Richmond and Ebenezer

I mentioned in my post of yesterday that we had met up with Lis, Tone and the girls at the little community church at Ebenezer where we enjoyed a very pleasant Devonshire Tea

It didn’t do my waistline all that much good as the most delightful scones were homemade by the local ladies as was the plum jam. The cream was rich and bountiful

The ladies were also the waitresses, cooks, washers up-er-ers and doers of anything else that needed to be done. A lovely bunch of mid life to older volunteers.

Having said all of that, it is not the reason for my post. I did want to talk a little about the church and its history.

The building is located in a very large tract of land that doubles as a cemetery and, in the past, a school.

The graves in the cemetery stretch back to 1825 and it is still in use today. It now caters for the more modern funeral types with a number of columbarium scattered around the precinct.

What interested me was the nature of the funerals in the early days of the history of the church. It is said that the funeral corsages would arrive by river. You see the church grounds are bound on one side by the beautiful Hawkesbury River.

The casket would be placed on a small barge that would be towed up or down the river by a row boat, maned by a couple of strong rowers. They would pull up on a little beach down from the church and the casket would be carried up the embankment to the church for the final service and burial. I don’t know about you but I found the story quite fascinating.

Now, just a quick word about the school. Though he was not the first teacher, John Anderson was a convict who received a Kings pardon and became a popular teacher at the school for 26 years.

The church remains the oldest existing school building in Australia. Many of the local children lived at the school because of the dangers faced travelling to and from their not too distant homes through the thick and inhospitable scrub.

Oh, I almost forgot. Owen Cavanough, the man who donated the land on which the church was built is, according to family lore, the first man from the First Fleet to step ashore at Sydney Cove.

So there you go. Driving along a narrow back road in this beautiful part of the world, you could be forgiven for missing the fact that the area just reeks of modern (by traditional owners terms) history.