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Rediscovering Ginninderra:
Old Coach Road (Mulligans Flat)

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Patrick 'Pat' Cavanagh
The Cavanaghs became synonymous with the Mulligans Flat area, even though they first selected...

The first European settlers in the Mulligans Flat area of Gungahlin were William Ryan and John Gillespie. Ryan was living in the area when his son was born in 1844 and by 1856 he held a lease over a section of Mulligans Flat (Gillespie 1992:13). Gillespie lived in the Gungahlin area from 1844 and in 1852 he and his wife Mary Ann established the 'Horse Park' homestead, which is the oldest occupied homestead in the district.

Until 1861 the majority of landholders took up large blocks, or amalgamated smaller holdings into larger agglomerations (as in the case of the Rolfes and Gillespies, for example). The Robertson Land Act of 1861 saw a major increase in the selection of smaller holdings in the district. The selectors were limited, because of earlier land alienation, to the less desirable and less-well watered lands in the northern and western part of Gungahlin, and longer established landholders (and free selectors themselves) used the Robertson Act to extend their land holdings. Examples include Jemima and John Winter ('Red Hill', later Gungaderra), Henry Gozzard ('Aston'), as well as Thomas Gribble, Archibald McKeahnie, Edward Ryan, Timothy Ryan, John Walsh and William Ginn and Walter Ginn.

The Old Coach Road, constructed in 1880 was the main route which linked the early rural settlements in the Canberra/Queanbeyan region to Bungendore, Lake Bathurst and eventually Sydney. It was also a link between Bungendore and Gundaroo, offering a much shorter route than the former way via Queanbeyan and Canberra. It provided a valuable social function as well as essential services which included the mail coach, a means to get to school, church and other social activities and a supply route. The road was traversed on foot, by horse and cart, bullock drays and the single bushman/farmer on horseback. It soon became an important road linking dotted homesteads and isolated rural regions to the railhead at Bungendore after 1885. From there the train would make the long journey to Sydney more comfortable and efficient. The Old Coach Road also shortened the distance of traversing the region and thereby enhanced the quality of life for people on the land in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In the ACT the road ran through gentle sloping country, first passing the Mulligans Flat School, which opened in April 1896, near the Gundaroo Road junction and several of the early settlements and dwellings in the area, such as, "East View" owned by the Cavanagh family, 'The Retreat', 'Aston', 'Inglewood'—the home of Joseph and Elizabeth Winter, and finally Walter Ginn's property and orchard at "Dungarvon" as it crossed the border. For most of its route through Mulligans Flat the road was confined between 6-wire fence on its northern side and a log fence on its southern side and crossed the property boundaries by gateways across the road.

By the 1880's, however, it was not heavily utilised and most likely served only as a local link after the railway line linking Cooma, Queanbeyan and Bungendore was completed in September 1887 (Andrews et al. 1990: 6). The 1915 Federal Capital Territory Feature Map (Sheet 1) shows the route beginning at Gundaroo Road and running east to pass out of the ACT border on the lower slopes of Gooroo Hill (NSW). The road then turned southeast and later south and then linked with Macs Reef Road to cross the Lake George Range and join the Great Southern Road at Bungendore.

The term 'road' when applied to the Old Coach Road, and indeed many of the other rural links in the last decades of the nineteenth century is somewhat a misnomer. Like many of the rural link roads, the Old Coach Road was rutted, poorly maintained, often deteriorating into watery morasses at creek lines and low lying areas. It sometimes proved more a hindrance to progress and "one which outlived a good many of those who struggled" along it (Lea-Scarlett 1968: 89).

The Old Coach Road formed a link between the Gundaroo Road, and Bungendore linking up with Macs Reef Road in New South Wales. Although much of the original route of the Old Coach Road no longer exists in its original form, part of the section traversing Mulligans Flat Nature Reserve still retains a good deal of its original fabric and structural form. This section of the Old Coach Road is clearly defined, extending from the visitors' information board on the main walking trail east for approximately one km in an easterly direction towards the ACT/NSW border.

The road surface is compacted earth made from the naturally occurring geological elements and was most likely the original surface for much of its route through Mulligans Flat. This surface is evident for approximately one kilometre to a point adjacent to where a walking trail and bird walk trail meet. At this point a drainage line and a small artificial embankment form a barrier across the road and mark the visible termination of the road surface.

The Old Coach Road is a rare example of a nineteenth century transport link in an isolated rural region of what has since become the ACT. Where once there were a number of roads linking the rural homesteads and properties in the region and providing access to and from the region, many of these have disappeared from the landscape due to more recent development. These roads provided a mode of access between isolated rural homesteads and properties, and provided vital links for the bushman, the homesteader, the school child and churchgoer, the local magistrate or parson, the mail carrier and the bullock dray driver. The Old Coach Road also provided a major transportation link by which goods and services could reach the rural settlements of the Canberra area and by which the rural residents could travel and keep in contact with family members.

For a short period The Old Coach Road was the major link between the northern rural settlements and the railhead at Bungendore. The remnant of this road today demonstrates an important layer of ACT history in that it was a vital aspect of daily life, reflecting the connectivity and relationships between nineteenth century

[edited extract from Heritage Registration, Old Coach Road, 2011]

The following article, about the Old Coach Road orignally published in the Wamboin Whisper (October 2025), was kindly contributed by author David McDonald.

The 1882 dispute over the Old Coach Road, Mulligans Flat–Bywong–Bungendore, by
David McDonald

Have you ever visited Mulligans Flat Nature Reserve at Gungahlin, ACT, on the eastern side of Ginninderra? It is a beautiful Yellow Box-Blakely's Red Gum Woodland reserve that is understood to be '... the largest remaining patch of Yellow Box–Red Box woodland left anywhere in the world' [Lindenmayer, 2024, The forest wars: the ugly truth about what's happening in our tall forests, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, p. 221]. This ecological community is classified as Critically Endangered under both Commonwealth and ACT biodiversity legislation.

Soon after leaving the Nature Reserve's car park at Forde, you meet what is now known as the Old Coach Road. This is not a registered name, but is now widely used, particularly since, in 2011, the road was placed on the ACT Heritage Register. The Statement of Heritage Significance advises that '... there are few roads which have a level of intactness comparable to the Old Coach Road, able to bear testimony to the rural character of the nineteenth century including its gravel nature and tree-lined corridor. As such, it is a rare and notable example of this kind of place' [Australian Capital Territory 2011, Heritage (Decision about Registration for the Old Coach Road, Gungahlin) Notice 2011, Notifiable Instrument NI 2011 - 642, made under the Heritage Act 2004 section 42 Notice of Decision about Registration, ACT, Canberra, www.legislation.act.gov.au/ni/2011-642, p. 2].

But what has that got to do with the Bywong/Wamboin area? The answer is plenty, and the context was tensions over a road construction proposal in the 1880s. On 29 September 1882 a public meeting was held at Carroll's Hotel, Bungendore (now the 'Beehive' residence in Molonglo Street). It was '... one of the best attended we have seen, every person in town being represented, and all desirous of securing the object for which the meeting had been convened'. The object referred to was to discuss, and vote upon, a motion:

That it is the opinion of this meeting that our Member should immediately urge upon the Minister for Works the pressing necessity of placing at once upon the Supplementary Estimates a sufficient sum to make the road from Gininderra to Bungendore fit for public traffic, which would give the residents of Gininderra easier access to railway at Bungendore by 15 miles than to another point.
By this stage tenders had been let for the construction of the Goulburn to Bungendore section of the railway, with the expectation that it would reach Bungendore by 1885.

The following week, the Queanbeyan Age reported on a meeting of the Gundaroo Vigilance Committee at which this initiative was discussed. The meeting deplored:

... the actions of the Bungendore Vigilance Committee in trying to divert the Gininderra traffic from [the Gunning/Gundaroo/Queanbeyan] road. It was resolved that a public meeting be held next Saturday ... to take the matter into consideration as the committee think the centre of the earth should not be entirely snuffed out. The Bungendoreites defeated us in the matter of the railway, and we are not going to quietly allow them to wrest from us the traffic that passes through the place if we know it. So the Gundaroo and Gunningtes are taking time by the forelock. ... consequently we are not going quietly to submit to be put in the shade altogether<i>

The people of Ginninderra, however, were having nothing of this! The paper reported that:
<i>The people of Gininderra are determined to render every assistance in their power to aid the Bungendore folks in having the direct road between the two places named put in a state of thorough repair, as it is generally believed that even when the railway is opened to Queanbeyan, a large portion of the Gininderra people will avail themselves of the Bungendore station in preference to Queanbeyan, as there is very little difference in the distance, while there will be a saving of 18 miles trainage. I understand the road recently laid out, with the exception of one or two places, will be an excellent one when cleared. Great indignation is felt by the residents here at the assurance of the Gundaroo people in holding a meeting to consider what steps they would take to prevent us having this road put in repair. Like their impudence indeed [ 'Notes from Gininderra', Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 31 October 1882, p. 4].

The Gundaroo community meeting was duly convened.['Bungendore', Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 3 October 1882, p. 4.] The newspaper report on the meeting records that the chairperson:

'... said action had been taken because the Bungendore people were trying to divert the traffic there that should go through Gundaroo to Gunning. Mr W. Affleck, J.P., then said he had communicated with Mr Harcourt, J.P., respecting the road, and read the letter received in reply; after which he said he had been told that from the mountainous and rough character of the Bungendore road they need not fear that Gininderra traffic would go there<i/> ['Gundaroo', Queanbeyan Age, 17 October 1882, p. 2]

Additional arguments about the relative distances from Gundaroo to Bungendore in one direction and to Gunning in the other were also significant. Given that, the meeting resolved, unanimously, 'to leave matters as they are'.
This meant that the views of the Ginninderra folk and the 'Bungendoreites' prevailed, and the government decided to have the road surveyed.

The road was 'Preliminarily Notified' in the Gazette on 1 May 1883 (p. 2303), with the following description: <i>'Road from the Gundaroo and Bungendore Road, within W. Moore's 640 acres to the Ginninderra and Gundaroo Road, at the north-west corner of M. Walsh's 40 acres, C. P., portion No. 185, parishes of Bywong and Goorooyarroo, county of Murray,—being part of the road from Bungendore to Ginninderra.' In other words, the route of the road was from today's Bungendore Road, west along the track to the Macs Reef diggings (today's Macs Reef Road), across the Yass River, and continuing west to cross McLaughlins Creek (Sutton) and thence to the Old Gundaroo Road, Ginninderra (today's Amy Ackman Street, Forde).

The National Library of Australia (NLA) holds a plan of a survey of the western ca. 3.5 miles (5.6 km) of the road which states that it was surveyed in September 1880; see nla.gov.au/nla.obj-234003151. This may be the reason that the Heritage Register states that it was built in that year. The NLA's catalogue entry states, however, 'Estimated date of issue: 1883'. This may reflect an annotation to that date made at the foot of the plan. The 1883 date accords closely with the road's gazettal dates.

The Old Coach Road 'from Bungendore to Ginninderra', as the Gazette had it, was confirmed in the Gazette of 27 February 1885 (p. 1369), and was opened on 23 March 1886 ['Formal opening of parish roads', New South Wales Government Gazette, 23 March 1886, p. 1980.], 12 months after the opening of the Bungendore Railway Station. Its route can be clearly seen in the 1914 military map [Great Britain, War Office, General Staff, Commonwealth Section 1914, [Military survey of Australia]. Canberra, Australia, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-230577189.] online at nla.gov.au/nla.obj-230577189. Mulligans Flat is near the top-centre of the map. The road runs east from there, across Sutton Road to Macs Reef Road at the Yass River ford; 'Reardon' there is the 'Lumley' property. It follows today's Macs Reef Road and Bungendore Road to Bungendore.

Apparently, although the traffic on the road reduced following the opening of the Queanbeyan railway station in 1887, it was still well used two decades later, given the 1908 report of 'A large waggonette, drawn by four spanking horses, ... now plying daily between Mulligan's Flat and the Bungendore Freezing Works with rabbits. The turnout is the property of Mr. H. E. Gozzard, of Aston homestead.' (The 'Aston'[ 'Notes from Gininderra', Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 26 March 1908, p. 4.] was about 2 km south of the Old Coach Road.)

References

References for first article:

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