OUTBACK PERSONALITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23400, 15 January 1938, Page 5

OUTBACK PERSONALITY

AWARD IN HONOURS .'.LIST,; " DAD " cunninghame; of the WEST ■ ■";- '.'':;■:;: •'•:,:'.." I-'.'-' ;•:<-> — ; " .' '.SC (From Our Own Corespondent). ;> SYDNEY, Jan. 7.' j One of the most popular, men in; the Kimberleys, in , Western Aus* tralia, is Mr James Kerr Cunninghame, of Fitzroy Grossing, who was awarded the Imperial Service Order, Medal, in the New Year's Honours list.: v>/ : .u'> ■;..■•" '■Atfs\^-X'--:-'-H " The Crossing " will scarcely recognise his. full name. To the, people of about half a million square miles, he has never been anything else but very affectionately "Dad Cunninghame." • Fitzroy Crossing is 6000 straight miles from Sydney. A - hotel and a store and a post office . are midway between Derby and ~« Hall's Creek, which are 500 miles \] apart. " Dad "is the post office, and • / has been for 10 years. a For a score or so of stations from * 50 to 200 miles apart, he carries out « all the duties of a full post and ; telegraph staff. The rest of his cus- 5 tomers are the wanderers of that v huge cattle country—ringers, drbv- r ers, prospectors, donkey-teamsters, $ well-sinkers, bagmen, and other no- , 7 , mads of the Kimberley trail who „ call in once in perhaps two years. • A good/many of them have the let T ters addressed to their ' Christian s» names—Bill the Co6k at Fossil r i Downs, Tom the Ranger, and so 0n.:...:-; "Dad", knows them. all. .■';,■* Mr Cunninghame weighs 23 stone, jjj That may be why he is so unfail- T ingly genial and such a general fav- :«j ourite. They are proud to have a him in.that lean country, to show : ' visitors what it can produce. ; ; 'f