Picton  New South Wales

This peaceful rural village, 79km south-west of Sydney’s CBD, has some lovely old buildings and public works to delight the visitor, like the old railway viaduct over Stonequarry Creek, the slab-built St Matthew’s Church, constructed in 1838, and several old family homesteads, one of which, Jarvisfield, is now the clubhouse for members of the Antill Park Gold Club.

Many of the imposing homes were built from locally-quarried sandstone, as an important sandstone quarry has been operating here for as long as anyone can remember. Few buildings are as impressive as Parkhill, built in Gothic Revival style for Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell on 405ha Douglas Park in the early 1840s.

Parkhill's signature is a stone turret and the eastern gable bears the Mitchell family's coat-of-arms. Parkhill today is known as St Mary's Tower and it and the attendant Gothic chapel are used as a retreat by missionaries of the Order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Picton was named after General Sir Thomas Picton who distinguished himself at the battle of Waterloo.