Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 371
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[Page 371]
183
who signed a guarantee that if the Postal Authorities installed a plug-in type of manual exchange at Parkes, they would become subscribers for a period of not less than five years. A strict condition of the agreement was that the telephone was to be used only by the subscriber, his family and his employees.
The Municipal Council had provided gas supplies about twenty years before, and now made electricity generally available: it was generated by wood-consuming suction-gas engines in a central powerhouse.
Hitherto, the town had depended for its water-supply on one small, concrete-arch, storage dam, built towards the end of last century fourteen miles away in the Bumberry Ranges. During hot droughty Summers the rapidly growing town often had to put up with muddy water and severe restrictions, and citizens had to see their lawns and gardens wither away, time after time. But during his term as Mayor, Dad was instrumental in having a second and much larger dam, Lake Metcalfe, constructed, which gave the town ample water for some years to come: he worked very hard to get this project undertaken and completed; it had to be temporarily shelved during the first World War.
In November, 1922, it was decided within the family that I should go to Sydney and be coached to pass the matriculation examination, held early in March by the University of Sydney for entrance to the Peter Nicol Russell Engineering School; at the beginning of Lent Term later in this month: I had only a little over three months in which to do this task. My Father, with Flood in residence took over the supervision of the "Frenchmans" and it was arranged for me to draw £3-10-0d a week to cover all my expenses.
On arrival in Sydney, in the early morning, I answered an advertisement in the appropriate column of the Sydney Morning Herald, and promptly became a boarder, with two other gentlemen, in a small house up the hill from the ferry wharf at Mosman Bay. Our landlady and provider of meals was a middle-aged Danish spinster, Miss Gotch, and she accommodated us comfortably enough for thirty five shillings a week, not including lunches on work days