Reg buckle repost

Hello and welcome to Casterton Connections. An initiative of Hands-Up Casterton where a group of enthusiastic locals have come together to capture, preserve and share stories of people who have a connection to Casterton. Hello and welcome to this episode of Casterton Connections. My name is Colin Buckle. I'm here with my father, Reg Buckle today, who is a long-term resident of Casterton and he moved away and then came back in later years. So this is the story of Casterton from my father's perspective. Dad, where would you like to start? This is not meant to be my life story. It's about Casterton. However, I must start by saying that I was born in Casterton at a small private hospital at the corner of McPherson and Addison Street and it was only a small house and I think from memory it was either a nurse, Miss Leverk or I cannot remember the other woman's name. However, that's where I was born. Now, my parents lived in Runnamede and so did my two elder siblings. Runnamede was a homestead around about 12 mile or 15 kilometers from Casterton. Dad was the rest about at Runnamede. By trade he was a butcher so we used to do all the killing for the homestead. The people in the homestead had fissons and also pet carpetsnakes which no one seemed to like except them. Then in 1934 when I was about three years old my mother and father bought a house in Casterton which was now near the junction of Mitchell Street and Hanson Road. Now in those days Hanson Road and Mitchell Street were not named. Our official postal address was off Mount Gambier Road, Casterton but the lane that was went from the highway down to our house, everyone knew as cow dung lane and the story goes there and this is true. My mother actually got letters addressed to cow dung lane but we had no male delivery we had to call on the way home from school at the post office, pick up her male. I can remember Casterton. The railway hotel had hitching rails and a hitching rail which would have been about I suppose five or six feet long and it had rings along that rail so they could tie their horses and whatnot up and there was also one hitching post there. That had a ring on a two to tie there. Down near the post office actually between the post office and there'll be a hotel on the footpath there was a wooden horse trough cut out of a huge log and of course there was also hitching rails there. My school days I used to walk to school which was about two miles, that's about four kilometers roughly and that was quite a distance. On the way home quite often we would go along Mount Gambier Road and at the centre-tough there was a German howitzer from the Second World War and beside it there were two mortars one on each side of that big gun. When I came back to Casterton I was absolutely amazed that the gun wasn't there neither were the mortars. The gun was eventually discovered in a creek bed and that was purchased by the historical society from the chap who bought it in the first place and it was restored and it's now undercover at the railway museum. Now Casterton in those days and I'm talking between 1935 and 1940 wasn't uncommon to see Bullock wagons in the main street. The one in particular I think the owner's name was Bilsen and he had I'd say it was eight or ten I know there was a lot of them that Bullock's both female or cows and steers they didn't differentiate between the sex of the Bullocks and quite often on the way home school or two school see that Bullock wagon or one of the Bullock wagons that he or other people owned and used. When I returned to Casterton after an absence of 44 years I couldn't find anyone that knew anything about those mortars. People I spoke to the elderly people in Casterton could remember the gun the big gun but they could not remember the mortars and it's only two or three weeks ago I actually found someone that knew those mortars and he used to do exactly the same thing that I used to do and my siblings used to do on a way home from school and that was play on the big gun and run around the mortars. Now before you go any further on that I'm surprised that there are no photos of the time that showed that big gun or the mortars for that matter so you're aware of anybody that may have had those photos and possibly why the RSL doesn't even have those photos. Burn McCallum. Burn McCallum? Yeah. Okay. And about that's that's the story of the centre-tough guns. So when you were growing up when you were younger what's the first memory that you have of Casterton? Is it the growing up part or the moving part from Roney Me to Casterton? Is that like what do you remember about the actual township? What was in the township? What buildings were in the township at the time when you moved? Well the township is altered enormously. They particularly business owners and types of shops and things like that. There was four or five banks. There was three or four grocery shops, two fruit and vegetable shops, a couple of barbers, three or four solicitors, garage serving petrol on the main street. Coxins was one. And Kent's garage down the bottom in near the bridge was another and there were two bake houses. Oh it was just amazing the difference I found when I got back to Casterton. So the year that you're talking about when all of these businesses were there what year roughly are we talking about? We're now talking about the late 1930s early 1940s. Okay. I can remember one morning in 1950 one. I had my suitcase packed. I carried it from home down to town that that distance of about two miles. I got on an asset roadways bus at Albert Oldfield Birkfields Garros which is now the bakery in Casterton, the centre of Casterton. That bus broke down between here and Hamilton just going down a month or so and the driver when I told him that the reason I was on the bus, that I was going to join the Air Force and I had to catch a plane in Hamilton. He hailed down a an old utility and the driver took me into Hamilton to get the bus to take me out to the airport. That bus, of course, was an asset bus and I boarded it and said airways, decoder aircraft and flew to Essendon and Melbourne and then from there I went to enjoy the Air Force. How long did you end up staying in the Air Force before you actually came back to Casterton? What year did you come back to Casterton? It came back to Casterton in 1993. But you had relatives that were living in Casterton during that time? Previous to that. Yes. Previous to that had hardies and so forth and cousins that lived in Casterton and I used to come up here quite not often. My mother moved to Melbourne in about 1954 and that's when I stopped really stopped coming up until my wife and I retired and started tripping around. There's another homestead near Casterton called Warwick. Now one of my cousins and myself used to go to Warwick for our school holiday. Warwick Homestead is well documented in different books, but there is one thing that people that I was told by my uncle, who worked at Warwick Station, that there were graves there. No one actually believes me, but the reason I say that is because my uncle used to tell myself and my cousin, you can't go down there and play because there are graves down there, and no one seems to know anything about that. The township itself, the shops were plentiful, every shop was occupied, we had two picture theaters, three hotels, and I said earlier two bake houses. And did you go to the picture theaters as well, when you were a kid were they somewhere that you went to, was a day out or whatever, were they popular basically, were they used a lot? Yes, the theaters were used very, very often. But we didn't go very often because it used to cost money to go to the movies. There wasn't much money around those days, and there was a bus that used to go down man can be a road from near the golf links, which was known as Pinchgut Alley. It ran from near down to the bridge over the Melbourne River in the town, and that used to cost trippin's ahead for the fair, but that was a return fair. So trippin's was I think two cents in that conversion to decimal currency. And with the theaters themselves, like you said that they were popular, where were they actually located in the town, where were the theaters? The main theater was in the town hall, right in the centre of town. The other theater was down the bottom end right near the bridge, that in later years that closed down and became a roller skating rink. And that was very, very popular, but the only trouble was we had to walk from home down there and then walk back. But some of us did have roller skates, I had roller skates. And at least one of my brothers had roller skates. But it was quite a long walk and then of course you had to walk back home again. The shops in Castan were very popular with school children. They used to buy their lunch. There was no candy in at the school, and I'll tell you a bit about the school later. McGregor's pie shop was straight opposite the Castan hotel. And he used to sell sloppy pies for throughput siege. And the children would go to the school children. They would buy a pie for throughputs and then go to the grocery shop and get a penny's worth of broken biscuits. There was a lot of broken biscuits because they used to come in big square tins and they were served out in bulk. The children go to the butcher shop and there was one particular butcher who was really liked by a lot of the children and parents. His name was Alf Barton. And you go there and he'd give you a piece of German sausage or a piece of black pudding or white pudding. And you get that and then you would go to the bakery to Curtis bakery which was very close to the butcher shop. And you'd buy a Boston bun and you'd share it between about four people. And the baker would butter it for us. Can I just ask, because I'm not sure what it is, but what exactly is a sloppy pie? A sloppy pie has one, when you bite into it, all the meat runs all over you. And burns you. Yes. Now we used to buy a lunch about, I would say about once a month, because money was scarce. And we used to take the forepins to school for lunch. And what I just described a while ago, the pie and the pennies were the biscuits or the meat and the Boston bun, that what it would be. Or alternatively, we would go to the fishing ship shop, which was called a cafe, but it really wasn't. It was just as far as I can remember, it was just serving fish and chips. But it did have the little rooms where people could go and sit down and have the meal. But the fish was always barracuda, full of plans. But you did get plenty of chips in those days. Were they served up in the newspaper like they used to? They were served up in, if you're lucky, it'd be a bit of butcher's paper and then newspaper. So the other shops that, I mean, you were saying that you, like last night, we were talking and you were saying how you started working. There were other shops around, like the two jewelers, for example, and you started your apprenticeship with one of the jewelers. Yeah, that's right. So were they quite, how would you say, were they, I won't say popular, but were they, did they do a lot of business back in the day? Those sorts of shops, because those sorts of shops today probably aren't as popular in the town of this size. So were they popular back then, were they used a lot? Yes, they were, they were used a lot. In those days, of course, we didn't have digital watches or battery watches. They were all mechanical and the two jewelers were also watchmakers and they used to do well watches and clocks up in the town. It was very, very busy in the repair side of it. That's where I started my apprenticeship at. There are nights watchmakers and jewelers shop. And the jewelry side of it, that was very, very busy too. Because in those days, the early days, when I left school at the age of 13, there were very few people who had motor cars. So you wouldn't go to Hamilton or Mount Gambia. So there was a lot of shopping done in Castan, both for foodstuffs and hardware and everything else. The big hardware store was Pieden. That also was a funeral director, a hardware store. And later on, Bill Pieden also introduced a self-service store that was much lighter. That's the ultimate in multitasking, isn't it? Not really when you think about it with all the different businesses owned by the same bloke. And there was another second funeral director, Charlie Anderson, who had a funeral parlor down near the Ike Family Emporium. Just on the riverside of the Emporium. And that brings to my memory Ike Family's Emporium. That's where being a menswear store, I used to buy all my clothes. And he would let me pay it off, take the clothes, pay it off, no interest, no nothing. And I used to pay it off at about a shelling or two shelling a week. And opposite that was a bike shop. And I bought a push bike. I couldn't afford any of the top-class stuff like gears and free wheels or anything like that. I bought a Molvin Star bicycle and it was a fixed wheel. In other words, the pedals kept going no matter what you were doing. As long as you were moving, the pedals were going. And from memory that cost me just over £3, which was a lot of money in those days. And the owner of the shop, Fred Ick, was his name. He was a bike rider, he used to do a lot of racing. He let me pay that bicycle off with no deposit at two shelling a week. And I eventually paid it off. So you eventually paid it off? But how long did you keep the bike for just as a matter of interest? I cannot remember how long I had it for. I would have had it for five or six years at least. Because we still couldn't afford it. When I started my apprenticeship, I was getting seven and six months a week. Which wasn't very much money. I used to give my mother two shelling a week. Pay off like thinly two shelling and a shelling or two shelling for Ick. And Fred Ick, I used to give him nearly always two shelling a week. So it didn't leave much money to go to the movies or pay a bus fare. So he didn't have to walk down to the pictures. So as part of like we're talking how old were you then about 14? I was 13 when I started my apprenticeship. At that particular time, can you, it's going to be a test of your memory, I understand that. But can you remember many of the names of the stores that were in town at the time? Yes, I can. There was the grass aside, there was marantados, there was colcens, there was There was Hoopers, there was, oh, another one where the Co-op was at Wednesdays, they're going. Goodie Harris. The Fritten Festival shops were Fee Kim, a Chinese background whose father had a vegetable garden, a man going to be a road near Pinch Cut Alley and Ralph Baxter was the other fruit shop. The duly shop was SJ Fry and I have my father's pocket watch and that has SJ Fry Caston on the dial. The Fish and Chip shop was Sanos, S-A-N-O-S, McGregor was the pie shop. Wheat rosses was the ladies' ware. There was a foreign gibson which was a mix, men's and ladies' clothing. There was, oh, there was a, the rendezvous restaurant was a very, very popular restaurant. It was, yes, it's so beautiful meals and that was near Electra House which is where all sorts, they had a called all sorts now. Caston had its own electricity supply which was DC current which is different to the AC current which we have now and it had a butterfly tree which backed onto the school and talking about the school. I said earlier that I was mentioned the school. The primary school had bluestone foundations up to about, from memory about 18 inches or two foot high and above that, I think it was brick and it was a very, very old school. It was, I can remember, being old even then and the Caston Elementary School, Caston Higher Elementary School called C-H-E-S it was, was on the south side of that school backing up against the butterfly tree. Britain was promised a college and it was to be built where the nursery is now. That was called the college block in lady's, but then they decided to sell that, the education department decided to sell it and they built the school where it is now. In man can be rude. So in place of the old school is what you're saying? Yeah, that replaced the old, what they called C-H-E-S, Caston Higher Elementary School, which was school number 2-0-5-8. How do you remember that it was 2-0-5-8? I don't know, but I can remember things, I can remember numbers. I can remember my father's number in the light horse, it was 2-2-1-2-1. I can believe it or not, I can even remember his rifle number, which he used to have to bring home the rifle in the scabbard that they used to put on the horses to carry it. That was 5-0-1-5-1. My brother's number was double 3-6-0-1 and Air Force, I can just, I can just remember numbers. So I must have inherited some of that because I actually can remember your Air Force number. A-3-5-3-double 7-year, so I can remember it. So going on from the school, how much longer, once you started your apprenticeship, how much longer were you around in the town and how much change did you see between the time you started work and the time you actually left, how did the town change? The town didn't seem to change very much. We had, of course, electronics came into it and there was electronic shop opened up. Perhaps I shouldn't say electronics, it was electrical, but that was Orb Baxter, opened up his shop and he used to repair the old radios and what, it went all then, I was new radios. But if they had troubles, he was the so-called expert to repair all those. But the township itself, during my early years, or when I say early years, I'm talking about from the time I left school and started my apprenticeship until I joined the Air Force, the town did not seem to change much. The Furnall director stayed the same, the bank stayed the same, the grocery shop stayed the same, the camera stayed the same, everything just seemed to stay the same in those days. Did the population change much during that time? We would have liked it to increase or decrease during around that time. No, for a memory, because it was wartime, for a memory, I didn't worry much about statistics and the population was running, but I don't think there was any change much. So, not really noticeable change during that time? No, there was no noticeable change. In those days, the Castan Football Club was called the Swans, not the cats that they are now. And I used to time keep for the football club, traveling to Penzers and Dunkel and Portland and Colouraine. And I also used to do time keeping for the 50-mile bicycle race, which was held every Queen's birthday or King's birthday, whatever it was, every year. And the bike riders used to have to go from the town hall, they would go out to Dunrobbin, back to the town hall, down to Digby and back again to the town hall, and that's where it finished. That bike race is now called the Walt Smith Memorial bicycle race. So, that actually replaced the other race, that race? Yeah. It was the same race. Oh, it's the same race. Same race. It just changed its name. I can't remember what they called it in the first place. Probably just a bike race. Just a bike race 50-mile. Yeah. There's a pretty grueling sort of a race because it's between here and Digby's, quite a few wheels. Yeah. Well, I mean, just one of the stories that we were talking about last night, actually, back in your place, was when you did work for the post office for a little while and you were collecting the mail and you said there was, um, three or two spots that you rode to, but tell us where those post boxes were and what you had to do to collect the mail. That was, well, that was in the army. Obviously, after school used to go to the post office, pick up the post office bicycle, which, uh, for a memory, I reckon it weighed about half a ton, was a shocking thing. Uh, and I used to pedal that up the Church of England hill to the hospital. There was a post box at the hospital. I used to clear that one. There was one halfway down the post office at the Church of England. I used to clear that one and then I used to have to ride down and up to Robinson Street near the Catholic school and clear one there and then go back to the post office and clear the one at the post office. So that would have kept you very, very fit? Yeah, it kept me very, very fit, but it wasn't only that. As our school day used to finish at four o'clock, I used to get home around about up at five, six o'clock. And if it was my turn, I had to go and milk a couple of cows. So it wasn't an easy life. But we got by, we used to go robberting when we had time. We used to sell the rabbit skins, we used to drive the rabbit skins, sell them. And I think from memory, we got six pounds a pound for the dried skins. And another way we earned money was my grandfather, Tony Buckle, who lived down Sleepy Hollow, which is the end of Russell Street where it joins Old Mount Gambia Road. He used to drink a fair bit and he used to buy his beer in bottles. And they were in packed in a wooden box and there was two dozen in a box. And every second bottle was in a straw sleeve. So they wouldn't bang against one another and break. We used to go down there and collect the bottles and we used to sell them and we got a lot of money for those, and those days we used to sell them back to the Geoffrey Brothers cordial factory in MacPherson Street. And we used to get ten pence-ape near dozen for those and that was a lot of money there. Excuse my ignorance on that, but ten pence-ape near dozen would work out to what per bottle roughly. You've been incensed. Incents? Well ten pence-ape near would be about nine cents. That's nine cents a dozen, so it would be roughly three quarters of a cent per bottle. But of course if we saw a bottle on the side of the road, we'd pick it up today. So you can remember Geoffrey's cordial being made in the town? I can remember Geoffrey's cordial being made in the town. Geoffrey's used to supply all the shops that sold the cordial and he used to supply bottled soda water to the hotels. They had their own ginger beer. And there's some specialty soft drinks as well, I can't remember what they were, but they had in the early times they had bottled with their own name, moulded into the Jeffrey's cordial factory. So you can remember the things that the larger factories that were actually encased at the time, like you've mentioned Jeffrey's cordial, you've mentioned the butterfly factory, you've mentioned the, oh what was the other one that you mentioned, I can't remember now, but all of these different factories that were, so the town was quite thriving when you were growing up wasn't it? Well in Castan, and I'm talking now about the later years when I was, when I say the later years I would have been about 15, 16 I suppose, there was Myers had a club factory in Castan and that was near where the scaffold is, there's a house built on that block now, there was a, where the nursery is now, there was a disposable underwear shop, a factory, not a shop, a factory, and that then was pulled down, a prison building was erected for a cabinet-makers business and that building still stands there anyhow but it's vacant. As are many of the shops unfortunately vacant in the town at the moment? Yes, there's quite a few vacant now, if we came the fruit and vegetable shop that's vacant, Goodie Harris's grocery shop that's vacant, Hooper's grocery shop is now, it's a restaurant. How did you feel when you came back to Castan though and saw the changes that you saw? I mean, obviously there was a big difference between when you left and when you came back. It must have, did it come as a shop to see what had happened to the town and how it had gone from that point onwards? It did, it became a very big shop because that was just when Melbourne, after the war, was growing at an enormous rate and I was stationed at Laverton near Werribee and Werribee was starting to grow and population increasing as is being built everywhere and when I came to Castan it just, it appeared to be dead but it wasn't, the people still loved their town, they were still friendly people, I can give an example of friendly people. When I came back to Castan, I'd been a member of the Masonic Lodge for many, many years and my cousin who used to print the notice paper for the Castan Masonic Lodge, I was talking to her and she said oh, there's a chap just down at the hotel, there's a friend of mine and you want to go and talk to him. So I went down and I saw him and I said the same stranger, I said I walked down the town and I did not know anyone and he said hang on a minute, he said you didn't know people. I said what do you mean? He said you're a Freemason, he said you've got a lot to friends around you as you know, he said you might not know them to see but he said you know them all right but no it appeared to me to be a terrible quiet town but that's what we were looking for more often I had to live here and we eventually settled here but I joined the Air Force in 1951, left it in 1971, discharged and then worked in Melbourne as a trade waste inspector for eight years and then I had some serious surgery and decided not to continue working and retire and then my wife and I started touring Australia but that's getting away from from Castan so then when after we toured Australia we had seen lots of places we would like to live but holiday crowds were just enormous so we came back to Castan to my cousin's place. We were staying there in the caravan this is when we were still touring and she said you were talking about that you might come back to Castan she said there's a little house up in Mount Gambia road that you might like why don't you go and have look at it so we did we had a look at it and it was a wreck and I mean a wreck it had seven different plattings on it but we could see potential so we bought that and then we spent a hell of a lot more renovating it than what we paid for the property but we're very happy there now thankfully it's not classified I wouldn't like to own a classified property but it might be one day because it's about 115 years old or something now 120 years old now and it's got 12 foot ceilings and it's just lovely so you were actually saying before about you looked at other towns and you said that you know they weren't suited to you because of the holiday crowds and things like that as a matter of interest now with the kelpifestival which the population of Castan explodes beyond the leaf when the kelpifestival is on how do you handle that given the fact that you didn't really want to settle in a place where there was that sort of issue or that sort of thing event that occurred or do you look at it now as a case of well that's good for the town so therefore I'm quite okay with that is that how you view it all yes it's good for the town we know it's good for the town when you look at anything it doesn't matter what what is happening in the town whether it be a carnival or anything the kelpifestival anything like that you've only got to go 500 yards and you're out of the town and you're away from the people it doesn't it doesn't worry anyone anything was down at the island park they now have the Castan show at the island park it used to be up in Robertson Street on Turek Hill but the buildings got all derelict and they decided to shift it all down to the island park which is a beautiful park it used to be in the real old days and island there is what they call the Esselagon and you virtually cross part of the Esselagon to get into the island park and that lagoon used to join around the river and it was an island now in there sporting facilities there are two football grounds one of which is a lighted football ground and you wouldn't find many towns in Australia with lighted football ground when they only had a population of about 1800 and the main football oval had a bicycle track around it but the council in those days said oh that's dangerous because the footballers go on the hard surface as they cross the boundary there was another football ground or another oval which now they use for equestrian events and that's very very popular but in my young days that ground was used quite often for live pigeon shoots and I'll tell you there's not many people in Castan now that can remember live pigeon shoots and we used to go down there after the shoots and gather up the injured pigeons and take them home and we'd have pigeon pie but the trouble was you had to spit out all the led shot all right so one of the things that we discussed last night and I want you to cover this story off because I think it is quite relevant to Castan what can you remember of the events and the story around Queenie the elephant oh Queenie the elephant Queenie the elephant was an elephant that was owned by one of the circuses worth circus used to visit Castan quite often and there was another circus but I can't remember the name of it and one of the circuses businesses had an elephant called Quee that elephant actually died in Castan and it's very well documented you can even get it on the internet and read all about it it died unexpectedly and being a full grown elephant they had to get someone to dissect it so they could remove the body so they got the local butcher to cut it all up but that's a very well documented in books and everything else but it's nice to hear somebody actually who was there during the time speak of it as opposed to just reading an article yeah not any you were one of the people who actually lived through that so you saw what happened you experienced the whole event yes I saw it all right and I got into trouble about it too because the news got around the school that the elephant had died and it was down in such and such a place so I decided I was going to go and have a look and I got into trouble going over late home that day I think it was well and truly dark before the chaos got milked or even found them because our cows used to roam the roads and when we got home school one of us used to have to go and find them and bring them home biggest thing is to go around the river because we had no water in our property. That's another story about Castan 2. Castan had the water supply from Kanonga, Tongue, Reservoir. Our house we didn't have any running water, didn't have any electricity. The running water we used to go up to Mt Genby Road. The old horse and cart would put a 44 gallon drum on that. This is when we ran out of tank water, which was often what going would fill up the 44 gallon drum and take it back home. And that would last a while, but it's time six children had a bath. I mean the water was all gone again, but that Kanonga Tongue water was absolutely horrible. Really bad. But our water supply now comes from a bore out on Punola Road. And that's good water supply now. They have a proper treatment plan for it. Now, just as a cover off sort of thing, there's a lot of people who might listen to this and don't understand where you sort of fit into the history of Castan in yourself in as much as your family. So you had your father and mother and Hammy children were in the family. There was my father and mother and six children, one girl and five boys. My father was discharged from the army. He joined the Light Horse and that was disbanded and it became the fourth Australian Motor Transport Regiment. And a few months after he was transferred to the army, he got ill and was discharged medically unfit. And he died in 1944 at the age of 43. And my mother was only around about 32, 33 and had six children to look after, which was pretty tough on those days. I had several relatives around the place. You still do have several relatives around the place. As the family historian myself, I know you have several relatives around the place. Yeah, a lot of them didn't know were relatives. So your mother was Mary Blair and your father was Fergus Buckle. Fergus Buckle, Fergus White, W-H-Y-T-E. Yeah. And your siblings' names, like if you would have run through the family names, you'd die. Well, there was Frank, Francis. There was Norma. Well, Jessie was her name, but she hated the name Jessie. And there was myself, Ridge. There was Rai. And there was Lez and Brian. I think that's a six. You can't remember your own family, but you can remember a lot more about that town. But my father, after he left Ranameed, he worked at Portland at both weeks' meet-works, banning the carcassus. I suppose it was for overseas exporter. I can't remember. Must have been, because we wouldn't have eaten at all in Australia. I don't know how an alley got from Castan to Portland, because he was away five days a week and years to be home for two days, but he only felt like one day we hardly saw him, because he has traveled home on the Saturday, I think, and back on the Sunday. But I've done a hell of an alley travel. No idea. Must have been someone that had a car, lived in Castan, worked in Portland. And then, of course, he joined the army, or the light horse, or whatever. And he didn't last long after he was discharged from the army. We've covered quite a bit, and I'm really appreciate the fact. But I know I've heard these stories many, many times before, and I'm quite happy to listen to them again over and over and over, because every now and then you'll come out with a small piece, which is not been something that you've told me in the past. So I really appreciate the time that you've spent to do this today, and I would like to thank you very much for taking part in this today. That's one thing about returning to Castan. I can't find many people that have a memory like I have. I can remember things when I mention to them, and they say, "Oh no, that's not right," and I can't remember that. But things like what I mentioned earlier, the big gun up at the centre of tariff and mortars and whatnot, the hitching rails at the hotel and ringing trough and bullet wagons in town. I don't know, I must be getting old. How does getting old mean that you've memory improved? So I thought that went the other way. Well, I cannot answer that. I don't have a answer. Anyway, thank you very much for your time, Dad. I'll call you Dad, or Regen for everyone else. Really appreciate what you've done today. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure, thank you. We hope you've enjoyed today's episode of one of our homegrown heroes. Jump over to one of our other episodes to continue the Castan Connections journey with us. Please don't forget to follow our podcast and share it with your family and friends. Thank you for listening.