John Bull remembered

In February last year, Peninsula News ran Steve Spillard's account of the creation of Woy Woy Rd in the 1920s. He told how John Bull, owner of a farm at Bull's Hill, was unhappy with the plan to put the road across his land and let his prize bull Romeo act as sentry at the entrance to his property. Here, John Bull's grand-daughter Cecily Dynes recalls her childhood visits to Woy Woy. I am John Bull's grand-daughter and I am now aged 79.

My mother took me to stay on the farm nearly every weekend until I was nearly five, when he died suddenly.

The story was he died because a thorn entered his blood stream.

His was the first dead body I ever saw, when I peeked into the bedroom, although forbidden to do so.

My grandmother was frantic when he died and of course had to sell the farm and livestock, I suppose including Romeo.

I loved staying with my grandfather and grandmother in Woy Woy.

He taught me all the old English army songs, such as There's Something about a Soldier and Sussex by the Sea.

Every Saturday night, we all went to the pictures and I remember standing on the seat shouting "I want Mickey Mouse" until the projectionist produced him.

So it seems I inherited some of my grandfather's bossy ways.

My mother, Hilda Mary Higgins was their only child and went to school in Woy Woy until she ran away to Sydney in the late 1920s.

One of my earliest memories is sitting in the hay loft while my grandfather milked his cows at 4am.

Then he had to turn around and deliver it all over Woy Woy, come home, have a rest, and milk the cows again at sunset.

Meanwhile my grandmother and I would shout at the passing trains: "Coal, coal". And they threw lumps of coal down to us and that was how we cooked our meals.

I don't approve of his treatment of trespassers, but he really did have a hard life.

He was the first man (he was 16 years old, a drummer boy in the 9th Lancers under Lord Roberts) into Kabul in the second Afghan War.

He later performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show before Queen Victoria.

He hated the life and couldn't wait to leave England and become "his own man" as a farmer in Australia.

He lost his first farm in Canberra due to floods in 1913.

I remember him as very kind and loving.

He built the first wireless in Woy Woy, the first I ever heard.

Online Submission, 15 Nov 2010 Cecily Dynes, Federal NSW