New page – John Olxey and the chain of ponds

Happy Easter!

Though I’m feeling slightly guilty for being inside when the weather is so stunning, I’m glad to announce that I’ve posted a new page to the site. John Oxley and the chain of ponds explores Oxley’s trip up the Brisbane River in September 1824, during which he landed near Western Creek and discovered a “chain of ponds watering a fine valley”. I’ve done my best to explore not only what Oxley’s observations can tell us about Western Creek, but also what our knowledge of Western Creek can tell us about just where Oxley may have landed and discovered the chain of ponds.

I hope you enjoy it. And as ever, please let me know if you have any insights to share, any questions to raise, or if you simply happen to find a mistake!

-Angus

Site performance issues

Over the 24 hours or so that the site has been live, I’ve found that on my PC it occasionally runs very slowly, sometimes to the point of pages timing out altogether. I’ve noticed some other occasional glitches too, like the picture at the top of the page not loading. Both have these problems have occurred while viewing the site with Mozilla Firefox, and both of them seem to get fixed if I clear the browser cache (‘Tools’>’Options’>’Advanced’>’Offline storage’ in the Firefox menu).

If anyone else experiences these or other problems, please let me know by contacting me or leaving a comment below. Let me know also if clearing the cache, or some other action, has helped to resolve them.

The site seems to run a bit quicker on Google Chrome, and without issue so far. I haven’t yet dared to view it in Microsoft Internet Explorer (so much for pre-release testing!).

-Angus

Hello world!

Welcome to oncewasacreek.org!

After a very lengthy gestation period, I am excited to finally have the site online. Now I get to find out if it makes sense to anyone else!

This site is a work in progress. There are pages still to be written, and many that have been written will surely undergo further development as I find the time and inspiration to work on them. When I add or revise anything of interest, I will be sure to post about it here in the Newsroom.

There’s no right and wrong way to explore this site, but I suggest starting with the pages that describing the creek, its course and its catchment. Then you may want to look at the essay about the story of Gregory Park, which is the first of what (I hope) will be a series of essays exploring the history of different parts of the Western Creek catchment.

I’d love to hear your feedback about the site, and for you to share your own knowledge and thoughts about Western Creek and its catchment. You can leave comments at the bottom of some pages (like this one), but for most topics I suggest using The forum to share your thoughts. Otherwise you can email me via the Contact page. Given that the site has only just gone live, there are bound to be glitches here and there – if you spot one, please let me know!

Finally, you can read a little bit more about the site, and about me, on the About page.

I hope you enjoy the site!
-Angus