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Good news today about the damaged De Salis family cemetery at Tharwa...

A little background first... the De Salis family cemetery or Cuppacumbalong cemetery is a 19th century raised mound cemetery of a unique design. It is located at the junction of the Gudgenby and Murrumbidgee Rivers near Tharwa Village and was once the favourite spot to sit and ponder of Rudolph De Salis. It was here the family decided to bury him when he passed on but the ground was of a type that made it very difficult to dig a grave of any depth. Apparently it took nearly two days.

Add to this the whims of two flooding rivers and three of the early burials at the location were simply washed away. Not to be deterred Rudolph's mother Charlotte thought of a unique way of preventing washouts and making the digging of graves an easier task.

In 1878 stones was carted from nearby Mount Tennent by horse and cart to build an oval retaining wall that was then backfilled with earth to raise the cemetery well above the flood line. This served the purpose well and the cemetery became the resting place of many who worked and lived on the Cuppacumbalong Holdings.

The cemetery is the oldest rural cemetery in the ACT and being a short walk from the new Bbq area located underneath the recently refurbished Tharwa Bridge is readily accessible to the public. It also has informative signage along the walk past Cuppacumbalong Homestead and at the cemetery.

Unfortunately in the Canberra floods of 2010 two sections of wall collapsed after succumbing to the backlog of water being retained within the mound. Sections of the wall simply fell into a jumbled pile of fieldstone. The floods were a major infrastructure setback for TAMS and the cemetery was added to a very long list of repairs within the Territory.



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I stopped today to take a few pictures of the 'scar' on Mount Tennent ( Or Mount Tennant if your thinking about the bushranger) I had no idea what caused it but did know of two Canberrans who have climbed up to inspect it. Tim the Yowie Man and John Evans of the Canberra Bushwalkers Club.

I am always recommending John's blog as probably the most comprehensive collection of first hand information on bushwalking locations and historical spots etc. available. Just generally great information.

As I said I have no idea what caused the scar so its best to get it from someone who has been up there.

From Johnny Boys Walkabout blog - 1 May 2012 Scar on Mt Tennent



where he took a few short videos at different stages of the descent. John's YouTube channel...

All the articles collected in this post were spawned by a chance reading of an old Gininderra Church meeting report from 1880, and a few idle hours. At the end of that reported church meeting the following, almost casual mention, intrigued me:

"The attention of the hearers was frequently diverted from the business of the evening, by the jabbering antics of one of those (unfortunately becoming too common) Australian gorillas, which remained outside the building endeavouring to create amusement or annoyance by its senseless tricks."


Australian gorillas really? Around Canberra?


I started 'Troving' around our region to try and find out how 'common' these Australian gorillas really were but the term didn't seem very common around here at all. There are quite a few reports in other areas of NSW but I was interested in around Canberra.

Now I took a huge leap here... I did find the next local article from 6 years later  that describes an animal perhaps similar to a gorilla, by way of a  large "hairy human form". "Arms bent forward and nearly touching the ground" (Later articles return to describing an ape or gorilla).

This animal was apparently running around the back of Bredbo NSW, just south of Canberra in the 1880's so I thought this report could describe one...





I'll end this post with something I think is appropriate. An Aboriginal friend and artist from the South Coast (Mogo) has told me hairy man stories before from the region. He also mentioned that they were brought up as children to fear them so I found the following report from 1935 interesting. Apart from the racist language in our national papers of the era the report is suggesting there may be "a kind of gorilla" around Nowra and Twofold Bay...




The search engine at the National Library can be a lot of fun if you delve in for an hour or so. I am sure I could find more 'gorilla/ape/man like' mentions if I punched in the appropriate keywords but I got the feeling that they took an Australian ape very seriously at times in the day. Even if they struggled locally with what to call it.

I found the Yass Aboriginals hunting experience quite fascinating and its just a foot note. The Aboriginal name out of all those reported though seems most appropriate for the mysterious animal. 'Douligah'. It would of course be a phonetic spelling.

Drop me an email if you have seen an Australian gorilla around the place.

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Its only lucky I watched 10 seconds past the sight of me hanging around setting the camera. I usually delete them when I identify them.


It’s nice to have friends with the technical know-how to rip a raw file video down to its bare pixels and the best guess is this is a human being wearing what appears to be a stocking on his beanie covered head. It is also possible that he wore glasses…

I think the disturbing thing was the closeness of this individual to me without my knowledge. The ground covering is so noisy with bark, twigs and leaf litter that he would have had to be a ninja to come up to me so I can only assume he had gone to ground there before I arrived. Also when I reviewed this 8 day old video it dawned on me I was a long way from any assistance.

People ask me what map I use to get around the ACT's bush so I thought I would do a review of my favourite, the Rooftop's ACT South Activities map. Before this map I only had access to the traditional contour map.

The Rooftop's map is a 1:50 000 scale map with 20 m contours. It covers the Namadgi National Park, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, Googong Foreshores. Small parts of Kosciuszco & Brindabella National Parks & adjoining areas in NSW.

The map also shows southern Canberra and Queanbeyan although the information is rudimentary. It does however show the access routes out of the city and the surrounding parks.

Please excuse the quality of the photographs but they are taken of my old, worn and stained map that I find invaluable and although showing a little neglect still serves its purpose. Anyway... it will give you a look at the intricacies of the information.

The map was constructed by extensive GPS fieldwork carried out in 2010. The comment from the Namadgi Visitors Centre that provide the map here in the ACT was that "A man literally strapped a GPS to his head and walked every trail in the ACT". Obviously it was done in vehicles where possible.

As an example the following photo showing the walking track up to Bushfold Flats starting at the visitors centre. It gives an example of the distance marking along the walks and the sort of additional information supplied about a specific area...

All up its the best map of the parks I have come across. What I have shown here is a minuscule example of what is a very comprehensive resource covering our entire region. Currently it seems only available at the Namadgi National Park visitors centre and from memory it cost about 12 dollars.


Two long distance tracks traverse part of this map. The Bicentenial National Trail is over 5330 km in length and goes from Healsville in Victoria to Cooktown in Queensland. The Australian Alps walking track is about 650 km in length and goes from Walhalla Victoria to the Namadgi Visitors Centre.

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The following video is from the YouTube channel jtneill. It's a mad adventure and a race against darkness up the slopes of Mount Tennent to the snow.

James seems to have strapped a video camera to his body and ran up the Mountain starting at 4.20 pm.

The video shows a vivid side to the mountain, wildlife, scenery and a lovely ending that I thought was well worth a little extra exposure...


"There was snow on Mt Tennent, so I did a late afternoon run to suck in Mother Nature's winter rapture. Water, rivulets, sweat, rocks, trees, kangaroos, drink, wombat, dusk, sky, silence, ice, snow, descent, home, share, memories, edit, upload, reflect." James T Neill - Wilderdom.


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He photographed a tiny jumping spider that was eventually shown to be a brand new species. It's called the Peacock Spider and has been appropriately named after its discoverer 'Maratus harrisi'. The Sydney Morning Herald has the full story...

As for my efforts with the trailcam during March and April I've put together a compilation of up to ten-second videos of Namdgi wildlife collected in two areas I've been in. I've decided to move to a different area for the winter round and am moving far south. I plan to set out cameras in the coming days...

The clips here are placed in the order they where collected and are all date and time stamped...


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7th Nov., 1912.Sir,--In your issue of the 6th there is a letter giving the origin of the name Canberra. Will you allow me to give the evidence furnished by the Baptisms Register of the parish as to the spelling of the name ?
Will you allow me to give the evidence furnished by the Baptisms Register of the parish as to the spelling of the name ? The Register begins with the year 1845, and the name is invariably spelt "Canbury." In October, 1855 " Canberry " appears for the first time, and " Canberra " for the first time in March, 1857. The two spellings continue till September 1861, when " Canberry" is used for the last time. After that date it is always "Canberra."
Yours, etc,A. H. CHAMPION,Canberra Rectory,6th Nov., 1912.
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