Minders of Tuggeranong Homestead: Jenny Horsfield nurtures Canberra heritage

In 1916, Mary Cunningham had almonds harvested from trees at Tuggeranong Homestead, now in the suburb of Calwell, packed for shipment overseas to the troops for World War I.

Thomas Charles Weston (1866-1935), the great horticulturist and arboriculturist of Canberra, was so impressed by the bounty of the crop that he asked the Cunninghams for permission to take some of the nuts to raise new trees for the Federal Territory gardens and orchards.

War correspondent and historian C.E.W. Bean (1879-1968) noted that, in a photo taken in the 1880s, almond trees near the house were at least 80 years old. Bean lived there for five years from 1919 and married Effie Young in 1921.

Minders of Tuggeranong Homestead (MOTH) was established in 1993 to lobby for heritage protection for a site of national importance that was under threat of subdivision and development.

Jenny Horsfield has been with MOTH since the late 1990s. At the recent launch at Tuggeranong Homestead of Peter Rees ' book on C.E.W. Bean, Bearing Witness, a fine country afternoon tea was served in the main living room, a central place in the house for the Cunninghams and Bean's staff. The catering was done by MOTH's Rebecca Lamb, Lynn Forceville, Jan Trask, Elizabeth Conway, who made a quince cake, and Jenny Horsfield, who made raspberry muffins.

Having studied the history of the site, Horsfield says a fig tree in the garden dates from the 1920s and it was raised from a slip taken from a much earlier tree. A young Ruby seedless grapevine grows around the verandah on the old part of the house, a pise rammed earth structure built for Mary and Jim Cunningham in 1908. Grapes were grown at Tuggeranong in the 1840s when Sheriff Thomas Macquoid brought cuttings from the MacArthur estates near Sydney. The property, at that date, was called "Waniassa" (sic).

Mary Cunningham brought asparagus crowns to Tuggeranong from her family home at Riversdale in Goulburn where her father, former NSW surveyor General Edward Twynam, had an asparagus bed in his garden that featured in local newspaper articles.

An old orchard lies on the northern side of old Tuggeranong Creek and it served the early householders with a wide variety of fruit trees.

Rob and Jenny Horsfield came to Canberra 30 years ago after living in London for seven years. They built their home in Kambah for their young family and Jenny started the garden. This season she is harvesting potatoes, pumpkins, carrots, silver beet, beetroot and zucchini. She has brassicas, cabbages and broccoli, under cloches for the winter, and has planted broad beans for the spring. A Croatian friend gave her garlic to plant 25 years ago and the offspring still produce a good garlic crop each year.

Jenny says this has been a great raspberry season and she has picked a bowl of berries every day during February, March and up to mid-April. A pair of chooks, one Isa brown and a black Orpington, are happy birds that get plenty of free range pecking when Jenny is out in the garden. Their eggs and the raspberries feature in Jenny's muffins.

***MOTH will be hosting "Green Army" teams on May 14 and May 21 to work in the orchard which has been replanted with plums, peaches and hazelnuts, in the remnant woodland and creek line which is being re-established with native vegetation. People interested in MOTH's work are welcome to join them. Contact Jenny by email: robhorsfield@bigpond.com.

Raspberry muffins

Take one beaten egg, add half a cup of sugar, quarter cup of olive oil, one cup of milk. Then add half a cup of Greek yoghurt (Jenny makes her own) and one cup of raspberries, fold in two cups of sifted wholemeal self-rising flour. Bake in greased muffin trays in a moderate oven until brown on top, about 20 minutes. May be frozen for later use. (Footnote: Jenny serves her raspberry muffins on her mum's little Royal Albert plate. If you want another mouthful of raspberries for your mother, Canberra Handmade in Civic stocks the perfect jam from Montrose Berry Farm in Sutton Forest.)

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.