NEW SOUTH WALES.
I.
A FEW OLD IDENTITIES.”
THIS last trip had given me a surfeit of the sea, and I made up my mind to settle down. In order to do so I looked about for some land having a prospective value, and at last fixed on a spot on one of the estuaries of Port Jackson, between the Parramatta and the Lane Cove rivers, a narrow peninsula known as Hunter’s Hill.
A good deal of this land had been mixed up in some of the early “land booms.” The principal portion belonged to Mrs. Reiby, better known in olden times as “Margaret Catchpole.” Some blocks had been mortgaged by Terry Hughes to the Bank of Australia—a bank that failed in the crisis of 1842. Owing to these intricacies, and doubtful titles, the purchase was made on advantageous terms. The work of securing a sound title was in itself an incentive to purchase the property, which I did in spite of all the forebodings and croakings of my friends.
I must confess that the locality did not enjoy a very wholesome reputation. The Lane Cove river is bounded on one side by the Field of Mars common—some 6800 acres of land which was, and had been, “jumped” by some very rough people—old convicts, runaway sailors, and jail-birds—who eked out a living by stealing timber and boating firewood to Sydney.
One of the landmarks in the river—the “Butcher’s Block”—owed its name to a foul murder. “Murdering Bay,” and “Tambourine Bay,” also had a blood-stained chronicle. On Hunter’s Hill proper there were also some reminiscences of the old felonry of New South Wales—one of the grants having been the property of the Quaker, Towel, who suffered the highest penalty of the law at Newgate for the murder of his servant-maid.