Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in Two Generations

The header is a wedge tail eagle photographed from Manna Mount, Manna Park. Photo: Mal Carnegie, Lake Cowal Foundation.

I recently supplied my books to Mark Wright. To my surprise back came a request for me to attend his mother Hazel’s 90th birthday party. He told me Hazel wanted my signature on the books. A delicious lunch of spit roasted pork and lamb with all the trimmings was provided for the large gathering of five generations of her family.
Mark told me his mother and father, now deceased, worked on Manna Park, J .J. Leahy’s main property, in 1949/50. She remembers rabbits being a major problem and were controlled with poisoning, trapping, kangaroo dogs catching them, and rounding up rabbits through a netting funnel into a netted yard in the paddock corners. Finally a plough was used to destroy the warrens. My father was a pioneer in rabbit control by enclosing his properties with rabbit proof wire netting and then using these methods to control them on the more than a 100 properties he controlled during his lifetime.
In 1950 the whole property was flooded and Hazel describes how the doors could be lifted to allow the flood water to flow through her house. This was too much for the Wrights, so they then moved on.

Manna Park’s 1950 flood

Manna Park Homestead, 2016 flood. Photo: Mal Carnegie.