Cultural Items of Significance
Harry Smith was a businessman who owned land in what is now the Marsfield area. Smith created a picnic area on the banks of the river, which has long since returned to nature, but a set of stone steps can still be seen at the top of the slopes above the river, lining up with Culloden Road. It is likely that Smith had these steps built to provide access to the picnic area. Smith also had a quarry in the area, from which he obtained the stone to build his mansion, Curzon Hall. The latter was built circa 1899 and is located at the intersection of Balaclava and Agincourt Roads. The name Curzon came from his wife's name: Isabella Curzon Webb. The building was purchased by the Vincentian Fathers in 1922 and turned into a Catholic seminary. In 1983 it was acquired for business purposes and became a function centre. Curzon Hall is listed on the New South Wales Heritage Register as a site of significance.
The river is known for being the site of the mysterious deaths of Dr Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler on 1 January 1963. The cause of their deaths has never been established; but there is a strong theory that the two deaths may have been caused by accidental hydrogen sulphide poisoning, due to the build-up of the poisonous gas beneath the river bed that formed both naturally and by pollutants from nearby factories along the river. The incident has always been known as the Bogle-Chandler case.
Read more about this topic: Lane Cove River
Famous quotes containing the words cultural, items and/or significance:
“The men who are messing up their lives, their families, and their world in their quest to feel man enough are not exercising true masculinity, but a grotesque exaggeration of what they think a man is. When we see men overdoing their masculinity, we can assume that they haven’t been raised by men, that they have taken cultural stereotypes literally, and that they are scared they aren’t being manly enough.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness—a color, a weight, a texture—that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)