Regand Park deeds acquired after bizarre midnight visit
WHEN Sydneysider James John Brown heard about the mystery surrounding Regand Park’s origins, he knew that there was a connection with his family but that it wasn’t quite the story that people expected.
As the grandson of James Buckley Brown and Catherine Brown, James (who is now known as John) clearly recalls the circumstances of the Brown family’s acquisition of the former dairy homestead which now lends its name to an entire area of Dubbo.
“That James Buckley Brown had been the owner at one time is false,” he explained.
“It was acquired by his wife, Mrs C Brown after he passed away.”
Born in 1846, Brown was the son of an English father and Irish mother, and became a prominent citizen and local land owner. Marion Dormer’s well-known book “Dubbo to the turn of the century” indicates that Mr Brown was the home’s owner at one point.
“It is thought to have been built for James Buckley Brown c.1884.”
However, John states that his grandmother’s association with the home came after his grandfather had already passed away in 1928.
Prior to his death, Mr Brown had been an established property owner.
“He’d had a station in Queensland and they lived at 74 Brisbane Street.
“But my grandfather had a lot of trouble with the bank, he went broke,” John explained.
John, who left Dubbo at the age of 23, tells of the strange circumstances by which his late grandmother acquired Regand Park.
“In the middle of the night, there was a knock on the door and she came out with a candle. Her bank manager was at the door, he told her to come up to the bank at 8 o’clock the next morning.
“The next day, he handed her the deeds to the house because the banks were foreclosing. That’s all she got from the bank. It was the beginning of the Depression.”
Despite the odd transaction, Mrs Brown never actually lived in the home.
“It went straight in the real estate agent’s hands to be sold,” John explained.
Although he never went inside the regal home, John describes it as “a grand old place”.
John’s great-grandfather, also John, was also a well-known identity in the Bogan Shire. According to Cobb and Co records, he was “a man who built quite an empire in these parts and earned the nickname ‘King Brown’. His magnificent two-storey residence was known widely as the ‘Palace’. The arrival of the railway was the death knell for the area of Canonba (northeast of Nyngan) as a Cobb and Co post and its population dwindled from 472 to just 10.”
The original Regand Park homestead is now owned by Sally Coddington and is currently on the market.