The Wool Road
The Wool Road was a historic road in New South Wales, Australia, that ran from Nerriga to what is now called Vincentia on Jervis Bay. It was constructed privately in 1841, using convict labour. Its purpose was to provide a shorter route to a seaport for wool grown at Braidwood and beyond. The historical significance of The Wool Road is that it was the first road, capable of being used by wheeled vehicles, linking the inland area around Braidwood to the South Coast. The road led to the foundation of the privately owned port town of South Huskisson and the adjacent 'government townshIp' of Huskisson.
The Wool Road's route made its use difficult and the port on Jervis Bay was not a success. In 1856, the original road was realigned and extended to Terara instead of Jervis Bay, becoming the Braidwood Road. The old route through the coastal escarpment to Jervis Bay fell into disuse for many years.
Much of the original route of The Wool Road—approximately 68 km in length—remains in use today, but some parts are accessible only to four-wheel drive traffic. Only a part of the original route that is currently in use is known as The Wool Road or The Old Wool Road today—the section from the Princes Highway to Vincentia. The remainder of the original route still in use today is made up of a significant part of the Braidwood Road, Wandean Road, and a short section of the Princes Highway.
Historical context
The land between Nerriga and Jervis Bay is part of the country of Wandandian people, a group of Yuin. Wandandian people spoke Dharamba, which was probably the northernmost dialect of the Dhurga language. Traditionally, Wandandian people used paths, from the Pigeon House Range through the area now known as Wandandian, to reach the fishing grounds of St George's Basin and the inland hunting areas of the tablelands. In the 1830s and 1840s, Wandandian people still lived on their traditional lands.The land also lay within the County of St Vincent, one of the Nineteen Counties in which white settlement was permitted by the colonial government of New South Wales. In the late 1820s and 1830s colonial settlement had spread to the vicinity of Lake George, Braidwood, Yass, the Limestone Plains, and beyond to the Monaro district. The country settled was well-suited for the production of wool, for which there was a booming export market, but lay far from the existing port of Sydney.
The Great South Road originally forked at Marulan, with one route going to Bungonia and the other to Goulburn. This forking was in the—ultimately unfulfilled—hope that there would be a route found through the coastal escarpment via Bungonia, while the path through Goulburn headed in the direction of newly discovered grazing areas around Gunning and Yass.
The route, to Sydney from Braidwood, was via Bungonia and a crossing of the Shoalhaven at Kurraducbidgee.
Transporting the wool bales using the cumbersome bullock drays of the time involved a long and arduous journey from Braidwood—taking around three weeks at the bullocks' slow pace and with their need to stop for rest, feeding and watering—via Bungonia and Marulan to Sydney. The owner of Yarralumla, Terence Murray, further away at the Limestone Plains, complained that, in wet weather, the drays could take as long as three months to reach Sydney. From the early 1830s, there was agitation for a shorter route to the sea.
In the 1830s, a bridle-track known as the Corn Trail was made, from Clyde Mountain to the coastal Buckenbowra Valley. It probably followed a route already used by local Aboriginal people. It was steep and only usable by pack horses. Transport of wool in bales required a road that could be used by bullock drays.
Jervis Bay, a large sheltered bay that was suitable as a deep water port lay far closer than Sydney but there was no road from Braidwood toward the coast beyond Nerriga. From 1831, there were sea-going auxiliary steamships—such as the Sophia Jane—operating in New South Wales but steam powered railways were not in place before the mid-1850s.
Although transportation of convicts to New South Wales had ceased in 1840, it was still a penal colony. Convicts were a workforce that could be put to work on road making.
Route
The endpoints of The Wool Road were the locality of Nerriga—by 1841 already connected to Braidwood by a rudimentary road—and the newly created port of South Huskisson on Jervis Bay. The significant geographical obstacles to be overcome were crossing the Endrick River near Nerriga, climbing to a plateau in the northern part of the Pigeon House Range, then avoiding the steep valleys and gorges cut into that plateau by tributaries of the Shoalhaven and Clyde rivers, and subsequently descending from the plateau to the coastal plain to reach Jervis Bay.After fording the Endrick River, The Wool Road broadly followed the direction of the modern-day Braidwood Road, from Nerriga to near the Boolijah Peak, a point east of Sassafras. The current Braidwood Road alignment is the result of an upgrade in 1856. The original 1841 road's exact route was different in some places, most significantly where it climbs the Pigeon House Range at Bulee Mountain near Nerriga. The 1841 road traversed the ridge to the north of Bulee Mountain and went through the man-made Bulee Gap, whereas the 1856 alignment and the current road pass to the south of Bulee Mountain
Following the line of the modern Braidwood Road, the road crested the Pigeon House Range, at a location known as Billy's Hill. It then passed over the narrow part of the plateau not cut by the impassable gorges of Ettrema Creek and Bainbrig Creek. It continued past Sassafras and the Tianjara Falls, through another narrow part of the plateau, between the impassable valleys of Tianjara Creek and the most upstream parts of the Clyde River.From near the Boolijah Peak, The Wool Road diverged from the current route of the Braidwood Road and followed the route of modern-day Wandean Road, through the steep Wandean Gap., then following ridgelines of tributaries of Wandandian Creek, to Wandandian. In this section, the road's elevation dropped by approximately 2,500 feet in 10 miles, as it descended the coastal escarpment, via the locality of Jerrawangala and Wandandian. Most of this part of the route is now only accessible to four-wheel drive traffic.
From Wandandian, The Wool Road followed the route of a previous foot track—already in existence by 1841 and probably of Aboriginal origin—to Jervis Bay. Its route followed the approximate line of the existing Princes Highway for a short distance, then broadly followed the direction of the modern road still known as 'The Wool Road', from the modern-day Princes Highway near Basin View, via St George's Basin to Vincentia. At St. George's Basin, the 1841 route followed the road now known as 'The Old Wool Road' where it deviates from a section of the modern-day The Wool Road that was constructed around 1929. The Wool Road ended at a port on Jervis Bay that is now Vincentia.
History
Finding the route
In 1831, Robert Futter of Bungonia and George Galbraith of Nerriga formed an expedition to find a path from Nerriga to Jervis Bay. The others making up the expedition were William Ryrie, James Holman—who was known as the 'Blind Traveller'—and two Aboriginal guides whose names are not known.Holman later recounted—in his book ‘A Voyage Round The World: Including Travels In Africa, Asia, Australia, America Etc. From 1827 - 1832', published in 1834-1835 —that the route they had taken from Yerock Flat to the coast was taken against the advice of the Aboriginal guides, who had strongly suggested following the range further to the north. Holman later recognised that had they done so they could have found a far easier route for a road to Jervis Bay. However, the explorers had passed through rugged and difficult country and, having reached Jervis Bay via what was apparently the shortest route, did not search for any longer but easier route.
In 1839, the owner of Yarralumla, Terence Aubrey Murray, also explored a route between Nerriga and Jervis Bay, which may have been similar to that followed by the Futter expedition.
Proponents
After at first failing to obtain government funding for such a road in 1839, landholders from around Braidwood and Nerriga decided to fund and build their own road from Nerriga to Jervis Bay. The principal advocates and financial backers for the new road were John Mackenzie of Nerriga and Dr. Thomas Braidwood Wilson of Braidwood. Others on the committee advocating the road were landholders Terence Aubrey Murray and the Ryrie family. Wealthy and influential colonists Alexander Berry, Robert Campbell, Thomas Walker and James Macarthur were also supporters of the new road.Edward Deas Thompson—at the time the Colonial Secretary of New South Wales—was a backer of the road, but also stood to benefit from its construction. He owned 2,560 acres of otherwise useless land on the western shore of Jervis Bay south of Moona Moona Creek, Thompson had been attempting to dispose of this land as late as August 1839 but it was not suitable for agriculture. Explorer and surveyor, John Oxley, had said of the land on the western shore, in 1819, "We saw no place on which even a Cabbage might be planted with a prospect of success" and that "perhaps a more miserable sterile Country was never traversed by man". However, an east-facing point—now known as Plantation Point—provided shelter from the south and a safe port—the 'Inner Harbour'—and there was enough land on which a port township could be situated.