Camden

 A Place to Call Home

Did anyone ever watch A Place to Call Home a drama TV series on Channel 7?  Those of you who did, will remember the beautiful house featured in that series called Ash Park where the Bligh family lived.  Well yesterday Ken and I did a trip down to the Southern Highlands and on the way we called in at Camelot a grand house on the outskirts of Camden and, guess what folks?  This was Ash Park where the filming of this drama series took place.  There it was, in all its romantic glory.  Little turrets, chimney stacks, gables and balconies silhouetted against a backdrop of drop-dead gorgeous countryside.  It was just like a magical fairytale where, at any moment, I could picture Noni Hazlehurst, as Mrs Bligh, stepping down the front steps to greet us to her home!

Camelot was originally built in about 1883, although more likely to have been 1888.  It has 55 rooms and a network of long passageways, steeples, garrets and towers and many ornate fireplaces.  Some hundreds of thousands of bricks were used in the building and a reservoir was built on the hill and water pumped from the Nepean River.

This is the main entrance, front door and gravel driveway.  The actors in the television series all used this main entrance for their scenes in the show, arriving in the glamorous cars of the era.  The present owners of the house, Brendan Powers and his wife Rachel Powers. bought the property in 1999 and are lovingly restoring it to its original glory.

This is the beehive shaped Smokehouse, for smoking meat.  It has not been used for more than 50 years, but the owners now have plans to bring this back into production.  The house behind was built for the architect and builder to live in while Camelot was being built.  It is now just a shell inside, although the owners' son is slowly renovating it.

 A small corner inside the house showing an ornate Hall Stand and chaise lounge.  The distinctive arched windows are a feature of the architecture of the house.  The Architect was John Horbury Hunt and in his time was one of New South Wales' most brilliant architects.  He trained under the colony's leading architect, Edmund Blackett.  John Horbury Hunt arrived in Sydney in 1863 aged 24.  He was born in Canada.

A view from an upstairs verandah over the surrounding countryside.  The Razorback Range can be seen in the distance.

Camelot remains today much as it was more than 90 years ago.  An extra turret has been added since 1937 to enclose the upstairs sunroom.

Surveyor, John Oxley in the early days of British colonisation, received a 600 acre grant of land outside Camden where he built Kirkham, the site of today's Camelot.  The original Kirkham was demolished and in its place the present home was built.  The only Oxley building to survive today is the Kirkham Stables, built in 1816.