Health Services c1950

Hospital and Ambulance services 1949

Goulburn Base Hospital c1950

There are five public hospitals in the Southern Tablelands Region and one private one, while another public hospital is projected. They are (with bed numbers at 30th June 1949, shown in parenthesis) at Goulburn (182), Yass (66), Crookwell (46), Queanbeyan (36), and Braidwood (27), and St John of God Hospital (83) at Goulburn, whilst the proposed hospital is to be at Captains Flat, but is as yet only a clearing station containing four beds.

All have X-ray equipment and at Goulburn public hospital there are pathology services and special X-ray equipment.

District ambulance centres are located at Goulburn, Queanbeyan and Yass. Goulburn also has branches at Braidwood, Captain’s Flat and Crookwell.

Text source: The Southern Tablelands Region: A Preliminary Survey of Resources (1949).

Images: Goulburn Base Hospital (c.1950), St John of God Hospital from Goulburn: Queen City of the South (1952), and Goulburn District Ambulance (c.1960)

During the 1940s and 50s, did anyone in your family have involvement with the operation of hospitals or ambulance services around the Southern Tablelands districts?  Please share your memories.

Aboriginal communities of the Yass district

The Yass to Boorowa district is part of the former Ngunawal language area. Its Aboriginal family networks were linked with major Aboriginal settlements in central NSW such as Brungle station, Erambie and Warangesda mission. It contains some of the earliest areas of European pastoral settlement, with the development of two distinct Aboriginal ways of life. The first was the camps, drawn to the edge of Yass, the main ‘magnet’ of settlement. The second was people in small farm blocks. They attached themselves to large landholdings (stations), surviving on small farm blocks, or provided seasonal labour. These early Aboriginal small-scale farmers are now almost forgotten. They represent a fascinating phase, before the Board was formed in 1883 to actively manage a reserve system. Some of the earliest historically known Aboriginal figures, now turned into local legend, belonged to this colonial period. Some of their descendents lived on farms or reserves; others moved into the expanding cities.

…

The families of Yass and Tumut/Brungle were so connected, that they should be treated as a single group. Many Yass households had close relatives in Brungle. Yet in terms of settlement form, they comprised three distinct communities: Brungle ‘Aboriginal station’, the town fringe campers in Yass and the people camped on Aboriginal farmlets near Rye Park.

…

The pastoral town of Yass contained unrecorded camps on places near the early town, such as the showground, during the 1830s to 1880s. Showground camps are mainly known from local white oral history at places such as Cowra, Queanbeyan, and Yass. The predated the formation of the Board in 1883, which set aside a series of small Aboriginal reserves near the towns.

The Yass and Tumut districts contained three identifiable but kinship linked communities: The Yass town campers, the Brungle reserve people, and the Rye Park farmlet residents. Oral accounts point to families, such as Russell and Lane at Rye Park, regarding themselves as very separate from the locally residing ‘fringe’ families at Yass, who were integrated at a quite different level into the town’s economic life.

Source: Extracts from Survival Legacies: Stories from Aboriginal settlements of Southeastern Australia by Peter Kabaila (2011), pp.197-199.


Are you descended from the Aboriginal communities of the Yass district?  Please share your memories.

North Goulburn Football Club 1937



Reserve Grade Competition Winners 1937

Top Row: H Armstrong, L Coughlan, D McPherson, B Squires, F Squires

2nd Row: H McSullea, D Shepherd, T Withers, J Collins, R Jones, G Bradford, D Waters

3rd Row: E Norman (coach), N Stevenson, W Hurley (Capt), W Sharman (Vice-Capt), F Connolly (Pres).

Was anyone in your family in this football club? Please share your memories.

St Kilda Cottage and Hadley Private School

St Kilda Cottage, later Hadleigh or Hadley

Hadley Private School
Beppo Street
c.1910

A semi-detached, National Trust classified building located at 21-23 Beppo Street Goulburn. The central portion was built in 1862 as a private residence by Rev Puddicombe, later Archdeacon at St Saviour’s Cathedral Goulburn. Of Flemish bond brick, with stone quoins and sills and with stone stables in the rear, the building is of simple Victorian Gothic style. Additions to the east and west occurred around 1879 by Archdeacon PCK Rowe. In 1892, it was the residence of CL Swanston whose daughter Maud married Mr F Zouch Moriarty in October of that year.

The building came into use as a school under Miss AH Studdy in 1898. In 1905, Mrs Anderson changed the name to Hadleigh. In 1944 the building was listed as part of the estate of M & E Anderson.

Sources: Goulburn Heritage Study (1983); 1890 Goulburn City Council Rates Index; Goulburn House Names Past and Present compiled by ET Cross (1999, with later additions).


Did anyone in your family live in St Kilda, or attend Hadley/Hadleigh Private School? Please share your memories.

Geoff Meredith, Racing Car Driver

Windellama was once the home of racing car driver Geoffrey Charles Meredith. He lived at Buburba, Windellama for a time around 1925-27 where besides being a racing car driver he was a grazier.


Geoff Meredith in his 'Bugatti' at Maroubra

 Geoff Meredith owned several French “Bugatti” sports and racing cars. At one stage he drove a Brescia Bugatti on Gerringong beach at 100 m.p.h. and also drove on the old Maroubra speedway in Sydney in 1925-26.

He does not seem to have been at Windellama for very long as he only appears there in the 1926 electoral roll. During his time at Windellama he was visited by other notable racing drivers such as Hope Bartlett, Albert Vaughan, Leo Salmon and Phil Garlick.

In 1926 he was elected Vice President of the Goulburn Motor Club. Meredith raced extensively at Penrith and Maroubra speedways with limited success and he even turned his hand to motorcycle racing.

Goulburn hosted the Australian Grand Prix in January 1927 at the Racecourse. Geoff Meredith raced his type 30 straight 8 Bugatti at this event which he won with his friend Hope Bartlett second.

I can remember my late mother speaking of Geoff Meredith and his Bugatti car and also of Salmon and Vaughan. She probably met them when they visited the district.

Later in 1927 Geoff went to New Zealand and raced his car on Muriwal beach without much success. He went to England in 1928 to manage a team of Australian motorcyclists who were trying to interest the English in the new sport of dirt track speedway.

Not having been in England very long he went to the Isle of Man to view the motorcycle races but contracted pneumonia and died in Nobel’s General Hospital in Douglas, Isle of Man on 13 June 1928.

He was buried in the Borough Cemetery, Douglas, Isle of Man.

References:

Electoral Rolls.
Papers of my late mother.
One For The Road. Jack Pollard.
Goulburn Evening Penny Post.
Sydney Morning Herald.

Story by Tom Bryant 14 November 2006


Do you have a family member who was involved in the Australian Grand Prix of 1927 in Goulburn?  Please share their memories.