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Message from Probus Club of Goulburn & District Inc.

by Probus Club of Goulburn & District Inc. | 15 Jun 2015

Keith Simpson read a Henry Lawson poem as an introduction to his thumbnail sketch and in keeping with the ANZAC spirit, spoke about the young men who enlisted in the first world war from the small central western towns of New South Wales.  As an example, Keith cited Bimbi, a town on the Barmedman to Grenfell road with a population of six hundred.  Eighty went to war and twenty did not return.  Four hundred young men from Grenfell enlisted and ninety-five did not come home.  This was a great loss to farming communities.  Keith spoke also of the introduction of share farming, rail transport and rabbits.

Guest speaker John Jervis used various models, power-point presentation and brochures to give club members an insight to the history of the Towrang stockade.  John worked with his father servicing farm machinery in the Towrang area during World War II.  He learned much of the area’s history from his father.

The Towrang stockade was the last out-post developed on the Great South Road. As a transfer from the Wingello stockade it was established in 1835.  It was used until 1844.  This was the most remote stockade and it took six weeks round trip by bullock to Sydney for supplies.

Governor Macquarie had convicts consisting of fifteen year (long term) and lifers at his disposal.  The long-term convicts were accommodated on farms and used as farm labourers.  The lifers in chains were used for work on the roads. They were housed in mobile cells (called boxes) at the stockade.  The boxes on four wheels were four metres by three metres.  Each box housed ten convicts in chains.  They were chained to the interior of the cell at dusk and they were not released until next morning.  To help alleviate the minus eight degree temperatures, each convict had one blanket and relied on body heat from the very close company.  Convicts were fed before the officers and were given an amount of food equal to sixty five percent of the officer rations.  Punishment for misdemeanors was strictly controlled.  It had to be authorised and witnessed by a magistrate and was administered by chaining the convict to a steel tripod and opening his bare back with fifty (sometimes more) lashes.  The only instrument of punishment allowed was a military cat ‘o’ nine tails, a device made to very strict specifications.

Apparently, the heralded figure of two hundred and fifty convicts housed at the stockade is not fact as there were only thirty officers at the stockade at any one time.  They did not have the manpower, resources or accommodation for so many men in chains.

The stockade consisted of six cottages and four other buildings all built from local natural elements.  They had bark roofs and hessian in the windows.  Part of the complex was a powder magazine burrowed into a small hillside and not consistent with today’s safety standards as the officers’ houses were on top of the same hill.  At the time of decommissioning the stockade, an audit showed there were five boxes, 6 buildings, a blacksmith shop and stables.  Some materials were sold off and others brought into Goulburn.  There are still remnants of the stockade available for viewing by the public along with the convict built Towrang bridge and culverts on the other side of the Goulburn to Sydney freeway opposite the Towrang turn off.  Some of the movie ‘The Potato Factory’ was filmed around the bridge and culverts.

New office bearers for the club were installed for the year: President: Kaydn Griffin, Secretary: Mick McGhie, Treasurer: Kevin Hogg, Vice President: Geoff Gulson, Assistant Secretary: Ron Stamm, Programmes: Kevin  Thompson and Peter Simpson, Membership/Apologies: Peter Jordan, Tours: Geoff Gulson,

Morning Tea: Ron Reid, Bulletin  Editor: Don Elder and Ces Isaac, Publicity: Bill Young, Welfare: John Miller

For enquiries about joining Probus, contact Peter Jordan 4821 3875 or Mick McGhie 4821 3328.