Bucketty & Wollombi Community Groups
The Convict Trail Project was initiated by community groups in the Bucketty and Wollombi areas who saw the local convict relics in their areas becoming degraded and vandalised, through lack of interest or awareness on the part of any government agency responsible for the management of our heritage. With the support of their local council, they organised themselves under the auspice of the Tidy Towns scheme, which provided dollar for dollar funding for community based projects.
The Bucketty Tidy Bush community, having been upset at the theft of over 100 convict stones from the Bucketty Wall precinct, organised a number of working bees, under the supervision of an archaeologist. They removed built-up silt and debris from the curved approaches to a former convict-built bridge at Bucketty and subsequently obtained stone from a demolished building at Maitland. They engaged Albert Kraan, a local stonemason, to rework the stones and replace the Bucketty Wall section which had been stolen. The left hand picture shows the wall before work was done by Albert Kraan; the right hand picture was taken during the visit of the mobile crew, working in the distance.
The Murrays Run culvert had recently been bypassed by a realignment of the main road. From their observations, the Wollombi community had become concerned that some stones across the top of the culvert had collapsed. Under the auspices of the Wollombi/Laguna Tidy Valley Committee, they obtained professional advice. Albert Kraan was once more engaged to restore the collapsed section and make the culvert functional again. The Wollombi/Laguna Tidy Valley Committee, as did the Bucketty Tidy Bush Community, maintained the areas, put up signage, making the sites welcoming and clearly visible to the public. The Wollombi group also did some work on the Fernances Crossing Culvert, which had also been bypassed by the road re-alignment.
It was these neighbouring community's realisation that similar situations were probably happening elsewhere along the Great North Road that led them to encourage other community groups and agencies to form the Convict Trail Project. The Convict Trail Project has undertaken a number of conservation initiatives at various sites along the Great North Road. It has also encouraged and assisted other agencies and management authorities to under works for which they are responsible.
Overtures had already been made by these community groups to the Department of Corrective Services for the use of weekend detention labour to maintain the sites, but this proved difficult to organise. However, once the Project had developed a much broader base, and on-going work was clearly needed, discussion with the Minister for Corrective Services, Bob Debus, led to the involvement of a newly formed mobile prison crew, from the low security St Helliers Correctional Centre near Muswellbrook. There is more about the mobile crew and its operations in the next section.
