History Notes - Markets on Saturday

7th September 2022

History Notes

Another busy week has passed with an even busier one coming leading up to the markets this Saturday.

Finally, we have tracked down a photo of F.W. Ridley for a book being written in Bingara.  Mr Ridley was a bank manager in Bingara, he was also a relative of A. A. Adams of Barraba station and later Gineroi.  As most people would know Mr Adams was an early arrival in New South Wales who supported himself by taking jobs around the Hunter in the early 1840’s.  He made friends with a number of well-known settlers in the area who visited and later settled in the north of New South Wales.

He purchased Barraba Station and lived there for some years before his partner in Gineroi died and the Adams family moved north to Gineroi.  Mr Adams’ sister married a Mr Cheesman in England and after the death of her husband brought her family out to Australia to live in northern New South Wales.  One of her daughters married a Mr Ridley and the Bingara bank manager was a son of that marriage.  He married a Miss Capel, from Piedmont, and thus we have the Barraba connection.

Returning to Trevor Wearne’s memoirs he mentions the Bingara Road over the Devil’s Elbow near the property Hill Top.  Trevor’s mother was a Miss Capel, daughter of John Capel of Piedmont Woolshed, on the northern end of Piedmont.  John and Maria lived there for most of their married life, only moving to Rocky Creek two years before John died in 1909.

The Capel extended family enjoyed their family Christmas together before the Wearne family departed for Bingara in a sulky with some of the older children riding their horses.  However, it was not long before young Ernie Charters arrived at Piedmont Woolshed with the news that there had been as accident on the Devil’s Elbow.

Apparently, the pony had bolted, left the road, and went into a gully, tipping the passengers out of the sulky and ended up upside down in the gully with the sulky on top of them.  Fortunately, everyone including the pony survived the accident with a few scratches, but the pony was never used in a sulky again.

I hope we see a crowd at the markets this weekend – the society stall is going in for socks and calendars this month so come along and have a look and perhaps make an order.  Both items are well worth a look.

News for September 2022