Looking Down a Time Tube

Today I am standing at the top of Muggyrang, a gully of the Broken Back Range. Dawn is just breaking when I look down my time tube to 114 years ago. I look south along Flying Fox Creek, across a small flat alongside the creek and see a man in his 40's and a boy or is it a young man saying goodbye to their wife and mother.

In the early autumn of 1897 George Matthews and his son Lyall had pigs ready for market. Their neighbours and close relatives, Brothers in Law George and Bill Hollinshead also had pigs ready for market. The market where they would sell the pigs was at Maitland a distance of about 20 miles. There were no trucks or wagons to cart the pigs, even if there were there was little by the way of roads. They would do as they had many times before, walk the pigs to market, a trip of 3 days.

This little community lived in the Pokolbin Hills, perched on top of the Broken Back Range, a place that just a few years earlier George Matthews described as a wilderness swarming with flying foxes.

George and Lyall set off from their place on Flying Fox Creek, just south of the top of Muggyrang, as dawn was breaking, it was Tuesday 9 th March. George Hollinshead lived further up Flying Fox Creek about three quarters of a mile further south of where George Matthews lived. Bill Hollinshead, although everyone knew him as "Rivers", lived about half a mile east of his brother George on the next ridge.

George Matthews' wife Mary was the younger sister of Bill and George Hollinshead. She had married George before she was sixteen, 22 years earlier. In the autumn of 1897 Mary was expecting her 13th child. At the time Bill and his wife Frances had ten children and George and Jane had eight. The fattened pigs needed to be sold to help fill these growing families.

George and Lyall walked the pigs in an easterly direction, uphill, following the ridge between two unnamed gullies that flow into Flying Fox Creek. They had tuckerbags over their shoulders, Mary had packed some damper and corned pork, and each was carrying a rolled up swag. They met up with the Hollinsheads about half a mile from home at the “Cross Roads” where the old Pokolbin Road, Mount View Road and Singleton Road met.

George Hollinshead had his oldest son Alf with him who was only 14 and Bill was accompanied by his son "Moozel". Well his real name was Herbert but everyone called him "Moozel", just like everyone called his father "Rivers". "Moozel" was 17, the same age as his cousin Lyall. George Matthews was 45 years old, Bill Hollinshead was 49, and George 39.

After the morning greetings, "G’day GT", George Thomas Matthews was "GT" to those game enough to call him that, "Mornin Rivers, how many pigs ‘ave ya got" etc. The boys had a shyack at each other and the group set off in a northerly direction along the Pokolbin Road, only a bridle track really. Following the ridge to the east of Foxy Gully, past the Parish cottage of the Lord Bishop of Newcastle, the road descended steeply down into Pokolbin and levelled near the junction of Foxy Gully and Muggyrang Creek. From here they turned east past the little school, such as it was to serve the education of the Pokolbin children, and then following along the general direction of Pokolbin Creek.

The party had reached where Pokolbin Creek flows to Black Creek, time to camp the night, they had covered a distance of about 8 miles. Here there were good water holes and plenty of firewood to boil the billy. It was a good place to rest with the 20 or so pigs, there was even an established yard here to keep the pigs together overnight, such as it was, a few spotted gum saplings strung between the trees on the bank of the creek. The men smoked their pipes as they directed the boys to gather some fallen branches and make a fire. A billy of tea would go well with their damper and corned pork for dinner.

George Matthews and Lyall were quietly happy, if the pig sale price is good they might get ₤1 each for their pigs, not so sure about those "Hollinshead hogs".

From Stoney Creek they could see the railway and the structures of South Greta Colliery. This pit was the first of many in, what was to become the biggest coal field in the southern hemisphere, the South Maitland Coal Fields. These sights were very unfamiliar to the boys from the Pokolbin Hills and Lyall had some extra excitement and anticipation. His father had told him of coal mines and what opportunities there might be as more were established.

Tomorrow they would have only a mile and a half to go to reach the sale yards of Maitland. They would be in good time to register their pigs with the auctioneer. The sale yards were on Campbell’s Hill, opposite the Maitland Hospital which had already stood on the hill for nearly 50 years. The saleyards were new by comparison, John Eales and Henry J Adams had established them in 1874, initially privately owned but sold to the Borough of Maitland in 1889.

They hoped the prices were good. George had a plan that he had made with young Lyall. If they got more than their immediate needs to feed the family then Lyall would get a share. Maybe Lyall would have ₤10 enough for the ¼ deposit required for a Conditional Purchase of the minimum 40 acre portion of Crown land. George knew all about how the purchase worked, he had done the self same thing 17 years earlier, and had added three Additional Conditional Purchases extending his land holdings to the east, he now had 173 acres. George had not raised his money by selling pigs, rather by crop raising along the Marrowbone Road in Pokolbin on land he rented from Bernard Connolly.

The pig prices were good as later on that day, the 11 March 1897, Lyall Matthews took a Condition Purchase on 40 acres of heavily timbered land in the Pokolbin Hills. The land adjoined the western boundary of his father’s original selection, it was Portion 67 in the Parish of Millfield.

Lyall Matthews had ambition, the benefit of having land was clear. He didn't have enough money to pay any greater deposit than was required for the minimum Conditional Purchase of 40 acres, but on the same day he took a Conditional Lease on a further 40 acres adjoining and further west and to the south of his Conditional Purchase. Lyall was pleased with himself, he now had 80 acres of heavily timbered albeit steep land.

They would be home on Saturday, a day of rest on Sunday, George insisted that there be no work done on Sundays, and on Monday Lyall could start felling trees to erect his dwelling. After all a condition of the Conditional Purchase was that he had to occupy the land within a month.

The land acquisition had purpose, the pits would need props, the miners housing and the Pokolbin Hill had the timber. It wasn't long and Lyall had a bullock team and the coal mines were popping up, or is that being sunk, all along where the towns of Kurri Kurri, Weston, Abermain, Neath and Cessnock were emerging.

The Hollinsheads followed suit and for the next 60 years bullock teams were used in these Pokolbin Hills and always at least one owned by a Matthews. How many timber getters, how many bullock teams, how many trees were felled, how many pits supplied? It has been said that the sides of the mountain were denuded of trees.

I stand at the top of Muggyrang and look west at the mountain side in front of me, it has the appearance of virgin bushland, rugged and heavily timbered.

Only with some guidance and close examination can you find the remnants of a saw pit, a chute where the logs were slid down to the gully and snigged to the loading up ground. Wander up the mountain side and you can find the old bullock tracks following around the side to a ledge where a log could be swung around by the bullocks and launched down the chute. If you are lucky you might come across an abandoned snatch block. Wandering further and you find the stumps of the various trees which have been felled.

All these a clear indication of past activity that have been swallowed up by regrowth and invisible to all but those few who have knowledge of what to look for and where.

I am sure that 114 years ago when George Matthews was raising pigs alongside Flying Fox Creek on his first selection that he was telling young Lyall of the coal mine near the saleyards at Maitland and his vision of the demand for timber that mines would create.

I am also sure that he recalled his training as a sawyer in his youth at Ellalong when encouraging Lyall into timber getting. I think George had no idea of the extent that the coal mining would develop and the logging that would occur over the next 60 years.

Nor did he ever think that his Great and Great Great Grandchildren would be able to stand in the same place and see what must be the same sights except for the Forestry Road winding its way into the mountain.

Lindsay Threadgate Feb 2011