Kandos a Rare 20th Century Town
There is something about an orchestra that sets it apart from a band. A band swells in the open air. It is an exciting spectacle, its natural space a rotunda, a park or a main street. An orchestra shines under electric lights. It radiates romance, its natural space a ballroom or concert hall. It woos and charms, caresses and pursues.
That terrible war was about ordinary young men wanting adventure, itching to test their heroic capacity on foreign battlefields, wanting to prove their love of country and empire.
Architect William Kemp introduced a new style of bush school, the Beehive. It avoided the Gothic, had an enclosed verandah, semi-circular galvanised iron roof and was built with local materials (in the case of Pyangle, timber and stone).
Education was pretty raw a hundred and fifty years ago. Imagine a dozen or more kids squashed on a couple of long benches, scraping their feet on the dirt floor of a slab and bark shack, reciting letters of the alphabet, while the untrained teacher pointed with his cane.
W B Murphy jumped out of on-line newspapers so many times I finally said, 'OK! I'll do your story.' But how to begin?
In December 1922 the Lithgow Mercury announced, 'although in other centres Labor Day demonstrations seem to be declining, Kandos in the vigor of its youth, put forth its best effort on Saturday.'
We learn of a woman who discovered that being a wife, mother (two school-age sons Terry and Lance) and home-maker, wasn't going to give her the fulfilment she wanted.
The highlight of the highway route, but also the part that causes a tinge of anxiety for me, is that sliver of road cut into the side of Blackman's Crown, in early days referred to as the Crown Ridge.
Even in those early years, Australians understood the significance of Anzac Day as more than a commemoration of those who had fought.
Kandosians might find it hard to accept that three New Zealanders contributed more to the foundation of Kandos than three Australians.
You probably think of cordial the same way I did: a coloured syrup (bright red or green in my day) which you poured into a glass, up to about a centimetre, and then topped up with ice cold water.
Kandos History 