The Beginning of the Historical Society in Barraba
History Notes
What a wonderful job and happy birthday to the staff and community of the Barraba News who have reached their 5th birthday. This is likely to be a year of birthdays as we have at least a couple more to celebrate this year.
Amongst a small pile of exercise books, I have found a Shell Exercise Book with Nandewar Historical Society Minute Book written on the label. It also states that it begins in July, 1965 and ends in October, 1971- a rare exercise book recording the beginning of a 50 year history- someone else can add up the number of weeks, minutes etc!
A public meeting was held in the Council Chambers (now the GoCo office) at 8p.m. on Tuesday 13th July, 1965. There was a special guest, Mr. Bax, President of the Royal Australian Historical Society in Sydney, who addressed the meeting re local historical societies preserving the local history of their town and district.
Two motions were then put to the meeting as follows: -
- That a branch of the Historical Society be formed in Barraba and
- The branch be named Nandewar Historical Society.
Mr. E. H. Carter was elected president of the Society with two vice presidents, Mr. R. McDouall and Mr. D. Coote also elected. Mrs. Betty Crowley and Miss Margaret Urquhart were elected Secretary and Treasurer, respectively.
There were also six committee members elected - Dr. P. Bass, Harry Crowley, Phillipa Wauch, Miss P. Capel and Mr. E. Pearce. Meetings were held each month, although there is no record of who attended unless they moved a motion. Miss Elsie Capel addressed the meeting on 23rd November, 1965.
In March 1966 it was decided to hold an exhibition in the Youth Centre on 28th May, 1966. In the meantime, a simple constitution was drawn up and adopted at the May meeting before the exhibition. I attended the exhibition and remember the huge number of collections on show- particularly the tea-towels. The guest speaker was also a great success - some people noted him as giving "cheese at the end of every verse" but he did give a most interesting speech.