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p. 140.
“.....At the pretty town of Woollongong [Wollongong] is the port of the district, and an artificial harbour has been cut in the rock. A neat church has been erected at ‘Dunlop Vale,’ but is, as some think, disfigured by a cross, which is stuck over the entrance, and certainly looks rather forlorn. Some of the settlers are much scandalised by its presence as if it were a crucifix, and, thinking it savours of Popery, refuse to subscribe to the building. A wooden church is in progress at Kiama, twenty-five miles south of Woollongong, and is also adorned, or disfigured, as people may think, by the same emblem. This is the last church on the coast south of Sydney.”
pp. 141-142.
“At Kiama is a cavern [the Blow Hole] running horizontally into the cliffs on the sea-side, and open to the sea. At right angles to it, and communicating with it from above, is a perpendicular shaft, or opening, like a huge well. Hence, during heavy gales of wind, the waves dash into the cavern, and a gigantic fountain spouts through the opening, or ‘blow-hole,’ to the height of sixty feet. Kiama is rather famous in colonial annals for the immense prices obtained by the Government for plots of land in the town that ought to have sprung up there. This embryo town consists of a few scattered cottages; and land, that once fetched 400l. an acre, might now be had for an old song. When the Government could sell no more land there at a high price, it offered to sell at a tenth of what had been its highest reserved bid, and a fiftieth part of what it had once sold at, thus depreciating the value of all former purchases; just as cheap Jack in the fair, when he sold a knife for a shilling, immediately announces that he has another just as good, if not much better, which he will sell for one penny, and so raises a laugh against his dupe.*
“* A committee of the Legislative Council made the following statement : - ‘The localities on which the upset price has been raised and subsequently reduced between the years 1833 and 1844 comprehend nearly the whole of the colony. As remarkable instances your committee select the localities of Alexandria, Old South Head Road, where the upset price was 10l. in 1839, and 100l. in 1840, and 5l. to 10l. per acre in 1844; St. Leonard’s, 100l. in 1840, 150l. in 1842, and 50l. in 1844; Kiama, 8l., 50l., and 80l. in 1842, and the last were sold in 1843 at 8l. per acre.’ The Governor made the following reply : - ‘Of the three places mentioned (Alexandria and the Old South Head Road), two are in the neighbourhood of Sydney ! the third, Kiama, is a place at which during the height of the land mania, the most absurd prices were given for land. The course pursued by the Government in respect to the upset price of these lands, all of which were either town, suburban, or special allotments, was precisely that which any private proprietor would have followed, who had lands which he desired to sell. The upset price (or what an ordinary auctioneer would call the reserved price) was a little below what it was supposed the land would sell for.’ I may remark that ‘the reserved price’ is announced before the sale.”
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