Brickendom Estate



Turkeys on the working farm.



Church on the farm.

A flock of Ducks

The cottage next to ours looked pretty with white flowers surrounding the porch.

After the Trowunna Wildlife Park we stopped for a few groceries and made our way to our lodging - a convict built cottage at Brickendom Estate.  We found our way to the farm and saw our names on an envelope on a kiosk.  The caretakers were off duty.  Inside were our keys and directions to our cottage.  We drove between the sheep and horse paddocks, past several barns, down a hedgerow, past several buildings to a row of three little cottages.  Ours was the last in the row.  Inside we found wooden slat walls.  Some of these walls we could see through into the next room and some were covered with a thick muslin.  The floors were wood.  The door handle looked ancient.  The windows were original.  Inside we found a small bathroom with the smallest tub I have ever seen-slightly longer but less deep than a laundry tub.  We had two bedrooms, a spacious kitchen, a living room with a fireplace, and a porch with a wood branch bench, another chair and a wooden branch table.  What a cute place!!  We had our dinner on the porch.  A flock of chickens came by and we fed them our scraps making sure every chicken got something good to eat.  A cat came by and wanted to come into our cottage.  We had read that this was allowed as long as we didn't lock him in when we left.  We didn't want to share our space with a cat so we shooed him away.  After dinner we explored the heritage convict farm.  We read about the convicts that worked here and why they were convicted.  Most of the convicts committed a crime that related to their employment.  A seamstress was convicted of stealing needles.  A farm worker was convicted for stealing a pitchfork.  One seven year old girl who worked in a laundry was sentenced to 14 years for taking a piece of clothing.  Unbelievable. And we were staying in a cottage built by these convicts! We hoped we didn't have nightmares.  According to what we read, most women convicts, being in the minority in Australia, were married out of their sentence within a year of arrival.  I talked to one native Australian who said it was "cool" to have descended from convicts.  Less cool but still admirable was to have forebears who ran with Ned Kelly, the famous outlaw who was sort of the Australian version of Robin Hood.  We walked through the sheep paddock down to the river just as the sun was setting.  This was an awesome place to stay for the night and it's too bad we only got here at 4 pm and we had to leave before 6 am the next morning to get to the airport on time.