Histories

Extract The Northern Champion (Taree, NSW) 12 July 1933

BACK IN '47

MR WOOSTER'S REMINISCENCES

The ' Daily Telegraph'' reporter, writing from Nabiac, says:-   Does Archbishop Kelly remember the times in which the incident -related here occurred .' It is a pitch-black night, The Watch men on the deck of the Maid of Cork yawns at the swinging ship's lantern.

The tide laps against the barquentine's   counter. There is no light ashore— in the stricken cabins of New Ross County Waterford. It is the famine year of 1847, and Michael Kelly is sleeping ashore in the house of his sailor-father. He has gone happily to bed to-night, because Father Flynn has given him a devotional book for a catechism prize (the Archbishop has it still). The watchman hears a low hail from the water. Leaning over the bulwark he makes out two dim forms in a bobbing fisherman 's coracle. 'What d'you want?' 'It's starving, we are, yer Honor. Give us food for 'the love of God I'

The watchman draws a deep breath. He takes a bucket, fills it with corn from the bin on the deck, and upends the bucket into the shadowy craft at the Maid's counter. He blocks his ears against the gasps of thanksgiving.   'This is the only lime I ever stole,' the watchman told me, relating, after 76 years, an incident whose scene is Arch bishop Kelly's birthplace. Charles Wooster, once of the Maid of Cork, is 95 now. I met him at Nabiac where he has lived for half a century. . He believes himself to be the oldest sailor and soldier in tho Commonwealth, still drinks his tot of O.P. rum nightly, drives his gig alone, and in his comfort able retirement has only one complaint — he can no longer read, even with glasses. 'JUST MISSED CRIMEA' This man. who helped to ship wheat out of Odessa to Waterford just the Crimean War, when famine gripped Ireland, has the voice, hearing, and bearing of a middle-aged man. He speaks of having 'just missed the Crimea. as men more than (60 years younger speak of the Great War. He   was in H.M.S. Warrior after the Cri mean campaign, and enlisted for the Maori War in 1863          

Mr Wooster was skipper of vessels on this coast for many years, and says he made tho first gold strike in the Northern Territory. When I suggested that he must have seen much of Australia, he said cheer fully Yes. I've been over most of the   colonies.'

Note the reference to The Northern Territory is in fact north Queensland (Ray Wooster)