Discover Mandemar

Early land and the Neale family

Council’s heritage survey records John Oxley using the name Mandemar on 9 October 1822. It traces a 400-acre holding from a promise of land made to Robert Roberts in 1819, through David Allan’s family, to solicitor William Henry Moore in 1824. Cattle were run there before the formal deed issued in 1834. The sequence is a reminder that occupation, a promise of a grant and the issue of a deed were different events.^[5]

The Neale family and the property called Mandemar feature in a 2012 Society article following the donation of a portrait of Sarah Neale, née Nicholson. The article provides family and land-history leads that should be checked against the underlying grants, deeds and family records.^[7]

The Society’s account says Sarah Neale died at Mandemar in 1853 and John Neale sold the property in 1860. Their son John Thomas Neale was involved in the early Fitz Roy iron venture at Mittagong, connecting one family’s rural holding with the district’s industrial history. The newsletter is a starting point for checking the dates and family relationships against original records.^[8]

Objects can carry this rural history beyond the district. Young Historical Museum identifies a wine press made at Mandemar by Joseph Vogt and later taken to Young by his son William. It links the locality with family movement, craft and vineyard work in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.^[6]

Schools, timber and the landscape

The district’s school appears in the NSW education history under Mangellore, with the note that it was called Mandemar until July 1913. The dataset lists half-time teaching from January 1876, later provisional and public-school periods, and a final half-time period ending in May 1922. High Range’s school record identifies Mangellore as its partner during some of these years; periods and school locations should be checked against original education files before tracing an individual pupil.^[10]

Timber also linked Mandemar with New Berrima. A 1964 Southern Portland Cement staff account recalls that Bill McDowall moved a sawmill from Mandemar to the works site by bullock team during construction. The mill cut timber for the works; the article records the recollection of a long-serving employee rather than a complete history of the mill.^[9]

The 1946 Parish of Berrima map shows Mandemar Flat and surrounding numbered portions near the western parish boundary. It provides a way to relate rural land parcels and roads to the broader district, but its annotations need to be checked against deeds and survey plans before treating any name as ownership at a particular date.^[11]