He had acquired The Fox Under The Hill inn, on the Great Western Highway at Prospect [today the site of Fox Hills Golf Club].
In 1905 he also leased, or acquired, 41 acres on the southern side of the highway abutting Prospect Reservoir, although the Emu Gravel Company retained ownership of its private railway to the quarry site.
The land was also in his brother’s name, but it was Mark who resided at Fox Under the Hill and farmed the land.
"The historic building known as The Fox Under the Hill, now owned by the well-known Reynolds Brothers, wholesale milk purveyors, has recently undergone extensive alterations, and the place has been transformed into a very attractive structure. In connection with the estate, also, large and commodious milking and hay stacking sheds have been added, the latter structure being very extensive in character and now fully stocked”.
Mark Reynolds was elected to the Prospect and Sherwood Council as an alderman in 1905.
From reports in local newspapers, he took his position very seriously and was always interested in local improvements and community issues and was not frightened to speak his mind or to clash with fellow aldermen.
At The Fox property, he built a large stone silo, new dairy buildings, and reportedly had 240 acres of land, most of which was under lucerne. His farm, now known as Gueinbah, was regarded as a “model farm.”
The main dairy building was so large it had a hand propelled tramway running through the centre of it to carry the milk churns, another Reynolds innovation. He was described as a man “of enterprise and industry”.
Not without incidents
On 1 February 1906, he married Naomi Norman of Sans Souci at Christ Church in Sydney.
Life at Gueinbah was not without its incidents. An employee, William Erickson, aged 18, was thrown off his cart and trapped under the wheel where he lay all night.
He was found in the morning and taken to Parramatta Hospital to recover from his injuries. In February 1906, a cart belonging to Mr Reynolds came into collision with a tram in Church Street,
Parramatta, when the horse became frightened by the steam tram and suddenly twisted around. The tram struck the back of the cart, damaging it, and the driver was thrown off, but unhurt.
Worse was to come that same month, when two of Mr Reynold’s Ayrshire cows were struck dead by lightning in his paddocks.
Although some distance apart, they were in a parallel position and death was said to be instantaneous. It was mentioned that since he has resided at The Fox Under the Hill, he had lost three horses and five cows, and was the owner of some 90 head of cattle.
In June 1906, Mrs Reynolds attended a function at Prospect Public School and gave a special prize to Wallace Allen, for his excellent efforts as a young scholar. In December 1906, Mrs Reynolds gave birth to a son.
The name Reynolds was becoming well known in the Blacktown and Prospect districts. When Blacktown Saleyards opened on 3 May, 1907, Reynolds had part of his dairy herd of cattle for sale.
In conjuring up an image of what it looked like in those years, the little village of Prospect was growing steadily, as was traffic on the Western Road. Steam trains shunted past the
Reynolds home at The Fox and through his southern paddocks on their way to the quarry. The nearby Prospect Reservoir was a popular place for picnics and outings, and it was probably an idyllic time in those pre-war years.
But Mark Reynold’s efforts were about to take a turn for the worse. In February 1908, the Herald gave a good description of the dairy but also mentions that Reynolds was having problems due to the weather and other factors:
“Mr Mark Reynolds, Gueinbah, Toongabbie, has also suffered badly with the season and a fair sized herd scattered and dairying interrupted. Seeing how matters were trending,
'Mr Reynolds sold the bulk of his herd when prices were good, and is now proceeding to build up again, by purchase and subsequent improvement by selection, which is a weary process.
"It is almost impossible to secure an even herd under such conditions inside of many years. Previously Mr Reynolds was milking 70 odd cows.
"The milking shed is fitted up with 33 stalls running down each side of the building, which is made of iron. A tramway runs down the centre for bringing the feed from the shed nearby, taking the milk into the dairy and running the sweepings out of the bails and stables.
The milking machines are installed, although not being used at present on account of the small number of cows being milked. Mr Reynolds has a fine stone circular silo with a capacity of 100 tons. There is a portable oil engine on the place for working the milking machines, pumping water, chaff cutting and other things. The place is fitted up with almost every convenience for efficient working.
"It is a good property, well watered, there being dams and tanks besides a creek running through it, which stands for most seasons.”
Two months earlier, the Reynolds brothers transferred the land back to Emu Gravel. Whether the land was held by them on lease or freehold is not clear, although earlier reports indicated they had owned it.
A further transfer took place on 30 March 1909 of Portion 33 and 34, on which The Fox Under the Hill inn stood. The family moved to Orange, where Mark had been offered a position as Agricultural Department Inspector.
They then moved to Cowra, where he managed the Cowra Experimental Farm. He was highly regarded, the Cowra Free Press stating: “Mr Reynolds has shown himself to be both capable and enthusiastic and it is good to know that the Department has given recognition to his merit by promoting him to a position which will give greater scope to his ability and unflagging energy… In his duties he has shown abundant energy and ability and has been of material assistance to farmers by means of his lectures and demonstrations …”
Exactly why Mark Reynolds left Prospect and Gueinbah is not known. After his many efforts to make it into a working and model farm, difficulties with the seasons may have contributed to his departure, and he may have had financial problems as well.
The offer of a well-paid government position at Orange was probably too good to refuse. He became known as an expert on silos and the different types of fodder storage and frequently gave lectures in country areas or wrote for local newspapers, sometimes drawing on his experience at Prospect. He died in October 1950.
The Silos and the Well
An enduring mystery is where were the large sheds and silo that Mark Reynolds had built? No trace of them appeared to remain in later years and it is impossible to precisely state their location, although it is more than likely they were on the southern side of the Western Road, but close enough to the road for transport purposes.
An aerial photograph in 1943 shows that something had existed on the southern side of the road, directly opposite the old inn, and what appears to be the remains of two round silos and a beehive well.
There were difficulties in accessing the site, due to a high wire fence and long grass, not to mention speeding traffic. There is a large silo / water tank of some four metres in height in good condition, but the remains of the second structure were concrete rendered brick and very difficult to see and photograph.
This is possibly the silo of six metres in depth that Reynolds later describes in his lectures.There is also a beehive well in very good condition.
The well was to receive excess water pumped out of the silo, which was some six metres (two thirds) underground and had a false bottom to protect the chaff from getting wet.
This type of silo was a new design at the time and based on a type used elsewhere in NSW and also in Canada. In later years Mark Reynolds would lecture and write on silo construction techniques in many parts of New South Wales and refer to the silos he had built at Prospect
The entire former Gueinbah property has now been lost beneath new developments, as has The Fox itself; but there is a narrow wedge of land surviving between the Great Western Highway and the M4 Motorway which contains a dwelling erected in the 1970s and some pasture land which appears to be disused.
It is on this wedge where the silos and well survived until recently. There appears to be no trace of any large dairy sheds or tramway, if indeed they were located in this area, but the land has been disturbed and it is difficult to tell without proper investigation.
These surviving structures may have been the last surviving link to Mark Reynolds and his model farm, Gueinbah, and The Fox Under the Hill inn.
They were not protected by Cumberland Council’s Local Environment Plan and advice from the planner there was that they were to be the subject of further examination to ascertain their origins and ensure their future preservation.
Regrettably the two silos and the well were suddenly demolished without warning in August 2019, and for no reason. The sites were excavated, the bricks removed, and all traces of them were removed, leaving no footprints whatsoever, which is strange.
Today the area remains grassland. What could have been an important archaeological site and its historical links to The Fox Under the Hill, Mark Reynolds and Gueinbah, and early grain storage experimentation in Sydney has been completely destroyed; a great tragedy for historians and agricultural researchers alike.
