WINDSOR'S " RUM SMUGGLERS' TUNNEL"

R. M. Arndell, in his book Pioneers of Portland Head, first published in 1976, recounted that a rumour of an 8ft. x 10ft. brick tunnel was built from the river to Andrew Thompson's store to deliver the casks of "illicitly brewed" rum from Thompson's and Solomon Wiseman's still on Scotland Island into the stores cellars. Arndell reported a similar tunnel which led from another hotel opposite the foot of Baker Street, on the south side of Macquarie Street, to South Creek.

Tales of such tunnels seem to abound for there is also reputed the be a tunnel linking the Macquarie Arms Inn, previously known as the Brighton Arms, at Pitt Town to the Bird in Hand Inn, according to some members of the Johnston family. It should be remembered that the Bird in Hand was actually on the opposite side of Bathurst Street to the hotel currently bearing that name, which was actually the Maid of Australia. The exact location of the supposed tunnel, and its purpose, remain a mystery.

Tales of the "Rum Smugglers' Tunnel" can be traced back to the early days of the Hawkesbury.

Thompson, aided and joined by John Howe, must have had very large stores, and also had a very large turnover in stores stock. Thompson himself appears to have conducted the sales of and manufacture of spirits, especially rum and whisky. Andrew Thompson was known to have a distillery for rum at Scotland Island, at the mouth of the Hawkesbury. There is no doubt whatever in the writer's mind that the large bricked 8 x 10 conduit or tunnel leading from where Thompson's store site was to the river, parts of which can still be seen by an observant eye was constructed specially to draw up the barrels containing the rum which was illicitly manufactured on a wholesale scale, Thompson's vessels bringing the grog to the foot of Thompson Square, near the old Windsor wharf. An old Hawkesbury native, by name William Smith, has said to the writer, that when he was a boy in the "twenties" of the last century, he distinctly remembers the long, shingled structures that used to go down to the river bank from where the remains of Thompson's large store once stood. The time of which he spoke would be the "twenties". We can now quite understand the reason for the construction of the underground brick tunnel, which most people erroneously think was a drain to carry away waste water from the old gaol..