Stories

On Sunday 2nd October 2011, a memorial to the Ham family will be unveiled at Giants Creek Cemetary to honour all members of that family buried there between 1894 and 1932. It is expected that quite a few descendants and family members will be attending the ceremony. This memorial has been long-promised since the 1981 Ham Family Reunion to recognise the family members who were buried in one particular area of the cemetary and with no permament markers to memoralise them. There are seventeen names and dates to be inscribed in a grey/black granite slab.

The originator of the family was a George Ham (born about 1770) who hailed from Goring in Oxfordshire. He arrived in Sydney aboard the "Royal Admiral" in 1800 and in 1806 married Ann Epton of Sydney. Ann was born in Lincolnshire in 1783 and her father, Joseph, died the following year. She came to Sydney in 1806 aboard the "William Pitt" and married soon afterwards. The pair had four surviving children - Henry George (1807 - 1894), Ann (1810 - 1879), James (1812 - 1903) and Frances (1816 - 1900). Somewhere along the line George and Ann parted company. It is assumed he died sometime in the 1820's. Ann Epton died in 1864.

The Googe family has been a pioneering farming name in the Upper Hunter for nearly 200 years. Originating in Cornwall England, John Googe settled on property at Manobalai  in the Wybong valley , west of Muswellbrook in the early 1800’s.

His son Elias Cundy Googe was the father of Elias Henry Googe. Henry as he was known, married Coral Thrift from Giants Creek in 1930 and they made their home at “Hillview” ,Wybong. They raised three sons Dudley Keith, Robert Henry and John Edward.

Dudley the eldest took early schooling at nearby Manobalai Public School and then progressed on to the Muswellbrook District Rural High School where he excelled in most sporting pursuits he tuned his hand too. These included high jumping, tennis and cricket.  On completing the intermediate certificate Dudley took up full time farming at “Hillview” while his brothers completed their education.

On behalf of Lynette and myself, we welcome all our visitors to Muswellbrook during spring. Please join us at some of the wonderful events from August to December.

Along with the many other family stories celebrating the 2011 Muswelbrook Carnivale in Spring, we would like to share a little of our family history with you.

I was born in Inverell but lived in Ashford with my family of six brothers and two sisters. We lived about 4 kilometres from Ashford and all walked together to school.

My mother was crippled by arthritis and confined to a wheelchair so to help with the family, I left school at 14 and went to work at the local sawmill for some time and then went to work on local tobacco farms which were owned and operated by a number of Italian familes who had come to Australia in the 1950s.

On behalf of Muswellrook RSL Sub Branch, welcome to Muswellbrook and our exciting Carnivale…

My name is Greg Cole; I am President of the Muswellrook RSL Sub Branch and I would like to share a little of my story.

I was born in 1946 at Macksville on the mid-noth coast of NSW. With my Mum and Dad, four brothers and one sister, together we operated a banana plantation at Taylors Arms. My mother came from the area but dad "migrated" from Warnambool in Victoria.

One of my grandfathers came from Norfolk, England and one grandmother came from Tipperary in Ireland. I worked on banana plantations for some years and then in a local bakery until 1967 when I was called up for Nationa Service with the Australian Army. In 1968 I went to Vietnam as a machine gunner with 1st Battalion 1RAR and was involved in several actions including the "Coral" and numerous patrols against the Viet Cong.