We awoke to a sunny day but cloud moved in just after 8:00am. The forecast was for showers and storms but the locals all said that it won’t happen. As we write this entry, we know that the locals were correct at even though there was a 70% chance of rain, it remained dry.
Today was to be devoted to family history.
Just after 9:30am, we collected one of our relatives and headed to the small township of Boggabri, some 40k’s north of Gunnedah.
Our goal today was to photograph the house where “Her” mother was born and to try to locate the grave of “Her” mother’s sister who died at the age of 3 months.
Recently we had noted that “Her” family name had been allocated to the road where the ancestors house was located. So that is where we headed.
We have visited this property before so we had no trouble in driving directly there. From the outside the house looked derelict but we noticed a couple of vehicles so we assumed that someone was there. We called out but no one responded so some pictures were taken before we continued down the road a short distance to get a different perspective on the house and to turn the car around. As we turned the car we noticed another vehicle at the rear of the property so we decided to drive in.
Soon we noticed someone walking so we headed in his direction. We met the current owner of the property and he was more than happy to talk to us. Not only was he happy to talk to us but he provided a tour of the inside of the house which he is currently in the process of restoring. He also suggested we drive further into the property and look at the original windmill and adjacent dam. He also told us to stop at the derelict sheering shed on the property and look inside as it was still in its original condition.
We did stop at the sheering shed and were given another guided tour. We were told to be very conscious of snakes as a very large king brown had been killed close to the homestead in the past couple of days.
The shearing shed has had little modification since the day it was built. “She” stood inside and tried to imagine her Grandfather standing in the stall shearing a sheep held between his legs. The owner of the property intends to make the shed safe but it is unlikely it will be restored. We have lots of pictures that we will add to our family history research.
Leaving the old property, we headed back into the Boggabri township and had a nice lunch at a small restaurant called “The Vault”. The food was excellent and was not expensive.
Leaving the restaurant, we then headed to the local cemetery where we were able to find the graves of many “Her” relatives. We were unable to find the headstone that we were looking for and we will have to accept that the grave is unmarked. We left the cemetery with a belief that we have an idea where the grave actually is and for now, we will accept a belief that we found what we were looking for (later we would be proved wrong).
We stopped at one more property on our return trip where again we were able to meet the current owner.
Arriving back in Gunnedah just before 3:00pm, we had intended to say our goodbyes to our relatives, go shopping and then have a quiet night. Instead we played cards until 9:45pm and that included a lovely pizza delivered to the house from Domino’s Pizza.
We were back in our caravan just after 10:00pm and after a very long but satisfying day, it did not take us long to go to bed. There had been none of the forecast rain.