Today we can tell how a nicely crafted, silver trophy presented to a Numurkah district farmer in 1909, turned up on a West Australian farm property.
WA farmer Brett Rose contacted Country News several weeks ago in a bid to find the descendants who could claim a silver trophy discarded on his property many years ago.
The trophy sat, unclaimed, on a mantelpiece in Dandaragan, Western Australia, for about 40 years, before Brett decided to try and find a home for it.
The only clue was the name — ‘J. Darbyshire’ — and the name of the Numurkah Agricultural Society.
The name on the trophy was that of Jack Darbyshire, the teenage son of Numurkah farmer and civil engineer John Darbyshire.
John and his wife, Maria Katrina, had a dairy farm in Numurkah, called Mundoona Park.
He was the engineer on a Goulburn Valley rail bridge, the Trans-Pacific Railway and many wooden bridges in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and WA.
Young Jack exhibited the winning dairy cow at the Numurkah Show while his father was away, no doubt building railway lines and bridges.
Jack died in France during World War I.
A descendant of the Darbyshires, Fiona Rafferty, relayed to us the following description of how the trophy had travelled 3000 km from Numurkah to WA:
“Civil engineer and former Numurkah farmer, John Darbyshire, had a daughter Constance Kerslake who had four children — Jessie, John, Dorothy and Margaret (Fiona Rafferty's mother).
“John Kerslake served in World War II and when his service ended, the Australian Government offered return soldiers an opportunity to start again in regional areas.
“He chose to settle on an orchard farm in Katunga.
“It is my understanding that my grandfather gave the trophy to his grandson, John, who in turn gave it to his eldest child, Penelope — or Penny as we call her.
“Penny and her husband and two children moved to WA and at one time, they lived in a cottage on a farming property in Dandaragan.
“They were very active in the local community and even started a local newspaper that is still circulating today and has a subscripted distribution throughout WA.”
Penny Haley and her husband rented the cottage on the Dandaragan farm of Brett Rose. Brett went to primary school with Penny’s children, Nicholas and Emma.
Somehow the trophy was left inadvertently when the Haleys left the cottage or it was not wanted any more.
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