The 2024 Back to Belgenny festival showcased living history at Belgenny Farm, featuring reenactments, traditional trades, and various activities such as sheepdog trials and guided tours. The event included a demonstration by Governor Macquarie’s regiment and highlighted the farm’s historical significance, providing visitors with an immersive g…[Read more]

This newspaper article examines policing in the Camden district of NSW. Policing was an integral part of the NSW colony, as was the building of residences for the local police constables and premises to keep offenders. Policing started in the Camden village in 1840, with the first police presence at the Nepean River crossing in 1804. With the…[Read more]

This blog post explores The Cowpastures, a region in New South Wales that originated in the late 18th century with the escape of cattle from the First Fleet. It evolved through European settlement, shaping cultural landscapes influenced by Aboriginal peoples. By the 1840s, it had become a defined regional identity, later overshadowed by the…[Read more]

The blog post explores the history of Denbigh, a significant colonial farming complex in Australia that recently opened its gardens to the public for a rare charity viewing. The property, with a dark history of conflict and anxiety, reveals layers of history, from dispossession of Aboriginal lands to dairying to urban invasion. Denbigh’s fortified…[Read more]

This newspaper article examines the arrival of Hawaiian music and dance after sweeping the rest of the country on the stage, at the movie and broadcast across the radio waves. The craze of the 1920s and 1930s was centred on hula dancing and the steel guitar. The first mention of Hawaiian culture in Camden occurred in 1925 when young Daphne Butt…[Read more]

Australia Historical Association Newsletter 5 September 2024
History Week 2024, ‘The Memory Landscape of the Cowpastures’, Ian Willis
Camden Library, John Street, Camden, Saturday 7 September 2024, 1.00pm AEST
In this talk, Dr Ian Willis OAM will offer a new look at the Cowpastures story in the Macarthur region. Ian will use examples of mem…[Read more]

Mirza Athar Baig is a unique and unconventional novelist of Urdu. Each of his works of art constructs a new world. On top of that, his works also change the way we look at the world. His writings seem to be the stories of an adventurer, always trying to discover a new world. In 2022, when his novel Khafif Makhfi Ki Khwab Beeti came out, readers…[Read more]

This newspaper article is about the Cowpastures Region, which emerged as a regional concept in the late 18th century. It starts with the story of the cattle that escaped from the Sydney colony in 1788 and were brought to New South Wales by the First Fleet. The region is a cultural construct of European settler society. It was based on the…[Read more]

A novel is at least a new world, or a new understanding of it. Is it possible to present the new world with old words? Or it requires new words. If the existing social structure (ethos) and concept of reality (world view) is to be changed, then mere wording does not work, one has to do experiments of form. Then, in a post-colonial society, it is…[Read more]

A novel is at least a new world, or a new understanding of it. Is it possible to present the new world with old words? Or it requires new words. If the existing social structure (ethos) and concept of reality (world view) is to be changed, then mere wording does not work, one has to do experiments of form. Then, in a post-colonial society, it is…[Read more]

This blog post examines Australian writer Nancy Phelan’s “Some Came Early, Some Came Late” (1970) and how it explores the historical significance of the Cobbitty region in New South Wales. It focuses on the efforts of early colonial English immigrants to recreate a ‘little England’. Phelan’s unique perspective, influenced by her own experiences…[Read more]

This newspaper article examines the four bridges at the Ford on the Nepean River at the entry point to the country town of Camden NSW. Access to the southern side of the Nepean River has been an issue since European settlement and the discovery of the Wild Cattle in 1795. Governor Hunter named the area the Cowpastures, and it became a restricted…[Read more]

This blog post examines Elizabeth Farm, which was the home of John and Elizabeth Macarthur for over 35 years and played a central role in Australia’s wool industry. Following years of neglect, it was transformed into a house museum in 1984. With extensive gardens and historical significance, it stands as one of the oldest surviving buildings in Australia.

The 4B worldwide movement has captivated the attention of many feminists and childfree women. The 4B movement calls for the refusal to date, marry, have sex with, or birth children for men. Starting in South Korea in 2019, the movement has quickly spread around the world. The 4B movement in the U.S. adds momentum from the legacy of the childfree…[Read more]

In this unpublished work, I set out to critically analyze the film ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’ The purpose is to begin developing a framework that incorporates feminist, post-colonial critique into critical media literacy practices. While this is the first attempt to do so, this blog entry lays the groundwork for what this could look like in practice.

In this previously unpublished scholarship, I hope to unpack the question of how land is narrated in K-12 spaces through the settler memory using the elementary Land Run reenactments as a case study. While this project is situated as part of my larger dissertation work, what I hope to offer here is how I am thinking about settler memory as an…[Read more]

The Camden History Journal is a bi-annual Camden Historical Society NSW publication.
Camden History March 2024 v5n7 (editor: Ian Willis) :
Dianne Matterson: Camden Bags Store: An Intriguing and Enigmatic Past, p. 301.
Lee Stratton: Honouring Brian Stratton, p. 308.
Max Walker: Building the Cowpastures: The Legacy of Convicts in the…[Read more]

This book details the history of the presence of Chinese market gardeners on the Nepean River floodplain at Camden NSW from the late 19th century for over one hundred years. It is a collection of articles written by Camden identities, starting with RE Nixon in the 1970s and then moving to contemporary times and the extensive research by Julie…[Read more]

This newspaper article tells the story of a clump of Agave americana, which is native to Mexica and southern USA, that has grown on the verge of Cawdor Road south of the Camden town centre for decades. The plants have created a lot of conjecture and are a bit of a local mystery. It is hard to tell fact from fiction. One story says that it is the…[Read more]

This blog post tells the story of the agave plants near Cawdor Road, Camden, which have become part of local folklore. Stories span murder, historical colonial gardens, and Indigenous conflict. These slow-growing succulents have sparked controversy and conjecture, with their true history and significance remaining a mystery. Despite attempts to…[Read more]