Holy Trinity Church Pioneer Cemetery Wander

The Bicentenary celebrations for Holy Trinity Church Kelso continue and on Saturday there was another wander around the pioneer sections of the cemetery surrounding the church. 

The weather was a perfect spring afternoon, so very enjoyable for all who attended.  This time, I was asked to give a talk about one of the graves.  The local family history group, together with the church historian have compiled incredible information about the early graves.  

I found the story behind my allotted grave to be really interesting, so thought I might share it here.  

MARY TINDALE – NEE WHYBROW

Mary’s story goes to show that complicated relationships aren’t a new thing.

Mary Whybrow was born in Sydney in 1815, the daughter of two convicts.

Parents

Her father, William Whybrow, arrived in 1796, having had his death sentence commuted to transportation for life. His crime was the theft of several silver items, silk gowns and petticoats and 300 pounds.  That was quite a significant theft.

Her mother, Elizabeth Clarke, arrived in 1808, having been transported for 7 years for stealing 14 yards of printed cotton, which would not be something to conceal easily.

William and Elizabeth married in 1809.

Mary was one of 7 children and when she was 5, in 1820, her parents separated and her mother, along with the children, moved in with John Poad Tindale, who later became Mary’s father in law.

Tindale Family

John Poad

John Poad Tindale married Susannah in England and they had one son, John Richard Tindale.  About a year later, John Poad was convicted of having forged bank notes in his possession and was sentence to 14 years transportation.

John was assigned to William Cox and worked on the construction of the first road over the Blue Mountains.  He was pardoned in 1816 and started to farm and acquire land, becoming very prosperous, owning land near Penrith, in Bathurst and Bylong.

Susannah

About a year after John’s transportation, his wife Susannah followed her husband to NSW as a free settler.  She left their son behind in the care of family.

Susannah also did well, establishing several businesses in Sydney. 

By 1819 she was in a good financial position, so sailed back to England to collect their son, now aged 11.

However, upon her return, she found that her husband was now in a relationship with Mary's mother Elizabeth.

John Richard

John Richard shared his time between his parents and attended Kings College at Parramatta for his schooling.

He started to acquire land from a young age.

Marriage

In 1830, when John Richard was 20, he married his step sister Mary, who was 15 at the time, here at Holy Trinity.  That was prior to the church being built, so they would have been married at the Parsonage.

They went on to have 8 children.  Records show that 4 of those children were also baptised at Holy Trinity.

After their marriage, they lived at “Victoria Farm” at Kelso, one of John Paod Tindale's properties.  This was also known as “Springdale” and established in about 1826.  The house still stands at Raglan, next to the airport, being one of the oldest homes in the district.  

Over John’s lifetime he built up an extensive property portfolio in NSW and farmed at Bathurst, ensuring a wealthy lifestyle for the family, even having their portraits painted in 1841 by the artist Maurice Felton.  These portraits currently hang in the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.

Mary is aged 26 at this time.

John is 31 at this time.

Separation

However, wealth does not always bring happiness, and John and Mary separated in 1849.  Mary made her permanent home at their property “Hornseywood”, near Penrith.

Meanwhile, John entered a new relationship with Caroline Sollis and went on to have a further 7 children.  They eventually moved to Tasmania, where he died in 1872.

Death

Mary died in 1882 from chronic bronchitis and heart disease.

Her death was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 30 May 1882:

"May 27, at Hornsey Wood, Penrith, Mary Tindale, widow of the late John Richard Tindale, Victoria Cottage, Kelso, aged 66 years and 6 months."

So, if she died at Penrith, why was she buried at Holy Trinity Kelso?

My guess is because her children were still here.  Her daughter Frances, known as “Fanny”, married into the pioneering Lee family and is buried in the adjoining grave, as are several of Fanny’s children.

I hope you found this as interesting as I did.  

After the wander around, we all enjoyed a delicious afternoon tea.  A rather lovely way to spend some time.

Stitching Goals for September

After quite a few months of our life being turned upside down, my sewing room is in utter chaos, with projects not put away, ironing to be done and quite a bit of Mum’s stuff to be sorted through.  Therefore, I will continue with the theme of this year by setting minimal goals and just going with the flow.  Having said that, a little bit of direction won’t go astray.

CHOOKSHED CHALLENGE and RAINBOW SCRAP CHALLENGE

This year has not been a good one for working on the Chookshed Challenge.  There are just two projects remaining and the one that came up this month is the Sashiko bag and I’m not even going to start to think about that at the moment.  The other is to make the Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt.  That is more achievable.  I have to catch up with the aqua blocks from last month, which won’t take long and the prompt this month is to add whatever you need to add, maybe a light blue or green.  I will pull out all the blocks I have made over the last three years and see what else is required.  I think, from recollection, that I only need to make six more blocks, so the aqua two and four more of whatever looks like it is needed.  Then, it is time to pull out my design curtain and have a play with the layout.  That may be a fun thing to do this month, that is not too onerous.  It would be so nice to have the quilt top for this made this month.

RAINBOW QUILTERS BLOCK

I have joined with Betty and her friends in making some group quilts.  The prompt in July was to make a couple of shadow blocks.  Now that I can start pulling out tubs of fabric it is a priority to get the blocks made and sent to her, as I hate holding up the project.

CROCHET CORNER TO CORNER RUG

I would really like to finish the rug this month before it gets too hot.

This is where I am up to today.  I have just started the fifth ball of yarn.  I think it will probably take seven.  The finished dimension for Wrap with Love blankets is 70 inches by 40 inches.  It is currently 55 inches long, so a little way to go.  Each row takes about 15 minutes at the current length of the rows.  That will get better once I start to decrease for the other corner.  It will have a few rows of trebles added for a simple edging.  I am finding it to be a nice mindless project to work on, particularly at my stitching days.

And that is it.  Anything else will be a bonus……It would be nice to have a bonus something worked on.  We will see how we go.

Stitching for August

 I’m a bit late with this, but let’s have a look at what crafting I got up to during the month of August.

The Chookshed Challenge ended up being yet another failure.  All I managed to do was restitch the little wording panel for the pincushion in finer thread.

This year has been rather unsuccessful when it comes to this challenge.  It is what it is.

I didn’t make my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks, as I was not to be dragging out tubs to get fabric.  It won’t take much to catch up.

Enough of the failures, what did I manage to actually do?

Mum’s little dog bookmark was a bit of fun to make.  A quick, colourful project.  It was nice to actually finish something.

I continued to plug away at the slow stitching panel at my stitching mornings and finished the panel up at Baradine on the weekend.  (More on that in a separate post.) It was fun to have a little play with some stitches other than straight running stitch on some sections. 

I now have to have a think about how I will construct the pouch that it is destined to become.

My corner to corner crochet rug has been slowly growing.  I don’t have a photo at the end of the month, but this is where it was up to mid August.  That would have been the start of the third 200g ball of yarn.  I was working on the fourth ball at the end of the month.  I worked on this in the evenings at Baradine.

The final project I have worked on is the Anni Downs pouch that was the project we were given at Scrub Stitchin’ in 2024.  I don’t seem to be able to get too enthused with the process of making this, but I know I will love it once it is finished.  I had a false start with this back in January, and took it to Baradine to work on.  Once again, not a lot of progress, but at least it was a start and I hope to plug away at it over the next little while.

How did I go with working on something for at least 15 minutes a day?

Surprisingly, I worked on something on 24 days.  Often that may have only been a row or two of crochet, as it takes about 15 minutes to work each row.

August = 24/31

Year to Date = 181/243, which is 74.49%, being a slight improvement over last month.

So, there wasn’t a real lot to show for the month, but I’m OK with that.  The projects will all get done in their own good time.  Now to look forward to September.

Rubyvale to Home

We left Rubyvale the next morning to travel further east to visit our friends in Rockhampton.

It was on that morning that we received the phone call to say that my Mum was going downhill fast.  We contemplated just driving home, but that would take at least three days, so asked our friends to see if they could get me on a flight home. That was Saturday morning and the earliest they could get a flight from Rocky was on Monday evening.  They then tried Gladstone, about an hour and a half south and were able to get me a flight on the Sunday in the late morning.

So, we did finally get to see our friends, if only for one night.  We had been trying to get there since early May, but life seems to have conspired against us this year.

My flight home was good, with a stopover in Brisbane.  On boarding both flights they announce that the flights were full, so I was very fortunate to have been able to secure a seat.

Including our drive from Rockhampton to Gladstone and my train trip from Sydney to Bathurst, it took 13 hours to get home.

I did make it in time to see Mum, before she passed away the following day, something that I will be forever grateful for.

Mick, meanwhile, had to drive home in the wet.  It took him four days, as there was no longer any rush.

He found a couple of nice free camps along the way.

His final night on the way home was at Gulgong Showground and it finally stopped raining and provided a beautiful sunset.

And that ends our second attempt at a Queensland holiday this year.  We don’t think we’ll tempt fate by going a third time.  We hope to get up there and finally spend some quality time with our friends next year.

In the meantime, there are other trips to go on.

Emerald and Rubyvale

For once, we actually stayed two nights at the same place.  It was time to just have a day trip exploring.

There is a nice, bright sculpture at the intersection of the road that turns off to the gemfields.

First, we headed towards the larger township of Emerald.  What a change it was to see green, irrigated crops.

It was a shock to see traffic lights.  We hadn’t seen any since Orange, only 50kms from home.

We had a nice wander around town.  We have been here briefly once before, about 20 years ago, so don’t have a great deal of memory of it.  We did remember seeing the giant version of Van Gogh’s sunflower painting in the park.  It stands 25 metres tall and was completed on 1999.

The main striking building in town is the Railway Station.  It is far grander than those further west.

After our wander, we headed out to have a look at Fairbairn Dam, also known as Lane Maraboon.  First stop was the lookout to see the dam wall.  We read that the water level is only at 22%, so very low and no water going over the spillway.

You drive over the spillway.

The catchment is huge and the dam is a popular spot for fishing and boating.

After our look around, we returned to Emerald for lunch before heading back to the sapphire fields to try our luck.

The small towns of Rubyvale and Sapphire are located on sapphire gemfields.  

Cattle can roam freely and have right of way in the two towns, and we had to give way to a few.

If you are here you have to try to find a sapphire, don’t you. We had our sieve and bits and bobs, ready to go and have a scratch around, but really didn’t have any idea what we were required to do.  As we drove through Sapphire, which is before Rubyvale, we noticed a few businesses offering sapphire fossicking in a very controlled way.  At the caravan park, the fellow said you have a better chance of finding a sapphire at those establishments than getting a permit and going to fossicking sites.

We arrived at Sapphire at about 2.30pm and we noticed that most of the businesses closed a 3pm.  However, one stayed open longer, so we went there.  We learned that the reason they close a that time is that you need good sunlight to see the sapphires.  Yes, we could have a go, but we would be cutting it fine.

So how does it work?

You pay $30 for a bucket of dirt.  We just shared one.  They guarantee that you will leave with 70 carots of sapphires.  If you don’t find that amount they will top it up.  If you buy a more expensive bucket, you will find a cut sapphire in the dirt.

You are also given a sieve, pair of tweezers, jar lid and piece of hessian each.

First, you empty a bit of the dirt into your sieve and take it over to a bench where you pick out the larger rocks and throw them into the heap of rocks.

Then you take your sieve of dirt to a washing trough.  Here you rinse the dirt off the rock and sapphires with a special motion.  Like gold, the sapphires are heavier than most of the other rocks and will sink to the bottom.  We washed and washed, and after our first attempt realised we should have washed even more.  Live and learn. So, after you wash and wash and wash and wash, you take your sieve over to your piece of hessian that has been laid out on a mesh table.

Here you upend the stones in a quick action and hopefully manage to pick out lots of sapphires, which shine in the sunlight and are glassier looking than the surrounding stones.  

The lady proprietor was excellent in demonstrating everything that you needed to do.  She was also very good at coming along and checking what you had put in your little jar lid to see if it was actually a sapphire or just quartz or something else.  She also would find sapphires that you had missed.

We had a fabulous time there and felt the $30 was well spent for the fun we had.

So, did we find our 70 carots of sapphires?  Yes.  Mick did very well.  He actually found one sapphire that is 39.1 carots.  Our total was 92.7 carots, so we exceeded the expectations.  

We were going to purchase their cute little bottle to house our finds, but that one was too large to fit through the neck.

Did we find our fortune?  No, despite its large size, that sapphire is worthless, as it is flawed and cannot be cut.  But it is fun to say you found one that size.

Oh, and the cafe at the fossicking park sells very good cake for afternoon tea to take away.

The perfect end of another fun filled day of travelling.