History & heritage

Many will have heard of the popular memoir,  A Fortunate Life,  which follows the story of Albert B. Facey (1894 -1982), and his experiences growing up and farming in the Wheatbelt, a book that has sold over half a million copies ... As an Australian history buff, I’m always on the lookout for stories of our farming pioneers, unfortunately, they are few and far between.

For those of you who have never spent the day at a picnic races in country Australia, if you make your first foray the Bong Bong Picnic Races at Bowral in the NSW Southern Highlands, the odds are you'll be hooked. Simply everyone is happy to be there.

Test your Aussie general knowledge with the inaugural Australian Rural & Regional News Quiz, coming to you each week - or so - from Australia Day 2024 on.

Patricia Gill. Shire president Kingsley Gibson says Australia Day celebrations in Denmark have moved in step with changing community attitudes and demands. Councillor Gibson said the Denmark Shire Council did not have a position on Australia Day and spoke to the Bulletin as a private citizen about tomorrow’s Kwoorabup Festival which he believed would be a safe and inclusive event for all.

Patricia Gill. "Australia has much to celebrate as a nation, and a national day presents a welcome opportunity for mature reflection on who we are, and who we could be." So says Andrea Gaynor, professor of history at WA University, who says it’s ‘odd’ that January 26, is the day for the commemoration.

The major renovation of the Corryong & District Memorial Hall and the adjoining RSL Hall has been completed and the Upper Murray community is invited to celebrate the milestone next month. Faced with closure at the end of 2007 due to both lack of interested community volunteers to manage it and in desperate need of a new roof and repair, the financially strapped Memorial Hall has been rejuvenated to become the jewel in the crown of the town.

Allora locals had the opportunity to vote for their favourite mural to be painted on the wall of the IGA building. There was a good response of 567 votes with 375 going to the red-winged parrot design.

John Williams. "Hang on, we are going to crash, look out", was the dramatic warning given to the driver of the second engine of the Adelaide-bound Express a few seconds before one of the biggest railway smashes in the history of Victoria. On the foggy night of September 7th 1951, Kaniva and Nhill fire brigades rushed to a reported train wreck involving two Expresses at Serviceton, just near the South Australian border.

Restoring a LA Case tractor has been the focus of the Quambatook Heritage Working Machinery Association’s members in time for the club’s annual Harvest Days to be held on January 27 and 28.

Australia Day, 26 January 2024, is the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Tower on the Mount. To mark this significant event, the Maldon Museum currently has a special exhibition on display, which includes interesting photos and maps.

Glyn Rees. One of the region’s premier events, the annual Allora Heritage Weekend, will see the Allora Showgrounds host a two-day feast of historical machinery displays and activity on Australia Day weekend, January 27th and 28th. Vintage vehicle and machinery enthusiasts from around the nation will again have the opportunity to take to the many roads leading to Allora and its picturesque showgrounds.

Roger Underwood. There was an unusual event in Dryandra Forest in Western Australia in November 2023: a commemoration of 100 years of forestry management. At a large gathering in the forest, beneath the shade of a 100-year-old brown mallet plantation, speeches were made, a plaque unveiled, and this book on the history of the forest was launched.

Allora Regional Sports Museum welcomed over 90 guests to the Commercial Hotel on Saturday for the Long Lunch. Catching up with super coach Wayne Bennett are two of his early school mates from St Joseph (now St Pats) - former Qld League Representative John Cowley and half century Rugby League administrator Peter Cavanagh.

John Ellwood. The Allora Bowls Club was formed at a meeting in the Shire Hall on the 23rd January, 1933. Shire Clerk Andy Hamilton took the chair but declined nomination as the foundation president. It appears that Andy must have relented afterwards ...

Elvis has left the building! Around 25,000 Elvis fans donned their bejeweled jumpsuits, poodle skirts and pompadour wigs to shake rattle and roll the week away in Parkes, New South Wales, for the 2024 Parkes Elvis Festival.

Gippsland's hardwood industry is now largely gone, with harvesting of timber from native forests on Crown land no longer permitted. Gippsland's native forest is part of the vast swathe of forest that stretches along the Great Dividing Range from the Dandenongs to behind Brisbane. It’s integral to Australia having the seventh biggest forest estate in the world ...

This is the very personal life-story of a charismatic Welsh seaman who moved to Australia for love and once there became a captain of industry. The work is ‘as told to’ by Paul Simons to the writer Terry Larder and contains many anecdotes that illuminate aspects of life in wartime Britain and in postwar Australia ... Most of the book is concerned with Paul's life and career, enlivened with some quite racy anecdotes and more serious reflections on the way of the world. Paul has a sense of humour but also a strong moral sense.

In 1894 the Monbulla School was opened 7km West of Penola on Clay Wells Rd ... Monbulla Hall was built as an addition to the site in the 1950s and would become the primary meeting place for the Monbulla community.

Alison Bennett Taylor. Local beer and festive cheer were flowing when the Denmark Hotel reopened for trading under new ownership recently. More than 400 locals filled the 100-year-old building for free drinks put on by the new owners in November before the doors were closed for a quick refit in time for the summer crowds.

For 60 years the Mullins have been farming in the Goomburra Valley but this came to an end on Tuesday 12th December when the Mullins family held a dispersal sale of their Holstein Dairy herd.