Traversing the King’s Highway on a routine Canberra run today, I was suddenly seized with a sense of desperation. Maybe because on the last day of the school hols for many, the road was chokka with utes towing caravans and boats, impatient overtakers risking life and limb to gain a few seconds’ advantage, and highway cops pulling them over like Canadian brown bears amid a salmon run; or maybe it was just a sudden wish to see a different road. On a whim I took the route out of Bungendore that leads to Captains Flat. My passengers agreed on the basis that they had no choice.
It was definitely one of those trips where the destination isn’t really the objective, but rather the journey itself. All I really knew of Captains Flat was that the weather radar that serves our region is based there, making it appear like the centre of the universe every time I have a quick hopeful look online for the makings of thunderstorms.
At first it seemed as if we were doubling back on the route we’d just taken out of Queanbeyan, but the road described a gentle arc northwards through rolling country, starting to look a bit parched now as the hotter weather bites. Every now and then you’d see a nice big farmhouse with its clump of trees and water tank; there was virtually no traffic.
And then, sweeping round a bend, we spotted something unexpected: a stone church with a pointy spire poking coyly from the dark ruff of evergreens that surrounded it. It looked a bit gothic, with the hipped roof of the spire seeming incongruously Nordic. We had to stop.
It was sunny, pretty hot, and silent. The church was, of course, locked, but in good nick. The sign by the door told us it was the Anglican church of St Thomas’ Carwoola, built between 1872 and 1874, and consecrated in 1876. We took some pics and inspected the graveyard before resuming our journey. I reckon Captains Flat is worth a future post, so will just record that we passed through and carried on through the Tallaganda State Forest and thus home to bustling Braidwood.
So how did that distinctive church find itself stuck out there? There’s not a huge amount of info around, but here’s what we know. Carwoola is a heritage-listed mansion nearby, built by Thomas Rutledge, who at one stage farmed 36,500 hectares in the area. Rutledge also provided the funds for the church and the foundation stone was laid in 1865. Design duties went to the Rev Alberto Dias Soares.
And here’s someone interesting, as the name may suggest. He was not a Catholic, despite being son of the Commercial Consul of Portugal in London: his mother was English and perhaps she had charge of his religious instruction. But she was an artist, and he trained as one as well, in both Oporto and Paris. He then also graduated as an engineer in 1849 and worked in that capacity in Sydney.
By 1855 he’d become an Anglican minister with the useful ability to design bigger and better churches wherever he went – starting in Queanbeyan where his Christ Church (Victorian Romanesque, I believe) was completed in 1861. Soares went on to design 15 churches in the region, as well as seven parsonages, and numerous church halls and associated buildings. He even designed a church for the Presbyterians in Queanbeyan, which was either a generous gift to those who didn’t share his faith, or a contribution to the civic harmony of the town.
St Thomas’ first service was held in 1874 (two years before the church was officially consecrated); the Queanbeyan Age of 2 December notes that the church “in its complete state is remarkably harmonious in its details and imposing in its appearance.” The correspondent adds, “there was a tolerably large congregation present, although we called to mind many residents of the district who we thought ought to have been in attendance.” The piece is anonymous, which is just as well, given this tendency to editorialise.
But why this interest in a church by a blogger with no religious inclinations whatsoever? Well, in any community you care to visit – certainly those of a western, Christian culture — the best place to find a sense of the community is the church. You see the names of the local families commemorated in the graveyard: the people who were christened there as babies, married there as young folk, and were buried there in time. Every single one of them has their story – as do the young men whose loss in war are commemorated in the church.
At Carwoola, this would be Jim Maslin, killed in France in 1917 and commemorated in a stained glass window, which sadly we could not see. He was 21, son of the owner of Carwoola by that time. Not knowing of this sad record inside the church, we noted with some amusement the name of the earliest settler in the graveyard, Owen Bowen: a convict transported in 1811, he came here as a free man; his family clearly prospered in the area and enjoyed the luxury of a vault in the cemetery.
We were only there for 20 minutes or so; but it was enough to spark all sorts of conjectures. Reverend Engineer Soares is worth a lot more attention; so is poor Jim Maslin. And Carwoola needs a visit too. This is what happens when you branch off from the beaten track – you become an explorer, not only in space, but time too. That can’t be time wasted.
