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If you're interested in Australian history, and you might have read my previous post on William Bligh, you may want to know more about the significant role more ordinary Cornish folk played in shaping the country's development. Their story, particularly the one about the settlement of the Cornish Settlement, now called Byng, is often overlooked, but it's packed with local Polzeath connections!
This past weekend, I visited Byng, a tiny settlement of about 40 people still nestled along dirt roads, about halfway between Bathurst and Orange. It's hard to imagine it now, but Byng was once the furthest western settlement in the new colony and established by enterprising Cornish pioneers who ventured across the daunting Blue Mountains. Almost all of them were Cornish farmers and miners and some of them hailed from St Eval and Blisland which are of course very local to Polzeath. There is a good chance too that as the mines in Polzeath opened and closed around 1823 that miners in Polzeath had downed tools and headed off to Australia to find better prospects in mining and farming.
Their journey and struggles were immense, but their legacy extends far beyond the prickly hawthorn hedges and fruit trees they brought with them. William Tom Jr., son of William "pastor" Tom from Cornwall, discovered a massive 4-ounce gold nugget near the settlement. This discovery, forever etched in Australian history, sparked the first Australian gold rush that attracted fortune seekers from all corners of the globe. Including some who even came from the recent Californian Gold Rush.
The Cornish influence goes beyond this golden discovery. They were among the first Europeans to settle western New South Wales, bringing with them critical agricultural and mining skills and a strong religious faith that helped shape the early colony's character.
Years later, William Tom's grandson recalled that at Cornish Settlement: “in my boyhood, I was taught to revere two things, John Wesley, and Cornwall... All our relations and neighbours were Cornish, many being local preachers, Class leaders and Sunday School Teachers, good earnest men and women, some of them, I feel sure believed there was no place in heaven except for Wesleyans”.
My brother, Tom, and I, and I’m a William, found the grave of William Tom jn who found that piece of gold at Ophir that sparked the gold rush that changed the history of Australia in 1851! His father, William “Pastor “Tom, sailed to Australia in 1823 on board the Belinda which is the name of my sister in law in Orange who we stayed with. How amazingly serendipitous is that!
As a bonus I stumbled across the grave of John Bray, no doubt a relative of our Polzeath estate agent and funeral director.
More details on the Cornish hawthorn and Byng here
http://www.cornwall24.net/2011/12/a-cornish-settlement/
William Tom jn sparked the gold rush that changed the course of Australian History
Belinda Clift, my wonderful sister in law who lives not far from Byng in Orange. William "pastor" Tom, the father of the gold rush boy, sailed to Australia from Cornwall in 1823.
There are about 41 residents of Byng today and these two were about to give birth to the 41st.
The hawthorn trees around Byng were bought from Cornwall to keep the cattle in
Look down this valley and you are on your way to the site of the Ophir gold rush
First Cornish Settlement church site
John Bray is a name we know so well in Polzeath. John Bray the estate agent sold my mother's Polzeath house and John Bray the funeral director buried her.
Bailey Haggarty. Bailey was the Assistant Director, Seagulls at the Australian National Maritime Museum and for a while probably one of the most famous dogs in all Australia. Now living out retirement near Orange with my sister in law
Turn here for the long and windy dirt road to Byng. About 40 minutes drive and you’ll not meet many on the road.
The legends?!
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, CBE (17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, nor far from Canberra, where he spent much of his childhood after he left his birthplace, pictured here, when he was five. Paterson's notable poems include "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) which Adam Clift, my brother in law, would recite to me in the 80’s and "Waltzing Matilda" (1895), regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem and which you’re probably singing right now.
One of my other Australian brother in laws, Simon Clift, launched into Mulga Bill's Bicycle on a recent bush walk which, if you’ve not heard it, is very funny and captures that unique and precious Australian sense of humour.
The wonderful Belinda, John Hawthorn (possibly his name connects to the hedges around Byng), and Tom Bartlett my brother who got on a bike in London and with three friends cycled all the way to Sydney. If Banjo Paterson had heard about him he would have written a versioni of Mulga Bill's Bicycle about him!
From this point you see the old volcano Mt Canobolas (4560 feet) on whose soils the many fine vineyards of Orange grow.
Lindy told us that beyond it there’s nothing higher. That’s all the way across Australia and the Indian Ocean until you get to the Rift Valley of Africa!
By coincidence that’s where I taught in the 90’s.
From the boarding house we ran at St Andrew’s Turi (8000 ft) we could see all the way across the Rift Valley to Mt Kenya (17,000 feet). Perhaps beyond that with a little stretch of the imagination you’d have seen Australia!
Turn here for the long and dusty road to Byng. You'll not meet many on the twisty road but the 40 km detour is well worth it.
The second Wesleyan church built at The Cornish Settlement, Byng
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