Gunning & District Historical Society

Historical photo of the Exeter Railway Disaster, Friday 13th March 1914. See  ABC Illawarra . In heavy fog, just before midnight on the evening of Friday, 13th March 1914, the Temora-bound mail train from Sydney collided with the Sydney-bound goods train from Junee at Exeter, NSW. The Junee goods train had been shunted onto the main line and it was presumed that the fog had obscured the signals for the driver of the Temora mail train. Fourteen people were killed and many more were injured in what was to become known as the Exeter Railway Disaster. At the time, this was the worst rail disaster in Australian history. A report on the incident appeared in  The Advertiser  on 16th March 1914 and is available on Trove . Pollard Family Grave Sites at Dalton Cemetery. Photo: Beth Aglio Recently, local author and historian, Keith Brown, accompanied Beth Aglio, a descendent of the Pollard family from Dalton, to assist her with some family history research. At the fam...

The birthing cot donated by Lyndell Whittaker Photo: Ann Darbyshire Lyndell Whittaker, daughter of the late John and Eyvonne Clancy, has graciously donated to the Gunning & District Historical Society, a birthing cot that would have been utilised for many local citizens immediately after their birth in Matron Bertha Bush’s private maternity hospital “Allawah” in Biala Street, Gunning. There was the possibility raised by John Clancy himself that this birthing cot may have been transferred from the earlier maternity hospital “Templeton” on the Collector Road, Gunning, operated by Nurse Beatrice Maud Caldwell. Nurse Bush's advertisement, note the phone number! Photo: Ann Darbyshire “Allawah” had been built by Con and Fanny Lucilla Dowling of “Bloomfield” in 1929 and Matron Bush leased “Allawah” from them. Their son Noel Dowling recalled several years ago that the annual rental was £58.10/- (or 58 pounds and ten shillings). That same year, 1929, Dr Barbour built ...

Graves of Robert Bayley and Lucy Jane Bayley, Dalton Methodist Cemetery (Photo by Garry Smith) Ann Bayley (nee Alchin) died at Leichhardt, Sydney on 4 July 1914. She was born in Staplehurst, Kent and baptised on 7 July 1832. She came to the colony of New South Wales with her family of Bounty Immigrants in 1838 aboard the Palmyra. The Sun (Sydney), Sunday 5 July 1914, p. 4. Ambrose and Ann Alchin brought their family to the Gunning District in the late 1840s. They settled at Jerrawa. In 1855 at the age of 23 years Ann Alchin married Thomas Bayley at Gunning. Their son, Robert Bayley, was born in 1857; he married Lucy Jane Waters at Gunning in 1883. Window dedicated to Robert and Lucy Bayley The Uniting Church in Gunning features a window dedicated to Robert and Lucy Bayley. Their graves in the Methodist Section of the Dalton Cemetery are part of a cluster of graves of the Bayley and Waters families. The headstones and general grave presentations are within a ...