The long Toodyay chronology: events in Toodyay’s history. Part 3, 1951-1980. 1st ed. (2011)

Description

Author: Compiled by Beth Frayne. Publication details: Toodyay WA: Toodyay Historical Society, 2011. Second printing (with minor typographical corrections), October 2015. Toodyay Historical Society publication series; no. 3) vi, 50 p., 56 p.: bib. Index. “Launched on 30 December 2011 in the 175th Anniversary Year of European settlement of the Toodyay Valley”.

From the Introduction by the compiler:

“Part 3 of the Chronology was going to cover 50 years of Toodyay’s history (1951-2000) but with such a busy ‘175^th’ year soon coming to an end, I decided to move 20 of those years forward to become part of Part 4. So, Part 3 now covers the 30 exciting years of 1951 to 1980, and Part 4 becomes a much more interesting and saleable product, covering 1981 to maybe 2012 or 2013!

The 30 years of 1951 to 1980 was an era of great change in Toodyay, for the town and district. The coming and going of Industrial Extracts Ltd., the digging up of Stirling Terrace, the building of the Standard Gauge Railway, the restoration of our old buildings, the opening of a museum, tourism and the beginning of an environmental consciousness had major impacts. Finding out ‘what happened when’ was made a little difficult by the local newspaper the weekly Toodyay Herald ceasing publication in May 1954. I had to source information from papers published in the nearby towns of Northam and Goomalling and also in Perth. Thankfully these newspapers are available on microfilm in the Battye Library and the Northam Regional Library and in hard copy in the Avon Valley Advocate newspaper office in Northam.

More Western Australian newspapers have been made available on the National Library of Australia’s digitized Australian newspapers website (http://trove.nla.gov.au), now part of the Trove service. However the main papers are only digitized up to 1954! So, the early 1950s in Part 3 are very well covered. The Toodyay Road Board and Shire Council minutes held in the State Records Office are a great source of very useful interesting information. I praise and thank detailed minute-takers!”