The twin towns of Milton Ulladulla have some usual characteristics and the reasons why go back more than 175 years. Two rich and influential brothers, David and James Warden and their intense hatred for each other, drove a series of events and decisions that shaped many things about Milton and Ulladulla – how Milton came to be, where the roads were built, where schools and post offices are located, and which town got the all-important courthouse, a place of local political and legal power.

The puzzle of these towns’ peculiar development, and this bitter and long-lasting feud between the two Warden brothers aren’t just linked; the feud underlies the way Milton and Ulladulla residents still interact today. Close, but different; friendly but still rivals, one town described to me as the ‘working class’ town, and the other as being for the old locals and well-heeled newcomers. In fact, one long-time resident of Lake Tabourie said to me, “oh Ulladulla is all right as long as you spell it correctly > M-I-L-T-O-N.”

So why are there TWO historic towns that date from the mid-19^th century but are only 7km apart? Most country towns are a day’s horse ride apart (ignoring beach-side towns and villages like Mollymook, as they didn’t exist during the 19^th century).

Sure, there are several closely connected twin towns in NSW, such as Albury-Wodonga and Tuncurry-Forster. But they all have a significant geographical reason for that ‘twinness’, like a wide and hard-to-cross river, which meant that were only connected many years later by a bridge.

Not only are the two towns very close together, but they have two different postcodes. Milton’s postcode of 2538 (the brown area) covers a very small population and is almost completely surrounded by Ulladulla’s postcode of 2539 (in blue). Why would that have happened?

And why does the main road south from Nowra, that’s now the Princes Highway, wind up a very steep hill into a little town like Milton, when Ulladulla was the harbour and port? During the 19^th century, most communication, supply and farm export went via coastal steamer to Sydney or Wollongong so it would have made much more sense if the road had gone an easier way there. Stony Hill on Milton’s north is so steep that many a fully-laden horse and cart couldn’t get up it. And several also came to grief trying to get down it.

Map of Milton Monzonite

The Milton Ulladulla district also has an unusual geology and soils. Ulladulla is built on low fertility sandstone but the Milton ridge and an area of about 10km around it, mostly to the south-west, has a very heavy fertile soil derived from volcanic Milton monzonite. It’s on this rich soil that our local dairy farms still thrive today. A local dairy farmer said to me a couple of years ago that he reckoned that the cows that grazed on Milton monzonite soil grew about a foot taller than his others.

The Warden brothers, David and James, and their feud have been known about by locals for generations.

“Oh yes”, said our late local history expert Joanne Ewin, “it was very bitter and long-lasting, and everyone knew that if you were received at Airlie House by David Warden, you were not at Boolgatta House, by his brother James Warden. And vice versa”

Let’s go on a journey back to mid 19^th century Milton Ulladulla to find out why these things happened, and how the Warden feud was involved.

DAVID WARDEN

David Warden, was the older brother and the first to arrive in Ulladulla.

He was born in 1810 in Kirriemuir near Dundee, Scotland. He migrated to Australia in the late 1830s and by 1840 he was in Ulladulla, building boats on the harbour foreshore with his business partner Robert Gee and taking advantage of the red cedar that was being exported through Ulladulla:

Joseph Townsend, who spent some years in Ulladulla in the 1840s wrote:

“I doubt if the Sydney ship-builders always procure the best timber that the Colony affords; and I think that, in this respect, they might take lessons at Ulladulla, from Messrs Warden and Gee. The panelling in the cabins of the vessels built at Ulladulla was of cedar, a wood nearly equal to mahogany”

Warden built dozens of brigantines and schooners for two decades at Ulladulla, using the local cedar and hardwood timbers from the surrounding forests.

And his ship building must have done well, as by 1841 he’d bought several parcels of land around Ulladulla Harbour. In 1844 David was joined by James, his younger brother of 10 years and by 1846 he had dissolved his partnership with Gee.

By 1849, David Warden was already a wealthy man, especially in local terms, and he was able to buy up the deceased estate of Alexander McLeay, outlined in white on this map. It was a whopping 2,560 acres to the west of current day Milton, in the area we now call Croobyar. (Incidentally the slightly odd sounding name of Croobyar seems to be a contraction of its original spelling of Cooroobya, itself an attempt to transliterate a local Aboriginal word into English). Not only did David Warden buy the land, but he also bought 709 head of cattle and horses to stock it.

Over the following two decades until his death in 1885, David Warden increased his land holding to an enormous 5000 acres – that’s all the white stars on this map.

It might seem a little odd that a boatbuilder with no farming experience would do this, but David Warden was not going to be a farmer himself. A story in the Sydney Mail written later, in 1881 reveals that:

“On purchasing Croobyar from the executors of the late Alexander Macleay, Colonial Secretary at that time, Mr. Warden let out the greater portion of his property on clearing leases, and from then up to the present a system of tenant farming has been encouraged.

Beyond keeping a few head of dairy cattle, Mr. David Warden does little farming. The estate has been subdivided for the convenience of the tenants. So successful has this system become, that I was informed that some of Mr. Warden’s tenants had laid by sufficient capital to take up good-sized areas in the neighbourhood of the Clyde River, and at the same time are retaining the leasehold of the farms where they have resided for so many years.”

In 1852 David Warden also acquired the licence for the Ulladulla Post Office. And likewise – that didn’t mean he sat behind the desk stamping letters – he employed someone to do the work.

By 1856 he had met Grace Buchan, a widow with 5 children. Their first son Alick was born that same year and then they married the next year in 1857. Grace went on to have another 3 sons, Charles in 1857, Winter in 1859 and Arthur in 1861 but she died in 1865.

With David Warden’s wealth came local power and influence.

He became a JP and then, in July 1857 he had that local power further recognised when he was appointed as one of Ulladulla’s first local magistrates, sharing that duty with William Hood Wason. As there was no courthouse at the time, the Court was held in David Warden’s store and post office in Ulladulla.

And when Ulladulla became incorporated as a separate municipality in 1874, he naturally became the first Mayor too.

In 1868, David Warden remarried, to Annie McLaren, and also built the beautiful double-gabled Airlie House on his Mt Airlie estate, employing James Poole, the gifted stonemason and builder who had built the stone pier on Ulladulla Harbour. Airlie House is in the distance in the 1870s painting of the Warden estate by well-known colonial artist, Samuel Elyard (image above) and can still be seen to the right when you drive out of Milton and along the northern end of Woodstock Road.

Between 1869 and 1874, David had another four children with his second wife Annie: Alfred, Harry, Emily and Robert.

And now to James, David’s younger brother.

JAMES WARDEN

Born in Kirriemuir in Scotland in 1820, James appears in Australia around 1844. He’d learned boat building while in Scotland so it was a natural fit for him to start working with his older brother in Ulladulla.

In 1855 he bought land to the north of Milton. It was probably cheap at the time as much of it was low-lying, swampy, and covered with thickets of Casuarina. The soil was fertile but far too wet for farming. However, James had both the money and the smarts to see what to do. Over several years he installed a vast network of seven miles (about 11 km) of drains which dried out the land and created 800 arable acres. He then grew successive crops of maize and oats to consolidate the surface. This is the area known locally as Boolgatta Flat which is the long straight stretch before you drive up the Yatte Yattah hill.

In 1863 James married Sarah Ann Garrad, daughter of another local landowner and they had four children, Robert (who became governor of the NSW Savings Bank), Adam (Mayor of Ulladulla in the 1920s), Edna and Norman.

By the mid 1860s, James had become an influential local landowner, a JP and also a Magistrate. He was instrumental in establishing the first Milton Wesleyan Church and, by 1871 was Shoalhaven’s elected representative in the NSW Parliament. He had two terms, until 1877, and then later became Mayor of Ulladulla in 1880 and again in 1886.

Not to be outdone by his older brother, he used the same master stonemason and builder, James Poole, for his self-designed two storey Boolgatta House – seen here in a newspaper photo in 1908. The very elegant Boolgatta House is a few hundred metres off the Princes Highway on the eastern side, on Boolgatta Flat, north of Milton.

James Warden lived on at Boolgatta until his death in 1904.

What started the feud?

The short answer is, we don’t know for sure but one can assume that, like all family sagas, there’s probably money, power or possibly even a woman at the bottom of it. There is some local scuttlebutt that they were both in love with the same woman but I suspect it was more likely to be about money, given that they’d been in business together.

There’s some circumstantial evidence that this estrangement was there by the late 1850s and, as each built his own sphere of influence and power, the clashes between their opposing factions became increasingly vicious and vitriolic.

However, we do have one exceptional piece of direct evidence from 1877. It’s a letter written by James Warden to his neighbour Daniel Pearman, a ticket-of-leave man, who had a farm on Croobyar Creek. Pearman married Nancy Hamon, and a photocopy of the letter came to us through Hamon family connections.

As it’s rather difficult to decipher, here’s the transcription. It’s dated July 30^th, 1877.

Mr Daniel Pearman,

Dear Sir,

In reference to your application for payment for one half of the boundary fence at the big Swamp, which you say has not been paid to you, although applied for at the time the fence was erected from David Warden, I have to inform you that I was not aware but what you had been paid for the fencing until some time ago, for I was then living at Croobyar & did not know what was going on in David Warden’s name.

I did continue to do so up to the year 1860, paying all accounts and receiving all the money which the farm had made, & had a clear right to pay your claim. Also you, I think, told me that you had applied to David Warden lately for payment of your claim when he told you that the farm was mine & not his. The reply to this I have only to say. If the farm belonged to me, then let him disgorge some £200 which he has pocketed of the earnings of the farm, & I will have great pleasure in satisfying your claim out of that amount.

I am not surprised at David Warden’s treatment to you in this matter – wherefore I had experience he so cruelly robbed me in the way he has done. Had I met a highwayman and (been) deprived of all I possessed, I could look upon that highwayman with some degree of honour, compared to the cold betrayal of a brother’s confidence.

I am yours truly

J Warden

This certainly leaves us in no doubt of James’s feelings about his estranged brother!

However this story would not be complete without the introduction of another local character  – Roger Seccombe.

Eyrie Bowrie, built by Roger Seccombe in Milton

Seccombe arrived in Australia in 1844 and was in Milton by 1859. He built the beautiful Eyrie Bowrie House on the eastern side of Milton. You can drive out to the new Eyrie Bowrie housing estate and see the original house about 100m away on the left-hand side of the road. We’re very lucky that it’s been beautifully restored (since the photograph above).

Seccombe made money from dairying and creating canned condensed milk. His sister Charlotte also came to Milton and married Edward Tydeman. From 1857 the Tydemans owned the Australian Hotel on Croobyar Creek on the north side of Milton, and then later built the first Star Hotel in Milton.

Seccombe became very close friends with James Warden – they often enjoyed a game of cards together at the Tydeman’s hotel and worked together on local committees, such as organising horse races on Racecourse Beach. By 1859, Seccombe was also a JP and a Magistrate.

The other thing that is important about the two Wardens and Seccombe is money lending. There were no banks in Milton or Ulladulla until the early 1870s. So, what do you do if you need to expand your business, buy more land for your farm or pay for a daughter’s wedding? You go to the richest men in the district and ask for a loan. These loans were made by promissory note which could be used like cash in the local community. Of course, you needed to provide collateral to the lender, so you mortgaged your land or put up your business assets.

By the late 1850s, each brother had established his power base in the County of St Vincent, as the district was officially known.

David Warden is ensconced in Croobyar and Ulladulla (then known as Boat Harbour, as Ulladulla referred to the whole district). That’s a huge area of land west and south-west of current day Milton, and also around Ulladulla Harbour. David Warden is the local Justice of the Peace, the local magistrate, the post office, and many people’s mortgage holder, or their landlord. And it is power that he likes to wield.

But David Warden is also a generous landlord. He builds his tenants schools and churches, he lets them use his huge barn on the Croobyar Estate for dances and entertainments, and he lends them money for their needs. Many of his tenants did so well that they later bought their own farms. But he’s clearly NOT a man to be crossed.

To the north and east of The Settlement (which later became Milton) we have an opposing power bloc of James Warden and his friend Roger Seccombe, plus James’s in-laws, the Garrads. They don’t like David Warden’s monopoly of local power and see his interests as directly opposing their own. They want the convenience of a town and services that are near to them, not way out west at Croobyar, or 4 miles south at Ulladulla.

James Warden and Roger Seccombe are perhaps Milton’s ‘heros’ but they’re no saints either. We have a newspaper story from the Sydney Morning Herald in 1887 of James suing Alexander Boag, the editor of the Ulladulla and Milton Times, for calling him a ‘Shylock’, so maybe he was not always a kind or forgiving money-lender. Bizarrely Seccombe eventually leaves the district and ends up a bigamist. James also seems to have been a pretty lazy and ineffectual member of Parliament – in 6 years he only spoke on a handful of bills.

David Warden and his supporters wanted to keep Ulladulla as the main centre, with a secondary settlement west of present-day Milton in the Croobyar area.

James Warden, Roger Seccombe and their supporters saw Ulladulla as a dirty and low-class port, especially with Millard’s smelly tannery, there since 1854, and they wanted shops, services and churches in The Settlement, which was closer to where they lived.

So how did this deep and very bitter feud between the two Wardens affected many aspects of the development of Milton and Ulladulla through the late 1800s? There’s the upsetting land speculation, the great post office punch up, the schools stoush, the road rumble and the great courthouse controversy. As most of these were happening simultaneously, it’s easier to examine them by subject rather than chronologically.

EXHIBIT ONE – SPECULATION, SPIVS and UPSTARTS

Although both Warden brothers owned large tracts of land, they always wanted more, especially if they knew the other one wanted it too.

In 1858, there was no town of Milton. There was the tiny Church of England, a few scattered houses and some small businesses serving the local farms, like a saddler and blacksmith. This locality was known as ‘The Settlement’, to distinguish it from ‘Boat Harbour’, now called Ulladulla.

Joseph Whatman owned a large parcel of land from Croobyar Ck up Stony Hill and along the ridgeline, called Myrtle Forest Farm. His house was just near the giant fig in Mick Ryan Park. In 1857 Whatman donated a small parcel of his land for a new church – the original part of the Church of St Peter and St Paul dates from this time. (In the centre of the photo). But he’d also needed some cash and he had borrowed money from…David Warden.

Meanwhile John Booth, who had for a couple of years been operating an inn and store called the Traveller’s Home on the main southern road just west of Milton, had realised that The Settlement up on the ridge could be the new go-ahead place and, if he was quick, there was money to be made. He began to talk to Whatman about buying some of his land. However, there was a problem, as Whatman had mortgaged it to David Warden in late 1857 and had fallen behind in his repayments. Note that Booth was also related by marriage to James Warden (Booth’s sister Jane was married to Sarah Warden’s brother, Robert Garrad)

In May 1858, Constable Bernard Brown from Nowra came south to serve a mortgage execution on Whatman.

Brown’s diary reads:

May 15 1858: Went down to Boat Harbour with Whatman. Mr Warden not inclined to help him out of difficulties. Returned to see Mr Seccombe who, I think, seems inclined to come to some arrangements.

Yes, Roger Seccombe lent money to Whatman to pay off David Warden.

Brown’s notes from the next day continue at a local land auction:

May 26: Yadborough’s 30 acres was purchased by Mr D. Warden but very determinably opposed by James Warden

Milton Town Plan, 1860

After Seccombe relieved Whatman of his debt to David Warden, Whatman immediately sold 80 acres to Booth, who had already had it surveyed. He then auctioned it off as separate town allotments in early 1860. And his speculation paid off – people were prepared to pay much higher prices than they did for land allotments in Ulladulla. Booth made a quick fortune.

Possibly David Warden had wind of Booth’s scheme and that was why he didn’t want to extend Whatman’s mortgage. He could probably see that The Settlement was already growing and he wanted to nip that in the bud, as it was contrary to his interests. Interestingly Booth left Milton under a cloud in 1861 and moved to Sydney.

He was certainly very angry at how this very profitable land speculation had been pulled off and what he saw as the lies that had been told by those making the profits, as we can see in this letter to the Illawarra Mercury on 18 January 1860, signed “Fair Play” but obviously David Warden, or one if his clique.

EXHIBIT TWO – THE ROAD RUMBLE

One way to control where the population is, and also where it wants to be, is to control where roads are built.

In the 1850s, the main south road came down from Yatte Yattah and then swung west to cross Croobyar Ck at a natural ford. From there it followed the flatter land west of the Milton ridgeline through Croobyar, and then headed west and then south-west to Ulladulla.

The road south past Milton, 1850s

David Warden thought this an obvious and sensible route as it conveniently joined up his Croobyar estate with Ulladulla and ignored the growing population at the upstart village of The Settlement. But of course, for the farmers north and east of The Settlement, this would just not do at all.  

After agitation from the farmers, in 1857 the Surveyor General sent a surveyor to plan a new Parish Road up Stony Hill and into The Settlement, which included building a bridge across the creek. The road would then continue along the ridgeline to Ulladulla. Construction followed in 1859, although not without considerable resistance from magistrate David Warden, whose unreasonable demands and slow payment authorisations led road builder McGee to complain bitterly to the NSW government.

However, in true Warden style, that was not the end of the matter. After the incorporation of Ulladulla Council in 1874, a couple of years later the Council was confronted with two opposing petitions.

One petition, supported by David Warden and fellow Aldermen Henry and George Millard, and also Ewin, wanted to reinstate a way of getting from Croobyar to Ulladulla direct, avoiding Milton. This road went along Croobyar Rd and Hession’s Rd (roughly along the alignment we now call Windward Way), to join the highway further south. At first there was support from Seccombe, Garrad and friends for this idea but, a year later, they were completely against it. Instead, they presented an opposing petition to Council for a road from Croobyar that came directly into Milton.

They contended that the road that cut out Milton would only be in David Warden’s interests, not for anybody else, and that travellers would be much better off coming into Milton first, and then following the road south to Ulladulla. Not surprisingly, Seccombe couldn’t get any of the Croobyar tenants to support that petition, reportedly saying afterwards:

‘“They are afraid of the old man, you know” – which the paper explained meant that ‘they had not public spirit enough to do anything but the will of their landlord.’

The argy bargy about which road to support continued in Council, with the two cliques putting and passing, and then rescinding motions.

In 1878 Alderman James Warden stood up in Council and for over an hour angrily shouted down the idea of a road that would allow people from Croobyar to continue in a shorter, direct line to Ulladulla. He couldn’t possibly allow this proposed road to cut through the middle of this particular poor farmer’s property. Over which he had a mortgage, of course.

Proposed Milton-Ulladulla Bypass

The long-term and annoying consequence of these arguments is, as we all know, that David Warden and his Croobyar tenants lost, and there is no alternative north-south road to Ulladulla other than the road, now the Princes Highway, that passes through Milton and which is often clogged with traffic. Ironically, if our much talked about bypass is EVER built, it will skirt to the west of Milton exactly as David Warden wanted.

EXHIBIT THREE – THE POST OFFICE PUNCH-UP

You may remember that David Warden had held the post office concession in Ulladulla since 1852. At that time the mail came by overland route from Nowra, which took about 8 hours, down the main south road west of Milton and then on to Ulladulla. Everyone had to go to the Ulladulla post office to post or collect their mail and pick up their newspapers, a return trip of about 9 miles from The Settlement.

IMAGE – letter to the editor Illawarra Mercury September 1858

Of course, by the late 1850s, the farmers and shopkeepers of The Settlement are not at all happy with this arrangement and want a local mail point. They begin a letter writing campaign, both to the Post Master General and the various southern newspapers, demanding a better service. This letter suggests that they could drop off and pick up their letters at Kendall’s farm just north of The Settlement instead, saving them a round trip of many miles.

Of course, David Warden is opposed to any change in the post office arrangements, countering that the Ulladulla Post Office services everyone perfectly well and adding that the mail will soon come by steamer direct to Ulladulla anyway, as a new stone pier has been built in the harbour.

The letter writing and arguments went on for months. We can only imagine what the Post Master General must have thought about the avalanche of correspondence he received on the matter, from such a tiny little tin-pot backwater as Ulladulla.

In 1859, with the imminent land sale at soon-to-be Milton, the campaign for a local post office was in full swing. They needed their mail direct, the Miltonians argued. David Warden coutered, accusing Miltonians of not sending or receiving any mail as most of them were illiterate. That really raised the stakes, with people in The Settlement writing to just about every paper in NSW with the statistics of how many papers were delivered to The Settlement and how many letters were sent and received.

By this time the Post Master General was heartily sick of it all and proposed a solution – BOTH Milton and Ulladulla would have a post office, even though they were only 4 miles apart. The first post marked letters had The Settlement stamped on them but that was soon changed to Milton.

In mid-December 1859, David Warden made his last-ditch attempt to stop the Milton Post Office. As the Kiama Examiner reported – the Ulladulla Bench of magistrates met to determine the most suitable place for the new post office. A deputation requested it be in Mr Knight’s residence, known as ‘Milton’. The Bench sat for nearly 2 hours debating the subject. The Examiner says that Mr D Warden treated that petition with contempt.

It followed with:

This is something like Mr. Warden; but he need not attempt to rule people any longer as he has done heretofore, for they are alive to his motives, and can see through his deep designs, and they are determined to have their rights, despite the slander and contempt that he may endeavour to place upon them. If Mr. D. Warden enjoys the same amount of contempt from each of the hundred and twenty men who signed that petition, as he bestowed upon it, I wish him much joy of the burden that he bears”

This letter writer in December 1859 hoped that as the matter had been resolved to the satisfaction of MOST residents of Ulladulla, that all this enmity and ill feeling would be buried in oblivion.

Unfortunately, all that got buried was a hatchet deep in each other’s backs, as the argument continued even then, about how the mail even GOT to the Milton Post Office – via the Clyde steamer and Ulladulla, or overland direct from Nowra.

Said this letter writer in April 1860:

This is a state of things not to be tolerated, and I trust that the inhabitants of Milton will shake off the apathy that has long existed, and that they will no longer bear the yoke of a “petty tyrant,” who has proved by his numerous and very over-leaning actions of late that his endeavours have been solely for his own aggrandisement and not for the benefit, but greatly to the disadvantage of, the people here.

If an account of all the letters that passes through the post-offices here were kept, it would be seen that, without any exaggeration, three-fourths of them are addressed to Milton. Yet, in the face of this great fact, the bag is sent to Ulladulla; and why is it sent there? Because the deputy at Ulladulla is the storekeeper, and, of course, through interested motives, has induced the Postmaster-General to send the bag there.

Eventually the matter was settled in Milton’s favour.

To conclude the great ‘Post Office Punch Up’, a newspaper report from the Illawarra Mercury, dated 7 December, 1860

Post Office Regulations

After a deal of time and trouble on the part of the Milton people, they have got their mail to come direct to that post office, notwithstanding the conniving of the Boat Harbor clique. It must gall them to the heart to see the power gliding from their fingers – power which they have clung to through thick and thin until it has been fairly wrung from their clutches by the voices of an independent public.

Postcode 2538 (brown) and Postcode 2539 (blue)

And, of course, the legacy of the Great Post Office Stoush is that there are two post codes in one regional district – that of 2538 at Milton, almost completely surrounded by the Ulladulla Post Code of 2539.

EXHIBIT FOUR – the SCHOOLS STOUSH.

David Warden had many tenant farmers on his land and they all had lots of children. As the benevolent laird, he built them a school, which was also attended by children from other surrounding farms as there was only a small church school in The Settlement. He was also mindful of his position in Ulladulla, and in 1860 petitioned (through one of his offsiders) for a government supported school there too. Because it was clearly the go-ahead town of the district.

“Application is made for a National School on the property of a local gentleman [David Warden] hitherto used as the Courthouse and constable’s residence. They are in excellent repair. Ulladulla consists of a township with upwards of a dozen families together with a considerable number of settlers in the immediate neighbourhood. The population is likely to increase rapidly, many families from Illawarra and Shoalhaven having lately been settlers and others contemplating moving in the same direction.”

Ulladulla School of Arts

On the strength of this self-assessment the Schools Board approved an Ulladulla school which began in 1861. After a while it moved into the Ulladulla School of Arts, a lovely stone building that stood where the Civic centre is now. Sadly, that was demolished in the late 1960s. But by 1878, the school had a new building in Green St which is still there today.

Out at Croobyar, by the mid 1870s the population was dwindling, while in Milton it was rapidly expanding, and more than 2/3rds of Croobyar School’s children were coming from Milton. David Warden had already decided that the old Croobyar School was too small and had been petitioning the NSW Director of Education for a new school even further west, on a reserve allocated from his Croobyar estate.

Naturally, Milton parents were just as determined that any new school would be built in Milton, led by John Miller of Narrawilly.

A conference of leading citizens met to make final recommendations about the new
school. Those present were: the three clergymen of the town, the Bench of
Magistrates, the landholders around, the Aldermen of the Municipality, Mr David
Warden, James Warden M.L.A., Messrs Kendall, Miller, Hall, Mitchell, Garrad and
others, plus poor Mr J. Gardiner who had been sent by the Council of Education to examine
the whole question and report his recommendations. You can imagine how he was harangued by all!

The meeting paid tribute to David Warden as the Educational Pioneer of the District but recommended that the new school be established in Milton. Undeterred, David Warden continued to write extremely long letters to the Director General of Education clinging steadfastly to his views.

The Minister, like the Post Master General before him, was overwhelmed by the volume of vitriolic correspondence that arrived in his office. The Schools’ Examiner, Mr Gardiner, wrote a 16 page report trying to explain why the situation was so fraught and recommending that he couldn’t see a long-term future for a Croobyar School. It was obvious that Milton really did need a school but just as obvious that David Warden had both local power and also friends in power, and he wasn’t about to give up. And there was the distance that the children of Croobyar would have to travel to the new Milton School.

So, like the Post Master General, The Director of Education took a similar wise and neutral course and followed the recommendation that both schools be built, as we can see in this departmental file note.

Milton School, engraving in the Town and Country Gazette, 1883

Milton School opened in 1877 and has grown and flourished for nearly 150 years.

Croobyar School gardening day

The new Croobyar School opened in 1880 and continued on until it was finally closed in WW2. Although the original school house was demolished soon after, the schoolmaster’s residence survived. It has been extensively but sensitively repaired and renovated, and lives on as the Old School House at Milton B&B.

The final part of the Warden v Warden saga was:

THE COURTHOUSE CONTROVERSY.

If a town is going to thrive, it needs government services. In the mid 19^th century, that was a post and telegraph office but also a courthouse, as the place of government administration and law.

David Warden had been appointed a magistrate in 1857. At first the court was held in his Ulladulla store, but a new courthouse was built in Green St Ulladulla in 1859, where the Catholic Church is now. The government paid for the building but the interior timber fitout was financed and installed by the people of Boat Harbour.

But by the end of 1859, the Miltonians were already pushing to have the courthouse moved to The Settlement. The Kiama Examiner reported:

“An attempt is to be soon made to get the new Courthouse on the settlement. This is where it ought to be. I am of opinion that all public buildings should be placed where they will benefit the public. We know that a certain individual, through interested motives, will make a hard struggle to have it at that miserable place called the township of Ulladulla. But what’s the use of placing it there where there are only two families and their servants residing, and where, in all probability, there will never be any more.”

David Warden’s push back managed to retain the courthouse at Ulladulla but, by the mid 1870s, the Miltonian clique was better organised and buoyed by their success with the schools and roads. The Kiama Independent reports in December 1876 these remarks from James Warden, as member for Shoalhaven in the NSW Parliament, at a banquet in his honour:

“The honourable member stated that he had acted in the matter of the court-house at Milton with a view to obtain a building for such uses in the centre of the population, and that it was useless to try to stay the current of events. Milton had gradually become the centre of this district, and it was only right that the court-house and the telegraph office and post-office should all be erected in the centre of the population”

The local court was moved to Milton from Ulladulla in 1877, including all the fixtures and fittings from that building, despite the protests of Ulladulla residents who had donated them. Soon that building became too small for the court business of a growing town, so a new courthouse was designed by Walter Vernon. While the government initially considered the cost for this Federation-style courthouse to be too high, our current handsome building was finally constructed in the mid-1890s – but only after the original courthouse roof fell in.

As the two towns continued to develop through the early 1900s, it became very clear which one was in the ascendant. Milton forged ahead, with extensive shopping, services and population, while Ulladulla remained static. It didn’t help that it was the industrial centre, with a tannery, fishing fleet, timber mill and iceworks.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that things started to swing back the other way. As those industries left and tourism surged, Ulladulla bounced back, becoming our main commercial centre, while Milton has turned into a town of tourist cafes and shops selling linen clothes and ceramic and jute decorator items. So maybe David Warden was proven right in the end?

Sculpted portraits of David and Alexander Berry

David Warden died in 1885, long before his brother James in 1904. Perhaps if the Milton Ulladulla bypass is ever built, the entry point to Milton could have large cut out silhouette portraits of the Wardens as important men of our district, like there is of the brothers David and Alexander Berry – their sculpture marks the northern entry point to Berry. Those two brothers face each other, but they’d have to put David and James Warden back-to-back!