MANNERING PARK

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Mannering Park is a small township located on an isolated peninsular on the southern shores of Australia's largest and most picturesque salt water lake, Lake Macquarie. (Mannering Park Community Website) (Image taken March 2017 by Hazel)

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Mannering Park was originally settled by Edward Garth who owned the area of Mannering Park north of Waverley Road. James Vale who utilised the land for farming and logging came to Mannering Park in 1911. (Mannering Park Community Website) (Image taken March 2017 by Hazel)

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The abundance of fish led to the establishment of commercial fishing on the lakes. (Mannering Park Community Website) (Image taken March 2017 by Hazel)

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In the early 1960's the Vales Point Power Station was constructed in the area, along with the associated coal mines. The influx of people to staff the power station and mines led to the need to establish education facilities in Mannering Park. (Mannering Park Community Website) Image taken March 2017 by Hazel)

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Mannering Park has now become a unique town isolated from any further housing development by the bushland buffer zone to the south and the lake to the north. Yet, although isolated, Mannering Park is still close to the transport, shopping centres, beaches and mountains that all make up the wider area referred to as the Central Coast. (Mannering Park Community Website) (Image taken March 2017 by Hazel)

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Within reason you could buy anything you wanted from the Farmers store – anything from bread and butter and jam t a hammer and nails. It was also the post office, and papers were sold there. They did not bake their own bread but had it sent down daily by rail from Newcastle. In general they gave good service, but they did not sell meat. That we bought from a butcher at Burwood in Sydney who regularly forwarded it by train to Wyee where we collected it. We usually went to Wyee about twice a week in a cart or on horseback for our supplies. When our first home was built the materials and furniture where hauled from Wyee Station by bullock team; but later when my brother Rupert built his home in 1923 the materials were brought from Dora Creek by our own barge which by that time we had acquired for transporting the timber, which we cut in our mill, to various places around the lake including Cockle Creek. (From the Memoirs of James Vinrace Vale) (Image taken in August 2017 by Hazel)

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Fishermen based on Dora Creek used to come into the bay and haul for mullet – the place was alive with them. Sometimes they would catch as many as 300 baskets of them. They could not send them all away, so they used to enclose them in wire netting and held in place by stakes and keep them alive until such time as they could send them to the Sydney markets by rail. Quite a number of the fish would die and a terrible smell would come from there so we called the place Stinking Point because of it. (From the Memoirs of James Vinrace Vale) Image taken in March 2017 by Hazel)

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There was plenty of wildlife in the bush – possums, koalas, wallabies and birds. Miners from Catherine Hill Bay would come across and shoot everything about the place.I recall one afternoon when some of these “sportsmen” were shooting where the memorial park is now, which was heavily timbered then. They shot a koala which they badly wounded. These loveable creatures cry out pitifully like little human babies when in distress. My father heard the shooting and the wailing. Very angry, he rushed down to the scene with a gun and threatened the intruders if they didn’t get off the place at once. They saw that he meant it and made a hasty retreat. The koala was so badly injured that my father had to shoot it to put it out of its misery. (From the Memoirs of James Vinrace Vale) (Image taken in August 2017 by Hazel)

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When my father first came with his two older sons to occupy his 720 acre property they travelled by road via Wisemans Ferry which was the road route from Sydney to the north in those times. The Pacific Highway did not come into use until about twenty years later. (From the Memoirs of James Vinrace Vale) (image taken March 2017 by Hazel)

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Mannering Park is a suburb of the Central Coast region of New South Wales, Australia. It is part of the Central Coast Council local government area. It was formerly called Vales Point. (From Where is) (Image taken March 2017 by Hazel)