Lambrigg, Tharwa

Lambrigg was the site where Farrer conducted his work on genetic selection for his wheat varieties.

He was academically very advanced and won scholarships and medals which took him eventually to Cambridge University where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1868.

He qualified as a surveyor in 1875 and for the next eleven years worked with the New South Wales Department of Lands.

William Farrer called the property Lambrigg which was the name of the English village where his ancestors lived.

There were also horses and sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, turkeys and fowls which came under Nina’s special care.

The first building at Lambrigg was a homestead erected mainly for the farm worker and his family to live in.

Farrer decided that the setting of the house was to be facing the river and the north with the view from the front balcony being the winding Murrumbidgee and the surrounding blue hills.

The financial depression that struck rural Australia in 1890 ruined the De Salis family and they lost all their properties and were forced to sell Cuppacumbalong in 1894.

George and Henry De Salis, Nina's brothers, were working on the properties and were severely affected.

He died at Lambrigg of heart disease in 1906 and was buried on the property (see photo of his grave after his burial at bottom of page).

[11] He spent most of his childhood in Melbourne and at the age of 18 in 1932 went to Oxford University where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts Degree.

In 1939 at the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted in the armed forces and served in the Middle East, Greece and New Guinea and was in a battalion that invaded Normandy on D Day.