Mt Ousley Road under construction in the 1940s. The suburb was named after a loan shark from the 1800s. Photo: From the collections of Wollongong City Libraries and the Illawarra Historical Society – P12/P12931.
One of the pivotal changes in the development of European capitalism came in 1545 with the permission to charge interest on lent money: “An Acte Agaynst Usurie” of King Henry VIII of England.
Usury, from the Medieval Latin ‘usuria’, originally was the charging of interest on loans. In places where the charging of interest became acceptable, usury came to mean the charging of interest above the rate allowed by law.
Today the term “usury” indicates the charging of unreasonable or relatively high rates of interest. The term “loan shark” is a more modern equivalent.
Some Illawarra baby boomers claim that they were hard done by when, in the late 1980s, interest rates on home mortgages hit as high as 17 per cent.
But the bloke after whom Mount Ousley was named (even though he never lived there) was one of the biggest loan sharks of all.
In 1838 he ended up in court “accused of unappareled extortion” involving interest rates of 150 per cent.
Ousley (also spelt Ouseley) Condell had claimed to be the nephew of British Major-General Sir Ralph Ousley (1772-1842). He also claimed to be cousin to the Right Honourable Sir Gore Ousley, Baronet (1770-1844).
Such a lineage would also make him a relative of Gideon Ousley – the famous Methodist preacher – after whom it was once incorrectly suggested Illawarra’s Mt Ousley might have been named.
Claiming such celebrated connections helped Ousley get four free 50 acre (20 ha) adjoining lots in 1830 that he called Condell Park. A suburb of that name survives in Sydney today.
In 1837 he also scored a large free grant of 1280 acres (518 ha) at Bargo.
But, having arrived in NSW aboard the small ship Swiftsure back in May 1829, by 1834 he became an articled clerk in the office of Mr B C Rodd, one of the solicitors of the Supreme Court.
Coincidentally, it was another solicitor, Mr John Thurlow, who had the misfortune to borrow some money from the man the Sydney Gazette went on to call “the notorious Ousley Condell”.
And what a serve the Sydney Gazette certainly gave Ousley Condell in its reporting of the court case: “The amount paid [by John Thurlow to Ousley Condell] at various times, and still claimed as due reminds us of [Shakespeare and] Prince Hal’s exclamation on perusing Jack Falstaff’s tavern account: ‘What but one penny-worth of bread to all this sack’.”
Moreover, the Gazette continued: “Shyloch’s pound of flesh sinks into utter insignificance compared with Mr Ousley Condell’s, well won thrift. At all events … we have but little doubt that Mr Ousley Condell will live in the recollection of the good folks of Australia as the veritable progenitor of the Colonial Usury Laws.”
Land sales in NSW were booming in 1839 and Ousley Condell took a punt and purchased 218 acres (88 ha) comprising much of what is today called Mt Ousley, as well as an additional five acres (2 ha) near today’s Princes Highway at Fairy Meadow for £1447 10s 1d.
He financed it with the help of mortgage to William Henry Kerr for £941. When the NSW economy went bust in the early 1840s and even the big wigs were brought to the bankruptcy courts, Ousley Condell declared himself bankrupt in October 1843 and paid not a penny in the pound on his mortgage debt to Mr Kerr.
Kerr thus held the title to the full 223 acres (90 ha) as “onerous property” until his death in England in 1858.
Ousley’s name, but not ownership, stuck to the acreage even when it was subdivided in 1885.
The land was thus lumped with the name of a seriously big loan shark but Mt Ousley Road itself also posed problems. At a June 1885 meeting of the North Illawarra Council one alderman contended that as “Ousley road was used by the public, Council should put it in repair”.
The Mayor countered with the following: “The road had never been properly handed over to the Council by the owners of the land. At the sale of the subdivision, Mr Biggar, the auctioneer, merely stated ‘There’s the road; you can take it over if you like, and if not you can leave it alone’.”
But it took until World War II for the road to be firmly taken over, supposedly as part of the war effort to provide better access to the Steelworks.
Construction commenced in 1940 but this new road was already causing flooding problems by June 1948. In 1950 (then the wettest recorded year in South Coast history) it had to be “closed and remained impassable for some weeks”.
To make Ousley Condell, Esq even more “notorious” he had also in 1841 been “detected in an act of gross indecency on the South Head Road”.
“The particulars,” it was said, “will not bear detail.” Freed from gaol, Ousley Condell paid “the highest fine recognised by the law: £10 and costs”.
Today Mt Ousley Road continues to gain additional “interest” because of the massive tree clearing which has taken been taking place since November 2024 in the vicinity of residents living near the University of Wollongong.
Let us hope the money for the current very extensive Mt Ousley roadworks have not had to be borrowed at the kind of exorbitant interest rates its namesake – Ousley Condell – was so keen on extracting from his victims.
