8.30At Ohio Creek, on Ohio Station
GPS S 30.9698° E 151.61396° Walcha S 30.97136° E 151.61307°
Walcha Grid Reference 675.48 727.47
8.30
At Ohio Creek, on Ohio Station
GPS S 30.9698° E 151.61396°
Walcha S 30.97136° E 151.61307°
Walcha Grid Reference 675.48 727.47
Ohio Homestead is the oldest surviving house in northern New South Wales and, with Salisbury Court, is one of the few New England homes remaining from the 1840s. It has an attractive setting looking down on the willow and elm lined Ohio Creek. The permanent water hole in the creek probably first determined its position. It is surrounded and protected by mature pine and elm trees.
The Ohio run was first taken up in about 1836 by John Herring Boughton, who lived at Tillimby on the Paterson River in the Hunter Valley. The squatting run took its name from the Ohio Creek which was possibly named by Colonel Henry Dumaresq whose sheep grazed in New England from 1835. Dumaresq had been in North America and may have given the names Ohio, Kentucky and New England to parts of the tablelands when he established his base at Saumarez. In 1839 Ohio consisted of three slab huts where eight men lived, and it had a five acre paddock of wheat, 3 285 sheep, nine head of cattle and one horse. In 1841 there were thirteen men at Ohio, mostly assigned convicts working as shepherds.
In 1842 Boughton sold his depasturing licence to Abraham Nivison, a Scotsman from Sanquhar, Dumfreisshire. He had sailed from Scotland in July 1839 with his bride, Mary Wightman, whom he had married a fortnight earlier. The couple Joined Mary's brother, A.S.Wightman, in the Hunter Valley where they gained experience of colonial farming and considered where to settle, Wightman probably guided them to the tablelands which he knew from his period as Dumaresq's superintendent. The climate and the pastoral potential would have appealed to the couple and they probably bought the run cheaply in the midst of a severe drought and economic slump.
The Nivison's first child, a girl, was born in the Hunter in 1840 and their second, a son, was born in 1842. He died at Ohio before his second birthday and was buried just outside the garden fence. Eventually three sons and three daughters were raised at Ohio. Mary Nivison died in November 1873 but Abraham lived there till his death in April 1895. The house was empty for a few years but in about 1900 the eldest son, James Alexander, moved into the house with his wife and their eleven children from their earlier home, the Glen, a few miles up the Ohio Creek.
After the deaths of James in 1913 and his widow in 1931, the house passed to a grandson of James, another James Nivison. In 1950 the house and some outbuildings were taken over by the Church of England which used them for some years as a boys' home and later a conference centre. In 1970 the home and about 25 acres was bought back from the Church by descendants of Abraham Nivison who now own the property as Ohio Homestead Pty. Ltd.
Ohio Homestead was built in three main stages. The first building was a single storey cottage of four rooms each with a fireplace. Directly behind the house was a kitchen building and nearby was a three roomed store with a large loft roof. These three buildings, the first stage, were built from about 1842. They were all constructed of two foot thick stone rubble outer walls covered with a lime render. The interior walls were of lath and plaster over split slabs, and the roofs were of wooden shingles. In the second stage, perhaps in the 1850s, small rooms were added to each end of the. cottage to enclose a back verandah, and a new roof was built with six dormer windows, each providing light for an upstairs bedroom. Two of these bedrooms had fireplaces. An open eastern verandah was probably added at this stage.
With the third stage of building in the mid 1860s, the house achieved its present external appearance. To reflect the family's prosperity and social standing a fine drawing room was added to the north with two smaller rooms opening off it, This addition had a higher ceiling than the older sections so that the bedrooms and store rooms above it had lower ceilings. The rendered stone wall construction was continued in this extension but larger windows were used on the ground floor.
Extensive renovations were made to the house and the property before J.A.Nivison moved in with his large family in about 1900. Pressed metal "Wunderlich" ceilings were installed for the ground floor rooms, a new pine staircase was built, and timber ceilings and fibro cement walls were used in the redesigned upper level. Gas lighting was installed. A brick bathroom was attached to the western verandah, new timber buildings were added to the west and south of the old kitchen, and a three-room timber office building with bedrooms was built for some of the sons. A specially designed cottage was provided for the laundry woman, cedar stables and other station buildinge were grouped in the nearby paddocks, and a large shearing shed equipped for machine shearing was completed in 1903. In the 1930s a large timber kitchen was joined to the western verandah and changes were made to the interior of the house. After 1950, in the Boys' Home period, further additions were made on the western side of the house. In 1983 the unsympathetic and deteriorating additions of the 1930s and 1950s were demolished and in 1985 extensive renovations were made: for the first time the house gained central heating, an internal bathroom, and kitchen.