Collits' Inn: Uncovering the Past: Surprises found in restoring this 1823 Australian icon

By Christine Stewart

Collits' Inn sits at the foot of Mount York, in Hartley Vale, just on the other side of the Blue Mountains.

The Inn was built by Pierce Collits, an ex-convict, in 1823.

This book is our personal story of restoring one of Australia's earliest Inns. All travellers crossing the Blue Mountains in 1823 had to come down the notoriously dangerous Cox's Pass past the Inn on their way to the settlement of Bathurst and other lands to the west.

There were many surprises: The Collits' Inn Operetta, the early nearby Cemetery, the story of a murder, the many beautiful linoleums, two strange mediaeval customs, and more.

When we acquired the Inn in 1998 it was very derelict. By 2002, several awards had been received both for the restoration and for the restaurant.

The project was often challenging, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately rewarding, and so has been the process of putting this story together. Many people have encouraged and assisted me with the telling of our story and I am most grateful for their help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Aug 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228837213

Christine Stewart

I was trained as an artist, not a writer. In 1998 we took on the project of restoring the derelict but iconic 1823 Collits' Inn, built by an ex-convict to welcome travellers crossing the Blue Mountains in the early days of the colony. In some ways I felt I was just the catalyst for this project and that my whole life had been in training for it. I had an Arts degree so was used to research and writing for the Conservation Management Plan; I had training in colour and design so enjoyed working on the interiors; I had done courses in gardening so re-establishing the garden was enjoyable; and I enjoyed working with the architects and builders. Thirteen years after we sold it in 2007 the urge to write the history of the Inn and the restoration of it grew so strong, as it was such a fascinating project, that I gave up my painting studio in order to do so. And then COVID-19 came along to give me the time and the space in my life to do so.

Book preview

Collits’ Inn

Uncovering the Past

Surprises found in restoring this 1823 Australian icon

Christine Stewart

Collits’ Inn

Copyright © 2021 by Christine Stewart

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-3720-6 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-3719-0 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-3721-3 (eBook)

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Abbreviations

Chapter 1 - Where is Collits’ Inn?

Chapter 2 - My Mother-In-Law Goes Riding

Chapter 3 - Katie Pilarcik – Owner of the Inn in 1998

Chapter 4 - Engaging an Architect

Chapter 5 - Repairs to the Barn and Stables

Chapter 6 - The Research Begins – Who Was Pierce Collits?

Chapter 7 - The Children of Pierce and Mary Collits

Chapter 8 - Pierce Builds His Inn

Chapter 9 - Researching the History

Chapter 10 - Interviews

Chapter 11 - Connections with Aboriginal People

Chapter 12 - History of the Roads

Chapter 13 - A Magical Time to be a Surveyor

Chapter 14 - Owners of Collits’ Inn

Chapter 15 - Inns Owned by the Collits Family

Chapter 16 - Farms and Inns of the Collits Children

Chapter 17 - Uncovering the Truth – Myths and Puzzles

Chapter 18 - Writing the Conservation Management Plan

Chapter 19 - All Areas of Significance in the Conservation Management Plan

Chapter 20 - Working with the Heritage Bodies

Chapter 21 - The Restoration Begins

Chapter 22 - Donald Ellsmore – the Finishes Architect

Chapter 23 - Uncovering Two Strange Mediaeval Practices

Chapter 24 - The Water – With Every Silver Lining There is a Cloud

Chapter 25 - The Garden

Chapter 26 - Items Left at the Inn

Chapter 27 - Uncovering William’s House Site

Chapter 28 - The Murder of William Collits’ Wife

Chapter 29 - The Demon Drink

Chapter 30 - Interviews With Ollie Leckbandt

Chapter 31 - The Collits’ Inn Post Office

Chapter 32 - The Operetta Collits’ Inn

Chapter 33 - Uncovering the Floors – Linoleums and Newspapers

Chapter 34 - The Mount York Cemetery

Chapter 35 - The Shale Mines at Hartley Vale

Chapter 36 - Publicity for the Inn

Chapter 37 - Who Was to Run the Inn?

Chapter 38 - The Opening Day

Chapter 39 - Running the Inn With Laurent and Cyrillia

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

References

Foreword

Collits’ Inn was the first inn west of the Blue Mountains, on the road to Bathurst. It was built nearly 200 years ago by ex-convict Pierce Collits, and it opened for business in 1823. As such, it is one of Australia’s earliest surviving buildings, and is rich in history.

However, the building and its history were nearly lost. When Christine Stewart and her husband, Russell, bought the Inn in 1998, it was severely run down and almost on the point of collapse – its history forgotten, distorted or dispersed. Over the next four years Christine researched, recovered and collated its history, and painstakingly restored the Inn and its outbuildings, saving them from disappearing completely.

By Australia Day 2002 the project was complete, and a grand opening day was held to celebrate the beautifully restored buildings. Collits’ Inn then came to life again as a guest house and award-winning French restaurant over the following five years. The Stewarts sold it in 2007, with its future secured for the enjoyment of future generations.

This book is Christine’s story of her family’s long association with the Mount York area, including those ten years as owners of Collits’ Inn, and how she went about recovering its history and restoring the buildings, with all the associated discoveries, excitement and frustrations. In her lucid and clear prose, Christine has here created a unique, fascinating and very readable record of this important colonial era inn, and her own enormous contribution to its story.

Bob Wright

Collits’ Family Historian

2020

Map showing Collits’ Inn at the junction of five roads and

its relationship to Mount York on the western end of the Blue Mountains.

M/L NSW Post Office Calendar and Almanac of 1833.

Collits’ Inn seen from Mt. York in 1935

Inscribed on back: "Presented to Mrs. Welch in grateful recognition

of her kindness during our visits to Mount York Farm (once Collits’ Inn,

Vale of Clwydd) September 1935." Signed W.L. Harvard, Frank A. Croft, John Nimmo, W. Livingston, (and another not legible).

Photograph found at the Inn in 1998.

Preface

This book is my account of our restoration of the 1823 Collits’ Inn, Australia’s earliest inn between the Blue Mountains and Bathurst. Although it is written in an informal and personal style, I have endeavoured to be as historically accurate as I can so that its contents can be relied on by historians.

It is a large undertaking to write a book such as this, so I had to ask myself: Why am I doing it?

There were many answers to that question.

Because the Inn is a very important link in the story of British settlement west of the Blue Mountains.

Because there were many fascinating discoveries made during the restoration.

Because there are at least 12,000 descendants of Pierce and Mary Collits who may like to know more about these discoveries.

Because the story may appeal to the many people who have visited the Inn and its restaurant over the years.

Because there are many people who love history – and the Inn is an integral part of Australia’s early history.

Because there are many who love to read of problems solved and difficulties overcome.

Because our experience may be useful to those taking on a similar restoration project.

And because John Cody, a publisher friend of ours who worked at Random House, suggested many years ago that I write it and bring the emotion into it.[1] Sadly, John died many years ago but his words kept tugging away at the back of my mind.

Finally, the urge to write it grew so overwhelming that at the end of February 2020 I gave up my painting studio to start writing – and then COVID-19 came along just at the right moment to give me the space in my life for such a time-consuming project.

We owned Collits’ Inn for ten years. During those ten years we had a fascinating but challenging, educational but frustrating, costly but eminently satisfying journey of researching the early history and bringing back to life this iconic Inn that is so important in the colony’s early history.

I then experienced the same fascinations and challenges in writing this book!

Christine Stewart

February 2021

Abbreviations

Chapter 1

Where is Collits’ Inn?

If you wished to visit Collits’ Inn from Sydney, you would drive due west for about two hours. You could take the Great Western Highway and after you reached Emu Plains – in the early days known as the Emu – on the Nepean River at the foot of the Blue Mountains, you would then be following much the same road that the early explorers cut through the eucalypts more than two centuries ago, in 1813.

You would pass through the small villages that make up the City of the Blue Mountains and travel along the ridge of those mountains – looking south into the magnificent Megalong Valley – whilst to the north would be the equally magnificent Grose Valley. When Charles Darwin saw this valley in 1836, he described it as stupendous – magnificent. It was named after Francis Grose who was in charge of the colony as Lieutenant-Governor from 1792 to 1794. He established military rule, failed to stamp out drunkenness, and abolished civil courts, so was perhaps less magnificent than the valley.

View of the Grose Valley from Hanging Rock, Blackheath.

Watercolour painting by Christine Stewart.

Three of the villages are named after those first intrepid explorers who set off into the unknown in search of land to expand the starving colony – Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth (Falls) – explorers remembered by generations of Australian children as LBW.

Several of the villages indicate our English heritage[1]: Faulconbridge, the maiden name of Premier Henry Parkes’ mother; Lapstone, named after water lapping on and smoothing the type of stones used by cobblers; Linden, formerly known as Seventeen Mile Hollow as it was seventeen miles from the Nepean River, but later named after Linden Lodge, a magnificent home built in 1865 by local businessman William Jolley Henderson; Medlow Bath, known at first as Brown’s Siding as there was a sawmill there, but the name was changed in 1883 to Medlow as there was another Brown’s Siding at Lithgow;[2] Mt. Victoria, originally named One Tree Hill for reasons which will be explained in Chapter 12: History of the Roads, but then renamed after the reigning monarch in 1868 and officially gazetted in 1876.

Other villages are named after natural features: Blackheath, Glenbrook, Hazelbrook, Springwood, Valley Heights, Woodford,* whilst others pay respect to Aboriginal heritage: Bullaburra: meaning clear day; Katoomba: Kedumba or Katta-toon-bah in the Aboriginal language, meaning shining falling water; Warrimoo, thought to mean eagle’s nest but open to question see [3]; Winmalee, formerly North Springwood but the name changed in 1972, after a competition, to an Aboriginal word meaning in a northerly direction again open to question [4]; and Leura, which so far, nobody seems to have found the derivation of this name, although some think it is an Aboriginal word meaning lava, but as volcanoes have not been active in the area for ten million years, this is also open to question.

*Actually, Woodford was originally named Twenty Mile Hollow as it was twenty miles from the Nepean River.

When you reached Mt. Victoria, the last of the mountain villages, you would have a choice. You could drive down the steep and winding Victoria Pass with its magnificent views out to the western plains, follow along the highway on the flat through the early village of Little Hartley and turn to the right just after that. You would then drive along a winding road through open pasture for about five kilometres until you reached the Inn to your right.

Or, alternatively, from Mt. Victoria you could turn a sharp right and drive along the Darling Causeway on the edge of the cliff that marks the western end of the Grose Valley. This road connects to the alternative route from Sydney at Bell. There is just one road off this causeway, Hartley Vale Road, which runs off to the left about six kilometres from Mt. Victoria. Taking this narrow road, which winds down through tall eucalypts and around a stone bluff, gives one the feeling of plunging back into the past. It is crossed by a wildlife corridor where, on one early morning trip to and from the Inn, I saw a snake, a fox, a lyrebird and a wallaby all crossing the road at the same place, whilst a herd of kangaroos was grazing in the paddocks to the right in the morning mist. It was quite magical.

This road flattens out just before the old shale mining village of Hartley Vale where there are remains of the old slag heaps to your left, now covered in blackberries. It was an important mine back in the late 1800s, as shale from this mine was said to have lit the lamps of London. (see Chapter 35: The Shale Mines at Hartley Vale).

Several peaceful houses remain from what was once a bustling village in the days of the shale mines. To your right will be a two-storey building now known as the Comet Inn, but originally the headquarters of the Comet Kerosene Company.

If you proceeded for another kilometre or so you would see to your left a low, simple timber building with a corrugated-iron roof. That simple building with a fascinating history is Collits’ Inn.

The other way to reach the Inn from Sydney would be to follow along the Bells Line of Road on the northern side of the Grose Valley. That road begins on the other side of the Hawkesbury River at North Richmond, and also has an interesting early history (see Chapter 12: History of the Roads). This road goes through Bell where, turning left, you would again follow along the Darling Causeway for about four kilometres from the opposite direction to reach Hartley Vale Road and the early route down to the Inn.

The Inn lies in the beautiful Vale of Clwydd at the foot of Mount York.[5] That valley was our first connection to all that followed.

Chapter 2

My Mother-In-Law Goes Riding

Our connection with that beautiful and peaceful valley began in 1975 through my husband’s mother, Bettine Stewart. She was English and came to live in Australia when she married his father, Douglas, an Australian veterinary surgeon. She was small in stature – only five feet tall – but large in spirit and quite adventurous.

She was a very talented artist and her work would have been much better known in Australia had she not had such a retiring nature. She had a great need for solitude and for years she had been looking for a peaceful hideaway in the country.

There was once a riding stable close to Collits’ Inn called Blue Hills, on Hartley Vale Road where one could stay in simple cabins and hire horses to ride in the bush below Mount York. In search of a country retreat, she hired one of those horses and rode up the hill through the eucalypts to a clearing where she saw two houses: a simple wattle and daub cottage with ivy growing through the stone walls of the kitchen annex, and not far behind it a plain fibro house. These two houses looked into a valley with a tiny creek and dam and were surrounded by a semicircle of Blue Mountains cliffs. In front of her was the interesting silhouette of Mount York. She fell in love with the seclusion and beauty of the place and enquired of the owner, Les Townsend, who lived beside Collits’ Inn, if it was for sale. To her great dismay, he told her it had been sold just the week before. Very disappointed, she drove back to Sydney to talk to the family about what she had seen.

Rackham cottage on our property behind the Inn.

Photograph Christine Stewart 1998.

The next week, Les rang to tell her that the sale had fallen through. With a sense of anticipation, we all drove up to see the property the following weekend. We walked over it with him, and all loved what we saw. Perhaps we sensed that this was one of the most historic places in Australia – we didn’t realise then that the stones edging the faintly visible old road marked the earliest road that anyone who came west of the Blue Mountains would have used once they had made the treacherous descent down Mount York. It just seemed a place of beauty and tranquillity.

Our son, who was six, held hands with Les as we walked along. My mother-in-law had no idea of the price and was therefore astounded when she heard it as, being accustomed to Sydney prices, this was far less than she would have imagined for two houses and seventy-two acres of land. Of course, it was little use to anyone except as a holiday escape as there was not enough arable land to make a viable farm. It was also land-locked, which we did not realise at the time, as the only access came through the Collits’ Inn block. Les was delighted, as my mother-in-law accepted his price straight away, and we were delighted as it was so much less than any of us had expected it would be.

And so our connection with that valley began. We were now the owners of what we called Rackham after the illustrations in Arthur Rackham books of ivy growing through old stone walls. Ivy had grown right through the stone chimney and even rooted into the floor.

We spent many adventurous holidays there, burning blackberries, keeping horses so that our children learnt to ride and make simple jumps, exploring the area and staying in the little wattle and daub cottage after we spent many weekends cleaning it up to make it habitable. At night we would hear the sound of a large lizard slithering around the low, pressed-metal ceiling just above our heads. (I now think this would have been a python as have recently learnt that they often climb into roofs in the cold weather. CS) We would of course visit the children’s grandmother who had made the fibro house behind very comfortable by adding on a verandah and painting the house dark brown. She spent as much time there as she could, as she loved it, and felt very at home and peaceful there. She later enclosed the first veranda to create a space for painting and then added another verandah.

Professor Douglas Stewart.

Oil painting of her husband by Bettine Stewart.

The Dam at Rackham Hartley Vale.

Oil painting by Bettine Stewart.

Bettine Stewart

Photograph by Christine Stewart.

View from her house in Careel Bay, Sydney.

Acrylic painting by Bettine Stewart.

A few years later, she heard that the 100 acres between Rackham and Collits’ Inn were for sale. The family company bought it, again for a very modest price.

We heard many stories about the old Inn just below us but knew nothing about its history. At that stage, it had walls painted turquoise with bright yellow around the doors and windows, unpainted fibro cladding along the western side, a derelict garden and outbuildings, and a collapsing barn and stables. My brother-in-law went to look at it and came back saying, It’s just a grotty old farmhouse.

Collits’ Inn in 1998. Photograph by Christine Stewart.

Katie Pilarcik, an old Croatian lady, lived there. She eked out a living by showing people around for $1 and giving them erroneous versions of the history. She would tell them proudly that Governor Macquarie had slept in the room at the end of the verandah, even though he had returned to England in 1821 before the Inn was opened in 1823. We called in one day and found it was filled with inappropriate furniture, cacti in prune tins were placed all along the crumbling flagstone verandah and there were embroidered Croatian cushions on the worn couches. We didn’t take much interest in it and never suspected that one day it would take over our lives to the extent that it did.

We had no idea that this was one of the most historic buildings in the country. On the block behind it, which we now owned, was the old cemetery which did look interesting. We saw well-trodden paths to the graves of Pierce and Mary Collits and read the sad stories on many tombstones of children dying before reaching the age of three – at least five in one family (see Chapter 34: The Mount York Cemetery). We began to think that there was a history here that we would like to know more about.

Almost every time we visited my mother-in-law, she would speak of her worries about her entrance road not being gazetted, so that if the Inn were ever sold she could lose her access to this place that she loved so much. We did make Katie Pilarcik an offer to buy the Inn before she went back to Croatia in about 1990, but her price was far too high and the Inn too derelict to contemplate taking on its restoration as well as buying the 200-acre block upon which it stood. She was trapped overseas during the Croatian War of Independence (1991–95) and when she did finally return, she put the Inn up for sale again in 1998.

It was then, more than twenty years after we had bought Rackham that we had a telephone call from a man called Steve Patterson who wanted to buy 170 acres of the original grant of 200 acres on the northern side of Hartley Vale Road in order to erect holiday cabins. He did not want the Inn on its thirty acres on the southern side of the road, but he had heard from the agent that we might be interested in buying it. He therefore rang to propose that we divide the property between us. After much discussion it was agreed with Katie Pilarcik that we could buy the Inn on its thirty acres and he could buy the other 170 acres.

However, Katie was very shrewd and knew that her land would be worth more once the Inn was restored, so once we had signed our contract, she then refused to sell the 170 acres to poor Steve who had suggested the arrangement in the first place. He was of course, justifiably disappointed; however, we heard that he did eventually find land further west for his holiday cabins.

And so on April Fools’ Day, 1998, we exchanged contracts to buy the Inn and its extremely run-down and derelict buildings. We knew nothing whatsoever about its history. An architect friend of ours, was heard to say, I think they must be mad! We probably were but it was a glorious madness, which I for one have never regretted and I think my husband was secretly rather pleased with the project, although it meant he had to keep on working for years to keep paying for the restoration!

Chapter 3

Katie Pilarcik – Owner of the Inn in 1998

Perhaps before I tell you what we had to do next, I should tell you about Katie Pilarcik, the owner of the Inn when we bought it.

Katate Pilarcik and Christine Stewart

holding one of Katie’s embroidered cushions.

Photograph by Russell Stewart, 1998.

Bob Morris, who lived locally, gave me the story. Realising that anything we did with the Inn was part of history I began to keep diaries right from the start and recorded my conversations with him in my Diary No. 1.

He told me that Stefan Pilarcik had come out to Australia from Yugoslavia and moved to Hartley Vale in the 1930s because his brother Roman lived at Hartley Vale. As soon as Steve gained citizenship he was sent to fight. After his return from the War, he bought the Inn on 10th September 1947.

Steve first married Elsie Finch who then ran the Inn as a guest house. She had grown up in Trangie where her parents ran the Royal Hotel and met Steve when her parents bought the Comet Inn just along the road at Hartley Vale.

Steve set up a eucalyptus still for making oil, as there was a ready sale for use against colds and flu – just mix a few drops with sugar for sore throats and rub it on chests for colds and flu.

Steve and Elsie had a serious car accident going onto the Great Western Highway from Hartley Vale Road. Although Elsie was not killed immediately, she was very disabled and died a couple of years later from the effects of the accident.

Description of Elsie by the artist Gifford Eardley. Written on one of his drawings of Collits’ Inn.

When Elsie died, Steve advertised for a wife in Croatia. Katie (Katate) lived in Croatia and had been married to a German soldier. They had a son Josip. When her husband was killed in the War after only four years of marriage, she answered Steve’s advertisement because she was almost destitute and had a couple of sisters in Australia. Without meeting him and after just exchanging photographs, she came out to Australia to marry him in 1965. It must have been very difficult as they spoke different dialects.

Katie worked hard helping him with his eucalyptus distilling business. After Steve’s death, the title deeds of the Inn were transferred to her on 8th July 1991.[1] She was then very lonely as she spoke little English and could not drive a car. However, her nephew David, and also Elsie Pilarcik’s granddaughter, Lorraine, and several other family members kept in touch with her. Bob told me that the condition of the Inn declined seriously over this time as she had no spare money for upkeep.

I later met Lorraine who told me her grandparents, Steve and Elsie, had run the Inn as a guest house. Steve and Elsie slept in the right-hand room of the old stables, and the girls in the left-hand room, as there were two doors to the stables then because one of the windows had been made into a door. Her uncle slept in the room which was then at the eastern end of the Inn’s back verandah. Guests used the other rooms. Elsie had two stoves in the kitchen, as a gas one had been installed beside the old wood stove. The kitchen at that stage was what we later made into the rear dining room. There were tables for guests right through the front rooms.

I had a hard time understanding Katie, but she did tell me that the soil there was excellent for growing vegetables. Later, when we were digging deep trenches into the ground to put in all the cables and pipes, we found that the soil was a pale-grey clay with a very thin layer of top soil only a few centimetres deep. I had never seen soil like it. There was no humus in it at all, so it is strange that it was so successful for vegetables. I can only think that it was vastly different further down the slope towards the south where they had established a poultry yard and a vegetable garden. All that was left of that was a tangle of wire suggesting the remains of fences and a rustic wooden gate to what we assumed had been the poultry yard.

Gate to the old poultry yard.

Photograph Christine Stewart 1998.

Katie also told me that they had once tried to smoke a pig as they used to do in Croatia. They did it in the old shed behind the Inn but, It no good, big stink . . . good in Europe . . . too much hot here, from which I gathered that the carcass had gone bad.

She showed me the tank that they used for distilling eucalyptus oil – a large, high, round, rusty metal tank on legs with a narrow spout at the bottom – but she told me it was hard work and a very hard life. I imagine the returns would have been very low for all the work that would be required to obtain oil from eucalyptus leaves, but I was told that Steve also did other jobs in the district.

Katie’s kitchen was extremely derelict as the floor was undulating dirt, covered by broken screed, some old, cracked lino and an old carpet. It was a lean-to at the back of the Inn that had once been a shed for storing vehicles beside the house. I am not sure why she used this area and not the area with two stoves in what is now the rear dining room. The Inn was very, very basic with no toilets inside and only one very primitive bathroom which was an added-on, very shoddy room on the back verandah.

The only bathroom at Collits’ Inn.

Photograph Christine Stewart 1998.

However, fortunately it did not appear to have had much done to it, apart from the fibro wall enclosing the western side. Katie told us that that was already there when she arrived in 1965.

After Steve died, Katie was even more destitute. Elgas, the local gas company, told us they had not delivered any gas for six months, meaning Katie had had no hot water for all that time.

As there had obviously been a few thefts and some vandalism, we felt it was important that we have caretakers at the Inn, but of course it wasn’t a very appealing place to live being so run down with only two power points in the whole place, no inside toilet and just a gas heater in the very basic bathroom.

However, we found a young couple, Paul and Karen Williamson, who were saving up to buy their own property, were expecting a baby and were happy to live there rent-free and to do a few odd jobs such as cleaning gutters and mowing lawns. He worked with Steve Anderson the local surveyor. Both he and Karen had grown up in the city but said they loved the country life and planned to build a house at Hartley Vale. They wanted somewhere to keep horses and to help them save towards a place of their own.

Our first caretakers, Karen and Paul Williamson, at Collits’ Inn.

Photograph Christine Stewart early 1999.

They stayed there all that year, but it was too basic for them when their baby arrived, so in late-January 1999, we looked for a new tenant. Sue-Maree Boyd came to us to say she would like to live in the Inn with her two sons and daughter who were all still at school. We met her and felt this would be ideal as she was so interested in the place, in gardening, pruning fruit trees, and keeping horses and poultry – and she even suggested resurrecting the vegetable garden but that didn’t happen! She said she worked three days a week as a hairdresser in Blackheath. Her two horses were already there with Paul and Karen, so she said she would like to move in gradually and be there by 15th February. We told her she could work