Wagga Wagga Confidential : personal advertisements from 1939

 

Looking for the undocumented life of a city’s past can be difficult – on the surface what records remain appear to give few clues to the day to day reality. I’m always intrigued by the idea – what was it really like, in the background, beneath the surface?  and found in the tiny personal advertisements in the Daily Advertiser from years gone by, a world of daily concerns. If you’re looking for local stories and glimpses of local characters, you’ll find much to interest you in the personal ads. If time travel ever becomes a thing, I’ll be signing up to visit Wagga Wagga between 1870 and 1945, because looking through the newspapers of the time it was quite an exciting and interesting place.

I chose the first week of 1939 to do a quick search, as there was quite a bit going on in the world at the time : the Spanish Civil War, the Nazification of Germany, and all the associated unease that was approaching due to Hitler’s growing power, just to mention a few.

So what were the good people of Wagga Wagga doing in January 1939? They were going dancing, consulting Chinese Herbalists, and losing an inordinate amount of odd objects which they then tried to recover by placing an ad in the Daily Advertiser: Gent’s blue spotted dressing gowns, spectacles, bread baskets, and bags of wool.

The employment  advertisements  frequently asked for “clever girls” or “strong girls” for jobs like housekeeping and office work, presumably in an effort to weed out the “stupid” ones before they took the trouble to answer the advertisement. Sometimes businesses would run a series of short advertisements  one after the other, in conversational tone,  exhorting readers to buy used cars, get bargains in dress materials, or attend special meeting or shows.

If you are interested in using the Daily Advertiser as a research resource, you can come into the library to use the microfilm (we have all the Daily Advertisers on film up to the third last current month) or you can access early Wagga Wagga newspapers (including some of the Daily Advertiser) up to 1954.   http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/title/687

Food, mail, madness: the Wealth and Progress of New South Wales 1893

So what was important to the average civic minded person in 1893? Assuming you were on the right side of the law, that is.  The Wealth and progress of 1893 gives us a good idea. Social, agricultural, political, meteorological statistics, religion, insanity and public libraries all get a mention. A cross between an almanac and statistical record, there is a great deal worth reading especially if you are looking for accurate historical detail.

New South Wales was still referred to by its inhabitants as a colony, mail still mostly came in envelopes and packages, and language was used very differently to how it is now. This almanac reads more like a literary novel than a straight out statistical report and is therefore easier to read.

Other items of note include: some  information from the census of 1891; land holdings, foodstuffs of all kinds (manufacture of bacon and ham gets two pages to itself, of course), how society dealt with destitute children, the insane, and oddly, an epigrammatic end to the “social conditions and charities” section with a paragraph on the “Intellectual progress” of New South Wales. Libraries and reading rooms get a mention as a major part of the progress of the state in this regard: “The State, conscious of the value of literature in softening the minds and manners of the people, encourages with great liberality the establishment of libraries and reading rooms.” (p.561 The Wealth and progress of New South Wales 1893)

The local studies collection at Wagga Wagga City Library has many more gems for you to discover. Come into the library or peruse the catalogue online – go to the library homepage and click on the catalogue button

http://www.wagga.nsw.gov.au/library

Have fun researching!

On the road: The Olympic Highway realignment at Kapooka

 

Local studies at Wagga City Library now has copies of the New South Wales Roads and Maritime Services report on the realignment of the Olympic Highway at Kapooka, the little brick bridge constructed in 1880 and it’s sharp and dangerous approaches to be streamlined in a long overdue overhaul . 

 

The benefits of in depth studies like these are that they give a really detailed view of a particular place or area, with information on environmental impact on flora and fauna, historical background, and extensive mapping, clearly labelled. And this makes the studies perfect for research!

The New South Wales Roads and Maritime Services website has the documents available in full for you to peruse if you prefer to view them online:  

http://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/roadprojects/projects/south_western_region/olympic_hway_kapooka/project_documents.html

To view the online documents you can bring your own ipad, laptop or tablet in and use the free wifi available in the library or you can log onto one of the public access computers with your library card.

 

 

 

New resources in local studies

New to local studies, four very different books and research studies- a selection  of new resources now available in the local studies collection at Wagga Wagga City Library :

Fusion : stories and recipes from local people who have come from diverse communities such as Burma, Chile, Poland and China. This book is from the publishers fourWpress in Wagga.

The Waterhole Project: Combaning Creek to Lake Cowal , by George Main. Described by the author as “a work of environmental history” of a small area in New South Wales this is a printed copy of the blog written by George Main and hosted by the National Museum Australia, with a  very detailed focus on a small area of land.

 

 Blood and Circuses : an irresponsible memoir by Lex Marinos

The life story of actor/comedian/social commentator Lex Marinos.  Lex Marinos grew up in Wagga Wagga and went on to have a successful career in comedy.

 

7^th  / 21^st Australian Horse : A brief history of the Regiments, by Ken Telfer : useful reference for those researching military history in Wagga.

If you are a member of the Wagga City Library you can borrow and read any of these within the comfort of the library !

 

 

 

The heyday of the outlaw : Bushrangers in the Riverina

A recent query regarding bushranger Ben Hall prompted some interest in whether Wagga Wagga or the surrounding districts had produced any outlaws of note. The local studies collection in Wagga City Library provided some answers : Wagga Wagga Thrillers by Sherry Morris and Riverina Rogues by Kevin J Passey are just two of the resources available.If you are interested there are many other books available in the general collection and the local studies collection has some parish maps as well, to add to the fun of researching. Cross referencing with the places named on parish maps shows the progress of celebrity bushrangers and their gangs across New South Wales and more particularly the Riverina. For more contemporary accounts, you can search Trove newspapers online.

The main local bushranger talent was the Blue Cap Gang, headed by Robert Cottrell. Their targets included stations such as Barellan, Berembed and Berry Jerry. One of the endearing traits of the Blue Cap gang ( and indeed some other bushrangers ) was to get their captives to do odd things like play their favourite tunes on the piano, or play draughts, a welcome change from the usual fare of rape and violence associated with bushrangers and their gangs at the time. The gang's exploits across the region made it into newspapers as far away as The Argus( Melbourne) , The Townsville Daily Bulletin ( Queensland) and The Cornwall Chronicle (Tasmania). Robert Cottrell was tried at Wagga Court on 20 April 1868.According to Sherry Morris, Cottrell only served six of his ten year sentence, and was set free because "His sentence was only light as he had never actually shot or wounded anyone and had no prior convictions". (p 15, Wagga Wagga Thrillers) 
Tales of notorious bushrangers and their exploits across the region are just the thing for dreary winter days. Come into the library and explore the world of the bushranger through our collections !

SHOWTIME! 61st Annual Wagga Show

A recent conversation in the library with a visitor from Emu Plains made me curious about the subject she was researching - special trains that ran straight to the Wagga showgrounds early last century.
The local studies collection has a slim volume of the history of the Wagga Show on the occasion of it's 100th year, written by Keith Swan and mentions the "cheap excursion trains" coming from nearby towns such as Albury, Urana, and Leeton. Swan's history has the showground siding being completed in 1889.
This excerpt from the Daily Advertiser (left) has details for a day's rail timetable in August 1925.

On Thursday 27 August 1925 the Daily Advertiser
devoted a large amount of the front page space to the events and details of the 61st annual show, giving a lively description of the day's events , morning to night. 1925 was the year that "the spirit of spring permeated the air", with records broken in attendance and takings at the gate, and the year that "congestion" in the cloakroom was "so great , that a police officer was was given the duty of seeing that order was maintained". Local businesses also got on board the the Show bandwagon, (right) offering special deals while the Show was running, many businesses having displays at the Show itself.
This was also the year a restroom in the form of a tent was run by the Country Women's Association and the Church of England, to much critical acclaim.

 Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Troupe also visited when the Show was on, and theatres and other venues took advantage of the influx of visitors to the town, presenting vaudeville, comedy nights, dramatic plays from travelling acting companies, and bands played on the pavement in the evenings outside the theatres to attract customers.

If you are researching early Wagga Wagga, or just curious about former times, the city's newspapers are a great source of information. You can access these by coming into the library to use the microfilm (the library holds microfilm of all Wagga Wagga newspapers) or you can search online through Trove http://trove.nla.gov.au/
or you can use the links on our local history page
http://www.wagga.nsw.gov.au/library/wagga-history/links to take you straight to some of the Wagga Wagga newspapers available through Trove.

Happy researching !

A river runs through it: John Fairfax, his canoe journey to Wagga

“ Next day we paddled on to Oura, a little village, and bought eggs from a lady who lived in a mud house which was beautifully made in blocks and whitewashed with the result that it looked, and was, cool.

                        Waterway to Wagga, p. 38, Run o’ waters

John Fitzgerald Fairfax, 1904 – 1951, of the Fairfax news empire, visited Wagga Wagga on one of his car and canoe journeys through the New South Wales countryside. 

Starting at Gundagai, John and his travelling companion Stephen, paddled down the Murrumbidgee, camping on the riverbanks by night, and following the river to Wagga Wagga by day. Their progress along the river is given in enough detail so that anyone interested in recreating the journey could do so, as they passed by local stations and landmarks and eventually ended up on Wagga beach.

There were many such trips around New South Wales, through the Illawarra, along the coast to Kiama, Bateman’s Bay ( via the Clyde River) and luckily for us  Fairfax wrote about his experiences which were then compiled into “Run o’ waters”, illustrated by Cedric Emanuel. These essays were originally published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Walkabout, and the Bega District News.  

John Fairfax was a journalist in the Fairfax newspaper business, served in the AIF during world war two, and after the war resigned from the Fairfax board and retired from journalism. Fairfax committed suicide in 1951, on his property at Gocup, near Tumut in New South Wales. 

A copy of  Run o' waters is available in the Wagga City Library local studies collection and can be read within the library. It's a great travel read and particularly interesting with so many local references.