Rouseabout...

This is a view from half way up the side of Mt Rouse, just behind the little Western Districts town of Penshurst. Mt Rouse is an extinct volcano, and forms one of the many neat hills that dot this landscape. At the base of the mount is a quarry, at the top a telecoms repeater station. The house just visible among the trees is Kolor, built in 1868 for the squatter, John Twomey. Twomey occupied the area in the 1840s-1850s, the run was small by comparison with most runs in the District, about 9000 acres, but the soils are rich, and Twomey benefitted. Like most squatters who remained after the 1850s Land Acts, he freeholded, then built a suitable house. The house is on the register of the National Estate.


This photograph was taken from below the house to the right of the colour picture above. It is interesting in that the decoration in the middle ground is a an explicit demonstration of 19thC social relations. Aborigines form the lower group, in possum skin rugs, Mr Twomey is higher up, close to the house, with his horse. These are images from the Latrobe library collected during an excursion into the history of the area done as my MA 12 years ago.

The top photograph gives some idea of what the countryside looks like now. We are fortunate in having pictures of what it looked like more than a century ago, in the few years after the house was built. This is the most interesting photograph. It is taken from a similar position to the top photograph and shows the extensive vegetation on the plains. The trees on the plain are mainly E. camaldulensis, Red Gum, with some acacia, I think, on the slopes. The close planting around the house that now obscures the building has yet to be done. Looking over the plains now, it is obvious they have been cleared, although at the time of occupation they were often described as like a gentleman's park. The top photograph indicates some of what that park description entailed. very open woodland of the red gum has been preserved in parts, but faces the problem of little being done for regrowth as the old trees reach the ends of their lives. Stock keep the land cleared as effectively as the Aborigines firestick kept it open in the millenia before European occupation.