Hunter Living Histories

“Gold Is The Colour At Black Hill”

By Athel D’Ombrain

Black Hill is a small farming area about seven miles south of Maitland, N.S.W. and notable for about seven orchards tucked away in the midst of fairly dense eucalypts.

It is notable for a particular reason, for this is the one place in Australia where the early mandarines known as Oonshi variety are grown. A few other places do grow some but as one fruit expert said, there are only two places where Oonshi mandarins are grown best, one is Japan, the other is Black Hill.

After the early mandarines are finished the whole area near the orchards, blossoms out into a great mass of golden blooms from a species of wattle known as Acacia fimbriata, literally painting the hilside gold. To add to this at Mr Osborne’s orchard “Midway” another unusual citrus variety adds its bit of gold to the picture. These are the Tangelos a cross between a Grape Fruit and a Mandarine, but these are a product of California.

The Fringed Wattle, to give it a common name, is a species from the Northern Tablelands of N.S.W. but have appeared here some years ago in a pocket of bush and are now spread out all along the boundaries of the orchards. many of the trees are twenty feet and over and spread out to interlock their branches forming great masses of golden blooms. On Mr Osborne’s orchard, the wattles form a backdrop to the green and gold of the big juicy tangelos, which they start picking in early October.

The Oonshi mandarines are from Japan, where eighty percent of mandarines are of this variety.

They have been grown here by the Osborne family for seventy years but the present generation have the added beauty of Tangelos with a hillside of golden Fringed wattles to add to this beauty.

Where the roadway passes the entrance, a large colony of bellbirds live, including the beautifully gold and black plumaged male regent bower bird, so gold is indeed the colour for this tranqil setting even if it has the unattractive name of Black Hill.

 

Athel D’Ombrain
Honorary Associate Australian Museum
[1973]

 

Archivist’s Note

We hold the the archive of photographic negatives of the late Athel D’Ombrain. The were donated to the University Archives in the Auchmuty Library in February 1982. D’Ombrain was invited to become a Convocation Visiting Scholar at the University of Newcastle in 1981.

Local Treasures: The Athel D’Ombrain Archive

One of his roles as Convocation Visiting Scholar was to work with Denis Rowe (the then University Archivist) in the Archives in the Auchmuty Library, in cataloguing his photographs and organising the articles he had written for the Newcastle Herald. According to his son, Mr Robin D’Ombrain, he wrote a total of 995 articles for the Newcastle Herald. Athel D’Ombrain died in 1985, age 83 years.

In 2011 while preparing some publicity on the digitisation and uploading to our Flickr Site of the D’Ombrain negatives, we reviewed the holdings and found that while we held the negatives, we could not see any of the newspaper articles that we supposedly held.

We had remained in contact with Robin for many years, as each request for reproduction had to be approved. Robin was a staunch supporter of the University Archives. As copyright owner of his father’s work, whilst securing open access, he also mandated that for commercial requests for reproduction, a fee was to be paid to the University Archives and used for general funds for the archives, and not specifically to his father’s photographic collection. The digital age changed everything. We did ask Robin about the news articles, but he was unable to locate them, and so their whereabouts remained a mystery.

It was only after the death of Robin D’Ombrain, and thanks to daughter in law, Kirsten Gorton, that all 995 newspaper articles came to light, hidden among papers, photographs, books & artefacts at the family home. They along with nine boxes of material (including possible thousands of additional negatives and prints) plus large format items were finally brought into University custody in April 2023, thus completing the donation transfer begun in 1981.

It was while researching another enquiry that we came upon Athel’s charming little piece on the gold of Black Hill. We would like to ask the people of Black Hill if any of these Oonshi mandarins are still there? If not, then why not plant some? Where was Mr Reg Osborne’s orchard? Is it still there? What of the tangelos? The bellbirds and regent Bower Birds? Is “gold” still the colour at Black Hill?

Gionni Di Gravio OAM
University Archivist & Chair, Hunter Living Histoiries