This edition of Picture This is a little blast from the past, courtesy of one of our biggest fans, FRANK WARD, who calls Shoal Bay home these days but is still as keen as mustard to know what’s going on in Campbelltown.
Here he tells the stories behind the black and white photographs he sent the South West Voice in Macarthur:
This photo at right is of me and my late wife Joan and my kids at Campbelltown station in 1968 after the electric train came in for the first time.
As an Alderman [councillor] we went down to Minto and got on the train to ride to Campbelltown and after that we all walked down to Glenalvon, where they formally opened the restored building.
Everyone was dressed in period costumes.
From Glenalvon we headed down to Bradbury oval for the festivities.
The second photo is from the council’s 150 year meeting and I am receiving the commemorative medal for the occasion, below.
I had to grow a beard as I was running the beard growing contest at the time.
The photo with me and Joan below is at the Ball that was held and I am so straight as I had not long had a back operation and was wearing a heavy back brace.
I was elected to Campbelltown Council in 1962, eighty years after my maternal great grandfather Charles Bull was elected to the very first council.
He was the second Mayor of Council in 1883 and then in 1895 was elected as a MLA [MP] for Camden on almost the same electorate boundaries that I had when I stood in 1969.
But at that time I did not know any of my mother’s history as she died when I was two and I went into St Patrick’s Orphanage at Armidale as a two year old.
There is a copy of my family history in the Campbelltown Library. The last time I was down there I recorded for the Library an hour of recollections on tape.
