Vale Eric Aarons

Eric Aarons recently passed away at the age of 99, 2 months short of his 100th birthday.  We wrote about Eric in a blog back in 2015 entitled "The Red Menace - Communism comes to Minto!".

Eric died peacefully after a lifetime devoted to advancing the causes of working people and the battlers of the world, and preserving the planet for future generations. He had lived and worked quietly for many years in his bush home at Minto Heights.

He was widely admired for his sculptures in stone and wood and had his first exhibition in 1972. The Casula Powerhouse Art Centre held a retrospective of his work in 1999.

The Campbelltown Arts Centre holds two of Eric's works "Diprotodon"(2000-2002) and "Who wants to know me" (1993), both on permanent display.

Eric Aarons 1919-2019

Written by Claire Lynch



Sources
Sydney Morning Herald 23.1.2019
https://izi.travel/en/0bb8-eric-aarons-head-2010/en

Fun in the Mud

So much has changed since this photo was taken in about 1955. Pictured having great fun playing in the puddle are Marilyn Thorburn, Gillian Walker (now Blackstone) and Diana Thorburn. The location is Allman Street, Campbelltown, close to where it intersected with Oxley Street. Oxley Street has now become Moore-Oxley Bypass. In the background is a house and to its left is the former Wesleyan Chapel, built in 1845-46, and now the Uniting Church. Both these buildings still exist on the site.

The photograph was lent to the library by Gillian Blackstone, formerly Walker. Gillian was the daughter of former alderman and dairy farmer Arch Walker. The Walker family lived for a time at a house called 'Malua', previously located near the corner of Allman and Oxley Streets. It was demolished in the mid-1970s to make way for the new bypass. The children, including Gillian in the centre, would be playing out the front or very near the front of 'Malua'.

Although both buildings still stand today, much has changed. The house is now hidden by a number of trees and shrubs and Allman Street is, of course, now kerbed and guttered. The main change though, is the endless rush of traffic tearing along the bypass.

Wish we could go back to these simpler and more innocent ways of life sometimes!

Thanks to Gillian for this and the other fabulous photographs lent to the library.

Below is a shot of the sun rising at exactly the same spot today.

Written by Andrew Allen

Tildsley's Butchery

L to R Unknown, Unknown, Phyllis Cracknell, Grace Tildsley, Reginald Tildsley. Photo is undated. (Roslyn Tildsley Collection)

 

Campbelltown Library was recently fortunate to be given a copy of the this gem of a photograph by Roslyn Tildsley. The photograph shows Tildsley's Family Butchers with Reg Tildsley and his wife Grace with Phyllis Cracknell. The other two men on the left are unidentified but could possibly be Bill Coogan and Charles Jones, who were known to have worked there.

 

The shop was located opposite the old post office in Queen Street. The brothers Reginald and Horace moved there in 1922. An advert in the Campbelltown News that same year refers to them as the new butchers opposite the Post Office. The family had a butchery in Camden as well as Campbelltown. In 1923, the year after they moved into the Campbelltown shop, one of their huge wagons carrying carcases was 'smashed to match wood' on the Campbelltown-Camden railway on the night of June 12. Thomas Tildsley, a brother of Reg and Horace, was driving towards Narellan and at the crossing at Curran's Hill he was overtaken by the 5.15pm train from Sydney. The engine struck the back of the vehicle and smashed it into a thousand pieces. It was described as a miracle that Thomas survived.

 

The family overcame the set back and remained at Campbelltown until late 1937, when New Brothers secured the business. The butcher's shop no longer stands. Reg lived a long life and in his eighties was still trying to have an input into the Camden business. Although long retired, he would creep into the shop and start making sausages!

 

Written by Andrew Allen

Sources:

 

HOLM, Marie et al 1985

Campbelltown 1930-1940 Dumaresq Street and Environs

 

Brisbane Courier, 13 June 1923, p13

 

Camden News, 16 December 1937, p5

 

Leila Spearing Interview 26 April 1978, held at Campbelltown Library