from the Newspaper Files
100 YEARS AGO
West Gippsland Gazette – Tuesday, September 22, 1920.
LIBERTY LEAGUE
Two representatives of the Liberty League, Messrs. Castiau and Pearson, visited Warragul and gave addresses in defence of the existing system of liquor trade.
Cr. Copeland presided, but the meeting was a small one. In fact, at 8.30 there was no one in the large hall, except a solid little phalanx of ladies, about 20 strong, representing the Warragul branch of the WCTU.
Later on the attendance increased somewhat, but probably did not exceed 60 or 70 persons.
It was an unpleasant night and the shops were open until nine o’clock, but it looked as if sheer apathy was really the cause of the small attendance.
Mr Castiau said he and his friend, Mr Pearson, had come to Warragul to express their views on behalf of the Liberty League, and he asked for them a fair and impartial hearing.
He wishes to tell them that if they were deprived of one liberty, they would be deprived of the lot. He would like to tell them too that they had on their side the Bishops and the intellectual men of the community. He wished them to remember that.
There were diggers in the audience that night, and he could tell the audience that those men would tell them how they relished their ration of rum in the trenches in France.
Cows in Shire Reserve
After the council has endeavoured to make a beauty spot around the Shire Hall, it is very annoying to councillors and officers to find cattle either straying or deliberately put into the Shire Hall Reserve, where they not only cut up the greensward, but eat and break down the shrubs which take years to come to perfection.
A case of this kind came before council when
Cr. Oliver, feeling sympathy for a ratepayer who had been muleted in £2 damages, brought the matter before the council.
Cr. Oliver said he had been spoken to by W. Bryne concerning his cow which had got into the Shire Hall Reserve and was impounded with £2 damages. The secretary said this cow or its owner was an old offender.
The council had spent money to make the Shire Hall Reserve a beauty spot. And this cow was put in and was destroying the place. He himself had shut all the gates overnight, yet at 8.30 next morning he found the cow had been put in and all the gates were still shut.
50 YEARS AGO
Warragul Gazette – Tuesday, September 22, 1970.
WGH PRESIDENT’S TALKS ON 1969-70 AS ONE OF ACHIEVEMENT
1969-70 was a year of outstanding achievement for the West Gippsland Hospital, committee president Mr J. Findlay said.
Speaking at the annual meeting, Mr Findlay told a large crowd that during the year the $202,500 easterly extensions were opened; the budget balanced – with a credit of $50 – and a long-standing overdraft was “wiped off”.
“The year will go down in the history of the hospital,” Mr Findlay said in his annual report.
The hospital extensions were first discussed in 1959, and it was a proud moment in February of this year, when the Committee could say, “This is ours – we do not owe anything on it”, he said.
“The public’s stake in these extensions is considerable.
“It is through generous public contribution over the last 11 years that it is debt-free,” Mr Findlay pointed out.
Call in the University students – Doctor
If militant university students could be persuaded to train their attention on our unsafe roads instead of on the Vietnam War, more lives could be saved than will be lost in Vietnam.
Buln Buln Shire medical officer of health, Dr E. J. C. Hamp, of Drouin, said this in a report to the Shire Council meeting.
He was again commenting on the section of Princes Highway between Warragul and Drouin, about which he said the CRB would apparently not take action to reduce the “death, maiming and accident rate”.
Dr Hamp said there was no guarantee that the new by-pass road would be completed within six years or more.
In the meantime, the volume of traffic would grow and the Federal Government would collect more and more taxes from motorists, while nothing would be done to alleviate the pressing problem.
WDCA THROWN INTO TURMOIL
Warragul District Cricket Association has been thrown into turmoil following the withdrawal of teams and unavailability of grounds.
The season will begin on October 3, with the lowest number of senior teams in the past 25 years.
Nilma-Dusties have withdraw from the A and B grade sections, and Hallora-Ellinbank has withdrawn from A grade.
Eight teams will compete in each of the three grades.
WDCA secretary Mr C. Pierrehumbert said the unavailability of grounds had given the Association one of its biggest “headaches” for many years.
“The exceptionally wet year has left several grounds waterlogged, and others won’t be available because of reconstruction work,” he said.
The decision not to enter A and B grade teams this season has ended a long and successful sociation with the WDCA for NilmaDusties, who at one stage won 10 premierships in 12 years.