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 ...

Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 20 September 1933 The celebrated cueist gave a very impressive exhibition, and it is expected that the local standard of play will improve as a result. After being formally introduced by Dr. W. M. Barbour, president of the institute, Lindrum engaged Mr M. Lawton in a game of billiards.  Lindrum soon accustomed himself to the run of the table and compiled a break of 318, the last hundred being knocked up in four minutes. He later scored 106 and 77 unfinished. Mr. Lawton got some difficult cannons, and made breaks of 37 and 22. Mr. Lindrum also played snooker matches with Messrs. E. B. Worden, T. Taylor, J. Power and A. Maher. His best breaks were 42, 35, 32 and 31. At the conclusion of the matches, Lindrum's trick shots amazed the audience. This remarkable cueist, who only recently attained the age of 21 years, made his first thousand break at 18, scoring 1324. He holds the world's record for snooker with a break of 139, potting every b...

Keith Brown, Ann Darbyshire and Garry Smith inside the Gunning Uniting Church (Photograph by Malia Smith) As a descendant of the Alchin Family of Gunning, Dalton, Jerrawa and various other places, I was pleased to visit the Uniting Churches at Gunning and Dalton in early March this year. Malia and I were warmly welcomed by Keith Brown and Ann Darbyshire and given access to both churches. It was a rewarding opportunity to see the interior of both places of worship. Robert & Lucy Bayley Window Of particular interest was the stained-glass window in the Gunning church dedicated to Robert and Lucy (nee Waters) Bayley. It is always gratifying to find such an artefact that has such relevance to my own family history research. Having the opportunity to examine the architecture and interior fittings of both churches underlines the simplicity of these churches but yet makes clear the ethos of the Wesleyan/Methodist approach to the “business” of worship. The contrast ...

Rodney Howarth with the Gunning Public School class photograph from 1955. Photo by Ann Darbyshire. By Ann Darbyshire. Following on the trail of just who was the “J Lees” on the trophy unearthed in Gunning by an enthusiastic local fossicker, Rodney Howarth got in touch with a member of the Gunning Historical Society. Rodney had a similar trophy to the one that had sparked the hunt for the Champion Girl Under 6 winner.  It turns out through further research by Greg Murphy on Trove that it was indeed the same year as the J Lees trophy. Rodney's trophy from the same year as the J Lees trophy A former Gunning boy whose parents owned most of the strip of shops that now house the Picture House Gallery and other retail outlets, Rodney had another trophy that he won in his final year at school for that now outdated event – the Hop, Skip and Jump. He broke the existing record by about 13 inches and laments that although his father was a movie camera enthusiast, this heroic ...

Jennifer Lamb at the Goulburn Mulwaree Library, 12 March 2017 I travelled to Goulburn today to hear Jennifer Lamb, resident Miles Franklin researcher, give an illustrated talk on the author and the city of her day. Franklin is regarded as one of Australia's literary greats for her novel, My Brilliant Career , published at the time of Federation in 1901. Ms Lamb became an avid Franklin researcher after "rediscovering" the author many years ago. At the time, there was little awareness of the important link between Goulburn and Franklin's novel, but there are many interesting back stories to the novel's protagonist, Sybylla Melvyn, that mirror events in Franklin's own early life and society. Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879–1954) lived at Stillwater, a property near Goulburn, from 1891 to 1903. Franklin wrote her most famous novel at age 18 while residing there. Her novel caused a bit of a stir at the time because of the many parallels betwe...