Please contact either of the following with any queries or information to share re Edward Powell:

John Byrnes - john.mail "@" ozemail.com.au 

David Patrick - patrickd "@" spin.net.au 

( Also considering the many changes since the time here of Edward Powell  -  including controversies, family feuds, relationship with indigenous people, the whereabouts of his and a daughter's internment behind the inn, and the much changing urbanising landscape. )

 

Preface

The writer (JGB) has long been a researcher on the past.   After receiving a Council grant of $50 in 2008, to review Strathfield's older past, I became interested in the Powells (as well as surrounding events of that time, including relationship with Aborigines).   Efforts to further interest the Council or any Councillors in any way about the Powell family as founders of Liberty Plains (later on within Strathfield LGA) never had any success.   Many suggestions were made specifically about erecting commemorative signage of some kind on this older history of the area, but that matter was in no way favoured.

The years passed by and in 2011 a further request of $50 assistance was sought from Council specifically to cover the Government fees that may be imposed in searching for old documents (e.g. land titles data in respect of Powells' lands).   Such a grant was declined because it was said that all grants had to be for some clear "community benefit".   It was held that such work would have no benefit for the community   I did argue that it was of community benefit that communities should better know their roots, but to no avail.  Later on, in 2011, the Annual General Meeting of the Historical Society was attended, at which suggestions for projects for the coming year were sought.   I suggested a Powell plaque.   The Society liked that idea and made a funding request to Strathfield Council, which was granted in late 2011.

This file/webpage gathers information on Edward Powell, "his" land, and associated people.

Some of his land (first grant, named Dorset Green) was today's Homebush astride Parramatta Road.

Changes are briefly traces from Aboriginal times to till the present (when Parramatta Road is called "Used Car Alley) and guesses the future for this strip of the highway.  In recent years the zoning was changed to highrise (six storey) and if carried out segments might transform to "Highrise canyons", which is already occuring immediately to the east at what is known as "Strathfield Triangle".

The writer's particular interest in the Powells, Powell's Creek and Edward Powell's first grant (Dorset Green - latter day Homebush) began in 2008 with a small grant ($50) from Council to review Strathfield LGA's older history.   Special interest was in primary industry like farming, forestry, brickmaking and it emerged that the first brickmaking was probably along Powell's Creek (by the Powells or others?).   The 2008 study was also looking for ways of making the earlier history better known in general.   Initially a small sites-descriptive booklet was considered.   This idea lapsed, not least because of specifics about sites being still uncertain.   Since then the location of sites such as the original Powells' inn (the Halfway House now though to have been where The Summit arpartments are on Parramatta Road) have been more confidently concluded about.   Also thought has concentrated more on Powell's Creek and the possibilities of placing history signage there (as had beenrumoured that State Government, DEC or similar, was keen to buy or resume parts of that back into public ownership).   In October 2011 an existing brass plaque in a very small reserve besides Powell's Creek (now a concrete canal) at Elva Street was stolen (one of a spate of brass plaque thefts that had been happening in the municipality).   It was suggested to the Strathfield Councillors that the plaque (which was to an "International Day of Mourning", photo shown below, not be replaced there but somewhere else such as in the nearby Strathfield Square.  Such course of action, it was thought could have the following three benefits:  1)  More people would see it (and hence maybe some take heed); 2)  It would be very unlikely to be stolen again if it were there (in Strathfield Square); 3)  And doing such would then free up a very small restricted open space area for some of the much needed signage to give better recognition of the LOCAL environment and history.

Edward Powell is someone for whom the rarity has happened that one of our 1700s settlers have had some of their literal words faithfully recorded at some length (on oath).   That was due to Edward running defence in a trial about him and others killing two Aborigines on the Hawkesbury (near Windsor).    The accused were found guilty of the murders, but with with little or no punishment imposed at a time when punishment could be ferocious even for the slightest offence.  Death was many times imposed in the early colony, sometimes for what now seems like trivial matters by modern standards and always for homicide.  However the reason why there was no punishment after the conclusion of this trial was that Powell, then a Constable at the time, claimed it was government policy at the Hawkesbury settlement to kill suspected hostile Aborigines wherever met with (with some exception of not killing any domesticated or thoroughly befriended/assimilated ones).    This was something no doubt highly embarassing for the government, to maintain that such a policy existed and was widely known to have existed.   The government denied that any such thing existed, and wished to make out that it had the welfare and just treatment of natives foremost in mind.   Although the government flatly denied what Powell said in defence of himself and the other accused, Powell was able to successfully call witnesses - including from within police or government ranks whose testimony well appeared to substantiate what Powell claimed was policy.   Quite a few were called to give testimony and the defence claimed that it had many more willing to come forward in like vein should the Court wish to hear more on that aspect of what people on the Hawkesbury understoond was the government policy on the matter.

Like anything in the past for which records are far far from complete, there is much herein that is still debatable.   The identities and lives of people are largely "re-constructed" by trying to piece together snippets of GOVERNMENT records, because overwhelmingly these are the only records that survive.   Few of none of the early settler families maintained preservation of their own written records, indeed if any such were ever written.   Mistakes are easily made in piecing together this information.    Thus the later-day identity of convict Sarah Dorset of the Lady Julian transport ship, who bore Edward Powell's first known child (Edward Dorset Powell) can be debated.   She is concluded currently as being the woman buried as Sarah Woodward who died near Kincumber north of the Hawkesbury.   That woman was at Windsor prior to the Gosford district, in around.   The Powell's also moved to Cornwallis on the Hawkesbury, very near Windsor.  Population was small and if Sarah Woodward was really Sarah Dorset then that these two descendent streams from Edward Powell did not know of each other's existence there would be unlikely.    Another suspected connecting link besides physical re-convergence towards Windsor is with ships and the James Underwood sealing business.   Both Edward Powell and Edward Dorset Powell might be involved, and also James Underwood ended up marrying one of Edward Powell's daughters.  Then after notable conflict with the widow of Edward Powell, former convict Elizabeth Fish, which must have split the family at the time, Underwood ended up gaining control of the Powells' Liberty Plains lands.  Hence when this land at Homebush was finally sold for subdivision it was sold as Underwood's estate. 

Edward Powell was a first settler (farmer) of Liberty Plains who owned the "Dorset Green" farm, that covered what is now the Homebush shopping centre and railway station (although the original Homebush property was further north towards Homebush Bay).

Mr Powell appears to be now very little know of in the land he once owned, despite the fact that the creek running through it (now a concrete canal) is named after him.  In a test of this the passers-by along Homebush shopping centre main streat, about one in five for an hour's duration, were asked if they'd ever heard of a historic figure named Edward Powell.  None had.

At the Council library in Homebush the librarian first spoken too also had not heard of Powell but the Local Studies filing cabinets do have a little a little on Powell.   There is one item there, a fading photocopy of pages 202-204 of the "Hawkesbury Journey" (Bowd, 1986) that is a compact biographty of Edward Powell.

Powell for the current writer is one aspect of local interests arising since 2008.  This was when I began some consideration of the older history or "more ancient past" of the Strathfield LGA, assisted by a $50 grant from Strathfield Municipal Council.    Some of the things that came to mind from this work, and which were then as widely suggested as possible were such perceived needs as:

* That Councils photograph anything interesting exposed in excavations (something first suggested in Strathfield in 2008, to the then Mayor, re locating/mapping the Minchinbury Sandstone; but which has also previously been suggested to other authorities re geoheritage).

* A masterplan for better knowing the past (a suggestion submitted at time when Council called for forward planning ideas)..

* Memorialisation of the early settler Edward Powell (which is followed up on with further ideas as in this present webpage)..
* Having a history/heritage committee open to the public (it is understood that there was formerly a Heritage Committee but that it lapsed).

It was considered by the writer, and by some others who have pondered on the matter, that the role of Edward Powell, the original European inhabitant who had persisted longest in the district (and who died and was buried there) is under-recognised.  It was suggested that two small memorials (e.g. brass plaques) be placed, one of the footpath of Parramatta Road where the Powells "Half Way House" inn had once stood (a little to the west of where Parramatta Road crosses Powells Creek), and another where Powell and one of his daughters had been buried (just north of Homebush railway station).   As late as mid 2011 this suggestion had been making no headway.  Also, no early Council records on the Powells be located (even though Powell had sold Council the land where the Strathfield Council Chambers were constructed).   Also, search for any Powell descendants had been carried out with no success, which additionally included enquiring to historians in the Hawkesbury district (where the Powell family had early acquired land).   Council and the local Library were also asked if they knew of anybody else interested in researching local history apart from myself, Council or council staff.   The reply on more than one occasion since 2008 was always that there still was nobody else known of besides myself and the ongoing strong interest in history by one staff member.   Nonetheless one person (DP) and it eventuated that he actually had been researching Edward Powell and other Homebush matters far longer and more thoroughly than this writer.

( .. these notes are but working notes)

Earlier edit of this webpage began with:

Special acknowledgement:    Local historian David Patrick (pers. comm.) has determined from a number of strands of evidence, in 2011, where the Powells lived for many years on Parramatta Road in Homebush, at their Halfway House inn.   Some quotes from Dave regarding this, and how he did it, are herein.

This webpage is not a smooth narrative but rather a lumpy repository for placement of any information as it arises.  Please send any info or comments/corrections to john.mail "@" ozemail.com.au .   Latest comments, not yet melded in, are at the end, just before references, under "COMMENTS" (e.g. currently includes how the romantic interpretation of Edward Powell returning to Sydney to find his Sarah Dorset and son again cannot be right in view of Powell travelling with Webb and what Webb must have known....).  

 

Edward Powell first came to what is now called Homebush/Strathfield area (first known as Liberty Plains) in the late 1700s.

If he could return to his land today, or rather to the surface of it as he was buried under it, what might be the first changes to strike him?

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge over Powell's creek since he was there, and even the bridge has vanished.

But the first thing he'd probably note would be the absence of the graves of himself and daughter, and the headstone - and maybe that the passers-by had never even heard of graves ever being there.  He'd certainly notice now very high strange buildings were now all around, one lying over where he had his inn the Halfway House on Parramatta Road.   If he asked "What are they" he'd hear for the first time words like "high rise" or "multi-storey" or "apartment blocks".   They didn't have any of those things at Homebush back in Edward's day.

Edward Powell is the somewhat forgotten settlement founder and inn keeper of Liberty Plains; itself a now largely forgotten area which is still well reflected by a peculiar street pattern within the northern Strathfield municipality south from Homebush.

The name Powell has not  been greatly celebrated in Strathfield (Liberty Plains) even though Powell had been the settler there who eventually came to own most of the land of Liberty Plains.   Powell and his descendants there sold a small block to the embryonic Municipal Council, on which the Council Chambers now sits, and in front of the chambers (between there and nearby Strathfield railway station was a brick pit and works, run by Powells, which presumably gave bricks to build many of the earliest houses (none at all now surviving?) and after that may well have served as the first municipal rubbish dump.

It has been suggested that greater honour be given to Powell as a district founder, and that some small memorial or plaque be placed to mark his gravesite, just north of the railway line very close to Homebush railway station.   Nothing like that has progressed so far, however.

The "city fathers" of Strathfield seem never to have had much gusto over celebrating the memory of our pioneering Powells?

Maybe there is no particular reason for that.   Perhaps it is not heroic enough for the municipality to have wanted to more fully embrace?   There is at least one stain to his reputation.   That stain is the blood of two seemingly innocent aboriginal youths who were murdered by a party of European settlers near Windsor,  of whom Edward Powell appears to have been the ringleader (according to court records).

Those youths, killed at the Hawkesbury River near Windsor, were put to death as 'payback' (vengence) for the deaths of two white settlers at the hands of aborigines, a deed done not long before the killing of the two youths.   A court trial appeared to establish that the particular youths killed were innocent of any direct involvement in the previous murder of the whites, but that they were related tribally; plus there appeared to have  been a fair measure of confusion at the time amongst the white settlers around Windsor as to the exact events which had taken place previously.

The defence mounted by lawyers on behalf of the accused settlers committed on charge of murder, was that the Sydney authorities had many times given instructions for destroying aborigines wherever they might be met with, or given similar indications of intent, etc.   The prosecution held such defence to be absolute nonsense and the settlers were judged guilty as charged; however the matter of punishment was deferred to the home government in England, which later on sent back instruction that the accused by pardoned.   Disgraced as a Police Constable, Powell returned after this to his Liberty Plains holdings and thereafter mainly conducted himself as an inn keeper at his Halfway House on the Parramatta Road.

"""""""

POWELL, EDWARD (1762-1814), farmer and innkeeper, came from Lancaster, England, where he had been a farmer and fisherman. He visited New South Wales as a seaman in the Lady Juliana in the Second Fleet, and then returned as one of the colony's first group of free settlers. The party, which included Thomas Rose and was assisted by the British government after it had received urgent requests from Governor Arthur Phillip for free men, skilled labourers and farmers, sailed in the Bellona and reached Port Jackson on 16 January 1793. Eight days later Powell married Elizabeth Fish, a fellow passenger, who later bore him two sons and four daughters.

On 7 February Powell received the title to an 80-acre (32 ha) grant at Liberty Plains. Later, perhaps in the search for better soil, he moved to the Hawkesbury where by 1799 he had been appointed a constable. Hitherto an innocuous figure, in October 1799 he achieved notoriety when he was found guilty of being involved with four others in the murder of two Aboriginals, but the majority of the court thought that the case 'under all its peculiar circumstances' should be remitted to the British government before any sentence was imposed. In January 1802 Lord Hobart recommended that they be given conditional pardons.

Meanwhile, although dismissed from the position of constable, Powell had been advancing his farming interests. By 1806 he owned 140 acres (57 ha) of which 32 (13 ha) were in cultivation, and a small quantity of livestock including two horses and two cows. Shortly before the Rum Rebellion, in which he supported Governor William Bligh, he appears to have returned to the Liberty Plains district, and become an innkeeper as well as a farmer. His Halfway House, on the Parramatta Road between Sydney and Parramatta, was a landmark. In 1811 he was appointed poundkeeper for the area in which he gradually acquired additional property. He died on 19 October 1814, leaving his estate to his wife, who died in August 1836, having married James Moore in June 1829. Control then passed into the hands of his son Edward, who at first let the inn and 500 acres (202 ha), and then sold it to his brother-in-law, James Underwood. Another daughter of Edward Powell senior married Richard Siddins.

( http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020301b.htm )

"""""""

Arrival of the Lady Juliana at Sydney

Powell first entered Sydney harbour on the Lady Juliana, a convict transport vessel.

In the England the right hand man of Lord Sydney, the British Home Under-Secretary Evan Nepean, decided that, in order for the new colony to prosper, it would need the stability created by women.  To this end, Nepean ordered a shipment of female convicts to immediately be sent to Sydney Cove.  

There to  “upon landing, promote a matrimonial connection to improve morals and secure settlement” - but it did not work out quite that way as by the time they arrived the Sydney colony was desperate for more food, not more mouths to feed.

The Lady Juliana in tow of the Pallas Frigate. The Sailors Fishing the main Mast which was shatter'd by Lightning

(Source:  A painting by Robert Dodd [1748–1815] )

The Lady Juliana was the first convict transport to leave England after the First Fleet.  She made only one such voyage, leaving Plymouth in July 1789 with 226 female convicts and arriving at Syney in June 1790 after a voyage of 309 days.

 

 

The Lady Juliana (also known as the Lady Julian) was the first convict ship, and first large transport of females, to arrive at Sydney (Port Jackson) after its settlement by the First Fleet of convicts deported to that place.  The Lady Juliana is therefore sometimes considered as part of the Second Fleet and sometimes not.  The Lady Juliana has also been nicknamed in more recent times by researchers or others as "the floating brothel".   This ship uprooted from England and brought to Australia the following female convicts who likely did much to increase the human stock of this far-flung colony of the British Empire, and hence become aptly regarded as mothers of later Australian nation: 

SURNAME CHRISTIAN NAME TRIAL PLACE DAY MONTH YEAR DEPARTED ALIAS DETAILS & COMMENTS Aborrow Ann Surrey .. Summer 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Acton Sarah Middlesex 14 01 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Anderson Mary Middlesex 07 05 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Ansell Mary Middlesex 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Anstey Mary Ann Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND Also listed on MARY ANN (1791) Armsden Ann Kent .. Lent 1787 ENGLAND aka [Harmsden] Arnold Mary Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Atkins Violetta Middlesex 25 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Atkinson Mary Middlesex 23 05 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Ayres Elizabeth Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Barlow Mary Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Barnes Elizabeth Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Barnes Mary Kent .. Lent 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Barnsley Elizabeth Middlesex 27 02 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Barry Ann Middlesex 10 09 1788 ENGLAND aka [Berry] Bateman Mary Middlesex 07 05 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Baxter Susannah Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Beach Mary Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Bolton Hannah Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND aka [Moore] Bone Ann Middlesex 10 12 1788 ENGLAND aka [Smith] Brady Ann Middlesex 25 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Brammer Mary Nottingham .. .. .... ENGLAND aka [Bramwell] Bray Susannah Middlesex 22 04 1789 ENGLAND Also listed on NEPTUNE(1790),MARY ANN(1791) Brooks Ann Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Brooks Jane Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Brown Elizabeth Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Brown Grace London 27 02 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Brown Sarah Sophia Middlesex 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Bryant Ann Kent .. Lent 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Butler Mary Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Carroll Mary London 18 04 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Carter Elizabeth Middlesex 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Carter Margaret Middlesex 22 04 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Carter Mary Berkshire .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Carter Sarah Middlesex 11 07 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Cavenaugh Mary London 02 04 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Chafey Mary Middlesex 11 07 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Chaplin Mary Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Clapton Ann London 10 12 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Clark(e) Catherine Kent .. Lent 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Clayton Mary Middlesex 02 04 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Cook Elizabeth Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Cotterel(l) Elizabeth Middlesex 02 04 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Cottle Mary Somerset .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Cousens Mary Lincoln .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Cowcher Mary London 24 10 1787 ENGLAND aka [Christmas] Cross Mary Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND aka [Davidson] Cumberland Sarah Nottingham .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Curtis Esther Middlesex 10 12 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Dale Rosina Lincoln 08 03 1788 ENGLAND Also listed on indents for NEPTUNE (1790) Daniels Martha Middlesex 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Davidson Mary Northumberland .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Davis Ann Gloucester .. .. 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Davis Deborah Kent .. 07 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Davis Mary Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Davis Mary Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Dawson Jane Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Dawson Mary Middlesex 23 05 1787 ENGLAND aka [Bray] Dean Elizabeth Warwick .. .. 1788 ENGLAND aka [Deane] Dell Elizabeth Berkshire 24 04 1789 ENGLAND Also listed on indents for NEPTUNE (1790) Dorset Sarah Mary London 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... Douglas Elizabeth Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Dowling Mary Middlesex 10 12 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Doyle Ann Kent .. Lent 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Dring Ann Nottingham .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Dring Sarah Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Drury Elizabeth Lincoln 10 07 1787 ENGLAND Also listed on indents for NEPTUNE (1790) Ellis Jane Liverpool .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Emmans Elizabeth Berkshire .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Emmes Ann Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND aka [Hems/J'amms] Everitt Ann Essex .. Summer 1787 ENGLAND aka [Evered] Farrell Elizabeth Middlesex 23 05 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Fidoe Alice Bristol .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Fidoe Elizabeth Bristol .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Fidoe Jane Elizabeth Bristol .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Fitzpatrick Rose Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Flannegan Mary Middlesex 02 04 1788 ENGLAND aka [Flanagan] Flavel(l) Ann Gloucester .. 03 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Forbes Jane London 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Fortescue Ann Kent .. Lent 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Frost Frances Exeter Devon .. Summer 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Gale Elizabeth London 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Galland Ann Middlesex 10 12 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Gee Hannah London 27 02 1788 ENGLAND aka [Teasdale/Teesdale] Gibson Ann London 23 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Giles Elizabeth Middlesex 25 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Gittos Mary Middlesex 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Goldsmith Elizabeth Middlesex 25 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Gomer Sarah London 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Gosling Mary Warwick .. 03 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Goslin(g) Elizabeth Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Graham Sarah Middlesex 23 05 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Gregory Sarah Hertford .. Lent 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Griffin Elizabeth Devon .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Hagar Ann London 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Handyman Ann Middlesex 25 06 1788 ENGLAND aka [Hardiaman] Hannaway Ann Middlesex 14 01 1789 ENGLAND Also listed on indents for NEPTUNE (1790) Harding Amelia Middlesex 22 10 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Hardyman Elizabeth Middlesex 22 04 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Harper Ann Somerset .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Haynes Alice London 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Henderson Elizabeth Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND aka [Anderson] Heyland Catherine Middlesex 02 04 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Higgins Mary Middlesex 14 01 1789 ENGLAND aka [Harrold] Hill Ann Gloucester .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Hoddy Rachael Middlesex 25 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Holloway Elizabeth London 11 07 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Hook Mary Middlesex 07 05 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Hopper Elizabeth London 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Hounset(t) Mary Middlesex 14 01 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Hounsum Catherine Middlesex 07 05 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... House Sarah Middlesex 07 05 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Howard Ann Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Hunt Susannah Suffolk 03 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Israel Maria Middlesex 22 04 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Ivemay Elizabeth Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND aka [Ivenay] Johnson Elizabeth London 23 05 1787 ENGLAND aka [Lee] Johnson Mary Middlesex 25 02 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Johnson Matilda Middlesex 10 12 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Jones Ann London 27 02 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Jones Elizabeth Middlesex 07 05 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Jones Elizabeth London 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Jones Hannah Middlesex 18 04 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Jones Lydia Middlesex 27 02 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Jones Mary Middlesex 22 04 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Jones Mary London 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Jones Sarah Middlesex 27 02 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Karrain Eleanor London .. 10 1786 ENGLAND aka [Kervein] Kearnon Elizabeth Middlesex 25 10 1786 ENGLAND aka [Price] Kelly Sarah London 23 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Kemp Ann Middlesex 18 04 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Kimes Mary Middlesex 18 04 1787 ENGLAND aka [Potten] Lammerman Mary Northumberland .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Leicester Elizabeth Middlesex 09 01 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Leicester Isabella Middlesex 09 01 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Lewis Mary Middlesex 25 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Lloyd Jane Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Long Mary Middlesex 23 05 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Lyons Sarah London 23 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Maddocks Grace Middlesex 09 01 1788 ENGLAND aka [Maddox] Manning Sarah Essex .. Lent 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Manson Isabella Middlesex 27 02 1788 ENGLAND aka [Smith] Marsh Ann London .. .. 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Marsh Charlotte Middlesex 10 12 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... McCormick Sarah London .. 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... McDonald Eleanor Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Metcalf(e) Elizabeth Middlesex 22 10 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Michael Sarah Middlesex 22 04 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Milledge Susannah Bristol .. .. .... ENGLAND aka [Miller] Moody Elizabeth Bristol .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Morgan Ann London 23 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Morgan Margaret Middlesex 09 01 1788 ENGLAND aka [Jones, Mary] Mortimore Susannah Exeter .. Spring 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Mullenden Mary Chelmsford .. 03 1789 ENGLAND aka [Mullendon] Nash Mary Middlesex 23 05 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Natchell Sarah London .. 04 1789 ENGLAND aka [Mitchell] Newton Mary Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Oakley Mary Middlesex 10 12 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Oliver Mary Kent .. Lent 1787 ENGLAND Also listed on indents for MARY ANN (1791) Owston Ann Surrey .. Summer 1787 ENGLAND aka [Houston] Parry Elizabeth Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND aka [Perry] Pealing Hannah Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Peasley Hannah Somerset .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Pennington Elizabeth London 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Pickett Susannah London 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Poor Ann Kent .. Lent 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Price Ann/Elizabeth Gloucester .. Summer 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Proud Martha Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Randall Mary Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Read Mary Middlesex .. 04 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Reid Mary Middlesex 25 02 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Richards Elizabeth Warwick .. 08 1787? ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Riley Elizabeth Kent .. Lent 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Roberts Sarah London 09 01 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Robinson Elizabeth Middlesex 22 04 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Roch Ann Middlesex 22 04 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Rose Mary Lincoln City .. 03 1786 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Roster Elizabeth London 09 01 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Rowney Hannah London 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Russell Mary Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Sanders Jane Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND aka [Norris] Saney Elizabeth Bristol .. .. .... ENGLAND aka [Seney] Scott Eleanor Northumberland .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Shakespeare Elizabeth London 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Simpson Charlotte Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND aka [Hall] Simpson Mary London 09 01 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Smith Elizabeth Middlesex 11 07 1787 ENGLAND aka [Fue/Free (Carr)?] Smith Elizabeth Middlesex 27 02 1788 ENGLAND aka [Carr (Fue/Free)?] Smith Hannah Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Smith Isabella Kent .. Lent 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Smith Margaret Liverpool .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Smith Mary London 09 01 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Smith Rebecca Devon .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Smith Sarah Middlesex 02 04 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Steel Ann Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Steel Elizabeth Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Her headstone found ""In Memory of Eliz Steel died 1795 Aged …" in an excavation in old cemetery, below the Sydney Town Hall - http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/history/foundations/BurialGround.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Steel   Stewart Margaret Kent .. Lent 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Stewart Mary Middlesex 23 05 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Stewart Susannah Middlesex 09 01 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Stockwell Ann Gloucester .. Lent 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Stokes Ann Warwick .. 03 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Stringer Elizabeth Gloucester .. 03 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Stubbs Susannah Warwickshire .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Sulley Elizabeth Middlesex 07 05 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Sutton Sarah Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Talbot Dorcas Middlesex 25 06 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Talbot Mary Middlesex 27 02 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Taylor Sarah Middlesex 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Thomas Ann Middlesex 22 04 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Thompson Mary Lincoln 19 03 1789 ENGLAND Also listed on indents for NEPTUNE (1790) Thomson Elizabeth Northumberland .. 07 1788 ENGLAND aka [Thompson] Thornton Ester/Hester Middlesex 18 04 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Tilley Elizabeth Gloucester .. 02 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Tuck Mary Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Tuft Mary Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Turner Rachael Middlesex 12 12 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Vandebus Jane Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Verriner Sarah Wiltshire .. .. .... ENGLAND aka [Verrinder] Wade Mary Middlesex 14 01 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Walker Mary Middlesex 23 05 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Warren Mary Warwick .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Waters Jane Middlesex 14 01 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Watson Eleanor Surrey .. Lent 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Watson Elizabeth London 23 05 1787 ENGLAND aka [Davis] Wheelden Jane Derby .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Wheeler Ann Middlesex 27 02 1788 ENGLAND aka [Wheller] White Catherine Kent .. Lent 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Whiting Jane Middlesex 14 01 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Whitlam Sarah Lincoln 10 07 1787 ENGLAND Also listed on indents for NEPTUNE (1790) Whittaker Jane Middlesex 07 05 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Williams Jane Middlesex 09 01 1788 ENGLAND aka [Vicars] Williams Margaret Somerset .. 02 1788? ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Williams Mary Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Williams Mary Kent .. Lent 1789 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Williams Phoebe Middlesex 02 04 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Willock Ann Lincoln .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Wilmot Catherine Essex .. Lent 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Wilson Mary Middlesex 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Wilson Sarah London 09 01 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Winspear Mary Middlesex 02 04 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Wishaw Elizabeth Middlesex 10 09 1788 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Wood Ann Middlesex 24 10 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Wood Margaret London .. 04 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Yeoman(s) Ann Middlesex 12 09 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Young Ann Northumberland .. .. .... ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Young Sarah Middlesex 11 07 1787 ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ( Source: The Women of Botany Bay, by Portia Robinson )

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This ship left Plymoth on 29 July 1789 and arrived at Sydney on 3 June 1790.   A few of the convicts died during the journey, so of the c. 226 who set out, 222 are believed to have arrived in Sydney.  

The passage took 309 days.   This was one of the slowest journeys ever made by the early convict ships.  The Lady Juliana was delayed, spending 45 days at Rio de Janeiro and 19 days at Cape Town.

A month is 28-30 days, so this was about nine months and long enough to have a baby in.  According to John Nicol's later account, "numerous" of the convicts had borne children on this epic voyage.  One who did that was the above list member:

"Dorset       Sarah Mary          London             24     10    1787   ENGLAND   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ..."

On the voyage a son was born by Sarah, and baptised Edward Dorset Powell ten days after the Lady Julilana arrived at Sydney.

An account of this voyage of  the Lady Juliana was written by steward John Nicol, in which he recorded that once the ship was fairly out to sea, every man on board took a wife from among the convicts.  [Nicol, John, John Nicol, Mariner: Life and Adventures 1776-1801, Melbourne, Text Publishing, 1997. ISBN 0871137550 ]

During the voyage rations were properly issued, the vessel kept clean and fumigated, the women were given free access to the deck, and supplies of fresh food were obtained at the ports of call.  This treatment was in sharp contrast to that meted out to (other) convicts on the infamous Second Fleet.  Two weeks after the arrival of Lady Juliana, the storeship Justinian arrived, followed a week later by the three ships of the Second Fleet with their shamefully treated cargo of starved and maltreated convicts.

The sending of many women to boost the colony at Sydney was doubtless some good idea at the time, when conceived in England (chronicler seaman of the Lady Juliana, John Nicol, simply noting "the colony at that time being in great want of women"), but when they arrived they were not as warmly welcomed as expected  - for the colony was not doing well.   It was in fact 'starving' in a manner speaking, and desperately was hoping for more provisions to arrive from the motherland.  When instead a cargo of women arrived, not food, the authorities were very annoyed (although a stores ship did arrive only two week later).   A previously hoped-for arrival of supplies had not eventuated as the ship bringing them, HMS Sirius, had been wrecked at Norfolk Island.

So when the women arrived on 3 June 1790 Judge Advocate Colling may have reflected the general attitude of the officials at Sydney when he wrote in his diary the arrival of a "cargo so unnecessary and so unprofitable as 222 females, instead of a cargo of provisions".   A Lieutenant Ralph Clark was equally disgusted with the arrival of 'still more damned whores'.

The women would not be allowed to stay, could not be allowed to stay - the colony did not think it had the food for them, so they were before long  transshipped elsewhere, to Norfolk Island.

Edward Powell may not have been aware that the female convicts would not be remaining in Sydney.

But in any case he would have known that he could not stay with Sarah and his child.   Had this been a big city, like Rio de Janiero he might have tried to stay by deserting, but Sydney town at that time was tiny and there was no way anyone might hide out there unbeknown to authorities.

So, after repairs to her damaged or strained timbers, the Lady Juliana would be sailing on to China to pick up a cargo of tea which the East India Company wanted transported.  

Thus on 25 July 1790, the Lady Juliana sailed out of Sydney harbour - and Edward Powell had to be on her.

John Nicol who later wrote of the Lady Juliana's voyage wrote that of every man on board who took a wife from among the convicts he "was as bad on this point as the others".  He took up also with a Sarah, Sarah Whitelam (= Sarah Whitlam in the list above) - "I fixed my fancy upon her from the moment I knocked the rivets out of her irons".  Like Sarah Dorset, she too bore a son on the voyage.  John Nicol pleaded to be let stay with her at Sydney and offered all his earned salary (forego his wages) if let do so.  But this was not allowed.  So, pledging her eternal faith, and leaving her his Bible with their names written in it, he sailed away in the Lady Juliana. He never saw Sarah or his son John again, and continued his voyagings in many parts of the world until he retired from the sea when an old man.

After returning to England, Edward Powell must have considered his opportunities for getting back to Sydney.

Such opportunity arose when the Government advertised for free settlers to go to the colony of New South Wales.   So Powell returned but when he arrived back enquiry could have immediately revealed that the Lady Juliana convicts had been trans-shipped away not long after their arrival.   Powell then, within days, married another from the vessel he came in, Miss Fish.  Edward Powell and Elizabeth Fish were married on 24 January 1794, eight days after the Bellona arrived in Sydney.

The mainstream Powell family story from then on is the story of the descendants of Miss Fish.

Did Edward Powell forget Sarah Dorset?   Who knows, but despite returning to a Sarah-Dorset-less Sydney and marrying there to Miss Elizabeth Fish his grant still got named "Dorset Green" and the first child borh in Sydney was named "Sarah" (the daughter who later suicided at Liberty Plains and is/was in a grave with or near Edward there).   These are possibly just co-incidences of names; and it is thought that Elizabeth Fish had lived in Dorset county in England.

But did they ever meet up again with the other lot - the "Dorset Powells"?    This has long been uncertain (but suspected that they would have), at least to this writer.   The colonial/convict records are incomplete, tattered and sometimes wilfully destroyed - whence the tracing of whatever happened to Sarah Dorset is not straightforward or easy.

At Norfolk Island, Sarah Dorset gave birth to a daughter, Rebecca Dorset in December 1792, the father unrecorded.   She must have returned to Sydney after her sentence expired and in the 1896 Muster it is almost certainly she who was recorded as "housekeeper to John Woodward".  She died in 1838 and was buried as Sarah Woodward.  The 1806 Muster also indicates that her son Edward was employed by Mr Kable in the sealing trade.  It is also thought that Sarah Dorset/Woodward was at one time at Windsor and if so it would seem very likely she knew or met up again with Edward Powell since he like the other struggling settlers of Liberty Plains abandonned that place (with its heavy clay soil that weathered from the Ashfield Shale, not particularly good for agriculture), and moved to Hawkesbury, close to Windsor, where the alluvial loam was "rich".   

NOTE the following 'coincidences' or leads:

1) Convict James Underwood (arriving 1791), who subsequently became very wealthy, helped build a 34-ton sloop for the Hawkesbury River trade in 1797; then he built the Diana in 1798-99 which later became the property of Underwood and his partner Henry Kable.

2) In 1800. In that year he was in partnership with Kable and a mariner, Samuel Rodman Chace, who was master of Kable & Underwood's sloop Diana engaged in Bass Strait sealing. The partnership with Kable lasted until 1809.

3) James Woodward (a believed son of Sarah Dorset) was also a shipbuilder, at  Brisbane Water - and he is known to have been born at Windsor.  Hence Sarah Dorset was at Windsor.  [His birth also is not in the online BDM.]  

4) In 1812 Underwood married Mary Ann Powell (the second daughter of Edward Powell and Elizabeth Fish); and via this connection came to gain much of  Liberty Plains, Edward Powell's lands.

(viz.  http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/underwood-james-2751 )

 This intepretation, that the Sarah Dorset connected with seaman Edward Powell was the woman buried as Sarah Woodward is the interpretation that was favoured by Bowd (1986).  It is here thought to be correct.  Nevertheless there are still loose ends that are perhaps not understood.  For example, as known to Hawkesbury area researchers (pers. comm./not seen) there are these records of St. Phillips church (at State Archives):

- Sarah Dorsett died 1832 aged 37, parents unknown
- Edward Powell b. 1790 to Edward and Sarah (Dorset)
- Edward Powell b. 1803 to Edward and Sarah

There are various indications of Dorsets living at Windsor since the 1830s, and a 'Martha' Dorset married at Gosford in 1861 to a Joseph Cupit (BDM) (presumably connected to Sarah Dorset/Woodward who had gone to that district later in life).

The "Edward Powell b. 1790 to Edward and Sarah (Dorset)" is certainly the Edward Dorset Powell son of Edward Powell.   But who was "Edward Powell b. 1803 to Edward and Sarah"?   Perhaps just a coincidence of names but maybe a contender for mixing up with other later Edward Powell (jr) records?

The "Sarah Dorsett died 1832 aged 37, parents unknown" would have been born in 1795 and so could have been a daughter of Sarah Dorset perhaps; although other records have it that Sarah Dorset's daughter born at Norfolk Island was named Rebecca.   

According to John Nicol, a steward on the 'Lady Juliana' ( Bateson, Charles. The convict ships 1787-1868. 2nd ed. Glasgow : Brown, Son & Ferguson Ltd., 1985 ie 1969 ) the story is that Sarah had been: deserted by her lover and forced by want upon the streets. Her parents 'decent looking people' visited her before she sailed.  Nicol wrote of an emotional reunion with her parents who came on board ship to see her. 'My lost child!' said her father, hardly able to speak, as his sobbing wife embraced Sarah, who fainted. 'The mother with streaming eyes, blessed God that they had found their poor lost child, undone as she was', wrote Nicol.

Nicol wrolte 'She was young and pretty, and had not been two years from her father's house; so short had been the course of her folly and sin. She had not been protected by the villain who ruined her above six weeks; then she was forced by want upon the streets, and taken up as a disorderly girl'.

Nichol wrote that on the voyage, one of the crew, William Power ‎[sic]‎, fell in love with her.   That is presumably "our Sarah", even though 'Power' should be "Powell" and 'William' should be "Edward".   If so, how easily names and records can get mixed up.

According to Nicol, this 'Power' returned to NSW when she (Sarah Dorset) had served her sentence, married her, and took her back to England.   This of course cannot be true and relates to imagined events after the actual voyage, on which he must have heard inaccurate information - but sentimentally it is surely the same story, or an imagined 'lived happilly ever after' version of the story as Nicol must have half-known it.

[ The information above has been given to the writer but the original source "Nicol, John: John Nicol, Mariner: Life and Adventures 1776-1801, Melbourne, Text Publishing, 1997" has not yet been seen directly.]

Powell indeed did return to the colony aboard the ship 'Bellona' as a free settler in 1793, and presumably he did so with the thought to re-unite with Sarah Dorset.  However, she like the other Lady Juliana prisoners had long not been in Sydney.   They had been trans-shipped and never did remain long in Sydney.  Upon reaching Sydney, Powell married Elizabeth Fish instead, a free woman who also sailed on the Bellona.

According to Michael Flynn ( The Second Fleet: Britain's grim convict armada of 1790. Sydney : Library of Australian History, 1993 ) Edward Powell was a seaman aboard the ship 'Lady Juliana' who fathered a son by convict Sarah Dorset, also aboard the 'Lady Juliana'.  The child was baptised Edward on 13 Jun 1790 in the week following the ship's arrival in Sydney.

Flynn related details from Sarah's trial record:  Sarah and Mary Dorset were enjoying a dinner and a pint of beer at a City of London public house when a man came in, left his greatcoat by the door and went out for half an hour. The publican stopped the girls as they were leaving and accused them of theft when the greatcoat was found on Sarah's arm under her cloak.  Both were tried at the 24 Oct 1787 Old Bailey sessions.  Mary was acquitted but Sarah was sentenced to 7 years transportation. She was held in Newgate Gaol until 12 Mar 1789, when she was embarked aboard the ship 'Lady Juliana', age given as 20.

Prior to March 1788 Sarah lodged a petition for mitigation of her sentence, but reporting on the petition, the trial judge wrote 'she...appears to me a very proper subject for the colony at Botany Bay'.  According to Flynn, Sarah was erroneously listed as Mary on the ship's indent (the name of the other one of the arrested pair, the one who was acquitted). The two women may have been sisters, sisters in law or cousins.

Eight weeks after arriving in the Colony, Sarah and baby Edward would have been amongst those 194 convicts, mostly females ex the Lady Juliana, who were sent on to Norfolk Island, and arrived there on 7 August 1790. 

Norfolk Island may have been the end of the line for some of the first transportees,

but others were later sent on to Van Diemen's Land and some returned to Sydney.

A daughter Rebecca, was born to Sarah on Norfolk Island in December 1792, father unknown (some suggest John Watson).  It would also seem that Sarah was one of those who made their way sooner or later back to Sydney.   There is a mention (source not traced)  that Sarah returned to Sydney with both her children in February 1794.  Thus another recorded 'Sarah Dorsett' who would have been born in 1795 could have been a daughter (third child) to Sarah Dorset and born in Sydney ... but if so, nothing more is known of that Sarah Dorset.   NSW births/deaths/marriages, online, has no "Sarah Dorset" records whatsoever.

In the 1806 Muster, Sarah was described as a 'housekeeper' to John Woodward.  He was then a butcher with two children - James born about 1803 and Jane born about 1805.  A third child George was born around 1807.   Thus if all John Woodward's children were by Sarah Dorset then she may have had in all six children by 1807:  Edward, Rebecca, ?Sarah, James, Jane and George.

Another possibility which has been considered is did Edward Dorset Powell perhaps change surname to Watson, after adoption?

Robert Watson was a convict on Norfolk Island at the same time as Sarah Dorset.  He is apparently later recorded as having a son Edward and a daughter Rebecca whose birth dates coincide with Sarah Dorset's Edward and Rebecca (pers. comm.).  If indeed Edward Dorset Powell was adopted by Robert Watson then Robert and Edward were buried together at Bunnerong Cemetery.  That Edward had married Elizabeth Pawley at St.Phillips on 29/6/1811, she being born in the Colony 24/3/1795 (and lived between 1800 and 1805 at Norfolk Island), and dying in 1836.   However, others have identified Edward Dorset Powell as being the Edward Powell who died 28 December 1858 ‎(Age 68)‎ at Braidwood.    This all still seems to be debated and this writer has not seen the primary documents.

Some, such as Bowd (1986) have thought that Edward Dorset Powell was t he boy recorded in 1806 as employed by Kable and Underwood in the Bass Strait sealing grounds.   Moreover, Edward Powell's fourth child "Edward Powell" also seems to have gone of to work on Underwood's ships.

 

The "Dorset" factor

Edward Powell christened his farm grant at the Liberty Plains intended new settlement with the name "Dorset Green".

Whatever an intending new settler might have been thinking about on the long journey out from England, it surely must have included what name he'd give to his new farm(?).   Thus the name 'Dorset Green' as an idea might have well pre-dated the marriage of Mr Powell and Miss Fish in Sydney.  Alternatively it was so named because Elizabeth Fish had lived in Dorset county(?).

Maybe Miss Fish had never been told about Miss Dorset even (it seems another strange 'coincidence' that first child by Elizabeth Fish was christened "Sarah"?); in which case Edward might have stuck with his original choice of name, even though it was rendered by events a tad inappropriate.   This however is just mere supposition.

According to Gwen Dundon's Shipbuilders of Brisbane Water (pp. 58-59), known about with thanks to Kay Williams, there is the following information:

"""""""""""

Farmer and sawyer James Woodward was the registered builder of two 1840s ketches at Brisbane Water.  He was a very early resident of the district,  having been authorised in May1830 to take possession of a 30 acre grant "The Brothers" which had been promised to him on Cockle Creek and which was confirmed to him in 1840.  He was a son of John Woodward who came to the colony as a convict in 1798 on the transport Barwell.  James was born at Green Hills, later known as Windsor.  His mother Sarah was widowed in Sydney in 1825 and was residing with her son and his young family when she died at Kincumber in 1838 and was buried by the Rev. Edward Rogers.

 (BDM gives her death record = Sarah Woodward, age 73 - V18383269 22/1838).

"""""""""""

Sarah's burial was registered in the parish of Brisbane Water, with her age given as 73 (some accounts would make it 72).  She was presumably living with her son James who had settled at Cockle Creek.  Sarah, it is believed by some,  was buried at Point Frederick near Gosford; and that her grave was one of the first in the now historic cemetery.   She was buried by Rev. Edward Rogers of the C. of E.   There was, however, no church at Point Frederick in 1838; but neither was there  any C. of E.  burial ground at Kincumber till 1842.  

The Register General Office's data for the death of Sarah is:

Number 3269, Vol 22
Name:  SARAH WOODWARD
Abode:  Kincumber
Age: 73 years
Quality or Profession:  Settler's wife
When died:  11th March 1838
When buried: 13th March 1838
Where ceremony performed:  District of Brisbane Water in the County of Northumberland, NSW
By whom the ceremony was performed:   EDWARD ROGERS

In 1838 the Englishman Edward Rogers was a Deacon of the Church of England and had been appointed to Brisbane Water only in January that year..  He was made a priest only in February 1839, so having been buried by the "Rev. Edward Rogers" may be doubted.  Because no rectory at Gosford was built until after 1840, Rogers probably lived elsewhere.  At the time of Sarah's death he may have been living on H.G. Watson's grant "Toorigal" near the mouth of Kincumber Creek.  Not long afterwards he moved to Narara Creek where he lived in a bark hut.   The burial of Sarah Woodward was actually the very first to be entered in the Brisbane Water Register by Rogers (Ref: Rev. A. P. Elkin in the "Newcastle Diocese Churchman" and reprinted in the Gosford Times on 4/6/1925). 

Why any think she'd be buried at Point Frederick is unknown, especially since church land may have already been dedicated at Kincumber.   She may have been buried in any of a number of places (her son James was buried at the C.of E. cemetery at Kincumber).   There is, for example, nothing to say that she was not buried on the Woodward grant at Kincumber.  Even though the NSW government had been trying to dissuade burials on private property there were many times that this was not obeyed.   (From local historians, per Kay Williams.)

Some further information on James Woodward, in the "Pre 1901 Gosford Pioneer Register" as above, which further confirms that James' mother was Sarah and that Sarah Woodward was Sarah Dorset.

An early Kincumber slab house

In the 1841 Census, "Cockle Creek" had seven householders.  These pioneer families included the Normans, Picketts, Pipers, Woodwards, Humphreys, Horrigans and Blackfords.  There were no doubt other sawyers, shipwrights, assigned convicts etc. who did not appear on lists, though numbers would still have been small at this time.

 

Edward Powell family

The Powell family.   Follow links to any of these at:

http://www.easystreetretreat.com.au/australianroyalty/individual.php?pid=I63719&ged=purnellmccord.ged

 

Where was Powell's Halfway House near Powell's Creek?

Local history researcher David Patrick in 2011 relocated what is probably the best indication so far know of that helps know where the Halfway House stood.  This is panoramic drawing entitled "The Meet of the Sydney Hunt Club at Homebush", in the Illustrated Sydney News, 25 October 1873, page 4 (Supplement).  

This fine drawing is a view looking westwards along Parramatta Road from a high point just north of the road and east of Powell's Creek.   It shows the area then had very few houses and the most prominent structure was the two storey inn seen on the southern side of the hill and about half of the way up to the crest (where the current  Horse and Jockey Hotel is).   It is thought that the Halfway House was single storied at the time the Powells had it.   A later operator, William Cutts, apparently added the second floor between 1848 and 1858.

The 1873 illustration shows on the north side of Parramatta Road, from Powell's Creek west to the hill crest one narrow paddock then two large paddocks.   The inn stood opposite the western west side of the first large paddock.   Thus, if the two large paddocks depicted were of about equal size this would mean that the inn stood about half way from the creek to the hill crest.   Comparing that to today, and using the concrete canal of today to mark the creek, this would put the inn (at the halfway point) at the present day A.J. Bush parking lot on the corner of Station Street and Parramatta Road.   Of course this is rough and ready - in the first place a drawing need not be an accurate depiction to such fine degree as that; secondly the canal may have shifted the waterway somewhat from the original creek.   However the inn site should be either the present parking lot or else the "Summit" highrise building next west. 

In June 2011 David (pers. comm.), using the abovementioned panoramic old drawing and other evidence, finally concluded "problem solved" and that there is no longer any doubt where the old inn lay.  

To do this, David cross-referenced the 1873 picture to a detailed court enquiry of a fatal coach accident outside the hotel in 1848, where a witness describes the accident as being opposite the hotel 150 yards up the hill from Powell's Creek.  David then walked the footpath with a wheeled odometer to measure along the road from the creek/canal (150 yards = 137 metres).  At 137m he reached the driveway entrance to the underground car park of The Summit.  Without doubt the location of Powell's Half Way House is now occupied by "The Summit Apartments" and likely also the A.J. Bush car park on the high side of Station Street where it joins Parramatta Road.  This firmly places the old pub 70 metres east of the present Horse and Jockey Hotel.

Dave added that this also made him trust implicidly another old map he has which places the old pub in that exact spot as well.   That old map shows it to have been more where The Summit is now, rather than on the corner where A.J. Bush's car park is.  That old map shows it exactly where the wheeled odometer ended up on the evening he walked the distance after using the distance figure obtained from the witness account recorded in 1848.  "Simply astounding", Dave reckons.

 

What happened to the Powell family graves behind the Halfway House inn?

"Avoca Court", a ?1930s small block of flats at Loftus Crescent facing Homebush Station exit - the  present writer's current best guess of where the Powells may have been buried. The Echo newspaper in 1890 stated "Mr. Edward Powell, the elder, died in 1816 and was buried on his estate. The grave may still be seen, fenced in with white palings, and shaded by a couple of trees, on the plain between the present Homebush railway elation and the Horse and Jockey Hotel".  It was suggested to Council that a brass plaque to the effect that the Powells' graves were 'hereabouts' be placed at the railway steps abutment on the opposite side of the road to this photo.   Council showed no interest in the idea of any signage however, at one time deeming that such matters were not considered to be of significant benefit to the local community.   The counter argument to that however was they it does benefit a local community to become better aware of its roots.   Another factor, proferred in 2011, was that brass plaques which Council had already places in the municipality had been stolen (e.g. all plaques in Strathfield Park were stolen).   Thought was then given to perhaps using some less valuable (and tempting) material than brass.

View of the opposite site of the street to the above view, looking south.   Just right of the figure and the edge of the staircase is a strip of railways land between two fences.   The closest fence, wire mesh, is easily seen through (as seen here).   On that land could be a good place for memorial to the graves as it would be relatively well protected against any vandalism (it being reported in 2011 that many of the brass plaques formerly laid by Strathfield Council had disappeared (presumably stolen for copper value).

 

 

One style of memorial plaque that might be suitable to remember the Powells buried hereabouts by.   This example is at Elva Street.

 

   

Other plaques, both "presented by the Strahfield District Historical Society": at "Verani" 24 Homebush Road Strathfield and the Council Chambers.  Three other plaques are at:  Homebush Road (westside between Victoria Road and Albyn Road) commenorating the former site of ‘Seven Oaks Farm’; Cotswold Road commenorating the site of the former home ‘Fairholm’; and at Strathfield Avenue commenorating the site of the former “Strathfield House”. 

Two burials are recorded to have taken place behind the Halfway House inn, that of Edward himself, and also a 16 year old daughter who committed suicide there.

Born and died at Powell's Creek - Sarah Powell (1794-1810).   Details from Marion Joyce Purnell  http://www.easystreetretreat.com.au/australianroyalty/individual.php?pid=I63719&ged=purnellmccord.ged 

The father, Edward Powell, had a much longer life but he too was buried behind the inn, with Sarah.

For starters, here is a very summarised life of Edward Powell from:

Flynn, Michael. The Second Fleet: Britain's grim convict armada of 1790. Sydney : Library of Australian History, 1993 

To follow the persons mentioned, follow the links to "Easy Street", the work of Marion Joyce Purnell (easystreetretreat "@" gmail.com).

Marion states "I've made available on the world wide web all the genealogical work I've been doing. As a former librarian and website developer, I'm a great believer in sharing.  My site is called 'Australian Royalty' because I have quite a few convict ancestors. Check it out! You might find some of your ancestors there too."    Presumably she is somehow related to Powells (that connection not yet followed though, and will be mentioned here when known).

Here is Edward Powell summary, via Marion and in turn from Michael Flynn's work: 

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First union	Between 29 July 1789 and 3 June 1790 ‎(Age 27-28)‎ Sarah Dorset - ‎[View Family ‎(F16036)‎‎] During the voyage of the ship 'Lady Juliana' Sarah and Edward conceived a child. The child was baptised Edward on 13 Jun 1790 in the week following the ship's arrival in Sydney.  (The Lady Juniana was a convicts transport ship; Edward was a seaman, a member of the ship's crew.)  (Edward was separated from Sarah, as he had to sail off with the ship.   He returned to Sydney perhaps find Sarah and his son, but she  had been moved on, and Edward instead married Miss Fish, another member of the ships immigrant free settlers.  Yet, Edward named his farm at Liberty Plains "Dorset Green" - was that after the place Dorset in England.  Or was it after Sarah Dorset - or both?  ~~~~~~~~~~~
Birth of child #1	1790 ‎(Age 28)‎ The high Seas Son: Edward Powell  (I63717) ~~~~~~~~~~~
Immigration	15 January 1793 ‎(Age 31)‎ Sydney Cove, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Edward returned to Sydney in 1793 aboard the ship 'Bellona', stating that he was a farmer and fisherman from Lancaster, aged 30. ~~~~~~~~~~~
Marriage	24 January 1793 ‎(Age 31)‎ Elizabeth Fish - ‎[View Family ‎(F16037)‎‎] Sydney City, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia ~~~~~~~~~~~
Property	Between May 1793 and 1798 ‎(Age 31)‎ Liberty Plains, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. In May 1793 Edward was granted 80 acres at Liberty Plains, followed by a further 60 acres at The Flats. The land there proved to be poor and he was one of a number of settlers in the area complaining of extortionate prices charged for necessities by local traders in 1798. ~~~~~~~~~~~
Birth of a child #2	17 April 1794 ‎(Age 32)‎ Liberty Plains, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Daughter: Sarah Powell  (I63719) ~~~~~~~~~~~
Birth of a child #3	7 June 1796 ‎(Age 34)‎ Liberty Plains, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Daughter: Mary Ann Powell  (I63286) ~~~~~~~~~~~
More  Property	1798 ‎(Age 36)‎ Cornwallis, Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia Late in 1798 the family moved to the Hawkesbury where Edward purchased a 30 acre farm at Cornwallis from Michael Doyle. Edward was appointed a constable in the area. ~~~~~~~~~~~
Birth of a child #4	21 September 1798 ‎(Age 36)‎ Cornwallis, Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia Son: Edward Powell  (I63720) ~~~~~~~~~~~
Death [ Associate ]	August 1799 Yarramundi, Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia Death: Thomas Hoskisson  (I52606) ‎(on the date of death)‎ - [Relationship Chart] Associate: Edward Powell  (I63714) ‎(Age 37)‎ ~~~~~~~~~~~
Tried for     murder	October 1799 ‎(Age 37)‎ Sydney City, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Friend: Simon Freebody  (I52610) ‎(Age 32)‎ - [Relationship Chart] Friend: John Winbow  (I63715) - [Relationship Chart] Friend: Thomas Hoskisson  (I52606) ‎(2 months after death)‎ - [Relationship Chart] In Oct 1799, he was tried with four local emancipist farmers ‎(Simon Freebody, James Metcalfe, William Butler and William Timms)‎ at Sydney for the brutal murder of two teenage aboriginal boys at the Hawkesbury. The boys, known as Jemmy aged 15 and Little George aged 11, lived among the settlers, and were members of a tribal group, several of whom had recently murdered and dismembered two local white men ‎(Thomas Hoskisson and John Winbow)‎. Freebody and the other men were among a party of angry settlers who captured the boys as they were visiting a neighbouring farmer returning one of the dead men's muskets. They bound the terrified boys' hands and killed them with a cutlass and musket. The court at Sydney found them guilty of the murders, and that the aboriginal boys had been innocent of involvement in the murder of the white men. Unable to reach a majority verdict meting out punishment to white men for the murder of aborigines, the court released them on good behaviour bonds and referred a decision on their punishment to the Home Secretary in England, who ordered the men to be pardoned. Source: Macquarie University. Division of Law. Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales 1788-1899 ‎[Database Online]‎ R. v. Powell and others ‎[1799]‎ NSWKR 7 Court of Criminal Judicature Dore J.A., 15-16 October 1799 ~~~~~~~~~~~
Event  [ Friend ]	October 1799 Sydney City, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Event: Simon Freebody  (I52610) ‎(Age 32)‎ - [Relationship Chart] Friend: Edward Powell  (I63714) ‎(Age 37)‎ ~~~~~~~~~~~
Death  [ Associate ]	1799 , Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia Death: John Winbow  (I63715) ‎(on the date of death)‎ - [Relationship Chart] Associate: Edward Powell  (I63714) ‎(Age 37)‎ ~~~~~~~~~~~
Birth of a child #5	1800 ‎(Age 38)‎ Cornwallis, Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia Daughter: Jane Powell  (I63721) ~~~~~~~~~~~
	After 1800 ‎(Age 38)‎ Cornwallis, Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia  In 1800 Edward was mustered with 20 acres sown in wheat and 6 in maize, owning 30 pigs. He supported himself and received government rations for his wife and three children
Property  notes	Between 1801 and 1804 ‎(Age 39)‎ Cornwallis, Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia Buyer: Matthew Kearns  (I63638) ‎(Age 39)‎ - [Relationship Chart] In April 1801, Edward assigned Powell Farm to Matthew Kearns to secure a debt of £16/14/8. Soon afterwards however, Edward purchased Edward Main's farm at Richmond which he called 'Curryburry'. In 1802 he was mustered holding 105 acres ‎(11 sown with wheat, 7 in maize)‎; he owned 30 goats, 25 pigs and held 15 bushels of wheat and 40 of maize in store, fully supporting himself, his wife, four children, three free workers and one convoct. The Powell family became increasingly prosperous. Edward purchased a mare for £100 in 1803 which impaled itself soon afterwards while jumping a fence. In 1804 he advertised for an 'instructress' for his children who would be required to reside at the Hawkesbury. In 1806 he was mustered with 20 acres sown in wheat, 7 in maize, 5 in barley, owning 2 horses, 2 cows and 20 pigs.  ~~~~~~~~~~~
Birth of a child #6	1 August 1803 ‎(Age 41)‎ Richmond, Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia Son: James Powell  (I63722) ~~~~~~~~~~~
Birth of a child #7	17 July 1806 ‎(Age 44)‎ Richmond, Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia Daughter: Elizabeth Powell  (I63723) ~~~~~~~~~~~
Return to     Liberty Plains	between 1809 and 1810 ‎(Age 47)‎ Liberty Plains, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia In 1908 Edward sold his Cornwallis farm and returned to the Liberty Plains area where he had acquired 475 acres. He was granted a wine and spirit licence for the Halfway House public house there in that year. In January 1810 he petitioned Governor Macquarie for the confirmation of a 100 acre land grant and a gift of 18 acres adjoining his residence at the Halfway House on Parramatta Road, which he had received from the anti-Bligh regime. He stated that he had arrived as a free settler 'after the prime of his Life being devoted to his King and Country in the times of Warfare'. He wrote that he had a wife and eight children, and had suffered the loss of 34 sheep which had been killed 'by the Natives in their recent depredations'. (These sheep had been run off and were tracked by Edward to Cooks River, to the south - where some had been cooked.) ~~~~~~~~~~~
Death of a child	23 September 1810 ‎(Age 48)‎ Liberty Plains, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Daughter: Sarah Powell  (I63719) ‎(Age 16)‎ ~~~~~~~~~~~
Marriage of a child	2 June 1812 ‎(Age 50)‎ Parramatta, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Daughter: Mary Ann Powell  (I63286) ‎(Age 15)‎ Son-in-law: James Underwood  (I63283) ‎(Age 40)‎ ‎[View Family ‎(F15875)‎‎] ~~~~~~~~~~~
Birth of a grandchild #1	8 August 1813 ‎(Age 51)‎ Sydney Town, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Grandson: Joseph Edward Underwood  (I66467) Father: James Underwood  (I63283) ‎(Age 41)‎ Mother: Mary Ann Powell  (I63286) ‎(Age 17)‎ ‎[View Family ‎(F15875)‎‎] ~~~~~~~~~~~
Death	17 October 1814 ‎(Age 52)‎ Liberty Plains, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia ~~~~~~~~~~~
Burial	Liberty Plains, Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Edward was buried at his public house, the 'Halfway House' and his tombstone was visible as late as 1887. The 'Sydney Gazette' commented that 'he had always been much esteemed as a worthy character'. ~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The ?good old days and the Hawkesbury connections

There is a large literature on the convict times.   Much or most of it is written by officialdom.   Some of it is written by or transcribed for men who lived through it as convicts when young but recorded it from memory when old men.   These memories of old men may easily be erroneous in detail (as memory generally may be) but nontheless are very valuable and interesting.

One such old man, who also typifies the varied early connections that there were between Homebush area and "The Hawkesbury" was Joseph Smith.  In his later life he lived on a grant adjacent to the Fleming farm at Macdonald River (a branch of the Hawkesbury).   The Fleming family began on a military man grant at Concord.   One branch of offspring then established a Fleming farm west of Liberty Plains (which later became Flemington - NB: very likely but not rigorously proved) but the family is more noteworhty for going after Concord to the Hawkesbury - where they first settled near Windsor, but later on also in the Macdonald River Valley.  Joseph Smith himself arrived in Sydney on the Second Fleet in 1790, as a transported convict.   He was aged 14.  

Joseph Smith was later met and described by Caroline Chisholm (the woman who did much to organise and protect single girl immigrants).  She described him (fide Hutton Neve, 1978 - "The Forgotten Valley", Library of Australian History, p. 33) as:  "He was an old man, with a large featured handsome military sort of face, of a red-brown complexion, shaven clean ... Out of compliment to me he once put on a blue coat with gilt buttons but, being evidently uncomfortable, consented to take it off again".

It was at the age of seventy-two, in 1845, that Joseph was persuaded to give his memoirs.  No doubt he was encouraged that he should tell his story, as he had been in the Colony almost since its establishment.

His record was published in "The Three Colonies of Australia" by Samuel Sidney in 1853, as a 'voluntary letter'/account of an Old Settler from "Macdonald River, County of Hunter, 3rd October 1845".

In this account, using some pretty dramatic language, Smith apparently wanted to put on record that there had been plenty of hardship then;

- "I was fourteen years old; there were only eight houses in the colony then.  I know that myself and eighteen others laid in a hollow tree for seventeen weeks" (it took time to construct huts for all the convicts).

- "I would eat anything then" (including dingo soup).

- "We never got a full ration except when the ship [provision ship from England] was in harbour".

- "Many a time have I been yoked like a bullock with twenty or thirty others to drag along timber".

- "They used to have a large hole for the dead; once a day men were sent down to collect the corpses of prisoners, and throw them in without any ceremony or service.  The native dogs used to come down at night and fight and howl in packs, gnawing the poor dead bodies"  (he is perhaps is referring to Toongabbie Government Farm where hundreds of convicts were engaged in tree-felling to clear the land, and where Smith recalled that about eight hundred died in six months at that place).

- "I knew a man hung then and there for stealing a few biscuits, and another for stealing a duck frock.  A man was condemned - no time - take him to the tree, and hang him".

- "The Rev. Marsden used to come it tightly to force some confession.  Men were obliged to tell lies to prevent their bowels being cut out by the lash."  (This is historically confirmed, that Marsden at least on one occasion engaged in ordering extra-legal or outside-the-law flogging solely to make a suspect 'talk' - which suspect did not talk and Marsden desisted in that course of action lest the young man might die.  This sort of torture many have been commonplace in still earlier times but apparently had been outlawed in British law by the time the colony of New South Wales began).

Smith spoke badly of certain overseers but that was the worst side of life in the new colony and not all masters treated assigned convict servants badly.  Indeed Smith had a high opinion of "old D'Arcy Wentworth" about whom he wrote "a better master never lived in the world".

According to Joseph Smith, "Old Darcy wanted me to take charge of his Home-Bush property".

But Smith was footloose and instead went up to the Hawkesbury River.  There he worked hard and eventually gained a farm at Pitt Town.  By age 72 Smith was quite wealthy for the times.  He by then had about a thousand pounds, and four properties (80, 75, 50 and 30 acres), a good house and some fine cattle.  

From the words, and experiences of Joseph Smith, it seems likely that he and others like him would not have been totally sympathetic to the colonial authorities.  According to Hutton Neve (op. cit.) when chained convict gangs were set to work at building the Great North Road in the 1820s the occasional escapees were hidden, fed and helped when possible by the Macdonald Valley emancipists.

Also, when John Henry Fleming had a reward offer on him by the police, after the Myall Creek Massacre ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myall_Creek_massacre ) he was never apprehended.  This massacre is widely regarded today as one of the most shameful incidents in Australian colonial history.  Squatter John Henry Fleming was the suspected leader of the group of stockmen, consisting of eleven assigned convicts and former convicts, who slaughtered killing of up to 30 defenceless Aborigines on 10 June 1838 at Myall Creek in the Bingara region.  John Fleming at that time was overseer at Mungie Bundie station, further down the Gwydir; and the rest were either serving or former convicts, armed with sawn off muskets, swords and pistols. According to Wikipedia and other accounts, after the massacre Fleming and gang rode off looking to kill the remainder of this group of Aborigines who they'd been informed had gone to the neighbouring station. They then returned two days later to Myall Creek to destroy evidence - dismembering and burning the bodies.  The station hut-keeper, George Anderson, who gave evidence regarding the perpetrators' return and them burning the bodies, stated: "I [Anderson] saw smoke in the same direction they went; this was soon after they went with the firesticks... Fleming told Kilmeister to go up by-and-by and put the logs of wood together, and be sure that all [of the remains] was consumed... the girls they left, and the two boys, and the child I sent away with 10 black fellows that went away in the morning... I did not like to keep them, as the men might come back and kill them." (Stone, Sharman N. (1974). "4.5 George Anderson's eye-witness account". Aborigines in White Australia: A documentary history of the attitudes affecting official policy and the Australian Aborigines, 1697-1973. Melbourne: Heinemann).  The investigator, Edward Day, took George Anderson away with him, believing that his life would be in danger if he remained at Myall Creek.

Also, according to the Wikipedia article, John Fleming, the leader of the massacre, was allegedly responsible for further massacres and his brother, Joseph Fleming, was linked to massacres in the Mananoa region of south-western Queensland (but no citation is given for this).  One of the Myall Creek perpetrators was Ned Foley who was a convict stockman to John Fleming’s older brother Joseph, at Mungie Bundie.

After the Myall Creek massacre, the station manager, William Hobbs, wished to report it but was initially talked out of it.  Hobbs then discussed it with a neighbouring station overseer, Thomas Foster, who in turn told squatter Frederick Foot who rode all the way to Sydney and report it to the new Governor, George Gipps.  Gipps ordered Police Magistrate Edward Denny Day of Muswellbrook to investigate.  Day carried out a thorough investigation and arrested eleven of the suspected twelve perpetrators. The only one to escape was the only free man of the group, and believed to have been their leader, John Henry Fleming.  Seven of the men arrested were eventually found guilty of murder and hanged, but Fleming was never located.  It is likely that he headed for the Fleming farm in Macdonald River Valley.   Some years later he surfaced in public to be married at Wilberforce.  He lead a respectable life and was trustee of the chruch and graveyard at Wilberforce.   He was also appointed in 1842 a Trustee for the erection of the Anglican church, St. John's at Wilberforce.

John Henry Fleming, along with his wife, is buried with a fine marble memorial at St John's Church cemetery at Wilberforce.  There is a memorial glass window to him in the church.  Apparently all these historical references to John Henry Flemming are to one and the same man.   Enquiry to the Council could not confirm this but also St John's chruch was asked in 2008 is this were so, and the answer from there was that apparently it was, but that nobody knew further details.     

The Fleming connection is not the only, besides that of the Powells, between Liberty Plains and the Hawkesbury.   Another one involves bushranger/outlaw "Black Caesar".

John Caesar (1764-1796), nicknamed "Black Caesar", was by the reckoning of some the fist Australian bushranger, and he was also one of the first Africans to arrive in Australia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caesar ).   In 1795 Cesar supposedly formed a gang of runaways in the process; although when shot and killed in January 1796 he was alone.  

On 29 January 1796, a reward of five gallons of rum was offered for his capture.  On 15 February, a man named John Wimbow, who had been pursuing him with a partner for days, found him in thick brush at Liberty Plains and shot him. 

After locating Black Caesar's hiding place, Wimbow without uttering a word, shot him dead.  Caesar was taken to Thomas Rose's hut.and died a few hours later.

Caesar apparently had a daughter, baptized as Mary Ann Fisher Power in 1806, who went to Van Diemen's Land in 1813 (fide http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/caesar-john-black-12829 ).

There are connections/coincidences here.   Edward Powell was found guilty of being (as ringleader?) in a group of five who killed two young Aborigines at the Hawkesbury River, just west of Windsor.     

Case of R-vs-Powell and others.  http://k6.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/go/hsie/background-sheets/british-colonisers-1792-1809

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:wCNejpVJtZIJ:www.law.mq.edu.au/scnsw/html/R%2520v%2520Powell,%25201799.htm+rickerby+%2B+hawkesbury+settler&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=au

The farm holdings near Windsor.   Constable Edward Powell had bought Michael Doyle's grant.   Where some of those recorded in the trial minutes lived can be seen.   Sarah Ramsey, at whose house, the three Aborigines were first detained by settlers, was apparently common law wife of Forester.   Jonas Archer lived opposite and it was seemingly his wife Mary Archer who next morning went to chief constable Thomas Rickerby who lived at the creek nearby (now Rickerbys Creek) and informed him that two native boys had been killed the night before and that John Pearson had told her that Edward Powell, the constable, Simon Freebody, James Metcalfe, William Butler, William Timms, Thomas Sanburn and Bishop Thompson were all together when they were killed, but that Sanburn, Thompson and Pearson had nothing to do with the murder.   Freebody and Powell seem to have been strongly involved and they are seen as neighbours.  The property of David White, who gave vital evidence, can be seen.   He testified that he was at at home when he heard shots and the cries of the boys.  He stated that he went "down" to the spot from whence he heard the shots (in this case "down" perhaps meaning downstream?).  The murders were done probably near the house of the widow Hodgskinson.   Exactly what property that was has not been identified but presumably was one of those between Constable Powell's and Senior Constalbe Rickerby's. 

" The prisoners being put to the bar. --- Thomas Rickerby, being sworn, deposeth that on the 19th day of September last Mary Archer came to him and asked him [330] if he had heard of two native boys having been killed. He answered he had not, when she replied that such had been killed the night before, and enquiring of her if she knew who had killed them she answered yes, that John Pearson had told her that Edward Powell, the constable, Simon Freebody, James Metcalfe, William Butler, William Timms, Thomas Sanburn and Bishop Thompson were all together when they were killed, but that Sanburn, Thompson and Pearson had nothing to do with the murder. That in consequence of this information, the witness, being Chief Constable at the Hawkesbury, went up to Powell's with two more constables with him namely David Browne and John Soare. That Powell was from home, but in his house were Metcalf, Thompson and (he believes Timms) and Sanburn; making enquiry of them if they knew any thing about the two boys being murdered. They made answer one and all that that knew nothing about it. But that Sanburn said they were as decently buried as any of the white people that were killed by the natives. The witness asked said Sanburn if he would shew him where they were buried, who told him no. That on leaving Powell's house he met with Powell of whom he made the like enquiry about the murder, who said he knew nothing about it, he had killed none of them nor did he know who had. That Powell refused to inform the witness where the said bodies were buried but on a search he discovered and with assistance dug them up and left the bodies laying on the ground while he went up to the Commanding Officer at the Hawesbury, Lieutenant Hobby, who went with Mr Braithwaite and the witness, and the bodies were examined when the hands of both the said boys were tied behind them and a wound through the body of the smallest of them as if given by a cutlass and second wound on or about the hip as if given also by a cutlass. The other [331] appeared to have been shot through the body by a musket ball and that one side of his head and down his face appeared to have been much cut by a cutlass".

Powell at first denied everything.   

But a little later on, according to Rickerby, Powell said that he thought it was the Governor's orders to kill the natives where they found them.

When Lieutenant Thomas Hobby, New South Wales Corps, the Commanding Officer at the Hawkesbury questioned Powell, he enied for some time any knowledge thereof, but after a while Powell did acknowledged that he had been present, but maintained that he did not kill the natives.

Hobby also testified that Powell told him that he understood it was the Commanding Officer's orders, also the Governor's, that all the natives should be killed.

Hobby testified that he had never given any such orders, nor did he believe the Governor had given any to that effect.  He also noted that Powell said it was done at the instigation of the widow Hodgskinson.

According to the testimonies, Powell first took action against the natives (and decided to kill them?) with Freebody.

Simon Freebody himself, a neighbour of Powell's there.  This was probably very close to where in 1794 there was "murder of an Aboriginal boy by settlers on the Hawkesbury in 1794. He was tied hand and foot, dragged through a fire until his back was horribly burnt, and then thrown into the river and shot" ( http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/pubs/pops/pop37/hirst.htm ).  This shooting was done by Robert Forrester.  On 17 October 1794 he was examined about the Aboriginal boy he said he had shot who was escaping after having been tied up as a suspected "spy".   Forrester had been living with Isabella Ramsey since 1793 and had several children by her (another reference to Isabella Ramsey is that she married a marine, James Manning, at Parrmatta in 1792).  Forrester died at the same place, Cornwallis, on 15 February 1827, at age 69 [REF:  "The Founders of Australia - A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet". By Mollie Gillen].  This was presumably the same "Isabella Ramsay" who testified at the Powell trial, especially as she was a Forrester's farm, that before the natives were killed, the three came into her dwelling house with the musket of Thomas Hodskinson who had been lately killed by the natives in the woods, and delivered up said musket.  Simon Freebody and another person then came into the house and questioned the natives as to what manner said Hodgskinson had been killed, before leaving to fetch Powell.  

Also the testimonies reveal that the pair killed by Powell and others were payback killings because (other) natives had killed two Europeans, apparently around Yarramundi, named Hodgskinson and Wimbolt.

This "Wimbolt" appears to be the "John Wimbow" (a.k.a. Wimbo and Winbow) who shot Black Caesar without uttering word, at Liberty Plains in 1796.  

Then Wimbow is killed by Aborigines on the Hawkesbury (Nepean), and then in 1796 Powell and others kill two (other) Aborigines in payback for the killing of Wimbow and another.   Apparently Powell (who was a police constable at the time) did consult with one of the widow of murdered white men after tying up the two young natives about her wished and there is nothing to suggest she was inclined to mercy.   This was a vengence killing. 

The two Aborigines killed had not been involved in the killings of Hodgskinson and Wimbolt/Wimbow.  Testimony was that these two had been friendly with the whites for quite some time, and they might even have thought that they would be rewarded by bringing back a valuable musket to the settlers.

However the testimony of others (e.g. Isabella Ramsay and John Pearson) shows that when the Aborigines reached the settlers they were seized rather than being shown any gratitude for returning a musket.  When one of them asked for a drink, Powell said to him 'you shall have no water here, you have killed a good fellow and you shall not live long'.  Freebody gave him some water, but Powell said they should be killed for they had killed a worthy good fellow and it would be a pity to see them go away alive. 

Powell asked Isabella Ramsay if she had any ropes.  Being answered no, Powell said that it was pity they should escape as he understood it was the Governor's and Commanding Officers' orders that natives should be killed whenever they could be met (found).

Powell then sent John Pearson to his (Powell's) house and get some rope which he had dogs secured with.  That man returned with only one rope, saying he could find no more there.  Powell himself then went for rope and brought back more ropes.  The hands of all three of the natives were tied behind them, and as Pearson also noted some rope around their necks.  Powell and others (Timms, Butler, Metcalf, Freebody and Thompson) then took them away.

About a quarter of an hour after they had left her house Isabella Ramsay testified she'd heard the report of two muskets being fired.  John Pearson said likewise.  Two of the natives were murdered by Powell and others, and the third managed to escape somehow.

There was some basis for Powell's assertion that he thought it was government policy or instruction that the natives were to be killed where met with.   The NSW Government primary school curriclum ("K-6" = Kindergarten to sixth class) compliled incidents between Aboriginal people in NSW and the British colonisers, 1792–1809, for use in teaching about the British Colonisation of Australia ( http://k6.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/go/hsie/background-sheets/british-colonisers-1792-1809 ).   A few of the incidents they record will illustrate the nature of the times:

- 1795 - Aboriginal people at the Hawkesbury kill another settler.  Natives are blamed when Thomas Webb is wounded and his hut is plundered at the Hawkesbury. A spear is thrown at soldiers in a boat on the river.  Collins refers to the hostilities at the Hawkesbury as ‘an open war’ between the settlers and the natives, who carry off the ripe corn in blankets and nets. William Rowe and his son are killed at Richmond Hill.  "Within a few weeks five people have been killed and several wounded" Colonel Paterson advises London.  Paterson, who had led expeditions against the Hottentots at the Cape of Good Hope, despatches 60 New South Wales Corps troops from Parramatta to the Hawkesbury River.  They are ordered ‘to destroy as many as they could meet of the wood tribe (Be-dia-gal); and in the hope of striking terror, to erect gibbets in different places, whereon the bodies of all they might kill were to be hung’.   Collins wrote to Surgeon Edward Laing: ‘The natives at the Hawkesbury are murdering the settlers – Abbott & MacKellar with Co [New South Wales Corps] soldiers are in turn, murdering the natives (but it cannot be avoided).’  

Navy lieutenant John Shortland thought the punitive actions had been successful and recorded ‘The Natives at the Hawkesbury on first settling were very much angered with the people,’ but the detachment of soldiers sent there ‘answer’d the purpose... for few of them [Aboriginal people] were ever seen after, & are now very quiet: in short the natives are perfectly reconciled to the inhabitants’.

But then a large group of Aboriginal people at the Hawkesbury attack settlers. ‘An armed party was directly sent out, who, coming up with them, killed four men and one woman, badly wounded a child, and took four men prisoners.’

- 1796 - Natives severely wound a man travelling by boat on the Hawkesbury River.  John Wimbow, who is living with an Aboriginal woman at the Hawkesbury River, shoots and kills John Caesar for a reward of five gallons of rum.  Hawkesbury settlers agree they will assemble for mutual protection when Aboriginal people are seen near their farms. ‘It has been intimated to the governor, that two white men had been frequently seen with the natives... and were supposed to direct and assist in those acts of hostility by which the settlers had lately suffered.’  The two renegades, Wilson and Knight have shown the Darug that English muskets, once discharged, are useless until reloaded. This, says Collins, ‘effectually removed that terror of our fire-arms with which it had been our constant endeavour to inspire them’.  ‘The Natives of the Hawkesbury... lived on the wild yams on the banks. Cultivation has rooted out these, and poverty compelled them to steal Indian corn ... They [soldiers and settlers] came upon them [natives] unarmed, and unexpected, killed and wounded many more. The dead they hang on gibbets, in terrorem. The war may be universal on the part of the blacks, whose improvement and civilisation will be a long time deferred. The people killed were unfortunately the most friendly of the blacks, and one of them more than once saved the life of a white man.’

- 1797 -  Pemulwuy, at the head of ‘a large body of savages’, said to number 100, attacks the government farm at Toongabbie. At dawn the next day, troops and armed settlers pursue the attackers to the outskirts of Parramatta. When Pemulwuy, ‘in a rage’, throws a spear at a soldier, he is shot and captured. The first volley kills five of his men. Pemulwuy has seven buckshot wounds in his head.  Aboriginal people attack the Kissing Point (Ryde) settlement in Wallumedegal territory on the Parramatta River, wounding John Wood (who later dies) and his wife Mary and burning their home.  William Garland, a convict at Parramatta, is ‘speared by natives’.   Augustus Alt, the first to take up residence in Croydon ('Hermitage Farm') had its house burned down by natives in 1797.

- 1798 -  As the maize again ripens, a settler is killed and three others wounded at Toongabbie.  Two more are killed a few days later. Hunter writes: ‘It became absolutely necessary... to send out numerous well-armed parties, and attack them [natives] wherever they should be met with; for leniency had only been followed by repeated acts of cruelty.’   A mob of Aboriginal people attack settlers at the Northern Farms near Parramatta (near King’s School) and burn their houses.  

- 1799 -  Aboriginal people spear and kill an ex-marine settler at the Georges River. Hunter writes: ‘The natives belonged to the tribe of which Pe-mul-wy was the leader.’  Settlers from near Edward Powell’s farm torture and murder two Aboriginal boys, Little Jemmy and Little George, when they bring in the musket of Thomas Hodgkinson, who has been murdered in the bush. They shoot one boy and hack one to death with cutlasses. A third boy, Charley, escapes by jumping into the river. Governor Hunter brings the murderers to trial. They are found guilty, but released. [Sources: Hunter to Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800, HRNSW Vol. 1V:2–3; HRA 1, Vol 11:401–3; Minutes of Proceedings, X905, pp 323, 329–362, SRNSW; Rex v Powell and others, Court of Criminal Judicature, 15–16 October 1799, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, website of the Division of Law, Macquarie University, Sydney].

In view of all of the above, and for example, since Governor Hunter had written only some months previously that "It became absolutely necessary... to send out numerous well-armed parties, and attack them [natives] wherever they should be met with", Powell's "defence" that the government had instructed for natives to be killed whenever met with we now know was true enough to a significant sense - although the prosecution in the case just as convincingly brought opposite evidence on this point.  

Also, at the trial, after Lieutenant Hobby had testified that Powell told him that he understood it was the Commanding Officer's orders, also the Governor's, that all the natives should be killed; but that Hobby maintained he he had never given such orders, nor did he believe the Governor had given any to that effect, Powell then questioned him.  Powell had said it (Hobby's order) was done at the instigation of the widow Hodgskinson.  So Powell asked directly to Hobby "What orders did you give to a party of soldiers who went out to bury the body of Thomas Hodgskinson who had been killed by the natives?"   Hobby replied "My orders to the soldiers were to go out with the men who were going out to bury the bodies of Hodgskinson and Wimbolt (who were murdered by the natives about two months since). “That if they fell in with any natives on the road either going or returning to fire in upon them.”   

Also, the court discovered from Hobby that he (Hobby) had notified to the Governor his intention that if the natives should still continue their violence of sending out a party of the military to kill five or six of them wherever they were to be found.  This was typical tooth for a tooth and inspire-terror tactics (tactics used all over the British Empire at one time) and the Hobby in response to such communication of his intentions received the Governor's directions to act discretionally against the natives as he wished.   This too re-inforced Powell's claim that it was also on the Governor's orders that natives were to be killed whenever met with.

Powell was extending special case orders to be as if general standing orders and/or could apply to settlers too.   But even for this evidence emerged to support Powell.  Lieutenant Hobby was questioned "When you sent a party of soldiers out in pursuit of the natives were they accompanied by settlers or any other description of persons?"  He answered "Yes they were and I believe by several".  Then, when asked "Did you, when you gave orders to the party to go out and shoot any of the natives they should meet with, consider these orders extending to the settlers or others that accompanied the party?" Hobby answered "Yes I did upon that excursion only".   The testimony of settler Jonas Archer contradicted Hobby on that.  Archer had been in the party sent to bury the bodies of Hodgskinson and Wimbow.  He was asked "Do you know what orders the soldiers had, and did you feel yourself authorised to do when out on the excursion to bury the deceased aforenamed?".  Jonas answered "I know not what orders the soldiers had in particular, but understood it was to kill any natives the party could meet with and that was my intention".  He was then further asked "Did you understand the orders to kill the natives were to be enforced after the above expedition?" and to this he answered "Yes I did, nor should I have thought myself doing wrong by killing any of the natives afterwards".   Once again this strengthened the defence that Powell believed it was government orders to kills naitves whenever met with.

According to the testimony of Robert Braithwaite, gentleman, Powell also told him that he did know know who had killed the natives, on account of it being so dark. When Braithwaite observed to Powell that it was a very cruel way of killing them even had they been detected in committing any act of depredation, Powell replied had Braithwaite seen the bodies of Hodgskinson and Wimbolt how they had been murdered by the natives, he would not have thought it so inhuman.  Powell also told him that that the natives were killed at the desire of the widow Hodgskinson.

It would appear that possibly the tied up natives had been taken from the home of Isabella Ramsey (Freebody's farm) to the house of house of the widow Hodgkinson to enquire of her opinion on them, and that she desired they be killed(?).   According to testimony of David White, he was at home when he heard the shots.  He also heard the cries of the boys.  He stated that he went down to the spot from whence he heard such shots, and calling in at the house of widow Hodgskinson found she was not at home at the time, so he waited there.  When she came in she was accompanied by Simon Freebody and Mr Timms.  Simon Freebody told David White that Powell had shot at a native but apparently missed and that one escaped.  Also that he, Simon Freebody, had killed the other one with a cutlass, and that the third native, who was being held by Timms, Metcalf had shot through the body.   Where the widow Hodgskinson was during all this seems not to have been mentioned or enquired into.

Jonas Archer testified that in the five or six years he had been at the Hawkesbury settlement 12 white persons had been killed by natives, and that whites had killed about 20 natives over the same period.

Archer was asked are not the settlers or their men in the habits of taking the women from the natives and that the native men are prevented from taking them away through fear of their fire arms? He answered that in two recent instances he knew of this was so.  They were taken against the inclination of their native men but he also knew the said two women were companions to the white men from choice.

In a four page written defence by the accused, it is stated that the Hodgskinson and Wimbow muders were at the "Blue Mountains", and a little later in the statement recorded as "on the mountains".  James Metcalfe took the gun from the three natives back to the widow Hodgskinson.  James Metcalfe then left the house of the widow Hodgskinson and informed several neighbours what had happened concerning the natives, and that he (Metcalfe) had every reason to believe that they were come with no good intent, for they were natives in great numbers at the back of the farms (accordign to Metcalfe).

In the defendants' written statement Metcalffe claimed that after the natives were tied up and lead out from the Ramsay (Freebody/Foster) house, one made his escape.  Then  "James Metcalfe went in pursuit of him, and the rest of the neighbours (unknown whom) followed the others and (as we suppose) killed them".   Powell testified that he had gone home to bed and heard the musket shots from home.  The next morning he was arrested.

William Timms, Simon Freebody and William Butler also declared that they had gone to their homes and had not been present at the time of the killings.  It was declared "The next day William Timms went to see where the natives were buried as did many others. Timms said, 'ah my poor master (Hodgskinson) was not buried like this, he was cut into pieces with a tomahawk and a death spear run through his yard and came through the back part of his neck'. On these words the said Timms was taken into custody and the others likewise on similar words were taken up also". 

The defendants in written statement referred to the evidence adduced against them.  Regarding John Pearson who swore to being in the house of Isabella Ramsay with her, at the time the natives were taken out by the neighbours and remained there the whole of the evening, they stated that  Isabella Ramsay declares upon oath that she was by herself until James Metcalfe returned from pursuing the native that first ran away and made his escape, and that the said John Pearson was not there.  On the seemingly definitive evidence of David White that stated that he "came forward through pure hatred and malice against the prisoner Edward Powell, who has at divers times been necessitated to go and call him the said White into his custody (Powell being a constable at the Hawkesbury) and many times searched the house for stolen property which was supposed he had and even thought he had committed many robberies on his neighbours".  

Again the defendants stated that "it was generally understood that it was a standing order, or at least it was so issued from the Commanding Officer, to kill any of the natives found in their way, particularly after the barbarous, cruel and inhuman murder of the unfortunate Hodgskinson and Wimbow, a murder the most horrid to have beheld. Any gentlemen to have seen the mangled bodies of the deceased would have shuddered and ever bore an antipathy against the cruel natives in general, and that it behoves every man to be on his guard against them and their intentions, never to give them any encouragement for it's this indulgences they have received makes them so knowing".

The defendants called to witness a Corporal in the New South Wales Corps, Peter Farrell, who could confirm the story of how a native, young Charley, who was believed guilty of particpation of very serious unprovoked attack was taken down to the Governor but the latter knew not how to deal with him and set him free.  Young Charley, believed present at the spearing of Goodall; was apprehended at the house of John Burne and escorted to Sydney by Farrell.  There he was presented to the Governor as a native who was known to have been at the spearing of Goodall and committing several other barbarous depredations. Well, said the Governor what am I to do with him? Why did not your own Commanding Officer at Hawkesbury do something with him?  Farell answered his Excellency that he supposed it was from a wish to make a more public example of this native. The Governor replied it was not in his power to give orders for the hanging or the shooting of such ignorant creatures who could not be made sensible of what they might be guilty of, therefore could not be treated according to the (British) laws.  The Governor told Farrell that immediate retaliation should be made on the spot or words to that effect, as that was the only mode he could think upon.  The Governor then admonished the said native Charley as to his future conduct and ordered his discharged.  He ordered said Charley to be taken up to Mr Cumming at Parramatta with whom he had lived as a servant, and where he might be further admonished.

The defence case also called witnesses as to the depredations of the natives and stated they had other similar witnesses willing to come forward.

One such case of attack by natives was of John Tarlington at Toongabbie.  One Sunday two male natives came to his house, one of them called little Charley and the other McNamara. He welcomed them into his house, and the free man his servant also with his master shook hands with the natives who left their spears outside the house, and asked for bread which the witness gave them. They then asked for meat which the witness said “by and bye” as it was then dressing.  Then four more came, one whom he knew as Major White (regarded as the best known of the killers of Hodgskinson and Wimlow) and one other little George, who was the youngest of the two natives said to be killed by Powell and others.  The other two he knew as Terribandy (another killer, by report, of Hodgskinson and Wimlow) and Jemmy the elder of the two natives said to have been killed by Powell and others.  Tarlington also welcomed those four natives into his house, at which time the meat and cabbage was ready.  Soon thereafter 12 or 15 more arrived and were given the remainder of the food.  George, Jemmy and Charley asked for melons, and were taken to the melon bed.  Jemmy went some little distance from the melon ground and calling out something in the native language, about 20 or 30 more natives immediately came out of the bush.  Two other Europeans happened to arrive, Nicholas Redman and Joseph Molony.  For unknown reason the native Terribandy threw a spear at the freeman servant Joseph Collins, which wounded him so desperately that he died a few days afterwards.  They then attacked Tarlington and wounded him in three places with spears, besides beating him with waddies.  The youngest of the natives, Little George (said to be put to death by the prisoners) threw a spear that went through Tarlington's arm and a wound he received in his side was given him by Jemmy the other native said also to be killed by the prisoners.  Next Nick Redman was barbarously murdered and mangled, and Joseph Molony was also severely wounded whilst endeavouring to escape. The natives then plundered the house and premises of his stock and every kind of property he had.  Tarlington also found his wife had been severely beaten by Charley.  Tarlington reported that the two natives supposed to be killed by the prisoners were involved in the murder of Redman.

That was the most serious attack which the defendants called evidence upon, detailed to have directly involved the two native boys who Powell and the others were accused of killing.   This dated from about 18 months previous to when Jemmy (estimated about 15 or 16) and Little George (about 11-12) were killed.

Another witness was William Bladey who encountered the natives called Major White and young Jemmy when out duck shooting.  White appeared to be about to throw a spear at Bladey when another party of natives arrived including one Bladey knew as Major Worgan.  Charley was also present.  Bladey asked Worgan why the natives were angry with him.  After Worgan replied they were not angry with him, for he was a very good fellow, but with the soldiers who were very bad, the natives all departed together.  When Bladey got home he was informed by his wife that the natives, 17 in number and many of whom she knew and described,  had robbed and plundered the house of every thing they thought desirous to take away with them.  Bladey was questioned by the court did he know the reason why the natives are so very angry with the white men and the soldiers?   He replied he did not, except by report in that he had heard of a native woman and child being killed by a soldier.  However he did not know why they had been killed.   Others also spoke of this solder's actions as cause of native hostililty.

One of the members of the court was likely known as sympathetic to the defendants as they questioned him, Lieutenant Neil McKellar: “Pray sir when you commanded at the Hawkesbury what orders did you issue against the natives for committing depredations on the settlers?”  He answered "To destroy them whenever they were to be met with after their being guilty of outrages, except such native children who were domesticated among the settlers".   He added that the it was understood the natives were not to be injured except in retaliation for any outrage they might have recently committed.

At the end of all the evidence the court's verdict was to find the defendants severally guilty of killing two natives.

But "to reserve this case by special verdict until the sense of his Majesty's ministers is known upon the subject. The prisoners will therefore be enlarged on producing two sureties to be bound in ₤100 each and themselves individually in £200 each, personally to appear to abide by such decisions as his Majesty's ministers at home may think fit to make on the case so reserved as aforesaid".

The court disapproving the conduct of Powell as a constable did order him to be suspended.

The members of the court made individual pronouncements:

Captain Henry Waterhouse -  That the prisoners are severally guilty of murdering two natives without provocation on the part of the natives. Captain Waterhouse added that by his opinion he meant not to affect their lives, because it was the first instance of such an offence being brought before a criminal court and therefore the prisoners could not have been aware of the consequences of the law.

Lieutenant John Shortland -  That the prisoners are severally guilty killing two natives in a deliberate manner without any provocation on the part of the natives at the moment.

Lieutenant Matthew Flinders -  That the prisoners are severally guilty of wilfully and inhumanly killing two unresisting natives who were not in any act of hostility or depredation

Captain John McArthur, Lieutenant Neil McKellar, Lieutenant Thomas Davies, the Judge Advocate -  That the prisoners are severally guilty of killing two natives.

There opinion as to the sentence  were:

The Judge Advocate                  - The case specially reserved

Captain Henry Waterhouse       - Corporal punishment

Lieutenant John Shortland         - Corporal punishment

Captain John McArthur              - The case specially reserved     

Lieutenant Matthew Flinders     - Corporal punishment

Lieutenant Neil McKellar            - The case specially reserved

Lieutenant Thomas Davies        - The case specially reserved.

 

All of the defendants denied participation in the killing, implying it must have been done by some of the other neighbours.

If the finding of them guilty is correct then the evidence must contain a considerable amount of untruth.

The defendants were allowed to return to their farms pending instructions from London. Subsequently they were pardoned. ( Historical Records of Australia, series 1, vol. 2, 401-403; series 1, vol. 3, 366, 372, 785.)

That sometimes "The people killed were unfortunately the most friendly of the blacks" was someting written by Rev Thomas Fyshe Palmer to Doctor John Disney, Sydney, on 3 June 1796 (MSS 948:18, Mithcell Library).  Thomas Fyshe Palmer was a "Scottish Martyr" - one of the 'Friends of Liberty in Scotland' or 'Scottish Movement', fraternally akin to the United Irishmen in Ireland.  Palmer, who was associated with printing of a pamphlet calling for universal suffrage and other reforms, was convicted of sedition and sentenced to transportation.  Before this exile he was also put in irons for forced labour for three months.  But in Sydney, he was given the treatment often afforded to exiled educated gentleman - he was not treated like other prisoners and was spared from forced labour (as were other exiled Scottish Martyrs).  Palmer was a Unitarian minister and in 1792 had published a controversial pamphlet entitled "An Attempt to refute a Sermon by H. D. Inglis on the Godhead of Jesus Christ, and to restore the long-lost Truth of the First Commandment".

What Palmer had earlier written in "The people killed were unfortunately the most friendly of the blacks" perhaps applied also to the two that Powell and others killed in 1799, Little Jemmy and Little George (it is thought that Jemmy was aged 15, and George was aged 11).  For according to some of the evidence given at the trial they had been living friendly to settlers for quite some time.   But revenge was revenge and these two mis-chanced to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, at a time when the thirst for revenge over the killings of Hodgskinson and Wimbolt/Wimbow was strong. 

According to evidence the defendants called the boys killed by Powell and others had been closely involved in serious outrages and might seem to have deserved their fates.  But on the other hand, one of the witnesses, Jonas Archer, testified that the elder of the two natives killed had been told by Archer which native had got the gun belonging to deceased Hodgskinson, and that Archer desired him (the boy) to go and get it.  Archer testified he then went to the widow Hodgskinson and told her that she would get the gun in a few days.  This indeed occurred, and the Aboriginal boy, as requested, brought in the said gun.   As earlier mentioned the boy may have thought he was doing well and would be rewarded(?).

All this understanding/misunderstanding - with potentially deadly consequences - was transacted across the great barrier of language.

 

The remaining signs of an earlier land boundaries alignment

The first land lay-out of the district was a NW-SW grid that had been defined along and off from the creek later named as Powell's Creek:

 

The Liberty Pains settlement grants.   Note also that the early Parramatta Road did a mild kink so as to approach and cross creek more head-on.  Where it bent again, going west, is where Rochester (now Knight ) Street met it.  These mild deflections still exists but are slightly diminished, e.g. in that the road coming from Sydney to cross Powell's Creek used to be very slightly further north.  Powell built his inn, the Halfway House, just inside his original grant boundary, coming from Sydney (150 yards west of the creek that has been since then named after him).   Note that Simeon Lord (another ex convict who later grew spectacularly wealthy, similar as James Underwood) seems to have gained control of Powell's "Dorset Green" grant (number 15 above) but Powell later on re-gained that land and built his inn at the NE end, on the road to Parramatta and just west of the creek which later became known as Powell's Creek.

 

 

A "Powell's Estate" subdivision of the one of the early Powell grants.  This land was sold in 1886.  The

"Govt. Road" is George Street, where the Arnott's biscuits factory was later established.  Notice

that the road down to the Homebush Station is orthogonal to Parramatta Road at that time.

 

The orientation of various streets in Strathfield (Homebush) today still reflect the alignment of Liberty Plains time.   The furthest west remnant of the NW trending streets is the northern end of Fraser Street.   North of the railway line reminders are seen in a bend in Park Rd, and the junction of Parramatta Road with Subway Lane; and to a greater degree in "truncated" or bevelled (rather than orthogonal) buildings both sides of Parramatta Road just west of Powell's 

 Creek  

 

 

 

Strong bevel at northern end of highrise apartments building ("Racheal's Gardens"), at the kink in Park Road in 2009-2010

 

 

The eastern part of Park Road has same NW alignment as Wentworth Rd South, Underwood Rd and Ismay Ave. north of the motorway.

 

 

 

Racheal's Gardens, Park Road

 

 

Rachel's Gardens site as car parking before the highrise building was erected; and with next development sale offer as in May 2011.

 

 

 

The Subway Lane bevel (Knight Street with Horse and Jockey Hotel at right).

 

 

The bevel just east of Station Street is along the eastern edge of Edward Powell's 80 acre grant.   The land east of it was a 60 ac grant to Thomas Webb.  Note howt the present day Station Street is parallel to Rochester (Knight) Street but on older map (below) the street ran SSE.

 

 

Another old map similarly showing the more northern passage of Parramatta Road over Powell's Creek.   The rather different (more north-northwesterly) original course of the road leading from the Homebush Railway station to Parramatta Road may be noted.   Also the hotel (now "Horse & Jockey") long hereabouts was formerly more to the east and has since then been rebuilt at the  corner of 'Rochester Street' (this northern segment of Rochester Street has also been renamed).  Note the original Liberty Plains NW alignment running SE (along the eastern ends of Beresford Rd and Albert Road to the then kink in Churchill Avenue (now truncated by Raw Square).    The continuation of this NW-running edge is seen in the below 1943 airphoto.   Earlier maps like this suggest that the original path/road from Parramatta Road to the station was further towards the creek than  the current Station Street.  the auction poster for Powell's Estate auction in 1886 shows the orthogonal-to-Parramatta Road route to the station by that time.  Also the original station was later moved west by 100 m, believed to have been in the mid 1880s.   Powell's Creek divides south of the railway line and around that junction, and especially along the western branch, is where the Powell family and associates over an extended period may have carried out brickmaking.   The resultant pits at this place, between Albert and Redmyre roads, may also have become Strathfield's first garbage dump(?).

 

 

This gives the location of the Powell's Creek brickmaking.  An extract from planning for the Railways of NSW, Mr Woore's report.  The Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 7 August 1846, page 2. ( http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/12888990 ).

Note continuation north of the NW-running Liberty Plains alignment originally based on the creek course (since then likely moved somewhat and converted to a concrete canal).   To the west of this strong property boundary, going north, was a large structure (though to have been government owned land and with the building at one time used as a drill hall (later on Railways buildings and a Railways nursery operated here), then six private homes, then a larger building which belonged to the A.J. Bush meat company.  The alignment then crossed Parramatta Road and truncated another large commercial building (identity not yet learned of).

The same area today is shown below.   Edward Powell was buried in his orchard behind his inn on the Parramatta Road.  His burial site lay just north of the Homebush Railway Station, perhaps under or near the tall high-rise buildings now seen along the east of Station Street, or maybe under the flats/houses west of Station Street(?).  A map of Homebush Station by State Rail, dated 1876, marked his (still visible at that time) tombstone as 'within the hotel land enclosure, near the railway fence'.

http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-33.866336,151.087471&z=18&t=k&nmd=20100615

Lower photo enlarged to better show the truncation or bevelling along the eastern side of the A.J. Bush building at Parramatta Road.

 

Block between Knight Street and Station Street

This block has special interest as somewhere here was the original Half Way House inn run by the Powell family.

This block has special interest as somewhere here was the original Half Way House inn run by the Powell family.   When the Powell family moved back there and started the inn, the area was rural farming land.   Much of it would not have been cleared by it is known there was initially a cleared farm opposite the Halfway House, from this ad in the The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 22 March 1817, page 2:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2177146

Burr's farm land was still being advertised for sale in 1818 and was described as being within a few minutes walk of the Parramatta Road, near Mrs Powell's Halfway House.

As early as July 1797, work had began to widen the track between Sydney and Parramatta to a uniform width of 20 feet along its full length.   It remained this wide, to allow two passing vehicles, for a long time.   The construction of the railway line to Parramatta relieved pressure to upgrade the road further until the avent of motorised traffic in the 1920s.  After that the increase in traffic lead to pressure for it to be widened.  The Main Roads Board formed in 1925.  On 7 June 1926 a Main Roads Board  meeting resolved to set aside funding from the Commonwealth's road funding scheme for road development to be used on some of NSW 'great trunk routes', which included the Great Western Road.   Resumptions and road widening works for Parramatta Road occurred in the 1930s and no doubt lead to the demolition of the early structures at Powell' Half Way House vicinity.  

Photo of Parramatta Road at "Homebush" in 1935.   This is considerably further west, at the entrance to the State Abbatoirs (near present Australia Avenue).   The abandonned railway bridge footings seen in photo are still there.  Note the original central roadway (bitumen?) and on each side of that are four new additional lanes in concrete.  The widening was done, it is thought, in the 1930s.  This widening of the road into a bigger "highway" also extended eastwards.

 

 

Same area in 1979 showing the even more drastic traffic exapansion work, the F4 Freeway (M4 Motorway).  (Photo:  RTA)

The widening of the road through the strip of commercial premises along Parramatta Road at Homebush must have had serious effects and such included the demolition of the earlier Horse and Jockey Hotel.   Records noted at State Archives include "B.30/615 - Widening Parramatta Road Homebush [purchase from J H Cross of the strip of premises at the corner of Parramatta Road and Powell Street], 1929-1930", and "B.30/558.  Parramatta Road widening [Parramatta Road widening Main Road No. [number] 84 and Homebush Council], 1926-1930".   The specific case of the hotel, by then owned by the Toohey's chain, has not yet been found but apparently after significant compensation was obtained from the government the hotel was demolished and rebuilt about 14 ft further to the south.   When the old hotel was demolished is not certain, but presumably was in the 1930s when the road was widened.  The new one was built in 1941, in Art Deco style. 

At the junction of Knight Street with Parramatta Road the Homebush Theatre is on the north side and the Horse and Jockey Hotel is on the south side.

.

Homebush Theatre (Photo:  TimBos, 2010) 

 

Horse and Jockey Hotel  (Photo:  J. Bar, 2007) 

 

 

The original Horse and Jockey, built ca. 1876, in 1902 (damaged by fire in 1920s and demolished)

( Photo:  See http://www.gdaypubs.com.au/NSW/sydney/homebush.html )  (Photo: per David Patrick)

 

 

Information on the Horse and Jockey that was in the Echo newspaper published in 1890 (per strathfieldhistory.org, Cathy Jones).  Note that

in 1890 it was recognised that some were 'of the opinion' that the original inn ("Mr Underwood's house" as Underwood had obtained

it from the Powells) was "rather nearer Sydney".   That is the herein view too, that the site is under what is now the Summit apartments.

 

Southern side of Parramatta Road east of Knight Street:  Horse and Jockey Hotel; thence three businesses (all empty and abandonned in 2011), thence large highrise apartments block ("The Summit").   The middle one of these three business premises is currently a common frontage to two earlier buildings.

"The Summit" highrise block, with the A.J. Bush parking lot to the east of it.  The original Halfway House site is likely under the Summit; or part under the Summit and part under the adjacent A.J. Bush car park..

 

 

Facing "The Summit" block of 42 residential apartments and ground floor commercial premises, at 52-58 Parramatta Road, taken from across on the northern side of the road.  The original Half Way House of the Powell's was likely

where the entrance to the underground car park of the Summit building now sits, at left of view.   (Photo: 2011)

 

 

View from "The Summit" looking east along Parramatta Road.   The dip in the road is where Powell's Creek crosses.

The elevated M4 Motorway can also be seen there in the distance.

 

This area when the M4 (first called the F4) was being built.   Parramatta Road once ran just east of where the M4 crosses the railway line and at that site there was once a brick hotel which for a time also bore the name (and licence) of the Horse and Jockey.   Both it and Powell's Half Way House used bricks made from the clay of Powell's Creek.  A waterhole used as local water supply was north of the Parramatta Road, whereas the brick kilns are thought to have been near the creek some 20 chains upstream of the Parramatta Road.  Their exact position has not yet been ascertained.   (Photo:  RTA, 1978).

 

 

Looking back westwards over the same area, from the end of the M4 Motorway.   (Photo:  RTA, 1985)

Parramatta Road at the Horse and Jockey, looking east.   This is a hill crest - note the slight slope commencing down to Powell's Creek.  East of the Horse and Jockey Hotel are seen three currently (2011) abandoned business premises, and then comes the "Summit" highrise block (which is probably where the former Halfway House of Edward Powell stood).

The Horse and Jockey Hotel is a historical descendant of Powell's Half Way House inn but not on exactly the same footprint.   The present hotel is at the crest as shown here.   The Halfway House is believed to have been slightly down the slope (pers. comm. David Patrick, Homebush resident with a long interest in researching the matter). 

 

A problem with newspaper records on the Halfway House is that there was another of the same name on the Parramatta River further east, near the Iron Cove  Creek in present-day Ashfield, and it is difficult sometimes to know which one is being referred to.   There was an early murder by a gang at what was likely the eastern Halfway House (in about 1820).

 

Edward Powell was active at his Halfway House by 1811.   In January that year he advertised having impounded a mare will filly foal by her side, which could be returned by paying for damage done by trespass and necessary charges (The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 19 January 1811, page 2).  In the same issue of the Gazette he advertised for a "steady Man, who may be capable of instructing Youth in a plain way, to take the charge of Eight or Ten Children, in an agreeable Neighbourhood".   Hence he was organising a school for the neighbourhood (also sometimes early known as the Halfway Houses, to include other dwellings besides the inn.   Whether or not any school was ever started in consequence of the advertisement is not known.

 

Powell received a spirits licence for his Halfway House in February 1811.  Powell's Halfway House was thereafter to prove extremely popular, or well known, as a stopping place on the road.  It was related in later years that few coaches passed there without stopping.   It appears that it was for a time a horse-changing station for coach services between Sydney and Parramatta (or that may have been at another place of the same name at Ashfield?).  Or if the horses were not changed then the passengers were, with separate coach services operating out of both Parrmatta and Sydney and meeting at the Halfway House.   Often the passengers were obliged to spend up to half an hour at the Halfway House in consequence of such arrangements, whether or not they desired refreshments.   This was no doubt very profitable to an inn.  One report in 1826 (The Monitor, 3 November 1826, page 2) regarded the coaches travelling between Sydney and Parramatta as too dirty for any respectable woman to travel on, but later on they did improve.

 

The Parramatta Road held some dangers for travellers.   Some might even have perished along the route.  The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 2 December 1824, page 2, reported that an "Inquest was held last week, at the Halfway house, Parramatta, on the body of a man that was discovered in the contiguous woods, in a state of putrefaction. It was not possible to identity the deceased. Verdict - Found in the bush".   There were many robberies, so that murder in association with robbery or assault was one possibility.  The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 4 March 1814, page 2, reported upon a woman having been robbed on the road near the Halfway House inn: "Yesterday night, at dusk, Mrs. Kelly was stopped in a chaise by two footpads, on the Parramatta Road, about half a mile from Mr. Powell's half-way house , and robbed of a number of valuable articles of apparel. The villains wore handkerchiefs over their faces, and by their threats and harsh treatment; added much to the agitation which an unexpected attack of this terrifying description upon a defenceless woman must have been expected to produce.  - The following is a list of the articles she lost, and which she has requested us to offer a competent reward for the recovery of; viz 2 white cambrick gowns ; 2 new print ditto ; 3 habit shirts with lace ; a large scarlet India shawl ; a new black veil ; 3 lace caps ; 4 pair of white cotton stockings ; a new pair of shoes ; 2 white dimity petticoats ; and a large pair of gold ear-rings".

 

In 1817, because of the frequent robberies on the road between Sydney and Parramatta, the Government made an edict (The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 13 September 1817, page 1) discouraging  convicts and ticket of leave men to travel the road except on actual duty, and commencing night patrols by the police:

 

 

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2177457

 

Bush-ranging on the Parramatta Road was nonetheless not extinguished overnight, and "On Wednesday evening the Parramatta police secured another bushranger who has for some time been robbing on the Parramatta Road; he was taken near the half-way house at sun-down, there is but one of the gang he belonged to now a at large" (The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, 17 April 1840, page 2).  An assault occurred in the same vicinity in the following month: "On the 26h instant, Mr. William Lekey, Sheriff's Officer, was most brutally assaulted in a field, near the half-way house, Parramatta-road, by some ruffians, who without the slightest provocation, attacked him, with bludgeons and beat him so severely, that he is yet confined to his bed, and were it not for the assistance, he providentially received by some person who were passing no doubt he would have been murdered" (The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, 29 May 1840, page 2).

 

In 1826 the licencee of one of the inns known as the Halfway House was J. Nettleton (The Monitor, 14 July 1826, page 2) who took offence at a newspaper report mentioning an apparently disreputable person ("Blind Larry") being at his place.   The Monitor (21 April 1828, page 7) reported on Mr Nettleton vacating that Halfway House and moving to another place on the Parramatta Road.  Perhaps for that reason one of the places known as Halfway House seemed to have lost its licence by 1830, as the below 13 February 1830, page 3, article shows:

 

 

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/32073232

[Fifty soldiers of the 57th, with their serjeant and Officer halted at the half-way house to Parramatta, where the Coach at present stops; and although the keeper has no license, yet such was his desire to accommodate the troops, that he provided them with every thing (save liquor) that they required, and gave such entire satisfaction to the Officer, that he expressed his gratification at his Host's judicious arrangements for so large and sudden an arrival.]

Strangely, however, another newspaper article written very soon after that, in The Australian, 5 March 1830, page 2, described coach passengers drinking at the Halfway House.   Unfortunately, there was another "Half-way House" on the Parramatta Road, near the Iron Cove Bridge, Ashfield, where the Parramatta coaches may have changed there horses.   Thus the seemingly incongruous February/March 1830 mentions probably refer to different inns. 

 

The inn at Powell's Creek must have been de-licenced at times, as it is recorded as gaining a licence back in 1848 ("At a licensing meeting on Saturday, the license held by Thomas Shaw for his house known as "The Star" on the Sydney Road, was transferred to William Cutts, and removed to that person's house - the Old Half-way House on the same road" (The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February 1848, page 2).

 

The inn, after it passed from the control of Powells, also probably had other names.  It was put up for lease in 1819 by James Underwood.   One curious newpaper ad later on refers to it with two names at the same time, viz. in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 5 December 1825, page 3: "STRAYED, from the Britannia Inn, Half-way house, Parramatta-road, on the 16th August, a Black COW, big with Calf, white back, and freckled face, horns turned in, and branded with a crown on the near side, and a S. on the off side. Likewise, a Black BULLOCK, on the 20th September, with a white back, 3 years old, branded E. W. Also, on the 4th November, a Working BULLOCK mottled grey, with some black spots, one short horn, and one, hooped horn, branded with a crown on the near side, and.S. on the off side. Any Person bringing the said Bullocks, or any one of them to THOMAS WESTLEY, at the above-named lnn, shall receive One pound for each of them".  Westley began business there in early 1825 and used a dual name, presumably in part for the inn space and in part applying the name Halfway House to the accomodation part(?).   He advertised that it had "Good Stabling and excellent Paddocks for Stock" (The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 28 April 1825, page 1) as well as a new stock of best wines and spirits.   Westley was leasing, as a newspaper mention in 1827 of the house referred to it still as Mr James Underwood's Halfway house.   Again in 1827 a one pound reward for each of five strayed bullocks was offered.  These bullocks were branded the property of James Foster - and strayed after fencing was burned (The Australian, 20 January 1827, page 4).  

 

The original Half Way House inn might have stood wherfe these three discontinued or abandonned looking businesses are today.  The central one, No. 64-66 Parramatta Road, appears to be a frontal consolidation of two previous sites.  In recent times it was D&P Picture Framing and a factory outlet for fabric sales - rolls of fabrics were formerly on display in the windows.  Some think the original Half Way House inn of the Powells' was here.   Note real estate sign.  Cited benefits:  "Growth pocket with high rise re-development potential (STCA)"   [Photo: 2011]

 

The Bush carpark land with east of "The Summit" in background; looking west from the Station Street entrance.

 

Bush carpark and admin building at upper left.   The Bush buidling is destined to be more highrise.  Highrise will soon be continuous

between Station Street and the old NW "Liberty Plains" alignment - with exception of one residential house that remains. 

 

 

The run of highrise buildings along eastern side of Station Street is broken by a single remaining single storey home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The A.J. Bush building, 38-40 Parramatta Road, Homebush.   The beveled eastern wall reflects the original creek-parallel layout of Liberty Plains.

 

The Bush property (DP 312988) is seen to consist of three constructions.   There is the 1930s(?) red texture brick core building (No. 39) and built onto that later on is the narrow No. 40 building.   The narrow building has been occupied/owned since 1968 (built?) by Orest Peter Sywak and Stephanie Sywak (Lot A, DP 312989 (probably bought from Bush family interests?).   Another later (the latest?) addition is extra offices behind the main Bush building.   The major ownership of the site has been the Bush family intersests, namely A.J. Bush & Sons Pty Ltd since 1970 - used as the company's head office.  Before that it was owned mainly by Bush family (with others?) back to 1926.  From 1914 (or maybe 1908) till 1926 it was owned by William Charles Wentworth Maiden (salesman).  Before that, back to 1890 it was owned by Frederick Clissold, gentleman, or his widow.   It first passed to the Bushes with Norman Verne Bush (butcher) in 1926 (from Land Titles records, per Geotechnique 2010).    

 

South of this Bush site the land had all become residential high rise in relatively recent years.  In 2008, Geotechnique began soil and contamination investigate for this last bit fronting Parramatta Road to also become similar residential highrise (Geotechnique 2010)(DA 2011/047).  A request was made to Strathfield Council under Freedom of Information for any information on the site, in March 2010.  This however, revealed records only back to the 1960s.  Other records (Land Titles) show the land was owned by Frederick Clissold, (gentleman) in 1890-1892, and by his descendants till 1914 when it passed to William Charles Wentworth (salesman).  It was purchased by Norman Verne Bush (butcher) in 1926.  Norm died in 1946.  There was a double Bush funeral, suggesting perhaps an accident:

 

 

Sydney Morning Herald - Wednesday 8 January 1947, page 22

 

Alfred John Bush commenced trading in his first butcher shop in Newcastle in 1909-1912 before coming to Sydney in 1921 and establishing the wholesale butchery business of A.J. Bush and Sons.  Members of the Bush family owned the Parramatta Road site from 1926/30 (two lots, A and B, in DP 312989 till the present time (2011) except that 1968 the Station Street frontage page (Lot A) passed to Orest Peter Sywack and Stephanie Sywak.  Orest Peter Sywak, being a director of Auburn United Formwork Pty Ltd, was prosecuted in connection with an incident in which a worker fell 5m in 1999, sustaining serious injury.

Geotechnique (2010) found this site to have 10-30 cm of fill overlying silty clay with traces of fine sand and alluvial gravel and/or ironstone (4.5m).  That then overlay 1m of shaley clay, passing down into weathered shale (grey at depth) to the end of the hole at 8m depth.  This was in an auger hole for a groundwater monitoring well.  The 4.5m of at least part alluvial interval would be part of the floodplain sediments of the nearby Powell's Creek.

 

Terry Hie Hie and the last Powells of 'Dorset Green'

Terry Hie Hie house was the last bastion of the Powells at Homebush.   It was established by James Richard Powell who was a grandson of Edward Powell.    James fought off "trespass" by Thomas Rose, a descendant of a co-settler of Liberty Plains, in a legal case over possession of the land

The Sydney Morning Herald of 3 August 1876, page 2, has record of James successfully suing Thomas Rose, as below:  

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/printArticleJpg/13377600

The Powells disputed the boundaries and administration of the disposal of land that Mr Underwood had gained control of.  Disputation was via the Underwood estate trustees (after Underwood's death), as recorded in the NSW Underwood Estate Act 1882 and the Underwood Estate Distribution Bill 1878.   Those Acts followed the Underwood Estate Act 1873 and the Underwood Estate Act 1873 Amendment Act 1874  (Mr Underwood's doings being extensive and/or tangled enough to require Acts of Parliament to sort things out or finalise matters).  

 

James Underwood's will claimed he owned 309 acres of land formerly Poswell's property. 

This and the land west of it (Fleming's Farm) he seems to have let to Potts.

 

 

 

Pitt Street Sydney 24 April 1873
Thomas Underwood Esq.
Underwood Street
Paddington

Dear Sir
The Underwood Estate Act has been assented to by the Governor
Yours faithfully

Russell & Holden

(Published by Maurice Miskel in the N.S.W. Philatelist, August 2003, Volume 25, Number 3, pages 13-15)

 

Long before the days of the telephone, solicitors used the post to send this short note advising onwe of Underwood's son that the Underwood Estate Act has been approved.  This interesting little 'artefact' of the past has been well researched and documented by Maurice Mishkel, Dundas, Ontario, Canada ( maurice@auspostalhistory.com ).  Maurice has had 73 years of of intermittently collecting Australian stamps and more lately (since 1999) being involved in "Social Philately" - http://www.auspostalhistory.com/home_page.shtml .  Maurice was written to in order to enquire about where this item is now.

The Underwood Estate Act was passed by Parliament on 23 April 1873 and its preambles explain the intent to sell all James Underwood's lands as were described in his will (at Paddington, Homebush, Fleminton (Fleming's farm) and Ashfield, plus the city properties).  Hearings into the Underwood Estate were in the early 1870s and it eventuated that there were three Private Members' Bills and three Acts of Parliament needed to process matters and settle the problems arising.  The firm of Russell & Holden at first assisted the government but later on represented most of the family's descendants.

According to Parkinson (1989):  "All of Thomas Underwood's land was eventually sold (around 1,000 acres of to-day's inner Sydney), and only the solicitors and the mortgagees made anything out of it in the end. The sagas and the court cases went on for about 30 years. Litigation went over to the privy Council in England, and disputes entailed between family members (which were legion), their solicitors, their financiers, their trustees, and so on".

Liz Parkinson has done an excellent job of attempting to make sense of it all.   She herself is a descendant of Richard (1839-78) the youngest son of Thomas Underwood and his first wife, Mary Ann Powell.

James Underwood (1771-1844) was aged about when found guilty of breaking, entering and stealing goods, for which he was sentenced to 14 years, and transported to Sydney on the 'Admiral Barrington' which departed 27/3/1791 and arrived at Sydney Cove as the last ship of the Third Fleet on 16/10/1791.  James' sentence had expired by 1797, and following that he became very wealthy from shipbuilding, ship chartering and trading, sealing, brewing and land acquisition.  James liked had an eye for women and wealth to indulge his lives, acquiring two mistresses and two wives.  He was criticised more than once on the methods of some of his land acquisitions.  

The Echo newspaper in 1890 accepted James Powell's right to the land he claimed.  It wrote that after Mr. Edward Powell, the elder at his in and was buried out the back of it "on the plain between the present Homebush railway slation and the Horse and Jockey Hotel" he was succeeded by his son ("the late Mr. Edward Powell", who  in his turn was succeeded by one of his sons, Mr. James Richard Powell.  The Echo added that "The estate has not been kept through three generations  without some expense and trouble, as Mr. Powell relates that there have been no less than seven lawsuits in the Supreme Court in connection with the tenure, all of which have resulted in his favour".   That was a rather impressive and sustained win for Mr Powell.

It is interesting how the legal system operated at that time.  Instead of the judge doing the "obvious" thing of calling as witness someone appropriate from the Lands depertment to find appropriate title records he relied solely upon testimony of the principal parties (excluding any tennant interests too - if there were any).  One hundred and thirty-five years later a grant of $50 from Strathfield Council was sought to offset costs of searching for Powell family land title records at Homebush (covering also the land of the Half Way House).   This, however, was declined by Council which opined that the matter of such historic State  records was not of significance to the local community.  

In 1885 James Powell was noted as having 50 acres of land in Homebush, with the southern boundary at Redmyre Road.   Thus he had recoved much of Edward Powell, his grandfather's, land.  He and "company" established a brickworks, seemingly somewhere between the later Council chambers and Elva Street (fronting Redmyre Road).  Council records of this have been sought but so far (2011) nothing has been found.

The legal case of 1876 reveals that James Richard Powell began living on the land about 1870.   It states there that he lived at first in a "hut".  Where he first lived is uncertain but may have been closer to Powell's Creek, where one or more of the Powells ran a brickworks.

He later built Terry Hie Hie, a quality home, and this is where James Powell died in 1890 (and one of his daughters in 1883):

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/13774600 ; Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 1890, page 1

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/13542195 , Sydney Morning Herald, 17 August 1883, page 1.

These are the only known early (mis-?)spellings as "Tarry" Hie Hie instead of the name following the place name Terry Hie Hie.

The known genealogy of James Richard Powell is:

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

• Name: James Richard POWELL
• Sex: M
• Birth: 2 OCT 1823 in Richmond NSW Australia
• Note:

  V18236370 1B/1823 POWELL JAMES R EDWARD MARY
  V18231501 148/1823 POWELL JAMES R EDWARD MARY

• Death: 8 OCT 1890 ¹
• Note:

  Jeanette Dixon's file advises 'James Richard POWELL eventually lived on remains of family property at Homebush (Terry Hi Hi)
  - ten children (7 unmarried). Son Edward had 'Bull & Bush Hotel' at Baulkham Hills.'

  Father: Edward POWELL b: 21 SEP 1798 in Cornwallis Flats near Richmond NSW Australia
  Mother: Mary ROBINSON b: 1800 in Wilberforce NSW Australia
  
  Marriage 1 Emma HUNT b: Abt 1825 in of Sydney NSW Australia

  • Married: 13 APR 1850 ²

  Children

  1.   Clara P. POWELL b: 1854 in Sydney NSW Australia
  2.   Mary L. POWELL b: 1856 in Sydney NSW Australia
  3.   Edward J. Richmond POWELL b: 1858 in Sydney NSW Australia
  4.   Arthur Sydney POWELL b: 1862 in Sydney NSW Australia
  5.   Maud G. POWELL b: 1864 in Sydney NSW Australia
  6.   Alfred Henry POWELL b: 1866 in Sydney NSW Australia
  7.   Blanche A. POWELL b: 1868 in Sydney NSW Australia
  8.   Elva POWELL b: 1871 in Sydney NSW Australia
  9.   William George Stanley POWELL b: 1874 in Sydney NSW Australia
  
  Sources:
  1. Author (1): Jeanette Dixon - Robinson, Harrison, Powell & Fish descendant
     (Note: Jeanette Dixon is descended from Edward Powell and Elizabeth Fish via their son Edward Jr married Mary Robinson (dau of Edward Robinson and Mary Harrison) via Emma Powell married Joseph Onus Jr., son Joseph Edward Onus married Georgiana Hunt, dau Emma Louisa Onus married John Thomas Matcham Pitt, son John Matcham Pitt married Winifred Butcher, dau Jean Winifred Matcham Pitt married Clifford Henry Pearson.
  2. Author (2): Sandra Smith - Edward Robinson and Mary Harrison descendant
     

  Jeanette Dixon < aberwynne@yahoo.co.uk>
  

( Per Ancestors of Amanda Helen TAYLOR - http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~amandataylor )

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Thus grandson James had married in Sydney aged 27 and it was not for another years before he moved onto land he considered family land at Homebush, establishing a "hut" there (according to Thomas Rose).  By the time of James Powell's death brickmaking was the main or second major industry in the area, and the only brickworks clearly recognisable as named in Sands directory is Powells', e.g. Sands for 1887 has:

""""""""""""""""

Redmyre road [Homebush]

Kent, H C., architect ‘Kelmwood’

Priddle, C J

Elwin, Theodore, draftsman

Redmyre road [Strathfield]

Molyneaux, Joseph A, woolbroker,. ‘Glenwood’

Creagh, Rev. S. M., ‘Staverton’

Powell and Co., brickmakers

"""""""""""""""".  

The Echo newspaper in 1890 stated about Strathfield that:  "THE PRINCIPAL INDUSTRIES are Mr. John Morrison’s railway carriage factory, and a large brick yard near the Strathfield Railway Station".  The Council was asked for any records of these industries but nothing has been forthcoming.  Nonetheless the Powell brickworks must have been along Redmyre Road between the Council chambers and ('near') the railway station.  That was probably the frontage but the actual works would have been on the northern side of Redmyre Road and running towards Powell's Creek - likely along a small tributary of that creek.  The area now is all close housing.

The Echo newspaper in 1890 gave some further information on brickmaking.  It stated "Nearer to Sydney, along the Parramatta-road, and not far from the Concord lockup, was the Governor Gipps Hotel, opened about 1846. It is said to have been built by Mr Edward Burton, who had previously kept the London Tavern in George-street, Sydney. The bricks were burned on the estate, which was granted to Mr. Rose, but which had been purchased by Mr. Edward Powell. This house was kept for some years by Mr. Hand. It has been used as a private residence for the past 20 years.  The bricks for the Horse and Jockey Hotel, erected by Mt Kerwin were also made on Mr Powell’s land".   Many years it has been related to the writer that demolition at a site near Concord Road (possibly over the former Governor Gipps Hotel?) foundations were uncovered that were made of convict-era bricks.  The developer endeavoured to find a taker for these interesting old bricks via eBay - however there was no interest and they were finally sent to the dump.

  

 

Aerial photo ca. 1922    (Per:  Strathfield History, Cathy Jones)

http://strathfieldhistory.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/aerial-photo-of-albert-and-homebush-road-1922.pdf )

Terry Hie Hie, 43-45 Homebush Road (Lot A, DP33i523)..

The 1986 Strathfield Heritage Study appears to have missed Terry Hie Hie, although it did note some older housing in the vicinity, in Homebush Road.

The house may have been first entered (4/6/2002) on the Strathfield Heritage inverntory as result of a "drive-by" sighting in 2001 (with a photo taken in October 2001).  However in 2002 no name had been known for it.  Further Strathfield Municipal Heritage Survey work in 2003 by Kemp and Johnson seems to have added nothing re the house.  However, the name "Tarry-Hie-Hie" was later affixed to the property (probably derived from a misprinted death notices?):

 

The house was further photographed in 2004, and again in 2005 by Pamela Hubert.   Pamela Hubert (Hubert Architects) did the Strathfield Heritage Review 2005. 

Interesting information on the house, assembled by Strathfield Council, may be found in State Heritage Inventory record 2430261 (LEP 105; 2006).  Despite being done in 2005 or earlier, the record on this house (SHI 2430261) is still not yet showing at the State online heritage database ( http://www.heritage.nsw.gov.au/07_subnav_04.cfm ).   This may have assisted the seeming falseness of the story that Terry Hie Hie had been demolished to go undetected for so long?   That (verbatim) story is now assumed false, unless perhaps James Powell did have an earlier home in the area by that name, which has been demolished, and the name was transferred (there is however no factual reason to suspect that).

The SHI record 2430261 has a number of inconsistencies or suspected errors.   It calls the house "Tarry Hie-Hie".  That probably comes from a mistake made in Samuel Powell's published death notice.  The SHI record also states that James Powell was "one of the supporters of the establishment of the Municipality of Strathfield".   If he was then 2430261 nine lines later on states "James R. Powell was a signatory to the counter-petition to incorporate Strathfield Council in 1884.  Then under REFERENCES it indicates that this counter-petition as being year 1895 (not 1884).   The actual counter-petition has not yet been found (by this writer) but it must be findable as it was Gazetted.  The Echo newspaper in 1890 explained that "In September, 1884, a petition signed by 78 persons - prayed that their district might be incorporated under the name of the MUNICIPAL DISTRICT OF STRATHFIELD.  This is the first time that this name appears officially in connection with this district, which had previously been known as Redmire (altered to “Redmyre” some 25 years ago)".

Thus the original petition was in 1884.  But the counter petition came in 1885.   The Echo 1890 said of it: "On the 11th February, 1885 A COUNTER PETITION signed by 86 persons was gazetted. In this it was urged that the former petition was issued solely in the interests of the residents of Redmyre, and did not represent 100 souls. The district comprised a large portion of land only sparsely populated, and the residents of Homebush and Enfield proposed to incorporate their districts separately".    Perhaps James Powell signed both the petition and the counter-petition?    Regardless of opposing the formation of Strathfield Municipality, the next year, 1886, Powell sold to the Council land for their Council Chambers to be built.

Another seeming inconsistency in the record for SHI 2430261 concerns when Terry Hie Hie was built.  It is at first stated that it was built ca. 1880.  But later in the document it is stated that it was started in 1884 and completed in 1904.   The current appearance of the building perhaps has more of a 1904 flavour.  It has a feature band of dark brick on the face - something that became popular in the early 1900s but not as yet noted elsewhere for the 1880s (although the present writer is not familiar with a very wide range of early Sydney housing).

Following James' death in 1890.  James' widow Emma died ('Burwood' district) in 1904 and ownership then passed to the children, William, Blanche and Elva.  It appears that the house was modified to its present external form after Emma died.  There are possibly now only remnants of the 1880s house(?).  James' second son Arthur Sydney Powell may also have gone on living in the area, as he was married in 1895 at Ashfield.    

The last Powells owning Terry Hie Hie were Blanche and Elva Powell who died in the 1940s.   

These two sisters were both daughters of James Richard Powell, born in 1868 and 1871.   

Blanche died at Burwood in 1941.  She was possibly named after Blanche Sly who was born on Curryburry about 1870, and later married Henry Richmond (Harry) Powell, who was also born at Curryburry about 1870.  [Henry died in 1846 and was buried at Richmond cemetery.  Henry Richmond Powell's father was Henry Richard Powell].  

Elva was possibly named from another Elva Powell who was daughter of Mr and Mrs W.B. Trayhurn of Bingara (viz. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/15397411 ); this being another suggestive connection to the region around Terry Hie Hie?

Alfred Henry Powell died on August 19, 1947, at a private hospital in Strathfield, aged 81 years, who was brother of William and Elva Powell ( http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/18040288 ).  He was the third son of James Richard Powell, and having died in Strathfield he too likely seems to have been living in the area.

Elva died in the following year, in 1948, at Ashfield possibly at a hospital or nursing home.   It was suspected that Elva Street is possibly named from her.  Strathfield Council was enquired to about when Elva Street was formed and who it was named after. 

These were the youngest of Jame's children save for William George Stanley Powell born in 1874.   After Blanche and Elva died, William Stanley Powell would have had full control but he was edlerly and died in Parramatta in 1951.  SHI 2430261 states that the house was sold in the mid-1940s to the Wades, although that might seem unlikely as Elva did not die till 1948.  The Wades, however, were definitely there in the 1950s.

Following the deaths of the two Powell sisters Blanche and Elva, no more Powell descendants lived in Terry Hie Hie (or in Homebush?).

Terry Hie Hie was then passed to Wilfred and Enid Wade, cattle breeders (sale date unknown, perhaps early 1950s).

Agricultural land at Terry Hie Hie - early members of the Powell family went there but so far little is known about this.

Powell's Homebush Road home was named from Terry Hie Hie, an early grazing selection and today is a very small farming centre.   Terry Hie Hie is 47 km south-east of  Moree, the nearest large town. 

The township grew as an offshoot of the station by the same name and best thrived when it was a focus for forestry activity in the area. A resident forest foreman was once stationed there and lived in the former police station (the cell is still there). The former cash store with its intact petrol bowser in front is an unusual reminder of the days of single-bowser filling stations.  A complex of buildings on both sides of the road at Curra Downs, 3kms north of Terry Hie Hie includes a house, sheds, silos, a windmill and stockyards.

Aboriginal groups have been seeking that land there be given to them.  The area is seen as "the last big bit of bush that Aboriginal people can connect with in the Moree area".    Terry Hie Hie was the first land claim submitted by the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, in 1977.  This lead to the creation of the Terry Hie Hie Aboriginal Area in December 2005. It covers an area of 15,382 hectares:

In 1837, two assigned convict servants, James Blanchare and George Burnie, were killed by Aborigines at George Bowman's Terry Hie Hie run.  During1837, squatters complained to government authorities about killings and mutilation of employees, and livestock by Aboriginals in the Liverpool Plains. Significant among those who complained was George Archer about the murder of two of his men at his Terry Hie Hie run.  In the following year, on 10 June 1838 the Myall Creek Massacre occurred (16 km northeast of Bingara), involving the killing of up to 30 unarmed Aborigines.  Seven of the 12 settlers involved in the killings were later hanged for murder.   According to some views, the attack on stockmen at Terry Hie Hie Station resulted in the Myall Creek massacre.

The Aboriginal Protection Board established a station at Terry Hie Hie but in the 1920s the people moved off it, to Moree, fearing their children were going to be taken from them by the Protection Board.  Still feeling it was their land from which they had been forced away to escape the Protection Board, when the possibility of making land claims came decades later, Terry Hie Hie was claimed.

Another farm house that was in the possession of the Powell family for 160 years, on the Richmond lowlands, was "Kurri Burri" (a.k.a. Curryburry), now a polo stud:

http://www.kurriburri.com.au

Edward Powell arrived at Hawkesbury River by 1798 and apparently prospered at Cornwallis, thence buying another 100 acres at Richmond Bottoms which he named "Curryburry" about 1802.   What this name meant to Powell remains unknown.   

 Edward Powell's son, Edward Jr, took over Curryburry.   This was James Richard Powell's father.  

Early brickmaking

Clay for early brickmaking was doubtless dug out along Powell's Creek.   Both a hotel near the later Arnott's bridge over  Parramatta Road and Powell's Half Way House used bricks made from locally dug clay.   A waterhole used as local water supply north of the Parramatta Road might have been either a natural 'billabong' or an abandonned clay bit.   The most precise reference refers to kilns at Powell's Creek near the railway line.  The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 August 1846, page 3, published a report on proposed railway lines, including the one to Parramatta.   This mentioned that the line would cross Powell's Creek "at the brick kilns, about 20 chains from the Parramatta Road ..".

This would suggest that kilns were near Powell's Creek at what is now the eastern end of Beresford Road (at junction with Elva Street).   The later site of Meriden Anglican Girls School has also been suggested as where the Powells had an early brickyard.   Other suggestion from fragmentary evidence is that they also extracted the clay of a branch creek that ran off Powell's Creek , southwards towards Vernon Street.   Along that, between the end of Beresford Road and Redmyre Road the pits are thought to have later become an early rubbish repository in the municipality, after Strathfield Council was formed.   Enquiry about earliest garbage disposal, however, has found no documentary evidence of this to date.  

~~~~~~~~~~~

Perhaps the Powell graves (Edward Powell and a daughter) have been since excavated in ignorance.   Perhaps family arranged removal (but no definite record of that is known of) or perhaps the graves still lie in some of the land which has still escaped later disturbance.   No systematic search for old land records, to better resolve this, has yet been attempted.

Edward Powell died relatively young and was buried out back of his Parramatta Road inn, known as the Halfway House, along with the burial of one of his daughters who had earlier committed suicide at their inn.

Their inn was somewhere near where the present day Horse and Jockey Hotel is, somewhat more to the east.   

Thinking in terms of the present day Parramatta Road, behind the inn might suggest around the western end of Homebush Station.   However as shown even with the snippets above, the roadways have changed somewhat.    Also, Powell's eastern boundary was a northwesterly running boundary as shown above.    Thus behind the inn, bearing in mind the older land allotment pattern, would seem more likely to be around the western end of the railway station.   Land is somewhat less disturbed there, with a sizeable area perhaps never built on (e.g. current parking area of Railways' offices land - signals section and earlier on there was also a railways nursery at this place).     Hence there may be some chance that the patch with the graves might not have since been excavated.

There is no memorial anywhere near there to these Powells --- but there deserves to be, in view of the part Powells played in the history of the area (the family also early established itself near Richmond and perhaps is better memorialised there?).   The main local reminder of Powell is Powell's Creek, now a concreted-over stormwater canal.

Thus it probably seems fair to say that the Powells are under-acknowledged, if not largely forgotten, in the history of Homebush or Strathfield Municipality.   Edward Powell and his wife received one of the first land grants of Liberty Plains, and later came to take up land that other first settlers gave up on.   The Powells later on did well from an inn, more so than from farming.   But the family also engaged in farming and orcharding, and also had a brickworks (descendants, not Edward himself).   

However, Strathfield Municipality has changed much from the 1700s when  the Liberty Plains free settlers first turned the soil.  So much so that where the Powell's brickworks and quarrying was is now hard to know, and even the grave of Edward Powell himself has been long ago lost sight of - its position, near Homebush Railway Station can likely be determined at least approximately from study of existing records.  .  

In 2010 Strathfield Municipality celebrated its 125th anniversary with excellent history displays in August, mounted in the Strathfield central Library at Rochester Street, Homebush.  

The displays  was arranged broadly chronologically but also with themes.    At the 'beginning' came the 'Aboriginal' times, but little was put up about that, just photos of bush at some unspecified place/s, suggesting that maybe Strathfield in the past 'first' looked something like that.   One of the photos used to illustrate undisturbed bush showed scattered sandstone, so it is likely that Strathfield in fact didn't look like that.

Next in the display sequence came a very small mention of the first settlers in the area, stating about the formation of Liberty Plains farming settlement but that it soon failed and it was a long time after that before suburban development affected the area.

Elsewhere in the same Library, in the expanding collections of the Local Studies Room, the biography file of Edward Powell is just a couple of pages long, copied from the 1986 book "Hawkesbury Journey" about Hawkesbury pioneers by D.G.  Bowd.   

The Powell family was indeed also pioneering on the Hawkesbury, after Liberty Plains failed, but unlike other Liberty Plains settlers the Powells both left and then returned.   The Richmond Bottoms on the Hawkesbury were of far superior soil (alluvial soil) than is the meagre shale soil of Strathfield municipality, for agricultural purposes.   The Powell family was relatively prosperous there and was able to acquire further lands.  By 1803, Edward was prosperous enough to purchase and transport there a hundred pound value mare, but she unfortunately met very soon afterwards with a fatal accident at the Powell property  (".. a good Mare, the property of Edward Powell, Settler, in leaping a fence stuck on one of the pales, by which accident she died immediately", The Sydney Gazette, 28 August 1803).  

Although prospering at the Hawkesbury, two things may have contributed to the family leaving leaving there.   Powell was made a Constable at the Hawkesbury but became ringleader in the murder (vengence killing) of young Aborigines there.   He was relieved of his position of constable.  Then in 1806 came disastrous flooding.   The family leased some of its land, sold the rest and returned to Liberty Plains about 1806-1808 (c.1806 fide  Parkinson 1989, c. 1808 fide Bowd 1986).

Back at Liberty Plains, Powell became a major identity of the area and came to acquire a great deal of the former Liberty Plains grants land.   After Edward's death his large land possessions were to pass to a member of the Underwood family, in a manner described in detail in the excellent 1989 book by Parkinson "The Underwoods: Lock, Stock and Barrel".   However some of the Powell descendants continued to hold significant land in the area and lived on there for quite some time.  In a map of 1867, Jas. Powell is shown as owning the land at Homebush north of Redmyre Road, a little of which he later sold to Strathfield Council and is the site of the Town Hall and Council chambers.   The Powell family built a fine house there, Terry Hi Hi (now demolished), and a 1901 Strathfield census showed a Mrs Powell resident at Homebush Road.   The family also played a very direct role in early suburb building in that it ran a brickworks, located between the Council Chambers and Strathfield Railway Station.

In 2010 John Byrnes and David Patrick decided to team up in further researching things to do with Edward Powell and the Powell family of Homebush-Strathfield and Cornwallis-Richmond on the Hawkesbury River.  Of particular interest was what became of Powell - is he still buried somewhere between Homebush Railway station and the hotel he owned on Parramatta Road?   The two of us suspect that he is although various tales to the contrary have been heard of.   One was that his remains had been removed to the other family area, Windsor area, but this is likely confusion with a later Edward Powell descendant.

Great family research in a book by Liz Parkinson (1989) gives much of

the Powells story, especially the Underwood connection

 

Written and Illustrated by Liz Parkinson, a descendant of this Underwood family, this is the story of three brothers: 1. The Convict: James Underwood (1771-1844) had a 7-year sentence for supposedly stealing a couple of pairs of slippers, although innocent of breaking and entering. He established Sydney's first private shipyard on the Tank Stream, and an early distillery on his 100 acres at Paddington. Upon his death,  he left a legendary Estate, requiring 3 Acts of Parliament to resolve. 2. The Merchant: Joseph Underwood (1779-1833) came to Australia in charge of one of his brother James' ships in 1807. They both ran ships to the sealing islands in Bass Strait, and spent the proceeds on more ships and land acquisitions. In his later years he became the Squire of Ashfield Park. 3. The Drunk: William Underwood (1786-1827) sailed in and out of Australia a few times on his brother's ships, before settling at Ashfield. There he ran a pub on a corner of his brother Joseph's land, and had the disgrace of dying drunk in the street.

 

Bowd (1986) wrote that Edward Powell died in 1814 at the age of 52, and that his wife Elizabeth then kept the Halfway House going until her death four years later, aged 44.  However Liz Parkinson's book gives much fuller account and explains the split in the family after Edwards death, the intervention of Rev. Samuel Marsden, and how James Underwood came to gain all the property.   Her book gives in considerable detail how the the family of Edward Powell came under the influence or power of James Underwood and how much of Liberty Plains passed to him.   Re the 'Drunk', according to The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 27 February 1827, page 3, the brother William Underwood might have died at the Halfway House:

 

 

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2187757

Parkinson (1989, p. 45) states: "In Rumsay's 'Pioneers of Sydney Cove' the following appears on p. 82, under the heading of Edward Powell: 'On his farm a vault was erected, in which he was buried.  Later his body was moved to the 'Driver' vault in the Devonshire Street Cemetery, and on the demolition of that cemetery, to Rookwood, where a tombstone was erected.' (Author is unsure of the truth of these assertions".

From Parkinson it was learned that Edward Powell's obituary appeared in the Gazette on 22/10/1814, and that he was buried in the orchard near the Halfway House with his daughter Sarah.   This notice of 22/10/1814 has been found as below, but it does not include where he was buried.  A few days later his widow or relict, Elizabeth gave notice of her hopes to administer his affairs (for what happened after that the interested reader should refer to Parkinson for an account of the rifting within the family over inheritance.

The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Saturday 22 October 1814, page 2.

 

Died - On Monday morning last, at his residence on the Parramatta Road, Mr Edward Powell, 

many years a Settler in this Colony, where he had been always much esteemed as a worthy

character.  He leaves a wife and large family to deplore his loss; and all who knew him 

sympathetically participate in their afflictions.

The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Saturday 26 November 1814, page 1.

 

MRS. ELIZABETH POWELL, Relict of the late Mr. Edward Powell, of Liberty Plains, hereby gives Notice

of her intention to apply for Letters of Administration to the Estate and Effects of her late Husband.

 (signed)   E. POWELL.

Another story sometimes told is that railways lands over-ran the site of the Powell graves and to save Edward's headstone it was transferred to Terry Hi Hi where it was laid down a the rear doorstep - places upside down to conserve the inscription.   This story further goes that when the family 'died out' in Strathfield, Terry Hie Hie was demolished without anyone at the time realising Edward Powell's tombstone was lying as a doorstep.   This is a 'good story' but its truth is much to be doubted as it sounds too much like another rather similar family story (this one true) which has its setting in the Richmond-Windsor area.

And of course Terry Hie Hie house still lives on, un-demolished - unless just perhaps "demolished" could refer to extensive re-making of it about 1900, or even that the Powell's had an earlier habitation in the area by that same name (but no evidence exists to support that).   This story probably is a myth, and it also has "versions".   Another version of the story that the Powell gravestone was taken away and used as a step, has it that it went to the "stationmaster's house".   This alternative version was heard, locally, by the writer years after hearing of the (main) version that the gravestone had been taken to Terry Hie Hie.   Seeing that Powells lived locally at the time of the last eyewitness reports of the gravestone in situ , and lived locally until the 1940s (and the area of the gravestone became flats in ca. 1930s) it does seem extremely likely that the family must have been aware that the grave/s were being built over - and highly likely that the family would have salvaged the headstone.   But if so, then where did they take it to.    That they would have taken it to the backyard of their main house in the area, at least temporarily, also does 'seem' very believable - but that's been as far as anything has gone on the matter.   Liz Parkinson collected an account that the remains were exhumed and taken elsewhere but she (pers. comm.) had severe doubt as to the veracity of that account too. 

David Patrick has material on Homebush at http://www.gdaypubs.com.au/NSW/sydney/homebush.html and has been researching the Horse and Jockey hotel (the successor of Powell's early Half Way House inn which was very nearby, and also researching the burial of Sarah and Edward in the orchard behind the inn.

John did a small study on Strathfield LGA (which includes the Homebush Powell lands) in 2008 - concentrating on first settlement time and earlier more ancient history.

Edward Powell was one of the settlers of Liberty Plains (now Strathfield).   Edward and his descendants play a large role in the history of Strathfield because Edward later acquired the holdings of others of the first free settlers who departed from the area, and also because the Strathfield Council bought land from the Powell family for siting its Council Chambers.

Pre-1890 (Photo: by ?-Kerry, published in the Echo newspaper 1890)

(Source:  http://www.strathfield.nsw.gov.au/about/images/townhall2.jpg )

{ Little change from pre-1890 except that large gum tree in front was removed and palm trees planted.

(Photo:  'Jasabella' ? 2005).   Palm tree ?still there.   A second story added, and a clock added at the tower.

Strathfield Council was incorporated in June 1885 and declared a Municipality.  In August 1886, the Council acquired land from James. R. Powell [owner of 'Terry-Hi-Hi' Homebush Rd and descendent of one of the original Liberty Plains land grantees Edward Powell] at the cost of £600 on the corner of Homebush and Redmyre Roads in order to build the Council Chambers.

Edward Powell (1762 - 1814)

Edward Powell was born at Lancaster, England.  He later on became a fisherman,  farmer, constable, innkeeper and significant landholder.  He  had for some years been an ordinary seaman in the British fleet and some think he was press-ganged into the navy at the time of the American Revolution.

Edward later declared to Governor Macquarie in 1810 that he had devoted the "prime of his life" to "King and country in the times of warfare".

Edward Powell first visited Sydney as a seaman on the Lady Juliana.

The Lady Juliana convict transport ship (also known as the Lady Julian) left England in 1789 and was the first convict transport to arrive at Sydney after the First Fleet.  She is therefore sometimes considered as part of the Second Fleet, and sometimes not.  The ship left Plymoth on 29 July 1789 with 226 female convicts aboard, and took 309 days to reach Port Jackson.  The Lady Juliana brought many females to the new colony.  The penal colony till then had relatively few child-bearing females and so the Juliana women would become to significant extent mothers of a nation-to-be.   Their youngest was aged 11 years of age,  Mary Wade (who by the time of her death at age 82, had over 300 living descendants.   Another noted convict on board was Elizabeth Steel who is historically the first deaf Australian (her headstone was only 'discovered' as late as 1991).

Most of the women had been London prostitutes and the vessel was termed a "floating brothel".   This ship was the subject of the ABC documentary "The Floating Brothel".  An account of the voyage was written by her steward John Nicol.  He recorded that "when we were fairly out to sea, every man on board took a wife from among the convicts".

When the Lady Juliana arrived at Port Jackson on 6 June 1790, after almost 11 months in transit, the convict Sarah Dorset had become pregnant to seaman Edward Powell and had borne a son.   According to Nicol, Sarah was a young and pretty girl who had been ruined by a "villian" then "forced by want upon the streets, and taken up as a disorderly girl".

Up disembarking in Sydney, Sarah's son was baptised 0n 13 June 1790 as Edward Dorset Powell.

Sadly for all, Edward could not stay with them, but was required to return to England with the ship.   After repairs to her strained timbers, the Lady Juliana sailed for China on 25 July 1790 to take on a cargo of tea for the East India Company, and Powell stayed on the ship till it returned to Sydney..

Edward no doubt thought that Sarah and Edward Dorset would remain in Sydney, and that he would return there.

Events, however, soon altered that.   Although the colony had indeed wanted, and needed, females it was very unfortunate that by the time they arrived the colony had fallen on hard times and was virtually in the grip of starvation as the intended next supply ship, HMS Sirius, had been wrecked at Norfolk Islands.  The colony was quite desperate for more provisions.   So when the Lady Juliana arrived the authorities were mortified at so little food, no provisions ship arriving but instead arriving many more mouths to feed.  The Judge Advocate, David Collins, recorded in his memoirs the arrival of a cargo so so unprofitable as "222 females, instead of a cargo of provisions".   Lieutenant Ralph Clark lamented the arrival of  "damned whores".    The authorities decided to tranship the Lady Juliana women on to the Norfold Island settlement.

Edward Powell was not able to return to Sydney till he took advantage of the government desire for subsidised free settlers for the colony.   At the age of 30 he joined the settlers bound for New South Wales on the Bellona.  He was noted as being in good health except for a "very violent contusion" of his left arm and shoulder.

Powell is believed to have been returning for his Sarah and son Edward, however they were already gone from Sydney.   Whether or not Edward learned that, he married a fellow passenger Elizabeth Fish, eight days after the Bellona berthed in Sydney.

This marriage meant that he gained a grant of 80 acres (32 ha) at Liberty Plains (instead of 60 acres as was the due of a single man).   And yet he still called the grant "Dorset Green" - was this because he had a son named Edward Dorset (or did Powell himself have some earlier association with the Dorset region in England perhaps)?  The grant was ratified on 7 February 1791.

Later on, Edward received a further 60 acres grant in November 1794 at "the entrance to the flats" (Homebush Bay, eastern side) which is now the Rhodes area.   The second round of grants was given to the free settlers probably in response to their difficulties and complaints.  Some official enquiry by magistrate the Rev. Samuel Marsden, and Surgeon Thomas Arndell,  confirmed how badly the settlers had fared and that they had been driven to the utmost distress as they claimed.

Liberty Plains had failed both agriculturally (the soil is very clayey) and economically (the settlers could not match with the produce the very high prices charged by merchants for all necessities).   When the Hawkesbury River's rich alluvial loam flats were opened to settelement the Powells moved to there in September 1798.  The family (Edward and Elizabeth, and two young daughters Sarah and Mary Ann) moved to a 30 acre farm which Powell somehow acquired from the grantee Michael Doyle.  By 1799 Powell had been appointed a constable for the Hawkesbury.

Late that  year, 1799, Edward Powell was found guilty with four others of a charge of having 'barbarously murdered'  two young Aborigines at or close to where Edward lived.  These were payback killings for the natives having murdered two settlers shortly before.

Map showing a possible early route up onto the Blue Mountains and relevant to the Yarramundi

murders for which Constable Powell ring-led the payback/revenge.   (Source:  Paish 1992, p. 4) 

Powell, as a constable, had something of a ringleader role in the murders.  The young Aborignes, after having been tied up were killed by shooting and cutlass.   A third one who the group of settlers tied up managed to get free and made his escape.   There three males had come to the settlers' place (Cornwallis side, southern side, of the Hawkesbury River, just upstream of Windsor) to return the musket of the part of two Europeans who Aborigines had killed at Yarramundi (further up the Hawkesbury) some time before.   It appears that another settler had suggested to the youths that they should go find this musket and bring it to the settlement, but the group who seized and killed them might not have known that they were 'acting under instruction' thus.  Powell took the action of killing them after consulting with the widow of one of the his recently murdered neighbours.  It was considered a form of justice (at least by the settlers, if not by central authorities) that when natives killed settlers, settlers should kill natives.  This was "payback", something that virtually all past cultures has practiced. [Edward Powell, Simon Freebody, James Metcalfe, William Tibbs and William Butler were the five settlers placed on trial for the murders.]

Where these killings took place  the settlers had on a previous occasion seized and tied up another young Aborigine.  Some accounts say they tortured him by dragging him through a fire or ashes of a fire, to make him reveal where others of his tribe were located.   However, other locals stated that part is not true.  This individual escaped and jumped into the Hawkesbury to try and swim to the other side.  Whilst in the river, however, he was shot and killed.   

No punishment was ever inflicted on any of the men involved in these admitted or court-proven killings, other than that Powell was stripped of his position of Constable.   Powell and the four others convicted of  the double murder were in January 1802 recommended for conditional pardon by Lord Hobart.  Just a little downstream at Windsor/Wilberforce there also lived the ringleader of the infamous Myall Creek Massacre, and he was appointed a Magistrate and became a pillar of local society.

By 1806 Powell  owned 140 acres (57 ha) of river flats land, of which 32 (13 ha) were in cultivation.  The main property, located on somewhat higher ground away from the floods (but still at 'Richmond Bottoms'), which he named 'Curryburry'.   Another daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1806 at Curryburry (a.k.a. Curry Burry).   The Curryburry property at Richmond Bottoms comprised 100 acres which had been granted to Edward Main.  It had a frontage to the Hawkesbury River west of Cornwallis (Portion 22, Parish of Ham Common). The name 'Richmond Bottoms' is perhaps no longer used for this locality (now called Richmond Lowlands).

Edward did well at the Hawkesbury overall and he came to own a quantity of livestock including 30 goats, 71 pigs, 2 horses and 2 cows.  One unfortunate incident, however, was when many of his stock perished by consuming a "noxious weed".   He had one convict assigned to him as farm labourer or servant, and his farm also supported another two or three emancipated convicts who he employed.  His first farm holding at Cornwallis he leased for forty pounds a year and the family lived at Curry Burry closer to Richmond.   Some of Edward's children were born at Curry Burry and the Powell line would hang onto house and land there for at least four generations.  They breed prize-winning horses and at one time a Powell's Curryburry wine was marketed.   Nowadays there is a Kurri Burri polo grounds on the Richmond Lowlands.

Based at Curry Burry, Edward appears to have become relatively prosperous as early as 1803, and in 1804 he advertised for a governess or "intructress" to move to his home; presumably to be both a nanny and to provide lessons for educating the children.   About this time his son to Sarah Dorset had been apprenticed, in 1803, to Captain Robert Rhodes, master of the whaling vessel Alexander.  Whether Edward the son of Sarah was in touch with his father is uncertain.

Shortly before the Rum Rebellion, in which the Hawkesbury settlers had supported Governor William Bligh, Powell returned to the Liberty Plains and become an innkeeper.   He sold much of his Hawkesbury land for two hundred pounds.  His inn was on the Parramatta Road just west of the Powell's Creek crossing and it was called the Halfway House in reference to that site being half way between Parramatta and Sydney.   He received a wine and spirit licence in 1809.   

Also in that year, 1809, the Sydney Gazette reported how "numerous banditti" (Aborigines) had driven off 34 of his sheep flock.   Powell and companions tracked the sheep and next day found in ground ovens at Cooks River, to the south, where cut up sheep carcasses had been roasted under a covering of tea tree bark, a description of which cooking method Powell sent to the newspaper.   In 1909 Edward was also granted an additional 100 acres at Bringelly and an additional 19 acres at Liberty Plains.   He was becoming a major landholder.

In the following year came a tragedy for the Powells.  Edward and Elizabeth's eldest daughter Sarah committed suicide in September 1810.   Returning home one afternoon Edward and Elizabeth found her hanging from a rafter in the back skillion.   Edward took her down and tried to bleed her in the right arm ('bleeding' a person being still a regarded cure in case of illness) but all to no avail.   She was buried in the orchard behind the inn.     

In December 1810 Edward bought considerable land again in the Richmond area.   He purchased 60 acres from John Watts.

 In 1811 Edward was pound keeper for the area around Liberty Plains and he had gradually acquired additional property.    He came to hold 475 acres and acquired the former farming grants of Thomas Rose, Frederick Meredith and Thomas Webb.

Edward Powell died on 19 October 1814 and he was buried in the orchard with or close to his daughter Sarah - "A map of Homebush Station (by State Rail) dated 1876, marks his (still visible at that time) tombstone as 'within the hotel land enclosure, near the railway fence" ( http://www.gdaypubs.com.au/NSW/sydney/homebush.html  ).    When doing a review of the past of Strathfield LGA in 2008 one of us (JGB) collected various stories on what had become of the first Powell graves site near the railway line at Homebush.   Some thought that only the tombstone had been relocated, some doubted that there ever had been any tombstone, and there was also account about the grave having been exhumed and remains moved to another family grave at another Sydney region cemetery to the east (and someone else doubted this story).   So at that time, 2008, what had become of the burial site was uncertain.   In June 2010 one of us (Dave) was contacted back by a Powell descendant after making more enquiries, and informed that Edward Powell's grave had been exhumed some time after 1879, moved to the Hawkesbury, re-built and is still visible there.  More on this is being sought.   Strathfield Council had no inkling of this when enquiries had been made about the grave site back in 2008.   Dave also had not known of this even though he had for over four years been looking through old records for anything to do with the Powells, especially their Half Way House inn.   This then is example of how 'elusive' various details of the past may be.  

Also in June 2010 there was put to Strathfield Council the suggestion that they begin making a formal 'Plan' for knowing more about the past.   This suggestion went with other related planning-related papers to the last Council meeting held in June.

Edward died intestate and there would be bitter fighting for years to come over the disposal of his assets.  His his estate was accepted as passing to his wife Elizabeth.   She died in August 1836 after bitter rifting inside the family over the inheritance and control of property.   The widow Powell married James Moore in June 1829, a man not approved by all her children.  After her death, control of the estate passed into the hands of son Edward.  Edward at first let the inn and 500 acres (202 ha) of Powell land, and then later on sold it to his brother-in-law James Underwood, and rich merchant and shipbuilder who most likely had been angling for some time to get control and ownership of the Edward Powell estate (the widow Powell having been the main impediment to Underwood's likely or assumed desires in this matter).  Another daughter of Edward Powell senior married Richard Siddins.

 

Sarah Dorset (c1766 - 1838) ... and what became of her and children of hers ?

What became of Sarah Dorset, and son Edward Dorset Powell after her forced separation from Edward Powell by circumstances is murky and some of what follows may prove to be erroneous or mis-matching of similar names.

She may have become wife of Robert Watson, yet no record of him having any formal wife has been found.

But Watson had 'children' and someone had to be their mother - the reasons for thinking it might have been this Sarah are below.

Such scenarios involving Sarah and various children are merely possibilities though, still to be further tested.

Sarah Dorset was born in England about 1766.  In 1787 she was with an obvious relative, Mary Dorset (sister/cousin) in a London public house when a male customer left his great coat by the door whilst he was absent for about half an hour.   A matter of alleged theft was then to occur.

The publican stopped the girls as they were leaving, and accused them of the theft of the coat which it was alleged was later found to have been secreted under Sarah's cloak.

Both girls were tried at Old Bailey on 24 October 1787 with the theft of the coat, valued at 2 shillings.  Mary was found not guilty, while Sarah was convicted and sentenced to be transported for 7 years.

Sarah lodged a petition for mitigation of the sentence, however the trial judge was not swayed and wrote "she appears to be a very proper subject for the colony at Botany Bay".

Sarah was then held in Newgate Gaol until 12 March 1789, before boarding the "Lady Juliana". 

During the 11 month voyage Sarah and Edward Powell teamed up, a child was conceived and born on board, then after landing in Sydney was baptised Edward Dorset Junior. Edwards was obliged to leave them and return to England on the Lady Juliana.

Eight weeks after landing at Sydney Cove, Sarah and the baby Edward were among 194 convicts (mostly female) sent to Norfolk Island.  They arrived there on 7 August 1790.  In December 1792 Sarah gave birth to a another child, Rebecca. It is not known who the father was but it is suspected to have been Robert Watson.  It was at this time that Robert Watson was living on Norfolk Island (1790-1793). Sarah and her two children remained on the island until they were returned to to Sydney in February 1794.

It is unknown what happend to the children, Edward and Rebecca.  Did they stay with Robert Watson, for by 1806 what is thought to be the same Sarah Dorset is found described as a housekeeper to John Woodward.   He was a then a butcher (a convict transported in 1798 "Barwell").

Sarah Dorset died on 11 March at Kincumber, Brisbane Water, and was buried 2 days later.

Records apparently indicate that Robert Watson had a dependant 'son' Edward and a daughter Rebecca.  The birth dates of these children coincide with Sarah Dorset's children Edward and Rebecca.

Robert Watson also had another son, John, who was born in 1797, but was his mother Sarah Dorset too?   

Some pieces of the "evidence":

1: Edward Watson (Dorset/Powell?) is confirmed as a son (but an adopted son perhaps?) in a deposition of Robert Watson of 3/8/1813 stating: "the Estramina being commanded by his own son, Edward Watson".   Note the Estramina has a connection to James Underwood:

 

( The Estramina , originally called Extremeña, was a two masted schooner of 102 tons, built at Guayaquil, in the Spanish Viceroyalty

of Peru but  now in the modern day Ecuador.  It was launched on 13 October 1803.  It has been seized by the English. )

If this is Edward Dorset Powell then he and his adopting father Robert Watson are buried together at Bunnerong Cemetery. Edward was b.1790 aboard "Lady Julianna" en route to Sydney. He married Elizabeth Pawley at St.Phillips on 29/6/1811, she being born in the Colony 24/3/1795, and dying in 1836.   

2: Rebecca Watson (Dorset?) is confirmed as daughter of Watson in a number of letters to the Colonial Secretary; also in having Robert Watson as a witness to her marriage in 1811.  Rebecca, b. abt 1792, married Robert Murray and died 28/9/1826.

3: John Watson (Dorset?):  Rebecca was a witness at his wedding.  Reference to him can be found of him in a petition to the Colonial Secretary on 26/10/1821 indicating "humble petitioners (John Watson and & Rebecca Murray nee Watson) are the only children now living of Robert Watson".  John was born abt 1797 in Sydney.  He lived in Tasmania at one stage, and a letter written by him in 1830 from Hobart Town confirms that.  Sarah Dorset too might have been to Tasmania(?).

 

Unsorted snippets / unchecked possible leads

The following notes are unsorted.   They might fit in with other facts above, or contain some separate leads, or be irrelevant.

Dr C.J. Smee records the following Powell births to 1800:

b  1790 bap 13/06/1790 Edward to Edward & Sarah Dorset d 19/02/1820

b 17/04/1794bap 01/06/1794          Sarah to Edward & Elizabeth Fish   d 24/9/1810

b 07/06/1796 bap 06/08/1796         Mary Ann to“’”’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’  d 09/02/1820

b 21/09/1798 bap ?                            Edward       ‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’       d 22/11/1887

b  -/-/1800                                             Jane ‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’               d 09/01/1883

( plus 1 other Powel, parents not given:  John Powell,  b 1790 )

The first 4 births above come from St Phillips registers, the last two are from early editions of the Pioneer registers.

Re Edward & Elizabeth Powell: the Hawkesbury Pioneer index vol 2 has some changes and gives births of their children as :

1 Sarah b Liberty Plains 1794  

2 Mary Ann b Liberty Plains 1796

3 Edward b Cornwallis 1798

4 Jane b Cornwallis c1800 m 1816 Sydney to Richard Siddons

5 James b Richmond  1803

6  Elizabeth  b Richmond 1806 (sic)

Re Woodwards:

There are no Woodwards listed to 1800. 

James Woodward was a farmer  sawyer , and shipbuilder - possibly with others - and occasional sailor of his vessels.  His sons included a Captain, another  a shipbuilder while 2 daughters married shipbuilders (Frost & Settree).   The ten children of James & Margaret nee Murphy:: George, James, William John (k/a John) Sarah, Henry, Margaret, Elizabeth , Mary , William James, Rebeccah & Edward Phillip.  (First two may have died young.)

 

A PARTIAL TIMELINE 

1790 - Edward left the colony on the 'Lady Juliana' when it returned to Europe.

1793 - Returned to New South Wales as a free settler on board the 'Bellona'. He stated that he was a farmer and fisherman from Lancaster.

1793 (May) - Received a grant of 80 acres at Liberty Plains.. This was followed with an additional grant of 60 acres at 'The Flats' (Homebush Bay).

1798 - Edward and his family moved to the Hawkesbury district. Here he purchased a 30 acre farm at Cornwallis from Michael DOYLE. He was appointed as a constable in the area shortly after taking up residence there.

1799 (October) - Edward was tried, along with four local farmers, for the murder of two aboriginal boys. This act was in reprisal for the killing of two white settlers by local aborigines.  The men were all convicted and Edward was suspended from his position as a constable. No other penalties seem to have been inflicted.

1801 (April)  - Assigned Powell Farm at the Hawkesbury to Matthew KEARNS to secure a debt of £16/14/8. Soon after this he purchased a farm at Richmond from Edward MAIN.  He named this latter property Curryburry.

1802 - Mustered as holding 105 acres.

1803 - Edward Powell was prosperous enough to purchase a hundred pound value mare, but she unfortunately met very soon afterwards with a fatal accident at the Powell property.  (The same day a good Mare, the property of Edward Powell, Settler, in leaping a fence stuck on one of the pales, by which accident she died immediately. The above owner from , short time since, purchased her at Sydney   for the sum of 100l.  [The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Sunday 28 August 1803, page 2.]

1809 - Edward sold his Cornwallis farm and returned to Liberty Plains where he acquired 475 acres. He was also granted a wine and spirit licence for the Halfway House public house in that area.

1810 (January) - Petitioned Governor Macquarie for confirmation of a 100 acre land grant he received from the provisional governmant that deposed the 'tyrant'  Bligh.

1810 (23 September) - Edward's daughter Sarah (aged 16) committed suicide in the Halfway House, her parents' inn or public house.

("The same day a Coroner's Inquest was taken at the house of Edward Powell, on the Parramatta Road, on the body of Sarah Powell, his daughter, who had unhappily strangled herself in a state of melancholy, and delirium, to which effect was the Verdict" [The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Saturday 29 September 1810, page 2] ).

1814 (5 February) - "On Friday evening the cart of Mr Edward Powell was stopped at Blackwattle Swamp by two footpads, on its return homeward, and robbed of ten gallons of spirits, together with some other articles of trifling value" ( The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, page 2.)

 

OTHER MISCELLANEOUS NEWSPAPER ITEMS

1880s - "Powell Edward (JP)" died aged 89 at "Curryburry Richmond Bottoms" and was buried at Richmond cemetery.  (Hawkesbury Chronicle) [not seen].

1946 (SMH, 17 Octorber) - "POWELL - October 16 1946 (suddenly ) at his son's residence Curry-Burry, The Lowlands Richmond, Henry Richmond Powell of 36b Windsor Street Richmond, beloved husband of the late Blanche and dear father of Jessie (Mrs A Bush deceased) and Jack and devoted brother of Mary (Mrs Cook Mosman)."

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Information pers. comm. from Liz Parkinson (researcher of the Underwoods family), and from Hawkebury district historians, especially Mrs Kay Williams (further comment below), has been very helpful in compiling this file to date.

 

COMMENTS

June 2011

Bob Pankhurst:   I think Charles Swancott [former author - JGB] was something to do with sawmills and therefore traveled widely about the coast area.  I showed him some carvings at Kariong about 1953 when he was up there with a Brisbane Waters Historical Society bus trip.  He certainly did not check his facts as in one of his books he mentions ........

Kay Williams:

Powell is likely to have learnt what happened to Sarah from Thomas Webb, fellow passenger on the "Bellona" who had been on Norfolk when she was there and co-habiting with another man, then  returned to UK and  came out on Bellona.   I don't know whether WEBB had returned to UK  on the same ship as Powell in 1790, but it was around that time. The story by author and Steward on the Lady Juliana, the sentimental John Nicol, that he later returned longing for his wife and child is not thought to be based on fact  these days, esp. in the light of Powell's  marriage to Elizabeth Fish 8 days after disembarking from the Bellona.  This marriage increased his grant entitlement from 60 to 80 acres.  In 1794 Powell successfully petitioned for a further 60 acres (Thomas Webb married [another] passenger, the convict Catherine Buckley, 7 days after disembarking from the Bellona.  This gave Catherine a mitigation of her sentence and Thomas more land too.)

Re Sarah's burials [alternative accounts]: -   Charles Swancott in "Gosford and the Kendall Country" attributes the first burial [account] at Point Frederick (which still exists as a "Pioneer Park"  to Sarah Woodward who died 11 Mar 1838 and was buried 13 Mar 1838 by Rev Edward Rogers . There is no certainty that Sarah was buried at Point Frederick and it may be likely she was buried at St Paul's Anglican Cemetery , Kincumber (Her abode was shown as Kincumber in the burial register) .  John Dawes in "Round About St Paul's" notes the first burial in St Paul's cemetery was Sarah Woodward of Kincumber who was interred on 12 March 1838.  Sarah was widowed in Sydney in 1825 and came  to live with her son James Woodward and his family when she died aged 73 at Kincumber in 1838 and was buried by Rev Edward Rogers.  James' father John had come to Sydney per Barwell 1798 and James was born at Green Hills .

 - Sources CC FHS  "Point Frederick Pioneer  Park Cemetery", and Gwen Dundon "Shipbuilders of Brisbane Water" p58.

Note Swancott often did not check his sources before he published, and often wrote what had been "remembered" by contemporaries, and it is likely his assertions come from something he was told, and that  either he or the teller mis-remembered which cemetery.  I think Kincumber St Pauls is the most likely burial place, as John Dawes states.  Subsequent descendants were also buried there.

 

OTHER (FUTURE?) DEVELOPMENTS ... the term "Greater Homebush" and who are the developers?

Powell's Creek has come under review in recent years by something called the "Greater Homebush Living Centres Team" (GHLCT), which especially set out to form a 'strategic framework' of further development of the 'corridor' of the creek.

At "Fortius", an Australian property funds management group established by Ray Sprouts in 2000.

Fortius has had some interest in the GHLCT , as have a few others.   What exactly was or is the GHLCT, and does it still exist, is unknown.

By all indications it was a creation of government, but was it solely government or was it in any way a "public-private partnership"? 

Exactly what the "Greater Homebush Living Centres Team" is very murky or unclarified in most references or mentions of, although it has/has an precisse address:  GHLCT, Level 8, Signature Tower, 2-10 Wentworth Avenue, Parramatta - and although there is every indication of it having had significant operating budget in the early 2000s.

It appears to be wholly or essentially a part of the NSW Department of Planning (Planning NSW), and in or about 2002 it commenced a "Landscape Design Plan" for Powell's Creek which aimed to set the "framework" for future development along the Powell's Creek "corridor" from Homebush Bay to Strathfield Railway station.  

People were organised to meet for discussions and to generate a "vision" for the future of Powell's Creek (Canada Bay Council has also held some separate public consultation itself to gather opinion of what people wanted to see the creek become along their segment of it).

The GHLC project for the creek began calling the exercise the development of a "Landscape Design Framework"; and it was stated that aims for this included the following:

• Enhance awareness of the environmental and recreational value of the corridor; 

• Raise activity in the corridor [SIC - whatever this might mean?].

 • Establish the corridor as a destination for recreation, cultural experiences and education [this is typical town-planning "consultants-speak".]

• Enhance and protect biodiversity [this is whole-of-State government policy so is not specific to Powell's Creek.];

• Improve the physical integration between the communities of Strathfield, Concord, Sydney Olympic Park and Homebush [a very interesting aim as south of the Parramatta Road the surrounds of Powell Creek had become very developed, such that regaining public access along a narrow corridor there would present far greater difficulties, and be most complex in negotiations, than for anywhere else further downstream along the creek/canal].

GHLCT proceeded to hold various consultation meetings and workshops: 

The term "Greater Homebush" appears to have sprung from the Olympics Park and surrounding urbanisation at Homebush Bay.  There are usages such as "Sydney Olympic Park sits within Homebush Bay at the heart of Greater Homebush, a subregion of Sydney. It is located 14 kilometres west of Sydney Central Business District".  The term possibly arose about 2000(?) and has certainly become more entrenched, especially with planners, since that time.   It is so far a term that has been little know an not used in the wide community but that will probably change.   The NSW State 2001 buget stated that "The Greater Homebush Project will ensure that the development of the area complements the growth of Parramatta".   In the NSW State Infrastructure Strategy 2008-09 to 2017-18 this 'sub-region'  was mentioned as the "Greater Homebush precinct".   

Those primarily involved in the GHLCT work were declared to be:  Strathfield and City of Canada Bay Councils, Sydney Olympic Park Authority and two Planning NSW Urban Improvement Programs known as "Parramatta Road" project  and "Centres Travelling Together" project.

The "Centres Travelling Together" project has not here been looked into yet but the "Parramatta Road" project has by various names been a planning focus that has been ongoing for years - and is highly influential to the Homebush segment of Parramatta Road gaining a seeming "highrise canyon" future fate.  During preparation of this webpage all Strathfield councillors were contacted as to what they knew of these matters.   None knew of anything noteworthy it would appear and no useful information was obained that way.   

In the "PARRAMATTA ROAD STRATEGIC PLAN - DRAFT REPORT - REVISION D - AUGUST 2002" it is stated (page 133) that "Strathfield DCP 20 proposes up-scaling urban development" along this section of Parramatta Road.   The strategic plan defends doing that by stating:  ".... the strategically located but under-developed land on Parramatta Road represents a major regional asset.  It is an ideal site to concentrate urban consolidation projects; it is also an opportunity to remove development pressure from the surrounding low-density suburbs.  In light of Parramatta Road’s historical role as a dumping ground for ‘not-in-my-backyard’ developments, it might be objected that a strategy which involves attracting higher densities to the Road corridor is simply a new variation on an old theme.  This document argues that by concentrating development, it is possible to achieve better urban outcomes for both the Road and the region than occur currently.  Further, with appropriate planning mechanisms in place, not only can the errors of the past be avoided, an entirely new future for the Road can be created".   

In other words the Parramatta Road project appears to have virtually echo'ed what Burwood Council told residents years ago - namely that by turning the centre of Burwood into tall highrise it would be possible to save the rest of the municipality.  

And it is also similar to the many claims proved fales by the passage of time that "urban consolidation" in the inner suburbs could save the rural and sem-rural fringe of greater Sydney.   But having consolidated the core, urban development is now simply rolling over those fringes too (e.g. NW and SW Cumberland Plain).

That a highrise canyon along Parramatta Road would save the rest of Homebush seems just as likely to be just a hollow promise eventually, but for the short term it might perhaps hold true(?).

Genevieve was apparently the GHLC project manager at some stage and a Dr Kerry Keogh is another named person who was involved.  He was involved in assuring "stakeholders" about Strathfield Council's support for the project.   Dr Keogh was also connected apparently with the "Parramatta Road" component of things as abovementioned (assumed to be similar or the same as the "Parramatta Road Taskforce" (rejuvenation workshops for Parramatta Road to the east of Homebush had been held for the community in previous years - e.g. the project "Parramatta Road: 2000 and Beyond: A Strategic Framework" launched in 1998).  This Dr Keogh also appears to be the one mentioned in NSW Parliament on 23 February 2005 and 24 February 2005:

"""""""""""""

Ms PETA SEATON: My question without notice is directed to the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, and Minister for Natural Resources. When he employed the corrupt former general manager of Strathfield council, former Labor staffer Kerry Keogh, on the Parramatta Road task force in the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources, was it based on the recommendation of the honourable member for Strathfield and her friend the former Strathfield Mayor John Abi-Saab, who admitted yesterday before the Independent Commission Against Corruption that he paid corrupt developer Michael Saklaoui $15,000 to tape Alfred Tsang taking a bribe?

( http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20050223050 )

[ This question directed to MP Craig Knowles received only a nonsense or un-useful answer from that Minister. }

Mr JOHN BROGDEN: My question without notice is addressed to the Premier. Will the Premier order an investigation by the Department of Local Government into why Hassan Harb, known as Sam the Paving Man, was awarded over $170,000 in contracts at Strathfield Municipal Council by corrupt general manager Kerry Keogh, a former Labor staffer, without a public tender after Sam the Paving Man donated $5,000 to corrupt former Strathfield mayor John Abi-Saab's campaign and $5,000 to the campaign of the honourable member for Strathfield?

"""""""""""""

Kerry Keogh is holder of a Doctor of Philosophy from Australian National University, 1973 (subject/topic unknown).  He was the General Manager of Strathfield Municipal Council between 2001 also 2004, CEO of Elderslie Finance Ltd in 1999-2000 and before then a deputy CEO of the Australian Hotels Association NSW.  As referred to by Peta Seaton he was apparently performing 'project leader' type roles with the NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources, although the details of such remain unknown.

Also in 2004, before Kerry Keogh left, Strathfield Council was in the news (Anne Davies, Urban Affairs Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 March 2004 ) over some controversial sponsorhip matters involving him.  The Council had accepted $10,000 in sponsorship from a developer, Crown International,  who was "asking the council to rezone a heavily contaminated waste dump for residential properties".  Another sponsor, the Hannas Group, was seeking to develop the Enfield brick pit where the company had the 'problem' of what to do about a colony of endangered green and gold bell frogs.  The Council had debated whether the site owned by Crown International in Strathfield South should be rezoned to allow residential development.  It was said to have been a dump during the 1960s for chemical and putrescible waste, thereafter classified as "unhealthy building land" and "undesirable" for residential development by the Environment Protection Agency in 1999.   Later on, after the site was acquired by Crown, this company sought rezoning to overcome that classification and hence allow building of  120 townhouses and units.  The council staff initially recommended against rezoning, on health grounds, but effort to counter that recommendation continued.   Councillors Cathy Jones and Nick Lucchinelli stated that accepting sponsorship from developers who had applications before the council represented a conflict of interest.  The Mayor, Cr Abi-Saab said he could not see any conflict of interest and the general manager, Dr Kerry Keogh, said the process was transparent ( http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/25/1079939787801.html ).  

Not long after this, on 9 February 2005, the Sydney Morning Herald published ongoing news from an ICAC enquiry that a developer, Anne Bechara, had told ICAC that Strathfield councillor John Abi-Saab conspired with her to lie to the Independent Commission Against Corruption about their roles in the alleged plot to unseat the council's mayor, Alfred Tsang.  Developer Bechara supposedly had been losing millions of dollars in potential profits from a series of development sites when Cr Tsang reversed plans to raise building height limits on Liverpool Road.  The ICAC inquiry heard that her son, Marcus, copied a recording of Cr Tsang accepting a cash bribe from another developer and returned it to Cr Abi-Saab, who is alleged to have wanted to use it to bribe Tsang into getting his vote for Abi-Saab to reclaim the mayoralty.  By that time Strathfield's General Manager Kerry Keogh had resigned from his "position" at the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources.  The inquiry also revealed that Kerry Keogh was a former business partner of the developer Michael Saklaoui, who made the Tsang recording.  Dr Keogh was also identified in a taped telephone conversation played to the inquiry in which he was telling Cr Abi-Saab that investigators were heading to the Council to raid its files ( http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Bribery-inquiry-told-of-lie-about-videotape-evidence/2005/02/08/1107625209708.html ).

After Kerry Keogh resigned, the Mayor Cr Tsang ordered an internal inquiry by the former president of the Local Government Association, Peter Woods, into the council's affairs.  Also controversial at the same time was that MP Eddie Obeid was believed to be trying to gain control of the Homebush Bowling Club in Pomeroy Street (and its 29 poker machine licences).  Mr Obeid was reported as saying that the aim was to get premises to "help children".  The seed capital would be coming from six Lebanese developers, but Mr Obeid was reluctant to name them.   Cr Abi-Saab, the major focus of ICAC enquiries, had been introduced by Eddie Obeid to Virginia Judge (later MP for Strathfield) who had convinced him to run on the council and for Mayor.  Cr Abi-Saab in turn claimed in his defence that he had known Cr. Tsang was corrupt and that this was the reason why he (Abi-Saab) was attempting to dislodge him from the mayoralty.  

Another commentator posited that this was all part of a larger 'revolving door' syndrome, stating that "Kerry Keogh, the corrupt General Manager of Strathfield Council, was given a job on the State Government's Parramatta Road Taskforce (until the Strathfield ICAC hearing) and Joe Scimone went to work for his old mate Joe Tripodi at NSW Maritime (until the Wollongong ICAC hearing). Keogh, incidentally (or perhaps not), was former chief of staff of ALP minister Ross Free. In the US they call this the 'revolving door' ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Government-industry_revolving_door ".

Save Our Sydney Suburbs (NSW) Inc. made a News Release in February 2005 stating inter alia: "The Strathfield Council ICAC inquiry about the machinations surrounding the videotaping of the Mayor allegedly accepting a bribe is hitting the headlines. A Mr. Saklaoul is accused of taking the video in order to try to control the mayor. Interestingly there is a DIPNR link. As SOS member Anthony Meaney points out that Mr Kerry Keogh, Saklaoul's partner and former Strathfield General Manager, is now NSW Planning department's project officer for the Parramatta Road task force which is examining a major increase in building heights along the road".   However, Dr Keogh had soon resigned from that too.

The Powell's Creek project was termed "Powells Creek landscape design framework : harbour to hinterland".

There are no doubt hard copies of the documentation of this project but very useful is a CD-ROM produced of such.  This is two volumes on 1 CD-ROM (Vol. 1 "Design strategy and implementation Plan" : Vol. 2 "Research, analysis and consultation").  Copy of the CD-ROM is at the State Library of NSW, Sydney, with call number MAV/ DISC10/ 346; R RAV/ DISC10/ 954.   Presumably copies were also given to the two participating Councils.  Copy of the CD-ROM is also at the National Library.

The project reporting was done or coordinated by Clouston Associates of 6A Wetherill Street, Leichhardt, landscape architects and urban designers.  Additionally, Clouston Associates did the Powell's Creek Masterplan work for Strathfield Council.

The 2002 "Draft" landscape design framework report includes, near the end, that:  "Once the LDF (Landscape Development Framework) is approved a working party needs to be formed to push the project and pressure various bodies for funding" (vol.2. page 12).

Was it approved?   Was a "working party" formed?    What is happening?

It probably was approved, as an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by by Claire O'Rourke Urban Affairs Reporter on 24 May 2003, titled "Greening the creek that industry forgot" is recognisably about it.   It refers to it as "A plan to link sites along the creek, announced yesterday by the NSW Government"; and mentions "The 30-hectare corridor stretches from Homebush Bay, through Bicentennial Park, Mason Park Wetlands, Powells Creek Reserve to the Strathfield town centre".    Opening up the section south of Parramatta Road is the greater challenge.   The article obtained comment from Canada Bay Council but no comment from Strathfield Council.   The Minister for Planning is recorded to have launched the Powell's Creek "Harbour to Hinterland Project" on 19 November 2002 which also might mark when the draft framework was approved(?).

This all appears to have been a major planning exercise as the Greater Homebush Living Centres program appears to have been allocated $100,000 of funding to develop a comprehensive strategy.   Presumably a very great amount of that went to consultants.   A lack of local knowledge and local history is apparent repeatedly through the documentation.   For example the project team is recorded to have "made several attempts to engage the involvement of the indigenous community".   Not surprisingly that met with zero success as even by Edward Powell's time there was no longer any known local indigenous community along Powell's Creek.   

As to whatever is happening since then under the framework, in 2003 the following rather cryptic announcement appeared about building a bridge somewhere along the corridor:

A 2003 grant by Department of Planning - http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/harbour/pdf/harbour_projects2003_04.pdf

(cf. 2007 grant of "$20,000 to Canada Bay & Strathfield Council for continuation of the Hamilton Street Bridge across Powell's Creek - 'Harbour to Hinterland' long term strategy to provide a link between Homebush Bay and Strathfield Town Centre" - which might refer to the abovementioned bridge, or another one? ). 

The sentence "The project entails the construction of a shared pedestrian/cycle bridge across a widened Strathfield Creek as part of a future continuous accessway along the Powells Creek corridor" is typical of a lot of the obtuse/obscure verbage which also occurs  within the 'draft framework' documentation itself.   Presumably "Strathfield Creek" as mentioned above actually means Powell's Creek as there is no creek known of that has ever been called 'Strathfield Creek'.   The actual whereabouts of the bridge is not mentioned.   Such "locational slack" also occurs repeatedly throughout the framework documentation too - e.g. planning recommendation spots shown on graphics in the documentation appear to be (slightly) misplaced (e.g. near Elva Street?).

And what will a "widened" creek mean in practice?    In the framework documentation there is mention of "Naturalising and reprofiling of the creek opposite the Arnott's Biscuits site and south of the Parramatta Road".   This is most interesting, however elsewhere in the same documentation it is also mentioned that such might not be possible or even desirable - leaving the reader still up in the air as to just exactly what was the 'draft' plan desiring or recommending in that regard.   

The only definite thing that is so far known of is that in 2009 the Department of Planning acquired an important part of the former Arnotts' land, alongside the Powells Creek canal between Parramatta Road and Allen Street.  This was acquired on Council’s behalf for the purpose of open space.  That is a significant addition to public and accessible land ownership along the corridor.   According to illustrations in framework documentation the land besides the creek immediately across the southern side of Parramatta Road seems to be likewise desired as public land.  That land is currently occupied by the "Car Sell" used car yard.   The land on the northern side of the highway, which was acquired by DEP, still has on its Parramatta Road fencing an old Arnnott's ownerhsip sign plus, interestingly, a faded Strathfield Council DA notice.   Thus there must have been a development application on it put to Strathfield Council by the owner, prior to the sale to DEP instead.   DEP indicated that it would transfer this land to Strathfield Council in 2010.   

On the basis of knowing that it would be getting this land, Council in late 2009 made an application for $69,000 grant funding under Round Two of the Federal Government Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program 2009-10; to be used somehow on beautifying/improving this land parcel.   This is a patch of land which for a time was generating complaints to Council about the number of stray cats there.

Interesting parts in the Framework documentation (cf. Fig. 5.5) includes for near Elva Street "Design tidal beacon as minor interpretative node describing the souce of Powells Creek and Aboriginal associations with the area", and also planned was a 'scuptural piece' to be placed near Strathfield Station for describing the history of Powells Creek.   The Minister for Planning, The Hon. Brad Hazzard BA, DipEd, LLB(NSW), LLM(Syd) MP, was contacted in Otober 2011 to enquire if there had been any progress with planning either the "beacon" for the creek near Elva Street or the "scupture" for near the Strathfield railway station.  This enquiry was acknowledged on 7 October 2011 ("Please be assured that your correspondence has been referred to the appropriate staff member for all necessary action".

SOME REFERENCES

( .. an incomplete list )

Bowd, D.G., 1986.   Hawkesbury journey : up the Windsor Road from Baulkham Hills.  Library of Australian History, 255 pp.

Campbell,  J. F., 1936.  Liberty Plains of the First Free Settlers, 1793.   Journal and Proceedings, Royal Australian Historical Society.  Vol 22, part 5, , pp. 317-329.

Fletcher, B. H., 1967.  Powell, Edward (1762 - 1814).   Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, pp. 347-348.  Melbourne University Press.

Geotechnique Pty Ltd, 2010.  A.J. Bush and Sons Pty Ltd.  Proposed mixed development.  Lots A and B in DP 312989.  30-40 Parramatta Road, Homebush.  Further Investigation and remedial action plan.  Report No. 11920/1-AB.

Nicol, John: John Nicol, Mariner: Life and Adventures 1776-1801, Melbourne, Text Publishing, 1997. ISBN 0871137550

Paish, L., 1992.  Hawkesbury Road and the Development of North Springwood. Springwood Historical Society.  56pp.

Parkinson, Liz, 1989.  The Underwoods: Lock, Stock and Barrel. The Lazy Lizard, Terrigal. 272 pp.

NSW State Library.  Newspaper index under "Edward Powell". 

Watson, F. (Ed..), 1914-1925.  Historical Records of Australia. Series I.  Governors' Despatches to and from England. 1788-1848, Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, Sydney.