The Berrima mystery that rocked my world

"Apparently, it's engraved with "A MAN DIED HERE 1837," reveals my well-connected confidante.

Having grown up in the Southern Highlands and never once heard of the random rock and its mysteriously morbid engraving, my interest was more than piqued.

So, earlier this week I took the Yowie-mobile for a spin up to the Southern Highlands where I enjoyed a delightful morning on hands and knees snooping around approaches to the historic town.

Sadly, all I uncovered were piles of fast-food wrappers and two dead wombats, both in advanced states of decomposition. Not to mention a generous dose of sunstroke.

Gee, how hard can it be to find a rock? Not wanting to return to Canberra empty-handed, I put in a quick call to Linda Emery of the Berrima & District Historical Society. If a convict so much as belched here, Linda will know about it. She's an oracle in these parts.

Bingo! Linda not only confirms the rock is no myth, but she knows exactly where it is.

"It's on the eastern side of the highway on the Sydney side of town, a few hundred metres before the shops," she advises.

Smeared in a new layer of sun cream, and with a belly full of scones and jam (when in Berrima...), I venture back out into the heat.

Better directions would have been "about 80 metres before the 'Historic Berrima 1831' sign, but, hey, if Linda had told me that, I'd have missed out on the opportunity to reacquaint myself with those two wombat carcasses. Eww.

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Back to the chase. I can only just decipher the engraving, but sure enough, it reads "a man died here 1837". There also appears to be the initials 'BG' engraved just before the date. Due to its location to the left of the date, it's not obvious if it's part of the main inscription or the tag of a subsequent graffiti artist.

Okay, so while the location of the rock is known, just whose death does it refer to? Well, that bit is even trickier to narrow down.

"The rock formed part of a cutting almost certainly made when convict road gangs were working on the New Line of Road to the south," says Linda, "but the identity of the man killed remains a mystery, despite several theories being put forward over the years, none of which stand up to critical examination."

Some believe he was a victim of serial killer John Lynch, who was hung in Berrima Gaol in 1842 for the dastardly murders of 10 people. But that story was full of holes as it didn't match historical records.

Another claimed "the dead man was very tall with bright red hair and a beard who had ridden to Berrima to fetch Dr Lambert to attend to his sick wife. His horse fell and he was killed." Sounds plausible, doesn't it?

"The problem with this story is that when our man was killed in 1837, Dr Lambert was only 10 years old and still living in England!" exclaims Linda.

Bummer.

As to the faint nature of the engraving; apparently it's not the first time it's become difficult to read. According to Linda, in the 1960s, Mittagong Shire Council town clerk Claude Lee "spent an entire afternoon with hammer and chisel touching up the lettering etched in the crumbly sandstone". He mistakenly thought his job "should last another hundred years".

The community-minded clerk was so touched by the mystery of the man's identity that he even penned a poem. Here's the second stanza:

The man who here was killed we'll never know

Nor he or she who wrote the words to show

A record of their loss, and graved a rugged cross

With 1837 plain below 'A man killed here'.

And now I'm sitting here alone,

Renewing all the letters on the stone.

I hope he'll like the way it's done

The man killed here.

But the saga of our mystery rock engraving doesn't end there. In 1963, when road widening threatened to destroy the stone, the Department of Main Roads was lobbied by Linda's predecessors at the historical society to relocate the rock further down the hill to where it is today.

Are you aware of any similarly cryptic inscriptions on rocks closer to home? If so, I'd love to hear from you.

Just 10 kilometres up the road from Berrima, in the village of Sutton Forest, is Hillview, the former NSW Vice Regal country estate.

Following this column's recent revelation that the grand gates at the village's All Saints Church had been gifted from Hillview, John Standen of Kambah asked "are any other mementos left" by the succession of NSW governors who prayed at the country church.

According to historian Linda Emery, "several governors and their wives presented fine gifts to the church, including the brass lectern (Lord Jersey in 1893), prayer desk and altar vases (Sir Harry and Lady Rawson, 1902-09), communion vessels and a brass alms dish (Lord Chelmsford, 1909-13). Told you Linda knows her stuff.

Perhaps the most significant item is a Union Jack presented by Lord Wakehurst (1937-46), which according to Linda, is "the very flag that flew over Government House in Sydney when the German surrender was proclaimed on May 8, 1945".

Long before NSW governors frequented the historic Sutton Forest church, one of Australia's most eccentric 19th-century characters, William Francis King, worked briefly as schoolmaster at the village school in 1830.

The son of a respected paymaster at British Treasury, King's parents dearly hoped he would become a man of the cloth. However, after showing little interest in the church, at the tender age of just 22, his father promptly banished him to the distant colony of NSW.

King didn't last long at the quiet Southern Highland's school - the vibrant social scene of Sydney was calling, and he was soon pouring beers at the rowdy Hope & Anchor pub, ironically located on King Street.

While at the landmark watering hole, he worked on his fitness, and by 1840 his feats of endurance running became legendary.

In 1842 he combined his love of selling pies with his passion of running, an unusual combination that earned him the nickname of The Flying Pieman. Before long it was his full-time gig.

King was the ultimate showman and fast became one of the most recognisable figures in Sydney, often clad in a colourful costume boasting striped-red knee breeches, long blue jacket, and black top hat. He also always carried his trademark staff, complete with flying-coloured ribbons.

Some of his athletic feats were truly astonishing. Most famously, he'd sell pies to passengers boarding the Parramatta ferry in Sydney and then be waiting at the Parramatta wharf to sell the very same customers even more pies, having run all the way there, carrying the pies in two baskets atop a pole. Really. If that wasn't odd enough, as an extra challenge, The Flying Pieman would sometimes complete his extraordinary endurance feats with an animal or two perched on his head.

He spent his final days at Old Men's Home at Liverpool where he died in 1874, aged 67.

Rating: Medium - Hard

Cryptic Clue: Croak

How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email sent after 10am, Saturday January 14, wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.

Last week: Congratulations to Nick Hillier of Sunshine Bay who was the first to identify last week's photo as a driftwood cubby on the foreshore at the north end of the Batemans Bay bridge. The clue of "out with the old, in with the new" referred to both the (relatively) new bridge and the shiny new adjoining playground and recreation area. Forget the movie tickets - Nick's real prize was "finally having bragging rights over his son Gavin" who was a winner of this quiz back in September 2015. Perhaps it's time for Gavin to return serve.

The Berrima boulder isn't the only reference to an obscure inscription to recently land in my inbox. While recently enjoying a walk around the Khancoban Pondage, James Montgomery noticed this unusual marker, and wonders about its origins.

Getting to the bottom of this inscription has proved much less difficult.

According to darkstories.org, a bushwalker had a "terrifying encounter" with a "hairless and mottled grey-coloured creature the size of a child" in the same area in May 2003. I suspect the plaque refers to this creature which apparently had "no ears or nose and a small lipless mouth with jagged teeth". Whatever it was, it must have left a lasting impact to go to the trouble to erect a plaque.

CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601