Dawn Till Dusk

By HEATHER BLACKSTOCK

I was asked last year by Ruth Holmes, who is a member of the Historical Society in Dorrigo, if I would do a biography on my father for the Dorrigo Historical Society. I agreed and have not long finished writing it.

Since I had spent much time with my dad in my early years, I was interested in his achievements and good deeds and wanted to portray his charitable character as best I could through telling stories about how, as a family man, he educated himself and his children and how he coped having experienced times of adversity through thick and thin. He was a joy and inspiration to all those who knew him, and although he enjoyed helping the family and others, his life soon became full of good deeds.

In 1912, at the age of seventeen, George Winkley sought a contract to carry mail and passengers from Taree to Grafton, which route had no connecting railway. With his mother’s support, he was able to purchase a Studebaker car from America. Since he had a driver’s license, his agent allowed him to go to Sydney wharf and drive it off the ship. How proud and responsible he must have felt doing that! It was the first of its kind on the North Coast, with a self-starter and electric lights (p4). Later a partnership was formed with Ernst and Winkley, and the car served as a touring car on weekends to transport notability around the country (p5).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Dec 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984500656

HEATHER BLACKSTOCK

The author was born and raised at "Hucclecote" on a mixed farming property in Dorrigo N.S.W. It is where Heather Blackstock (nee Winkley) enjoyed a wonderful childhood and, from memory found inspiration to further her artistic talent from memory.

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Copyright © 2019 by Heather Blackstock.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/02/2019

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25

Memoirs—Tribute to My Father

To my special dad, the man we called Pop

I was

well-known as being Dad’s right-hand man for the first fifteen years of my life. This close connection allows me the privilege to write about his compassion, generosity of spirit, and personal courage. I carry with me a vivid image of him etched against a deep-blue sky, the same colour as his eyes, under the consuming heat of a Dorrigo summer sun. A farming man dressed in a grey flannel shirt and dark trousers, ploughing a paddock to plant or harvest crops. Should the woollen flannel shirt have become wet, it would still have kept him warm. Methodically he walked mostly without shoes, swaying back and forth, guiding a handheld plough behind our trusty old draught horse: a placid Clydesdale named Tiger. They left in their wake a transformed landscape—a pattern of near-straight lines of red earth.

p1George%20Snr.%26%20Florence%20Winkley%20a.jpg

I remember him as a man of routine, discipline, hardworking, up at the crack of dawn, and home by sunset. He taught by example, doing what challenged him without complaint and never seeking attention or praise.

My father, Samuel George Hill Winkley was born in West Maitland, NSW, to English and Irish immigrants, who had met on ship Dunbar from England and later married in 1890.

George Jnr. was the first born in 1895,

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and five siblings followed—Francis, Ella, Charles (whose twin died at birth), Walter, and Reginald. They were raised on a farming property at Oakhampton, known as Forest Hill.

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George Jnr. being the oldest child was forced to grow up fast due to the responsibility of helping his parents, with a large portion of the support needed for the family. In 1909, he left home to work for the Canada Bicycle Company in Brisbane, and learnt mechanical engineering. Having a talent for the mechanism of things, he learnt to tune and test motor cars in their showroom. Also, he took delivery of new vehicles, after attaching the wheels that came in crates at Sydney wharf. The company he worked for had the agency for all the principal makes of the time such as Talbot, Renault, Durracq, Silent Knight, Russell, E-M-F and Flanders. He also gave driving lessons to new car buyers. His first delivery was to Alf Alcorn in 1912, a farmer from the Richmond River district.

George became aware that there was a push to extend the North Coast railway from Maitland to South Grafton in NSW, which began with a parliamentary enquiry in 1903. The Dorrigo branch of rail, was forty-three miles long (sixty-nine kilometres), with eleven stops and twelve sidings, (mostly servicing timber mills), and with fifteen bridges and two tunnels. The first train to Dorrigo arrived from Glenreagh on 27th September 1924. The