What it was - An 80 year old Camellia Nursery in ruins

Today I want to show you some of the history of the site because it really is fascinating. The property is next to my finger lime farm at Kurrajong Heights. It was originally Australia's biggest camellia producer under the name Spencer Scott & Sons Nursery which operated for about 80 years. Each year they produced over a million camellias for the Australian market. Today I still have about 3 acres of the original camellia plantation which was used for the cuttings. There are over 1,000 trees up to 80 years old and 400 different varieties. The buildings were all built around a 2 acre lake filled with water lillies and 70 year old koi carp and 35 year old native bass it is absolutely spectacular in winter!

The back of the property was used as an irrigated growing out area which was progressively abandonned as the operations passed their peak. Originally it had all been terraced into 7 flat growing areas. This whole area contained endless piles of discarded pots, machinery, trailers, sprinklers and the nightmare that is plastic weed matting... 6 acres of it! Over the decades this had turned a into a jungle of 7m high noxious weeds privet, lantanna, wild tobacco, wisteria, crofton weed and blackberry all interspersed with dead and dying black wattles. The weeds were so thick you literally had to crawl through it and most of the property was completely inaccesable unless you crawled and slithered through like some kind of jungle creature...

As part of the DA approval I had to do several plant and animal surveys of the entire property which cost around $25,000 and the rest of the documentation and plans cost another $220,000 just for the approval. The surveys found nothing of value in there as the entire property had originally been stripped bare of its native vegetation. I have done a little video of the property over time so you can see its progression from the first google earth pic 2002 through to September 2023 when the mulching was complete.

 But what was inside those old buildings? There were echoes of decades of hard work, dedication and the soil was still filled with their sweat, tears and discarded mementos of the day to day life on a huge production nursery. The office desk was covered in dust and cobwebs next to the window which had reflected the progressively aging face of 3 generations of nursery men and women over many decades. 

My kids and I loved exploring the old buildings, the cupboards and old technology always there was this feeling as if we were intruding into some other world, some private important space from the past as if we had stepped back in time.

Books no doubt once highly valued for the knowledge they provided on how to better manage this property and its millions of plants now lay discarded and moth eaten, covered with dust and never to be opened again.

It was as if the place was stuck in a time warp from the 1970's and 80's. Fascinating and eerie. A workshop full of spare parts for the 6 Japanese nursery trikes which were still parked in the same place from their last day of work a decade ago. Old pumps and spray equipment, belts and tonnes of irrigation fittings mostly in the old imperial measure.

A potting machine which no doubt was once shiny and new and the cutting edge of nursery production technology now sat rusted and quiet. But surprisingly it still worked its old rubber conveyor wobbling and lifting the cobwebs to the spinning potting table. How many plants had this beautiful old thing potted?

There was the lunch room with an old dog's bed. Now long forgotten. I am surethat bed was very loved in the cold drizzly mountain weather we get in June when the Camellias are at their brightest. And the dunny - having long since lost its thunder was now dry & dusty and home to the ubiquitous redback spider under its seat.

 

 

I would always gravitate back to the lonely office. Left open upon the desk was the last order book from the nursery days. Meticulously hand written with lists of phone orders for nurseries, names and prices or discounts filled in for months page after page after page. But the last entry showed a singular moment captured in time. In neat cursive writing there the very last line of this book hand written was my name Lee Etherington and my mobile phone number - with a line quickly and finitely drawn underneath. The pen left neatly beside the book on the desk with its lid off and now dry and covered with a layer of dirt and cobwebs. This captures the end of an era for this space and the start of a new one. I have kept that book safely in my house and will have it on display in the visitor centre. A timely reminder that all things come to an end and a realisation that one day in the future whatever I am building now will too be demolished and become something else. Such is the circle of life!