Sunday, October 1 marked 100 years of the grand old home known as Strath holm, built on a farm on Warral Road, West Tamworth, although subsequent land development changed the access to Frank Street.
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More than 60 Hathway descendants gathered to celebrate not only a home, but to appreciate the meaning of family and family history, and enjoy the traditional family game of cricket.
Henry Walter Hathway left Adelaide in the early 1900s. His father Charles came from England on a ship called Strathalbyn and found work in the hotel industry. Henry and his brother Lewis had other ideas and left for Sydney in the early 1900s to seek a living from the land.
From Sydney the brothers ventured up to Winton, West of Tamworth, and together in very primitive conditions forged a farm of crops and livestock. In this time Henry travelled back to Adelaide to marry and bring his young bride Ethel Milnes back to the farm with him. They had 6 children, 3 dying before their first birthday Charles 1, Charles 2 and Hazel.
In 1917 Henry sold the Winton farm and, with Ethel and their three surviving children, moved to Tamworth and bought 10 acres of land on the outskirts of town. Lewis located to Curlewis, outside of Gunnedah, and that is another story.
In 1917 Strath holm was built. It was home to Henry and Ethel and their children Mavis, Reginald and Doris.
The soil was good, and it wasn’t long before a thriving orchard was established in the front paddock and an equally successful vegetable garden. They also ran a few chickens. The produce not only fed the family but also supplied the Tamworth Base Hospital and other local shops and bakeries.
Whilst their mixed farm was doing relatively well, young Reginald had an idea to develop the poultry arm, and set up a hatchery, as the margin between purchasing and selling of the chickens and eggs was very slim.
The Hatchery was known as H.W. Hathway and Son and it grew to become one of the largest and most up to date poultry farms outside Sydney. With a flock of 3,000 selected layers and an incubator capacity of over 22,000 eggs, in 1935 the incubators turned out almost 70,000 baby chickens.
All the chickens were free range and housed in 52 pens. An additional farm along New Winton Road was purchased to accommodate the demand for chicken feed as the business grew. The Hatchery supplied all of northern NSW and southern Queensland. Chickens were sent by bus and rail in boxes big enough for the consignment with a red and white sticker that read “Day old chicks, keep in a cool well ventilated place”. And they survived. Sometimes it took days to get to their destination.
In 1935, in conjunction with a Sydney-based Hatchery, a Japanese chicken sexer, Tomatsu Kawai from Nagasaki, came to Tamworth to ply his trade of sexing day old chickens. He would come up on the train on Sundays and stay till Tuesday. He was able to teach his skill to others.
This was most advantageous as, from day one ,chickens were sorted and sold according to their gender, pullets (female) obtaining a higher price than a cockerel. This job does not exist anymore. It was a highly skilled vocation and attracted a good wage. My father, Cliff, took up the trade when he joined the business in the late 1940s. He had a remarkable success rate of 98 per cent. The business was now known as Hathway’s Hatchery.
Reginald stayed on the farm till his death in 1972. He purchased an extra 10 acres and built his home 100 yards down the track from the main house and raised 4 children, Betty, Cliff, Bruce and Keith. When Henry died, Ethel moved into town to live with her daughter Mavis, who married George Dunn. They had one child, Hazel. Doris married Howard George and had four children Max, Ross, Heather and Don, all of whom stayed in and around the district. Cliff and his father continued to run the hatchery.
In 1957 Cliff married Judith Bruderlin and they moved into the now vacated home of Henry and Ethel. They had four children, Ann, Stephen, Lee and Brenda.
I am the eldest and we all have many happy memories of our life at Strath holm, including the interesting jobs, such as taking all the little boxes of chickens, with the red and white stickers on them, to the West Tamworth railway station to be shipped off to their various destinations.
When the egg board ceased operation and the larger companies moved into the area with all their big sheds full of chickens in cages Hathway’s Hatchery was no longer a viable operation.
In 1975 my father came up with the idea of turning the disused chicken sheds into storage sheds. There was no competition and the business boomed. Even though there is competition today the business continues and is known as Hathway’s Storage.
The house has only been modified a couple of times. A bathroom, kitchen, laundry and living area were added in 1957 and to bring it into the 20 th century an ensuite was added to a front bedroom in 2001.
Most of the 30 acres has been subdivided but the old family home still stands proud and strong, and is recognisable from afar by the two tall cabbage tree palms my great-grandfather planted in the front lawn.