This week we see early Glen Innes through Douglas Abbott's eyes.
'Being a small boy in Glen Innes in the early 1900s the up-and-coming modern world was at my feet clad in lace-up boots with a skirt, and short sox and sweater or blouse.
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The only motor car had arrived in Glen Innes which filled our young nostrils with a new and pungent odour which came out at the back.
Then there were the steam strains and goods trains, and when we walked up to the station to see the trains arrive, Tattersalls Hotel double decker bus drawn by a pair of large horses was there. People said it met all the trains to pick up commercial travellers. There were also one or two hansom cabs with the cabbies perched up at the back; buggies and sulkies.
We children often had magic lantern shows at night, the lantern being lit with a candle or small fuel flame. The coloured glass slides were fed by hand, the picture appearing on a white sheet.
Most of the better-known streets in Glen Innes had blue metal gravel surfaces.
The spittoons in the barber's shops; men with their waxed moustaches
In those early days the Glen Innes Common played an important part in the affairs of the town. It had an area of some two hundred acres without any subdivisional fencing, the townspeople having the right to run several cows and horses subject to the payment of a small rental fee per head.
As the mind recalls those early days...old Larry Madden with his cloth cap and red handkerchief round his neck who looked after the horses and vehicles of travellers at Tattersalls Hotel; coursing at the Plumpton with live hares; the Highland Gathering at the showground on Boxing Day followed by the Scottish concert in the Town Hall; the spittoons in the barber's shops; men with their waxed moustaches; workmen wearing goggles breaking up basalt rocks with heavy sledgehammers for road making; horse drawn drays, lorries and carts....
There were three farrier's smithies, the largest being George Mann's next door to the old Grand Theatre.
This smithy was usually on the visiting list of young boys on Saturday morning to see the horses being shod with steel horseshoes made on the premises. The whole place smelt strongly of burnt hooves with 10 to 12 horses tied up waiting their turn and we often saw large Clydesdales amongst the horses being shod.
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