Historical Society - No November markets
To begin I must apologise for missing the result of the raffle last week. The society is very grateful for the support you have given to this competition over the last six months. The winning ticket was drawn by our President at the Annual General Meeting and Ally Denyer is the lucky winner.
Not much has been happening lately but one of our members spotted a stray headstone which is not mentioned in the isolated grave folder. There was immediate research, and the family is now identified in the folder. We are always happy to add isolated graves to the folder whether there is a headstone or not – sometimes there is only a name and vague description of the site, but they all mean something to the family concerned.
As mentioned last week there will not be a market this month due to the rules and regulations but hopefully there will be two in December (4th & 18th) depending on how the regulations are then.
When the railway reached Barraba in 1909 it opened up the area and made trips by coach or sulky to Tamworth a thing of the past. Gradually Barraba people purchased cars, especially after Cliftons opened their doors in 1912 and later moved to larger premises in the centre of town.
These days we lock our cars when we park them either in the street or a car park. In the early days, with few cars, finding a park was not a problem and few people knew how to start or drive a car but there is one story that my mother often told.
Grandfather, known to us all as “the boss”, bought himself a car and in due course took the family to a film being shown in Clifton Hall. Clifton’s Garage was almost opposite, and several people parked their cars in the garage while at the theatre – the garage was open until about 11pm on Saturday nights!
The film being over and everyone pouring out of the theatre, the boss offered to drive a town family home before returning to collect his own family. He collected the car from the garage and picked up the passengers and took them home. Mr Capel then went to collect his car and pick up his family, but the car was missing from the garage – no one knew what had happened until “the boss” returned to pick up his family and it was found that he was driving the wrong car, his was still in the garage.
After a bit of chatter and an apology, everyone set off home in their own car. That could never happen these days!!