Set in a picturesque if remote paddock, the story of the 145-year-old Carwoola church is one of convicts, colonial explorers, high society - and more than a few mysteries.
Along a winding road on Canberra's outskirts, made lonelier as dusk descends, the Victorian Gothic church sits hidden behind towering pines and hedges, its steeple just visible through the swaying branches.
Adding much to the air of mystique of St Thomas the Apostle Anglican Church is its attendant graveyard. And on stepping within its consecrated bounds, the ghosts of its long past are palpable – from the stained glass window featuring the likeness of a lost local soldier, to at least one parishioner who, after almost a century, remains.
A building “greatly longed for”, it was welcomed on a Sunday 145 years ago and its current community will celebrate that moment in time on November 24, 2019.
Set between Queanbeyan and Captains Flat, in the “well-grassed, undulating country” of the river plain of the Molonglo, it's part of one of the oldest and once most impressive landholdings in the region, Carwoola.
Just as the area had previously been known as "Marley's Plains" and "Friday's Plains", the property was thought to have first had the title Carrowillah, Aboriginal for "where the water meets the plain".
In its earliest stages, several small slab dwellings were constructed by grazier turned explorer, Edward John Eyre. On selling his portions to Government supplies contractor, Irishman, William "Billy" Rutledge in 1837, Eyre would set off on his journey to traverse the unknown areas of the greater continent.
Also known as "Terrible Billy" for his hot-headedness, it would be William's younger brother, 23-year-old Thomas, recently arrived from the Emerald Isle, who'd be sent to manage the holding.
In addition, Tom would secure the important mail contract from Goulburn to the Monaro.
By the 1840s, on his brother's move to Victoria, the younger Rutledge was in a position to take over as squire. (Later, both would also briefly become politicians).
Having married Martha Forster, daughter of an Army surgeon and sister of squatter and politician, William Forster (who'd coincidentally become first Member for Queanbeyan in 1859), the Rutledges quickly became landed gentry.
Entrenched in the life of the wider community, Tom served as a Senior Magistrate and would be honoured as a Life Member of the Queanbeyan District Hospital of 1861. He'd also greatly expand his empire, coming to encompass as much as 90,000 acres all told (in modern times, reduced to 5,000 acres).
This involved taking up most of the addresses of his high profile neighbours. Among these were Governor Macquarie's former aide-de-camp, Major Henry Antill.
It also included securing The Briars from the family of Colonial Treasurer William Balcombe. This had been named for their estate on the island of St Helena - Napoleon Bonaparte's place of exile.
[NB: Balcombe is also said to have brought with him two species of trees new to Australia. One, the weeping willow, is found to this day along the banks of the Queanbeyan River. Further, when the Balcombes moved to Victoria, they also named their next, still-existing property, 'The Briars'.]
At its peak, Carwoola had a carrying capacity of 36,000 sheep. Its grazing credentials extended to cattle and some of the finest racehorses bred in the district. As early as 1866, this saw the property earn the description of "the model farm par excellence of NSW".
Rich in other ways, too – a gold seam was discovered in 1860, and another “extensive alluvial gold deposit” in the vicinity in 1888.
Unsurprisingly, bushrangers of the infamy of the gang of Ben Hall and the "bloodthirsty" Clarke brothers, regularly frequented the area - the property itself held up on a few occasions.
In keeping up with the Joneses – or at least the most influential landholders on the Limestone Plains, the Campbells of Duntroon (1825) – Tom graced his station with an impressive Georgian mansion and a small village for his employees.
It came to be very a impressive set-up indeed. There were cottages, a store, a smithy and a variety of outbuildings, from stone stables ("a hell of a big building for five bloody horses"), to a coach house, and even a barred holding cell. All of this set within gardens worthy of an English manor.
It also said much about the social function the estate served.
Accordingly, along with the land, Tom also provided most of the funds for a church, reminiscent of the Campbell's house of God, St John's, blessed in 1845.
The foundation stone of St Thomas was laid two decades later, by William Broughton, first Anglican Bishop of Australia (and the only one as it would later be divided into smaller dioceses). It seems though, none are aware of precisely where the marker was set.
Another seven years would pass before construction commenced in 1872.
Much put out by the delay was its worldly designer: son of a Portuguese knight, Parisian-trained artist and engineer, and rector of the Queanbeyan parish, the Rev. Alberto Dias Soares.
The fourth Anglican church in the district (St John's, Queanbeyan's Christ Church 1844, St Philip's Bungendore 1865) - it was the clergyman's sixth such commission. While he'd be responsible for some 30 throughout NSW, including just the one Presbyterian model, St Stephen's, also in Queanbeyan (and quite similar to St Thomas) - it seemed particularly close to Soares' heart, he writing of the “long and urgently needed church at Molonglo”.
It would take two years to build, making use of the nearby coppery-tinged stone.
With its octagonal tower, belfry, buttresses and carved dripstones keeping the rain from its numerous ornamental windows, it added considerable grandeur to the essentially solitary surrounds.
Inside, it boasted vaulted timber ceilings, a traditional sanctuary arch, pews enough for 150 of the faithful, and an impressive sandstone baptismal font donated by Rev. Soares.
Among other significant gifts, the altar window depicting Christ and the doubter, St Thomas, provided by banker and founder of the Colonial Sugar Refinery (CSR), Sir Edward Knox - Thomas Rutledge's brother-in-law.
Bibles from 1869 were also set upon the lectern and pulpit during services.
Killed on the Western Front in 1917, Jim Maslin, the 21-year-old son of J.F. Maslin, Carwoola's owner from 1907 until 1928, is reflected for eternity in stained glass.
Just a month after his death, in November, Tom Rutledge's grandson, Lieutenant H. Forster Rutledge, would also be killed, at Ypres.
It's said the church was once home to a WWI honour roll naming these young men and others from the area.
Featuring an illustration of “ghostly images of the fallen above the altar whilst a church service is being held”, it seems to have mysteriously disappeared.
And so, to the other tribulations, tragedies and purported curiosities of the church and the area, some generated by known forces, others unaccounted for.
Unsurprisingly, natural disasters abound: the inevitable floods and fires, and in 1871, a destructive "whirlwind". In a 1944 bushfire, an employee of the station, William Talbot, died when the firetruck he was in overturned.
In 1955, locals were witness to a near-fatal plane crash after an Army pilot hit high tension wires during a training exercise.
Unnatural deaths were also not unknown. Well-respected tenant-farmer, John Marshall, shot himself in 1906, in front of his wife and daughter. According to testimony of Mrs Marshall to the coroner, he'd been "driven mad" by the longevity of the drought of the time.
On Friday the 13th January, 1911, it was reported that human remains had been unearthed "south of the churchyard".
Found by a local rabbiter, two iron spoons without handles were also buried among the bones.
Police investigations could find no evidence of missing persons in the area within the previous 50 years. Talk though, turned to a local legend of two shepherds who'd been involved in an altercation in the vicinity almost half a century earlier. One of them met his end as a result.
On forwarding the remains to the First Government Medical Officer of Sydney for examination, they were revealed to be those of an "Aboriginal Australian".
There's been a modern assertion that around the time in question, an Aboriginal man was sentenced to death for an attack on a Marguerite Ratcliffe, wife of a shepherd of Carwoola, but verification of this claim is so far elusive.
Ratcliffe though, did have a rather unsettling experience on the banks of the Molonglo when a black snake attempted to attack him - and with renewed vigor each of the three times it was repelled.
And then there's the odd case of the one-eyed foal.
In 1903, a brood mare on the property lost an eye in a "natural accident". She produced foals for the next three years without problem. In the fifth year, she gave birth to another, healthy in all respects - except it was missing an eye, on the same side of its face as its mother.
Yet other strange occurrences in the area include some of the first instances of reports of Unidentified Flying Objects witnessed in the region.
No doubt a result of its relative isolation, along with attempted hold-ups at the Station, there were robberies at the church as well: in 1930 - soon after the Wall-Street crash that brought on the Great Depression - two itinerants were charged with break-and-enter and theft.
Far more sinister, academic Peter Read wrote in his book, Haunted Earth, of damage inflicted inside the building in 2003. This included evidence of some sort of ritual, and the "devil's number" 666 left on display in reference to the next hymn. The trail of destruction led outside to the graveyard, the ground itself as well as grave furniture disturbed. The purpose of the potential acts of sacrilege remained unfathomable.
Two days later, there was a similar attack on the Michelago Catholic Church.
Located towards the rear of St Thomas, it's believed the burial ground existed well before the church came into being and is unusual in a number of respects.
Some sources suggest the earliest interment there was the original Molonglo pioneer and former convict, Owen Bowen, in 1840. Despite his prominence, his is an unmarked grave – one of 242 of a similar nature (at least, those known). Ornate headstones, iron fences and plaques for more than 160 others, some damaged over the years in moronic acts of disrespect, are also to be found there.
The church itself though, wasn't consecrated – that is, “set aside in service of God” - until 1876, suggesting the possibility the final resting place was unsanctified for more than 30 years. Nonetheless, it was deemed suitable to add a site of worship alongside it (and rather than the other way around).
Equally outside the norm (according to the Australian Museum's exhibition, “Death: the last taboo”), the local Heritage Register notes it's still possible for people to be buried in the graveyard - with the right permissions.
One who lies within is Franc (Bert) Falkiner, “world famous stud sheep breeder” and owner of nearby Foxlow from 1920. On his death nine years later, it was recorded in the Sydney Morning Herald, that as his cortege passed along the road, in the adjoining field, 13 horses, “as if they had an intuitive knowledge that they were following their master for the last time, formed into a line and for several miles cantered in regular formation alongside the procession”.
In 1933, the ashes of D'arcy Osborne (his father, George, the previous owner of Foxlow) - who'd died two years previously - “were sealed in a niche under the framework [of a window of memory]”. According to The Canberra Times, the “unusual method of remembrance [was] the first of its kind in the district” - and making his place within, everlasting.
Many with generations-long links to the church both continue to live in the area and regularly visit.
The Daniels owned a sawmill at nearby Rossi, the patriarch, Edward, providing the timberwork within.
William Follett was the stonemason - one of his well-known descendants, former ACT Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, the first woman to become head of government in Australia.
In 1999, Tom Frame, historian, academic, author, former Navy man and in 2001 made Anglican Bishop to the Australian Defence Force, was the rector.
With this in mind, specially installed as part of the 125th anniversary was a rather unusual window for a church far removed from the sea - one featuring a sailing ship. During the 19th century, Rattler transported free settlers to the wider district, including those who took up residence in the parish. For posterity, it commemorates seafarers and ships for the role they played.
There's also many a more curious tale told by those who've long resided in the area.
From what some believe to be the sounds of rattling convict chains, to the tombstones of St Thomas glowing on moonless nights, shadowy figures apparently seen moving in their midst, and even an unknown horseman claimed to silently gallop past its entranceway.
Perhaps it's Thomas - either the man who built this now heritage treasure, who died of the unfortunate sounding "senile decay" at Carwoola in 1904, or the saint for who it's named - continuing to overlook our own Sleepy Hollow.
* Another charming and unique local church - potentially the only one of its kind in Australia - is St Paul's at Burra (NSW).
For more on the unsolved, unexplained and unknown in the orbit of the Australian Capital, also see my capitalcrimefiles.com.au website which has features my new podcast.
SOURCES:
Queanbeyan, District & People - Errol Lea Scarlett, 1965.
Bygone Queanbeyan - Rex Cross, 1972.
God's Architect - the Churches and Parsonages of Alberto Dias Soares - Graeme Barrow, 2015.
Pastoral Homes of Australia, 1914-1929. Published by The Pastoralists' review.
Haunted Earth - Peter Read, 2004.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/31388379?searchTerm=carwoola&searchLimits= https://australianmuseum.net.au/about/history/exhibitions/death-the-last-taboo/burial-cremation-or-donation/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carwoola_Homestead
https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-268959083/view?partId=nla.obj-269119836#page/n97/mode/1up
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