Parkes. NSW. The railway station. Still in use. The Indian Pacific transcontinental train passes through here. Old rail yard workshops and sheds. : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Parkes. NSW. The railway station. Still in use. The Indian Pacific transcontinental train passes through here. Old rail yard workshops and sheds. / denisbin
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Parkes –the Early Years. The Currajong district (later called Parkes after Sir Henry Parkes the politician and federalist) was first sighted and explored by white men in 1835 when Major Thomas Mitchell explored the areas from Parkes to the Bogan River which flows northwards from here to its junction with the Darling River near Bourke. Charles Sturt and Hamilton Hume had traced parts of the Bogan River north of Parkes in 1828. Mitchell’s explorations opened up the Parkes area but his conflict with the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people did not help later squatters. Richard Cunningham the noted botanist on Mitchell’s explorations was killed by Aboriginals on the Bogan River in 1835. As early as 1826 the “limits of settlement” were set where land could be bought and sold, or even squatted upon. In 1827 a road was surveyed to Wellington, 110 kms to the north east of Parkes and the town of Wellington was laid out in 1828. No settlement was permitted beyond Wellington or Orange or Molong or Cowra or Yass. But the new ordinance banning western settlement in 1829 did not stop the pastoralists/squatters who chased good open pasture lands with creeks and good pasturage. In 1833 NSW passed the Protection of Crown Lands Act to stop this. But it failed too. The first settlement beyond the defined limits in the Parkes district was at Eugowra in 1834. Mitchell’s explorations of 1836 and his favourable reports opened the flood gates to squatting. Acts of violence between Aboriginal people and the squatters was uncontrolled so in 1839 an act was passed to levy squatters an annual tax for police and peace keeping forces with Commissioners to ensure the peace. In 1846 the government granted 14 year leases to the former squatters as their claim to the land was legalised. The nearest sheep station to what became Parkes was Bald Hill station run by Thomas Bolton but there were four other big stations in the district by 1848. The pastoralists developed their properties until the discovery of gold at Lambing Flat (Young) and Forbes in 1861.The routes the diggers followed bypassed Currajong (Parkes) but that was not to last. Currajong had been surveyed as a village site in 1853 but little had emerged there. In August 1862 James Pugh discovered gold in the hills at Currajong. Golden Bar Hill gold field was discovered nearby about the same time. The first ores were taken to Forbes to be crushed but by early 1863 crushing machinery was located near Currajong. By 1867 the gold mining was declining but 40,000 ounces had been extracted from mine shafts. The village had police barracks and a school and many tents. By 1871 it was almost deserted when another gold find was made at Bushman’s and more in 1872 and 1873. Bushman’s was soon a village of 6,000 people. Some of the gold found was easy alluvial gold but most was in deep lodes. In August 1873, Henry Parkes (later Sir Henry Parkes from 1877) who was then the Premier of NSW, visited Bushman’s gold fields and met with diggers and the local Gold Commissioner. A township was to be called Coobang but this was changed to Parkes in December 1873. On the same day the largest gold nugget found on the fields was discovered – the Welcome nugget weighing 132 ounces. These gold fields produced 50,000 ounces of gold between 1871 and 1873. A mail service was started from Orange and police patrolled the fields and a Union Church was built in 1872 near the present day Uniting Church in Court Street. At that time there was a general store, a hotel and some other commercial buildings in Bushman/Currajong. It was the Gold Commissioner who laid out the streets of Parkes in 1873 with a dogleg in the main street because of the early buildings. After the gold declined the new land act ensured that farmers as well as pastoralists moved into the Parkes district. It was Henry Parkes who had championed the 1861 Robertson Act in NSW which allowed selection of land before survey for blocks of 40 to 320 acres at £1 per acre. 25 percent was due on occupation and the balance in three years’ time. This act remained in force until 1884. The earliest wheat crops were taken to Orange for milling until the McGee and Quinn mill was erected in 1871. The mill was destroyed by a massive fire in 1895. A second mill was built near the railway line in 1911. In fact the railway from Orange opened up Parkes to markets beyond the district. It reached Molong in 1885 and Parkes in 1893. The line from Parkes was extended to Condobolin in 1898 and north to Peak Hill in 1914. The link across to Broken Hill (and Adelaide) via Condobolin was not completed until 1927. Parkes became a municipality in 1883 with its first mayor and the town was well established by the mid-1880s. The first Council Offices and library were erected in 1886.The original Wesleyan/Union Methodist Church was erected in 1864 doubling as an early church school and then provisional government school from 1868. Compulsory education did not come about in NSW until 1880. The Currajong School in the Wesleyan Church closed in 1868 and another wooden school opened in 1872 until the Parkes Primary School was completed in 1875. It opened with 93 pupils and a few years later had 350 pupils! A new government school was built in 1933 and a high school established in 1941. The Sisters of Mercy built a convent school in Parkes in 1910 but the Sisters of St Joseph also had a two storey convent in Parkes. The Anglicans built a wooden church in 1875 but it burnt down in 1876. A parish hall was not built until 1889 and it was then used as a church until the new St George’s was completed in 1927. The Parkes Methodist Church was built in 1897 and the church hall added in 1913. At that time the original wooden Union/Wesleyan (1864) church was demolished to make room for the new church hall. The Presbyterians first met in the Masonic Hall until they built a church around 1890. Their first church was started in 1916 and opened in 1919. The Catholics began masses in the early school in the 1870s until their church opened in 1889. This fine church was demolished in 1941 and replaced with a bigger Catholic Church in 1942. As a result of many German Lutherans moving from South Australia to Parkes a Lutheran congregation was established in 1892 but a church was not built until 1953. The Lutherans used various halls around the Parkes district for their services for around fifty years. |
| 撮影日 | 2021-05-01 15:54:40 |
| 撮影者 | denisbin |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | DSC-HX90V , SONY |
| 露出 | 0.003 sec (1/320) |
| 開放F値 | f/6.3 |