Bundanon

In 1853 Captain Charles Wardlow gained a crown land grant on the Shoalhaven River at Riversdale which consisted of 64 acres. The property was passed down through the family until it was sold in 1954 to George Walker of Cambewarra. In 1974 the Walkers sold Riversdale to Arthur and Yvonne Boyd to which the Boyd’s added 2 parcels of land totalling 144 acres, more than twice the original 1853 land grant. 

Charlie Weir

Shoalhaven resident, Charlie Weir (1928 – 2021) grew up on the Bundanon properties. In the following extract of an interview in 2012, with Bundanon’s Property Manager, Henry Goodall, Charlie shared some of his stories. Charlie is well-known in the region as the founder of Riverwatch, a voluntary organisation to protect the Shoalhaven River.

Interview

“A lot of things happened them times, you know, with the running of the boat, and a lot of things we experienced, like the piggeries they had (at Riversdale) – they used to rear pigs and they used to grow a lot of corn, that’s why they had this wallaby chase every weekend, chasing the wallabies and beagles around the hill – you could hear them bellowing and going on all weekend at the dogs, keeping the wallabies off the corn…We used to trap eels and trap rabbits, and they were boiled down for pigs… we used to eat rabbits… You’d get rabbits for breakfast, dinner and tea, then you’d have a change the next day – it would be baked instead of boiled or something! And parrots off the corn…we used to eat king parrots! They were good eating too. 

We had no wombats here then… but this fellow (wombat) was over there and Grandad said, if it was after a flood he must have come down on a log…Anyway, I don’t know how he got it, but he got the wombat and fed it in the pig pen and fed it with the pigs, then when he got the wildness out of it he killed it and we had bacon made from wombat…And we had visitors from Sydney…my Grandma cooked bacon up with the roast lamb or something and Laurie was one of the visitors, he said “Not a bad bit of bacon there Jackie – did you kill that or did you buy it?” and he said “No I killed that” and when they’d finished eating, Madge finished eating – Madge was a bit fussy, that was Laurie’s wife, he said “Well how did you like your bacon?”… Madge said “Yes you want to do some more of that because that was beautiful that”…”Well you’re eating wombat for the first time.” And Madge was straight outside spewing her heart out! I can still see it!!! (Laughing) … I didn’t know the difference either, it was nice bacon and that was quite good. They eat roots, leaves and it’s just like a bloody pig. 

We used to go rabbit trapping… We could have two or three hundred rabbits to skin, clean, all the skins went on bows, they were sold, and that was the best money, selling skins…We used to go round the hills picking these ferns and Bill started that and then Grandad got onto it too and sending these ferns to Sydney and as far as I can gather, these ferns were used to decorate the butcher shops…They used to send these bundles of ferns to Sydney, they got good rabbit skins and fox skins and tiger quoll skins as well. Terrible when you think about it today, they say that’s why there’s no foxes now and I said well the funny thing, I said there’s no tiger quolls now … and them days there was hundreds of foxes. A lot of foxes and they all had beautiful skins on them. They never had the mange like today; a lot of the foxes have got a mange. Like wombats got a mange too. 

No wombats then no. I don’t know why, whether it’s because of the dogs who used to, every weekend they were here, they used to come in and line up – about four horses and people on it and shotgun and beagles all around. They were getting ready to go to the bush….Then the dogs would chase these wallabies out of the gully and come out where you’re standing. Boom boom boom! They were wallabies then and a kangaroo was never seen…. Now it’s all kangaroos… 

It’s funny how things have changed. You know I’m a real bird lover and one day I used to shoot them, ducks and all that on the river – cos that’s how we lived then. We didn’t have food to eat, of course we were lucky on the farm, we had corn, we had orchards, we had plenty of fish. We used to shoot ducks and parrots and eat all these sort of things. We used to eat guinea fowls. Guinea fowls are good eating. … Lots of wild ducks. 

The logging that was done here while we were here, and I was pretty young at the time, I can only just remember the bullock drivers and that. And I’ll tell you another thing – I remember it very well- I’d said to Dad, I said “The bullock drivers are up there” and he said “What do you mean the bullock drivers? They are not working, they’re not here. They took the team away, they’re not here,” and they were there right enough, I could hear them. It was in fact the bloody Lyre birds!… The Lyre birds mocking the bloody bullock drivers – you’d swear they were there and the axe chopping… Gee they were good. 

When I finished the building trade I worked on the (Tallowa) dam. I said to the Project Manager one day “when are we putting the fish ladder in?” because there was a plan for a fish ladder then and he said “what do you want a fish ladder for?” I said “just so that the fish can travel up and down , fish travel up and down the river all the time” and he said, “yes well I don’t know anything about it and if you like your job please keep your mouth shut.” So that stuck into me that, ever since then, and I told a lot of people about it…”… With my Dad I fished on and off for about forty years… and we were saw milling at the same time…But that was when I wasn’t very popular with a lot of fishermen because I was trying to bring in new laws – we were killing too many little fish in haul nets…They said “shut your mouth, you’ll have the bloody river closed, give them an inch and they’ll take a mile”… so I was very unpopular… I got out of the game and the Fisheries Research Officer called for volunteers to come and plant mangroves and I went along and just at that time I started Riverwatch, back in 1980.” Charlie Weir interviewed (on video) 2012.