Burrawang

Selectors and a village in the Brush

The Society’s account of the Cullen family places the first selections south of Wingecarribee Swamp in 1862. John Cullen was among the early selectors; he and his brother James later became hotel licensees and owners at Burrawang and Moss Vale, and both served on Moss Vale Municipal Council. The newsletter credits family records, the Society’s biography files and newspaper research as sources for this family history.^[13]

The Cullen family’s hotel interests were linked to the roads beyond the village. The Society’s family history records that Cullen and Haddin won an 1886 mail contract from Moss Vale to Nowra, travelling through Yarrunga, Barrengarry, Kangaroo Valley and Cambewarra. The service joined the railway town with farms, inns and communities towards the coast.^[27]

A photograph of Daniel Mumberson, taken in 1915, introduces another family in the Society’s collection. The newsletter records that Daniel, Barbara and their children came from Keswick to Australia in 1853, lived at Kiama, and moved to Burrawang in the 1860s. While building a home, Daniel and two sons earned a living cutting shingles and pit-sawing timber; Daniel and Barbara are buried in Burrawang General Cemetery.^[18]

A Council heritage survey records that a Church of England denominational school was built in the late 1860s and that St David’s Anglican Church opened on 22 October 1886. The Burrawang and Wildes Meadow Community Association’s historical account dates the post office to 1865, the Sassafras Inn licence to 1866 and the general store to 1867. These early services show a privately developed village serving selectors and farms rather than a government township. Council’s archives also preserve Burrawang/Robertson burial registers, an important source for local families.^[10][11][12]

Philip Morton’s account of local policing describes William Barrett buying 50 acres in the early 1870s and subdividing it into town blocks. Barrett and his brother Leonard also operated a steam flour mill and sawmill. This provides a promising lead for tracing the village’s subdivision through surviving plans and land records; the newsletter does not reproduce the sale plan.^[16]

Farms, shows and land sales

The Burrawang and West Camden Agricultural Society’s first annual show in 1880 linked the village’s farming community with the surrounding district. Philip Morton records that heavy rain made travel difficult and the following show was held at Moss Vale, where John Cullen lent land near the railway station and his public hall for exhibits. The Society later held its show at Robertson; these moves illustrate the practical importance of transport and venues to agricultural gatherings.^[17]

Community life also left buildings and records. The Burrawang School of Arts history dates the first Oddfellows Hall to 1883 and the purchase of the hall by the School of Arts to 1903. The community association’s account describes an agricultural club established in 1878 and a show held at Burrawang in 1880. These organisations offer starting points for tracing local farming families and the village’s social life.^[14][15]

Silverspring was also a working farm before its advertised subdivision. A February 1887 sale notice described A. A. Dunnicliff’s 208-acre seed and stud farm. In April the mortgagee advertised it for auction in farm blocks; in June the Goulburn Herald reported a private purchase of the farm by the Barrett brothers. The 1887 sale plan and the Barretts’ 1889 town-allotment advertisement can be studied together, but their precise boundaries require further comparison.^[24][25][26]

Another sale-plan lead survives in the State Library’s Camden County list: Silverspring, Burrawang, with Wilds Meadows Road identified as a boundary and an auction date of 16 April 1887. The catalogue entry is a useful starting point for locating the actual plan. Its relationship, if any, to the Barrett brothers’ later town subdivision has not been established.^[23]

A surviving advertisement brings the Barrett subdivision into focus. For an auction at the Club Hotel on 8 June 1889, Hayter, Graham and Moses advertised 180 town allotments on behalf of the Barrett brothers. The notice described land extending south from the hotel towards the new Church of England building and east from the vendors’ general store towards T. McCollum’s property; it mentioned lithographic plans available in several district centres. A later newspaper correspondent reported that 180 blocks were sold to local purchasers. The advertisement is evidence of the proposed sale and its marketing; the exact boundaries and individual purchasers need the original plan and land records.^[21][22]

The police station and the later village

Residents sought their own constable as the village grew. The Society’s account traces a station approved in 1894, initially in a room in the Gardiner family shop, and a move in 1903 to a house in Barrett Street. The station closed in 1920 and the district was supervised from Robertson.^[16]