Couple move to ‘big smoke’

Press, 4 November 1986, Page 35

Couple move to ‘big smoke’

PA Hamilton Mr and Mrs Nan and Albert Gracie, longtime residents of the doomed coal town of Rotowaro, have made the big shift to Huntly. After 37 years in their little wooden house in Rotowaro the couple last week settled into their State Coal-provided house in the comparative “big smoke.” All Rotowaro residents have to be out of the town by May, so State Coal can level the place in preparation for opencast coal mining. Mrs Gracie has lived in Rotowaro a long time — she moved there about 1920 when she was aged four. Mr Gracie went there in 1944, the year the couple married after meeting in a Huntly milkbar. Five years later they

moved into the little wooden house they left last week-end. The Grades are happy with the Huntly house State Coal has provided. The two-bedroom house is much larger than their Rotowaro one, it will be redecorated, has a “posh” new pushbutton telephone and — most important of all — has a coal range. “I have been used to a coal range all my life and it’s a saving on power because we get cheap coal,” Mrs Gracie said. Her husband, at the age of 77 can still do twice the work of the young ones, according to his wife. He was head carpenter with the mines at Rotowaro and retired 12 years ago. Originally from Scotland, he lived in Huntly from 1928 to 1944, before moving to Rotowaro. He

was greenkeeper at the bowling club there but will be giving that up now the couple have moved to Huntly. They reckon the bowling club is the thing they will miss the most from Rotowaro — Saturday and Sunday afternoons playing bowls, darts and even tiddlywinks. But many of their friends have already shifted to Huntly, so the Gracies have joined the bowling club there. But if they had a choice they would not have shifted. The Rotowaro community in its heyday was just like a big family, said Mrs Gracie, with everyone helping neighbours. The town had a good community spirit with marching, football and softball teams. Things started to slip once State Cosd .. an-

nounced in 1979 that the town would be removed to make way for a massive opencast coal mine — people started moving out and the old community began to break up. Recently, State Coal announced development of the mine, planned for next year, would be delayed six years because of reduced coal demand — this was pretty upsetting for some Rotowaro residents, Mrs Gracie said. State Coal was originally only going to guarantee the Gracies five years in their Huntly house and then they would have to find their own. But Mrs Gracie told State Coal:“If you let me into a house you will need a front-end loader to get me out again.” State Coal recently changed its policy and the Gracies now have the security of a house in,

; Huntly for the rest of » their lives. ! In Rotowaro the couple were paying $2.01 a week t to rent their house from ' State Coal. Their rent in Huntly is about 18 times higher ($36.25) but they f are not complaining. • Mrs Gracie and her family moved to Rotowaro when she was four • years old. She recalls [ there was no electricity then and only a mud track to Huntly. When her’ sister was pregnant and had to go to I hospital a hand-operated jigger was brought along 1 the railway track and she was laid across it on a stretcher for the trip to an ambulance in Huntly. Mrs Gracie’s father and six brothers worked down the mine and when her father wanted to go for a drink in town he had to walk two hours to Huntly jj.for the pleasure. J