Fishing at Spencer

We boys used to spend fishing weekends at Spencer.

Mum went once but couldn't stand the heat, the flies and the mosquitoes, but funny thing, she loved fish.

Thinking about mosquitoes reminds me that they used to carry lamps around Spencer looking for prey.

My brother Goog reckoned that they were fire flies, but my old man claimed he woke up with 10 lamps clinging to his arm and he didn't think fireflies were vampires, he said.

Going back when Aboriginal tribes used to meet at Wisemen's Ferry and hold get togethers, there were stories that the Aboriginies used to ride these mosquito like a sort of winged chariot.

They held air races, mock battles and the like, all sitting on their mosquito steeds.

So you see these were the first air-battles ever recorded.

Another first for Spencer.

Remember the giant pumpkins grown at Spencer, well they grew one that big, they decided to raffle it as a mobile-home, at the alfresco Dunkirk Hotel.

Skinny Neville won the pumpkin and he had 12 kids.

The pumpkin was big enough to give Skinny, his missus, and the 12 kids a room each.

They hired the biggest crane in Gosford to move the pumpkin to Skinny Neville's property.

It became the grandest house in Spencer.

Skinny was not to happy though, because his missus made him put a clean shirt on every day, to keep up the image of the grandest house in Spencer.

Kieth Whitfield, Woy Woy