HARRY REGINALD SKINNER

B, 1898 D. 1975

						Alfred Skinner 20 JUN 1824 - 27 SEP 1883
			George Joseph Skinner 15 APR 1862 - 26 SEP 1934
						Eliza Cummins 19 SEP 1831 - 30 SEP 1881
Harry Reginald Skinner 8 SEP 1898 - 27 OCT 1975
						James Davis Smith 18 DEC 1820 - 12 AUG 1903
			Nellie (Martha Ellen) Smith 17 DEC 1863 - 5 MAR 1944
						Jane Elizabeth Parker 30 NOV 1835 - 9 MAY 1924

In 1911 at the age of thirteen he contracted typhoid fever, brought to Gulargambone by an unknown person and he spent eighteen months in Dudley Hospital, Orange, the closest hospital. His older brother, Oswald died there in 1912 from the fever. After recovering from the typhoid fever he didn’t go back to school, so went to work in his fathers shop again, but was too weak for the heavy work of being a butcher. Harry then worked for his older brother, Ernie who had a garage, mail contract and two Ford taxis.

In 1914, still weak from the time spent in hospital, Harry went to Sydney and started an apprenticeship with Clyde Engineering. In 1916 the workers went on strike, which lasted for months, so he returned home and went back to work for Ernie, who was unwell and needed help.

Harry played rugby league for the Gulargambone Green Socks, a well known team at that time, who won many premierships. He played on the wing and won several trophies.

In 1917 Ernie died, at the age of 27, and Harry took over the garage and taxis, while his father, George took over the mail contracts. He found the business very hard on his own, but had dreams and believed Ernie was there helping him. There were very few cars at this time, so the taxis were in constant use. He took the District Magistrate on his rounds, which lasted several weeks, all over the north west twice a year. There was one lady, he had to periodically pick up from Dubbo, who always had a large suitcase with crying coming from it. She lived out of town on her own and had seven children, but was not married. Another good customer was Jimmy Sparks, a small time sheep stealer who had a small butchers shop. Harry more than once went out in the middle of the night to fix his truck, which was full of stolen sheep. Jimmy was once caught with butchered stolen sheep, so he was locked up and the skins confiscated as evidence. He was released on bail and promptly stole the skins from the police station, using a long wire hook to drag them through the bars of the window, there was no glass, and destroyed the evidence, the case was dismissed.

Harry was once visiting some relations out of town one night, when a wild man suddenly appeared with a gun and starting shooting holes in the roof and floor, and made Harry sing while Stu Webster, a bank teller had to play the piano, and he said they were an awful combination.

Harry sold the garage to Ted Ginty in 1920, and worked for him as foreman, earning £3 a week, and was in charge of 15 mechanics. Harry was very keen on cars and owned one of the first motor bikes in the district, which was always breaking down. Returning from a football match at Warren, his bike broke down and was picked up by a team mate on his bike, which then broke down, they left both bikes under trees by the side of the road and never returned for them.

The first ramps or grids on the roads were in two sections made to suit cars with a gap in the middle, a deadly trap for motor bikes riding across the middle of a ramp. A lot of the roads were also corduroyed (logs put across the road to stop cars getting bogged), which were very rough particularly for motor bikes.

About 1926, his Uncle Dick then living at Lucknow Girilambone heard that the paddock next door was available for lease, as it was Crown Lease Land, and he already had a living area, so couldn’t have any more land. He first asked Mort Skinner if he wanted it, but Mort already had a living area at Ulingar near Nevertire, so he suggested Harry. He bought the lease from W J Crawford for very little money and called his block of 8,400 acres Angiebar. At this time it was one paddock with an old bark hut, Morrises, and one tank (a large hole in the ground and not a dam). In earlier times there had been a sawmill and well near the hut, where they had sawn timber for the mines in the district. He stocked his property with about 25 cattle and returned to the garage in Gulargambone. He returned to Anglebar several months later to find all the cattle gone. Uncle Dick had sold them, saying that Harry owed him for looking after the cattle.

An article appeared in the Gilgandra Weekly on the 7th September 1933, on his departure from Gulargambone to go and live in Girilambone.

FAREWELL EVENING TO MR HARRY SKINNER.

A large gathering assembled at Mrs Francis’ Refreshment Rooms on Sunday night to bid farewell to one of our most respected towns men, in the person of Mr Harry Skinner. Mr Geo. Lemon occupied the chair and in his, opening address spoke in glowing terms of the character of our departing friend. Having known Harry since he was a baby, it was rather a calamity to the town that such’ a fine citizen should leave. The speaker wished him every success in his new venture. The toast of The King was then honored. Mr. Bolger spoke at length, supporting the remarks of the chair man.- He had known the guest for over ten years, and could say he had the happy knack of being able to mind his own business and would never lose friends on that account. The remark;, -were supported by Messrs. .Toe Donnelly, J. Gallagher, D. Ryan, J. Spark, . junr., AV. Sutton, J. Spark, sen., E. Lemon, E. McDonnell, A. Walker, J. Rosser, J. Horn, G. Francis and C. Ferguson. The toast of the guest was then honored, Harry calling upon -Mr. K. Lemon to respond on his behalf. The presentation of a wallet and fountain pen and pencil, together with a stock whip, was then made by , G. Lemon. The evening closed with the singing- of God Save The King.

After his father, George died in 1934, Harry spent long periods at Anglebar. He built a large shed, which he used as house, shearing shed and stables. He also started putting up fences and sheep yards, and making tanks with horses and scoop. There was one tank nearby called “Bullock Tank”, so named because there is a large hump in the middle of it, said to be the remains of a bullock team which was cleaning it out and were caught by a flash flood. He moved to Girilambone permanently in 1938 and left the garage to Mac.

Harry and Uncle Dick always went into Girilambone once a month for stores in a sulky, mostly on a Saturday afternoon. Once they got all dressed up for there monthly outing and arrived in town to find everything shut, it was Sunday. At one time they started building a new fence near the house at Lucknow and put up the gate posts and gate first, then left the rest to do other work. Every time a visitor came they would go to the gate and open it and come through it, even though there was no fence, Uncle Dick left it like that for years.

Girilambone became a town in the late 1800’s following the discovery of copper and gold in the district and the opening of mines. The railway came through about 1885, and the town had a population of about 2,000 people at the height of mining operations.

In 1940 he started suffering bad headaches and was put into Dudley Hospital, Orange again. The Doctors removed all his teeth, thinking they were the trouble, only to then find that there was a piece of steel in one eye, the eye had to be removed.

In 1941 Harry went to Sydney with his two nephews, Joss and Jack to enlist in the army for World War II, but he was rejected due to his eye and age, then 43.

Uncle Dick saw his solicitors in Nyngan, in 1943 about changing his will, to leave Lucknow to Harry. He was on his way to Sydney at the time to get a new hearing aid and was to sign the new will on the way back. Unfortunately in Sydney while getting off a tram, he was knocked down and killed by a car, which he was unable to hear coming. Lucknow was left to his brother, Ted and sisters, Sarah and Ada. Harry was able to buy part of it, of 3,300 acres, for £3,000. The remainder was bought by Max Johnson, who also bought Artie Lamph’s Wonga.

After the war Joss came to live with Harry at Anglebar, to recuperate from malaria and jungle sores. One day while going to town in the sulky the horse jibbed and wouldn’t go forward, and kept backing into trees. They unhitched the horse and cut down some saplings to free the sulky, then hitched the horse up again, only for it to do the same thing again. By this time they were. getting pretty wild, so Harry picked up a stick to give it a light tap, but as he did so the horse reared and was knocked out. Harry ended up leading a very dazed horse home and Joss pulled the sulky, whenever they heard someone coming, they got off the road and hid.

Harry found many aboriginal artifacts around “Lincoln Tank”, where there had been natural water holes and a large aboriginal camp. Several skeletons were also found after heavy rain uncovered them, all in a sitting up position. He gave most of his finds to Justice Ferguson, whose daughter lived nearby at Bylong. Most of the artifacts, including spears, nulla-nullas and axes ended up in the Sydney Museum.

Harry married Doreen Hope Harrod from Sydney. She had. been staying with her friend Margaret Johnson (Justice Ferguson’s daughter) of Bylong when they met. An extract from the “Nyngan Observer’, dated the 7th February 1946;

On Saturday night last, a smoke concert was tendered to Mr Harry Skinner in the Girilambone School of Arts supper room. The occasion was to honour the coming marriage of the guest of the evening to Miss Doreen Harrod, a friend of Mrs Ken Johnson, of Bylong, on the 16th February, at a city Presbyterian Church.
About thirty local gentlemen attended, and Mr Frank Morley occupied the chair.
Appropriate toasts were drunk in chilled wine and “May all his Troubles be Little Ones” proposed by the chairman, was supported by Messrs G. Gibson, K. Johnson, C. Grady, L. Dicker and Darby Wilson for Allan Spinks. Speakers referred in passing to the good neighbourliness of Harry, and his late Uncle Dick, and the sincere wish was expressed that the family continue to thrive, prosper and expand through this popular marriage.
Mr Ken Johnson proposed a toast “To the Bride-elect”, and Mr Max Johnson proposed “The Married Men”. In supporting the single men in a toast, Mr Geo. Gibson remarked that soon may they wed and cause a repetition of the evening.
Humorous items, and of a high standard, were rendered by almost all present, while Mr Ted Skinner, Harry’s popular uncle, thanked Girilambonc people for the way in which they had expressed their appreciation of his nephew and the name of Skinner.
The evening concluded by all joining in singing “Auld Lang Sync” and the National Anthem.

They were married in St Stephens Presbyterian Church, Sydney on the 16th February 1946, and moved into a new house at Anglebar of four rooms, to which they later added verandahs and more rooms over the following years. The only electricity was from a 32volt generator and batteries, the generator had to be started each night to provide lights.

In May 1948, while William and Grace Harrod, Doreen’s parents were staying with them, and Ruth was only three months old, the following happened as told by Doreen;

One afternoon we had a phone call from Mr Grady, the postmaster, telling us a small boy, Roger Pears, only three years old, was missing in the bush near Coolabah.
Harry, along with most men in the district collected at the place where he had been staying with an old man. The Coo!abah police organised the search and when he wasn’t found by nighifall, ordered everyone to rest and start again at dawn. At dawn they were to go in a certain direction, close together, combing the bush. However, Harry, Paddy Cottee and Tom King were convinced the boy was in a different area, wandered off together accompanied by Harry’s sheep dog Snow. After some time Snow became interested in a fallen log and going over the men found the boy fast asleep and none the worse for his night out. Mary and Ella Hall came along in their car and picked him up. Meantime back at Anglebar there was a baby to be fed who needed milk, so my father and I baled up the cow and I attempted to milk her (the only time I have ever. milked a cow). I got enough milk to feed Ruth and was told later I was very lucky she was such a quiet cow, because I had the leg rope on the wrong leg and most cows would have objected.

In a sequel to the above story, another boy from Coolabah, Max Walsh, went missing about 1952. Harry was the one that found him this time as well.

From 1946-48, they used the shearing shed at Gleneden, about four miles away. They mostly didn’t start shearing till Wednesday, as it took two days to get the shearers sober enough for work. This was when the shearing was done by contractors and they lived at the shed. A neighbour, Tom Ferguson used to help with the mustering, and he was a typical bushie. He would be bringing a mob of sheep in, in the middle of summer, and when near a tank they would rush in for a drink, sheep, dogs and Tom all drinking together from the muddy water. His brother Mark would do the wool pressing, with Tom sometimes helping. Once while pressing, Tom who always smoked using a cigarette holder, put it down on a bale, while putting wool into the press, after the bale was pressed, he couldn’t find the cigarette anywhere. He then proceeded to pull all the wool out of the bale they had just pressed, with Mark yelling at him for being such a fool. The cigarette and holder eventually turned up on a bale on the other side of the shed, put there by one of the rouseabouts.

In 1948 a shearing shed was built on Anglebar, Joss and Harry cut the timber, it was sawn into boards by Colin McKid and the shed built by Fuller Bros. The following year, Harry bought an old house in Armatree, and Joss and George Bartley pulled it down and then built the shearers huts out of it.
The following year, an old man suddenly appeared, but known to Harry, and as told by Doreen; He looked old when I first saw him, Ike Lacey, about 1949. Harry had picked him up in Girilambone, drove him home and said to me “here’s old Ike again”. It appears, Ike used to turn up at Anglebar periodically, stay for several months and then take off and go on a mighty spree. lren he would go on somewhere else, where no doubt the same thing happened. While with us he lived in Morris’s Hut, looked after himself (food provided by us) and when he wanted to go, he would ask Harry for his wages.
He was useful, helping Harry with the fences, in the shearing shed and in the garden, and he loved Ruth and George, and used to play with them. Ruth used to give him endless cups of “tea’ along with her dolls. It was quite common to see him with two or three hats on, as Ruth insisted people wear more than one hat. Ike was an Englishman and when Harry suggested he should apply for the pension, he said he couldn’t because he was a sailor and had jumped ship in Sydney and had never registered (also had never voted). Also he had a wife in London and was afraid she might find him and he surely didn’t want that.
We saw him last about the middle 1950’s, in the Nyngan Hospital, where he died soon after. Harry paid for his funeral, as he had nothing when he died, and was buried at Girilambone.

Harry was very keen on horses like the rest of his family, and owned several race horses in the 1950’s. He owned Vayu, a chestnut, Glenangle, a bay, Brother Andrew, a chestnut, and Cold Winter, a bay. They won quite a few races around the district at Nyngan, Girilambone, Coolabah, Hermidale and the Marra. He gave up race horses, when told by a shop keeper, George Shalhoub that Cold Winter was going to loose on the first day of a two day race meeting and then win on the second day, which is what happened. He thought that if a shop keeper knew what his horses were doing and he didn’t, it was time to give up. Harry’s cattle and horse brand was <S, which was his grandfathers brand first registered in NSW in 1865. He also had his father’s brand GJS.

In 1950 Harry bought 2001 shares in Weir and Harrod for £2001, Doreen’s family company, which was started in 1913 by her father. That same year they shore 2,414 sheep, at a contract price of 4/- each. They bought a Plymouth car for £846 and a jeep for £200. About this time there was a downturn in manufacturing and instead of putting men off at Weir and Harrod, several of them spent months working at Anglebar.

A gang of Italians worked there for six’ months, ringbarking. All immigrants had to spend some time in the country at this time.

In 1955 they shore 3000 sheep and sold 91 bales of wool for £9000. Geoff Scott put up new boundary fences joining Coolabah and Westwood for £65 per mile. The house was also extended at this time. One of the builders and the governess, Yvonne Morley were pretty friendly and Ruth would spy on them, no doubt to there annoyance.

When a new Presbyterian Church was built in Girilambone, Harry supplied the timber for the frame and floor boards from cypress pine growing on Anglebar. The timber was sawn by the local mill free of charge, and most of the building done by volunteers.

Max James, a local shearer, broke down within site of the house at Anglebar, one evening while on his way to the next door neighbours to start shearing the following day. He was a very good shearer, but was also a good drinker, and this night he set off for the house, as he could see the lights. The house was about one kilometre from the road with a tank about halfway between and in a direct line, he somehow missed the tank and the house and ended up at a tank nearly one kilometre past the house. Harry found him fast asleep on the bank of the tank the next morning, he had also missed the shearing shed and shearers quarters which were between the house and tank.

There were always lots of visitors at Anglebar particularly in school holidays, one visitor was Doreen’s niece Sue Harrod, who came regularly. One time Harry took her with him to get the “killer”, and she wouldn’t get out of the ute, and he asked her why. She thought it was a “man killer” and not the term used to describe a poor sheep that was to be killed for meat.

At various times Harry had aborigines working for him. Most of them came from Gulargambone, and Mac chose the reliable ones. They were mostly good workers out there because town and the pub was too far away. One Sunday a taxi from Dubbo arrived, 240 kilometres away, with Davy Dodd, a Gular aborigine in it. Harry had arranged for him to come and do some work, and was to pick him up later in the week. Harry had to pay the taxi fare, as Davy had no money, and it took him four weeks to pay off his taxi fare, they loved riding in taxis.

Like Mac, Harry always tried to help those less fortunate than himself. He would quite often find work for John Chant, whose father was an alcoholic, and he spent a lot of time at Anglebar during school holidays doing odd jobs and earning money.

They had been having trouble with a large white sow coming from Gleneden several miles away. The pig used to make a general nuisance of it’s self, so Harry dug out some Barossa Pearl wine which had come from Weir and Harrod as samples, but had gone off. He filled a large dish with it and the pig drank it, then John took over and chased the pig with help from the dogs all the way back to Gleneden. The pig never came back.

The 1960’s were very hard years at Anglebar with falling wool prices and a very bad drought, with only 480 points (122mm) of rain falling in 1966 compared with an annual average of 14inches (355mm). George and Ruth were both at Boarding School at this time putting a further drain on finances. The years leading up to 1966 were also very dry. Harry had to cart water for just over 12 months to keep the remaining stock alive, he had to cart water to the paddocks which had grass from the tanks where there was water but no grass. He ended up with about 900 breeding ewes after the drought to start again in 1968. Most of the garden died during this stage, grapevines, fruit trees, roses and lawn. Just as the sheep numbers were building up again, the wool prices dropped even further. One good thing happened at this time, 240volt electricity came in 1968, which meant the end of starting the generator every night. T.V. was also available for the first time, but reception was very poor even with a 50ft (1 5m) antenna.

The 1972 wool cheque of $2,200 from about 3,000 sheep didn’t even cover the cost of shearing, with a whole year to go by before any more income.
Harry remained active all his life and was still crutching sheep on his 75th birthday.

He died on October 27, 1975 at the age of 77, at home at Anglebar. He was buried at the Nyngan Cemetery, after a service in the Girilambone Presbyterian Church. An obituary written by long time Gulargambone friend Cap Lemon in the Nyngan Observer;

The death occurred on October 27, of Mr. Harry Reginald Skinner, who passed away at his residence Angleber’, Girilambone.
The late Harry Skinner was 77 years of age and was born in 1898 at Gulargambone and was a son of the late George and Ellen Skinner.
Harry Skinner was educated at Gulargambone Public School and on leaving school worked for his brother, Ernie.
On the death of his brother the garage was taken over by Mr E.R.(Ted) Ginty, and deceased was employed by Mr Ginty for some 14 years as head mechanic.
In his younger days deceased was a footballer of above average ability and was a member of the then famous Gulargambone Greens.
In the 1930’s Harry purchased the property of “Anglebar” in the Girilambone district, and later acquired a portion of “Lucknow’ also in the Girilambone district.
Harry Skinner was a horse lover and he acquired several top class gallopers with the most outstanding being “Glenangle”, who won many races in all Associations throughout the West.
He enjoyed good health for most of his life, however over the past two years had been receiving medical treatment, but still worked on his property up until just before his passing.
The funeral was held at Nyngan on Wednesday last, October 29, 1975, and a tribute to the popularity of deceased was evident by the large crowd who attended the Church Service which was held in the Girilambone Presbyterian Church and at the graveside, and the number of floral tributes that accompanied the remains to the Presbyterian Portion of the Nyngan Cemetery for interment.
The late Harry Skinner is survived by his wife, Mrs Doreen Hope Skinner, daughter Ruth (Mrs Lynch, Sydney) and son George (Anglebar, Girilambone).
He is also survived by one brother, Mr Mac Skinner, of Gulargambone, and three sisters, Flo (Mrs W. Richardson, Sydney), Dulcie (Mrs H. Rowland, Sydney) and May (Gulargambone).
To those left to mourn the passing of Harry Skinner sincere sympathy is extended.