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Herbert Park Station, situated about halfway between Armidale and Guyra in the New England tablelands, was originally part of a vast tract of land taken up by Alexander Campbell in 1835. Campbell, the man largely responsible for opening up the Inverell district to European settlement, had been sent there by Peter Macintyre, of Seganhoe in the Hunter Valley, to lay claim to the ‘beautiful sward of grass’ described by Allan Cunningham on his exploratory journey through the Darling Downs in 1827. Travelling via the New England properties of the Dumaresq brothers (Saumarez and Tilbuster), Campbell marked out an area north-east of present-day Armidale which became known as Guyra (sometimes Gyra). When Macintyre died in 1842, the property of 92,160 acres passed into the hands of his sister, Mary. She retained possession of Guyra until her death in 1870, when it was subdivided and sold to Christopher Leigh and Duncan Anderson. In 1884, two adjoining portions of Guyra were sold. The southern section was taken up by HW Curtis, which he called ‘Brooklyn’, while the northern section was purchased by George Henry Vaughan Jenkins, the eldest son of Dr RL Jenkins of Nepean Towers, New South Wales. Because of its geographical position, the property was initially known as Guyra North, but Jenkins, determined to prevent any further confusion between the names Guyra, Gyra and Gara (the latter referred to the Gara River, which coursed through the property), renamed the station Herbert Park after the family name of his wife, Beatrice Mary. When George Jenkins purchased Herbert Park Station, much of the work had already been done. He nevertheless cleared about 2,000 acres of land around the house, planted Willows along the Gara River to absorb stagnant water, and, after the custom of the times, implemented an extensive fence-building program to overcome the many difficulties associated with an ‘open’ run. By 1914, the estate was fenced and subdivided into about twenty paddocks. Herbert Park Station carried as many as 14,000 sheep during its heyday in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, but it was also known for its horse-breeding program. These were chiefly of the ‘weight-carrying stamp’, although Beatrice Herbert was fond of Welsh ponies, and in its early years the station was home to a managerie of these miniature horses. There was also a small herd of pure-bred Jersey cattle on the estate, and Geroge Jenkins, a keen supporter of the Royal Agricultural Show, won several prizes for these animals throughout the 1890s. On the agricultural side, the property was home to an orchard and a 100-acre paddock in which oats, maize, lucerne and potatoes were grown. By and large, however, Herbert Park was a sheep-carrying station, and much of George Jenkins’ energies (and those of his staff) were directed towards this end. The flock was comprised of pure Havilah Merinos, with rams purchased from FR White of Booloominbah near Armidale. Efforts to drain the fields and reduce moisture in the soil proved eminently successful; the incidence of fluke and footrot on Herbert Park, in contrast to many other New England properties, was virtually non-existent. The quality of the flock and its environment produced pleasing results. Herbert Park fleeces, described by one contemporary as ‘clean and weighty’, fetched prices always ‘near the top’. In accordance with Jenkins’ progressive approach to the station, a new woolshed was built in the late-nineteenth century which incorporated the latest ideas and technology. The old cement floor was replaced by a raised floor which provided shelter for 1,600 sheep and allowed the flock to be driven under cover in ten minutes in the event of a storm. There were also ‘sweating’ sheds which, according to George Pont, the son of the Jenkins’ gardener in the early years of the twentieth century, represented a considerable improvement to the efficiency of the station. ‘If you was [sic] caught in a storm’, he remembered, ‘and had a mob of sheep, instead of driving them miles to the shed, - you whacked them in [there], so you kept them dry’. The same principle applied to the extra weather shed erected on the opposite side of the river, which was accessed via a swinging bridge. ‘[A]nd it used to swing too!’, Pont recalled. ‘Particularly when a mob of sheep, perhaps a couple of thousand, [were] going across. She used to rock’. Later, machinery shearing was introduced which added to the station’s efficiency. These improvements made Herbert Park ‘a most beautiful station’, according to Pont, ‘well run’; but it also brought the Jenkins great prosperity and considerable status. A new homestead, constructed from hardwood cut on the property itself and containing twenty room, was built to reflect this state of affairs. There was a tennis court and extensive gardens with a variety of European trees and shrubs. The orchard, sloping to the river’s edge, was full of trees, healthy and heavily laden. Later, in 1904, a brick chapel was built on the southern wing of the house in memory of George Jenkins’ mother. The five married men and their families on the station were expected to attend and occasionally particpate in the choir. Workers could not refuse on the grounds of faith. According to Pont, Beatrice Jenkins was very particular when it came to employing staff. ‘She was an English woman’, he later observed, ‘and she wanted English people, you know, Church of England people, so they could go to church’. In 1911, George Jenkins died suddenly from a heart attack, leaving Beatrice to manage the estate. She at first coped well with this heavy task, but found the burden too great to bear after her son, Richard, went to fight in World War One. He returned in 1918, but was unable to take full responsibility for the property. As a result, about 4,000 acres on the western side of Herbert Park Road was sold in 1925. Four years later, Herbert Park Station, with its reduced acerage, was sold altogether and passed from the hands of the Jenkins family. It was occupied for a time by a Mr Cobcroft, who used the property to develop a Hereford stud and breed racehorses. Herbert Park Station is today in the hands of Geoff Siems, whose father, Ray, purchased the property from the Cobcrofts in 1978. Related Bodies:
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References:
George Pont, ‘Recollections of Herbert Park, 1910-1920’, 27 November 1976, Historical Resources Centre, UNERA; Merle Goldsmith, The Road to Herbert Park: A History of Early Settlement (Armidale: Herbert Park Road Progress Association, 1988).
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