Old Buildings: Station Master's House, Capertee

The Station Master's House in Capertee is the oldest surviving residence in the village and has historic significance, not only to the establishment of Capertee, but also to the history of the NSW railway system. 

The 1882 Station Master's House in Capertee

With the construction of the Gwabegar branch line it was decided to build a railway station at Capertee Camp (as the settlement was first known). On 17 February 1882 John Whitton (Chief Engineer of the NSW Government Railway) signed an illustration detailing the construction of the current Station Master’s House. Plans were drawn for the building in March 1882 and the house was built later that year.

This brick building is a fine example of a ‘Type 5’ Station Master’s residence built by the New South Wales Government Railway in the second half of the nineteenth century. Similar designs can be found at Lue, Rylstone, Kelso and Blackheath. This type of design features a full width verandah across the front of the house and an 'L' shaped floor plan. It was mostly used at larger way-side locations, being widely used in the 1880s. It is an attractive local landmark close to the Capertee railway station which was also built in 1882.

                 

As you would expect the Station Master's House
is close to Capertee Railway Station

The Station Master’s House was sold by State Rail in 1990 by which time it was very run down. Most of the interior was gutted and the grounds were full of scrap metal and weeds. Despite this the original 1880s iron roof has survived. The house was restored and the attractive picket fence constructed. It was then sold in 2002 to the current owner who has continued to restore the property and has extensively researched the history of the property and its many former occupants. The Station Master's House is  now used for short term holiday rentals. It's a popular choice with bird watchers, being on the edge of the Capertee Valley.

Link to owners Stayz accommodation website for this property: http://www.stayz.com.au/14862

Eliza Thurston

While Conrad Martens is the best known artist to paint in the Capertee area during the nineteenth century he wasn't the first, that honour seems to go to Eliza Thurston (1807-1873). Thurston painted a number of landscape views in the area during the 1860s. Her best known work in a public collection shows a panorama of the Capertee Valley taken from the Mudgee Road from the Crown Ridge (now known as Blackmans Crown). 

The inclusion of human figures on the lower left corner of the picture was a compositional device popular with artists at the time. These sightseers give the viewer foreground interest as well as a sense of scale which helped emphasize the monumental power of the picturesque subject matter in the background. While not a highly realistic rendering of the scene, Thurston's Mitchell Library work has great charm and shows that the panorama seen from the Crown was as popular then as it is today.

Capertee Valley taken from Crown Ridge, Sydney Road
1868 watercolour by Eliza Thurston
Mitchell Library collection

Eliza came from an established family of artists from Bath in western England. Eliza became an art teacher after she came to Australia in 1853. She lived for a few years during the mid to late 1860s with her (Mudgee based) photographer son Horatio Thurston (1838-1881). While resident there she produced her Capertee Valley works. She died in Sydney a few years later. Her daughter, Eliza West Thurston, was an amateur artist who painted mostly floral subjects. She worked as a teacher in Rylstone and spent her later years living in Mudgee.

For more information about Eliza Thurston please refer to her biographical entry in the Design and Art Australia Online (DAAO) website: http://www.daao.org.au/bio/eliza-thurston/biography/

Song of the old bullock driver by Henry Lawson

Author, poet and balladist, Henry Lawson (1867-1922) would have known Capertee well as he would have passed through the village often, either by road or rail. Around the turn of the last century Lawson wrote a poem about the old bullock drivers that travelled the Mudgee Road with their loads of wool. One of the many high climbs for the bullockies was around the base of Blackmans Crown, a peak located just to the south of Capertee, and Lawson touchingly mentions the assent and its reward of a picturesque outlook over the Capertee Valley.

Henry Lawson. drawing by Lionel Lindsay
Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, ACT

SONG OF THE OLD BULLOCK DRIVER by Henry Lawson 

Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble

In long single file 'neath the evergreen tree,

The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble,

And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea.

'Twas then that our hearts and our sinews were stronger,

For those were the days when the bushmen was bred.

We journeyed on roads that were rougher and longer

Than roads where the feet of our grandchildren tread.

With mates who have gone to the great Never-Never,

And mates whom I've not seen for many a day,

I camped on the banks of the Cudgegong River

And yarned at the fire by the old bullock-dray.

I would summon them back from the far Riverina,

From days that shall be from all others distinct.

And sing to the sound of an old concertina

Their rugged old songs where strange fancies were linked.

We never were lonely, for, camping together,

We yarned and we smoked the long evenings away,

And little I cared for the signs of the weather

When snug in my hammock slung under the dray.

We rose with the dawn, were it ever so chilly,

When yokes and tarpaulins were covered with frost,

And toasted the bacon and boiled the black billy,

Where high on the camp-fire the branches were tossed.

On flats where the air was suggestive of 'possums,

And homesteads and fences were hinting of change,

We saw the faint glimmer of appletree blossoms,

And far in the dstance the blue of the range;

And here in the rain, there was small use in flogging

The poor, tortured bullocks that tugged at the load,

When down to the axles the waggons were bogging

And traffic was making a marsh of the road.

'Twas hard on the beasts on the terrible pinches,

Where two teams of bullocks were yoked to a load,

And tugging and slipping, and moving by inches,

Half-way to the summit they clung to the road.

And then, when the last of the pinches was bested,

(You'll surely not say that a glass was a sin?)

The bullocks lay down 'neath the gum trees and rested -

The bullockies steered for the bar of the inn.

Then slowly we crawled by the trees that kept tally

Of miles that were passed on the long journey down.

We saw the wild beauty of Capertee Valley,

As slowly we rounded the base of the Crown.

But, ah! the poor bullocks were cruelly goaded

While climbing the hills from the flats and the vales;

'Twas here that the teams were so often unloaded

That all knew the meaning of "counting your bales".

And, oh! but the best-paying load that I carried

Was one to the run where my sweetheart was nurse.

We courted awhile, and agreed to get married,

And couple our futures for better or worse.

And as my old feet grew too weary to drag on

The miles of rough metal they met by the way,

My eldest grew up and I gave him the waggon -

He's plodding along by the bullocks to-day.

from Verses Popular and Humorous, first published by Angus and Robertson in 1900

Conrad Martens' artistic Crown

Some of the first artists to visit the infant colony of New South Wales were landscape painters. By the time European explorers and settlers had moved over the Blue Mountains in the 1820s, watercolour had firmly established itself around the British Empire as the preferred painting medium for landscape artists as it was both inexpensive and portable.

One of a series of three large watercolour views 
of Crown Ridge by Conrad Martens (Private Collection)

The London-born artist Conrad Martens (1801-1878) first came to Australia in 1835. Like fellow painter Augustus Earle, Martens had been employed by the pioneer naturalist, Charles Darwin  as ship artist on the voyage of the HMS Beagle. Martens was a great admirer of the pioneering English landscape painter, J M W Turner and throughout his painting career tried to emulate some of the painting techniques pioneered by his artistic hero.

Although he had travelled to other areas of the Lithgow district it was not until late in life that Martens visited the Crown Ridge on the western edge of Capertee Valley. The Crown Ridge peak is now officially known as Blackman’s Crown after an early explorer of the region, John Blackman (c.1792-1868). The Mudgee Road from Wallerawang to Capertee still passes around the eastern side of Blackman’s Crown on the edge of the Capertee Valley making it one of the most recognisable landmarks in the district.

Oil portrait of Conrad Martens
 by Pierre Nuyts (1853)

Unlike most artists, Martens kept detailed diary notes of his travels, painting projects and commissions. From these entries we know he spent a few days at Blackman’s Crown in December 1874. He stayed at the Crown Ridge Inn, a seemingly popular public house located on the southern side of the peak. One pencil study by Martens shows the Crown Ridge Inn with the Crpwn in the background. This inn no longer stands but some of its foundations can still be seen about 20 metres west of the present-day road alignment during winter when the grass is low.

Crown Ridge looking East, watercolour by Conrad Martens
View of Pantoney's Crown as seen from Pearsons Lookout c.1874
Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

Martens produced a series of detailed pencil drawings on site showing the Crown Ridge Inn, the Crown and the picturesque Capertee Valley below. He worked these studies up into three large watercolours some time after returning to Sydney. Two of these works are now in the Mitchell Library collection in Sydney while one remains in private ownership.

Martens was not the first artist to paint the Capertee Valley from the Crown. In a future post I will highlight the life and career of Mudgee artist Eliza Thurston (1807-1873) who painted the peak in the 1860s.

Old Buildings: St Jude's Church, Capertee

Dating from the 1930s Saint Jude's church in Capertee is located at the northern end of the village on the Mudgee Road (Castlereagh Highway). A Station church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bathurst this simple chapel is still consecrated but is rarely used for religious services.

St Jude's church in Capertee

The exterior is constructed of painted corrugated iron while the interior consists of a nave and porch. Light comes from coloured glass, Gothic style, windows. Despite its architectural simplicity this church appeals to many, especially Christians who like an unpretentious location for prayer and contemplation.

This church is named in honour of the Apostle Saint Jude Thaddeus, the Catholic saint of lost causes. Hopefully the long term survival of this building is not a lost cause.

St Jude's church as seen from the north

Located nearby to St Jude's is the Anglican Church of Saint Augustine's. These are the only two churches in Capertee.