RECENT articles on the McKay family focussed on patriarch Angus Mckay from the Scottish Highlands, brought home to me just how many current residents are descended from this family.
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It was therefore no surprise that while researching the Brown family that a McKay link was soon found.
William Mathias Brown was born on the Manning River in 1871. His parents were also born in the colony in the 1840s.
His journey from the Manning to Bowraville was by a horse drawn dray with his parents in 1881.
William attended Bowraville School and was known for his cricketing prowess throughout his life.
This is where we link up with the McKays, for William was married to Jane Brown at Buckra Bendinni in 1895. Jane was born at Wingham in 1876 and her mother was Mary Ann McKay, a granddaughter of our Angus.
William and Jane selected land at Taylors Arm in 1901. The property had a total area of 507 acres or 205 hectares. They had eight sons, from 1895 to 1918.
The family began dairying in 1912 and with the aid of his sons, William made his selection into one of the best properties in Taylors Arm.
William was an active member of the Taylors Arm Hall Management Committee from its inception.
William and Jane's son, Horace, also brought more historical links to the family when he married Hilda Sheather who was a cousin of the writer and poet Henry Lawson.
In 1919 a concrete home was built on the Browns' homestead. The gravel for the home was carted from Franks Wharf to the mouth of Baker's Creek. It was only the second of its kind on the Nambucca and still stands today. It boasted a separate kitchen to the house, reached by an undercover link to the main house.
Granddaughter Beaty Fuller of Macksville recalls fond memories of the house and her grandmother.
"There was a trapdoor in the kitchen floor. Below it was a cellar where Grandmother Brown kept her preserves. She made all her own clothes and made the men's work shirts from flour bags. When Aden's (her eldest son) marriage broke up she raised his three children."
Beaty spent a lot of time with her grandmother who taught her to cook and sew.
"She was endlessly patient with me and never raised her voice. We were always at my grandparents' house because we helped with the milking twice a day. We would mix up chicken feed in an old bath tub. Poultry would be killed every Sunday and there would be a competition to see who plucked the fastest."
Beaty describes the home industries of the day - like preserve making which brought about a practical use for empty beer bottles.
"The orchard had many fruit trees including persimmons and quinces. Any excess fruit was preserved in cut down beer bottles. We would wind string soaked in kerosene below the neck of the bottle and light it. Then we would tap the necked part of the bottle and it would break off. Grandma would put all her preserves in the jars we had created and sealed them with brown paper."
Modernisation of Taylors Arm came in June 1938 when electricity was connected. The "switching on" ceremony was accompanied by a banquet and dance at the Taylors Arm Hall and was held to be "the biggest event in Taylors Arm in 20 years". Beaty relates how this change brightened their lives.
"A red globe on the wall inside the house glowed when electricity was being used. There was one power point in the kitchen and a radio was plugged into this. We would listen to Dad and Dave."
Beaty's story does not end there. At her current age of 92, she resides in Macksville on the same site where she lived as a young girl in the 1940s. Her reminiscences are currently being compiled.
William died in 1944 and Jane in 1948. They are buried at the Bowraville cemetery. The concrete house and 50 acres was left to their son Horace, Beaty's father.
This article was written with the assistance from research by Carrolline Rhodes and the records of the Nambucca Headland Museum.
