Wooden paved road remnants, Great Eastern Highway

Statement of Significance

• Wooden Paved Road (site) has historic and scientific value as an excellent example of the ingenuity of road makers in the mid-19th century to overcome the difficulties faced in adapting the Western Australian environment to the needs of transport. • Wooden Paved Road (site) is associated with Governor Hampton, who first proposed the design, and the convicts who constructed the road. • Those elements of Wooden Paved Road (site) now located at the City of Belmont’s museum will provide an educational resource for improving the understanding of colonial life in Western Australia.

Physical Description

There is no evidence of the former wood blocks at the site of their original location. Remnant blocks are held in the Belmont Museum collection and on display in the museum.

History

In the decades following settlement of the Swan River colony, colonists regularly complained about the condition of the road to Guildford (now called the Great Eastern Highway). Various efforts were tried to make the road usable, especially in winter, but little improvement was seen by travellers. Convicts started to arrive in the Colony from 1850, but by 1853 it became evident that the labour was not always being used efficiently. In particular, there was no improvement to the road to Guildford. A camp for road parties was established in Redcliffe at ‘Depot Hill’. It is likely that this camp was south of the Great Eastern Highway between the Tonkin Highway intersection and Brearley Avenue. Governor of Western Australia, John Hampton, announced in 1862 that he had given orders for the treatment of three miles (5 km) of road: I have issued instructions that wood is to be used in the formation of part of the unmade [Stirling Highway], and if the experiment in as successful as I have seen it in Canada, we may by that means be enabled to improve and cheapen our road-making. (Inquirer, 23 April 1862) Convicts cut down trees and, after placing them over sawpits, the trunks were cut into discs about 30cm thick. These were positioned alongside each other, and the space between compacted either with soil or crushed limestone. The discs were known as ‘Hampton’s Cheeses’ after the Governor. By September 1866, the discs were ready to be laid down on the road at Rivervale, and this work was undertaken from January 1867. In a later book, one resident wrote about how most roads in the State were in poor condition: I may make an exception, however, in favour of an application of wooden pavement by means of which the old sandy furrows… are now replaced by a good solid causeway fit for fast travelling. The miles of sand over which I passed when this road was in its transition state have since been bottomed with sections of great forest trees, the shape and size of which are best described thy their ordinary name of ‘Governor Hampton’s Cheese’. (Janet Millett, An Australian Parsonage, 1872) In 2012, during an upgrade to the Great Eastern Highway (as the road has been known since 1935), engineers uncovered a 20m stretch of the original Hampton’s Cheeses. After archaeological investigation, a number of the discs were transferred to the City of Belmont’s museum for display to the public.

Integrity/Authenticity

Integrity: N/A Authenticity: N/A

Condition

N/A

Uses

Historic Themes

Creation Date

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