February 28 2018

It has been awhile since we’ve been able to acquire any postcards but this week we have brought two of them to share with everyone.

Postcard prices seem to be hanging around the $26 dollar mark with postcards from the early 20th century bringing in much higher prices especially of buildings that no longer exist.

These postcards mention Deniliquin on the back with a date of August 8 1955 but looking at the Town Hall picture, the pictures themselves may be from 1938 as the centre posters are promoting a film called ‘Boys Town‘ and that was a film of that year starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney.

The words are not visible in the scanned version but when looking at the real postcard they are visible.

‘Boys Town’ is a film that is considered a classic, it won Spencer Tracy an Oscar for his portrayal of Father Flanagan, ensured Mickey Rooney’s star status and they made a sequel in 1941 titled ‘Men of Boys Town’

Hopefully a magnifying glass will reveal what the other boards say as it is always interesting to see what was going on in town at a certain point of time and there is a chance of a good estimate of the date by attempting to find 1938 or 1939 papers to locate screening times of ‘Boys Town’.

The second image is of the Memorial Gates, the list of those who died or served in combat during the second world war were not up in this picture and there is still a gate on the right side.

Readers will also notice that on the right hand side is a fence before Waring Gardens, this was before the now low brick fence that we are accustomed to seeing and there is also a different array of trees in the background.

One thing that has gotten our attention is that the two cards respectively say V.5 and V.10 making us wonder what V.1 to V.4 and V.6 to V.9 are and anything beyond it as none of the other cards shown to readers have that.

February 8 2018

Deniliquin’s railway history has been disappearing over the last couple of weeks as the remains of the platforms and turntable have been demolished to make room for an eventual retirement village.

The loss of the railway was considered a major blow when daily travel stopped in the late 1970’s and the occasional passenger train arriving after then was considered interesting as seen in this 1989 video.

In what could be considered ironic, a booklet became available online around the time the platform and tracks were being pulled up.

This booklet was was made for a Melbourne to Deniliquin rail journey on Saturday September 30 1961 arranged by the Victorian division of the Australian Railway Historical Society.

It was called ‘Deniliquin by Daylight’ and left what was called Spencer Street Station (now known as Southern Cross) at 6:50am and arrived in town at 3:45pm despite a listed time of 2:10pm, we know of the time difference thanks to notations penciled in the booklet.

They left Deniliquin at 4:37pm and got back to Melbourne at 11:28pm making it a very long day.

While the booklet is short, it has interesting details such as how many trains the railway operated, the brick Deniliquin station was built in 1985, the fact the rail line between Echuca and Deniliquin has only five curves in the 45 mile journey and the NSW Government brought the line in 1923, gave it to Victorian Railways but the cost was paid for by the Victorians.

Below is all four pages at the best possible resolution so everyone can read it, can anyone spot the error on the front page?

December 22 2017

This week we picked up a book by Deniliquin Creative Writers called ‘From The Banks Of The Edward’.

It is a 128 page book filled with various stories, some discuss relationships that lasted for decades or they discussed sport, a couple are poems about the Edward River and a couple of stories talk about achievements and more.

One example of a story is ‘The New Chum’ by John Russell and it tells the story of Ada Jinks who moved to Deniliquin from England and the story tells how she and her husband John came to town, got their first house and it also describes how the conditions were and how locals got through times such as drought.

The story is insightful and accurate because of meticulous research through Ada’s own writings.

There are several pictures scattered throughout the book, most are of the subjects of the book but there is pictures of the now demolished Deniliquin Goal, the Community Centre when it was looking great and more.

Overall it is a great book and if any locals come across it they should give it a read.

(See our expanded entry on our sister site denihistory.com as it has more details)

November 8 2017, updated on August 17 2022

Just over two weeks ago (October 2017) we wrote about how bottles from Deniliquin’s Cordial and Beer past were on eBay.

We can now show you two of the examples we wrote about, the first one is a bottle from Collins & Son and the second is from Tru-Frute.

The Collins & Son bottle was the second example we’ve spotted on eBay in the last year and this particular bottle is a marble one complete with a stopper inside which is unusual as a Riverine Brewery Co. bottle of the same kind only has the marble, the marble is for the prevention of spilling during carbonation.

Only bits and pieces have been found about Collins & Son through available online newspaper archives.

A clue to the location of the business is a mention in 1905 of ‘the water table in Davidson Street from Mr T Collins cordial factory past Mr McGown’s shop to the creek‘

Thomas Collins died in 1928 and there was a theft in cordial preparation material in 1932 when the business was Collins Bros.

Collins & Son bottles do pop up on other auction sites and can fetch around $25 to amounts over $50 apiece depending on size and quality as they made bottles of different sizes and kinds.

The Tru-Frute bottle was the second Tru-Frute bottle on eBay at the same time but the two had different designs, this bottle has Tru on one side of the logo (four point star) and Frute on the other side and inside the logo reads Cordials Maher’s Deniliquin.

Below that reads ‘This bottle remains the property of V.P & F.T Maher Deniliquin’, has number 97 on the bottom with F1984 and a manufacturing stamp.

The Tru-Frute bottle is small slightly smaller than the Riverine Brewery Co. bottle we shown earlier.

Tru-Frute bottles can also fetch around $40 but the earlier the bottle the better as it is said that bottles from times close to the present are still in plentiful supply.

There may be a way around paying high prices on eBay and that is by going through places like ABCR Auctions and they may get you a bottle at a much lower price if nobody bids for them.

If you’ve developed a taste in collecting local bottles, search for the following nine companies.

Elliots Brewery
Riverine Brewery Co
E Ernstsen Brewery
Tru-Frute
Collins & Son
Deniston Dairy
Langman
Deniliquin Butter Factory
A. B. Jefferson

This concludes our series on the Riverine Brewery Co, Tru-Frute, E Ernstsen and Collins & Son bottles series, we hope you have enjoyed what you have read today.