Could you imagine a young policeman these days, in his late 20s on constable’s wages, affording to build a hotel in Berrima? Then two years later build a two-storey, 11-room, stone and brick house with detached kitchen, stables and large food garden on 100 acres.
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It happened in the 1830s when James Harper built both Harper’s Mansion and the Surveyor General Inn after quitting his job as a constable at the Southern Highlands first township of Bong Bong in 1835.
This story began in 1799 when his father, William Harper, was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for horse stealing, but then had a let-off by being sent to Australia as a convict in 1800. While working at Parramatta he met Irish convict, Margaret Morgan, and in 1805 they produced James, who unlike his parents, had a chance to go to school.
James worked for a few influential landholders on farms and married a convict girl called Mary Robinson. He became a constable and in 1829 moved with Mary into a police huts at Bong Bong, beside the Wingecarribee River, the very first European settlement in the Southern Highlands.
His job was to keep an eye on the convicts. They were a rowdy lot with drunkenness, violence and theft, all daily occurrences. James also had to help round up bushrangers. He took on extra duties to earn a quid - deputy postmaster, the official bailiff, clerk to bench magistrates, inspector of weights and measures. He was initially paid £25 a year as a constable, but two years later this ambitious lad was appointed chief constable and coroner on £75 a year. James knew that Bong Bong was never going to work as a town. The land was flood-prone and the river dried up in summer. More significantly the new main south road had been re-surveyed through Berrima. This would be the new go-to town.
The next year he purchased land at Berrima beside the main road, where he built Surveyor General Inn. After the hotel was finished he resigned as chief constable, moving from Bong Bong with his wife to take up the hotel licence. That same year he borrowed £150 from a friend Richard Loseby, the licensee of the Argyle Inn at Bong Bong, to build a house on 100 acres up the hill from his Berrima hotel.
James died seven years after finishing the house at the age of 38, but 181 years later the mansion still overlooks Berrima. We will never know how he died. The coroner put it down to natural causes, although the report noted ‘he was intemperate at the time’ – perhaps a polite way of saying he had a few too many drinks.
Learn more about James Harper and the old Bong Bong Township at the National Trust Heritage Festival exhibition in Harper’s Mansion, Berrima, Saturdays and Sundays - 10.30am to 4pm until May 20.
