Georges River

This article looks at one of the earliest farmers in the area south of Sydney, David Duncombe. Together with his convict servants he raised cattle and produce on what is now a forgotten but fertile area between the Georges and Woronora Rivers.

Oysters have been harvested on the Georges River for at least the last 6000 years initially by the local indigenous peoples and in the 19th and 20th centuries by European. Today, due to a combination of environmental factors and disease, the oyster industry has all but disappeared from the Georges River. Although the industries history has been poorly documented a rich archaeological record has been left in the mud and on the river banks.

The steam paddle wheel ferry SS Telephone was a familiar sight on the Georges River in the early years of the 20th century carrying passengers from Como station upstream to pleasure grounds at Lugarno Park and Parkesvale. There is no record of her ever leaving the Georges River but her history after 1908 is unknown. Her fate remains a mystery but a recent investigation of Parkesvale has uncovered evidence of ship salvage which may mark her last resting place.

Aboriginal women Biddy Giles and her second husband, Englishman Billy Giles acquired the Mill Creek property of Dr Alexander Cuthill after his murder in 1854. Recent archaeological investigations have located a home site and remnant agricultural landscape on Mill Creek tentatively identified as being the home of this important local aboriginal figure.

For the European colonists of NSW, bread remained an essential staple of their diets and a link to home as they struggled with life in a new place.  While successful grain production took several years to establish, developing processes which efficiently and economically milled local and imported wheat and oats into flour remained a problem for far longer.  The adaptation of European technologies to the alien Australian environment, a limited pool of skilled labour, as well as the peculiarities of a largely unfree convict workforce, added to the complications and in many cases attempts to engage in milling proved unsuccessful.
This thesis explores the efforts of one colonial entrepreneur, John Lucas, to establish two watermills on the Georges and Woronora Rivers south of Sydney during the 1820s. Although the broad pattern of the history of Lucas and his mills is known, there has not been a detailed study of this colonial enterprise or the operations of these industrial sites. This study aims to understand how the two mills, separated by a considerable distance, functioned as a single economic unit integrating with Lucas' broader mercantile interests.  It will consider the issues of technological transfer and environmental adaptation, as well the role and efficiency of a predominantly convict industrial labour force.  It will also consider the environmental, technological and commercial reasons for the decline and collapse of the milling operations.
Lucas’ Brisbane and Woronora Mills were recently located by the author in the Georges River basin, south of Sydney. Their archaeological study allows us to answer some important questions about how these mills operated as early industrial sites using convict labour.

Of the many ships that must have been associated with moving wheat and flour between John Lucas’ watermills in the Georges River basin and market there is only 2 for which we have a name. The Olivia, a schooner of 60 tons, owned by the Lucas family was used to take wheat from the family farms in Van Diemen’s Land to his mill’s and the Alligator, a schooner of 198 tons stranded in the entrance of the Georges River when trying to deliver wheat to Lucas’ mills. The newspapers of the day reported their tonnage and the sailing rig but nothing else is known about them as records of ships registered prior to 1840 are incomplete. This article discusses what we can learn about the size of these ships.

While the performance of industrial convicts working for the government has been well documented (e.g. Tuffin 2015) the convicts and ex-convicts employed by early industrialists has not been studied in any detail. This paper looks at the workforces of miller John Lucas and industrialist Simeon Lord. Starting from humble beginnings these industrialists used assigned convicts and former convicts almost exclusively to staff their various enterprises. 
While Tasmanian convict records are well preserved in NSW few individual convict records have survived. It was reported by Walsh (2007 p11) that most of the records of the office of the Principal Superintendent of Convicts (NSW) were destroyed in 1882. Thus, landmark studies of Australian convicts, such as those of Walsh, were based largely on generic records for NSW convicts such as shipping indents, Ticket of Leave records, musters, census and various aggregated returns on secondary punishment. These same record sources have been used to firstly identify the convicts of industrialists John Lucas and Simeon Lord and then to compare their characteristics and behaviour.

The names that spring to mind when considering the exploration of the Georges River is George Bass and Matthew Flinders who together with a young William Martin took a small dingy Tom Thumb up the Georges River to about Casula in 1795 on an expedition lasting about nine days. But was this the first exploration of this River?

Darcy Ezekiel Dugan (1920 – 1991) was Sydney’s most notorious criminal. He was not known for the enormity of his many crimes, but he captured the publics attention with his ability to escape custody, seemingly with ease. This article looks at his activities in the south of Sydney

At the end of the nineteenth century pleasure grounds sprang up across Sydney. On the Georges River over a dozen were accessed from the Como train station, with patrons visiting by ferry or hire boats. Through the early twentieth century tastes changed and private cars opened up new opportunities causing many pleasure grounds to close by the 1950s, the majority becoming public parks. Some modern parks, such as the recreation area at Como, still retain features of the old pleasure grounds.

There are three rivers between Sydney and the Illawarra, the Cooks, Georges and Woronora. Mitchell's Illawarra road was made possible by the damming of the Cooks River between 1839 and 1841 using convict labour. This article describes the section of Mitchell's Illawarra Road starting at the Cooks River dam
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There are many indigenous middens located on the Woronora River, Sydney. Historic evidence tells of a large midden, at Stretton Point Illawong, which was used, in the 1890's, as building material by the local landowner. This paper looks at the validity of this history.

Previous articles in this series have discussed the history of John Lucas’ two water mills and their archaeological remains. This article discusses the combined operation of the two mills to source wheat and deliver flour to markets in Sydney. This involves the maritime landscape of the Georges River and its tributaries together with the boats that would allow transport of materials and people between the two mills, creating a single economic and social unit. The maritime connections of the Lucas family have been detailed in the family history. Their farming interests in Tasmania were most probably useful in the supply of wheat to John Lucas’ mills. It is also possible that Lucas may have imported wheat from the Illawarra or even overseas. To maintain the economic advantage of avoiding import duty, Lucas would have needed to transit flour through Liverpool for land transport to Sydney. The elements and remains of this landscape are relevant to understanding the operation of the mills