MILTON

On April 21st 1770 Captain Cook, whilst sailing up the coast, sighted and named 'a remarkable peaked hill, which resembled a square dove-house, with a dome at the top, and which for that reason I called the Pigeon House'. This peak, Pigeon House Mountain, is a short distance west of Milton.

In 1827 the first land grant in the area was made to to Reverend Thomas Kendall (1778-1832). He settled north of the present township of Milton (in what is now Yatte Yattah), ran cattle and felled timber using ticket-of-leave men as labourers. He called his property 'Kendall Dale'. (Thomas Kendall often travelled to Sydney in his own small ship, the ‘Brisbane’, and was to lose his life when it was wrecked off Jervis Bay.)

Ten years later, the Ulladulla-Milton area was surveyed, and a survey for Ulladulla Village was undertaken.

In 1839 Thomas Kendall's grandson Henry Kendall, who was to become one of Australia's most famous poets, was born at Kendall Dale.

In the 1840s timber-getting was the area’s principal activity.

In 1855, a former convict, Henry Claydon took possession of 100 acres of land nearby, establishing an estate known as Claydon Park. He donated land to the Wesleyan Church in 1857 and, the following year, the first church in the district was built on the site. The Sarah Claydon Age Care Centre in Milton in named after Henry's wife, who was a midwife for the area until her death in 1876.

In 1859 John Booth, a business partner of the department store owner Anthony Hordern, purchased an 80-acre (32-ha) property called Myrtle Farm for £240 and subdivided it into 62 allotments. These he sold for between £8 and £27/10/- each (clearly making a substantial profit on the transaction!).

He developed the land into a private town that initially was known as ‘The Settlement’ (with the nearby town, now Ulladulla, being ‘The Boat Harbour’). Many of the streets in the town are named after Booth’s friends and relatives.

The naming of the town ‘Milton’ is attributed to the town’s first postmaster, George Knight. One story is it is simply a corruption of 'Mill Town', another that it was named after the 17th-century English poet John Milton, when a copy of Milton's ‘Paradise Lost’ caught Booth's eye in his library.

During the 1860s mixed farming and dairying took over as the primary activities in the area. The construction of public buildings also commenced, including the Star Hotel (1860), St Peter and St Paul Anglican Church (1860), Congregational and Catholic churches (1872), Town Hall (1871), courthouse (1877), public school (1877) and post office (1880). And because of its strategic position on the main road, the town developed as the commercial and administrative centre for the region, and became the centre where visitors to the area could find accommodation.

In 1862 the first volume of Henry Kendall's poetry, ‘Poems and Songs’, was published. Locals made this possible by taking up a public subscription to cover the costs.

With the growth of nearby Ulladulla in the 20th Century, Milton has declined in importance as a regional centre. It, however, remains a popular tourist destination – its appeal likely to be enhanced once the main north-south road (eventually!) bypasses the town.

Because of its significant number of historic buildings and because it is a fine example of a mid-19th Century private township, the town has been classified by the National Trust. Its principal civic and commercial buildings are Italian style, the churches are simple Gothic in style.