Utopia might be a state of mind to some but for the residents of Parkesbourne, it’s right underneath their noses.
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Henry Parkes, the father of Federation, had utopia on his mind when he visited the settlement back in the 1860s. This was a place where a battler could buy a small patch and make a decent living despite being surrounded by the vast Chisholm family properties.
Parkes visited the area when he was education minister and dropped in on the church where some 20 students had their classes. According to Parkesbourne’s oldest resident, Wilbur Weatherstone, when Parkes asked the name of the settlement, he was told it was obscurely known as Breadalbane Plains.
“We can’t have that,” Parkes said.
He christened it after himself and added the Scottish word, ‘bourne,’ meaning home.
Some 300 present and past residents celebrated ‘home’ on Saturday with a meticulously planned Centenary of Federation party, complete with period costumes. A procession of sulkies and vintage cars made their way from Merilla to the little Uniting Church at Parkesbourne in the morning sun. Atop the lead sulky was Wilbur Weatherstone, the village’s oldest resident at 88, and his wife Muriel. Mr Weatherstone’s father was a pupil at the little church when Henry Parkes first came to the area. One of 13 children, Wilbur was born at the family property, Allenby, and after completing sixth class at school, helped his father on the farm. In 1933 he inherited the extensive orchard and in one year sent a record 3,000 cases of cherries to Sydney.
“Another year when the market wasn’t so good here we shipped 200 cases to England,” he said.
In the middle of the war in 1942 he married Muriel, then a member of the Women’s Air Force. They settled on the property and raised six children.
A ‘stingy’ Federal Apple and Pear Board and 50 inches of rain in one year saw the end of the orchard and the Weatherstones switched to sheep. After a lifetime in the area, the couple moved to Goulburn last April. Yet they remain Parkesbourne’s own.
“It has been a very special place over the years,” Mr Weatherstone said.
According to locals, Parkes occasionally visited his friends and Parkesbourne’s first settlers, John and Ann Brown.
Today their descendants and those of many others including the Grunsells, Apps, Hunts, Bastins and Friends are still there.
And there are also some ‘blow-ins’ from Sydney who are taking up blocks in the second wave of subdivision, this time of the Chisholm family land. They are seeking a little piece of Utopia too.
