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William Andrew Murphy (1841-1927) the Hermit of Hat Hill Road, Blackheath

The following is based a transcription from an oral history recording held by Blue Mountains City Library.

Mr Murphy as remembered by Jack and Ted Harris who, during their schooldays, became acquainted with the old solitary who lived at the foot of Hat Hill overlooking the blue expanse of the Grose Valley.

“At this particular spot there was an old gentleman, an old Irishman, by the name of Murphy who with his own hands had built himself a stone house. The stones he collected from the area, a very very rocky area. He used the local soil and mud mixed together for mortar and he built himself what was quite a weather proof and comfortable little cabin.

Now I don’t really know how Mr Murphy took up residence there. I first remember him in 1913 but he was a man, I think, who would be known as a remittance man. I think he probably had been sent out here to Australia because of the fact that maybe he had disgraced himself in his homeland. However, he lived out there, he made his daily trip into Blackheath, which was a five mile trip return, to pick up his money and to buy his provisions.

He was a great nature studier and he fed all the animals and birds in the area and, of course, they became more or less dependent on him for food. And a most interesting man to talk to and one of the attractions of a Sunday afternoon was for our tourist coach to take people, tourists, out to see Mr Murphy just about sundown, all congregate at his stone hut and then he would bring out the food and whistle and call up the animals and they would come – wallabies, possums, all sorts and sizes of birds – and it was something which you would liken to a miniature Taronga Park.

Well, Mr Murphy lived on there for many years and he was no trouble to anybody. He was always happy to interview people, talk to them, discuss the local environment and so on. Then he set his hands to making what would be a millet broom out of a particular shrub which grows in that area and he made a machine to make what looked like a very, very good replica of our millet broom today. But unfortunately for Mr Murphy, although his machine worked wonderfully, as my dad always said, when his brooms dried you had to have another broom to sweep up the mess that his broom left.

However, Mr Murphy was burnt out in a bushfire very similar to the Grose Valley fire of November 1983. He was completely wiped out and we up here on the top end of Hat Hill Road thought for sure that Mr Murphy must be incinerated. That bushfire occurred somewhere around 1918-1919. When the fire cooled off I can remember quite plainly a party of us set out to find what we thought would be his remains and what we found was his stone house still standing, red-hot, no roof, nothing at all left inside it, everything charred and Mr Murphy missing. Scouting around we found the old gentleman, only just barely clad, standing underneath a little waterfall which was his shower, his own private ablution, and he was alive. So a voluntary party set out to make his stone house habitable again. Of course, the old gentleman had received quite a great shock over this fire and he was not able to get about as he did before. He was given a horse as transport but that didn't work out and the horse escaped. From then on we feel that Mr Murphy was picked up by some of the welfare people and taken to a home.”

Further research has revealed that Mr Murphy started living in Hat Hill Road around 1913 and left Blackheath around 1926, the date of the photo, he was then taken in by the Drane Family of Kogarah where he died in 1927 aged 81 and is buried in Woronora Cemetery, his grave has been recently restored by their grandson Charlie Drane.

Although his brooms were a main source of income, for which he constructed a binding machine utilising cotton reels for pulleys, he augmented this by fortune telling and collecting tips from tourists. His drinking water came from a spring near his hut, but he used the waterfall on a nearby creek for bathing, it was probably the latter that saved his life in the bush fire. His horse which died in the fire was given to him by the Byron brothers who ran a dairy in Blackheath.

His obituary reads:

"HAT HILL’S HERMIT DEAD

Lived life of loneliness for years

Why did Mr W Murphy turn recluse and live a life of almost complete isolation in a little wooden hut which he constructed amid the rugged splendour of Hat Hill?
For years he lived there and in his loneliness won the affection of many plumaged birds in the adjacent bush. The wild thrush used to perch on his shoulder and eat meat from his hand.
He had a fine, generous nature, it is said of him. But he didn’t die in his little hut in the foothills. Instead he died at the residence of Mrs Drane, Wallace Street, West Kogarah, on Wednesday night.
Those who knew 'The Hermit of Hat Hill' will regret to hear of his death.&qu

Nobody will look at this. But it's really cool. Because it's a 12x optical zoomed panorama stitched from four quad-aperture HDRIs. Which is boring. 16 photographs each with shutter speed of 30 seconds went into making this, what a waste of time ;)

Two policemen came up to us whilst photographing this. I think someone was smoking weed and they thought it might be us. One nodded his head and said, with a cockney lilt, "long exposure is it sir?" No kidding.

In order to find out how to import an evaluated white balance, Zoe and I had to drive around Primrose Hill to find an open internet access point to download the camera manual :)

Anyway, it's a bit blurry, there is some distortion, and it's not as visually impressive as I'd hoped. And goodness knows why the contrast isn't matched because the apertures, exposures etc. were constant. But I'm pleased with the whitebalance! I guess capturing a horizon in great detail in the middle of the night is harder than I thought.