Some more holiday sights

First, a little background.

In my book collection is a book called "Annabella Boswell's Journal". Annabella Innes was born in New South Wales in 1826 and lived in different places with her parents and younger sister during which time she kept a diary, as did many well-brought up young ladies of the time. When she was still young her father died, and couple of years afterward she, her mother and sister boarded a ship to sail from Sydney north along the New South Wales coast to Port Macquarie. In those days - early 1840s - Port Macquarie was a convict settlement, a far cry from the coastal resort it is now which we visited a couple of weeks ago. Annabella's uncle, Major Archibald Innes, would not hear of his relatives settling in the port so offered them a home on his extensive property a few miles south of the town. Annabella lived there for several years and wrote about life in her uncle's house in her diary, which was published for her family many years later after she married and moved to Scotland.

Today the land that Annabella knew looks like this - that is Lake Innes in the background.

Turn around, and one could be a very long way from anywhere. It is very peaceful.
Turn a little further and see........this.
This sad sight is all that now remains of the large country estate once owned by Major Innes, and of the rooms where Annabella worked on her patchwork, and of the verandah where she and her sister and cousins danced the polka to the latest tunes of the day.
Walkways have been built to make for safe walking, as there is so much rubble and fallen brick.
Even the garden, once so lovely, has encroached on the house walls.

It was a grand estate employing 58 convicts as well as other workers; because it was owned by a Scot one of those workers was Bruce the piper, whose duties included piping the family awake each morning as well as waiting on the table with other servants in livery. Just imagine being rudely woken early in the morning to bagpipes! There were stables for the horses, and some carriages, a farm to keep everyone supplied with food, house servants - a very grand establishment.

However it all came to an end late in the 1840s when convict transportation to New South Wales ceased and convicts in Port Macquarie were relocated. Add to that a rural depression, and Major Innes could no longer keep his grand estate. It was sold, and the years took its toll on the buildings. A bushfire did more damage, and vandalism and theft of building materials finished off the once-proud buildings. If you are interested, there is more information here.

Social history can be fascinating.....how ordinary people lived their lives. In some ways not so different to us today, in other ways a world we can never know because that time has passed forever.

"Certain local rules have been recognized in society at Sydney from the fact that a gentleman's social position is acquired by virtue of certain offices which he holds, and the social status of woman is also in a less degree determined by the official rank of her husband."

How terrible to have one's status in life determined by one's husband, not by one's own achievements.

Enjoy your days!