This weatherboard and galvanised iron cottage was constructed around 1917. The ‘Wallarah Coal-mining Company’ built this three-bedroom cottage to house its mineworkers.
Bardons were the first remembered tenants. One of the early residents was the bullocky.” The bullock team hauled the large logs to the timber mill at the mine. It was exciting to see the bullock team coming down Flowers Drive with a load of large logs. We loved to see Mr Bardon wield his huge whip and hear him calling out to the bullocks to pull harder. The bullocks were usually housed behind the house in a special paddock. The timber was used in mine buildings and for woodwork underground.”
In the 50s Mr and Mrs Billy Wiggs moved into the house. Mr Wiggs was a coal miner. Their son, Billy, lived in Melbourne and their daughter Glady lived up the Pit Road (now Colliery Rd). Glady was married to Glan Williams and they had two children.
When they died Wigg’s niece, who was married to Bob Field, moved in. Mr Fields worked for the rutile mine and they had four or five kids.
“Rutile, Zircon and Molybdenite were mined from the sand of Middle Camp and the Bay beach. When the Coal Company sold the house they chose not to buy and moved north.
In 1968 Gregory Albert Bettini bought the house from the Coal Company. Previously he had lived and worked in the Post Office. He was an eccentric character and married a rather young wife. She lived with him in the house for a while but eventually ran off. They had a boat parked on the street and used to have picnics on it and throw fishing lines over the side and pretend to fish. He had a pet sheep, then a pet cow, both of which he took for walks on a lead. The house was subdivided into two flats when Mrs Bettini left and a young man, who was later killed in a car crash, rented half the house. Mr Bettini moved to Belmont and sold the house in 1978. The new owners were Beverly and Paget Blackburn who bought number 58 as a holiday house for $30,000. Local comment at that time was ‘we wouldn’t have given him that much’. The Blackburns lived in Palm Beach. Mr Blackburn was a Channel 9 Executive and at one stage was involved with Fiji TV. They moved to SE Queensland when they sold the house.
When their neighbour Tom Davies died Paget arrived for the graveside service in the Channel Nine news helicopter creating a large degree of interest from the congregated mourners standing at the graveside.
Brian Taylor and Julie Wattus bought this house in August of 1999 for $190,000. Brian is from Mullingar, Ireland and Julie is from Newcastle. Since moving in they have had three children; Luka, in 2001, Zachary in 2002, and Malaika in 2004 who was born at home.
This house was sold in March 2005 for $680,000 when the family decided to move north around Belligen.