Morawa Scene: Article 10—5,260 Words
Well, I have made it to article 10 in this series I kicked off back in late October of last year (2023). According to Microsoft Publisher—the tool I use to cobble these pages together—I have entered 5,260 words into the nine articles up to here; not counting the little grey block of words at the end of each page.
This page talks a little bit about the work involved in compiling these sheets and provides some insights into what I am thinking about for future pages. I am hoping that I have enough stories in my notes to do at least another ten sheets like this.
In this Morawa Scene page I also talk about the baseball caps I have had produced that have the P. H. Lodge & Sons ‘logo’ on them. Although I doubt back in those days it was called a logo. Probably just a brand.
For anyone going to the Morawa Get Together at the Greenwood Hotel on Saturday the 12th of October (2024) I will have some of these caps there for sale at a very reasonable price.
As usual, click on the image of the article as published in the Morawa Scene (shown at right) to view a larger version of it.
The previous article can be found here.
Well, I have made it to article 10 in this series I kicked off back in late October of last year. According to Microsoft Publisher—the tool I use to cobble these pages together—I have entered 5,260 words into the nine articles up to here; not counting the little grey block of words at the end of each page. You know the words I mean. Those few words at the end asking people to e-mail me with general feedback or if you think something is not right. Not that I have had one single e-mail from anyone. Everything must be perfect!
Oh! Except that little grey block of words was missing from Article 09 because I needed all the room on the page that I could possibly get.
I think 5,260 words is a good effort.
The average ‘full’ A4 page with standard 2.5 cm left and right margins is 350 words. Hence, after a bit of basic math, my 5,260 words work out to just about exactly 15 average A4 pages of content. And I managed to squeeze in some images here and there.
Each of my articles probably takes about 20 hours to compile, confirm, proof, and copyedit. Each page is sent to my older brother Robert for a thumbs up before I mark it as “Final”.
I didn’t plan for this 10th article to be a kind of checkpoint review. I had planned to make the government’s “Farmer’s Debt Adjustment Act of 1932” the subject of Article #10.
The following clip from my quick notes in MS OneNote confirms this intention.
I want to thank my niece Kim who had to read each article two or three, or sometimes even four times, for me as I reviewed and re-wrote the drafts. And also my brother Robert for doing reality checks on the stuff I wrote about.
I also want to thank whoever it was that arranged for all the old newspapers to be collected, collated, and scanned; and then made them available for people like me to search through. If you haven't found this treasure chest of old newspaper scans, and it is something you might be interested in looking at, then point your favourite Web browser—my current preferred browser is Brave—at trove.nla.gov.au and have a play.
The search tool they use takes a bit of getting used to. I recommend using the “Advanced” search option so you have more control over the search. But it doesn’t behave quite like you might expect. For example, it seems to generally completely ignore literal searches. So if you do a literal search it will treat it as a normal word-by-word style search. And it does not understand or parse + and - search instructions like a normal search engine would.
But once you get the hang of it then it kind of works okay.
I have at least five future articles planned and outlined. As mentioned earlier there is one about the Debt Adjustment Act. What a cruel piece of legislation that was for shopkeepers at the time. Although I do understand the government’s reasoning in saving the farmers.
I have an article planned featuring my father Sydney Walker Lodge. I think that is worth watching out for. There will be a bit of tale in that article about the sly grog trade in Morawa back in the early days.
There is also Part 2 of “The Ledger”. Part 1 of the legend of “The Ledger” was covered in article 04.
“The Big Shed” is another article I am outlining. The Big Shed—which was at the back of the shop—as the name might impart, was a really big shed. It has some stories to tell. One of them was a government secret.
Another idea I have but don’t have an outline for yet is about when WMC came to Morawa.
I think I should be able to make it to Article 20 before I run dry of interesting stories to share that relate in some way to P. H. Lodge & Sons.
I am planning to come back to Morawa on the 16th of August so I can attend Morawa’s “9th Biennial Art Awards and Exhibition” at the Town Hall on the Sunday, and maybe the Saturday.
Just for the fun of it more than anything else I have entered two canvas prints in the exhibition. One of the pictures will be familiar to those who have caught up with article 09 about the stuff that P. H. Lodge & Sons stocked and sold back in those days.
I have also had 60 baseball caps made featuring the P. H. Lodge & Sons storefront livery that I will be bringing with me. You can see a sample picture above. What you can’t tell from this is that the P. H. Lodge & Sons text is in what I like to call ‘shop canvas red’ red. The next line of text is in a ‘shop canvas green’. The third line of text is black. Black is good for numbers.
Most of the caps I have had made are the colour of what I like to call ‘old galvanised corrugated iron grey’.
The idea being that the caps are the colour of the roof of the shop and the writing on the front uses colours from the canvas blinds at the front of the shop. The shop that made Morawa.
That's my story and I’m sticking to it.
However, there is a very limited number in mid-pink; because my niece made me.
I will have these caps for sale at the art show in the Town Hall on Sunday. Then, if they want them, I plan to leave any unsold caps with the Visitors Centre at their new location in the old Morawa shire offices building.
