Effort Involved in Clearing 25 Acres

Robert Forrester, a First Fleeter who arrived in Sydney in 1788, officially received his land grant at the Hawkesbury late in 1794. For an incoming farmer, a European, being able to use this land productively required a great deal of hard work that was often shared by groups of men working together. The virgin ground had to be cleared of standing trees, the branches lopped, and all rolled together and burnt, leaving the tree stumps in the ground.

By August 1800, Robert Forrester had cleared 25 acres of his farm at the Hawkesbury, with 19 acres planted to wheat and 6 acres ready for planting maize (p 204 of 'Sentenced to Debt').

This information prompted a response from Ian Nicholls, a reader who'd lived on a farm beside the Hawkesbury at Freemans Reach in his childhood. Ian wrote:

Some people might think that clearing 25 acres in 5 years was a bit slow. I assume we don’t really know how big the trees were on the flood plain? I can tell you that some of them were enormous. On our farm on the same flood plain, every now and again, after heavy rain or heavy traffic, we would get sink holes. Some of these were 3.0 metres in diameter, sloping in to a centre up to almost 0.75 metres deep.

I was forbidden to ride on the mud guard of tractors Dad would bring in to do disc ploughing. One day I was on the tractor when the whole ground under the tractor sank into an enormous sink hole almost a metre deep and the diameter of the whole tractor, but not the plough. I almost fell off the tractor as it gradually climbed out of the hole. That was the largest sink hole I ever saw. The alluvial soil on our farm was very deep, well over 6.0 metres, and not a stone in sight. There is a rumour that way down deep there are round stones which can be crushed to make blue metal for roads and building, just like the stone up at Castlereagh.

A good indication of the enormous size of the largest trees comes from a painting of the district done around 1810. The land being farmed by Robert Forrester was near the bend in the river. 

"A View of the River Hawkesbury, NSW", c 1810,
by John William Lewin, courtesy State Library of NSW

In 1800 Robert had not only cut down huge trees to clear his land, he'd tilled it, planted 19 acres with wheat and prepared 6 acres of ground for maize.  

Ploughs were almost unheard of in the colony, and because the hardwood tree stumps couldn’t be grubbed out, ploughs were mostly troublesome and often dangerous to use. In any case, Robert had no animals to pull a plough. To prepare the soil for planting, the only tools available to him were an axe, a mattock and a hoe. 

In December 1804 Margaret Catchpole, a farmer herself, wrote: "In clearing new land, it is broken up by men with very large hoes, and it is the hardest work that is done in the country. A great price is paid for this labour, and men work too hard at it. They frequently destroy their health, and their lives, by their over-exertion. (Cobbold, History of Margaret Catchpole, p 319) 

Robert must have been a strong, tough man. His track record proves he was a hard worker, but he managed to survive as a farmer to the age of 69 years.

Read more about life at the Hawkesbury in early colonial times in 'Sentenced to Debt', which can be purchased here.