Whispering ruins ... Carrington Row.
Ben Stubbs explores a once-prosperous, now deserted valley with a rich seam of migrant and mining history.
In 1798, during the early days of settlement, John Wilson was given an unenviable task - find a band of convicts who had escaped Sydney and were intent on fleeing to China. Luckily for Wilson, the convicts weren't the sharpest geographers around.
Apparently the escapees had been told China was about 180 kilometres south-west of Sydney (not across the seas to the continent's north). Wilson's party went south-west in search of the convicts and by chance stumbled into a shale-rich valley that came to be known as Joadja.
It's not clear if the convicts found their "China"; however, Joadja's vast shale deposits became a vital part of colonial life. Seams were excavated and the shale used to produce crude oil and kerosene, giving a power source and much-needed economic boost to the colony.
Later, a full-scale operation was established outside Mittagong in the southern highlands and a narrow-gauge rail line built. At its peak, 1100 people lived in the Joadja valley, most of them working for the area's key landowner and employer, the Australian Kerosene Oil and Mineral Company. The community built a mining village, with a pub, school, arts centre and post office. A line of well-appointed houses in the village became known as Carrington Row.
Shale was exported from Joadja to markets across the world from 1870 until 1904, when cleaner and cheaper methods of oil production were discovered. For several years after the mines shut down, people continued to live in the remote valley but by 1911 all had left, abandoning Joadja to wildlife and the occasional squatter. Much of the land was sold to private interests who farmed parts of the valley and left the village to its ghosts.
My grandfather, Arthur Douglass, grew up in the area in the 1930s and would tell stories of his youth spent roaming the hills around Joadja hunting rabbits and exploring village and mine ruins. More than 100 years after it was deserted, I am keen to see what remains. I drive in from Welby, a village near Mittagong, past farmland and vineyards. The bitumen road becomes dirt before it winds down the face of what is known as Sam's Mountain to the valley floor. Ahead on the right is the first relic of Joadja's former success: the walls of the old school lie exposed in a paddock.
I continue to a clearing where Joadja's owner and self-appointed mayor, Valero Jimenez, is slashing at grasses in the paddock around the property's whisky distillery.
Jimenez shows me his house, once the mine director's quarters, with its original fittings and a verandah that looks out to the vacant hills that form parts of the valley walls. The isolation is immense, just as Jimenez likes it, he says.
Jimenez is a civil engineer by trade. He arrived in Australia from Spain as a six-year-old and as an adult came to the Joadja region about eight years ago. "I've always dreamt of having my own little town," he says with a smile. He fell in love with the valley at first sight. The land was privately owned and when the ghost town and its surrounds went to auction last year, Jimenez bought 400 hectares and began his restoration dream.
At its peak, Scottish settlers and shale miners from Glasgow were the dominant community of Joadja. The miners' migrant experience, and that of other foreign workers in Joadja, also attracted Jimenez to the ruins and motivated him to maintain its preservation potential.
Jimenez takes me on a private tour and can hardly contain his excitement as he talks of the restoration plans he has in mind. We first inspect the old School of Arts building, also used as a church. The structure is in good repair and as we walk through its shell, Jimenez tells me the building was later used as the first Masonic Lodge in the southern highlands.
Nearby, a former orchard that sustained 6700 fruit trees is empty except for a mob of kangaroos looking for fresh shoots. Jimenez points to the cliff behind Joadja; it was known as "the incline" and a rail line was built to haul shale from the valley floor to the rim - 784 metres above.
The people of Joadja created a boom economy in the 19th century. As well as mining, they made bricks and grew fruit and vegetables for sale in the colony. This prosperity meant Joadja was one of the first places outside Sydney to have a telephone line installed.
Jimenez and I continue past the pylons of the old railway bridge and he tells me a Joadja ghost story of two murdered miners said to roam the misty hills here.
The ruins are partly a result of the elements, though Jimenez says just as much damage has come from people coming here during the late 1990s to steal bricks.
We drive to Carrington Row, surrounded by sycamores and robinias introduced by the Scots. The row is named after the Governor of NSW in the 1880s, Lord Carrington. Where this lane was once a pleasant tract of foliage, now fallen trees populate the area and vegetation inhabits the lounge rooms and kitchens of the houses.
Jimenez and I enter one and see a fireplace still stacked with wood and a solitary lounge chair in the corner. It's as if a sudden storm swept in and people grabbed what they could carry and ran. Old clay smoking pipes litter the floor along with boots and whisky bottles.
We walk through the remains of the old refinery and under the giant smokestacks. It's overgrown with blackberries and thistles, though it's not hard to see how much the settlers had invested here, and as we walk over a rise to see what remains of the village pub, I see buried cables and old ship boxes half-submerged in a sea of dry grass.
The cellar of the Joadja Hotel is still clearly visible, though after seeing a red-bellied black snake I'm not keen to descend for a closer look. The school ruins sit on the edge of Jimenez's landholding; the scraps of a sturdy foundation are all that remain to indicate it once housed 140 students. We arrive back at the distillery, a modern addition to Joadja. Jimenez plans to begin making whisky here in part as a homage to the village's Scottish roots.
Later, I borrow one of his four-wheeler motorbikes to continue exploring the valley, then head home, leaving Jimenez to potter around the village. Joadja is a mysterious, perplexing ruin in a corner of the southern highlands and unlike anything I've seen. As I leave the ghostly town behind, I'm struck by a curious thought: did those convicts fleeing to China ever find what they were looking for?
From boom to bust to dust
Joadja's history marks it as a unique ghost town. However, there are many forgotten NSW towns and localities with grand histories and dark tales within to be explored. In the far south-west, outside the equally ghostly town of Henty, is Cookardinia. The outlaw Mad Dog Morgan once frequented the town, though now there remains just the shell of a pub, the woolshed and the post office. It closed in 1976.
The glory days of Gunbar are long gone, though this village, about 79 kilometres from Hay, was once part of an enormous cattle station and village. The term "beyond the black stump" is said to have originated here.
The cold and windswept town of Kiandra in the Snowy Mountains was once a hive of activity and ingenuity. It was the birthplace of skiing in Australia and a gold rush town, with a population of more than 15,000 in the 1860s. Kiandra still has mining relics, ruins and graves.
Newnes, in the Wolgan Valley north-west of Lithgow, has a similar history to Joadja. Extensive shale mines operated at Newnes from 1911 until 1932 and there are still ruins in the bush. The 600-metre Glow Worm Tunnel, adapted from an old railway line, is a popular tourist attraction.
If there was ever a suitable name for a ghost town, One Tree, on the Hay Plain, would have to be it. The One Tree Hotel was built in 1862 as a watering hole for travellers on journeys between the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee rivers. The hotel is now a historic site. One Tree is referred to as "Hell" in Banjo Paterson's poem Hay and Hell and Booligal.
Yalwal was a gold-mining town west of Nowra. It has since survived fires and looters and was used to source building materials in World War I. Many of the diggings, old graves and mine shafts are still visible.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
Joadja is 150 kilometres south-west of central Sydney. Take the Hume Highway to Mittagong, turn onto the old highway, then Wombeyan Caves Road and follow the signs to Joadja Road.
Staying there
Bluebell Cottage is a self-contained stay in Berrima Street, Welby, just outside Mittagong. It costs from $360 a weekend or $240 for two-night stays midweek. The cottage has two bedrooms, a full kitchen, garage and lovely garden. Phone 1300 657 559.
Visiting
Joadja Tours are by appointment only and cost $15 a person. Phone 4878 5129.
More information
See southern -highlands.com.au.
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