Connections

The discovery of a historic timber base during roadworks on the Avondale Estate earlier this summer should not have come as a surprise.

The dozens of split logs (pictured) unearthed 400 millimetres below the surface of Central Road, which leads from Freemans Drive to Avondale College's Lake Macquarie campus and the Sanitarium Health Food Company factory, were a typical base for roads in Cooranbong in the 1800s. The logs, cut most likely from trees on the estate and milled at the college, were sturdy enough to withstand use from horse-drawn carriages and early motorised vehicles, but not the semi-trailers now making deliveries to the college and factory. The workers resurfacing the road initially used shovels to remove the logs but eventually resorted to a grader and backhoe.

"I wonder how many people have crossed these logs over the years?" asks Rose-lee Power, curator of the Adventist Heritage Centre, a research centre based on the Lake Macquarie campus. "If only they could talk, what tales would they tell?"