The Hazeldene property in the centre of Berwick has a rich history, with a number of prominent owners, as NEIL LUCAS discovers in his latest look at the significance of place and street names in the region.
Hazeldene Court, Berwick
The property Hazeldene occupied the triangle of land bounded by Lyall Road, Harkaway Road and Gardiner Street (then known as “The Green Lane”). History records however that the name Hazeldene was only a more recent name.
The wife of the owner of the first house on the property was Maria Wilson (nee Pritchard) from the Nowra district in New South Wales.
The property was then known as Numba and it is very likely that Maria chose this name. There is a farming area to the east of Nowra known as Numbaa (note extra ‘a’) and Maria may have been brought up on a farm in that district which is part of the Shoalhaven Region.
Interestingly Numbaa fronts the large estuary of the Shoalhaven River. Numba was reputedly an aboriginal word meaning “blackfish”. Another use of the name Numba was the ketch of that name built in the Shoalhaven in 1854. The 34 ton ketch carried cargo along the Australian eastern seaboard. It was lost when travelling from Port Stephens to Newcastle in January 1878.
When George Wilson married Maria Pritchard, George’s father William Jnr established a house for the married couple on the Numba property. He often stated that he could “keep an eye on them” from up on the hill where he lived at Wilson House (located somewhere in the vicinity of the large Morton Bay Fig tree in the park fronting Shute Avenue).
George Pritchard Wilson, their son, was born at Numba in 1918.
When the Wilsons sold the property the new owner re-named it Hazeldene.
The new owner was most likely William Gamble who share-farmed a dairying property with Australia’s first Olympian Edwin Flack.
This farm known as Burnbank was located between Beaumont and Buchanan Roads.
In the 1930s prior to the Berwick Show, the Rae family from Narre Warren North would drive their show cattle to this property on the afternoon before Berwick show day and leave them in the paddock to freshen up.
A later owner was David Wood who became well known as an Olympian, and member of the first Australian Olympic Equestrian team which competed most successfully at the Melbourne Olympics.
Because of quarantine restrictions the equestrian events were actually held in Sweden. The Australian team finished in fourth place in the eventing discipline.
Some years later the name Hazeldene was allocated to the street created when the property was subdivided.
Interestingly, the original house remained on a large block with an entrance off Lyall Road and was transformed into a restaurant known as Willowdene which operated in the 1970s and 80s.
Local residents enjoyed some fine dining there for a number of years. This is the site of the Hark development in 2018-19.
