Fitzmaurice Street in the 1880s - 1884

So here we are , four years on, returning to the Wagga Wagga of 1884, and walking around our town. To start things off , by happy chance the Wagga Wagga Advertiser featured a little editorial piece called "Wagga as seen by a four years absentee", in November of 1884. After quoting Irish poet William Allingham's poem Ballyshannon, the writer praises various aspects of the town : the schools, the hospitals, new businesses, and lastly, gas lighting, which was a relatively new development (especially introducing street lighting).

1884

The new year in Wagga Wagga kicked off with scorching heat, with the school term commencing on Tuesday 15 January, but with few children being sent to school as temperatures hit 45 ° in the afternoon, and made worse by a dust storm that covered the district. 

As the year progressed, some of the important events in the town were based on bridges: the Company Bridge was bought by the government and made toll free in March of 1884, with a parade, dinner and amusements marking the moment.

Above, from the Sydney Illustrated News 1876: the Company Bridge in Wagga Wagga

1884 is also the year the Wollundry lagoon bridge started construction. There was some resistance by the people of Wagga Wagga to paying for the essential construction of the rebuilding of the bridge connecting old Wagga with Newtown and in the end it was paid for by the government, costing 3,000 pounds. 

Wagga Wagga was a very social town in 1884- picnics, balls, and dances in abundance, for all manner of groups in the community- Freemason groups, religious institutions, schools, all held events that were well attended and were big news at the time. 

The Freemason's Hall was in use almost every evening it seems with a dance, ball or travelling theater troupe. These social events were so popular that various businesses popped up offering catering and a cab business started as well to ferry people to and fro :

There were many entertainments over the course of the year, and actors and comedians of note visited Wagga Wagga, Grattan Riggs being one . His show was much anticipated and the show was written up in the newspaper :

Above : Wagga Wagga Advertiser, April 19, 1884

Grattan Riggs is remembered as an actor comedian, and he died in Tasmania in 1899. He gave signed photographs to his fans, like the one shown here (image is from the State Library of New South Wales collection) from 1891. Mr Riggs would have strolled along Fitzmaurice Street and maybe regaled the passers by with quip and a tip of his hat and popped into a pub or two before the show to converse with the locals (and down a pint or two as well). 

After agitating for some time to get a gas lamp installed on the bridge so people crossing at night could see their way, finally in October the lamp was installed and lit, to light the weary traveler on their weary progress to Fitzmaurice Street:

Above: from the Wagga Wagga Advertiser, October 18 1884

Interestingly, insurance agents, sensing a way to capitalize on the increasing popularity of gas, had a category of of insurance that covered "gas explosions". Gas lighting was all the rage in 1884, and advertisements promised "gas-lit" ballrooms, halls, shops (even billiard rooms in pubs) to lure customers. Smith & Jaye became Wagga's gasfitters in 1884 : 

Above :  from the Wagga Wagga Advertiser 29 November 1884

The gas lamp in Fitzmaurice Street was regularly vandalised by the yobs of the town (they would smash the glass panels in the lamp itself) and this behavior was called "larrikinism".

The year drew to a close, with Christmas being celebrated by local businesses offering the usual festive fare of toys, cards, and food, shops along Fitzmaurice Street getting into the Christmas spirit:  

Other businesses in Fitzmaurice Street included Lorrimer and Martin, Dyring's, Corthorn's, W. Tatham's (next to the Australia Hotel) , and E. Rand (chemist). This image (below) from the State Library of New South Wales Mitchell collection, is from about ten years earlier,  but it gives a good idea of what the street may have looked like around that time, a wide dusty street with buildings still being constructed on either side.

The Commercial Hotel ( current day Romano's ) is on the right hand side of the photograph and just beyond it you can see where Edward Rand the chemist (or druggist as he was known on the signage) was situated. 

If you would like to do your own history detective work, try starting with Trove :

https://trove.nla.gov.au/

And as always, the friendly and helpful staff at the Wagga Wagga City Library can help get you started. 

Fitzmaurice Street in the 1880s

There is an increasing interest in the early days of the town of Wagga Wagga , and there is still a great deal to be done to piece together a detailed chronology of the life of the first streets as set out by Surveyor Townsend in his original plan. 

The evolution of the town , as chronicled through the newspapers of the time, is fascinating to follow: businesses, court reports, advertisements, snippets of local news, are some of the pieces that make up the puzzle that was early town life. In the next few posts,  I'll be looking at three years from the 1880s - 1880, 1884, and 1888, to give you just a little window into the bustling hive of activity that was Wagga Wagga in the late 19th century.

1880 

In 1880, there were coaches carrying mail, people and goods  across the countryside. The Australian Hotel in Fitzmaurice Street was the booking office for the Royal Mail  at this point in time. 

Steamers also plied their trade along the river, and hotels were popular as offices for bookings, in this case the Pastoral Hotel in Fitzmaurice Street, or, as the advertisement below says, just ask the Captain on board the steamer (Wagga Wagga Advertiser, Saturday 6 March 1880).

There was concern about flooding eroding the riverbank and the impact of this in the town, and under the heading "Items of news" the writer expresses this worry of the weathering of the bank by "every freshet that comes down the river" (Wagga Wagga Advertiser, Thursday February 19 1880). A freshet was a flood from ice or snow melting and rushing down a river, thus causing damage from flooding, and the term was in popular use in America during the 1800s.

An editorial in the Wagga Wagga Advertiser on the same day in February calls on the Municipal representatives to impose sanitary measures on the residents and businesses in Fitzmaurice Street. Wagga Wagga as a town was reluctant to take on modern measures that would improve the health of the town and it was the job of the council at the time to implement the measures despite the unwillingness of the populace. 

Another major event was the fire in the Fitzmaurice Street that destroyed the Criterion Hotel, the Mason's Arms, the Masonic Hall and other buildings on Friday the 15th of October 1880. 

The fire was reported in the Wagga Wagga Advertiser on  Saturday 16 October 1880 :

As you can see from the excerpt above, the damage done by the fire was extensive. A further detailed report was written in the Wagga Wagga Advertiser on Tuesday 19 October 1880, describing the injuries of firefighters and volunteers and details of insurance for all the people and businesses involved. Here is an excerpt from that article : 

The fire was big news, and in subsequent days the response of the fire brigade was called into question: why hadn't they taken the fire truck to the river to get a steady supply of water, instead of the yard of the Criterion Hotel ? The Municipal Council of the time examined the matter thoroughly and it was decided that the "newly formed" fire brigade had done an excellent job in the circumstances. 

From the Wagga Wagga Advertiser, Saturday 30 October 1880 :

The new fire station was built in Newtown, which is probably more commonly known as South Wagga Wagga ( or as historian Keith Swan described it, "the area south of Wollundry Lagoon").

Businesses in Fitzmaurice street were many and varied, as were hotels. Although I can't cover everything here, a few businesses of interest were the IXL Furniture Arcade, Ye Chong Drapery and Grocery Store,  W MacArthur Tailor and Clothier, and H J Williams , Family and Dispensing Chemist.The Masonic buildings, housed businesses as well as the Masonic Hall.

Although we may think of the 1880s as a time of difficulty and isolation in country areas like Wagga Wagga and it's surrounding districts, quite a busy social and cultural life existed in the town and recitals, concerts, and entertainments were held at the School of Arts and the Masonic Hall. People also held these events at different venues including people's homes and other shops. The Wagga Wagga Brass Band gave outdoor concerts, this one held by the light of the full moon on Thursday 9th of December, as seen by this entry from the Wagga Wagga Advertiser below:

As you can see by the advertisement (left) from the Wagga Wagga Advertiser Thursday 1 July 1880, entertainments could be a mixture of all sorts- singing, a form of play known as a farce that was mostly buffoonery with very little story to back it up, and in this case, ventriloquism , (it's easy to imagine the doll would have looked pretty scary) but these troupes were quite popular in the country towns.

Shakespeare recitals, literary recitals, musical concerts , or combinations of any of these sorts of entertainments livened up the evenings and the seasons were mostly ignored. If rain or bad weather stopped an event, it was merely postponed, until the weather was more amenable.

The development of the life of Wagga Wagga as a town as it unfolds through the years is absorbing to watch. Meanwhile, if you are interested in doing your own research Trove is a great place to start -and here is a link to Trove's online newspapers :

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/?q=

If you have any queries the friendly staff at the information desk at the library can help.

                     

                         
                                                       

Aspects of local farming history : droving, dairying, shearing

The history of farming in the Wagga Wagga district is extensive, so I have chosen three books from local history that cover some diverse facets of the farming industry.

Heroes of the long paddock, by Chris Anderson, is a collection of interviews with drovers in regional New South Wales. Areas covered include Gundagai, Hillston, Deniliquin, and Howlong. Combining interviews, historical information, stories, photographs from the personal archives of the drovers and occasional poetry by the author, this book gives an insight into a rarely spoken about part of farming in Australia. 

Just in case you didn't know, the long paddock refers to the public stock routes where drovers take cattle and sheep to provide food relief in times of drought. 

Dairying: from foundation to deregulation by Des Cowley, is a detailed history of the dairying industry in Wagga Wagga and the surrounding district and shows a very active dairy industry in Wagga Wagga. The first dairy established was at Orange Tree Point in East Wagga Wagga, right next to the Murrumbidgee River, in 1890. This dairy was destroyed in a flood in June 1891. 

In following years there was an increase in dairying , with dairies and butter factories popping up in Ganmain, Cootamundra, Temora and Leeton, to name a few. 

This history covers every aspect of the commercial dairy industry in the area from early years right through changes in dairy technology and it's impact, to the foundation of of the Murrumbidgee Dairy Products company to deregulation in the 1990s. Accompanied by black and white photographs and statistics.

Above , detail : Dairying , from foundation to deregulation, by Des Cowley

Australian woolsheds, by Harry Sowden, was originally published in 1972, with reprints through to 1980. Filled with beautiful black and white photographs of shearing sheds across Australia, with New South Wales well represented, including Lockhart and other towns in the district. The old Urangeline shed at Lockhart is a particularly stunning piece of work, showing the complex carpentry needed to construct shearing sheds during the heyday of the sheep station. 

There is also a short history of the wool industry in Australia and photographs of early machine shearing handpieces. 

Above : detail showing a section of the old Urangeline shearing shed in Lockhart

As always, all these local studies items are available to look at within the library.