Bills Horse Troughs

Bills trough at Medlow Bath

Horse Troughs in the Blue Mountains are located at:

• Railway Pde, Medlow Bath - at the Somerset St intersection
• Glen Rd, Woodford
• Falls Rd, Wentworth Falls - near the Fletcher St intersection
• Glenbrook - near the theatre
• Blackheath - near the Govett's Ride statue in the park on the highway - not a Bills trough
• Ardill park, Warrimoo
• Douglass Square, Lawson - now lost.

There are also carved, stone troughs on Berghofer Pass and near the former Katoomba Baths at Leura Cascades.

Their story

The story begins in 1859 when George Bills was born in Brighton England. He came to Australia as a young man, and with his brother established a wire mattress manufacturing business in Kent St Sydney, which operated successfully over many years.

During his lifetime, George was a philanthropist who took a keen interest in seeking out cases of human need and gave many thousands of pounds anonymously to assist the needy folk.

George Bills died 14 Dec 1927 and his wife, Annis died on the 20 Jun 1910. After providing some personal bequests, his will directed the income from the residue of his estate to be used to provide troughs for horses, and for the purpose of preventing cruelty, and alleviating the sufferings of animals in any country.

Around 700 troughs were erected in Australia, mostly in New South Wales and Victoria, and some 50 in overseas countries - England, Ireland, Switzerland [for donkeys] and Japan.

In the early stages of trough supply, each was individually designed and constructed. One of the first was a granite Memorial trough, hewn in one piece as a memorial to Mr Bills. It was situated in Barton St Hawthorn, Melbourne; the trough has long since been removed.

Later a standard design was adopted, and Rocla concrete products supplied many hundreds of the troughs in Victoria and New South Wales. Troughs were supplied on application to the Bills Trust by Councils, and truckloads of 10 would often leave the Rocla Factory for installation by a team of men in country towns. Most of the troughs were made and supplied in the 1930's in Victoria.

The cumbersome steel and concrete moulds were later moved to a Rocla factory at Junee, NSW; where about 20 troughs were made in 1938. The moulds were transferred to Sydney where about 200 troughs were made and supplied to various areas. But the growing use of the motor car and trucks caused a halt in demand for the troughs and none have been installed since World War II.

Links

https://billswatertroughs.wordpress.com/page/2/  

John Merriman

Local Studies Librarian

The Sidneys of Megalong Valley, Blue Mountains

The Sidneys of Megalong

Isaac Walter Sidney was born in Bristol, England (circa 1857) and emigrated to the U.S.A. There he took up building as a trade although he described himself as a "skilled labourer" on his marriage certificate. He became an American citizen but later moved to Australia and Megalong where he purchased land neighbouring Donald Boyd's "Yaralta" (Parish Kanimbla Portion 25).

On Australia Day 1903, Isaac married Eliza Ann Campbell, described as a domestic servant from Hartley, at the home of Edgar Chapman, with the Reverend Pratt, Congregational Minister, officiating. Eliza had been previously married to a man by the name of Campbell but was known by her maiden name of Hunt. Eliza purchased land (Parish of Kanimbla Portion 170 & 166) and later her daughter, by her first marriage, Doris Fennell, took up land with Isaac and Eliza's son, and only child, Isaac Junior (Parish of Kanimbla portions 20 & 171). Isaac senior and Eliza built a pise cottage on their land which is still extant.

They were known as "poor" farmers as they had little stock. He did some building in the Valley and is chiefly remembered for his long and bitter arguments, for the British side, at the time of the Irish "troubles".

Eliza acted as the local midwife and was responsible for seeing some of the present residents of the Valley into this world. She died in 1943 aged 78, and is buried in an unmarked grave with her husband Isaac in Blackheath cemetery.

Isaac senior’s step daughter, Doris Fennell and her husband Harold, built a pise cottage near her mother and stepfather. She is alleged to have taken a stock whip to her husband, quite frequently, lashing him around the ankles, "because he moved too slow!". Harold died, aged 53, in May 1948 and Doris lived alone in her cottage until she too died in August 1960, aged 73. They share an unmarked grave in the Blackheath cemetery.

Isaac Walter junior (1905-1982), known as Ike, enlisted in 1942 and served as a private in ordnance during WW2; he married late in life to Esther Mildred Cox in 1957 and moved to Faulconbridge where he died, having sold the property to William and Joy Pringle in 1963 which is now named “Yapunyah”. Ike junior is also buried in Blackheath Cemetery in an unmarked grave.

Note on the photo: in the early 1900s Ebenezer Vickery of Kanimbla Station established a freezing works on Blackheath Creek to process rabbit carcasses which were transported to the railway at Mt Victoria for sale at the Sydney markets; it is said over 1 million rabbits were processed out of the Megalong Valley.

John Merriman, Local Studies Librarian
© 2008 Blue Mountains City Library
Photo: Blue Mountains City Library Collection

Ref: Historic Megalong Valley (1988) Mary Shaw

Harry Peckman - the poetical whip (1846-1934)

HARRY PECKMAN, THE BLUE MOUNTAINS POET (1846-1934)

Harry Peckman was a true ‘Blue Mountaineer’. Born at Kurrajong in 1846, he lived the whole of his life in the Blue Mountains region and died in Katoomba in 1934. As a young man, in the days before the western railway line was built, he drove wagons and coaches on the road between Penrith and Hartley. Then, when the Mountains developed its reputation as a tourist destination, he began taking visitors to the local scenic attractions.

In the early 1880s he and his brother, John, established livery stables in Parke Street, Katoomba, at the back of the Carrington Hotel. Their business flourished. Both men were expert horsemen and knew the Blue Mountains intimately and their patrons soon included a growing number of holidaying dignitaries and their families. In 1887 Lord and Lady Carrington were taken over the newly opened Six-Foot Track to Jenolan Caves1 while, in 1893 the Duchess of Buckingham and Chandos was entertained with a billy tea and damper picnic at Govetts Leap2.

But knowledge of horses and the bush were not the only skills Harry possessed. To the many visitors who engaged him he became known as ‘the poetical whip’ who would take them to places off the beaten track and entertain them en route with selections from his repertoire of mostly self-penned songs and recitations. As more than one observer commented, his verses, performed in the midst of a grand, open landscape, provided visitors with a glimpse into the heart of the Mountains that no other driver could offer.

While no one could claim that Peckman was a great poet, it is clear that his skills as a performer made up for any deficiencies in craft. “No free verse for this poet”, observed cartoonist and journalist Hal Eyre in 1922, “but rhymes tuned to the beat of his horses’ hoofs.”3 His subjects ranged over the Blue Mountains itself and included dramatic and patriotic war ballads and heart-felt ‘farewells’ to friends who had died. There were also tributes to popular heroes like the sculler Edward Trickett, the first Australian to win a world sporting title, and the popular aviatrix Amy Johnson who visited Katoomba in 1930.

Like many self-educated men, Peckman was clearly a wide reader and his verses are dotted with various literary and Biblical allusions. He was also acquainted with a number of Sydney literary figures who sought him out when they visited Katoomba, among them the poets Roderick Quinn and Henry Lawson.

Though he performed for the gentry his audience was in the main a popular one and his work, when published, appeared almost exclusively on privately printed broadsides and later, when a newspaper became established in Katoomba, in the local press.

It seems that he was performing his songs and poems and peddling his broadsides from the time he worked as a young labourer and coach driver in the Hartley area in the 1860s and 1870s. In some of his reminiscences, recorded by local journalists, he mentioned the lively sessions of song and recitation he participated in at this time, particularly at ‘Kelly’s in the Glen’ halfway to Jenolan Caves.

Some of his work attained for him what is possibly the highest accolade a popular audience can bestow, a passage into the anonymous oral or ‘folk’ tradition that carried it to places far removed from the Blue Mountains.

Towards the end of his life Harry Peckman experienced hard times and, though visitors still often sought him out even in the late 1920s, he watched as the age of the motor car gradually rendered his coach and pair obsolete. At the time of his death he had become something of an icon, a symbol of a past era. On a slow news day the local journalists would seek him out and trawl his still alert mind for reminiscences of the ‘old days’.

For his 88th birthday, in August 1934, his friends organised a party. He performed his poems for the last time and, some seven weeks later, died. His grave in Katoomba Cemetery looks out over the tributaries of the Grose River that flow into what he once described as “the Hawkesb’ry silver Rhine”.

His name is publicly remembered in Peckmans Plateau and Peckmans Road, both in Katoomba.



Note: In 1993, nearly 60 years after his death, a small biography and collection of Peckman’s surviving poems and songs, The Prince of Whips: The Life and Works of the Blue Mountains Pioneer Harry Peckman, Jim Smith and John Low, was published. Copies of this book are still available, for more information contact Blue Mountains City Library Local Studies.

© 2008 John Low

1 For an account of this trip see Smith, Jim. From Katoomba to Jenolan Caves: The Six Foot Track 1884-1984, Katoomba: Second Back Row Press, [1985], pp. 33-4.
2 Duchess of Buckingham & Chandos. Glimpses of Four Continents, London: John Murray, 1894.
3 Hal Eyre wrote of his experiences touring with Peckman in the Sydney Daily Telegraph of 13th September 1922 and 26th September 1922. Three caricatures of Harry were also included.