Margarets Pages - My Australia series
AUSTRALIA ..HISTORY
These pages have a brief pictorial spread, covering some of our historical places. Settlement began in NSW in 1788.
When Phillip landed at Sydney Cove in 1788 the entire popualtion had to be housed in tents.  Gradually these were replaces with huts, first for the officers & officials, later for the convicts.
Most of the earliest huts had timber frames set directly onto the earth with walls of saplings laid horizontally, filled with mud and whitewashed to make them waterproof.  The roofs were at first formed with thatch (left) or shingles cut from the cabbage-tree palm.  The Governors Cottage built in 1789 was the first to be built of bricks.  By 1794 Sydney had 700 comfortable huts. Buildings of the era have been re-created at Old Sydney Town.
The "rum hospital" (right) in Sydney was built for the government by a group of contractors, in 1816, in return for the exclusive rights to import 270,000 litres of rum; part of this building became the New South Wales Parliament House in 1829.
"Sydney sandstone" became a popular building material in colonial times.  At first the stone was extracted by random quarrying the outcrops around the new township, especially from the West Rocks.  Later Macquarie established a goverment quarry on the north-west of Port Phillip (Observatory) Hill.
Because of the labour and expense involved in quarrying, sandstone was at first used only in  government buildings. 
(Left) is Bell-Vue House , Berrima NSW
Portland, Victoria, was founded in 1834 by the Henty Brothers who began a sheep run and a whaling st ation.  This cottage, was built there in 1850 and was the home of the first Curator of the Portland Botanic Gardens.
William Tom and John Lister washed 5 oz of gold in Summer Hill Creek at Ophir in Victoria in 1851.  Australia's Gold Rush had begun.
It is now a fauna and flora reserve with a picnic ground on the bank of Summer Hill Creek.  Trails lead to old tunnels, sluices, and other relics among the hills, and a monument commorates the field's place in our history.  There is an old cemetery but no sign that a town of 800 occupants stood there.
On creeks which flowed through the gold diggings thousands of miners muddied the waters in their attempts to find gold.  Many diggers arrived on the fields with only a pick, shovel, pan or wheelbarrow and at night made a bed of gum leaves and a blanket, or a temporary bark and sapling lean-to.
The diggings at East Ballarat, Victoria, have been reproduced at "Sovereign Hill Historical Park".
The wooden cradle  shown here was a simple mechanical extenstion of the principle used in panning but processed a larger quantity of gravel.  By putting the gravel through the grille at the top and rocking the cradle with water, the gold particles could be separated.  Water filled tubs were used for "puddling" the gravel to the same end.
A goldminers hut in Maldon, Victoria.  In 1853 more than 20,000 men including thousands of Chinese, took part in the gold rush at Maldon.
Some living places were more elaborate than others.  Many had tents on the fields.
The early settlers quickly leanred to utilise the materials of the bush. Wide overlapping sheets of ironbark (tree bark) or stringybark were lashed to a sapling frame with greenhide to make a weatherproof roof.  The hut shown here had a chimney and low "walls" of mud-bricks.  This was on the East Ballarat Goldfields.
Later structures were built of wattle-and-daub; thin branches of acacia (wattle)
were woven basket-fashion between the frame and mud was then forced into the wattling and the surface smoothed down.
The slab hut was another bushman's innovation.
This hut (left) is at "Glenmore" homestead near Rockhampton, Queensland (in the tropics), and was built in 1858 with a mixture of log and slab construction.
Western Australia was settled at Albany on King George SOund in 1826.
"Strawberry Hill" farm partly shown here was the home of the government resident.  The two-story section was constructed in 1836 for Sir Richard Spencer who brought with him from England the doors, flooring, windows and roofing slate.  The farm is the oldest dwelling-place in the west.
This barn called "Bradleys Barn" in Goulburn, New South Wales has rubblestone walls of various colours and textures.  The gables are of elaborately carved bargeboards.  The architraves of doors and windows were probably the work of an unusually imaginative craftsman.
Below are Ruins of the 4 storey penitentiary (centre with chimney) at Port Arthur, Tasmania (then known as Van Diemens Land).  Built in 1848, the brick structure could house 657 convicts in cells and dormitories.  The better-behaved convicts were kept on the top floor in dormitories.  The remainder slung their hammocks in cells measuring 2.4 by 1.5 metres on the first and second floors.  The mess-room where the convicts had their meals was on the third floor.  Battlements of the guardhouse and magazine are in the foreground..
A reminder of our sad convict past.  Most were sent here for such minor "crimes".
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