Perhaps you’ve noticed the harbour views from this open green space. This is Cadia Park. It’s a place with a story that stretches back over a century.
Cadia Park wasn’t always a park. Once, it was part of a 42-acre grant owned by James G. Wilson. He even built a house called Myrtlebank.
Fast forward to 1913. Charles Hoskins, an iron-foundry owner, purchased five acres of this land. The Hoskins Bros firm was a major manufacturer of iron pipes in Australia. Charles and his brother George had been running it since 1875. In 1907, they acquired the first modern blast furnace plant in Australia at Lithgow.
But why did Charles Hoskins come to the Blue Mountains? It’s a poignant tale. His daughter Nellie suffered from tuberculosis. Grief compounded her illness when her elder sister Hilda died in a car crash in 1912. Hoskins sought a mountain estate for Nellie’s health.
So, in 1913, he bought this land in Bullaburra. Cadia Park house was completed in 1914. Sadly, Nellie passed away that same year, never enjoying her new home.
The bereaved parents, Charles and Emily, did live at Cadia Park for some time. Charles built a stone rotunda from ironstone. He named the property Cadia Park after the source of Lithgow’s iron-ore. Interestingly, Cadia didn’t supply iron-ore to Hoskins’ blast-furnaces until 1918. However, the firm was surveying a potential rail link to Cadia by 1915.
Hoskins expanded the property. He acquired another 36 acres and leased a small reserve opposite Cadia Park. Here, he created a fine garden and a small menagerie. It housed koalas, wallabies, and birds.
In 1922, Charles and Emily moved to Elizabeth Bay. They sold Cadia Park to E. and E. Davies. Then, in 1923, Sir Arthur Rickard, a land developer, bought it. Rickard sold Cadia Park to Henry Swain in 1927 due to financial difficulties.
Swain then sold the property in 1930 to the Benedictines. This Catholic order used the Hoskins mansion as a nunnery. They built a new west wing. Two Benedictine Sisters and a Mother Mary were buried here in the early 1930s.
In 1949, the property transferred to the Sisters of St Joseph. This order was founded by Mary McKillop. The sisters built a chaplain’s cottage, a handyman’s cottage, and a steam laundry. In the 1970s, it served as a rest home for Sisters. Two more Sisters and a Mother Mary were buried on the site. Sadly, their graves are no longer evident.
A devastating bushfire in December 1977 destroyed all the buildings except the laundry and the Hoskins’ rotunda. Cadia Park has remained disused for over two decades.
Today, as you enjoy the views of Sydney Harbour from Cadia Park, remember its layered past. It was once a family’s hope, a Catholic sanctuary, and now a peaceful green space.