“I don’t like to see the old stuff wasted,” George Monaghan said as we walked into his shed adorned with tools, large and small.
There is an old Carbide 1880 light for a Penny Farthing pushbike or for on the side of a carriage, and an old-time engineering brace which used a ratchet to manually bore its own hole and then make a thread into metal.
“Old Wattie Laws laid most of the gas main pipe for Warwick and used this tool to tap into the main line when someone wanted to be added,” George said.
Old wrenches, cleverly made with cutting tools from 1775, a scythe and a handmade forge now operated by a vacuum cleaner with a Mother Potts iron and Tiddly iron that was heated on a stove before ironing clothes are among the many things George has collected.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” George said about a homemade drill press which was made partly from a Model T Ford differential and a shaft from the old Barnes Flour Mill which is siting in the corner of his shed.
“Most of the collection is my Dad’s and Shirley’s (his wife) father.”
George’s dad was a “pommy” and immigrated to Australia 1912 and as a lad humped his ‘Bluey’ from Adelaide through Broken Hill and Nindigully and settled finally on Alderman on Old Stanthorpe Road near Warwick.
He met Shirley and built up a dairy farm to raise 12 children.
In the early days he was a teamster using wagons and horses to work mostly on roads.
Before WWII there was a settlement called Lord John Swamp on the flats near Wildash where George’s brother Jim started work in a cheese factory.
“My Pop’s brand was registered there,” George recalls.
When the factory closed down Jim worked for a short while in the Warwick cheese factory and then moved on to the Malling Cheese Factory near Dalby to work.
Starting work was easy for George. It was only three weeks out of school before George’s mother received a letter from now-foreman Jim asking that George start work as a cheese maker.
“After a couple of years there it wasn’t my cup of tea, mucking around in curds and wey,” George said.
He eventually joined his brother as a builder because it was difficult to get builders at that time, which was about 1948.
Old dairies needed to be renovated and the fellow who owned the cheese factory owned about nine farms.
During winter when there wasn’t much milk for the factory, the men would go out and work on the farms for him so he was able to keep all the men employed throughout the year.
Building dairies and cow bales and yards kept them very busy.
“We couldn’t buy enough timber so my brother and I started a saw mill and cut cypress from private properties,” George said.
“We would cut the log, bring it down to the sawmill, cut the timber, build the houses and by the time you finished the house you knew each bit of timber by its first name.
“And you daren’t make a mistake or cut it wrong because you worked too flamin’ hard to get it,” he quipped.
George went to the Gold Coast and got into the building game properly, met Shirley, and they moved to the Sunshine Coast to raise their family.
In 1991 Shirley and George moved to Warwick and transferred to the local Lions Club.
Volunteering at the Warwick Show with the Lions Club meant that it didn’t take long before George became an important part of the show team and especially in the Show’s Doug Feez Pavilion display which George co-ordinates each year.
“I would like to see more people come to the show – it’s a great opportunity for town and country to come together,” he said.
“I’ve always volunteered right from when my children started school. It gives something back to the community, keeps you fit and you don’t go stagnant.”
And he said that he is sorry to see his own work ethic is not being taken up by some people in the wider community.
“It is disappointing to see people not wanting to work. You need a ready workforce so new industries can come to Warwick.
“Manufacturing costs are cheaper here than what they would be in Brisbane.
“A truss factory – I see new houses going up with trusses they bring up from the Gold Coast. We should be making them here.
“The town has beautiful schools and boarding schools and it is sad for people to think ‘I’m not going to work so I may as well live on the coast then I can go surfing’.”
But George said he is looking forward to his planned adventures.
“I’ve travelled all over Queensland while working but I would like to go for a trip to Melbourne and see the Great Ocean Road.”
George will be in the main Doug Feez Pavilion during the 150th Warwick Show with a large display of tools, memorabilia and stories to tell.
Visitors call in and say hello, and they should be sure to ask about the Madison and Sons pipe wrench…
