Events and Displays

An author talk and two historical displays highlight what's coming up in the Local Studies section at Campbelltown Library.

On Thursday July 30 at 1pm HJ Daley Library will host author Rochelle Llewelyn Nicholls for a free talk about her new book Joe Quinn Among the Rowdies: The Life of Baseball's Honest Australian. I have written about Rochelle's book in a previous post on this blog.

Before its 20th-century Olympic trailblazers, and Depression-era icons such as Phar Lap and Don Bradman, came an Australian sporting pioneer who was celebrated on the most glamorous stage in the world-American major league baseball. Formerly from Campbelltown, Joe Quinn's story has, until now, been lost in the land of his birth. Meet Australia's first professional baseball player and manager, whose willingness to "have a go" in the grand Australian tradition will live long in the minds of sports fans on both sides of the Pacific.

Booking for Rochelle's talk are essential and can be made by contacting the library on 4645 4436.

We currently have on display at HJ Daley Library an exhibition on HistoryPin. Campbelltown Library uses HistoryPin to show then and now images of local scenes. The images are taken from our photographic database Our Past in Pictures and, with the use of Google Street View, the 'then' images are overlayed on to the same position supplied by Google Street View. You can also check out HistoryPin on our website at http://www.historypin.com/channels/view/16333020/#|photos/list/

From July 13 to 31 we will host a display for Bradbury's 50th anniversary called From Sherwood Hills to Bradbury. It will reveal how much change the suburb has undergone since Lend Lease's first stage was completed in 1965. Accompanying this will be a feature on Campbelltown pioneer William Bradbury whom the suburb is named after. The display coincides with the Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society's launch of it's Grist Mills journal on William Bradbury. It will be launched at 'Glenalvon' on July 11 at 10.30am.

Bradbury Park House

In 1816, Governor Macquarie gave a grant of 140 acres to Joseph Phelps who sold it to William Bradbury the following year. Bradbury Park House was built on this land in 1822. That year Macquarie and his party were touring Airds and the Illawarra and they had breakfast at Bradbury's. Macquarie noted that Bradbury was then building a good two-storey brick inn on a "very pretty eminence immediately adjoining Campbelltown". He also wrote that he named it Bradbury Park. It would have been one of the first substantial private buildings in the town vicinity.

Bradbury Park House had a quadrangle of kitchen, servants' quarters, wooden stables, granary and barn behind. Elaborate flower and kitchen gardens lay to the south of the house. These gardens are featured prominently on an 1844 map of Bradbury Park Estate below.

When Bradbury died in 1836, his estate was inherited by his daughter, Mary Shiel. Bradbury Park Estate was subdivided in 1844.

The house was located about 140 metres opposite where the town hall is located in Queen Street. Today's Asher Place off Bradbury Avenue is the location of the house. The two storey house still standing at the corner of  Moore-Oxley Bypass and Lithgow Street is said to look very similar to what Bradbury Park House looked.

Unfortunately, Bradbury Park House was demolished in 1954. Interestingly, two nails from the building are held at the Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo.

                           Bradbury Park House around 1918. (Claude Haydon Collection)

Source:

Demolished Heritage Buildings of Campbelltown, 2005

Camden News 18 December 1941

Written by Andrew Allen