Memories "left" to Yowee
Summary of our Adventure
Hi my name is Adrian Spencer and my father was John (Jack) Spencer, his father was William (Bill) Spencer.
Over the years, a collection of photos has passed down to us, but in February this year we had a flood which damaged our family history.
My father passed away before our son Leonard was born and my mother not long after Leonard’s 6th birthday.
Like most things, you go your own way and I never got the opportunity to go and do what Leonard and I just did. (Father and son time).
Another part of this adventure was to show Leonard where we lived as children when I was a lad in Central Western NSW.
Tullamore
An area that I can remember was growing up was in the town of Tullamore, then on 2 farms in the district.
On my 5th birthday we moved into Tullamore house, then moved out onto a farm on the Tottenham Rd called “Jaccarda”.
Dad seemed to be working hard on very difficult land.
Our neighbours were the Jefferies and they still had a farm with draft horse.
They used them to pull the mowers/reapers and we would go help stack the stool for drying and later come back and collect the sheath and build high top haystacks.
The horses also were used for turning the grinding machine to make floor and oatmeal as well as chaff for stock food.
Excitement was in going there, but not the oatmeal we received.
In the deepening drought of 1966, in the heart of western NSW we were forced to sell the property and move to the Sydney, then down to South Nowra to manage as service station, P.O. and general store, before returning to the property across the road from Jaccarda to manage the property “Devon”.
We established our contacts again with the neighbours and played tennis at Yetha siding tennis club.
It was a fun time for me as I had the chores but also a gun, shangi, riding a bike about one and half mile every school morning with my sister to catch a school bus to take us into and home from Tullamore.
One of the families we got know very well was Mr and Mrs Pietsch.
They are both in their 90s today, so then going to Forbes was to reconnect with them and their family.
Leonard also got to meet their children too.
Trip from Deagon to Louth
We left around 9am from Deagon in Leonards Toyota HiLux dual cab with camping back.We headed to Toowoomba, Dalby and Moonie. We stopped for lunch across the road from the service station before moving onto St George.
We fuelled up then onward to Ninidigully Pub. Stopped there for a squash, checked out the display.
Next town we visited was Thallon and onwards to Dirranbandi, Hebel and arrived in the dark at Lighting Ridge caravan park.
First night sleeping in a swag and Leonard did a great meal for dinner.
Next morning onward to Louth, via Walgett, Brewarrina, Bourke and then Louth.
We stopped in Brewarrina at the Information centre and picked up stickers and enjoyed morning tea.
Interesting, if you own a electric car they have two chargers there.
Moving on we arrived in Bourke went shopping for food ad off to Louth.
This was the start of dirt roads. A lot of water in the drains and some washouts.
We are lucky to be a few days out of the rain. The Darling river was up 7 metres.
The paddocks along the road seemed to be stripped of grass.
Nearly a desert with only iron stone pebbles and red sand.
As we passed through Louth we dropped into the Pub there.
It was known as Shindys Inn. We met the new owner and passed over some photos of the Inn and a photo of her Aunty.
Grandpa Bill Spencer
The first part of the trip was to go to where Grandpa Spencer lived in 1920.The property was known as “Dunlop Station”, west of Louth on the Darling river. (one million acre property).
The buildings were built in 1880s from local stone and timber.
The property was serviced by paddle boats from Adeliade.
They also had one of the largest shearing shed in Australia at the time.
The original owner of Dunlop was and Irishman.
The property was bought by the Murray family before being sold to the new owners and the web site is https://www.dunlopstation.com/.
Leonard and I camped on the edge of the Darling River overnight.
That evening we had a tour of the house with the owners, learnt a lot of history.
I passed onto them some of the photos.
To be continued
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