WHEN Gary Edwards posted a photo of his mother reading the Manning River Times on Facebook page ‘You’re from Taree if…’ the post was met with comments congratulating Winifred on remaining an active reader.
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At 99-years-old, many said perhaps she was the oldest reader in the Manning.
The Times asked Gary to tell us about his mother’s life:
My mother Winifred Mary Edwards was born in 1917 in Tinonee into a family of five to parents James and Doris Noon.
She spent her early days living at Taree Estate as her parents were share farming at Fletts Dairy farm – one of the first dairy farms on the Manning. Her father also delivered a milk run.
Edinburgh Drive was the old highway those days and she often told the story of finding old swaggies asleep on their front verandah.
Her mother would give them a meal and they would set off on the road again.
Her parents moved to a dairy farm at Idalake near Mount George where she met my father Percy Edwards, a builder and grazier.
Her parents decided to move to Kingaroy, Queensland to take up peanut farming.
She moved with her parents but my father was already in love with her so he followed her there.
They married in 1940 and then moved back to the Manning.
The first years of their married life was spent dairy farming at Number One, near Cooplacurripa on the Nowendoc Road.
Times were tough, milking 100 dairy cows twice a day by hand.
They lived across the river with no bridge, so they had to wind the milk and cream across the river in a flying fox.
They didn’t have a car and when my mother was pregnant and she had a doctors appointment my father had to wind her across the river in the flying fox.
She would ride the milk trucks to Mount George then catch the train into Wingham and later make her way back – a big day for a pregnant lady.
After a few years at Number One they moved to Mt George for about 10 years – it was a thriving community in those days.
About 1953 was the final move, when our family moved back to Taree where she remained a housewife and lived for the next 55 years until about five years ago when she was diagnosed with dementia and placed into care at Banyula Lodge.
When sorting her house to our delight we found hundreds of Manning River Times newspapers featuring articles and stories she had saved with some dating back to 1954.
She is now enjoying her stay in Banyula where she will celebrate her 100th birthday on August 17.
