Extracts from the Journal of Cyrus John Richard WILLIAMS (written in the late 1930's)
Kaludah
Kaludah had been established in the early days as a wine-making farm. The house was situated on a small hill overlooking a lake about half a mile long and about 100 yards wide at its widest point. In the lake were two great clumps of weeping willows, in which wild ducks bred and sheltered, and in my young days ducks could always be had, but the amount of shooting allowed was always strictly limited, and only by special permission of my grandfather John Doyle.
The estate comprised about 532 acres, about one mile square, one side being bounded by the Hunter River, another by the Great North Road, another by a road from Lochinvar to a low level bridge over the river called, I think Luskintyre.
At the entrance from the Great North Road was a small brick cottage or lodge, in which resided a family whose sole obligation was to open and shut the entrance gate to allow vehicles to pass in and out.
At the foot of the hill on which the house stood there was a similar lodge and gate, with a road leading up to the front of the house, but this “lodge” was unoccupied in my time, and this gate not used, all vehicles driving up to the gate of the farm yard and visitors or others entering the house yard past the kitchen, and the house by the back door.
The house itself was a long low building with veranda in front and facing the lake, with a central passage from end to end, the back door connecting with this passage at about the centre of its length. The eaves at the back of the house were so low that a man could only just stand against the back wall inside, the back windows being wide and low with vertical iron bars like those in a prison.
Driving up the hill past the orchard on the right, one entered the “farm-yard” through a wide open-barred gate fastened by means of sliding piece of wood which entered a mortice over the gate post. Such a fastening was secure against ordinary stock, but I remember seeing one of the plough mares moving back the slide with her teeth and opening the gate.
Immediately on the right of the entrance gate was the harness room and in front of it, used as a seat, lay the old screw beam of the original wine press, a long about 11/2 feet square.
A little beyond, on the same side, a low white wicket fence with a small wicket gate, marked off the “house yard.”
When entering through the small wicket gate one passed the kitchen on the left and the top of the underground rainwater tank on the right, while further to the right was the bowling room.
Between the kitchen and the house was a paved covered way, with climbing roses on the posts, along which way the food was brought into the house. This arrangement must have been inconvenient in squally wet weather, but I do not remember hearing any complaints. In old fashioned farm houses it was necessary that the kitchen should be away from the house, because the former, large and roomy, with hams and bacon seasoning among the rafters, was a sort of clubroom for the farm hands, and neither the noises nor the smells were wanted in the house.
Further to the left as one advanced towards the house from the wicket gate, was a raised barn or storehouse which one entered by means of steps, the lower storey of this barn being a partially sunk wine cellar, lined on each side with huge casks of wine.
So that the wicket fence and gate with the kitchen formed one side of the house yard, the barn or storehouse another, the main house a third and the bottling cellar and dairy the fourth, forming a quadrangle about 60 feet wide and 80 feet long, the house forming the long side.
The farm yard was entered by the barred gate mentioned before and was about 180 feet long by about 70 feet wide, bounded on the right by the harness room, the wicket fence and gate, the kitchen, the end of the cellar barn etc., and on the left by a cottage housing the unmarried farm hands, a covered shed housing the carts and other farm implements and the stables; an opening between the shed and the stables giving access to the piggeries beyond and to the bulls’ yard and house behind the stables. The far end of the farm yard was occupied by a barn and the fowl¬ houses, a road between them leading towards the Hunter River and the cultivated farm lands between the river and the lake, the river flowing from left to right as one looked from the house.
Between the far end of the lake and the river was the “old vineyard", so called in my early days. This was the original vineyard of Kaludah, but at some period the river had overflowed its banks washing through the vineyard and scouring great channels through, leaving not more than half the vineyard.
So that when I first went to Kaludah, in about 1868, at the age of six, a new vineyard had been planted on the slope of the hill to the right of the lake, looking from the house, that is, on the opposite side from the river.
With regard to the extraordinary damage to the old vineyard, this must have been accentuated by the outstripping and washing away of a level of earth, which had been built to keep the river out, otherwise the mere rising of the water could not have had such an effect.
On the hill about the “new vineyard” was a brick cottage which had been built by James Doyle who was to have been married, but something, which we children were not allowed to learn, had intervened, and the cottage remained empty for many years, being subsequently occupied by King the cellar foreman, who in my young days was the carpenter or cooper, building and looking after the wine vats.
On my later visits to Kaludah in 1910 and 1931 this cottage was occupied by Robert Doyle, a son of James Doyle of Cowhill, near Maitland, a brother of John Doyle, my grandfather.
This John Doyle, appears to have been a “squatter” or sheep farmer, at one time on the cow pasture on Hawkesbury River, and later on the Barwon as the Doyle brothers’ stations are still on or near that river. He married a Miss Fitz, and by this marriage I am related to the Fitz’s, Stubbs and Churches.
John Doyle's children were all christened Fitz for a while but this practice fell into disuse after the arrival of Louise Fitz, the next child being called Florence Nugent.
On my first visits to Kaluda (called Kaludah originally, as is shown by the old wine-bottle seals), the household there consisting of John Doyle, my grandfather, and his wife, James Fitz Doyle, his son and partner in the wine business, Louisa and Florence. James was the wine maker, his father John, looking upon Kaludah as a sort of homestead or house, his income coming from his station properties which were managed by his other sons, or some of them, among them Cyrus Doyle.
Some of the sons had gone off independently, as Fred, the eldest son, had an estate called "Rosebrook" near Muswellbrook.
Kaludah was a sort of hospitable gathering point for all the youngsters of my generation during their school holidays, and there we made the acquaintance of our various cousins, Harry Fitz, Jack Church, Clara Cadell, Dollie, Elsie, Leslie, Percy and Stanley, sons and daughters of Ellen, my mother’s eldest sister and wife of Lewis Doyle of Box Hill, and many others.
Here the town-bred ones learned to ride on the old “blue pony”. This old fellow, grey in my day, was of arab breed and when young had been almost blue, hence his name. He was about twenty-eight years old when I first knew him, and a great rogue. When approached with the bridle he would lay his ears back and make hostile demonstration, and on that pasting he would not open his teeth for the bit. But all this meant nothing, although it might frighten a beginner. He was clever after stock and on following, or “cutting out” a beast would often turn so sharply as to unseat us beginners, but he always, in such case, stopped immediately and waited for his rider to climb onto him again.
The Old Blue Pony
The daily office of any boy holidaying at Kaludah was to ride in to Lochinvar, a couple of miles and get the day’s mail at 9 a.m. The old pony would start with reluctance, but after a minute or two of opposition would jog along quite cheerfully, but nothing would induce him to go past the Post Office, and once you mounted him with the mail bag, he would rush off and gallop all the way home, if allowed to do so.
In the house paddock, just outside the farm yard gate was the barn, about 100 yards away, and to the right, a small lake or waterhole formed by a dam on the stream which lower down flowed through the large lake. On the other side of the small lake was the cottage of Murphy, the principal farmhand, and his family.
I have mentioned the ducks on the lake. My grandfather had a long powerful duck gun with which he could shoot the ducks from the house, but this was an unusual occurrence. James would sometimes let us boys have a go at the ducks but not often as they did not want them driven away.
It was never my good fortune to be at Kaludah during the vintage, but I have taken part in all the subsequent processes of wine making, bottling and packing.
In the early days, Kaludah made various kinds of wine, but later confined itself to “Kaludah Red” and “Kaludah White", the former a very fair claret and the latter a very good light “Hock”. Both these wines were good but did not hold their own on the market, partly from want of enterprise by James, and partly on a count of a disease which got the cellars, necessitating the destruction of all the wine in stock at the time.
The wine trade was finally given up on the death of James in 1904 and Kaludah became a dairy farm. James left a life interest in Kaludah to his sister Louisa, who had lived with him there for over sixty years and on her death to Maurice, the eldest son of his brother Cyrus.
Harold Doyle, his nephew, a son of Lewis of Boxhill had been James’ pupil and assistant for many years and might very naturally have expected the inheritance of Kaludah, but James entirely overlooked him. If James did not like Harold he had many years to find it out and should not have retained him in the position of a son for so many years, so long indeed as to misfit Harold for earning a living in any other position.
This injustice Louisa did her best to rectify by leaving to Harold her entire estate of £23,000 as a reward for thirty-two years faithful service and attention, Harold having been like a loving son to her the whole time. Louisa’s death occurred in 1933. Harold has married Amy Onus to whom he has been attached for many years and has purchased an estate on the Liverpool Plains not far from his old home, Box Hill.
And so, with the death of Louisa, Kaludah, which has for sixty-five years been a place where I, or my family, could always be sure of a hearty welcome and a pleasant holiday, disappears from our kin, or interest.
One of our amusements at Kaludah was the burning off of the old timber which had previously been felled, the logs lying about and the stumps still standing in the ground. Children as well as grown-ups always love making a fire, and so we never tired of this amusement.
On moonlight nights possum hunting was our great amusement. This game was very popular, especially with the dogs. One of them a youngish collie, used to come round to the front door and bark until we came out, he would then run to the nearest tree and announce that he had seen a possum. As soon as we reached that tree, he would run off to the next, and so gradually draw us into the paddock where he would really locate a possum.
One way of locating a possum was to run the moon along each branch of the tree, and when a possum was between us and the moon a furry edge showed up, at which we aimed, sometimes with sticks and sometimes with the gun. We got no bonus for possums, but sixpence for every native cat killed.
The Horses at “Kaludah”
The first to come to my notice was my grandfather’s horse “Emerald”, winner of many prizes at the Maitland and Singleton shows, as a weight carry hacker, a handsome chestnut with a white star in the middle of his forehead. As my grandfather left Kaludah for Dartmouth soon after my beginning to visit Kaludah, and presumably took “Emerald” with him, my recollections of this horse are less vivid.
Then came Uncle James’ horse “Blackie” his own special riding horse, a large black thoroughbred out of “Alice Hawthorn” by “Lord of the Hills”, another Maitland stallion. Owing to Uncle James doing very little riding when I knew him, “Blackie” had too little exercise and was inclined to be troublesome on the few occasions that he was brought from his box. No one else was allowed to ride this horse, which was a charming amiable creature.
Then there was my grandmother’s special buggy horse “Peter”, half thoroughbred and half Clydesdale, a large black horse and an amiable creature, well suited for being driven by an old lady in a buggy.
Then came Aunt Louisa's thoroughbred “Keloo”, a handsome beast with an arched neck and when we fed the horses with pumpkin in the late afternoons, "Keloo” would drive all the others away until he claimed his half pumpkin and taken it away to eat by himself, an unamiable creature. The two Clydesdale mares "Maggie” and “Jessie” did the farm work, ploughing and bringing in the grapes at vintage time. These were amiable creatures and very clever at opening gates. They were under the special care of the ploughman Martin, who lived in the cottage at the south eastern corner of the farm yard, on the left as you came in (marked P on plan of Kaludah).
In the paddock at the east end of the lake, ran the two thoroughbred brood mares "Alice Hawthorne” and “Zoe”, the latter reputed to be unride-able, but “Alice” was an amiable creature.
Later Alice’s’ brown colt came under our notice and when he left his dam he became a great pet. He was later sent onto one of the stations for a while and later returned to Kaludah as “Brownee”, one of the buggy horses in company with “Whalebone”, the pair being a beautiful match, but somewhat unruly on the rare occasions they were used to drive into Maitland, nine miles away. We boys were occasionally allowed to ride Brownie with special orders not to gallop him as he was very frisky and likely to toss us in his exhilaration.
Still later “Alice Hawthorn” produced a half arab foal which was allocated to Florence the youngest of the family. Florence called the mare “Idalia”, presumably after the recently published book of that name written by Ouida[i].
When Florence married and left Kaludah she took “Idalia” with her and I had use of the mare for some time in Brisbane later. She was a beautiful hack and like all “Alice Hawthorn’s” progeny an amiable creature, a beautiful dark grey with very distinct arab characteristics.
As it was the custom for members of the family in the late afternoons to give pumpkins to the horses in the home paddock just outside the farmyard gate, there was opportunity then to notice the various dispositions of the different horses. Some would hold the half pumpkin with his foot while biting off pieces.
1902/1903
I went up Kaludah to see my relatives, there meeting Harold, the youngest son of Lewis[ii] Doyle of Box Hill, and my Aunt Ellen, who had joined James to learn the wine making business and help generally.
While at Kaludah I visited the works of the Luskintyre bridge where the original low level bridge was being replaced by a high level modern structure. In the early days it was the custom to cross rivers liable to high floods by means of bridges at so low a level that the river water should submerge the bridge before the debris of logs etc., began to come down, as if that piled up against a wooden bridge the destruction of the bridge was almost a certainty. This system answered very well while travel was slow, by bullock wagons or so, when a days delay for the river to fall was not very material and such bridges remained in place for many years, but as traffic became speeded up such delays became insufferable and the old low-level bridges had to be replaced by bridges above flood level and with low supporting piles in the stream.
From Kaludah I went up to Quirindi visiting my Aunt Flo and Willie Cadell, who were full of the doings of a wonderful water diviner in the district and were sinking a well on his advice. On all my subsequent visits they were still without water, and did not like being asked about the results or their well sinking.
I also saw Lewis and Aunt Ellen at Box Hill and other old friends in the neighbourhood. Lewis was then in a dying condition, but just able to walk about.
On my way back from Quirindi I stopped at Dartmouth, where my uncle Cyrus Doyle was living and renewed my old associations there. At Dartmouth, which was on a slight hill, the great northern railway line passed through a cutting and when Percy and I were at Dartmouth in 1877 as boys of fifteen, we used to put pins and threepenny bits on the rails to get them flattened out by the locomotive until threatened with arrest by the ganger in charge of that part of the line. My diary indicates that the temperature was 950 in the shade when I visited Dartmouth in 1902.
1903
I left Katoomba on the 10th and onto Kaludah via Sydney. At Kaludah was the Professor of Viticulture testing the vines in the cellars and it was this gentleman’s unfavourable report which resulted in the destruction of all the wine in stock, the construction of new wine cellars half a mile away and ultimately, the abandonment of the wine making on the death of James in 1904.
I caught the Brisbane mail train at Lochinvar, saw my brother-in- law, Jack Mitchell, at the Glen Innes station and reached Brisbane that night, staying with the Cullen’s.
[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouida
[ii] Louis
Kaludah
Kaludah had been established in the early days as a wine-making farm. The house was situated on a small hill overlooking a lake about half a mile long and about 100 yards wide at its widest point. In the lake were two great clumps of weeping willows, in which wild ducks bred and sheltered, and in my young days ducks could always be had, but the amount of shooting allowed was always strictly limited, and only by special permission of my grandfather John Doyle.
The estate comprised about 532 acres, about one mile square, one side being bounded by the Hunter River, another by the Great North Road, another by a road from Lochinvar to a low level bridge over the river called, I think Luskintyre.
At the entrance from the Great North Road was a small brick cottage or lodge, in which resided a family whose sole obligation was to open and shut the entrance gate to allow vehicles to pass in and out.
At the foot of the hill on which the house stood there was a similar lodge and gate, with a road leading up to the front of the house, but this “lodge” was unoccupied in my time, and this gate not used, all vehicles driving up to the gate of the farm yard and visitors or others entering the house yard past the kitchen, and the house by the back door.
The house itself was a long low building with veranda in front and facing the lake, with a central passage from end to end, the back door connecting with this passage at about the centre of its length. The eaves at the back of the house were so low that a man could only just stand against the back wall inside, the back windows being wide and low with vertical iron bars like those in a prison.
Driving up the hill past the orchard on the right, one entered the “farm-yard” through a wide open-barred gate fastened by means of sliding piece of wood which entered a mortice over the gate post. Such a fastening was secure against ordinary stock, but I remember seeing one of the plough mares moving back the slide with her teeth and opening the gate.
Immediately on the right of the entrance gate was the harness room and in front of it, used as a seat, lay the old screw beam of the original wine press, a long about 11/2 feet square.
A little beyond, on the same side, a low white wicket fence with a small wicket gate, marked off the “house yard.”
When entering through the small wicket gate one passed the kitchen on the left and the top of the underground rainwater tank on the right, while further to the right was the bowling room.
Between the kitchen and the house was a paved covered way, with climbing roses on the posts, along which way the food was brought into the house. This arrangement must have been inconvenient in squally wet weather, but I do not remember hearing any complaints. In old fashioned farm houses it was necessary that the kitchen should be away from the house, because the former, large and roomy, with hams and bacon seasoning among the rafters, was a sort of clubroom for the farm hands, and neither the noises nor the smells were wanted in the house.
Further to the left as one advanced towards the house from the wicket gate, was a raised barn or storehouse which one entered by means of steps, the lower storey of this barn being a partially sunk wine cellar, lined on each side with huge casks of wine.
So that the wicket fence and gate with the kitchen formed one side of the house yard, the barn or storehouse another, the main house a third and the bottling cellar and dairy the fourth, forming a quadrangle about 60 feet wide and 80 feet long, the house forming the long side.
The farm yard was entered by the barred gate mentioned before and was about 180 feet long by about 70 feet wide, bounded on the right by the harness room, the wicket fence and gate, the kitchen, the end of the cellar barn etc., and on the left by a cottage housing the unmarried farm hands, a covered shed housing the carts and other farm implements and the stables; an opening between the shed and the stables giving access to the piggeries beyond and to the bulls’ yard and house behind the stables. The far end of the farm yard was occupied by a barn and the fowl¬ houses, a road between them leading towards the Hunter River and the cultivated farm lands between the river and the lake, the river flowing from left to right as one looked from the house.
Between the far end of the lake and the river was the “old vineyard", so called in my early days. This was the original vineyard of Kaludah, but at some period the river had overflowed its banks washing through the vineyard and scouring great channels through, leaving not more than half the vineyard.
So that when I first went to Kaludah, in about 1868, at the age of six, a new vineyard had been planted on the slope of the hill to the right of the lake, looking from the house, that is, on the opposite side from the river.
With regard to the extraordinary damage to the old vineyard, this must have been accentuated by the outstripping and washing away of a level of earth, which had been built to keep the river out, otherwise the mere rising of the water could not have had such an effect.
On the hill about the “new vineyard” was a brick cottage which had been built by James Doyle who was to have been married, but something, which we children were not allowed to learn, had intervened, and the cottage remained empty for many years, being subsequently occupied by King the cellar foreman, who in my young days was the carpenter or cooper, building and looking after the wine vats.
On my later visits to Kaludah in 1910 and 1931 this cottage was occupied by Robert Doyle, a son of James Doyle of Cowhill, near Maitland, a brother of John Doyle, my grandfather.
This John Doyle, appears to have been a “squatter” or sheep farmer, at one time on the cow pasture on Hawkesbury River, and later on the Barwon as the Doyle brothers’ stations are still on or near that river. He married a Miss Fitz, and by this marriage I am related to the Fitz’s, Stubbs and Churches.
John Doyle's children were all christened Fitz for a while but this practice fell into disuse after the arrival of Louise Fitz, the next child being called Florence Nugent.
On my first visits to Kaluda (called Kaludah originally, as is shown by the old wine-bottle seals), the household there consisting of John Doyle, my grandfather, and his wife, James Fitz Doyle, his son and partner in the wine business, Louisa and Florence. James was the wine maker, his father John, looking upon Kaludah as a sort of homestead or house, his income coming from his station properties which were managed by his other sons, or some of them, among them Cyrus Doyle.
Some of the sons had gone off independently, as Fred, the eldest son, had an estate called "Rosebrook" near Muswellbrook.
Kaludah was a sort of hospitable gathering point for all the youngsters of my generation during their school holidays, and there we made the acquaintance of our various cousins, Harry Fitz, Jack Church, Clara Cadell, Dollie, Elsie, Leslie, Percy and Stanley, sons and daughters of Ellen, my mother’s eldest sister and wife of Lewis Doyle of Box Hill, and many others.
Here the town-bred ones learned to ride on the old “blue pony”. This old fellow, grey in my day, was of arab breed and when young had been almost blue, hence his name. He was about twenty-eight years old when I first knew him, and a great rogue. When approached with the bridle he would lay his ears back and make hostile demonstration, and on that pasting he would not open his teeth for the bit. But all this meant nothing, although it might frighten a beginner. He was clever after stock and on following, or “cutting out” a beast would often turn so sharply as to unseat us beginners, but he always, in such case, stopped immediately and waited for his rider to climb onto him again.
The Old Blue Pony
The daily office of any boy holidaying at Kaludah was to ride in to Lochinvar, a couple of miles and get the day’s mail at 9 a.m. The old pony would start with reluctance, but after a minute or two of opposition would jog along quite cheerfully, but nothing would induce him to go past the Post Office, and once you mounted him with the mail bag, he would rush off and gallop all the way home, if allowed to do so.
In the house paddock, just outside the farm yard gate was the barn, about 100 yards away, and to the right, a small lake or waterhole formed by a dam on the stream which lower down flowed through the large lake. On the other side of the small lake was the cottage of Murphy, the principal farmhand, and his family.
I have mentioned the ducks on the lake. My grandfather had a long powerful duck gun with which he could shoot the ducks from the house, but this was an unusual occurrence. James would sometimes let us boys have a go at the ducks but not often as they did not want them driven away.
It was never my good fortune to be at Kaludah during the vintage, but I have taken part in all the subsequent processes of wine making, bottling and packing.
In the early days, Kaludah made various kinds of wine, but later confined itself to “Kaludah Red” and “Kaludah White", the former a very fair claret and the latter a very good light “Hock”. Both these wines were good but did not hold their own on the market, partly from want of enterprise by James, and partly on a count of a disease which got the cellars, necessitating the destruction of all the wine in stock at the time.
The wine trade was finally given up on the death of James in 1904 and Kaludah became a dairy farm. James left a life interest in Kaludah to his sister Louisa, who had lived with him there for over sixty years and on her death to Maurice, the eldest son of his brother Cyrus.
Harold Doyle, his nephew, a son of Lewis of Boxhill had been James’ pupil and assistant for many years and might very naturally have expected the inheritance of Kaludah, but James entirely overlooked him. If James did not like Harold he had many years to find it out and should not have retained him in the position of a son for so many years, so long indeed as to misfit Harold for earning a living in any other position.
This injustice Louisa did her best to rectify by leaving to Harold her entire estate of £23,000 as a reward for thirty-two years faithful service and attention, Harold having been like a loving son to her the whole time. Louisa’s death occurred in 1933. Harold has married Amy Onus to whom he has been attached for many years and has purchased an estate on the Liverpool Plains not far from his old home, Box Hill.
And so, with the death of Louisa, Kaludah, which has for sixty-five years been a place where I, or my family, could always be sure of a hearty welcome and a pleasant holiday, disappears from our kin, or interest.
One of our amusements at Kaludah was the burning off of the old timber which had previously been felled, the logs lying about and the stumps still standing in the ground. Children as well as grown-ups always love making a fire, and so we never tired of this amusement.
On moonlight nights possum hunting was our great amusement. This game was very popular, especially with the dogs. One of them a youngish collie, used to come round to the front door and bark until we came out, he would then run to the nearest tree and announce that he had seen a possum. As soon as we reached that tree, he would run off to the next, and so gradually draw us into the paddock where he would really locate a possum.
One way of locating a possum was to run the moon along each branch of the tree, and when a possum was between us and the moon a furry edge showed up, at which we aimed, sometimes with sticks and sometimes with the gun. We got no bonus for possums, but sixpence for every native cat killed.
The Horses at “Kaludah”
The first to come to my notice was my grandfather’s horse “Emerald”, winner of many prizes at the Maitland and Singleton shows, as a weight carry hacker, a handsome chestnut with a white star in the middle of his forehead. As my grandfather left Kaludah for Dartmouth soon after my beginning to visit Kaludah, and presumably took “Emerald” with him, my recollections of this horse are less vivid.
Then came Uncle James’ horse “Blackie” his own special riding horse, a large black thoroughbred out of “Alice Hawthorn” by “Lord of the Hills”, another Maitland stallion. Owing to Uncle James doing very little riding when I knew him, “Blackie” had too little exercise and was inclined to be troublesome on the few occasions that he was brought from his box. No one else was allowed to ride this horse, which was a charming amiable creature.
Then there was my grandmother’s special buggy horse “Peter”, half thoroughbred and half Clydesdale, a large black horse and an amiable creature, well suited for being driven by an old lady in a buggy.
Then came Aunt Louisa's thoroughbred “Keloo”, a handsome beast with an arched neck and when we fed the horses with pumpkin in the late afternoons, "Keloo” would drive all the others away until he claimed his half pumpkin and taken it away to eat by himself, an unamiable creature. The two Clydesdale mares "Maggie” and “Jessie” did the farm work, ploughing and bringing in the grapes at vintage time. These were amiable creatures and very clever at opening gates. They were under the special care of the ploughman Martin, who lived in the cottage at the south eastern corner of the farm yard, on the left as you came in (marked P on plan of Kaludah).
In the paddock at the east end of the lake, ran the two thoroughbred brood mares "Alice Hawthorne” and “Zoe”, the latter reputed to be unride-able, but “Alice” was an amiable creature.
Later Alice’s’ brown colt came under our notice and when he left his dam he became a great pet. He was later sent onto one of the stations for a while and later returned to Kaludah as “Brownee”, one of the buggy horses in company with “Whalebone”, the pair being a beautiful match, but somewhat unruly on the rare occasions they were used to drive into Maitland, nine miles away. We boys were occasionally allowed to ride Brownie with special orders not to gallop him as he was very frisky and likely to toss us in his exhilaration.
Still later “Alice Hawthorn” produced a half arab foal which was allocated to Florence the youngest of the family. Florence called the mare “Idalia”, presumably after the recently published book of that name written by Ouida[i].
When Florence married and left Kaludah she took “Idalia” with her and I had use of the mare for some time in Brisbane later. She was a beautiful hack and like all “Alice Hawthorn’s” progeny an amiable creature, a beautiful dark grey with very distinct arab characteristics.
As it was the custom for members of the family in the late afternoons to give pumpkins to the horses in the home paddock just outside the farmyard gate, there was opportunity then to notice the various dispositions of the different horses. Some would hold the half pumpkin with his foot while biting off pieces.
1902/1903
I went up Kaludah to see my relatives, there meeting Harold, the youngest son of Lewis[ii] Doyle of Box Hill, and my Aunt Ellen, who had joined James to learn the wine making business and help generally.
While at Kaludah I visited the works of the Luskintyre bridge where the original low level bridge was being replaced by a high level modern structure. In the early days it was the custom to cross rivers liable to high floods by means of bridges at so low a level that the river water should submerge the bridge before the debris of logs etc., began to come down, as if that piled up against a wooden bridge the destruction of the bridge was almost a certainty. This system answered very well while travel was slow, by bullock wagons or so, when a days delay for the river to fall was not very material and such bridges remained in place for many years, but as traffic became speeded up such delays became insufferable and the old low-level bridges had to be replaced by bridges above flood level and with low supporting piles in the stream.
From Kaludah I went up to Quirindi visiting my Aunt Flo and Willie Cadell, who were full of the doings of a wonderful water diviner in the district and were sinking a well on his advice. On all my subsequent visits they were still without water, and did not like being asked about the results or their well sinking.
I also saw Lewis and Aunt Ellen at Box Hill and other old friends in the neighbourhood. Lewis was then in a dying condition, but just able to walk about.
On my way back from Quirindi I stopped at Dartmouth, where my uncle Cyrus Doyle was living and renewed my old associations there. At Dartmouth, which was on a slight hill, the great northern railway line passed through a cutting and when Percy and I were at Dartmouth in 1877 as boys of fifteen, we used to put pins and threepenny bits on the rails to get them flattened out by the locomotive until threatened with arrest by the ganger in charge of that part of the line. My diary indicates that the temperature was 950 in the shade when I visited Dartmouth in 1902.
1903
I left Katoomba on the 10th and onto Kaludah via Sydney. At Kaludah was the Professor of Viticulture testing the vines in the cellars and it was this gentleman’s unfavourable report which resulted in the destruction of all the wine in stock, the construction of new wine cellars half a mile away and ultimately, the abandonment of the wine making on the death of James in 1904.
I caught the Brisbane mail train at Lochinvar, saw my brother-in- law, Jack Mitchell, at the Glen Innes station and reached Brisbane that night, staying with the Cullen’s.
[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouida
[ii] Louis