God thank the Queen
LAST Monday (February 21) marked 30 years since Queen Elizabeth II last visited Dubbo and there were plenty of locals eager to share their memories after Dubbo Photo News put out the call.
Rae Willing popped into the office and astounded us with the completeness of her memorabilia from the 1992 Royal luncheon, complete with photographs, menu, place cards and the luncheon invitation itself.
“In 1992 my husband John was president of the golf club so we got an invitation to attend the dinner,” Mrs Willing said.
“We were sitting with our backs to the royals when they walked out and John turned around and shook hands with the Duke and just said “welcome to Dubbo” and of course with all the security, I thought the next thing was he’d be shot! I couldn’t get over how tiny the Queen was.
“I’ve kept everything from that visit: our invitations, the table place cards, newspaper articles, photographs because to me that’s history, it’s our family history and it’s important to preserve it.”
It wasn’t Mrs Willing’s first brush with the Queen – she’d just started school at Trangie Central when Queen Elizabeth II made her first visit to Dubbo.
“In 1954 when the Queen visited I’d just turned five and both my parents were returned army and they came down from Trangie to march. My younger brother and I stood in front of Western Stores in Macquarie Street (now Myer) to watch the march and the Queen go past. After that my grandmother took us around to Victoria Park but I don’t remember much of that at all,” she said.
Joan Scott, 92, called to tell about her experiences during the 1954 Royal visit.
With late husband Jim she drove into town from their farm, Merrinong, about 70 kilometres out of Dubbo in the triangle bordered by Collie, Warren and Narromine. Mrs Scott recalls they parked on the riverbank near the old low-level bridge where the
LH Ford Bridge now runs.
“I have very good memories of it,” she said.
“It was hot and we had our nine-month-old daughter with us and there weren’t 12 people at that location when the Queen went past, and we were very close to her.
“I’m a very strong royalist.”
Tanya Mcphail sent in some amazing photographs taken by family members during the 1992 visit, it seems they had pretty much scored some front row seats.
“It was a very hot day and we arrived two or three hours before the Queen was due so we could get a good position for the children to see her and present her with a rose,” she said.
The kids were able to present their rose to the Queen.
Cheryl Schloeffel was living in Dubbo in 1992 and took some great photos of the crowd.
“My husband’s family are an old Dubbo family been in Dubbo since the late 1800s.”