The one thing that hasn't changed in these four photos looking up Brisbane Street would be the Wentworth Mounds profile in the far background. Would Surveyor-General Major Sir Thomas Mitchell and his understudy John Gorman have predicted these developments over the years, resulting from their 1849 Town Plan? The only building that exists in all of these photos is the Mechanics Institute in the distance on the top right of Brisbane Street. Constructed in 1866 by our outstanding local builder William Springthorpe Dowel, it still stands at 93 Brisbane Street, with some additions, one of our oldest surviving buildings.

Our top photo, dating back to 1870, shows on the far right, at the corner of Brisbane Street and Lower Street (now Kable Avenue), the butcher shop of William Henry Russ, established two years prior in 1868. With Russ, it was "his way or the highway", leading to him being known as "Cocky" Russ. He'd arrived in Tamworth in 1858 at age 20, a cousin of the five Chaffey brothers. In the building shown he later added groceries to his meat sales. Running the business with his cousin Joseph Chaffey, in 1876 he imported a 'horse-works' machine from London, said to be capable of cutting up "300 pounds of meat an hour." Joseph Chaffey often complained, referring to Lower Street (Kable Ave): "It is only a lagoon and the Government should drain it." This 1870 photo was taken only six years after the disastrous 1864 flood, when all of Kable Avenue and lower Brisbane Street would have been underwater. Tamworth's population at the time of this photo was around 1500. A decade before this photo had been taken Chaffey had been fined five shillings for letting his pigs roam around Peel Street, ostensibly to show prospective buyers the quality of their bacon. Sometimes it pays to advertise!

Two Dowel constructed brick buildings are located beyond the Russ/Chaffey butchery building. Towards the left of the top left photo is the Moses Saddlery, operated by B & G Moses, on the corner of Peel and Brisbane streets, where today's Westpac Bank is situated. Their saddlery had been relocated to this place in 1862 from its nearby position near the Central Hotel in Peel Street. Across the road from the saddlery is a lucerne paddock, now the site of the Adairs business in Peel Street. Behind the Moses Saddlery in Brisbane Street is the home of retired Constable James Dwyer. Out of the picture diagonally opposite the saddlery on the Peel and Brisbane streets corner would have been the Travellers Rest Inn, one of our earliest hotels. Visible above the saddlery in the distance, to the right of the Mechanics Institute, is the original St Andrews Church in Marius Street, opened at the end of 1866.

This photo, taken in 1881, shows considerable development had taken place in the intervening years. The first Tamworth Borough Council had been formed in 1876, with P.G.King as Mayor, and the first train had arrived with the railway reaching West Tamworth in 1878. Both factors led to a growth spurt in the town. The population had grown to around 3600, with almost equal males and females. Standing out in the photo is the impressive Club House Hotel building, on the site of today's 1957 Good Companions Hotel. Another Dowel-constructed building, the Hotel opened in 1875, six years before this photo was taken. The Hotel was advertised as having "12 rooms available for accommodation'. The licensee around this time caused a stir by reducing the price of beer to threepence per glass. Please bring him back! Further up the street we see another impressive new brick building Aiken's Store, recently built, and soon to be taken over by T.J.Treloar, becoming known as 'Treloar's Corner'.

Our third photo goes back to 1936, taken 55 years after the previous photo. By now Tamworth's population had risen to around 11,000. What had been previously the Smithfield Butchery on the Brisbane St/Kable Ave corner had been divided into three business enterprise, including a continuation of the butchery, a furniture shop, and the upstairs George Barratt Saddlery. Previously a Novocastrian (yeah!), George Barratt became a foundation member of the Tamworth City Bowling Club. A Saddlery co-worker was his son Harold Barratt, a foundation member of Tamworth High School in 1919. Harold recalled there was a mark on the ground floor of this corner building about 3m above floor-level, which indicated the height of the 1910 floodwaters. The present Olympic Swimming Pool was soon to open in the following year (1937) after this photo was taken, which would have been to the then photographer's right.

Travelling on another 40 years to 1976, we now come to this photo, which looks not a lot different to the scene today, even though taken 46 years ago. Tamworth's population had grown to around 30,000. Prominent on the corner block is the Regent Theatre. The 1937 relocation of butcher Edward Hunter and saddler George Barratt from the previous corner building in photo three, enabled the Regent Theatre to be constructed and opened in 1939 on land owned by the Treloar family. The Regent Theatre continued to screen movies until 1971, before closing and re-opening in 1974. The opening of the Forum 6 Cinemas led to the demise of the Retreat Theatre Cinema.

So what will a photo taken from this location in another 50 years time look like? Anyone who's still around - let me know! As Bob Dylan says: "The times they are a-changin."

Contributed by Mike Cashman from the Tamworth Historical Society