The Great South Road had finally been completed from Sydney to Goulburn.

Wagons lumbered over a convict- built bridge and trundled down Grafton Street, which was constructed wide enough to turn a bullock team around in.

At the junction with Bradley Street, an inn on stood on each corner, marking the centre of the township at that time.

Those inns have long disappeared, but St Clair villa still remains from the brief era when Grafton and Bradley Streets were the hub of the town.

The Bradley family deserves special mention in the saga of this city. They had established “Lansdowne Estate” in 1825, and the town now stood on Bradley land. Their role in the development of Goulburn cannot be overstated.

They were the earliest entrepreneurs in the district, and their progressive ideas made the rest of the colony sit up and take notice.

Bradley’s Mill was the symbol of progress, belching smoke from its new-fangled steam engine. Wagon-loads of wheat converged on it from all directions, cementing our reputation as “the granary of the colony” and making Australia independent of imported flour for the first time.

Bradley’s Brewery was the first integrated industrial complex in the colony, and remains the oldest intact example of its kind in Australia.

All that is missing is the Maudsley Beam engine that once provided the motive power - it is now the centre-piece of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

William Bradley became Goulburn’s first tycoon.

He built the first mansion, stood for government, and placed the order for the first rail locomotive to arrive in the colony.

It is fitting that he married Captain Hovell’s daughter; Hume and Hovell had pioneered the highway, and Bradley pioneered the railway.

Bradley’s “Lansdowne House” is the oldest continuously occupied homestead in the district, and his “town house” still stands, much remodelled, as Tattersall’s Hotel.

Cash flows

By the middle of the decade, the financial recession was over and cash was flowing freely again.

Prosperity saw the centre of population move away from noisy Bradley Street.

Shops and businesses gravitated to Auburn Street, and genteel town houses were erected at the Clinton Street end of Sloane Street. Mandelson’s magnificent hotel and the adjoining terraces are fine examples of this gracious era.

All that money swelled the coffers of the Commercial Bank (which still stands behind a modern façade at the corner of Auburn and Verner Streets), and rumours abounded that bushrangers were planning a raid. The manager was forced to stand guard with a blunderbuss.

John O’Sullivan was not a man to be crossed. As the son of an Irish rebel leader of the Wicklow uprising, he had inherited his father’s fiery temper.

“Guy Fawkes night” gave a good example of that temper.

Traditionally celebrated with a bonfire to commemorate his failed attempt to burn down the British Houses of Parliament, an effigy of the arsonist was placed in an old chair on top of the pyre.

The patriotic Irishman rushed out, rescued Guy Fawkes, and broke the chair over the heads of some baffled bystanders.

Shows and fires

People had to make their own entertainment in those days.

Bonfires were also lit on the Queen’s Birthday, when teams representing “Town” and “Country” played a kind of soccer in the street with a blazing tar-barrel.

The first Goulburn Show in 1846 was a great success. Charles Macalister, in “Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South”, described the usual horse, sheep and cattle exhibitions, and told how the publican’s booth did a roaring trade, leading to some unscheduled entertainment; “Proceedings were enlivened during the afternoon by a bit of a free fight, started by an old ticket-ofleave man named Carney Mulligan, from Richlands. In good old Donnybrook style he pulled off his coat and dragged it along in the dust, challenging anyone who “darred” (dared) to tread on the tail of it.

The challenge was promptly accepted, and soon stirrupleathers (with stirrups attached) were pulled out, and fists, whips and sticks flying with great impartiality. The police and some of the more sober citizens quelled the row, and that’s all I remember of the first Goulburn show.”

He also reminisced about other forms of entertainment.

Boxing and wrestling were popular, “pulling matches” between rival bullock teams, “catching the greasy pig”, and kangaroo hunts were popular diversions. Wakes and weddings were the only social outlet for the womenfolk, apart from the occasional “gallop” around the dance floor.

The most popular sporting contests, he recalled, were the horse races at North Park. The 1848 event provided much hilarity when “Bawley”, the horse that hauled the water-cart from house to house, was unhitched, given a quick rub-down, and won two races: “A row started after the second race. The side of the publican’s booth was carried away in the conflict, the boards and canvas spattered with blood and hair, as the thick of the battle raged around the drink depot. To quell the melee, a trooper rode at the fighting crowd with drawn sword.

He was quickly unhorsed, and one of the mob galloped away with the fallen hero’s sword and threw it behind a stump.”

“Bawley” had a stellar career on the turf. According to Macalister, he was never beaten in a “hurryskurry” or a hack race.

Hanging around

But public executions still drew the biggest crowds. Almost the entire population turned out to cheer and jeer at the hanging of a notorious bushranger named Whitton, who had travelled back from Sydney Supreme Court to the scene of his crimes seated on his own coffin in the back of an open cart.

Crowds lined the Great South Road to catch a glimpse of him and the equally notorious hangman, Alexander Green, who shared his seat.

Green was horribly deformed, covered in pox, and had been kicked in the face by a horse. They said he could scare people to death, without the need for a noose.

The tumble-down gaol at Old Goulburn had been replaced by a massive brick edifice on the site of the current Post Office.

Grim walls loomed six metres high, crowned by watch- towers, dominating the town. Massive gates gave access to the courtyard where the gallows and “flogging triangles” took pride of place.

A set of stocks stood in Auburn Street for the public humiliation of petty criminals.

A new Court House opened in Sloane Street in 1849. It gave good service until it was superseded by a larger Court House. If anyone could be singled out for the population boom that was about to hit Goulburn, it was Dr. John Dunmore Lang.

As a champion of immigration, did much to promote the influx of worthy citizens with this glowing description of Goulburn in 1847:“Beyond all comparison the finest (town) in the Southern interior of New South Wales, and the buildings generally are of much more substantial character, as well as of a much finer appearance, than most inland colonial towns.”

Goulburn had 90 houses and 655 inhabitants at the start of the decade, but after ten years the population had risen to 1518. By then we could boast a library, a dramatic society, a bank, a hospital, a couple of schools, three newspapers, four doctors, five churches, and about 17 licensed pubs.

Perhaps we should raise a glass in the Tatt’s to the memory of William Bradley and John Dunmore Lang.