Una Jones has met George Townsend on the evening train from Flinders Street Station to Hawthorn. It is 1914. As well as their daily meeting on the train George has begun writing to Miss Jones. In this, his second letter to her, he mentions friends they have in common. We do not know who Heckle or Dorothy Holden are. Nor do we know what she has written to him. These letters were discovered in a building that was demolished some years ago.

23rd Oct 1914

Dear Miss Jones
(Since you would have it such) I hope you are quite well.
Heckle was quite interesting when I saw him again last night, and judging by his reports, Dorothy Holden must be somewhat after the same stamp as yourself.
Heckle states most emphatically that she is the prettiest, sweetest girl imaginable, only to meet with a contradiction from yours truly, who, I might say, has his own idea as to who would fill that particular bill.
Still, we don’t quarrell, being both more than satisfied.
I was determined to demand my … Photo last night, but my courage failed me, and now I have become reconciled to my loss.
Still, what is one’s loss is another’s gain.
I was rather surprised, however, that in the light of recent events, you did not wish for your letter back.
I feel a headache coming on so perhaps I had better stop before it gets out of my control.

Yours Truly
“Dear Mr Townsend”
(Save the Mark)

PS After seeing your handwriting I am just about ashamed of my scrawl. GT.

Historic Milparinka Courthouse and Police Station

Until recently drought-ravaged Milparinka (1400 km from Sydney) in Corner Country, New South Wales, didn’t have much to look forward to. Population was down to seven and the small but historically significant collection of heritage buildings were facing neglect. There were not enough people to staff the tourist office located in the restored Old Police Station.

While it hasn’t rained for years in Milparinka there has been a deluge of another kind. Volunteers by the car, caravan and camper load have answered a very unusual call from local pastoralist and avid historian Ruth Sandow. People have travelled from all over Australia to spend time in this tiny town to act as tourist information officers. Ruth is the driving force behind the Milparinka Heritage and Tourism Association that devised a simple and successful answer to the staffing problem. Visiting Volunteers now spend a few days or a few weeks looking after the historic precinct and providing passing visitors with information.

She says most Volunteers are city people who find the chance to sample outback life a real buzz. Most find it a practical way of giving something back to a remote outback community.

Awaiting restoration.

The Visiting Volunteers Program has resulted in another significant building restoration too. The Old Police Kitchens have been restored and now provide self-contained cottage accommodation, thanks to a Federal grant that funded the restoration.

Restored: Old Police Kitchen now self-contained Volunteer accommodation.

Ruth says that she now has a full roster of volunteers for the upcoming 2008 tourist season. So if you’re heading for Corner Country you’ll probably bump into one or two Visiting Volunteers in Milparinka.

If you’re interested in volunteering go to: http://www.outbacknsw.com.au/Volunteering%20at%20Milparinka.htm

It’s was a typical outback solution to a modern day problem. Donald Campbell arrived at Lake Eyre, South Australia, in the winter of 1964 with a dream to break the land speed record in his 4250 hp Bluebird jet powered car. While its Bristol Siddely Proteus gas turbine engine powered all four wheels it wasn’t what you called a 4WD as we know it. So getting the beast through the sandhills around Lake Eyre was the problem.

An oxy welding kit, some lengths of old railway line from the Ghan, axles and tyres and voila! You have a transporter to piggy-back Bluebird out onto Lake Eyre. Bluebird can zip across Lake Eyre at 650 kph. World land speed record done and dusted.

After 43 years this historic contraption is rusting quietly in the outback sun near the southern shore of the lake. Without it there would have been no world record.

Announcing the launch of a new website about our history.

Our History brings together stories about people, events and interesting moments in Australian history. It’s a bit like opening an old trunk in the attic, what with photos we find, people we get to know and letters we discover.

Many stories are by people who were there. Eyewitness views of events always seem more interesting. Our History stories are about experiences in war and in peacetime, life on and off the land . Especially interesting are the human interest stories of the past; the struggles, romances and challenges that individuals faced.

We invite you to post your thoughts and comments as well. This way we all get to learn a bit more.

Our History is the product of Keith Webb, Richard Leigh and Roger Clarke. When we’re not trawling through some sort of archive we’re making TV documentaries and producing DVD programs. Mostly about our history.

How could a contraption like this be involved in Donald Campbell’s 1964 land speed record attempt in Australia? Check the here.

Back in 1933 Rod Lingard lived on the banks of the Howqua River in North East Victoria. He was six months old when Thomas Barnett, a bullocky regular to the riverside Carriers Arms Hotel, would bounce young Rod on his knee. This is Rod’s story.

Thomas Barnett ,104yrs. & me, 6 mths. in Jan1933.

Tom Barnett used to say that he was born in Braidwood, NSW about 1828. His parents must have been true pioneers because that town was not formally laid out until 1839. How he got from Braidwood to Howqua in NE Victoria is not known but would be interesting. What we do know is that he became a driver of bullock wagons on the ‘run’ from Melbourne to Jamieson. Reportedly, the round trip took about two weeks if he did not encounter too many problems on the way. Apparently he used to stop over at the Carriers Arms Hotel at Howqua to wash away some of the dust of the long journey. The hotel had been built in the mid 1870’s by Thomas and Bridget Hennessey. For a period it served as a changing station for coaches on the way to Jamieson and Woods Point. The stables had feeding stalls for 4 horses.
After only a few years, Thomas Hennessey died at the very early age of 29 years. Whether it was illness or accident we do not know. Bridget ran the hotel herself for three years but it must have been a huge task – and perhaps she did not care for the single life ! In 1889 she married Thomas Barnett who was about 60 at that time and she was less than 35. Bullock drivers were strong and resourceful men !

The old bridge over the Howqua River was known as Barnett’s Bridge.
Our Tom and Bridget ran the hotel until 1929 when they surrendered the licence. By then they were both becoming rather frail so they advertised for a live-in housekeeper to take care of them. This is where I come into the story.
My grandfather, John Henry Attwater was a miner in Bendigo. Like most miners he was afflicted with lung trouble arising from the dust in the mines. This contributed to his death in 1915 during the great ‘flu epidemic. My grandmother was left with four daughters and one son still at home. She moved to humble accommodation in Yarraville until the four girls were all married off – my mother being the last in Nov.1927. Grandma saw the Barnett’s advertisement and took the job. She got free board and lodgings but no salary. The deal was that she would get the property when the Barnetts died. Bridget died quite soon after grandma took the job, but old Tom lasted until Dec 1934 by which time he was said to be about 105 yrs.My youngest aunt died in hospital during a simple appendix operation in Aug 1929, leaving a 3 year old son. It was decided that he would go to Howqua and be cared for by our grandmother. In 1935 my parents were both struggling with a small tailoring business and it was decided that I should also go to Howqua to live with my grandmother and cousin. I stayed there until 1944. My grandmother stayed there until 1951 when the rising waters of the new Eildon Reservoir forced her off the property.

See also”The Carriers Arms Hotel at Howqua”. Thomas Barnett is in the middle of the group of adults at the front of the hotel in the photo with the motor bike.

Carriers Arms Hotel

Rod Lingard grew up on the banks of the Howqua River in North East Victoria. His recollections paint a vivid picture of a lifestyle that has now disappeared. This is Rod’s story.

I spent nine years of my childhood at the Carriers Arms Hotel. It was 14 miles south of Mansfield on the road to Jamieson. In its heyday it was pretty close to being a self-sufficient community centre. Next to the hotel there was a stable with stalls for four horses. Near that was a hayshed and a three-sided shed to house two jinkers and a dray. There was a blacksmiths “shop” with huge bellows aimed at the centre of the small furnace, and a great big anvil in the middle of the building. Hammers, tongs, horse-shoes and a selection of metal and leather harness equipment adorned the walls. These walls and those on the stable were vertically-mounted hand-split slabs of timber cut from the nearby bush. There was a bark-roofed ‘cow shed’ with bails to restrain just two cows as they were milked by hand. Some distance down the paddock was the ‘slaughter-house’. This was an open sided structure with a heavy central beam high enough and strong enough to suspend a bullock for butchering.
Down on the alluvial flat by the View Larger Map Howqua River was the orchard, with about a dozen apples, several plums and a big pear tree. Up near the kitchen was an airy ‘apple-house’ with rough pole slats which allowed air movement around the stored fruit.
Of course there was a kitchen garden, and a ‘chook house’on the hill above the river.
The river yielded Murray Cod, Macquarie Perch, Blackfish and, in later years, both Brown and Rainbow Trout. Large freshwater crays were fairly easy to catch. Each autumn, mushrooms were plentiful, although only in certain paddocks.
The original title to the land was granted in the 1840’s and the first building erected about 1845. It was clad with hand split weatherboards and had a bark roof which was later covered with corrugated iron. It was a simple rectangle with a thick brick wall at one end. This wall enclosed a huge fireplace and a large baker’s oven with a cast iron door. The fireplace had a hinged metal beam from which you could hang a 4-gallon drum or the huge kettle directly above the fire.

Fireplace and lounge room
The hotel building was erected about 1875. It was quite a grand structure with a bar-room, lounge and five guest bedrooms. The ceilings and lower half of the interior walls were of t & g Oregon boards, and the upper half of the walls were of hessian covered with wall paper. Each guest room had a porcelain water jug and wash basin, and another, more compact, porcelain vessel under each bed ! Lighting was by kerosene lamps – some of them quite beautiful things, imported from U.S.A..
Behind the bar was a trap-door which gave access to a brick-lined cellar which helped to keep the drinks cool – no refrigeration in those days !
According to local folk-law, Ned Kelly was reputed to have drunk there on more than one occasion. I can’t vouch for that but there were a few relations and supporters in the Mansfield district. The Hotel closed in 1929.

I went there to live with my grandmother in 1935 and remained until 1944. In the early 1950’s most of the property was inundated by the waters of the new Eildon Reservoir. Many of the historical relics went in a clearance sale as the waters rose around the home paddock. We moved the two main buildings onto a remnant hilltop at the southern end of the property but we could not move the true ‘character’ of the original setting. Sadly, the buildings were destroyed in a mysterious fire in Jan 1992.

A group at the hotel c.1927. The bike is my uncle’s 1920 Indian.

Cowshed, with blacksmiths shop at left

The slaughterhouse

Broad view of the buildings in 1950

 John Gates was a young Australian pilot with 137 Squadron in the RAF. In 1944 he wound up leading his squadron in the first real test of the mighty Hawker Typhoon in it’s moment of glory in the battle of Falaise Gap.

The Typhoon was a behemoth of a fighter. Weighing over 5 tons loaded it needed all 2200 horsepower of it’s 24 cylinder Napier Sabre engine to fly at the impressive speed of more than 400 miles per hour. The Typhoon suffered some disturbing teething problems including a propensity to lose it’s tail and a high-revving temperamental engine.

Here’s the story in John’s own words. 

“I think the Air Ministry decided the Typhoon was not going to be a fighter. It just wasn’t. You couldn’t roll the thing, I mean you’d be shot down every time you’d be fighting with even a Tiger Moth I think, but fore and aft it was so sensitive.”

John had learned the art of ground attack on Hurricane aircraft. “I had the one with 40mm cannon and when you fired the guns you’d get pushed back in your seat! The Hurricane had 1000lb of armour plating up against the pilot, up yer bum and up your spine, eight rockets, four on either side, well by that stage.. the poor old Hurricane.. we had a Spitfire escort to take us across the channel. We lost very few aircraft - I don’t think we lost any at that stage, simply because if the German ack ack fired at us they were firing at a plane doing they thought about 180 knots and we were doing 120.”

John’s specialty was shooting trains. “You’d start at about 10,000 feet, and you’d come across this train and you’d say well, let’s have a go…so you’d go down and try to blow up the boilers.  If your shots went toward the carriages, we really got very upset. 

Then we got rockets, we became an experimental rocket squadron. We also attacked the German V1 bases in the Pas de Calais area. It was all good fun at that stage.”

From the Hurricane John moved onto the Typhoon. “ The Hurricane was a much slower plane so you could fire the rockets and then break left or right with sufficient time before  the rocket blew up the target. When the Tiffies came along, they’d do maybe a hundred miles an hour more, you just got to the target nicely when they blew up. So after blowing up a number of Typhoons, the Ministry decided this was a no-go show. They decided on a new technique which was to fire the rockets at 2000 feet range which gave you air top bottom and sides to break away and go somewhere else.”

 ”The next problem was the Typhoon’s gunsight. So some bright bugger certainly did the right thing, turned the sight right around and focused your attention on the aeroplane’s own windscreen. So the windscreen reflected a dot and a couple of red lines, there wasn’t anything else to help you. If you were firing the guns you put the dot on the target, but with the rockets you’d have to look out and see which way the smoke was blowing and where the wind was coming from. Then it was really a bit of deduction. You’d then have to say well the wind is blowing totally from the left so it’s going to blow it that way so we’d better pull the first couple back the other way and see if we win. And you generally have enough time because you drop from 10,000 feet to two thousand before you fired, so you had enough time to have a go with two rockets at a time, one push and if that was good you’d say ‘gee that was marvellous’ and away you’d go and all the way down you’d fire until you got to 2000 feet - you’d get rid of them all pretty quickly. We got very accurate. It was quite surprising how good you can get when you try.”

Then the squadron was sent to a forward base in France. 

“The German Army in the Falaise Gap area made a big mistake. They were totally caught with their heavy armour and this was the first real test of the rockets on Typhoons. Well, it was an absolute howling success. If the rocket hit the tank which we hoped they did because the sighting was a bit up and down… it blew the gun top off. Turret, gun and all, Boonk! It wasn’t very nice for the people inside, either. They were 60 pound high explosive warheads which penetrated the tank armour and then blew up. Well I mean it was really horrible when you come to think of it but it certainly killed tanks by the dozen.”

After the battle, more than 10,000 Germans lay dead, and over 730 tanks and tank destroyers from a total of 880 were destroyed.

Soon after, the Germans were in retreat along the Albert Canal. The squadron was asked to fly an almost suicidal mission.

“The idea was to fly straight down the main road and capture everything on the way - that’s army, with the Air Force going up along the side of the road on half an hour breaks to stop or hit or fire or do what damage we could to any enemy movement on left or right. So we went up to a map mark and went around for half an hour. So Group got us together and made a wonderful speech and told us he was prepared to lose every aircraft - we looked at each other and said is he flying in this? No way! 

We drew straws to see which squadron would go first and 137 won the straw for first. 

Like everything, sometimes first on is the best and sometimes first on is the worst. The Germans were expecting us and they put down a great barrage across the canal so we flew to one side of the barrage around and around and around for half an hour. Virtually nothing happened till the last five minutes when on the ground we saw the leading Guards armoured division tank going straight up the main road towards Eindhoven when it was hit by German fire. Boong! But from where? Boong! over there a bit of smoke going up. I reckon bloody brave, he really went up Boom like that and the second tank knocked him into the ditch. Well we saw where it was coming from so we circled around and back into this wood where there were three German 88mm guns which had just blown the tank completely over. 

We then endeavoured to blow them over with rockets. We couldn’t see exactly what we were firing at; we had a very vague idea so we all dithered around, and our eight aeroplanes each put eight rockets into that bloody wood, and it worked. So the next lot did something similar I think, and I understand that the poor Germans came out practically mental from the impact of the rockets. We didn’t actually hit every one of them but the fear was there and very effective.” 

 John survived the war to become managing Director of Streets Ice Cream. He is seen here at the Temora Aviation Museum.

In 1914 Una (Prudence) Jones lived in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. Each evening she caught the 5.23pm train from Flinders Street Station to Hawthorn. On this train she met George Townsend. George, who worked at stock and station agent Goldsborough Mort & Co, took a fancy to Una and dared to write to her.

This is the first of a series of letters written to Una by one of three suitors of the time. The letters were found during the demolition of a Melbourne home some years ago. They trace a blossoming friendship and romance against the background of World War 1.

Oct 16th 1914

To “The Girl in the Train”

Dear Madam,

I am well aware of the liberty I am taking by writing to you, but I have no doubt that in the time to come, I shall be forgiven.That sounds to me a funny way to begin a letter to a person one happens to be vitally interested in, but I can only plead non-practice in the art.

Do you understand that? My trouble is that I don’t know how to write what I want to say owing, I think, to my natural modesty and shyness.(That sounds rot)

I don’t seem to be getting on very fast, so please excuse.

I saw Miss Carter this morning, and she didn’t seem so pleased to see me as she might have. The only remark she made was that “you” and I seemed to be great friends and she was so glad that everything has turned out so well, for which remark I thanked her nicely and assured her that I would do all in my power to further Our Friendship. (She smiled) …. and we parted.

May I confess? I was in error in stating that I had seen you last Sunday afternoon, but the fact of the matter is that a friend on mine did, and on meeting me went into raptures about you. Such remarks as “She looked ripping” “absolutely stunning”, were quite frequent and his whole discourse was punctuated by exclamations of delight.

Bearing in memory last Saturday afternoon, I was quite able to understand.

Excuse my ramblings, and lest I should bore you, if indeed I have not already done so, I will terminate my first - letter (are you good at guessing)

Hoping that this does not cause too much work at the Dead Letter Office.

I amYours truly

Geo Townsend

PS Is not the writing Fierce.