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Sanitation was very primitive, even in the towns, and flies were a plague in the hot weather, consequently Typhoid Fever was all too common, and fatal. It got so bad at Hay that the State Government, as a matter of urgency and great expense, had to instal a sewage farm there and sewer the whole town. Infant mortality rate was shockingly high and Diptheria took a heavy toll of the younger people. There was no organised preventive medicine, an individual, on his own initiative, could be vaccinated against smallpox, but inoculations against Typhoid, Cholera and Diptheria were unknown. It really was "survival of the fittest".
Along the Bogan River there were many immigrant Irish farmers and their immediate descendants. They were much inter-married, and most of them were well educated and industrious. One of them (P.J. Mooney) was a respected Shire Councillor for some years, though rather a "wild Irishman" when he had had a few whiskies. One afternoon Dad had cause to reprove him for rather boisterous behaviour in the main street of Condobolin, telling him that he was behaving like a madman. "Well Andy my friend", he retorted, "What do you expect?", "My name is Mooney, my mother was a Madden and my wife was a Looney" - "Looney, Mooney and Madden!", "How can you expect me to behave sensibly with a connection like that?"
In the town of Parkes there were numerous Irish families, the outstanding one being that of the immigrant John McGirr and his wife. He owned the only bakery and milk-run, and lived on a small dairy farm at the eastern edge of the town. This couple had four sons and two daughters. Three of the sons got into the State Parliament on the Labour Party side. Patrick ("Paddy") the eldest, a very successful dealer in farms and city real estate, was an M.L.C. for years; Gregory ("Greg") who had received a very good education at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst, and was a very bright boy, qualified as a pharmaceutical chemist; he opened a pharmacy in Parkes, became the Member for Cootamundra, and the State's only ever Minister for Motherhood, and finally made a fortune by dealing in hotel properties (he was the second son): James ("Jimmy") the youngest was a couple of years