Country spirit personified
• Cindy Walsh in the shade of one of Legerwood’s memorial trees.
By Tony Scott,
August 18, 2021
As the saying doesn’t quite go … you can take the girl out of the country community, but you can’t take the community spirit out of the country girl.
That seems the case for Cindy Walsh, brought up a Rattray at Pyengana then married to the other side of Mount Victoria to set up home at Legerwood.
The latter was 43 year ago and she was immediately recruited to the local hall committee.
“My mum was a Ringarooma girl, so I was a local before I got here I think. I was welcomed by everyone really.”
And it was straight into community service.
“Hector Rose, who had the local store and was the JP for the area and also on the Hall Committee. He asked me to join straight after I was married really and I’m still on it. That was 42 years ago.”
In fact, she has served as secretary for the past 17 years.
“There used to be a hall committee and a water committee and a recreation ground committee and a tennis club, but they combined them all into one because there wasn’t enough people over the years to run all the different things.
“The Hall and Reserves committee we are now and we own the title to the Legerwood recreation ground. And that was developed by volunteers.
“(Husband) Graeme’s grandfather and quite a few of the others around the area with their bullocks cleared the recreation ground and made a footy ground and cricket ground in Morris Street.
“It’s not used as a recreation ground now. It’s rented out to a lady to run cattle on it.”
And she’s not holding her breath for Legerwood to field a team again.
“They won the final in 1952 but they joined Branxholm soon after to form the Wanderers.
“We’ve got photos down in the carriage of the old footy teams.”
That’s the carriage at Legerwood Park, noted far and wide for its carved trees and more latterly the growing number of commemorative live trees.
The former derelict railway yard, now a pleasant open grassed area with barbecues, picnic settings, toilets and shelters is a prime focus of the Hall and Reserves Committee.
“The committee was the one that created and still maintains the park. We do all the mowing and the maintenance of the park and we created it. We had all the local people with machinery and tractors and everything.
“It was just a big mess and the men with their bulldozers and trucks and tractors made the park.
“That really started on the ground in 2006, but it took us three years to get through all the red tape and it was only because the farmers had their public liability insurance that Crown Lands would let us onto the ground. And Dorset Council had to take the title on our behalf.
“Then just as we were getting underway two of our main men broke their ankles in separate farm accidents, so we had to have others step up like my son to replace his injured father.
“But the help we got from dozens of people was just phenomenal, the Lions club came and helped pick-up all the old bits of iron.”
The carved trees memorial to first world war soldiers was already starting to create some interest in Legerwood.
But that too was a project with a stuttering start.
“They were actually quite rotten. Those American redwoods should live 300 or 400 years but they were cut in half because they were planted under the telephone lines and all the water got into the middle and they were in real danger of falling over the road and the power lines, so they had to be cut down.
“My husband lived here all his life. He used to catch the school bus under them, but he didn’t know they were memorial trees until they were going to be cut down and completely removed and then two elderly ladies, both in their eighties, Margaret Diprose and Elsie Targett they were the ones who stood up and said you can’t cut these down they were planted for the soldiers.”
“They held meetings to stop them being cut down and then it came to the hall committee to try to find a compromise.”
Eventually chainsaw carver Eddie Freeman was found and with some Federal funding the carvings got underway.
Some early publicity about the memorial trees included mention of the broader park proposal.
“I was noted as the contact person and it sought of snowballed from there.
“We didn’t know who they were planted for, so I had to go into the Library in Launceston to find out who they were planted for, but the information started to come in.
“We didn’t know why they planted a tree for someone from England, but he was here working in the sawmills.
“Robert Jenkins, he was engaged to Trippy Forsyth, a local girl, and everyone knew Trippy because she never married.
“But they didn’t know the story until the trees were being carved there was only Elvie Forsyth, who was 86 and she said oh yes Trippy was engaged she had a photo of Bobby on the dressing table with her engagement ring beside it and she’d say ‘that’s my Bobby’ and she lost him in the war and just spent the rest of her life helping people.
“All these stories just came out. It’s been amazing.”
Cindy’s 27 years as the area’s resident Avon lady gave her direct access to some of those most personal of stories.
“I loved being with Avon. It wasn’t all that profitable, but it was a great way to introduce yourself to people and visit my 120 ladies in Ringarooma, Branxholm and Legerwood every three weeks.
“Sometimes it would just be for a chat or to give a hand for some of the older ladies who couldn’t take the lid off a jar or get up on a chair and change the battery in the clock.
“They became my best friends.”
The mass planting days of trees in the park were last held around 2007, but there are still requests for trees to be planted or seats to be added in memory of local family members.
And Cindy says there’s still plenty of room provided they’re not going to grow into huge specimens.
Her get-it-done attitude and rapid-fire communication means that community spirit is likely to remain pushing the cause for Legerwood for some time yet.
One rejoinder: “Some people say I talk too fast, but I just tell them you’ve got to listen quicker.”