I have opened this post as a chat room and will see where it goes.Just leave comments and I will post them. Remember people all over the world see this blog so there have to be some rules
no names with derogatory statements.
no derogatory remarks.
please leave the reader with a good feeling towards Gundagai as it is a good place.
Lets lift Gundagai out of the doldrums.
End all comments with a smiley face :- )
2 comments:
Talking of names, I am looking for a bullock waggon with the name 'Donald Dinnie' painted on it. The bullockies used to name their waggons the same as truck drivers name their trucks in current times.
Anyway, in 1934 the Duke of Gloucester visited Wagga, Cootamundra, Yass and Goulburn. This Duke, (Prince Henry), was to be the Prince Regent if required to if the then Priness Elizabeth inherited the throne pre age 18.
Some local wags took a bullock waggon named 'Donald Dinnie' to Cootamundra. The Duke stood on it to address the crowd, then at the end of that he was requested to sit down and it was indicated where, (on a tuckerbox), which he very obligingly did.
He laughed when told.
Where is that bullock waggon?
The Donald Dinnie connection - well Donald was a real Scottish strongman so that is a bit of a metaphor for King Arthur and the Henge Stones (didn't Merlin move those though but Arthur did come ashore at Totnes Coolac), and Gundagai's local landscape rearranger.
Maybe one of Gundagai's ancient(100years) Scot familes have that bullock waggon parked in their driveway? It would be very worth locating as it has a significant story attached to it. It is a real trojan bullock.
I think that Donald Dinnie story got lost as at that same Regal event at Cootamundra a Gundagai local threatened to shoot the Duke so got locked up given what O'Farrell did to Prince Alfred in the 1860s causing so much embarrassment that numerous things in Australia were named Prince Alfred including Gundagai's old traffic bridge.
Prince Charles made a private visit to very near to Gundagai in the 1970s perhaps to look at Gundagai's amazing landscape but few knew he was where he was. Whenm in a colony it is polite to pay regards to the Leader.
JJones
GUNDAGAI AND ITS ENVIRONS.
SOME soulless biped in Victoria is reported to have deliberately written that " Australia is not worth fighting for." Has he ever witnessed the glories of her sun-light mountains, the broad and fertile valleys, the noble forests, the grassy plains, and the countless streams of her interior - the future happy homes of millions of our race as yet unborn? Has he had no visions of future empire, of the destiny that awaits our children in this noble land? The man that Lord Byron made so many anxious enquiries after,_ the man with the dead soul,-has been unearthed, unearthed at the antipodes. ... Meantime we have descended from Parnassus, and entered the main street of the north town, and the charm has vanished. We are ankle deep, dragging a horse through the mud, and esteem ourselves fortunate if we do not get knee deep in one of the holes, out of which that string of bullocks has been endea-vouring to tug a dray for the last half hour, aided by a torrent of colo- nial oaths and execrations manufactured by a bullock-driver and two volunteers ex- pressly for the occasion. On either side a row of houses in every variety of bush architecture, about half a mile in length, rise out of the quag- mire. The most pretending edifices, and those on which the town depends for the respecta- bility of its appearance, are public-houses ; as you wade through the street past some of these you will observe a knot of long-legged, sallow faced, idle young men, leaning against the verandah posts, peering from under their dilapidated cabbagetrees, and evidently reckoning you up. The openings left for future streets give you occasional glimpses of a black, muddy creek, in which fetid pools are collected, separating the flat from the base of the hill, and immediately behind the lower low of houses, at the upper end of the street, on a green knoll to the left, is a beautiful little Roman Catholic chapel nearly completed, being the only place set apart for worship ; and further on to the right, on the margin of the flat, is an extensive flour mill : a fine stone-built hospital is also in progress high up the mountainside. North Gundagai, not yet recovered from the dreadful catastrophe of 1852, now contains five public-houses, no church, a Roman Catholic chapel, a National school, two well stocked stores, two mills, an hospital, bakery, butchery, court-house (built of slabs), and a full staff of the class of mechanics usually found in a country village. The population is more numerous than appears at first sight, as the inhabitants are scattered round the slopes of the mountain.
Crossing the horrid creek, you pass over the flat where numerous posts, still standing, mark the site of the old town. This spot, where the yell of despair rose above the uproar of the rushing waters, is now strewn with huge logs of driftwood and overgrown with rank herbage. Here and there the mouldering wreck of a chimney rises above the tall thistles ; blackened stumps are scattered up and down, and the l ancient giants of the primeval forest, tottering
in decay, and spared, from their utter inutility, look down upon this lonely place, now left to sleep in its own gloomy desolation. The people of the district still recount tales of heroic devotion and self-sacrifice on that fearful night that have never been chronicled, but that, pass- ing from sire to son, will be long remembered on the banks of the Murrimbidgee. As I turned into the mountain passes, and looked upon the glories of the setting sun, throwing the long shadows of the mountains across the valleys, and lighting up the leafy beauties and soft verdure of the river plains with its expiring rays, I never felt a truth more forcibly than that " God made the country man the town."
Australian Newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842-1954) Friday 26 August 1859 http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/13029902?
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