RUGBY LEAGUE IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

BLACK AND BLUE: THE STORY OF WALTER ‘JACKIE’ BROOKS, BLUE MOUNTAINS RUGBY LEAGUE HERO OF THE 1920s AND 1930s.

Talk given at the 5th Annual Blue Mountains History Conference, Sunday 25th September 2005
Springwood Library

In the 1970s, you may be amused to know, a glossy magazine in North Sydney described the local rugby league team as just a bunch of “big thickers bruising it away”1 every Saturday afternoon. Now, many of you may possibly share this opinion, so I’d better declare my bias right away. I like rugby league and, though my enthusiasm has diminished considerably in recent years, especially since the team I’ve followed most of my life was unceremoniously ‘done away with’, I still think rugby league at its best is a fast, open and exciting game.

Historically it has held a particular interest for me. In the years before rugby league became primarily a corporate investment, when it was anchored strongly in local community, much about that community could be reflected through its culture. This can be said too of other sporting pursuits and in fact the study of sporting history has become a fertile ground for the social historian in recent years.

Just as teams were identified with their town or region, so too the game has thrown up unlikely local heroes who, through their athletic ability, have carried the aspirations of the community on their shoulders. One such ‘unlikely hero’ is the subject of this paper and, while Jackie Brooks may not rank in the elite of rugby league players, to the Blue Mountains crowds of the 1920s and early 1930s, he was “a wonder-boy”.

‘Jackie’ was born Walter Woodburne John Brooks, 25th June 1906, at Little Bay, Sydney. His father William remains a bit of a mystery. There are a couple of references to him as a “labourer” and, intriguingly, a “variety artist” but outside of this – nothing!2

His mother, Jessie (known as Rosie), on the other hand, was the daughter of William and Fanny Lynch, prominent and respected elders of the Gundungurra people. William Lynch, whose tribal name was Mawialli, was born at Bungonia in 1830 to a Gundungurra mother and an Irish convict father. He worked for many years as a police tracker and later as a shepherd on Alexander Dalziell’s ‘Rosevale’ property in the Hartley Valley, eventually settling on his son’s selection at Gibralter Creek where it joins the Cox’s River.

Rose Anna ‘Fanny’ Lynch (nee Fisher) was born at Hartley in 1829 and after their marriage bore William seven children. Following her death in 1900, her husband and a number of their family (including Rosie) moved up into the Gully near Katoomba.3 When ‘Old Billy’ died in 1913 he was described as a “Mountain historian”, his obituary writer in The Blue Mountain Echo paying tribute to his “encyclopaedic” knowledge of the district.4

Though it was on the football field in the years following World War I that Jackie Brooks began to attract wide attention, his courage and physical stamina first came to public notice when he was only eleven. In November 1912, a year before his grandfather’s death, he played a leading role in the rescue of two of his friends, the sons of respected Katoomba families, who had fallen over a cliff on their way back from gathering wildflowers in the Megalong Valley. The local newspaper, The Blue Mountain Echo, described what happened:

“They had their afternoon’s ramble and were returning homewards up along one of the cliffs on a short-cut, making for Dixon’s Ladder – a weird wire rope hanging from an iron peg fully 70 feet over a sheer precipice at the end of the unfinished road commenced by the Government some years ago to connect Katoomba with the Valley. Jackie Brooks, a little copper-colored (sic) sprite, was out in front barefooted, and, as he had often taken the short-cut visiting a relative in the Valley, he hung on well. The other lads were handicapped with boots, and on the upward climb slipped slightly on several occasions. When nearing the top of the last incline, young Annesley, who was last, lost his hold and, with a cry of terror, slipped away and went headlong down over the awful precipice. Young Martin, horrified at the fall of his companion, also slipped away and followed Annesley over the side. The feelings of the colored midget, hanging on for dear life, can easily be imagined. He called to his mates and after a while young Annesley answered. Satisfied that both were alive, the little darkie scaled the cliff, climbed up Dixon’s Ladder and made all haste to town, where breathless and almost white with fright, he broke the news …”5

After returning with the rescue party and actively assisting in the recovery Jackie shared a cigarette with Constable Davis and was praised as “a little hero …deserving of every recognition”6. He was presented with “a handsome medal” at a special function in the Mission Church that served the small Aboriginal community in the valley of Katoomba Falls Creek and a small trust fund was set up for him.7

While young Jackie was wandering the bush tracks of the Blue Mountains with his friends, the game of rugby league, only recently arrived in Sydney (1907-08) from its birthplace in the industrial north of England, first appeared in the region. In 1912 the small village of Glenbrook in the lower Blue Mountains fielded a team, the Glenbrook Rovers, which competed successfully against teams from Emu Plains and Penrith. The large population of railway workers in Glenbrook at the time, working on the deviation through Glenbrook Gorge, no doubt provided the impetus for the town’s early adoption of the game and its team does not seem to have survived their departure when work was completed in 1913.

Three years later, in 1915, rugby league teams were formed in Katoomba and Springwood. The Katoomba club was formed under the patronage of James Joynton Smith, the owner of the Carrington Hotel and an influential supporter of the game in Sydney. It entered a team in the competition administered by the Hartley District Rugby League and, despite some controversial off-field tactics by the “Kaisers of Lithgow football”8, ended the season as premiers. Springwood, on the other hand, played in a Sydney ‘Western Districts’ competition and finished the year with six wins from twelve matches.

Unlike in Sydney where rugby league continued to be played,9 World War I disrupted the development of the game in the Mountains and a truly local competition did not eventuate until after hostilities ceased. The Blue Mountains District Rugby League was formed in 1920 and its co-patron (with Joynton Smith), Katoomba businessman John S. Henderson, donated a stylish trophy.

The first season produced a final between Springwood’s ‘Springboks’ and Katoomba’s ‘Federals’ that, according to the local newspaper, “metamorphosed the quietude of the bush into a veritable pandemonium”. It was played at Springwood’s Lomatia Park and, though the ‘Boks’ showed “the stamina of brumbies and the tenacity of bulldogs”, they were unable to prevent the Federals from taking the Cup 7 points to 2.10 This augured well for the code and, while the health of the local competition over the next two decades became really a season-to-season proposition, the early years saw teams from all over the Blue Mountains do battle each week.11

During the early years games were played on the Katoomba Park Recreational Reserve above Katoomba Falls. The Katoomba Show Society, however, spent the early 1920s upgrading their grounds at North Katoomba to include proper facilities for football and cricket and when the new ‘Showground’ opened in June 1925 it was soon adopted as the rugby league ‘headquarters’ in Katoomba. With additional refurbishments, including the construction of a grandstand, taking place during 1927, the Showground became “one of the finest, in every respect, outside the Metropolitan area, and was excelled by few in the whole State. It provided every facility needed, down to training rooms and showers.”12

In the history of the Blue Mountains strong and sometimes bitter rivalries have existed between, for example, ‘Upper’ and ‘Lower’ Mountains and even between individual towns like Katoomba and Blackheath. Katoomba’s evolution as the widely promoted ‘premier’ tourist destination and its perceived self-importance in this role occasionally touched a raw nerve in other parts of the Mountains. Sport can be a particularly acute barometer of such tensions and, indeed, they surfaced early in the new rugby league competition.

When Springwood defeated the Katoomba Soldiers Club in the 1922 premiership final the Blue Mountains District Rugby League, based in Katoomba, promptly disqualified the ‘Lower’ Mountains club after its opponents accused the ‘Springboks’ of fielding an ineligible player. This claim was hotly disputed and rumours of an ‘Upper’ Mountains conspiracy soon began to circulate.

Feelings ran so high that, the following year, when Springwood again won the final in August 1923, this time against the Katoomba Federals (with Jackie Brooks in the three-quarter line), the trophy presentation was delayed amid talk that Springwood would refuse to accept the Cup. It was eventually held in April 1924 but soon after, the Springwood captain, the popular but volatile Charlie ‘Mick’ Stratton, returned his premiership medal “broken up, accompanied by an insulting letter”. The Stratton’s were one of the oldest families to settle in the Springwood-Faulconbridge district, Charlie’s father buying the land on which Faulconbridge Public School now stands in 1869. This, however, held no currency with the District League in Katoomba and they declared him “disqualified for life”!13

The long-standing Katoomba-Blackheath divide was also given expression when, in August 1924, Blackheath RL Club withdrew from the competition amid accusations of bias.14 In the summer months too the fault lines showed. At the same time all this was taking place in rugby league a similarly bitter dispute was occurring between Springwood Cricket Club and that game’s district authorities in Katoomba.

But it wasn’t all feuds and acrimony. In 1921 a Western Districts competition, involving teams from Dubbo, Wellington, Parkes, Orange, Bathurst, Blayney, Lithgow and the Blue Mountains, was initiated with the establishment of the Western District Rugby League Football Association. As the 1920s progressed, the Blue Mountains team, chosen from all the local clubs, outfitted in royal blue jumpers and known to its fans simply as the ‘Blues’, began playing an increasing number of metropolitan lower grade and company teams alongside its commitment to the country competition.

The ‘Blues’ provided one of the few mediums through which the people of the Blue Mountains, characterised by a divisive geography of small parochial towns with entrenched traditions of rivalry, were able to express a unified sense of regional identity. Indeed, with the fluctuating fortunes of the local competition,15 the ‘Blues’ gradually came to occupy centre stage.

Today there would be few major rugby league clubs without Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders on their books. At the time Jackie Brooks joined the Katoomba ‘Federals’16 in 1923, however, it was a different matter. Indeed, that year saw the retirement of George Green, the first ‘Aboriginal’ to play first grade rugby league in Sydney since the competition began in 1908, and even his Aboriginality is uncertain.17 Nevertheless, perhaps Green who played a significant part in the North Sydney premierships of 1921 and 1922 provided inspiration to the young Katoomba footballer.

Whatever the source of his decision to play rugby league, Jackie’s first match performance was considered worthy of notice by the local press and within weeks he found himself selected to play in a combined Blue Mountains-Mudgee team against Lithgow. “No better sport or more gentlemanly player has donned the Mountains league guernsey”18, remarked one commentator and it wasn’t long before his attractive playing style made him a favourite with the local crowds.

League is an attacking game and, while the big forwards lay a foundation of grinding, even bruising, progress, to play as a centre or on the wing a player must have speed and evasive skills. Jackie it seems had both in abundance. There were times when, by merely receiving the ball, he brought the crowd to its feet in anticipation of what he might do. He was, said one reporter, “a wonder-boy when properly fed.”19 In a club match against Blackheath in 1924 he “electrified the crowd by a brilliant run. He evaded all opposition and scored in style.” The journalist, unsatisfied with his own ability to sum up Jackie’s performance, borrowed from none less than Alfred Lord Tennyson, comparing the footballer to the poet’s “immortal” who “goes on for ever”20.

In August 1928, “gathering in his own 25 and beating the whole field in one of the prettiest runs imaginable”, he placed the ball over the line after what was considered “the best piece of individual play we have seen this season.”21 And, the following year, he scored what one observer described as “the most remarkable try of his career” in a game against a team from Granville in Sydney’s west. “Intercepting a beautiful pass Jackie ran from half way in a most remarkable fashion. With great head and footwork he managed to dodge his many would-be tacklers, and scored right behind the posts. His feet went in the fashion of a horse, and no one could get close enough to bring off a successful tackle.”22 On another occasion he “covered the distance like a startled hare”23.

Of course, I never saw Jackie play but I know what these journalists were feeling and trying to express. I’ve felt it myself many times sitting on ‘The Hill’ at North Sydney Oval, especially as a young boy watching that great winger, Ken Irvine, who played so many games for Norths and Australia. When he received the ball and began to weave his magic over the game you could feel the invisible current of excitement and expectation run through the crowd. Such players bring to rugby league, so often dismissed as merely a contest of ‘biff and bash’, a kind of physical poetry that, especially when combined with an attachment to place and that pride in local community once associated with the game, can leave you struggling for words.

As well as attacking skills it is clear that Jackie was also blessed with an ability to ‘use his head’, to play intelligently and to learn from criticism. In a club match in June 1924 he was criticised for trying to do too much. Had he “short kicked at times”, the commentator remarked, “it would have been better for his side.”24 The following week, when playing for the Blues against the South Sydney Warrigals, Jackie clearly took this advice to heart. Receiving the ball on the half way line and “fenced off” by a phalanx of opposing players, he “used his head, short kicked, raced through, gathered up and flashed across an easy winner. It was a pretty and creditable piece of work.”25

The game also involves the defence of territory and an ability to tackle can separate a good three-quarter from the rest. Even when starved of possession and limited in attack, one journalist observed, “nothing got passed Jackie”26. On occasion he could be observed “working from wing to wing, one time cutting off the visitors’ winger after a burst across field.”27

When he was nearing the end of his playing career he could still produce ‘man-of-the-match’ defensive performances. In a game against Fairfield in 1936, “the beautiful tackling of Jacky Brooks” was seen as a highlight. The Katoomba Daily’s journalist concluded his report of the match with the comment: “I think Jacky Brooks is the finest tackler it has been my pleasure to watch. Not once on Sunday did he let his man go past him. … A pity the rest of the team does not tackle like him.”28

His speed in attack and effective defence were sustained by his remarkable stamina or, what one commentator called, “true football grit”29. Jackie’s ability to “go on for ever” was noted early and by 1929 he had earned himself the nickname of ‘Tiger’30. In August 1929 a thrilling Sunday match against Orange, in which the Blues were victorious over a team that contained two former internationals, revealed him at his most determined. He was a marked man from the kick-off and during the second half was found to have suffered a broken rib. Refusing to leave the field, he moved briefly to full back but soon reverted to his normal position in the three-quarter line where, “holding his injured side with one hand”31, he successfully executed a couple of try-saving tackles before the game concluded.

He was back on the field the following weekend playing for the Blues in a knock-out competition that involved a number of teams from the metropolitan area. This was, according to all reports, a “red-letter day for Katoomba”32 with the local side scoring an exciting victory in the final against South Sydney. The crowd at the showground was lively and conditions certainly favoured the local side, with wind, rain and snow all effecting play.

While it is true that Jackie Brooks’ abilities have to be seen in the context of the generally average and often criticised standard of football in the Mountains33, there is no doubt that he showed above average abilities as a player. In 1929 he would have benefited from the more professional coaching that came with the appointment of the experienced Charles Hamey as the District team coach. Hamey had been a South Sydney junior representative at aged 13 and was an ex Newtown Union player. He introduced a more disciplined regime into the training schedule and its impact was felt immediately, with the Blues recording a win against Bathurst that observers felt placed the team “on a level with any first class team of the west”34. On training nights the ground, lit by two large electric spotlights, “was as busy looking as a disturbed ant bed.”35 The Blues won 17 out of 21 games played in 1929.

Though an early commentator forecast that “some day he’ll be heard from”36, Jackie appears to have gained representative honours beyond district level only once. This was achieved in May 1933 when he was the only Katoomba player chosen by the Group 10 selectors to represent the group’s Eastern against its Western Division. The match was played before the State League selector at Bathurst and, while Eastern Division won and his pace was praised, he did not have a good game. He was criticised for “a little too much indecision”37 and failed to make selection for Country Week carnival honours in Sydney.

Nevertheless, his talents did not go totally unrecognised and the high regard in which he was held by local spectators and players alike was reflected in a number of local ‘honours’. In August 1924, at a dinner at the Hampden Villa guesthouse following a Blues victory over an Eastern Suburbs President’s Cup team that had won the Sydney competition, the Eastern Suburbs Club’s Vice-President “paid a high tribute to Jacky Brooks, which caused prolonged cheering from all present.”38 A month later his was the first name to be inscribed on a shield sponsored by Katoomba businessman and Federals official, Dave Brown, to recognise annually the club’s “most proficient player”39. And the following year his efforts were again recognised when the club presented him with its award for “all-round excellence”.

By the time Jackie Brooks began playing with the Federals club in 1923, Katoomba was claiming its title as the ‘Queen City of the Hills’. It had come a long way from its 1870s origins as a coal and shale mining centre. As the 19th century turned into the 20th mining the cliffs for coal gave way to mining the pockets of tourists. Development of community amenities such as gas, water and eventually electricity accompanied an ever expanding market in holiday cottages and guesthouses catering to all levels of income. Building continued unabated during World War I and by the early 1920s Katoomba was booming.

The community in which Jackie lived in the Katoomba Falls Creek Valley had been established there around the turn of the century. Never large, it consisted of a core of permanent families that included people of Dharug, Gundungurra, Wiradjeri and European descent and a regular itinerant population visiting and drifting through from other centres. A small interdenominational church, run by a local Katoomba Mission Committee, was erected in 1910 and the Valley people were also visited by missionaries of the Australian Inland Mission.

Many of the Valley’s residents worked in the town and participated in other aspects of Katoomba life without apparent discrimination. Indeed, Jackie worked at a number of jobs and, in 1927, after working for a local carrier for over a year, took his employer to court, alleging successfully that he was due 4 pounds 13 shillings and 9 pence “as wages underpaid in terms of the award”40. In the 1930s he appears to have obtained work at some of the local hotels and guesthouses including the Hydro Majestic at Medlow Bath and the Carrington and Milroy in Katoomba.

At a farewell dinner for the Carrington’s manager, Harry Cantor, Jackie spoke of how happy he had been working under Cantor with whom he had come from the Hydro Majestic.41 He worked in the kitchens at the Carrington and would bring home left-overs of food and sweets for the Valley children and scraps for his favourite cats. He played the organ in the Valley church, was a good singer, a fine dancer and skilled on both the gum leaf and the spoons. As such, he was a popular participant at staff balls and football club dinners. At the aforementioned dinner for the Eastern Suburbs team in 1924 he was one of the principal musical attractions, while in 1938 he won a prize for the most original fancy dress at the Carrington Staff Ball.42

While the Australian devotion to sport provided Jackie with a pathway to community respect and all the evidence suggests that he was widely and genuinely liked in both the sporting and general community, he was rarely allowed to forget that he was ‘different’. Language now unacceptable was then widespread and unremarked upon. It reflected deeply ingrained community attitudes. To the press he was the “swarthy Jacky”, the “copper-coloured lad”, the “fine little ‘white’ player” or the “gallant Etheopean (sic) with the white heart”.43 And, popular though he was with the crowds, it seems that he did not always escape the cruel and derogatory comment. “Give the ball to the boong!” was heard by at least one spectator who shared his memories with me.44

Beneath the surface of its metamorphosis into one of the nation’s premier tourist resorts, Katoomba was basically a small provincial Australian town imbued with a deep conservatism that underpinned its view of the world. Jackie Brooks might have been recognised and applauded as a fine footballer, but he lived, worked and played in a community in which ‘race’ and skin colour still mysteriously measured a man’s social acceptability and his success must be seen in this context. 45

The press’ treatment of three other Aboriginal men who fell foul of the law around the very time that Jackie was beginning his football career provides a useful comparison. The prominent historian of race in Australian sport, Professor Colin Tatz, describes community attitudes to race in terms of “inclusion” and exclusion”. The ‘acceptance’ given to Jackie emanated from his ‘special case’ status as a black champion. His racial difference was emphasized by his “inclusion”. The Hughes brothers, on the other hand, had no such special status. They had already placed themselves outside the law, compounding their racial “exclusion”.46

In April 1921 William Hughes, a World War I veteran, and his younger brother Herbert escaped from the Katoomba lock-up where they had been incarcerated for burglary. They lead the police on a ‘merry dance’ around the Burragorang Valley before they were eventually recaptured. Three years later their older brother Jimmy was also arrested in Katoomba for similar crimes.

In its coverage of these cases, in which police “wit” was matched against the “cunning” of the “copper-coloured coons”, the local press portrayed the brothers in a manner that suggested they were hardened criminals. It also implied, irrelevantly and with no real evidence, that Jimmy was “a perambulating darkie who used to play ‘peeping Tom’ in the nude”47. Some years ago a relative of the Hughes brothers came to the library seeking information and was distressed by this newspaper portrayal. She spoke of them in quite different terms.

As Katoomba rode the crest of an economic wave into the early 1920s, the Valley community on its margins remained poor. Houses were constructed with the limited materials available – saplings, kerosene tins, corrugated iron, hessian – and painted with whitewash. The local newspaper, if it referred to the community at all, called it a “camp” and mission records refer to numerous cases of sickness and premature death indicative of social neglect. In November 1924 Jackie married Edith Faith Stubbings at a well-attended ceremony in the Valley’s church, the interior of which was decorated “with wildflowers and greenery and a Wedding bell, and outside an arch of greenery was erected and coconut matting laid from the gate”.48 Within two months of the wedding Edith had died from complications incurred during childbirth.

In the 1930s, as his football career was coming to an end, Jackie seems to have considered other outlets for his athletic abilities. One of these, not surprisingly, was boxing. On the evening of Saturday, 1 April 1933, “our football champ” appeared at the Katoomba Town Hall in a bout with a similarly weighted (9 stone, 7 pounds) but height advantaged opponent named Jack Swords.

Despite showing all the courage and determination that characterised his football, his attempt to forge a new career in the ring proved unsuccessful. The reporter from the Katoomba Daily observed that: “Brooks attacked tigerously (sic), forcing the taller man again and again into his corner. In the third round Brooks hit the canvas for seven, and in the fourth, Swords … knocked him through the ropes. Coming back into the ring, Brooks received a straight left and a right arm jolt to the stomach, again going down. The towel was then thrown in from his corner.”49 This seems to have been his first and last fight.

Not a great deal is known about Jackie’s life after football. A former resident of the ‘Gully’ community recalled in an interview some years ago that he took up a coaching position in Wellington (NSW) after his retirement from playing in the mid-1930s.50 However, despite a search of the Wellington newspapers, no confirming evidence of this has been found. In 1936 he married Daisy Smith (aka Dennis/Barker), an attractive and “stylish” Aboriginal woman with reputed connections to La Perouse and Redfern. This marriage did not last. A later relationship with a non-Aboriginal woman, Eileen Rutland, gave him a number of children.51 With the possible exception of his stint in the Central West, Jackie seems to have lived in Katoomba until possibly the mid-1950s.

At this time the local council reached agreement with a local syndicate of car enthusiasts and what remained of the ‘Gully’ community was dispersed to make way for a modern motor racing circuit. Jackie Brooks may have left Katoomba at this time, though his departure could well have been earlier as a natural dispersal of the already small community began following World War II.52 He was, however, still living in Katoomba in 1949 when his mother died and when he applied for exemption from the provisions of the Aboriginal Welfare Act. Before leaving, I’m told he appeared in an exhibition match at the Katoomba Showground in which his team-mates made sure that he scored a try. It was a final flourish for “the wonder boy” of Blue Mountains football. He moved, it has been suggested, to Redfern or perhaps to La Perouse near his birthplace of Little Bay … and vanished!53

Epilogue

Considering the importance of sport in Australian life, it is unfortunate that Blue Mountains historians have given it so little attention. When seen in its broader social context sport can offer yet another perspective from which to look at our history. Jackie Brooks was a talented footballer who, through his exploits on the field, spoke that mysterious language understood by fans of all eras, that ‘secret knowledge’ so baffling to outsiders. He was also an Aboriginal man living in a small Australian town in the early 20th century. Such stories as Jackie’s are important. They open a window on to a moment in our community’s evolution. They show us the ways in which we have changed and remained the same. They provide us with context and continuity.

Outside Katoomba’s Carrington Hotel there is now an open area of public space where locals and visitors alike can soak up the sunshine, enjoy dramatic and musical performances or just sit under the gaze of one of Australia’s iconic 19th century hotels.

Set into the pavement of this ‘town place’ are a series of panels that memorialize, in an imagistic way, a number of local people whose lives have intersected with that of the old hotel, though regrettably no interpretive information is available to assist in a proper appreciation of their stories. One of these panels acknowledges the life of Jackie Brooks. It is, to my knowledge, the only memorial he has.

Note on Sources.

Most of the information concerning Jackie Brooks’ football career comes from the local newspapers of the time: The Blue Mountain Echo, The Katoomba Daily, The Blue Mountains Star and The Lithgow Mercury. Direct quotes have been referenced in the footnotes.

Information about the ‘Gully’ community is drawn mainly from:
BOOBY, Lillian. Oral History Interview recorded for the Blue Mountains City Library, 21 October 1992.
COOTE, Ann. Untitled and unpublished talk given to the Reconciliation Action Meeting, Katoomba, 2 May, 1998.
JOHNSON, Dianne & COLLESS, Dawn. Upper Kedumba Valley, Katoomba: Report on the Cultural Significance of Upper Kedumba Valley for Declaration as an Aboriginal Place, Blackheath: NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service, [2003].
SMITH, Jim. “Katoomba’s Fringe Dwellers” in STOCKTON, Eugene ed. Blue Mountains Dreaming: the Aboriginal Heritage, Winmalee, NSW: Three Sisters, 1993.
SMITH, Jim ed. Legends of the Blue Mountains Valleys, by Jimmy Shepherd, retold by Frank Walford, Wentworth Falls, NSW: Den Fenella Press, 2003.

My thanks also go to Margaret Joyce Jordan, Jacky’s niece, whose interest in, contributions to and encouragement of the research on which this paper is based is greatly appreciated.

An earlier version of this paper was published in Loosehead(Rugby League Quarterly), No.7 (Vol.2 Issue 1), Spring 1999, pp.7-9, 20.

© John Low 2005
Local Studies Librarian
Blue Mountains City Library

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