Menangle Rotolactor

Menangle Rotolactor

The rotolactor was a piece of industrial modernism introduced at Camden Park in 1952 by Edward Macarthur Onslow.


The idea came from the USA in the 1920s and the first rotolactor was built in New Jersey shortly after then.


Construction started in 1950 and completed in 1952. It had a capacity of 1000 cows a day and could milk 50 cows a day on a rotating platform.


The rotolactor was a huge tourist attraction for Menangle with up to 2000 visitors a week.


The rotolactor suffered from technical problems and closed in 1977. It opened shortly after this but finally closed down in 1983.

Menangle Rotolactor on Camden Park closed in 1977 and was a huge tourist attraction to the village (Camden Images)

This postcard from the collection of the Camden Museum shows the view scene by a visitor the facility. (Camden Images)

Reference:

Brian Walsh, Milk and the Macarthurs the dairy history of Camden Park, Camden: Belgenny Farm Trust, 2016

Kirkham



Camelot (formerly Kirkham) (Camden Images)

Kirkham is a picturesque, semi-rural locality on Sydney's rural-urban fringe between the historic township of Camden, with its inter-war and colonial heritage and the bustling commercial centre of Narellan.

Sydney rural-urban fringe

The arrival of the rural-urban fringe at Kirkham in recent decades has created a contested site of tension and constant change, resulting in an ever-evolving landscape. Successive waves of occupants have created their own stories, heroes and icons through a reinterpretation of history and heritage.

Rural aesthetic

The most recent newcomers have taken ownership of Kirkham's identity, assisted by developer-created exclusivity and the locality's rural aesthetic. The physical landscape of Kirkham is dominated by a bucolic scene provided by the valley of Narellan Creek.

Colonial heritage

John Oxley (1784–1828) was granted 1,000 acres by Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson, which he had to surrender in 1810. Governor Macquarie subsequently granted Oxley 600 acres, which was increased to 1,000 acres in 1815. The grant was named Kirkham after Oxley's birthplace, Kirkham Abbey in Yorkshire, and had frontages on the Great Southern Road and the Nepean River.There are two heritage icons from the colonial period: Kirkham Stables and Kirkham homestead (Camelot).

Main road

The main road passing through Kirkham is the Camden Valley Way which was known as the Great South Road until 1928 when it was renamed the Hume Highway.



Pansy, Camden-Campbelltown train (Camden Images)

Pansy, the Camden tram

 The route of the railway ran alongside the Great South Road through Kirkham between Camden and Narellan and was a prominent cultural feature on the landscape. Kirkham Railway Station, which was one of nine stations located on the railway.

Yamba Cottage, Kirkham c 1920 (Camden Images)

Yamba cottage

Historic Yamba cottage fronts Camden Valley Way (formerly the Hume Highway) and has been a contested as a site of significant local heritage. The building, a Federation style weatherboard cottage, became a touchstone and cause celebre around the preservation and conservation of local domestic architecture.

Read more @ http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/kirkham 

Sydney's Rural-Urban Fringe




Narellan Vale 2000 (Camden Images)

Sydney's rural-urban fringe has come out to meet the Camden district. It poses all sorts of challenges for locals and newcomers alike and is a landscape of hope and loss. Newcomers hope for the opportunity provided by a new life in a new suburb and locals mourn the loss of their memories and rural lifestyle.

The rural-urban fringe orginally arrived in the Camden district with the announcement of the 1968 Sydney Region Outline Plan. The NSW State Planning Authority then produced the 'New Cities' Plan in 1973. It  planned for the country towns of Camden, Campbelltown and Appin to have 500,000 by the 1980s. The suburbs in the Camden Local Government Area that were established from those plans included Mt Annan, Currans Hill, Narellan Vale, Smeaton Grange and Harrington Park, and urban growth of existing localities at Elderslie and Spring Farm.  

Oran Park

The most recent decisions that has effected the Camden Local Government Area is the NSW Department Planning and Infrastructure's 2006 South West Growth Centre Strategy that plans a population of around 300,000. The new suburbs that have emerged from this included Oran Park, Gledswood Hills, Gregory Hills, and most recently those in the Catherine Field,  Raby and Leppington area. 

Sydney’s fringe communities have been portrayed as one-dimensional, or just part of South Western Sydney, yet their story has a rich history that is complex and multi-layered. Sydney’s south-western rural-urban frontier is a transition zone of many contrasts from the the loss of Oran ParkRaceway and now master planned estates, and Camden’s ‘country town idyll’ and rural vistas.

New communities are sites where displacement, dispossession and disempowerment have produced stories which are played out in a landscape of dreams met and dreams lost. Sydney’s second airport, food security, moral panics, mining (CSG/coal/sand), Sydney’s water catchment, flooding, endangered Cumberland Woodland, ex-urbanisation, heritage, commercial development at Narellan and other urban development issues produce a volatile mix in these often overlooked conservative communities.

The road patterns were set by 1820 with colonial land grants handed to the colonial gentry. Their estates formed a network of estates across the western Cumberland Plain. Many of these properties and their

Within Sydney's south western rural-urban fringe there are some of the areas hidden gems like The Australian Botanic Garden at Mt Annan and the Camden Museum. 



Room with a view (ABG)



The Blue Tree (ABG)