Seeking the past in Menzies - Saturday 13th July

As much as we enjoyed Kalgoorlie we were glad to be moving on and leaving our "Bad weather hoodoo" behind. Grey clouds and cold weather saw us on our way to Leonora. The plan was to have a good look around Menzies where my Great Grandfather was reported, in our family history, to be the Postmaster in the early 1900's. Menzies is one of those ever shrinking ex-gold towns that are way past their glory days. The surprise was how the tiny town had been spruced up with Royalties for Regions money.

With only a few houses, one Hotel, one café, a 24 hour unmanned fuel outlet, a Historic Town Hall left and a variety of empty shops it was a pleasure to see how neat and tidy the town was. Beautiful laser cut sheet steel sculptures identifying places of interest and then very informative interpretive signs to explain the past, kept us happily busy for a long time. There was the old historic Post Office building where Great Grandad John Albert Musgrove was said to be Postmaster.

Luckily there was a great local history room in the back of the Information Centre so we set about rummaging through all the files of photographs and history articles. Trish spotted the photo of the Post Office staff first and sure enough there was John Albert. As there was no date on this photo we will have to check our records at home and ascertain an approximate date.

While waiting at the bike while Trish went to the public loo, my Trishy did what only my Trishy does best. She got talking to a total stranger at the Old Post Office after she had wandered up near the door of the building he was renting. Ooops! Not like Trish to waste an opportunity and from a distance I could see a lot of chat going on and finally the guy disappeared inside and came out with a book of some kind. Finally after about 15 minutes they parted and she finally finished her trip to the loo.

On arrival back at the bike she was excited and said that she had just heard an amazing story but I would have to wait until Leonora before she told me. The story did turn out to be amazing and like me you will have to wait to read it. I convinced Trish to write it down so we will put it on the Blog.

After a false start at getting our tent up in Leonora and then being asked to pull it down and move location we were finally set up in what looks like being a very good park

Lookalike Dave