire from the workforce this week and to celebrate have decided to retire my current blogs and start afresh with a single consolidated blog -  My Bright Field  - to record the delights of my new life adventure. If you are interested follow me over there.  I will still be Sweet Wayfaring and collecting Royal Hotels.  The delights I discover along the way will appear together with my gardens and towns where I live.

But then the grey clouds gather

Mostly there was sunshine but sometimes rain. The long drought is still too close a memory for us to not welcome rain even on holiday. We are still at Shellharbour here, you can see the steelworks at Port Kembla in the distance. Musing: From The Storm by Theodore Roethke "Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell, The waves not yet high, but even, Coming closer and closer upon each other; A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea, Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot, The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending, Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness."