Several readers reported a "penny dropped" moment when recently reading in this column that the term "billy cart" originates from billy goat-drawn carts in Australia in the 19th century.
"Oh, it makes complete sense now," exclaims Nicky McDonald of Kambah.
Some readers, including Christina Saw who grew up in Queanbeyan, even remember riding in a billy goat-drawn cart as a child.
"Dad, who was a carpenter, made the cart," she recalls. "The goat, a pet called Billy, was not always compliant and would end up tipping us out." Oops!
When Billy wasn't taking Christina for a ride, he was "almost always in trouble for eating my brother's dummies", she recalls.
However, celebrated winemaker Ken Helm of Murrumbateman isn't as convinced as to the origins of the term billy cart.
"My grandfather was told that it originated from the 1850s Victorian gold fields," Ken says. "Miners celebrated a gold find with French champagne, and the most popular was 'Billecart -Salmon' champagne, and hundreds of their wooden branded boxes came to gold fields.
"Apparently the kids took the empty boxes with the large word BILLECART written on the side and made downhill carts."
Sounds like a good story, and it may just be that.
I was going to offer a bottle of said champers to any reader who can find evidence to confirm its origins; however, a Magnum of today's Billecart-Salmon is almost $300. Heck. Talk about a gold rush. You'll have to settle for kudos instead.
Meanwhile, discussion on carts drawn by different animals prompted Nick Swain of the Canberra & District Historical Society to submit the photograph below of a camel-drawn carriage dating from circa-1910s.
While camel-drawn carriages were reasonably common in the outback during that era, it's an unusual find amongst photographs of the Canberra region.
The side caption calls the cameleer 'Mad Ryan', but the rest is a bit truncated, leading Nick to ponder "just why this photo is in one of our Canberra albums is a mystery".
Perhaps some botanically-minded readers could closely analyse the trees in the background of the photo to help identify the location.
This case reminds me of this column's investigation about 10 years ago of photo of an unidentified waterfall that was discovered in the collection of the Tidbinbilla Pioneers Association. After an exhaustive search in the Brindabellas for a 'missing' waterfall, it was determined the photo featured a waterfall on the south coast of NSW. Hopefully this mystery can be solved too.
It seems Canberra's only Pegasus Crossing at Streeton Drive in Weston is used after all. The revelation that the unmarked modern stairs are for riders to step on and off their horses before and after crossing the road came as a surprise to many (most) readers but Roz Edmunds says the crossing is used regularly.
Demonstrating how it's used, Roz pushed the high-level button, which allowed her to activate the crossing without dismounting her 14.2-hands horse, Willow.
"It's really helps us as the little green person flashes a lot longer than at a normal crossing - meaning we don't need to rush," she explains.
Meanwhile, this column's search of the Canberra region for remnant stone mounting steps like those still scattered around England has so far proved fruitless. However, several readers have advised of such a relic at Hartwell House (now a private residence) in Kiama.
The three steps are located right next to the Victorian-era property's postern gate - a rear entrance traditionally used by the household staff, groomsmen, and residents avoiding the more formal main carriage gates.
Surely there must be some closer to home?
Intrigued by the story behind Canberra's oldest photograph, Tony Maple of the Canberra & Region Heritage Researchers took a deep dive into the lives of the Hutchison family who appeared in the 1855 daguerreotype: Edward Hutchison, his wife Emily and their young son Alex.
"Edward's father James was one of the earliest skilled builders in Queanbeyan," Tony reveals. "Edward assisted him in building one of the early mills in Queanbeyan, or at least its chimney." Edward also installed the first organ in St John the Baptist Anglican Church at Reid.
After Edward died in 1857, Emily remarried bookkeeper John Walker, and had three more children. She died in Brisbane in 1903.
"It seems the Hutchison family had been builders in brick and stone and became builders of a spiritual kind," says Tony. "Alex devoted much of his life to building the Methodist Church in Queensland, where he died in 1934, 79 years after the historic portrait was taken in Queanbeyan."
Yet Reverend Alex Hutchison never forgot his home region. In 1927, while serving as a senior Methodist minister in Queensland, he visited London and brought back a stone from John Wesley's City Road Chapel - the 'mother church' of world Methodism where John Wesley was buried - for the fledgling national capital. In 1930, the stone was incorporated into Canberra's new Methodist Central Hall, a forerunner of today's Wesley Uniting Church in Forrest and a key step in Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational cooperation.
"It was a remarkable legacy for the little boy who stood before the camera in what is believed to be the oldest surviving photograph of the Canberra region," Tony says.
More details have come to light about Kate Marion - the teenager who met Edward Crace, her husband-to-be - while shipwrecked on an island in 1865.
Regular readers may recall it was Edward, who along with his coachman George Kemp, drowned at Ginninderra Creek in 1892.
While the Crace family name lives on in Canberra with a suburb named after Edward, it's Kate's name that is on everyone's lips (literally) when they tuck into a piece of chocolate cake at the St John's Schoolhouse Museum.
For almost 40 years, at special events held at the historic site, volunteers Maureen Brooks and Diana Body have been serving up a homemade chocolate cake, specifically made to Kate's 150-year-old recipe.
When I recently tasted a piece of the cake, Maureen, who has baked the cake "over 100 times", asked if I could identify the not-so-secret ingredient. And I could. It's treacle!
"If you want a taste of history, nothing beats Mrs Crace's chocolate cake," muses fellow volunteer Sue O'Leary.
Oh, if you want to check out the recipe, you can call into the St John's Schoolhouse Museum. It's open Wednesdays from 10am to noon and on Saturdays and Sundays from 2pm to 4pm. The recipe also features in The Abernethy Recipe Book (St John's Schoolhouse Museum, 2019) which details recipes contributed by descendants of James and Eliza Abernethy and their 12 children, who lived in the small schoolhouse from 1864 to 1882.
Did You Know? James was the longest-serving teacher at the schoolhouse when it operated as a school intermittently between 1845 and 1908.
What's your oldest family recipe? I'd love to know.
Rating: Medium - Hard
Cryptic Clue: 6.44
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email received after 10am, Saturday July 25 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Jason Klose of Waramanga who was first to correctly identify last week's photo as a ventilation shaft at the National Library of Australia. The library has extensive underground areas beneath its podium, including storage, plant rooms and service tunnels added and expanded over time. These shafts allow air circulation while blending into the landscape in a way that is more visually sympathetic than exposed industrial vents.
The latest entry in this column's occasional series on typos in public signs comes all the way from Blayney in the Central West of NSW, where, while recently travelling through the historic town, Bruce White of Bungendore stopped outside the bakery, keen for a pie and coffee.
"After I saw they traded in 'sandwitches', I was intrigued as to what sort of brew they might serve up," he muses. "Unfortunately they were closed so I may never know."
While exploring bushland near Aranda, Nick Arnott was mesmerised by the sight of a large burl on a tree. But as Nick got closer to the tree, he noticed something else. Can you see it? Yes, a near-perfect side profile of a human face. What a ripper.
CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
