Herbert Beecroft’s watercolour A Spring Morning at Madden’s Farm, Thirroul, showing Bulli, Wollongong and the Islands, from 1915. Photo: Supplied.
John Madden Snr, native of Limerick in Ireland, died at his residence of Coral Farm, North Bulli (as both Austinmer and Thirroul were then still known), aged 87 years.
Madden left behind a widow and 12 children.
But he certainly did not give his surname to Maddens Plains.
The story outlined by some Illawarra historians has always been that the Madden family which eventually moved to the Thirroul/Austinmer Heights area and set up Coral Farm let some of their cows graze on the top of the escarpment and that’s how the area became known as Maddens Plains.
Well….
As the Thirroul Madden family didn’t arrive in Australia until 15 October 1850 and the area was already being called Maddens Plains by even the Melbourne Argus on 15 July 1850, then I think, to rehash a famous phrase, “We have a problem Houston”.
As there is a Madden’s Hill on Menangle Road in the District of Airds, perhaps it was this previously unidentified family of eponymous Maddens who left their surname as a legacy to this point on the Illawarra escarpment?
However, my great hope is that out there somewhere, there is someone who knows for sure – for I certainly don’t.
“From Liverpool to Madden’s Plains, elevated 1200 feet above the sea, the distance is 30 mile from Madden’s Plains to where the Kiama track reaches the neck between Illawarra Range and Mittagong Range.” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 June 1849).
So apart from the naming of Madden Plains clearly predating the arrival of Illawarra’s large Madden family in 1850, some people would nonetheless go on to recognise the special qualities and importance of Maddens Plains to the residents of NSW.
“The basin of George’s River contains 160 square miles, its highest sources are always flowing, and are elevated 2200 feet above the level of the sea at Madden’s Plains, on the range at the back of the Illawarra. This would form the finest supply of water in the world … The waters have their sources on Madden’s Plains, as described by Sir Thomas Mitchell, and throughout their whole length contain the purest and most pellucid waters in the world, without the slightest brackishness or other disadvantages, and of continuous and abundant volume …. (The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 March 1875).
Yet the innumerable Madden descendants who went on to populate the Illawarra, despite definitely not bequeathing their surname to Maddens Plains high above Austinmer, still managed to make some considerable contributions to both the marine and agricultural environments of Illawarra.
After the family first began working on the giant Jenkins’s Estate at Berkeley, one Madden family member, William, got hold of the licence of the old Forest Inn Hotel at Fairy Meadow in 1879.
Later, Mr Maurice Joseph Madden occupied a farm named Cleveland at Avondale, which in 1908 was awarded a prize for “the cleanest and best-kept farm” on the entire south coast of NSW.
Maddens Plains in the Illawarra’s north. Photo: Supplied.
But they were just two of the family of Maddens who arrived aboard the good ship Kate in October 1850 which included parents John (aged 42), his wife, Mary, 38 and children Phillip, 20, Patrick, 18, William, 16, Honora, 14, Nicholas, 12, John Jnr, 10, Thomas, 8, and James, 6.
The spacing of the children does hint they were good practising Irish Catholics and so poor mother Mary Madden seems to have mostly kept falling pregnant the moment her breastfeeding of each subsequent child ceased.
But, of all the Madden family members who arrived in October 1850, it was John Madden Jnr who chalked up some very surprising achievements while engaged in lots of Illawarra work that involved not only skill but also plenty of dangerous hard yakka.
Remarkably, although probably having first learnt to swim in the famous Shannon River back in Limerick, Madden Jnr took to the Illawarra beaches and later became a professional diver complete with the now iconic very heavy diving bell helmet.
In the course of his dangerous and arduous vocation, Madden Jnr was foreman under the supervision of Patrick Lahiff in the excavation of the Wollongong Harbor.
Afterwards, in company with long-term Wollongong resident James Taylor, Madden Jnr worked underwater on the construction of a coffer dam, by which means the Wollongong Harbour Basin was more fully excavated.
He also worked in company with Patrick Kelly on the formation of the Kiama harbor and did the diving work involved in the laying of the foundation of the now much-loved first Wollongong lighthouse.
John Madden Jnr also did some of the salvage work on the ship Queen of Nations, which, on her passage to Sydney, was wrecked on Corrimal Beach opposite the mouth of Towradgi Creek. He did similar work on the vessels Little Pet and Llewellin which got stuck on Bellambi Reef.
When he finally gave up all this risky business, Madden came to a farm at Balgownie, where he lived and worked till his demise in 1913.
All in all, it’s probably a better legacy than giving your surname to “Maddens Plains”.
