INTERVIEW DATE: December 20th, 1998 - Arrived from Sydney in 1974 and settled in Towamba.

Peter and Heather Matthews moved to Towamba in 1974 to leave the stresses of city life behind. They arrived at a time when the last of the children of those who had settled and worked in the district in the late 1900's were living out their lives in semi retirement. These 'oldies' were genuine, helpful and thoughtful people who gave Peter, Heather and family a view through a steadily closing window of how life was lived fifty years before.

KATE. WHAT YEAR DID YOU COME TO TOWAMBA?
HEATHER. September 1974.
KATE. WHAT DID YOU COME HERE FOR?
PETER. We bought the school bus run off Albie Love (Enie Love's cousin - from Eileen Love interview)
KATE. WHERE DID THAT GO?
PETER. From here (Towamba) to Bega, there was one that ran from Towamba out to Pericoe, to McPaul's. There was another one that ran from Towamba down the Snake Track to Kiah and a big (school) bus into Eden.
KATE. SO YOU PICKED UP ALL THE SCHOOL KIDS FROM KIAH AND ALONG THE HIGHWAY.
PETER. We started... or Heather started one off from Towamba straight over the mountain to the high school. (Eden) That's the one that Barry Jackson's got now.
KATE. YOU HAD ONE RUN EACH?
PETER. We had four...
HEATHER. We had two buses to go down the Snake Track. We used to have a little bus that went to the high school...picked the kids up from here (Towamba), went down the Snake Track to Kiah store where we swapped over into the big bus and picked up the Kiah kids too and took them all into Eden high school.
KATE. WHAT WERE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS WHEN YOU CAME HERE? YOU CAME FROM SYDNEY?
PETER. Yes. It was different, yes.
KATE. WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE COMING TO, WAS THAT WHAT YOU FOUND?
PETER. Well, it was a different lifestyle, that's for sure. We wanted something that didn't have as much pressure as what we had in Sydney.
KATE. DID YOU FIND IT WAS MORE ISOLATED THAN WHEN YOU FIRST THOUGHT?
PETER. No. Not really. We drove out here a couple of times when we were on holiday in Eden. First time was a bit of an eye-opener. What the roads were like.
HEATHER. We came up the Snake Track, we came the wrong way. And we kept thinking, oh, we've missed it.
PETER. The next time we came out, we came out the right way and it looked a lot different.
HEATHER. The locals had a lot of horses then, and they used them. They actually ploughed with horses. None of the oldies had cars. I think one...Bob Greer had a car. But he didn't go to town (Bega or Eden). They all relied on the bus for their meat and bread and groceries. We'd bring everything out for them.
KATE. DIDN'T HE WANT TO GO TO TOWN IN HIS CAR?
HEATHER. No, he just used to run around Towamba in it.
PETER. It was a little old Morris Minor. You probably remember it in the paddock on the corner here.
KATE. OH, YES. THE OLD GREEN UTE.
HEATHER. There were about ten or twelve old bachelors here then. None of them could drive. Bob Greer was the only one out of them that could drive. The rest all had their horses.
KATE. DO YOU REMEMBER WHO THEY WERE?
HEATHER. Yes. Now, we had Athol and Bob Greer who lived in Blaxter's house near Jeff Knight's house. Laurie Beasley, next door to us. Arthur Beasley down the back. Jack Beasley up the top. John Thomas Obediah McDonald in the old house opposite the sports ground gate. Charlie Laing, across the river where Macey's are, at 'Nereman'.
PETER. Darcy Parker, over where Boller's are.
HEATHER. Yes, but he was widowed. He drove one of the buses for us.
PETER. Wilf Ingram out towards Burragate, at 'Widden Farm'.
HEATHER. That's about it, I think.
KATE. WERE THERE HOUSES HERE THEN THAT AREN'T HERE NOW?
PETER. The one down the back. (Arthur Beasley's.)
HEATHER. It burnt down.
KATE. WHAT WERE THE OLDIES LIKE. DID YOU GET TO TALK TO THEM?
HEATHER. Yes. John Thomas used to come down....they'd all come and sit along the bench of an afternoon.
KATE. WHICH McDONALD WAS HE?
PETER. Bobby's (McDonald) uncle. Cecil across the river, was his brother, where Ronnie McDonald owns now. (the Slattery's place)
KATE. WAS THERE ANYONE LIVING IN THAT OLD HOUSE THEN?
PETER. Cecil and Silvia and their son Gerry...yeah, they lived over there.
HEATHER. They'd all come and sit like a lot of magpies, along the bench. They'd ride their horses up ...
KATE. WAS THAT IN FRONT OF THE SHOP?
HEATHER. No. Here. Waiting for the bus to come in. Peter would bring the bread and the mail, meat. Whatever they wanted. So they'd all sit there and talk to me and the kids while we were waiting for Pete to come in. Old Jack McDonald, up there, he used to work in the mines, when they had a candle in their hat.
KATE. YAMBULLA?
HEATHER. Probably, it was out here. Couldn't tell you for sure.
PETER. He mined all up through the hills around here. I used to pick him up with his push bike, in the bus and drop him off up near Craig Cattell's (Stoney Creek) and he'd go up into the hills and spend the day there and come back out.
KATE. SO, THAT'S GOLD. FOSSICKING FOR GOLD.
HEATHER. Yes.
PETER. He knew where all the old mines were and he was an old prospector.
HEATHER. They were all very interesting. Arthur (Beasley) down here, put his age up and went to the first world war because he wanted to go to have a bit of adventure and go overseas. And he ended up in France and Egypt....
KATE. AND SURVIVED IT.
HEATHER. He survived it, and then he went to the second world war. He was a bit too old then so he put his age back so he could go over there too. But he didn't get overseas that time. They were isolated because they couldn't get out very much. Laurie (Beasley) used to talk about going to Eden in the cart with his father. Going in to get supplies or what, I don't know. But it would take them all day to go in, in the horse and cart. Then they'd come back and they'd camp along the road. Laurie, next door, he came in one day and he said would you like me to plant your potato patch? So he brought the horse in and the plough and he ploughed up my back yard for me and planted potatoes and Phyllis (South, Rollo's wife) used to deliver the milk. Fifty cents for a flagon. Do you remember that?
KATE. I CAME JUST ON THE END OF THAT.
HEATHER. And I'm sure she gave a lot away to people who didn't have much money. She'd leave the milk anyway. It was a social round too, because she'd have a chat to everybody every day as she came around. And they were all very interested in us doing the house up because we were the first of the new mob that came in.
KATE. SO YOU WERE HERE BEFORE THE MACEY'S? ('NEREMAN')
HEATHER. Yes. Charlie Laing still had the house down there then. We were sort of the first. There were a lot of new people out at Pericoe, at the commune out there.
KATE. 'TWO CREEKS'
HEATHER. Yes. A lot of new people there. But we were the first ones who had actually come from the city and come to settle here.
KATE. FROM ANOTHER PLANET.
HEATHER. Well, yes. It seemed to be fifteen odd years behind the city. Mainly I suppose because of the isolation with the old people because they only had their horses. They didn't have any vehicles.
KATE. WHO WAS IN MY PLACE WHEN YOU CAME HERE?
PETER. Nobody. It was empty.
HEATHER. Page's used to own that. Their son sold real estate.
KATE. AND WHAT ABOUT RAY LOVE'S HOUSE? ('Rivervale')
HEATHER. Margaret Love was living there. Margaret and Roy Love. Enie's (Love) son. They lived there for about six months when we first came here. Zita and Dave Farrell were in the old police station. Zita's father was a Parker and he had the store before Kellers. Ira Parker, he was. They'd gone by the time we'd got here.
PETER. It was Darcy who had the wine shop.
HEATHER. That was closed when we came here too.
KATE. WAS THERE ANYONE IN DALTON'S OLD PLACE?
PETER. The Dalton's had just moved in not long before.
HEATHER. When we first came here, everyone was very good to us. We lived in the caravan out in the back yard for six months because there was no water here, no kitchen, no bathroom. It rained for weeks and weeks. And I'd get up of a morning, all our furniture and that was in here, and our fire would be lit, in the old fire place. Albie (Love) would come down in the morning and light the fire for me before I got out of bed. They were just so nice. Everybody went out of their way to be nice. Especially Clare and Albie. I ran out of water because there was only a three hundred gallon tank, so I ran out of water pretty smartly when it stopped raining and Albie would go and get the fire truck which had a one hundred gallon tank on the back and he did three or four trips for me. He wouldn't get it out of the river for me, he said that wasn't good enough, he got it out of Jingera Creek. So he used to go up to Jingera Creek to get it. But nothing was too much trouble. They had time. They used to farm the flats down there behind Bob and Marj Sinclair's place. Mrs. McLeod used to be in there. Clarinda McLeod. She was a Dickie. The Dickie's were in Ray Love's place. And it was Dickie's flat along that stretch below the house (Ray's). Old Jack Beasley, he lived up on the hill here, right up behind Dickie's old place.
PETER. With his white horse, up there, and then he got crook and lived in the old place on Pongratz's ('Log Farm').
KATE. WELL, JACK WAS STILL RIDING THAT HORSE OVER TO THE SHOP WHEN I WAS FIRST HERE (1982). SO, WHAT WAS THIS PLACE?
HEATHER. A billiard hall. One section was the billiard hall and the other section was a barber shop at one stage.
PETER. It was a grocery shop at one stage ....
HEATHER. And a bush nursing association too. I suppose she used to come out to visit....
PETER. (Showing on old photo of the house in its original state) It was just a big hall.
HEATHER. Rat holes everywhere.....
PETER. It had all the old fibrous plaster lining and Albie used it for a corn shed. We got it as part of the deal (the mail run). The original idea when we bought it, was we were going to rent the place where Colin Veness lives now, (in the main street of the village) Sproates' were living in there and they were building in Eden. The idea was that we would go there while we did something with this. But their builders were behind and we had nowhere to go so we put the van in the back yard here and the furniture inside and we started to fix this straight away. And we've been doing it ever since.
HEATHER. It's been going for the last twenty-four years and we'll be going for the next twenty-four ...(laughter). The school had only the one room in it then, where the library is now. A young teacher was here. I think there were only sixteen kids and they were very pleased to see us because we had the four boys and we could put three in to school straight away. That brought the numbers up.
PETER. My brother came down for a month to give us a hand with this and he put his four (children) in too which swelled the numbers right up for a month.
HEATHER. But that school teacher was just fresh out of college. Too much for a young fellow to do the administration as well as everything else. So the kids used to go on nature walks every day. And that's all they did. They knew every tree and shrub in Towamba but they didn't know any maths. (laughter) Everybody got together, and the P & C, and we all complained and he was removed.
PETER. I hear they're talking about the church being sold.
HEATHER. Did you know that Charlie Laing put a window in the church, up the end near the alter, in memory of his parents?
KATE. OH, IS THERE ANYTHING WRITTEN ON IT?
HEATHER. I don't think there is any plaque or anything like that. (Interviewer investigated and a small plaque exists) Quite a few years back all the town ladies went up there and stripped back the alter and the pews and scrubbed everything up and gave it an extra coat of varnish on the rails, and did a bit of repair work and that's about the last thing that anybody has done to it.
PETER. Kurt (Pongratz) put a new roof on.
KATE. WELL, IF THEY DO WANT TO SELL IT, IT SHOULD BE GIVEN TO THE COMMUNITY.
HEATHER. I suppose it depends who built it in the first place.
KATE. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE DEATHS THAT OCCURRED SHORTLY AFTER YOU ARRIVED HERE?
PETER. Well, the mail run was sort of the life blood of the town, it did everything. I used to change the gas bottles for Mrs.Ben (Beasley) when she used to run out of gas. I did the same for Mrs.McLeod and you'd do their shopping for them and anything they needed doing.
KATE. MRS. BEN WAS IN BEN BEASLEY'S HOUSE WHEN YOU CAME?
PETER. Yes. And Mrs.McLeod was up the road there and you'd deliver Arthur's beer for him, down at the bottom and anything they wanted doing, they'd ask you to give them a hand. You were also the handy man. Who was the first one now.....Bob Greer, that's right. We were running the mail of a Saturday at that stage and we were going over to a birthday party. Darcy Parker was doing the mail that Saturday and Bob drove down in his little ute, just as we were
leaving and I said, 'Darcy's not back yet, Bob.' 'Oh, no,' he said, 'I'm in a bit of trouble.' I asked him what was up and he said, ' I think Athol's (Greer) died.' Can I come and give him a hand. So I went up there and there's Athol sitting up in his chair, dead.
KATE. HOW LONG HAD YOU BEEN HERE WHEN THAT HAPPENED?
PETER. A couple of years. About that. We'd been here a while. And that was the first one.
HEATHER. Peter stayed up there and I stayed home and rang the ambulance and then we had to wait over at the shop to show them where to go. We got into the routine after that, we knew what to do.
PETER. We went to the party after that. That was the first one.
KATE. SO, YOU DIDN'T DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN REPORT IT.
PETER. No.
HEATHER. You used to go and help dig the grave, didn't you.
PETER. There'd be Dave (Farrell) and Clive (Clements) and Albie (Love) and we'd dig the grave. Clive was on the cemetery committee. I think he had the plans (of the cemetery layout) and it was organised through him.
HEATHER. If anybody died everyone would go and help with the supper and that sort of thing afterwards. You were very involved in it. It wasn't like being in the city and the person is taken away and that's it. You were personally involved. And the next time was Molly wasn't it.....
KATE. HOW CLOSE WERE THESE DEATHS?
HEATHER. They were very close. Might have only been a couple of weeks.
KATE. WHO WAS THE NEXT ONE?
PETER. Molly Beasley. She was Jack Beasley's sister. She lived in Albie Love's old place, where Ian Lindsay is now. (opposite Sinclair's house in Towamba Street)
HEATHER. She had lived in Sydney for a lot of years and she came back to help Jack because he had a heart attack or something, and she came back to look after him up there for a while. In between times....he used to live up the top there first and then he went into hospital. He was in hospital for weeks and he came back up to Albie's house and rented, and after he got better and Molly died, he went up to Kurt's place. But Mrs. McLeod.....she was an old lady, in her seventies, getting close to eighty by then, she ran all the way down to our place and she'd just about had a heart attack herself by the time she got here. She couldn't use the automatic phone because it was a manual exchange when we came here, so all the oldies would pick up the phone and they'd get Margaret (Keller, at the store) to connect them to whoever they wanted. But with the new phone, she didn't know how to ring us. So she was very confused and also she just raced down here. We just went up and the same story, Pete just stayed there and comforted her and I went and rang the ambulance. And Mr. Ben was the next one wasn't it? Mr. Ben Beasley. That was in the early hours of the morning. Mrs. Ben rang you, didn't she. In the early hours of the morning.
PETER. No. We'd been to a party.
HEATHER. Oh, that's right....
PETER. Yeah, something had come up about Athol and Molly dying and a person was saying to us about these 'dyings' they called them. Anyway we were going home from the party and it wasn't very long after the phone rang and it was Mrs. Ben saying Mr. Ben had died. She didn't know what to do. Heather was pretty close to them. Anyway we went over and old Ben was laying out on the back veranda and Mrs. Ben had a blanket over him, said she didn't want him to get cold. We had to come home and ring Shirley and Paul and David (their children). And that was the third one. And after that, that was the end.
HEATHER. Everything was so personal, wasn't it. You went to help them when somebody died and then you went and put flowers in the church and somebody else dug the grave and everybody brought cakes for the do afterwards.
KATE. DID YOU GO INSIDE ANY OF THE HOUSES. WHAT WERE THEY LIKE AND WHAT WAS THE FURNITURE LIKE. WHAT DID THEY HAVE ON THE WALLS?
HEATHER. It was early Australian furniture. Beautiful! That was Laurie Beasley's mother's (a large dresser that Heather restored).
KATE. AND WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? WAS IT AUSTRALIAN?
HEATHER. Yes. It's Australian. They used to get things by mail order. Catalogues. And that bed I've got in there. That's Charlie Laing's mother's bed. My dressing table in there is Jack Beasley's mum's dressing table. So that's the sort of furniture there was. It was all beautiful. They had meat safes and they were usually cedar meat safes, with the gauze on the sides. We had a big water fountain that was Mrs. Ben's. You know those big cast iron pots with a tap at the bottom? Well, that's all our hot water system was for a long time. We put that on the stove.
KATE. SO THE FURNITURE WASN'T WHAT YOU'D CALL...KNOCKED TOGETHER.
HEATHER. No. You'd have a miner's couch and a chaise lounge. Some old stuff, nothing fantastic, all pretty basic.
PETER. That old cupboard out there came from Mrs. McLeod. It was made out of old butter boxes, still with the stamp on them. The lining on this place here, it was all old boxes.
HEATHER. And hessian. Hessian with wall paper over it. And they all cooked on fuel stoves. Laurie's (Beasley) kitchen was all black, from the smoke. And when we came here, we took him to town one day and bought him a plug in electric stove because his other one had burnt out.
KATE. SO HOW DID THE OLD PEOPLE TAKE TO THE ELECTRICITY?
PETER. The old bachelor blokes, they mainly had wood.
HEATHER. And they'd go out with a slide to collect the wood. It was like a sled with wooden runners and the horse pulling it. They'd go and get the wood with the axe and load it on that.
KATE. WOULD IT HAVE BEEN A LONELY LIFE FOR THOSE BACHELORS, OR DID THEY SOCIALISE A LOT.
HEATHER. They seemed quite happy about it. Apparently when they were younger they had a lot of social life. They had dances and that out at Pericoe and at the hall over here. (next to the general store)
PETER. They used to go over to the wine bar every Friday night.
HEATHER. They were all oldish when we came here. They'd be in their sixties, I suppose, late fifties. Probably past their dancing days. They were all quite settled in their ways. But the houses weren't anything out of the box. They were very basic .....
KATE. TWO ROOM...THREE ROOM?
HEATHER. Well, Macey's still have the old house down there. Laurie had a little bedroom on either end and the lounge room at the front that he didn't use. A kitchen and dining room at the back there and most of the houses were pretty much like that. Your place was one of the bigger ones. (Hartneady's old store) Terry's (Knight , next door to the church) place was only very tiny. He's built on to that twice now. It was only about a third the size.
KATE. WAS THERE ANYONE LIVING WHERE MOYNA AND TOM PRICE ARE WHEN YOU CAME HERE?
HEATHER. Old Mrs. South. (Rollo's mother)
PETER. That's where they used to do the milking.
HEATHER. Phyllis (South, Rollo's wife) used to come down each day and milk the cow. Old Mrs. South was a very active lady. She was very old.
KATE. WAS THERE ANYONE IN THE OLD HOUSE FURTHER DOWN FROM WHERE YOU ARE HERE?
HEATHER. No. Mattson's were in the house next to Colin Veness's. He was a Canadian, a chiropractor. He started up Yellow Pinch. (nature park, near Wolumla)
PETER. He went and lived over there (at Yellow Pinch) and Charlie Laing went over there as well. That's when he sold his place ('Nereman') to Macey's and then he lived in a caravan.
HEATHER. Yes, we took the caravan over for him, didn't we. Did you know Issy Ryan's wife was a McMahon? They lived in Ede's place. (previously 'Wattle Park' now 'Riverview') She was a McMahon and they came from Kiah. They were the only Catholic family in the district here. There were the Ryans and the McMahons. I think a couple of them married brothers and the sisters. The Catholic families were only allowed to marry Catholics and if they didn't find anyone suitable in that family, well they didn't marry. But nobody ever painted their house.....getting back to houses. They were all just weathered board.
PETER. In those days, Issy Ryan said, there was no point in painting your house, you could put that money into feed for the cattle.
HEATHER. We used to get Mrs. Ryan and bring her over to vote because she had Clem who was handicapped and they had to have somebody with him all the time. We'd bring them over one at a time. So Mrs.Ryan would come over here, Peter would take her over (to the school) to vote and she'd come and she'd sit down and have a cup of tea and I was painting one day. I slapped paint all over the old stuff to clean it up. And she looked at it and said, 'Oh, dear, that looks lovely', she said. 'That's a good colour. I knew, that when we painted our
house first up, that would be the only coat of paint it got.'
PETER. You were her official driver after that.
HEATHER. Clem, their son, had to go and have his checkup every few months so I used to take them in, pick them up and take them in to Bega to the doctor's. I used to go with Peter on a Friday, between the school bus runs. I'd take the station wagon over to Bega and bring milk and stuff back because Friday, there was a lot to bring back. And we only had a little...it was a Volks Wagon at that stage, when we first came here, a Combi, so I used to go over on a Friday. And Issy said I was the best driver in the valley. There weren't too many drivers anyway. (laughter) And he didn't know how to drive. He used to say, 'We oughter get rid of these white posts off the side of the road, they get in the road of the grader.'
PETER. He was a character.
HEATHER. Mrs. Ryan did everything very tough, though, didn't she. She had no heating for hot water, so she used to boil up the bath water in the washing machine......she had a big old wringer washing machine and the element went, so Pete bought her a new element from Bega and he had to put it in for her too. You had to be Jack-of-all-trades. She really did it hard. She looked after that boy (Clem) and she had to lift him...I think he was thirty nine when he died, and she used to lift him, and she was and old lady when we came here. She lived well into her nineties.
PETER. We could do no wrong there. I found Issy on the side of the road, collapsed, one day, at the river. I picked him up and took him home. He'd just run out of breath, he'd been walking the cattle or something so I picked him up and put him in the bus and drove him home. I was the white-haired boy after that. I could do no wrong. (laughter) They were all generally pretty strong and fit.
HEATHER. They worked hard.
PETER. They were chopping the wood up until they died. They were wiry.
KATE. WHAT WAS THE EVERYDAY DRESS?
PETER. Oh, just old clothes. They had thick cotton-like pants, shirt and braces.
HEATHER. The ladies wore dresses. They didn't wear trousers.
PETER. Probably the pants that they bought new, they just kept wearing and wearing and wearing...old style...
HEATHER. Shirt and trousers and a sports coat. And a hat.
KATE. BACK TO THE HOUSE....WHERE DID THIS BUILDING COME FROM?
PETER. Brought by bullock dray from Yambulla gold fields, so we were told.
KATE. DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT WAS WHEN IT WAS THERE?
PETER. No. I don't. It was re erected in here by Ted Butcher, I think. He had the mail run before Albie Love. They lived in that house where Colin (Veness) lives. He was son-in-law of Mrs. McLeod who used to live here in Laurie's (Beasley) place. She owned this. (Heather and Peter's house was the old billiard room which was built quite close to Laurie Beasley's old house)
KATE. McLEOD'S OWNED MY PLACE AT ONE TIME TOO.
PETER. Well, they owned this and....let me get this right. The old house (Laurie Beasley's) was the original block. This (the billiard room) was put on by Butcher and his helpers, and it wasn't done very well. It was a meter and a half over the boundary. We had to get that adjusted. But this became the hall and shop and bush nursing, whatever. A family used to live in there originally, a long while ago (in Laurie's house) there was a bush fire came down the hill and they were beating out the spot fires on the veranda, it was that close. It was up the back there and the old people stayed home and then the men went and the women stayed and beat out the spot fires. Then after that Beasley's must have moved in there. I think she (Mrs. McLeod) also owned Gropler's, or lived in there at one time.

AND THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS.