Carthona, Darling Point

Carthona is a large Gothic Revival architecture style house situated at 5 Carthona Avenue, on a promontory of Darling Point, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The mansion is listed by the New South Wales Heritage Council as a building of historical significance and is listed as being of local significance on the New South Wales Heritage Database.

Carthona was initially the residence of surveyor and explorer Thomas Mitchell and his family.

Carthona is described by the Heritage Council as an "impressive two storey mansion with cellars, of mannerist Tudor Gothic style. Built of sandstone, exterior there is a profusion of gabled slate roofs having castellated parapets and balconies dominated by tall tudor chimneys. Ground floor windows are pointed Gothic style having three centred heads and fretwork while first floor windows are flat arched and shuttered." It was built in 1841 by Sir Thomas Mitchell and it is believed that many of the keystones of doors and windows were carved by him. Carthona has had many residents some of whom were historically interesting.

Thomas Mitchell was born in 1792 in Scotland. His family was not wealthy but he joined the military and was proficient in drawing up plans of battlefields. In 1818 he married Mary Thomson Blunt who was the eighteen-year-old daughter of General Richard Blunt. In 1827 the couple came to Sydney and Thomas became Assistant Surveyor General of New South Wales and two years later became Surveyor General. During the 1830s Mitchell conducted three major expeditions into the interior of Australia. In 1837 he went to England and published a book about his explorations and obtained his knighthood. He returned to Sydney from England in 1841 and soon after purchased Lindesay. While he was at Lindesay Mitchell was planning to build Carthona. Besides buying Lindesay on Lot 1 in 1841, Mitchell also bought Lots 7, 12, 13, 14 and 15. It is on the last four lots that Carthona was constructed. In 1845 the Mitchell family moved into Carthona and Mitchell sold Lindesay to his friend Sir Charles Nicholson.

Soon after Mitchell moved into Carthona he set out on his fourth expedition in search of an overland route from Boree in NSW to the outpost named Victoria at Port Essington, in the present day Northern Territory. On the completion of the exploratory journey, Mithchell's Aboriginal "guide, companion, counsellor and friend", Yuranigh, lived briefly at Carthona, but not liking the city, Yuranigh soon left to take up work as a stockman.

In 1847 Mitchell again went to England and it seems that, at least initially, he may have intended not to return as an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald in February 1847 lists for sale all of his property including Carthona. Carthona is described as "the very splendid family mansion with spacious stabling and two acres of ground at Mrs Darling's Point, the present residence of Sir Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General."

He returned from England in July 1848 but again went to London for almost two years in 1852. In 1855, after his return to Sydney while conducting surveying work in Southern New South Wales he contracted a chill and developed pneumonia. He died at Carthona in October 1855.

In his will Mitchell left all of his property to his children and Carthona was left to his second youngest daughter Alice who was then only 16 and living with her mother. It seems that from about 1858 Carthona was rented by the Mitchell family to the Misses Cooksey as Blanche Mitchell, the youngest daughter mentions in her Diary on 17 July 1858 that Miss Cooksey called at Craigend Terrace where they were then living and paid her mother a quarterly rent.