Stop Press – Sherbrooke – is now a One Place Study – to find out more – CLICK
Up and Down Bulli Mountain – Discovering the Lost Village of Sherbrooke Bulli Black Diamond Heritage Centre part of the NSW Heritage Festival 2014 on April 13 1- 4pm and May 4 2014 : 11am -4pm
Download Up and Down Bulli Mountain Sherbrooke Exhibition Notes
Download Sherbrooke Descendants Questionnaire & email back to SherbrookeSisters@gmail.com
Sherbrooke is sometimes spoken of – but many people don’t know of its existence at all. It was a village up on Bulli Mountain, and was predictably known as Bulli Mountain. At first it was proposed by John Loveday to be changed to Beaconsfield (refer Illawarra Mercury 24/4/1883 & 8/5/1883), and instead was changed to Sherbrooke, after Lord Sherbrooke. The name change was done because of confusion with all the other “Bulli’s”. Sometimes it was also called Ferndale too.
Bulli Mountain had some settlement on it in the 1850′s (Map 1 – Map 2) – see an 1872 list for residents. And Sherbrooke, itself existed until around 1900, when the Water Board resumed all the farms for the Cataract Dam’s catchment – they did have a ranger there in1907. But back in 1888, farms at Sherbrooke were considered Splendid Illawarra Property, and none could have imagined what lay ahead.
It seems that Sherbrooke may have started out with as many as 16 families on Bulli Mountain, and then it grew by the time the village was resumed to as many as
50 familiesthat had lived there. The families included Allen, Blinkco‘s, Brown’s, Campbell’s, Dumbrell’s, Haberly’s, Keen’s, King, Knights, Loveday’s, Martin’s, Parsons, Reeve’s, Roberts, Spinks-Jones, Wales. There are still some descendants of the Sherbrooke Village families around the Illawarra – many of their ancestors had moved down to Bulli and Woonona, setting up farms there. The Jones set up on the Bulli Pass, and a treasured collection of Jones-Spinks family photo’s from the Sherbrooke days was passed down in their family – which has inspired the “Sherbrooke Sisters” to create this site …
The Spinks-Jones inter-married or been connected into other early Illawarra families like the Brookers after whom Broker’s Nose was named, & the Chilby’s (Childerley’s); as well as the Smithers, and so may be all inter-connected (see map), including into the Webb-Jones of Thirroul.
There was a sad story written 80 years ago, in the Grenfell Record & Lachlan District Advertiser, 12.10.1933, about forgottten lost villages like Sherbrooke.
To find out more of the Sherbrooke story click HERE
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