THE FOUR SOUTH COAST 'ESTATES'

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One significant feature of the NSW South Coast – or at least of the NSW South Coast’s history – are four substantial rural estates; the Coolangatta Estate near Bomaderry, the Mort Estate at Bodalla, the Kameruka Estate near Candelo, and the Ayrdale Estate near Wolumla.

They were all predominantly dairying concerns. They were all developed by entrepreneurs to enable large landholdings they held to be profitably developed. And they all had their own small ‘villages’ – things like a general store, a butchery, a post office a community hall - that provided basic facilities to those who worked on the estate, because in all cases these estates were located a considerable distance from the nearest large town which could not then have been easily been reached on a regular basis by those workers.

These so-called Estates were built for practical purposes – to provide housing to workers – but they also reflected something of a British utopian socialist or philanthropic paternalism ethos that was reflected in planned worker estates in England – at places like Saltaire in West Yorkshire that was developed for the workforce at local textile mills, and later emerged at the Cadbury’s Bourneville Model Village and Lord Leverhulme’s Port Sunlight village, to name just a few.

These South Coast Estates, as you’ll discover, had similarities but each was distinctively different. I’ll talk about them in the order they were established – which conveniently is also working from the most northern of them down to the most southerly of them.

So let’s start with the Coolangatta Estate.

In June 1822 Alexander Berry and his business partner Edward Wollstonecraft obtained a grant of 10,000 acres and 100 convicts from the NSW Government – so they were assigned 100 convicts for each 100 acres of land. They settled on the northern shore of the Shoalhaven River ‘at the foot of a hill called by the natives ‘Collungatta’. ‘Collungatta’ was the Aboriginal word for fine view.

By settling there, official European settlement of the NSW South Coast had begun.

The initial grant on the north side of the river rapidly expanded to the south of the river through purchases of grants that had been given to other settlers. By 1863 (so 40 years after the Berrys first settled the area) their property had quadrupled in size to more than 40,000 acres.

A self-supporting village was rapidly established at Coolangatta. A combination of convict (which Berry referred to as 'Government Men') and free labour was used to drain the swamps, grow tobacco, potatoes, maize, barley and wheat and rear pigs and cattle, with the cows providing milk, cheese and hides. The Estate also bred thoroughbred horses that were exported to India.

Mills and workshops were established with tradesmen engaged in cask-making, building refabrication, leather treatment and, later, the production of condensed milk and gelatine. Shipbuilding was also commenced at an early point, with the first vessel being launched in 1824.

In order to provide shipping access to the Estate, Alexander Berry had Hamilton Hume and three convict labourers cut a 209-yard canal linking the Shoalhaven River to the Crookhaven River. This was necessary because the mouth of the Shoalhaven River was silted up and not open to the sea. That canal was completed in just twelve days and was the first canal constructed in Australia.

Five years after arriving at Coolangatta, Berry married his business partner, Edward Wollstonecraft’s sister, Elizabeth.

Edward Wollstonecraft died in 1832, so Berry then invited his three brothers John, William and David and two sisters to come from Scotland to live at his Coolangatta settlement.

Convict transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840, and with it so did the labour provided by Berry’s ‘Government Men’. Berry’s experience of tenant-farming in Scotland led, in the 1850s, to his introducing an arrangement called ‘clearing leases’ with new settlers. Under this scheme, tenants were given five years rent-free to clear and fence an area assigned to them, before they then became usual rent-paying tenants. This arrangement effectively enabled Berry to develop the Coolangatta Estate and for him to establish the township of Broughton Creek (which is now Berry; it was established where it is because ships were able to sail up Broughton Creek to the outskirts of the town from the Shoalhaven River) and also the townships of Numbaa, Greenwell Point and Bomaderry.
By 1868 the population of Coolangatta Estate had reached 300 and the area surrounding the Estate was declared a municipality, much to Alexander Berry's disgust. So, he then refused to pay rates on his Coolangatta Estate to the new Shoalhaven Municipality, arguing that his property should not form part of the local government area. Subsequent actions in the NSW Supreme Court and to the Privy Council backed Berry’s stance.

In 1873 Alexander Berry died and the Estate passed to his younger brother David. David Berry nurtured the development of Broughton Creek village. He set aside land for an agricultural showground, and gave land on the four corners of the town to the Church of England, Presbyterian, Wesleyan and Roman Catholic churches. Between 1823 and 1905 (so over about an 80 year time period) over 145 miles of drains were cut that resulted in the reclamation of 31 square miles of swamp land.

David died in 1889 at the age of 94. The following year Broughton Creek village was renamed Berry in honour of Alexander and David's contribution to the region.

Upon David's death, the Coolangatta Estate passed to his cousin, Sir John Hay.

Many improvements to the Coolangatta Estate were undertaken during John’s management and additional land was developed. This resulted, in 1900, in the removal of the last Aboriginal people who had been living at the northern foot of Coolangatta Mountain and their relocation to a newly-established Roseby Park Aboriginal Reserve at Orient Point on the southern side of the Crookhaven River. Health problems in the Coolangatta Aboriginal camp are recorded as the official reason given for their removal.

Sir John died in 1909 and the Estate passed to his half-brother Alexander. Alexander is considered to have been a diligent and hard-working owner. He helped establish a Butter Factory in Berry and introduced pasteurization of milk to the area.

Alexander Hay died in 1941 and his son, Alexander Berry Hay, inherited the property. However, under the ownership of Berry Hay, the Estate was not maintained and for the next decade it severely suffered from neglect. In 1946, the original Coolangatta homestead caught fire and was destroyed. Then, in 1947, Berry Hay’s second wife sold much of the property to a local farmer, Colin Bishop.

In 1971, in the face of significant advice to the contrary, Colin Bishop began major work to restore the old convict-built buildings at Coolangatta. The original historic village, surrounded by vineyards, is now a major South Coast tourist destination.

(One of Alexander Berry's schooners, the Coolangatta, was driven ashore by strong winds and was wrecked on the coast of southern Queensland in August 1846. When a township was established nearby in 1883, it took the name of Berry’s ship.)

Now let’s move south to the Bodalla Estate, which was established and owned by Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, an opportunistic and very successful Sydney businessman.

Mort was – among other things - an auctioneer and a broker of wool, hides and tallow. In 1848, he extended his business dealings to financing pastoral properties in eastern Australia and, subsequently, was approached by John Hawdon, a squatter on a 13,000-acre ‘Boat Alley’ property on the southern side of the Tuross River.

Hawdon had secured a 14-year lease on the property in 1847 and had an option to purchase the land for £1 per acre. He needed the finance to do so.

Mort negotiated to take a half interest in the property, in a partnership with Hawdon. That deal was finalised and the land was purchased in 1856. Eight days later the title to the land was transferred to Mort.

Within two months, the 13,000 acres of land had been surveyed for subdivision into 32 blocks. These were put to auction (the auction being, naturally, conducted by Mort & Company!) as ‘The Devonshire Estate’. The few blocks that sold realised between £6 and £10 per acre (so, basically giving Mort a 600% to 1000% profit)!

Unfortunately for Hawdon, not enough of the blocks sold and he found himself in financial trouble – which, by 1860, resulted in Mort becoming the unencumbered owner of Boat Alley (Bodalla).

Mort originally intended a 4,000 acre ‘Comerang’ portion of Bodalla to be his country retreat and he engaged noted Sydney architect Edmund Blacket (who designed Sydney’s St Andrews Cathedral and the main Sydney University building) to design his ‘Home Farm’ residence. This included a central room capable of accommodating over 100 people where Church of England services were held on Sundays. These were celebrated by Thomas Mort himself whenever he was in residence at Bodalla. (The Catholics celebrated mass in Comerang’s Coach House.)

By 1861 Mort had, according to the Sydney Morning Herald (14.2.1861) decided ‘all available land is to be converted, under the new arrangement, into one monster dairy farm’ so that he could supply fresh milk at a cheap price to Sydney. (Mort, though, actually had a much broader vision: to make Australia the principal country from which Europeans – especially those in Britain and France - sourced their food.)

Gangs of Chinese labourers were engaged to help clear the property and Mort was not afraid to import the most up-to-date labour-saving devices for his property from the United States and Europe. Where he was faced with an obstacle, he looked for solutions – for example, early on, developing refrigerated railway carriages to enable fresh milk to be transported from the Berrima-Moss Vale area to Sydney.

As might be expected, a wide range of agricultural activities were pursued - crops included maize and potatoes, and pigs were raised to supply ham and bacon, which was then sold through Mort’s Bodalla Stores in Phillip Street in central Sydney.

And Bodalla’s milk, of course, was used to produce cheese and butter.

Cheese making was commenced at Comerang in the early 1860s. Local dairy farmers were already making cheese and sending it to Sydney. What Mort did was to hugely increase production and to ensure that Bodalla Cheddar Cheese was both of high quality and ‘of unvarying character’. In achieving this, he transformed what had essentially been a local cottage industry into a large and efficient manufacturing enterprise, and created a well-respected ‘Bodalla’ brand for his cheese and other products.

By March 1864 Mort’s Bodalla dairy was producing about one ton of cheese a week.

So, within a relatively short period, the Bodalla Estate had become what was described as ‘The model dairy farm of New South Wales’ and ‘one of the few showplaces of the industrial progress and enterprise of the Colony’.

By 1874 – so 18 years after Mort purchased the property - the Bodalla Estate was employing 230 people and a village had been created to supply the needs of their families. In the late 1870s/early 1880s the township moved to its current site, following extensive flooding of the area on several occasions in previous years, and the re-routing of the main north-south road. With the exception of the school, every building in the town (including 52 cottages that had been erected) was Estate owned.

Unfortunately, Thomas Mort died of pneumonia on 9th May 1878.

The Bodalla Estate was valued at £600,000 at this time.

Mort had envisaged a substantial Church of England Church would be erected in Bodalla, and that church was to become All Saints’ Church and a memorial to both Thomas and his first wife Theresa.

The Church was designed by Edmund Blacket who had been the architect of St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney and the main University of Sydney building. Edmund Blacket’s son, Cyril, who was also an architect, and who incidentally designed the rather unusual War Memorial Gates in Nowra, took over supervision of the project.

The Church was built in two stages – the first between 1880 and 1883, the second from 1899 to 1901. The granite that was used in its construction was quarried on the Estate. The Church was intended to be finished with a tall spire, but that was never built.

Whether Mort’s dreams for Bodalla would have ever been fully realised is debatable. In particular, transport of the Estate’s products to Sydney, and to the other potential markets he believed existed around the world, was a challenge because there was no nearby suitable port – an issue his successors tried to address, unsuccessfully, when they constructed a tramway from Bodalla to North Narooma in 1883 or 1884 .

Control of the Estate initially passed to Trustees. Under their control, the dairy herd increased and production from the cheese factory rose to around 300 tons per year.

In 1887, following the passing of a special Act of Parliament, ownership of the Estate was transferred to the Bodalla Company Ltd which was wholly owned by the Mort family. For some years expansion of the Estate continued, improvements were made to the Estate, and the Bodalla brand products were imaginatively and aggressively promoted:

For Christmas 1892, the Estate produced the two largest cheeses ever made in Australia – one 4,000 lb, the other 3,000 lb, each containing £30 in half sovereigns…the following Christmas, the Estate made two even bigger cheeses for (Sydney grocer James) Kidman, each weighed about two tons and contained fifty £1 coupons. They were shipped to Sydney in the ‘Trident’ from Moruya. To maximise the promotional value, tenders were invited to transport the cheeses from the steamer in Sydney and cart them around the city and suburbs using teams of 18 bullocks. Evidently, Kidman’s shop windows had to be removed to get the cheese into the shop.

In 1893 the Bodalla Estate’s best land was surveyed and then subdivided into 13 farms that were leased to tenant farmers for seven years. The company guaranteed to keep the cheese and butter factories open and to buy the tenants’ produce at ‘highly remunerative prices’ – something they were unable to do, particularly because significant competition was now being experienced from Bega cheese. By 1900, most of the farms were again being worked by men receiving wages from Bodalla Estate.

During the first two decades of the 20th century the Bodalla Estate, under the management of one Douglas Hutchinson, seemed to be resistant to change, did not keep up with changes in that were taking place in the dairy industry, preferred to pay dividends to the company shareholders rather than investing profits in upgrading infrastructure, and seemed oblivious to market changes (the Kameruka Estate, for example, was now producing Cheddar, Edam, Leicester, Derby, Stilton and other ‘fancy cheeses’; the Bodalla Estate produced only Cheddar Cheese).

By June 1914 plans were afoot to sell the Estate, but these were put on hold when World War I commenced.

In 1923, by which time the Estate was in ‘a deplorable state’ and was being seriously impacted by drought, 15 parcels of land were offered for sale. A further 12 were offered for sale the next year. Not all sold – and the indications are that Bodalla Estate had dropped in total value over the years to less than £140,000 (so to less than ¼ of its value at the time when Thomas Mort died). Over a few years from 1926, all the properties in the Bodalla township were sold – mostly to those already living or working in the town.

Dissatisfaction with prices being paid by the Bodalla Company led to it ultimately being purchased by a newly formed, dairy farmer-owned Bodalla Co-operative Cheese Company. Cheese production ceased in 1951, with local milk then transported to a Streets Ice Cream facility in Moruya until that was closed the following year. A new Bodalla Cheese factory opened in 1954 and operated until 1987, after which the local milk supplies were sent to the Bega Dairy Co-operative. The residual assets owned by the Bodalla Estate, including a ‘Big Cheese’ restaurant and tourist complex, were sold in late 1989.

Let’s now move south to The Kameruka Estate, near Candelo.

The Kameruka Estate was one man’s dream, one man’s vision. And that man was Robert Lucas Lucas-Tooth.
In 1863 be joined his two brothers in the management team of Tooth’s Kent Brewery in Sydney. In 1868 he became a partner in that business – so he had money to invest!

In 1864 he purchased the leasehold of the 75,000 acre Kameruka Estate from his uncle. By 1871 (7 years later) the Estate had reduced in size to 22,000 acres, but Robert Lucas-Tooth now owned that area freehold.

Robert’s objective was to develop the farm in a way that would implement his own humanitarian social ideals and become a “transplanted segment of the English countryside; a largely self-contained community based on the English agricultural estate system”, “providing his tenant farmers with six-roomed cottages, a school, a church, a meeting hall, store and post office. He planted English trees on a large-scale, built an ornamental lake, kept an aviary of golden pheasants and liberated all kinds of game: pheasants, quails, hares and foxes” … and, naturally, as you do, provided the Estate with a full-size cricket oval!!

Robert never lived at the Estate, although he visited it on a number of occasions. And Kameruka Estate was not his only interest: in the late 1870s he also developed an 820-acre Eridge Park estate at Burradoo near Bowral into a ‘model park’, and ‘in 1882 he built a castellated Gothic mansion at Darling Point, with a ballroom larger than theo ne at Government House, and named it Swifts after the family home in Kent. Astutely, he employed outstanding managers at Kameruka who would send detailed reports to him on a monthly basis.

He died in England in February 1915, reputedly of a ‘broken heart’ following the deaths of two of his three sons who were killed on active service during World War I. His other son, Archibald Leonard Lucas-Tooth, took over responsibility for the Kameruka Estate, but died shortly afterwards, in September 1918, when he contracted influenza whilst serving in the British army in France.

The period in which the Estate was at its most successful was that time when Robert Lucas-Tooth was its owner. He established a core business on the Estate (dairying), but he was innovative and was not afraid to trial new things.
And, when necessary, he imported skilled labour to the area to ensure that every one of his ventures was given a maximum chance of succeeding.

The Estate at one time raised pigs to produce bacon and ham, had a flour mill until it was found that wheat would not grow satisfactorily and that mill was eventually converted into a cornflour mill and was moved to Merimbula, had vineyards, and had orchards producing pears, peaches, apricots and apples,

At the dairies on the Estate the milking families were provided with well-built cottages of six large sized rooms protected from the hot Australian summers by a verandah. At the back was a detached kitchen sixteen feet square, and outside a brick oven.

Each family was responsible for the care and milking of one hundred cows and were paid at the rate of a penny a gallon of milk. The milk received in the morning had to be delivered at one of the three cheese factories by 7am, and in the afternoon milking commenced at 3pm so it could be in the cheese vats before dusk.

A ‘Manipulator’, or head cheesemaker, was in charge of each cheese factory – and there were three of these.

In the early days, Religious Instruction was provided by Ministers calling at private homes, but in 1865 a Church of England Committee was formed and the now famous Architect, Edmund Blackett, was called upon to design the ‘Holy Trinity’ Church. As with schools, the land for the Church was provided by the Estate. A stipend to pay the Minister was collected quarterly from the Estate’s tenants and it was ten shillings per family.

Two schools were built on the Estate - Kameruka Public School and Toothdale Public School.

The Estate’s village included a general store, a butchery, a Post Office and a community hall.

Due to the distance from the townships of Bega, Merimbula and Pambula the residents of Kameruka were a close-knit family and much of the entertainment was provided by picnics beside the creeks, or parties which were held in homes. A very memorable highlight was when Alfred Shaw brought the Eighth English Cricket Team to Australia. Whilst on tour Kameruka played host to a match between an English Eleven and Candelo Twenty-Two. Held over two days, at least 2,000 people attended the match, some driving or riding more than 100km to do so. Incidentally, the English XI won the match by an innings and 12 runs.

By 1904 1,400 cows were being milked on the Estate and Kameruka was producing Derby, Stilton, Dutch and Leicester cheese. Later it also produced Gouda and Edam cheese.

When accommodation for single men became a problem, a Bachelors’ Quarters was built that comfortably housed sixteen men.

Then a Hostel was built, providing tourist and visitor accommodation. The daily tariff of fifteen shillings included bed and three meals, and morning tea was provided for sixpence while afternoon tea was one shilling. A nine hole golf course was then built as an added attraction, with its rule being that ‘no golf was to be played on Sunday during the hours of the Church service at Kameruka’

The Estate also introduced some quite innovative benefits for employees. For example, all factory hands were given three weeks’ leave of absence and sick pay was made available to them at a half rate of pay for one month. A pension scheme was also introduced for the older men who were eligible for the Government Old Age Pension and several were also retained on staff to undertake light duties, which usually involved raking up leaves or keeping the premises around the offices tidy.

The real importance of the Kameruka Estate to the NSW South Coast was that it provided the district with a large-scale commercial enterprise at a time when there was no other large industry in the area. This provided employment opportunities, which in turn attracted a significant population to the area.

Eventually ownership of Kameruka Estate passed to two infant girls, and the Estate was run by Managers reporting to the Trustees of these girls. These Trustees, however, proved unwilling to invest in the Estate at the levels that had previously been the case, and were reluctant to innovate.

The Depression of 1929 also significantly affected the Estate and its profitability. But the Estate continued to survive and operate as very much a self-contained English agricultural estate.

In the late 1950s, the Kameruka cheese factories started processing milk for the first time from producers outside of the Estate until in 1971 they closed and the milk from the remaining 14 Kameruka dairies was diverted to the Bega Co-operative. The Bega Co-Operative (now Bega Cheese) also then took over the processing of Kameruka brand cheeses.
Over time, however, the focus of the Kameruka Estate gradually shifted from milk-production to the raising of beef cattle and sheep.

The Estate remained in the Tooth family for 150 years until, in 2007, it was sold to an English shipping magnate, Giles Pritchard-Gordon. At the time of its sale it covered 3,300 acres, so it had shrunk considerably from the original 22,000 acres that Robert Lucas Lucas-Tooth had purchased in 1871.

After the death of Pritchard-Gordon in 2014, his widow put the property up for sale. It was purchased in recent years in two separate tranches by a neighbouring family of dairy farmers who also own the historic Oaklands farm in Pambula. They have set to work restoring the numerous homes at Kameruka as well as the historic seven-bedroom homestead, and are running beef cattle and sheep on the property.

Now it’s just a little further sough to the fourth ‘Estate’ – the Ayrdale Estate.

While Kameruka Estate was bigger than Ayrdale, Ayrdale was widely praised as a ‘model’ dairy and its owner, John Marshall Black, was both a producer of cheese and a reliable supplier of cheese-making materials to other cheese-making factories.

By 1864, J.M.’s father, William, owned 160 acres of land that had previously been owned by the Twofold Bay Pastoral Association and J.M. had (or ostensibly had) purchased about 305 acres.

J.M. had been a storekeeper on the Kiandra goldfields, and in 1868 he opened the Ayrdale General Stores ‘selling at Sydney prices for cash: saddles, boots, calicos, Crimean shirts, and other varieties of goods of very superior quality’ The ‘other varieties of goods’ soon diversified to include cheese-making equipment: cheese hoops, bleached bandage cloth, calico, rennet (an enzyme that separates milk into the solid curds used in cheesemaking and liquid whey; rennet is traditionally produced from the stomach linings of young calves) and annatto (a yellow food-colouring).

He used the profits from these ventures to continually extend the Ayrdale estate. In 1885 he had 937 acres at Ayrdale and 981 acres elsewhere. By 1903 he was reported to have 1,272 acres at Ayrdale.

John does not seem to have had any farming experience. However, perhaps after seeing the success being enjoyed by more affluent neighbours in the area, like the Kameruka Estate, he embraced the potential that his land had for grazing dairy cattle.

He opened his first dairy in 1869, making cheese for local consumption. By 1878, Ayrdale was selling cheese in Sydney and J. M. Black was importing machinery for cheese-making. By 1880 the estate was producing 24 tons of cheese annually.

J.M. also became a major supplier of rennet to other local cheesemakers.

In the early days much of the heavy work at Ayrdale was carried out by Chinese men, who lived on a nearby reserve or, later, on the Ayrdale property itself.

On John Marshall Black’s death in 1917 the property passed equally to his only unmarried daughter, Millicent, and son, Charles. Despite the farm having demonstrated that it was a good investment, Charles (who was more interested in breeding horses for show jumping) closed the dairy almost immediately.

In 1923 Millicent transferred her share of the property to Charles, but re-inherited it on his death 15 years later. She and her husband moved back to Ayrdale shortly thereafter, and she lived there until she died in 1956.

In many respects the property remained a 19th- and early 20th-century ‘time capsule’- until a clearing sale was held at the property in August 2010.

In 2006 a heritage assessment of Ayrdale was undertaken. It concluded ‘Ayrdale is important in the course of NSW’s rural history: it was created by an emigrant Scottish family who built up a large property from small parcels of land, through entrepreneurship and hard work’ and it noted that ‘three generations of the family have scrupulously maintained their heritage, both physical and documentary’ and that ‘nothing has been removed or even substantially displaced within the property’.

Included on the property were ‘a completely preserved set of buildings and implements from 70 years of farming by the one family, with most equipment still in situ’. It, therefore, provided ‘a textbook example of a well-run 19th – 20th century dairy farm’ and, because ‘significant items of industrial equipment, all still within their working context…it demonstrates the workings of the 19th – 20th century cheese-making industry in an historically important centre of food production.’

It would have been interesting to have seen the property in that condition…and it is to our, and to future generations, detriment that it was then not preserved.

What has survived, though, is a full set of family papers covering the creation and maintenance of the property from the 1860s through to the 1920s. These are now in the Bega Valley Genealogical Society’s documents collection. Apart from these farm and family records, the most accessible relics from this historically important Ayrdale estate are currently to be found in the Bega Cheese Heritage Centre because, when the clearing sale was held in 2010, Bega Cheese bought some of the more important things on offer.

So basically, that’s the story of the four, historically significant South Coast ‘estates’. Fortunately for us, the remains of all four have survived – more or less. You can visit the original Coolangatta Estate at the base of Coolangatta Mountain, you can visit the canal connecting the Shoalhaven and Crookwell Rivers, you can visit the town of Berry. The township of Bodalla, including All Saints Church at Bodalla, are easily accessible and some of the original Mort Estate farm buildings have survived but are not generally open to the public. The little village of Kameruka Estate is still there – basically now the offices of the owner of the Estate – and the community hall, the Church and the cricket oval ae still occasionally used. The buildings of the Ayrdale Estate are still there intact, but are not accessible to the public, but can be seen in the distance if you drive along Wanatta Lane in Wolumla that leads to Bega Shire’s Waste Processing facility.