Kandos a Rare 20th Century Town
On 15 July 1933 Kandos Talkies would treat you to a double-bill, Beauty and the Boss, a “radiant romance, spicy and snappy – She had ‘IT’ but she hid it”; and “a sparkling satire Once in a Lifetime which reveals what goes on in the private offices of Hollywood film studios”!
That was Meg’s secret, like many women at that time. Keeping it secret enabled her to gain employment and a husband.
They were absentee landowners, colonial gentry, fraternising with their peers, making deals, raising capital and writing letters to public officials and newspapers. They paid an overseer to manage their holding.
I ask myself: why did my Aunt Meg, an openhearted, gregarious woman, who set me on the path of family history, and recorded so much of it, not tell me about my Aboriginal connections?
One of the things I love about old letters is the language that plants them in the past. Things like "the blinking b battery", "thingamajig", "going goodo", "oh gee", "a fair cow", "cheerio", "the old mob".
It was a familiar scene: a rough dirt road, dry creek bed, scrubby bushland. I saw no evidence of cultivation or construction, just shadows, silence, rustlings. But overwhelmingly I felt a sense of connection. I belonged there. I had sprung from this spot.
This is the story of a gutsy, red-headed, seventeen-year-old, Sarah Bellamy
In 1934 Lue had a pub, school, railway station, baker, butcher, one church, another store and fewer than twenty scattered houses.
Kandos. A name to celebrate a new town, a new industry and hopefully a champion racehorse.
On that day young bloods, sons of pastoralists mainly, rode in to Rylstone on their horses, were inspected, learnt the conditions of the regiment and were sworn in at the courthouse.
The turn of the century was a time when young rural men in particular, hungry for their own bit of land, raked among the hills, dales and gullies to identify and secure a portion of crown land.
Kandos History 