WHO's ever heard of the 'King of Port Stephens'?
Despite sounding like the title of a tribal leader, it was actually the moniker for an affable, wealthy politician, R.H.D. White.
White (1838-1900), former bank manager and MLA, wanted to set himself up as a gentleman of leisure on a country estate. So, in 1882 he bought the remote, historic property called "Tahlee" on the northern shore of Port Stephens, close to the Karuah River.
The site had earlier been abandoned as the headquarters of the pioneering Australian Agricultural Company (or AACo), but later it needed an awful lot of TLC.
Why, there had even been a fire that had destroyed the first colonial homestead.
That's why Robert Hoddle Driberg (R.H.D.) White decided to restore the glory of the site and build a new Tahlee House over the ruins of the old. At the same time, he greatly increased the size and grandeur of his new home in the bush.
White added a lounge, a separate billiards room, more bedrooms, then extended again by adding a large ballroom. The long, low structure was all very grand.
If White and his elite Sydney guests were to "rough it' in the then wilderness of Port Stephens, they would do it in style.
A botanical garden was also established with a great variety of exotic plants. Here, he employed up to 12 gardeners to rebuild and terrace the grounds on the side of the house facing the Port Stephens waterway.
By mid-1888, Tahlee was being referred to as a "mansion" in Hunter news reports because of its extravagance in the bush.
The estate also contained numerous work buildings, plus a tennis court, vineyards and orchards.
A small horse-drawn tramway also brought guests up from a convict-built boat harbour to the house. Two smart steam yachts regularly serviced the site bringing visitors and supplies.
The most impressive feature of Tahlee's chapel was an ornately carved and painted pipe organ, finally moved to St Philip's Church, Eastwood in Sydney, in 1932.
During the rebuilding of Tahlee House, several cannons were repositioned on the sloping front lawns. One of the larger English cannons was reputedly used at the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon in 1815. They may all have come to the site as ship ballast.
Luckily, much of the Tahlee estate with its rich history has survived to the present day, but in a different form, it now being a youth mission.
Since 1999, Tahlee has also been listed on the State Heritage Register.
Author and historian Janis Winn, 86, grew up in Tea Gardens and has always been interested in the site, especially its often overlooked, earlier background as the nation's initial A.A.Company settlement.
"As kids we went to Tahlee for Sunday School picnics, travelling by ferry and being in awe of the beautiful house (on the hill) at Tahlee which seemed so enormous to us," Mrs Winn says.
"And as I grew up many of my friends lived and worked in the Carrington (a nearby company settlement) and Pindimar.
"I became more fascinated recently with its history, especially as the AACo is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year.
"It's now Australia's largest pastoral company and the nation's oldest continually operating company. And its humble start was right here in Port Stephens," she says.
"I decided I had to do something to mark the occasion.
"I decided to write a book on the AACo's past and achievements. It took three years."
And that 250-page, $45 privately published book called Chronicles of Carrington, Tahlee and the Legacy of the Australian Agricultural Company 200 years will be officially launched on Saturday, March 9, at 2pm in Tea Gardens.
It's an impressive, almost encyclopaedic scrutiny into the company's early Hunter history and beyond. A good reference work.
"Although the company started with sheep, it is now running huge amounts of cattle on millions of hectares," Winn says.
Winn said that after the focus of company wool business moved to Stroud, then into the Tamworth region, the northern shore of Port Stephens opened to development by others from 1835.
Initially, it was timber cutters who created a small town, now Tea Gardens.
"Other local pioneers who followed the AACo include Frederick Phillips who bought 5000 acres at Pindimar, the Evans family who bought land at Bundabah, the Fidden family from Pindimar, the Holbert family from 'Limekilns', the Motum family who helped start the oyster industry at Wobbygong Bay and the Engel brothers who started the general business and ran local store boat, to name but a few," she says.
The steady growth of the AACo though is really a tale of two cities - the great coal and steel city of Newcastle plus Tamworth and company towns like Stroud and Gloucester.
"With its later approved land swaps, the company really hastened the development of the colony of NSW," Winn says.
The giant company's saga began in London in April 1824 with the new company being granted one million acres of Australian Crown land (to be worked by free convict labour) in exchange for one million pounds.
Within a few years, however, the British Government also urgently wanted the AACo to take over coal mining in Newcastle.
In return, the company received an extra 2000 acres of land west of the city's Brown Street, in 1829.
It was the beginning of modern Newcastle. The AACo mined beneath the area from 1831 to 1916, then sub-divided its landholdings from Cooks Hill to Waratah for residential sales.
Today, the legacy of the AACo in Newcastle is subtle, but it's there often in familiar city streets named after its top officials or key individuals.
Names include Parry Street, King Street, Laman Street, Blane (now Hunter) Street, Steel Street, Merewether and Dumaresq streets.
And take Hamilton's beloved Gregson Park, now undergoing a $3 million upgrade. It's named after Jesse Gregson (1876-1919), the longest serving general superintendent of the AACo, who succeeded Edward C. Merewether.
In 1889, 3.8ha of land was given to the then Hamilton Council provided it would be devoted solely to the recreation of pit workers and their families.
And then there's most of today's Hamilton bisected by Parkway Avenue from Tudor Street to Bar Beach, all created from low-lying bog and sand dunes by the AACo architects and surveyors.
This was originally a model precinct called "Garden Suburb".
Its legacy lives on today in two ornate but "unknown" surviving 1914 sandstone pillars in Gordon Avenue, at Learmonth Park.
They carry small metal plaques which are possibly unique, sporting the AACo's 1824 circular coat of arms (see picture inset).
The seal of the "hung sheep" is the traditional symbol for wool, while the oak and eucalyptus leaves show the company's links with England and Australia. The crown indicates the company was established by Royal Charter.
