Sarah Wentworth
My Fathers Were But Strangers Here
William Charles Wentworth was a nineteenth century hero in a land still described by twentieth century commentators as possessing no heroes
Museum stories
Not a lovelier site
‘There is not a lovelier site in the known world’, wrote the Sydney-born barrister and novelist John Lang about the Wentworth family’s estate of Vaucluse
Promised in marriage, courting in Colonial NSW
Free men and women who courted were considered to be ‘promised in marriage’. When a promise of marriage was broken—or breached—the offending party could be pursued through the civil courts for the value of ‘lost expectations’
Reviving Vaucluse House
The drawing room refurbishment draws upon authentic sources and traditional trades to re-create a room that the Wentworths might have known, while the orientation room has been redesigned to enhance visitors’ understanding of the site’s complex history
The leprechaun in the garden
Most of us have some childhood memory – or something half-imagined, half-remembered – of a garden of seemingly infinite adventure, far from the reasonable world of grown-up things