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Memories from Gail (Angus) Knight

By April 26, 2012No Comments

GAIL (ANGUS) KNIGHT
If the first car in Manildra was owned by the doctor then I think it was a Clement Bayard.  The doctor was of German origin and the car was stored up on the Cudal Road near Bald Hills.  Those days the road went behind Ray Griffith’s place.  I believe Rec Ward and the German doctor had an attraction about the start of World War I (1914).

Fred Parson, born 1908, attended Manildra Central School in the teens, often talked of being allowed to stand and have a look out the window when a car went past.

I think Allan Tom got a license in 1918.

Another early Manildra motorist was Stan Wenban.  Stan had a very early Triumph motor bike, once having to push it over 20 miles from near Escort Rock to Manildra.  No NRMA roadside service in those days.

The Rutherford family from Nyrang had a 1910 Brazier car from new.

I believe Alan Angus was one of the first people in Manildra to own a Geiger counter.  As a boy I used to go prospecting for gold with him over the hills at Meranburn.

Alan Angus also invented “automatic cup links” for rail carriages and my Uncle Bill Lea made little carriages with “cup links”, which he and Alan took to Sydney with George Davis to have patented.  They were passed, so the men were very excited, however the Railways had just put a new cup link on the trains and thought it would be too expensive to change them at the time.

Alan Angus was offered a position in Mullion for the invention, but didn’t take up the offer.