He fed the starving while his son butchered the car

It was the kindness of Wardell butcher, Daniel Walsh that stopped some of the poorer residents from starving through the Depression.

Daniel would boil up soup from bones, kept to feed pigs, and provide food for men who couldn’t find work and were living in humpies at East Wardell.

Born in the County of Ross Common, Galway, Ireland in 1856 Daniel arrived in Harwood in 1873 as a single man. At the age of 40 he married Bridget Hartigan and settled in the Wardell area, on the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. From there he became a dairy farmer, and, after the Broadwater sugar mill was established, he tried his hand at cane farming.

Daniel’s time as a cane farmer saw a number of developments in the industry including cane planting methods. When Daniel started growing cane, he used a horse-drawn plough.

When planting (unlike today), a whole stalk of cane would be placed in the furrow. Farmers soon learnt that the stalk would curl up and out of the ground as it dried. So Daniel and other farmers held trials of a number of other methods of farming that led to important developments toward the planting of cane in ‘sets‘ and by machine.

Daniel and Bridget Walsh's headstone in Wardell cemetery. Photo: Samantha Elley

In 1912 Daniel opened a butcher’s shop on his property at East Wardell. By 1920 Daniel’s business must have been doing well as he had bought a car, still in the early days of motorised transport. On June 24 of the same year Daniel’s son Jack and a group of his friends managed to drive the car into a fence and flip it on its roof.

The ‘sensational motor accident’, as described in The Northern Star of the day, occurred on Molesworth St near Brown’s Creek. No one was fatally injured but one man was pinned under the car and found later to have a broken leg. The other occupants were thrown into a nearby lantana bush. Daniel’s son Jack, who was driving, was uninjured.

At the grand old age of 90 years, Daniel died at his son’s house in 1946. His funeral was held at St Patricks Catholic Church, Wardell and he was buried in Wardell cemetery.

Story first published in The Northern Star, 2nd June, 2018

References

• ‘Daniel Walsh’ Work 2 Death, The Blackwall Historical Society

• ‘Obituary – Mr Daniel Walsh’, Northern Star, Friday, October 4, 1946, Page 4.

• ‘Sensational Motor Accident’, Northern Star, Friday, June 25, 1920, Page 4.