scone.com.auSconeite Snippet: Kelly Thrift
KELLY was not christened by his mother as Kelly, it was children in the playground that gave him the name and now in his 103rd year, it has stuck.
Born Garnet Lindsay Thrift, but dubbed Kelly by his school friends, he has experienced 102 years of life in Scone.
“At that time the Kelly gang was at the fore and we were chasing a ball or something in the playground and one of them said “Go get’em Kelly” like the Kelly gang and they all started to call me Kelly,” said Mr Thrift.
“Everyone called me Kelly, but my mother, she wouldn’t call me Kelly, she called me Garnet,” he said.
His real name is Garnet Lindsay Thrift and he has spent all his life in Scone, bar three years in the Australian army during World War II.
“I was in the field ambulance I didn’t go out of Australia, I was up in Cairns for a while and all ‘round Australia with different units,” said Kelly.
“I got out on Christmas eve in 1944 as a primary producer and got back into civilian life,” he said.
“I’d just been married, I’d married Barbara Cumberland, of Cumberland the taxi drivers.
“At that particular time I was on the farm where I was born at Parkville, on Ascot, I was there for my first forty three years and then I bought a house in Scone and got a job with Scone sporting bodies.
“I was the curator of all the sports facilities in Scone and I was in that for three years, but Ford had just bought out a new model Ford falcon and they were competing against Holden as the family car, six cylinder, six seater family car.
“I applied for the job, because I thought ‘I know everyone in this district’ and I got the job and made a success of it I was there for ten years.
“It was Capital Motors Ford in Scone and then they were taken over by Jones Ford in Muswellbrook and I spent some time in Muswellbrook then and through the district with Ford tractor and Ford everything; I had a wonderful time and then I retired,” he said.
“I thought I’d retire at 60, thought I’d had enough and I haven’t had a job since,” he laughed.
Kelly, who still lives at home on his own said he is surprised that he has lived to be 102 years of age and while he attributes it to luck, he does have one daily ritual he thinks has helped.
“I can’t believe it, I get a fright sometimes when I add up figures,” he said.
“Good luck, you could get a bad disease like cancer or those sort of things and there is no cure and you go off in six months.
“In my 40s and 50s a lot of my friends did.
“But I didn’t have any of that, I had good luck and I was a great believer in honey.
“I started having it in 1935, just ordinary honey you buy from the shops a spoonful each morning in a cup of warm water and I’ve never missed it since.
“It seems to give you a real good sizzle for the rest of the day, you start off with a bit of lubrication,
“Warm water, but not too warm or it can kill the goodness in it,” he said.
“I don’t know how many bottles I’ve had over the years, I was trying to add that up and I got a fright,” he laughed.
In looking back over the history of the town he experienced the ’55 flood, the advent of electricity, the proliferation of horse studs, the demise of the dairy industry and the rise of beef cattle.
“The main thing I think about is 1955, when we had record flood of the century and I was on the property out at Parkville then,” he said.
“I had a market garden a 12 acre market garden and overnight it went like that!
“I had a sow and six porkers on the farm and they were washed away with the flood and I thought, well that’s the end of them.
“But about three days later, I went up to have a look and see what I was going to do with the land and I saw some grass move on the bank and it was this sow.
“She had somehow found her way back to the farm and about six weeks later she had a litter off six pigs, it was a good thing to get out of the flood,” he said.
“People didn’t believe it was the same pig, but she was apparently a good swimmer and found her way back,” Kelly said.
In reflecting on the flood Kelly said he thinks the bypass is ‘overdone’.
“I can’t understand it, we’ve only had one big flood in 100 years anyhow it’s the way these things go,” said Kelly.
“It’s built for 12 feet over the town, I can’t believe it, I sit back and ponder where are we heading?”
“I saw electricity come to town, it was from the grid in Muswellbrook and they gradually incorporated all of the villages.
“We got it out in Parkville in about 1936, we gave the old lantern away.
“That was a big step, that was everything.
“There were great improvements to the roads and rail,but it was a shame we lost the daily air service.
“The studs have their own private chartered flights and of course a public company can’t compete with them, I think that’s been a problem and a loss to the town.
“We always had a good stud, right from the time I can remember, like Kia Ora, they had a good stallion called Magpie.
“Then other studs stated, Lionel Isreal started and he had Segenhoe, which has turned into a big stud and then in latter stud there was Arrowfield, with John Messara and his son, he had a good sire Redoute’s Choice and it kicked off from there,
“Mining has a lot of enemies, but it’s also done a lot for the district, but we need the arable land,
“There used to be a terrible lot of dairy farms, in the Wingen to Parkville area we had about 20 dairy farms, but now they have all gone into two or three big ones and swallowed all the small ones,” he said.
“Now through there it has turned into grazing with fat cattle,” Kelly Thrift said.
While Kelly says he can’t predict the future of Scone, he has certainly experienced a great deal of it’s past.
Kelly will turn 103 on May 9 this year, but he is not quite the oldest Sconeite, we’ll talk to her next.
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