York Family History
My earliest memory as a child is still so real to me. I wonder how life seems to pass, with days that meander through time as if yesterday stands still and waits for you to re live it. That is what it is for me. Of course, my mother as my shield, I had little to concern myself as a three-year-old, other than trying desperately to escape her watchful eye.
York family history on the North Coast of New South Wales goes way back to before Australia became a democracy. My great grandfather’s name was Hamilton York. An immigrant from England, he settled in Australia toward the end of the nineteenth century. That would have been around 1885. He made the journey to Australia as a single man and started out when he moved to Inverell on the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales. From all reports he could not stand the cold weather, so he continued north and made a home for himself by taking up farming at Swan Bay on the Richmond River.
Map 1-1 01. Australia (google earth 2024)
Map 1-1 02. Northern Rivers (google earth 2024)
Figure 1102. My Great Grandfather, Hamilton York
Figure 1102b. Caption on the back of the photo
He married my great grandmother and had a son, Robert Hamilton York in 1891. Together, they ran a dairy farm which in those days, was very tough and hard manual work. Up at four o’clock in the morning to milk cows by hand and getting the milk off to market while it was fresh. This of course was seven days a week, every week. Cows never stop producing milk.
I never got to meet my grandfather. He died in 1958 just before I was born. He was a tall, proud man, and very much a loyalist to his English heritage. So much so that he raised the Union Jack, rather than the Australian flag, every Sunday at the Swan Bay farm homestead. He started out as a dairy farmer, but through his ingenuity became a self-taught engineer and inventor. He married my grandmother Marjorie Lamond Macpherson in the early nineteen twenties.
Figure 1103. My Grandfather and Grandmother Robert Hamilton and Margorie Lamond York
They had two sons, Robert in 1925 and William in 1931. Old Bob not only ran the farm but was also interested in solving the many tasks on a farm by applying himself to think through the problem and come up with a mechanical solution. There was an increasing demand to provide mechanical equipment for the local industry being primarily dairy farming. Timber was also a prominent industry in the area and required the same ingenuity to solve problems using mechanical design.
As a young man he made a name for himself by using his father’s workshop and procuring the first lathe in the area. It was 1912, and there was a huge demand for straightening shot gun barrels. Every one had a shot gun. Going hunting was a primary source of food and he found there was a need for gun repair. Soon everyone in the area that had a damaged gun brought them to him for repairs. From there he continued solving the many farming challenges by building ploughs and mechanical equipment for the local farmers. In 1925 he built his own milking machine from technology of the day and went on to patent several improvements to this machine.
When running a dairy farm, the cows never stop producing milk. And so, he focused on improving the ability to run more cows by saving on this labour-intensive task. It was then he applied his inventive ability and came up with a number of improvements to the milking machine; Patent AU1926005233 “Improved support for milking machines”, Patent AU1925023721 “Improvement in Milking Machine Teat Cups”, and Patent AU1925026295 “Improvements Milking Machine Claws”.
Figure 1106. R.H. York list of inventions
In 1932, my grandfather rode his horse from Swan Bay to Sydney to witness the opening of the Sydney Harbour bridge. In those days, much of the road to Sydney was a windy dirt track that from all reports followed the old bullock trails as they fashioned a path on hard ground through the bush. Over the years, the bullock teams and horse and buggy traffic including the Cobb and Co stagecoach continuously compacted the road which was then eventually paved with bitumen. Given the winding nature and numerous rivers along the way needing to be crossed by ferry, the journey would take weeks on horseback. Today there is a dual lane motor way in either direction from Brisbane to Sydney cutting the journey down to eight or nine hours.
He went on to build and patent an improvement to a mechanical lift tip truck; Patent AU1935020760. This proved to be a great success in the local area for many years however was subsequently shelved as when hydraulics eventually took precedent. In 1937 he patented an improvement to the rotary hoe; Patent AU1937003063, which again was very popular with the local farming community.
Figure 1107. R.H. York inventions details
World War II entered real life in Australia in 1939. My grandfather was at this time in his late forties and not called upon to fight in Europe, however when America entered the war in 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbour, intense fear struck Australia that Japan was on their way here to take over. Of course, as history has determined, America turned the course of the war at the battle of the Coral Sea off the northeastern coast of Australia. As is well known this battle was fought and won by the US against the imposing Japanese fleet heading toward Australia without a ship from either side ever sighting each other. It was aircraft carrier verses aircraft carrier with fighter planes meeting to battle for air supremacy over the skies of the South Pacific. It was at this time my grandfather took up his duty and was appointed super intendant of the mechanical workshop at the Evans Head air force base. He was recognised for his efforts to oversee the servicing the American fighter planes as they flew in during the battle in need of urgent repairs from the ongoing fight. Quickly getting them back up and flying to rejoin their carrier. He secured lifelong friendships with members of the American air force officers who when the war concluded, followed up on a promise to send my grandfather a brand new massive Maxon lathe. They arranged for this machine to be loaded up on a ship in America and shipped directly to the whaling jetty at Byron Bay. My grandfather drove his tractor from Swan Bay to Byron Bay and spent two days towing this lathe back to the Swan Bay Workshop. At the time this was the biggest lathe anywhere in the Northern NSW region.
Following the war, my grandfather was awarded the Queens Commemoration Medal for his efforts and services during the war. Queen Elizabeth II travelled to Australia in 1954 following her coronation in 1953. Her majesty stayed overnight at the Gollan Hotel in Lismore and travelled from Lismore to Brisbane via Swan Bay past the shipyard on to the pacific Highway at Woodburn. My grandfather was invited to travel to Brisbane to be handed his medal of honour by Queen Elizabeth herself.
Figure 1108. Queens commemorative medal
Old Bob had a keen interest in flying and built and flew his very own glider at Swan Bay. I am not sure how he got it up into the air however I would presume he used winch to get the glider into the air and the straight section of road along the river at Swan Bay Road to take off and land. His inventive mind went on to build a twelve-record playing machine that could change and play records at the push of a button. I believe it to be the first duke box. He was convinced this machine was an original design, so he booked a fare on a ship to travel to America to patent it. From what I was told, the ship took two weeks to sail to America and unfortunately another inventor filed a patent three weeks before my grandfather arrived. This would have been disappointing, I am sure, and he returned to Australia on the next ship.
It was now post-war, and old Bob decided it was time to bring his young two sons into the business. My uncle Robert McPherson York and my father William Harper York.
Figure 1111. My uncle, Robert (Bob) Macpherson York
Figure 1112. My father, William (Bill) Harper York
Young Bob was the elder brother, six years senior to my father Bill, and in good old English tradition, was to inherit the farm. Some eighteen hundred acres of land forming a horseshoe shape south side of the Richmond River and bounded by the road from Lismore cutting across country from the west end to the east towards Woodburn for about a mile. My father was to inherit the workshop and foundry which was about ten acres of the farm at the western corner right on the river.
It was around this time that a fire broke out in the family homestead, and it burnt to the ground. The devastating thing about this was the York family lost much of our documented history. My uncle in and my father decided to build a grand house in the corner of the ten acres where the workshop was built. He built two houses in one. A double story house, with a central spiral staircase leading up from the ground to the second floor. A huge lounge room, dining room and kitchen on both sides of the foyer entrance with individual door access to each side at the front entry. A home for Bill’s family at one end, and a home for Bob’s family at the other. It is where my first years and memories began. Bob told me he took twelve years to finish this house. He built it himself literally from the ground up. He towed a trailer with the tractor along Swan Bay Road to the ferry and crossed the river to a quarry. He loaded the material to cast the bricks and transported them to the site where he built the house. Following twelve years of effort casting the bricks and building the house in between working the farm, it was finished. Bob started the house after the war and completed it around 1956. The house has since been listed as a heritage site.
