The last parcel of land that was granted to the first European landowner in the Milton-Ulladulla district is on the market.
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The historic Kendall Dale homestead is on 254 acres at Yatte Yattah, about four kilometres south of Milton. The property has been in the family since the 1820s and has been listed for sale with Raine and Horne Nowra for a minimum bid of $4.9 million.
Missionary and cedar cutter Thomas Kendall returned to New South Wales from stints in New Zealand and Chile. The Englishman was granted 1280 acres of land in 1827, north of the current township of Milton.
"There he ran cattle and felled timber utilising ticket-of-leave men for labour. Kendall travelled often from Ulladulla to Sydney but was drowned when his small boat, the Brisbane, was wrecked off Jervis Bay [in 1832]," the Sydney Morning Herald reported in 2008.
The centrepiece of the seven-bedroom, four-bathroom property is its Victorian, rendered homestead, circa 1848 to 1865 is set in "park like gardens" on the expansive rural block at 379a Princes Highway. It is currently a workable and productive beef cattle property and also includes a three by five acre lot subdivision on the southern end of property.
Thomas Kendall, Biography
Thomas Kendall was baptised on December 13, 1778 at North Thoresby, England. He was influenced by the revival of the Church of England during his upbringing.
Kendall left home at 14 and worked as a school monitor and schoolteacher in Lincolnshire. He married Jane Quickfall on November 21, 1803 and there were nine children of the marriage.
He struggled to make a living as a grocer and by 1808 he had applied to the Church Missionary Society to become a settler in New Zealand.
He set sail in May 1813 staying in Sydney, NSW until he was sent of an exploratory voyage to the Bay of Islands on the far-north east coast of the North Island in March 1814. He founded a mission under the patronage of Māori chiefs Ruatara of Te Hikutu and Hongi Hika of Ngai Tawake
The Encyclopedia of New Zealand describes Kendall as "an emotional, idealistic and self-torturing man, driven by evangelical zeal and seeking perfection, although believing at the same time in his own deep imperfection."
When opposed, as he often was by William Hall and John King with their more pragmatic, secular approach, "he was subject to outbursts of ungovernable temper".
He started at a school at Rangihoua on August 12, 1816, but it closed by the end of 1818 due a to a lack of supplies and trade. Kendall is known for his study of the Māori language. He had the first Māori book printed and published in 1815 A korao no New Zealand. A second book was published at the end of 1820.
Kendall, accompanied by Hongi Hika and the younger chief Waikato of Rangihoua, went to England to work with Professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge on the compilation of Māori grammar.
Kendall was ordained a priest in 1820, to preach specifically in New Zealand. He was known for defending the gun trade in which had also begun to deal by 1821.
Kendall was rumoured to have had an affair with Tungaroa, daughter of Rakau, the old tohunga of Rangihoua in late 1821. She had been taught by Kendall and was a servant at his house. Once the news broke he fled with her to a village near the mission station. The relationship ended in 1822.
He was dismissed from the Church in 1823 and Kendall agreed to leave. However, the boat on which his family embarked sank and he continued his life at Matauwhi.
His family remained there until they went to Chile in 1825. By 1827 he returned to Ulladulla to begin life as a timber cutter and farmer.
"Thomas Kendall pioneered the transcription of Maori; he also sought to understand Maori conceptualisations of their universe. He was destroyed by the hostility he encountered from the mission world. He was also blinkered by his religious preconceptions," it states in the The Encyclopedia of New Zealand