“The first sitting of the Supreme Court of Victoria on the Goldfields was right across from the ‘chain’ tree in Goldsmith Crescent with Judge Redmond Barry (the judge who later hanged Ned Kelly) presiding”
“We would leave school, and hang out at what is now the historical society and smoke.”
Max, whose great grandmother, Jessie Kennedy, was the first white baby born in Castlemaine, remembers the Grey box tree outside the old Court house on Goldsmith Cresent as still having the chains around the trunk which had been used to detain those awaiting trial at the court. As he got older and the tree grew, it grew over the chains, but he is convinced if the tree were to be cut down those chains would still be there.
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