Interview Transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Annette Williams
Interviewee: Annette Williams
Interviewer: Edie Swift
23 May 2023
Edie Swift I am Edie Swift, and it is March 23rd, 2023, and I am interviewing Annette Williams for the Illawarra Stories Oral History Project about her historic home in Unanderra and she has to tell me how to pronounce it.
Annette Williams Nudjia.
Edie Swift So we’re going to find out about Nudjia and everything you know, and it is a beautiful place, so you go right ahead.
Annette Williams Well it, it’s always been known as Nudjia, but it formally is known as Nudjia House. And it’s situated on the crest of one of the eastern slopes of Mount Kembla. And it has two creeks either side of this crest, ah, called Nudjia Creek, ah, to the north and Charcoal Creek to the south.
Nudjia is an Aboriginal name described for its location, being a safe and protected site, and that’s because it’s on top of this ridge line, out of harm of flooding or, or flooding creeks. So, the site, Nudjia House, is located near Charcoal Creek, which was the original name for Unanderra. The house faces the east, overlooking the ocean and the original Berkeley Estate. To the west is Mount Kembla, to the north is Mount Keira and to the south is Lake Illawarra.
The house is classified as a Victorian Georgian style building and is uncommon in the Unanderra area.
It is known to be the only remaining building of the old Berkeley Estate which consisted of 3,280 acres.
The original Berkeley house was demolished in 1840. So Nudjia is the only surviving relic of that time.
The house is constructed in two parts. The first building was built by William Warren Jenkins in the same year as Berkeley House was built in 1839 and it is in the same style as the outbuildings of the Berkeley Estate. The building, the cottage, which is part of Nudjia has two rooms and the cottage is made of handmade bricks. And it, there was originally a low veranda which has since been removed. The cottage served as a kitchen and bedroom. The roof of the cottage has a high pitched covered with corrugated galvanised iron. At one time, the roof was slate judging by the spacing of the roof timbers and the slate lying around in the gardens. The ceiling is, or has, 9 inch wide painted cedar boards and the doors and the architraves are made of cedar. The original cottage has been available to the public as a local historical museum, since 1993.
In 1988, Nudjia House was opened to the public to celebrate 200 years of colonisation.
The second part of Nudjia House was constructed from red cedar mostly grown on the property. It was constructed around 1870s and consisted of six room, a weatherboard cottage with the veranda all around it, set on rock foundations and timber stumps and faced with cement rendering. The main structure of the building is of hardwood framing. The interior walls are of plaster made early materials such as lime and horsehair.
In the lounge room there are bay windows with cedar frames, fireplace are made in all the rooms, but two of the rooms have marble, ah, mantle pieces. The beams and ceiling and archways and skirting boards are all of red cedar. The original roofing of, of the, um, was slate, but replaced by corrugated, um, iron due to the original roof falling in into a disrepair. It was built by William Warren Jenkins who was the oldest son of Robert, Robert Jenkins and Robert Jenkins’ grandson, William James Robert Jenkins.
Originally, the large veranda surrounded all four sides of the house until one end was made a bathroom when water was connected in 1974 and electricity became available in 1964. The property has extensive vegetation and landscape surrounding the building gardens contains large mixtures of existing vegetation, including annuals, perennials, shrubs, climbers and fruit trees, an array of exotic and native trees.
The building is an example of late 1800 lifestyle and the exterior fabric is mostly original
although changes have been made. The interior materials are mostly original. After purchasing Nudjia in 1950, my family carefully restored the building as almost every glass panel in the windows and doors have been replaced.
The Williams family consisted of three girls, and the youngest, which is me, was born in 1954 and I am still the current owner of the property. Nudjia survived the 1968 bushfires due to the community coming up here and fighting the fire with chaff bags because we weren’t on water – the water ended further down – and the Fire Brigades were too busy elsewhere to concern about an old home up in the hills. All the house remains but the dairy building and the fences and the livestock, livestock were destroyed. So, in 1973 Nudjia was subdivided into building lots.
After the passing of my mother, Joan Williams, Nudjia House and five blocks of land was up for auction in 2004. A developer who outbidded me purchased the estate for subdivision. Two blocks off the original five blocks were sold and new homes were built on them. In 2008 I was able to purchase the property back at auction.
The owner of the, the previous owners of Nudjia have not been too many – there, there’ve been a few.
Originally it was Jemima Pitt Jenkins, and she owned it from 1834 to 1839, which is five years, and she used the property as a dry run. William Warren Jenkins, her son, owned it for 47 years between 1839 and 1886 as a dry run and leasehold and cropping. William James Robert Jenkins, William Warren’s son,
owned it from 1886 to 1902. For 16 years they lived in and also rented out the property, as they moved to Sydney because Bill had poor health.
Thomas William Lindsay bought it from Bill in 1902, and he had it for 46 years but never lived in the house. So he wanted it just for dairy farm for the grazing and it was rented out for most of those years.
He sold it to the Australian Iron & Steel Company in 1948. And they owned it for two years and they rented it out as well. They were hoping to use it as their education facility and an overseas guests having a nice place because Nudjia overlooked the, the steelworks which was just starting up, so it was a wonderful property for them. But they found Greenhills, which is a little bit closer to Wollongong, at Figtree, that also overlooked the steelworks and they chose to use that site instead.
My father, Stanislaw Abbott Williams, worked at the steelworks and also my mother, Joan Elizabeth. They got married, and both worked at the steelworks, and because of Mum’s horses and Dad’s farming background, offered it to Dad if they were interested. Because my father had been with the AIS from Lithgow originally and came down with the original Hoskins brothers, so he was up there, senior clerk in the steelworks. Mum and Dad bought it in 1950 and, ah, it was sold after my mother’s passing in 2004. So they lived here for 54 years and lived in the house.
Robert Attington, who was the developer, purchased it from that auction in 2004, never lived in it, but subdivided, the five blocks into three and I was able to purchase it back in 2008 at auction and I’ve been living here since up to the present day for 15 years. So, all up, I’ve been in this house nearly 70 years.
Nudjia has links to Illawarra’s colonial history. Nudjia was built on one of the first five land grants of the Illawarra, which was issued in 1817. Nudjia was part of the Berkeley Estate originally granted in 1817 to Robert Jenkins, Esquire. He was a merchant, a shipping merchant in Sydney. Came out on one of the earlier ships and, ah, was very successful in Sydney. In fact he became one of the appraisals of Sydney Town. And he was offered one of the first five land grants in the Illawarra. There was five and there were situated around Lake Illawarra. And the reason for Lake Illawarra, because that was the only way access to the, ah, coast from Sydney, because they could come into the lake if the lake was open. They came in, they were able to get close to the shore and the cattle could walk to the shore from the boat and that was the only way they accessed it. So that’s why the first five land grants were around Lake Illawarra.
And, um, so, so after Rob passed – he had a horse accident -Jemima, his wife, in 1834, was, ah, obtained an additional 2,000 acres as a grant. The Estate eventually consisted of 3,280 acres. I, I think I mentioned that before. So, the historical story starts with Governor Macquarie in January 1817 issued the five land grants. And, ah, and Robert Jenkins received 1,000 acres between Allan’s Creek and Lake Illawarra. He named it Berkeley Estate after his homeland in Gloucestershire .As he lived and worked in Sydney he had stock up in Sydney on his farm and there were many droughts back then and the coast was used as a dry run during drought years in Sydney.
So they shipped them down to put on the coast because it was always green here as a dry run when it was drought in Sydney. The ship that Robert came out on was the Alanta In 1813 he was appointed Sydney Appraiser but he became the director of the Bank of NSW in 1819.Robert married Jemima Pitt. She was a widow from Captain F Appraiser, in 1813, and they got married in Parramatta at St. John’s. They had two boys, Robert Pitt, born in 1814, and William Warren in 1816. The boys grew up in Sydney.
In 1824 the colonial government extended grant notices to the individual applicants for land grants. The rule was the applicant could receive 100 acres of land for every convict maintained, free of charge to the government for one year. This was the incentive for property owners to expand their, their estate and obtain more free labour.
In 1828 the colonial government introduced regulation for granting temporary leases
with the crown for adjoining properties at a reduced rent. After this regulation Berkeley Farm had approximately 30 leasehold tenants to clear the land for grazing and growing crops under the clearing lease scheme.
Up to 1824 the estate was developed by convicts for Jemima and the leasehold tenants.
The leasehold tenants who managed the, the leases was a much easier way for Jemima to manage the estate, especially after Robert’s death. She continued to manage the estate as her dry run and acquired additional lands until she decided to hand it over to her son, William Warren Jenkins and he moved down to the coast and built Berkeley Estate Mansion in 1839. His brother Robert died with his family in a, in the wreck of the Royal Charter. But only one surviving child remains to that family.
It was William, who was the second child, that made the most of Berkley Estate and he married his cousin, Matilda Pitt Wiltshire.
In 1838 he built the two-storey mansion, and they had eleven children.
in the grand mansion located on Flagstaff Hill, part of Berkeley Hills. It was considered that the old handmade brick cottage of Nudjia was built at the same time as the Berkeley House in 1839 by William Warren Jenkins. It’s in the same style as the outbuildings. It is unknown who lived there, but with views of the estate to manage the cattle on the, the head Stockman would be the most suitable candidate to live here. Since settlement in the Illawarra which was originally known as Five Islands, has originally known colonial settlers used, they used the tracks created by the Aboriginal people.
And the only road in the Illawarra back then was the old Dapto Road that connected Dapto, which was really ended at Mullet Creek to Wollongong Harbour. But then in 1834-1835, the colonial government decided to build, to replace that road and make a more formal road so that farmers on the tablelands like Appin ah, and and also the Southern Tablelands could access the coast by road. And they built the Mount Keira Road in 1835 which connected to Wollongong Harbour which was being used, replaced Lake Illawarra, for shipping coming into the harbour and steam vessels. So people were coming down more and more from Sydney around that time. So the road had to be improved so between 1835 and 1844 that road were, was constructed by convicts, iron gangs, and it went through the Berkeley Estate.
And then Unanderra was created, or Charcoal Creek. And Jemima, the Jenkins family, were so generous they donated a lot of land to create the first school in Unanderra and the first church and so forth and the village was formed around that as part of the Estate.
And that road that the convicts built originally turned into the Princes highway as we know it today. And Nudjia’s, Nudjia Road is down on the highway and there used to be a mile post there saying ‘one mile to Nudjia’. And Nudjia Road, next to the Catholic church, was where the front gate was to the highway. So we owned all, well, I didn’t, but the original Nudjia estate owned from the highway up to the house and the little bit back to Cordeaux Road.
When my family bought it in 1950 they owned 12 acres only, but we still had that windy road that went down through the gully down – there was no roads that went up a steep hill like that – but it always went down through a gully and criss-crossed over the creek and then down to the Princes highway. I’m not sure how long you want me to go for.
Edie Swift Would you, um, if, I think this is great and I think we’ll conclude unless you want to say anything else because it’s just fantastic and…
Annette Williams There’s so much I could go on about but I mean you can get it online, ah, there’s so much research.
Edie Swift Right.
Annette Williams I did my Masters in local history research and I still want to do so much more history research.
Edie Swift Would you donate this to the Illawarra Stories oral history project.
Annette Williams Of course.
Edie Swift Okay. Thank you very much.