![]() There is another cryptic clue in the single architectural drawing surviving in the Meroogal collection. Tottie has a cryptic reference in her diary for 22 August 1891 that “Uncle finished Mrs McKay’s house, came home for good.” “To Miss Katie Billis” It is possible that other buildings may be attributed to Kenneth McKenzie. This new house was completed in September 1889. Roderick Macgregor was married to Kenneth’s niece Mary Susan Thorburn and the Macgregors lived on a farm called Torrisdale at Cambewarra. Kenneth McKenzie’s niece Tottie Thorburn, who lived in Cambewarra with her uncle and grandparents in the 1880s, records another building project in her diary: she noted on 1 August 1888 that Uncle Kenny and Roderick Macgregor “drew out a nice plan for their new house”. His other, documented, buildings in Cambewarra are later and include the School of Arts, for which he was the successful tenderer in January 1879 and the Cambewarra Union Church which opened in July 1900. Kenneth is supposed to have designed and built this house in 1867, following Georgina’s marriage to Samuel in 1866. This house, called Llanthony is, like Meroogal, a two-story timber house, with picturesque gables and bargeboards and a decorative Gothic bay window. In Cambewarra Kenneth designed a house for his sister Georgina and her husband Samuel Matthews, the Cambewarra storekeeper. Meroogal has many mementoes of Uncle Kenny, including a collection of small cream jugs and several examples of his woodwork. Tottie’s diaries record a steady stream of visitors to the house, friends and family coming to tea, staying overnight sometimes, sometimes staying longer. He lived at Fairfield with his elderly parents until their deaths, his niece Tottie Thorburn keeping house. ![]() In his 50s he proposed marriage twice but was turned down on both occasions. ![]() Kenneth McKenzie did not marry although he had some admirers, judging by a couple of Victorian valentines that were sent to him when he was in his 30s. He was also a keen naturalist and bushman. He played cricket and tennis and took up bowls at the age of 85. In the early 1870s, “when rowing was all the rage on the Shoalhaven”, he was an expert oarsman, and took part in several regattas held at Numba. The Shoalhaven Telegraph described him in 1922 as someone who was “keen on all manly sports”. He played the flute, performing regularly at local concerts - in aid of the Cambewarra Presbyterian Sunday School in support of the prize fund of Cambewarra Public School to celebrate the opening of the new hall for the Nowra School of Arts in May 1892. He was present at the foundation of the Nowra Highland Society in 1884 and also a foundation member of the Nowra Choral Society. Kenneth McKenzie was an active member of the Presbyterian church, serving as an elder for many years. When he returned to Cambewarra around 1871 he set up as a builder and is listed as such in the New South Wales Post Office directory for 1872. The remaining members of the McKenzie family moved to higher ground at Cambewarra, building a house which they called Fairfield.Ĭambewarra remained Kenneth McKenzie’s home for the rest of his life although he spent some years away from the district in the 1850s and 60s, working on the goldfields at Mitchell’s Creek near Bathurst. By that time Kenneth’s eldest sisters had married and left home. On arrival the McKenzie family went to Jamberoo, working at first as farm labourers before moving on after a few years to a leasehold farm at Terara on the Shoalhaven River - only to lose their house and nearly all their possessions in a massive flood in February 1860. The family embarked on an emigrant ship called the James Moran which sailed from Ullapool in October 1838 and landed at Sydney in February 1839. Like thousands of their fellow Highlanders they left Scotland in the 1830s, seeking a better life in Australia. The McKenzies, like most Highlanders, were Gaelic speakers, making a difficult living as shepherds and farm labourers in the aftermath of decades of Highland clearances part of a population swelled beyond sustainability on marginal land. Kenneth McKenzie was born around 1835 in the parish of Lochbroom, Ross Shire, on the north-west coast of Scotland, the youngest child of Thomas and Mary McKenzie.
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