NEWSLETTER of the Richmond River Historical Society

v.7, no.2, June 2010 ABN 58 487 170 223

P.O. Box 467 [165 Molesworth Street] LISMORE. 2480

Telephone: 02 6621 9993/FAX: 02 6621 9992

www.richhistory.org.au [email: info@richhistory.org.au]

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Visitor from Canada

A recent RRHS highlight was a visit from Professor Edward Watson McWhinney, the son of our first Secretary and a generous donor to the Society. Professor McWhinney was born in Lismore during the time his father was a teacher at Lismore High School in the 1930s. He spent some of his childhood here. He graduated in Law from Sydney University and later took his doctorate in Constitutional and International Law from Yale University. He also studied in Europe. He has had a distinguished academic career, has worked for the United Nations, and has had numerous advisory positions. He is a resident of Canada and was a member of the Canadian Parliament.

Professor McWhinney has a sister living in Ballina and while visiting her took the opportunity of visiting our Museum and having morning tea with some of our members. It was a very pleasant visit.

Update on Past Members

Several of our long-time members who have worked as volunteers for many years are now residing in retirement homes. You may remember some of these people. Meg Timbrell is a past-Secretary and Researcher and, on behalf of the Society, she also wrote articles for the local newspapers. She has been troubled with eyesight problems for some years and recently decided to leave her historic family home just outside Lismore and enter a retirement village.

Leith and Shirley Martin have been residents of a retirement complex for some time after selling their home at Goonellabah. They were both volunteers at the Museum for many years, manning the desk one day each week and always participating in Society activities. Leith wrote many articles and pamphlets on local history and donated most of his library to the Society when he and Shirley moved from their home.

Norma Olley was another regular volunteer, also manning the desk one day each week. She was very interested in the Society’s costume and needlework collections. She was also interested in the Research activities and attended all our workshops. Norma is currently living in Brisbane with relatives.

Many of you will remember Lloyd Newton whose father had the famous ice works in Lismore. He has always been interested in local history and has written several books relating to his family. Lloyd now lives in one of Lismore’s retirement homes.

Death of Member

Many of you will remember Pat Goodwin who was a Society member and volunteer for some years. Pat died recently aged 87. She was an amazing person with a bubbling personality, full of life, and working as a volunteer at the Lismore Public Library choosing books for the housebound practically to the day she died! Among her tasks at the RRHS she catalogued most of the books in our collection. She was born in Mullumbimby to Jim and Madge Cole but soon afterwards the family moved first to Ballina and then to Lismore. Most of her life was spent in Lismore. After leaving school she worked as an apprentice pharmacist at Byron Bay until she married Ken Goodwin. They had four children, three girls and a boy. Pat was always interested in books and libraries and so became a school librarian. In the 1970s she studied and obtained her registration as a qualified librarian with the Library Association of Australia. She was one of the first qualified librarians in the area and worked mainly in school libraries. She will be sadly missed. [It is interesting to note that her three daughters are all qualified librarians!]

Flood book

Floods have always been of interest (and concern) to residents of Lismore and district. RRHS member Kevin Olivieri has recently completed a book on the floods and it should be well received. It contains many of the flood photographs in our collection as well as some Kevin has obtained from local residents and The Northern Star. It will be available from the Society shortly. Kevin has been responsible for the photographs collection at the Society for several years and has compiled other similar publications, mainly relating to local towns. Prior to the flood book he completed a publication on New Italy.

Lift Update

At long last it seems we may be getting our long-awaited lift. Lismore City Council has included it in its current Forward Plan and it is scheduled for the 1912-1913 financial year. Provision was made for a lift in the original design when the building was erected in the 1930s, so it has been a long time coming! In recent years it has been a real nightmare for some volunteers (getting older!) as well as visitors. Recently a visiting researcher who is a paraplegic pulled himself all the way up the steep and narrow stairway so that he could undertake research. It was quite an effort and volunteers had to stand and watch, with their hearts in their mouths at times! As one of those who finds the stairs a major hindrance to visiting the Museum and Research Room these days, I sympathise – and will keep my fingers crossed! Discriminating against the disabled and elderly must be one of the least desirable traits, even for a succession of Councils!

[suggest – Lismore City Council have included the provision of a lift to the Museum building in the current Forward Plan. Installation is scheduled for the 2012-2013 financial year. (Margaret Henderson is) one of many members and potential visitors turned away by the present lack of accessability to the first floor where almost all of the Society’s resources are housed. A recent visiting researcher resorted to discarding his wheelchair and pulling his way up the stairs on his backside, an admirable effort but hardly adequate for all requiring access.]

Swimming pools

On 1^st April this year there was a wonderful article in the free Lismore paper, Northern Rivers Echo, relating to swimming pools and the art gallery. Over recent years there has been great discussion and argument about building a new swimming complex in Lismore and upgrading the existing swimming pool in Molesworth Street. Council looked at various alternatives and eventually decided to build a new complex at Goonellabah but also to upgrade the existing pool. These projects have now been completed and are being used by the public. However, there are now at least two other swimming complexes in Lismore – one operated by Trinity Catholic College and the other recently opened by the Southern Cross University. Although these are mainly for the school or the university the public can use them too.

Over the years there has also been much discussion regarding the building of a new Regional Art Gallery in Lismore. The RRHS was even involved at one time in this project as it was thought the Museum could be housed in a complex with the Art Gallery. [remove - With no final decision as yet made by Council on building an Art Gallery the Echo must have decided that the gallery and swimming pool controversies could be combined – they](The Echo) stated that Lismore was now the City of Swimming Pools and that another pool was planned, this time for the CBD area, on top of an Art Gallery! A wonderful sketch was provided, with a waterslide from the roof to the ground. The article read so well that no doubt many people, at least at first reading, did not realise that it was an April Fool’s joke! [Perhaps it was not such a bad idea anyway – sillier ideas have been put forward in the past!]

Deeves family

Recently a story for The Northern Star was written concerning the Deeves family. While looking for more information I came across a young American girl connected with the family who was about to be married in her ancestral home in Ireland. She was very interested and said she would speak to the elderly members of the clan about a possible link to the Australian Deeves family. Apparently all the Deeves families came from the same village in Ireland. The Internet is an amazing source of information! Our file is still very sketchy on this family so, if anyone knows anything, please let me know.

Lennox Head Tornado

Several members of our Society have homes at Lennox Head. As many of you probably are aware this village was hit by a tornado a few weeks ago and many houses were torn apart. Luckily no one was injured. The home of RRHS member and volunteer Marelle Lee was apparently badly damaged as was the home of our late member Mary Seccombe. This was a rare event for the area which perhaps made it even worse as people were unprepared. To add to the devastation, many of the older homes were full of asbestos. It will take many months before the village is back to normal. We often think that cyclones will play havoc with our coastal towns, but we never think of tornadoes!

[History Week

The Society is taking up the theme for History Week (Faces in the Street, 5-13 September) with Robbie Braithwaite choosing some faces in the crowd from our archival photos of the CBD. Maybe some of the unknown ones can be identified by relatives or friends. We are negotiating for downtown window space for a presentation and this may include a flat screen liquid crystal display (LCD) of sequential digitised images and biographical notes for the ones we have identified.]

Bye for now,

Margaret Henderson