Neighbours the Brown's Gigger Rogers
 | Alf Lane had 2 kids - Jack and Minnie |
| McElroys lived first at up from Mick Campbells house. Big family - good footballers. Hartwicks lived there after that when Ballie was going to school. |
| Magennis just below the entrance to Ballies farm. There was Jack and Jim who were shearers going as far away as NSW. They also did rabbiting. There was the mother and sister Kate. It was a terrible house and had an earth floor. Then Charley Brown lived there. He was a shearer with Peter Francis in NSW. He had 6-8 kids. The kids came to Kanes house when their mother was sick which was often. Harry was the eldest. Grandpa nursed some of them. Nora washed and fed them. Harry was killed at the War. (check Coleraine Cenotaph book page 46 - killed while a prisoner of war in Thailand in 1943 aged 34). |
| McGuire house just above the wildlife dam up from Paddy's - shifted. Left before about 1910 |
| Jigger Rogers was in Campbells house first. Mick Campbell came there around 1950 |
| As you turn at the top of the hill to Kanes Rd - on the other side of the Portland Road at the point of the hill, lived Dickie Drummond who built Kanes house in 1914 for 50 pound. |
| Bill Barton was married twice. He was a director of the butter factory. He was often away on business. Dr. Watson lived there before that. Sutherlands have it today. |
| Pearces flat - George Wilfred Peace was killed in action at El Alamein on 16th July 1942 aged 38 - (see Coleraine Cenotaph book page 49) |
There were a lot of characters around here as neighbours, Sunday was a day full of visitors. Poor old Aunty Kate and Dolly would walk up here, Billy Barnes would come up, cos he was well educated and travelled a lot. He was very entertaining, you could sit back and listen to him for hours.
The Eveston's were over there, Tom and Charlie, terrific neighbours, and the Bennetts, so it was a very closely populated area. There was always something to see going on, now you hardly hear a dog bark, or see a light at night, so now you are missing out on this little community.
You can imagine all the lights around, the Fergusons, the Browns down the hill, the Magnennis's, Jack and Jim, lived down there when Dad was just starting off. They used to go away shearing, had a sister with them, and their Mum was pretty old.
Then the Browns lived in a terrible old home, and there were a dozen of them, the Mother was always sick, the older boys would look after the kids, and Mum was always feeding them here, and they would sleep in front of the stove on rugs and things.
One time there, we were out kicking the football, and in those days there were tons of capeweed, Harry bought the baby up, their mother was in hospital and put it down in the capeweed whilst we kicked the football. Mum looked up and saw an old sow with her young pigs coming up, she thought they would eat the baby, so she had to run out and grab the baby and bring it inside.
They had a dirt floor and Mum had to go down there once, and all these kids were there sitting around the kitchen table with a pot of honey and a loaf of bread, and there was as many dead flies in the honey as there were flying around the kitchen.
The kids were diving in, dead flies didn’t make any difference, and eating the honey.
They were tough times. They seemed to survive and they seemed to be happy.
Down below us where Mick Campbell used to live – the old home there. Rogers were there they were the old originals too. They would have been here before Dad even settled here.
John “Gigger Rogers?”
Yes. With the mother and father, there were thirteen. They only had about 2 bedrooms and an enormous big table in their big kitchen which went from one end of it to the other. But when the weather got really cold and that, we used to often see them standing out the chimney which was outside the back door and they all couldn’t fit round the stove and they could get a certain amount of warmth from the bricks on the outside like bees that were sort of forced out their hive. Old Gigger their father, he only survived by shearing and selling a bit of wood, doing works around putting in a lot of crop and it was only the last couple of years that that family have died off but they lived to great ages. Isabel the youngest, she had the record, that when she attended school, she never missed a day from the time she started till the time she left. Well she darn well beat me by at least a year or more because I was a bugger if I thought it was too wet or I was going to get a cold or something I always sort of sledged it and as soon as it got passed 9 o’clock and I knew the school had started I’d be out with the dogs and gone. Anyhow, I don’t think it did me much harm.
