Tony Quigley from New Street in Killaloe was born in 1932 in Newtown.
Tony loved his home town of Killaloe and was a keen fisherman from a your age.
He passed away in 2006 at the age of 74.
Tony: Well I used to go over to Hinchy’s, the family the Hinchy’s and Lewis’s were the people who used to fish for eels. And I’ll always remember as a child going into Hinchy’s yard and everywhere you looked there was eels and they had these shallow boxes, well what they used to do, they’d actually go out from Killaloe and row up to Mountshannon. Mountshannon was a place where they did a lot of their fishing and you can imagine rowing up there and a north wind blowing down or coming home in the evening and all wet.
How long would it take them to get up there?
Well t’was ten miles roughly say and I’d imagine t’would take them sure I suppose three hours or so, depending on the weather too, and sometimes they would bring back timber, firewood, on their boat with them. But they had these little shallow boxes, I don’t know how much eels would fit in them, and they’d get ice out from Limerick or somewhere and they were sending the eels, exporting them to London, Billingsgate in London, and t’was a very slow process.
They had keep nets here and there, even down in the Canal there now, where Parks has the boats, they had keep nets there, just a big like a square box with lettuce wire on it and a trap door on the top of it, and they’d come back there in the evening and throw in a couple of stone of eels in to it, they had several of those around so when they had so many ton then I’d imagine, they wouldn’t have tons I’d suppose, only hundredweight I’d imagine, they’d export them to London.
So, it was like a small enterprise they had going themselves?
Oh yes, yes. The boxes were only about say four or five inches in depth and they’d put a stone or two of eels in each box, put ice in them and nail the boxes together again and there was air holes in them. There was an old man living here on this street, Paddy Gissane, and he had a pony and car and he’d come and take them to the Railway, but as often as not, they didn’t get any money, all the eels were supposed to be alive, you know that time I suppose the service wasn’t as good as it is now, the eels were held up here and there and on the other hand then maybe the people that they were selling them to would say that they didn’t arrive in as good a condition as they expected and they wouldn’t pay for them you see, that happened fairly often. But that was a regular thing. Paddy would come along on his pony there and collect the eels. When any shopkeeper in the town would order groceries from Limerick or wherever he’d go the station, that was his job with his horse and car and collect everything for the shops.
His horse was called Dolly wasn’t it?
I can’t remember, it could be. He had a couple of cobs ponies. Another job, also he was the bill poster you know, he was the man who’d get the bills if there was a circus coming or concert on or an auction.
The local advertiser.
Yeah, he’d do that. And another job of his was, if anybody died, in Newtown especially, I always remember as a child, he’d come along with the coffin, you see, in the horses’ car. T’was a very solemn kind of occasion to see him coming along, they’d be waiting and saying “any sign of Paddy Gissane coming?” “The funeral was supposed to be in at such a time”. These are people now that, very few people, only the wealthy people would have a hearse in those days, they couldn’t afford it in those days, that was during the War when petrol was scarce and they wouldn’t be inclined to go, a short distance especially.
So, Paddy would come along and he’d bring in the coffin, the people would have to carry the coffin into the Church it would be going in. So, he was a Jack of all trades.
He was also one of the men that knew where every grave was in the old cemetery below, if anybody had a grave to look for, Paddy had to go down and point out where the grave was.
Tony, where does the fishing come in in your family?
In my family? It’s just that I suppose because I was born in Newtown myself and say we used to keep a couple of cows and I’d deliver milk as a child; I used to sell milk around Newtown and I used to visit all the houses and listening to the old minds, like. Bill Ives was the oldest man, all his family fished of course. Bill Ives, Mickey Noonan, Mickey Hogan, Willie Robinson – the first man I ever went fishing with, Bill Courtney and Tom Lewis of course, so fishing was the topic of conversation nearly, it was part of their life like. When I was a child the Shannon Scheme wasn’t long over you know, and you see their way of life had changed so much you see from the baiting fishing and everything, they were mostly course fishermen, they hardly ever fished for trout, very, very seldom.
T’was only the gentry that really fished for trout in those days. Up to the 40’s, actually, I often heard of a man from Birdhill, this will give you an idea of the change in times, of course there was no engines then, the late 30’s and the early ‘40’s, the engines started appearing on boats and more people went fishing. Before that it was nearly all fly fishing. There was this kind of a snobbery attached to it aswell, you were above your ‘station’ if you were a working man and you went fly fishing or fishing for trout at all really. In the early 40’s I heard of a couple of local chaps that were on the way up the lake, one of them now was working in drapery and this old guy above, the changing times in Ireland if you like, he had his Gillie there with him of course, and he looked like that and he didn’t like to see the likes of those people coming on the lake fishing and he said “Here comes the Cart Horses”, you know he was the Thoroughbred you know…that existed you know.
How often would you fish?
I’d fish when I was young. Well I’d fish every Sunday I suppose and for a long time I only fished from the bank. I’d go out with the brother out to Ballyvalley out to Parkers, out to the boathouse in Parkers and fish off the boat.
Of course, not many people had boats in those days either you see, when I was on holidays from school if anyone would take us out we’d go. Willie Robinson would go out, sometimes he’d just go out for the pleasure of pulling around as far as Cookes, Cooke’s Hotel as we called it, where the Arab is living now was a far down as we’d go
and maybe a little bit below it and up as far as Derrycastle on the other side. If you were just going out for coarse fishing, that’s as far as you’d go.
Micky Hogan was another man now in Newtown that I went with, he had three daughters and he used to fish a lot himself, and I used be there as a child you know , going out to the house and he used to bring me fishing quite a lot so I imagine that he was the man that gave me the ‘bug’ for it the first time.
He’s the one to blame? He’s the one, yeah.
Do you remember your first fishing rod?
My own first fishing rod I would alright, but I remember that generation always had the good timber rods, ‘Greenheart’, they wouldn’t fish with anything else as a rule, t’was all that type, the reels were brass, very nice.
But as I a child we used to have a few cows below and we used to have the grass of where that Canal is now, t’was called the Marl Cave when I was young out where John LeFroy has the place now, that was always referred to as the Marl Cave when I was young because they brought in marl there, t’was a kind of fertilizer.
The fishing boats were along there with the baits and the rods on them, left there the round of the year you know and I’d look around and just sit in to the boat, I wouldn’t touch the baits now or anything like that, pike baits I suppose they’d have, they would have an odd trout bait I suppose. If anyone saw me I’d be leathered for even doing that you know but just to think that you could do that, leave the roads and the baits and everything there.
Now you have to lock the oars to the boat…..
And then I had another problem…..when the season was up and the cattle would be down there they’d an awful habit of scratching and rubbing their heads along them, they’d have the boats up on horse-type thing. Some people would have very poor trust and it might be there for generations. There was one boat there and t’was I suppose a hundred and ten years old at least. A boat was treated like one of the family, t’was the father’s boat before them and it was handed down to the son. T’is unbelievable, the quality of the timber but they were very good to look after boats, they made up their own paint, a mixture of white lead and oil. T’was the best quality, the oil would soak into the timber you know, you can’t get it now, the lead was taken out you see. And even when I was young, for years we used to use white lead.
Tony, can you remember when the first Fishing Club started here?
Well the first one that I had anything to do with was in 1957.
And what was that called?
Killaloe/Ballina, the one that’s there, the Anglers Association. T’was to bridge the gap, they tried to get away from the split. There was always a kind of a thing between Ballina and Killaloe and it even existed between Killaloe and Newtown believe it or not, in a small little place, unbelievable you know what happened abroad there. And you had people like Jack Lynch outside you see and Tom Bennett, Tom Bennett was one of the best men I think, he was a Chemist here in the town, he was a great man to organize and a great man to look ahead and to plan.
I remember I was involved with him in the Fishing Club and the Swimming Club and I remember going out with him when I was in the Swimming Club years and years ago out to where the Swimming Pool is now and he saying to me this is an ideal location for a Swimming Pool, that time you had the idea of letting the water in at the upper end with the natural flow of water that you could, for a little outlay you know you could have a Swimming Pool there.
No need for pumps or anything!
But when we came back to the club in Killaloe, “oh that was Ballina territory, you know”, you had this thing and t’was very hard to overcome, you know.
Did you have Ballina members?
We hadn’t any Ballina members in the Swimming Club that time, no.
But in the Fishing Club you had Ballina members?
Oh, Ballina and Killaloe members, there was as many from Ballina as there was from Killaloe.
And how many members would there have been altogether?
In the Fishing club? That time sure, it went up to about 150 I’d say, around that I’d imagine!
Was virtually everyone who was any way involved in the fishing then a member?There was families joined and you got a lot of members really.
What was the membership fee in those days, would you have any idea?
The membership fee was 7 and 6 pence, or something like that, I think.
And you’d have competitions like you’d have today?
Yes. Well the first competition, you see I wasn’t one of the founder members even though I was involved indirectly with them, I was very friendly with George Waterstone, he was one of the founder members and George asked me to know, I was only very young at the time, would I go out to Cookes, that was the first competition that was ever held, out in Forthenry there and of course they weren’t used to having competitions so that particular day, you paid so much to go out fishing and you got a prize for the heaviest fish and the greatest weight, the usual thing, I don’t know how many prizes there were that particular day, but my job that day was to stand on the bank with binoculars, he gave these binoculars, to see that there was no roguery going on, that one boat wouldn’t pass some of the fish to the other, if there was two friends out together you know, they could pass the fish, this is what they were afraid of happening. So, they ironed out all those things as time went by. That was my involvement in the first fishing competition, that was the 1st of October 1957, yeah, I was on the bank looking on, as a spectator.
Were there any problems in the club then?
Ah no, there wasn’t ever any problems, we never had any problems in the club as such, no! The only problem that the club had in my time I’d imagine was with that thing we were talking about with the Marl Cave, looking for a Right of Way down there, it was always public. T’was belonging to my Grandfather J.H. Ryan and for generations people went down there, you see, and there was this person came along and bought it and said he bought it as private property, so of course, we objected to it as the Fishing Club, and he offered us……there was only say about six or seven boats there at the time, and he offered us a quay each and obviously some of them people that he offered the quay were elderly people and when they’d die they couldn’t give the quay to anyone else and we said we wanted a right of way down to launch boats and things like that.
Eventually there was a public hearing up in the Courthouse and t’was decided there by this arbitrator that came down from Dublin that t’was an established public right of way and that every person in Killaloe or in the area had a right to go down there, not only the fishermen, you know, he made that very clear. That all fell through within a few years again. It’s there in the Clare Champion for anyone to read. His ruling, some people said he hadn’t the power. He came out from the Courthouse and inspected the place and came to that decision and everyone seemed very happy with it.
Now it’s supposed to be private property again, you know, something happened with it! And that was an ongoing thing. For hassle, that was the only thing, we had to go to the owner of this property that lived in Limerick so it was an ongoing thing and there was bitterness over it really I suppose, you know. Other than that, there was never any trouble.
Your first Lake boat……
My first Lake Boat, I bought it from John Tiernan and that was only in 1958, John Tiernan in Mountshannon and I gave him £42.50 for it, yeah, an 18foot boat. It’s still there but I don’t own it.
The second boat I built myself, in a wood-work class in 1971, with Jimmy Foley, there was four boats built at the time, and it cost me £45.00 to build it and I kept it for 17 years and I sold it after 17 years for £500.
That was a profit!
It was, yea. So, after having the pleasure out of it, you know. It’s a fibreglass boat I have now, I don’t like them as much as I do the timber ones but you’ve less trouble with them, no maintenance. If you’ve a nice timber boat like the other one, even though I made it myself I was always very proud of it, t’was a lovely boat, a lovely boat to handle on the lake. I didn’t build it exactly as the other boats were built because I had this thing in my head the way I wanted it built so I asked Jimmy Foley to change the design really, for balance and things like that you know.
Obviously they’re nice to have if you have a boathouse and a suitable place to keep them they’re easy keep but if you haven’t, they’re a lot of trouble. You see the quality of the timber isn’t as good, or wasn’t as good then when I bought it, t’was White Deal, and of course Larch, but it’s hard to get a good quality Larch then as well. But obviously the White Deal, after twenty years everything starts to go in it you see. And one year you’ve to put in ribs and the next year you’ve planks and leaves and it’s an ongoing thing so that’s why I decided to go fibreglass.
And did you ever do Gillie, any of ye?
I did it a few times only just for the Lakeside Hotel would ask, they’d send over for me if they were stuck, they had their own boat, Denise Costello, she’d send over for me and she’d supply the boat actually and the engine. I took out several different people on the Lake but I never charged them, I enjoyed the trip on the Lake so much that I never charged anybody in my life. I often went out with people that it didn’t suit me to go but simply that enjoyed it so much I didn’t ever charge.
You were telling me there earlier about the way people shot Pike? Can you tell me about that?
Well that’s all I remember – I suppose it was for the want of something to do. Some of those people made their living on shooting alone, say shooting and fishing, they didn’t do any other work. So I suppose, they shot the pike when they came in to spawn, they’d come in there to the shallow waters you see and very often if the sun was shining even in October or any time of year, they’d shelter under a tree and they’d stay very close together. There’s nothing more I can say about that. Well Peter Hinchy now and the Hinchy family would be the ones I remember. Pat Collins was another man.
They’d sell them, would they?
I never really asked them or found out what they actually did with them, they’d pickle them I suppose. And maybe I don’t know would they use them for the dog food or whatever. Pat Collins now lived where Paddy Reddan’s pub is now, they had a pub there for years, he was a man that was always into dogs and guns and going shooting.
And I suppose in the Summertime they supplied the Hotels didn’t they, the local fishermen. They used to sell the fish when all the Hotels were here in Killaloe?
I suppose, wait till I see now, there wasn’t that many fishing, they didn’t fish for Trout that much, those people didn’t really fish for Troutnow and I doubt if they ever sold them. Most of those were Gillies you know originally and the Lakeside even at that time, I remember Tommy Lewis telling me, you often heard of Anew McMaster, he was a Shakesperean actor, Killaloe was about the smallest place he ever came to, he wasn’t a very generous man according to Tommy anyway but I always remembers Tommy taking him up, he was doing Gillie for him from the Lakeside, and of course he was being paid by the Lakeside, a small wage every week, but as a rule when you’d take out somebody like him they’d give him a tip you see, so I said to Tommy one day, “I bet you got a good tip from Mr. McMaster”! “Yup, yup” said Tommy “three brass washers” says Tommy. There were the old brass thrupenny bits, that was nine pence. “After me hard day” he says. And t’was the wildest day that ever came out of the heavens.
Rowing by hand? Rowing by hand, yeah.
Tony, you were telling me there about school and the way you were always involved with horses, how you loved horses? And how you got out of school more or less to look after horses?
I was very much involved with the horses and I was over in McKeogh’s Yard one day and Paddy McKeogh asked me would I be interested in taking the job of riding out his race horses, t’was like a dream come true to me, they had some very good horses, you know, before that and up to that time, they had one that was second in the Galway Plate, he is buried up there at the back of the Bakery, they have a stone over him actually and I said to him that I’d think about it, that I’d have to ask my parents, so I went home and I asked them. I told him that I was going to school and he said “Oh forget about it” he said but I said I’m thinking of leaving anyway, or something like that to him trying to soften the blow and he said “Oh no, once you’re going to school, I won’t have anything to do with you” he says “I wouldn’t dream of taking you for a job like that”. When I went home and when I told them what he wanted me to do sure they said for little money you have to go to school, finish your education first. I had ideas of being an electrician at the time.
So, I jibbed anyway and I went on for several months, about seven I think anyway and they eventually gave in to me and I left school. So, I went back to him and asked him for the job and he said he had his mind made up to sell the horses ‘cause he couldn’t get anybody suitable to look after them. But I asked him for another job and he gave me the job in the confectionery and he said to me “You can have a go at it anyway, you probably won’t like it” he said “and I’ll see in a couple of weeks’ time and I might get something more suitable for you”. I was there eleven years and he never asked me to know whether I liked it or I didn’t like it so I looked for a transfer into the Bakery for more money and I got it. But I was always handy for them from that point of view then that I could do bakery work or confectionery work, that time we used to do an awful lot of confectionery. We were baking for his brother in Mullingar and we literally had something like I suppose a couple of hundred of iced cakes a day alone, along with maybe three or four hundred dozen of buns, there were thousands of cakes going out of there. There was seven of us employed in the confectionery that time and there was about fifteen in the Bakery, about twenty-one between the two places, that’ll give you an idea of the stuff that was going out. Then we used to bake this sausage bread, there was a Sausage Factory in Nenagh and you’d have to put different colours into it, what they call a long ham. You’d put different dyes in, t’was all for making sausage anyway, t’was a big factory. T’was closed down afterwards anyway.
The bread would be put through the sausage?
Yes. And then before Christmas when we’d be making Barmbracks and things, they used to hire McGrath’s lorry, there was such a demand for stuff. The business they did in those days!
When you first started what hours would you be working?
At first, I’d start at 6 o’clock in the morning and I’d usually finish that time at around 2 o’clock. The Confectionary was a little bit easier, the hours were shorter than the Bakery, the Bakery were the long hours. But in the Bakery you’d have…Monday was always a very, very long day, you’d start at 6 o’clock in the morning and you wouldn’t finish maybe till 11 o’clock at night but then Tuesday you might be finished after four or five hours, you see, and Wednesday, then Friday and Saturday were two very long days again.
At Christmas, we’d start in the Confectionery about two months before Christmas and Sunday and Monday you started at 12 o’clock every night and you wouldn’t be finished until about 12 o’clock the next day and that was it, there was no break, Sunday or Monday.
Did you get overtime?
You got very little, you got about a weeks’ wages, you didn’t get overtime by the hour you know we’ll say. Gerry Brookes was the head man there at the time, he got paid so much for every hundred weight of sugar that was used. We only got paid say, we might get a few pounds at the end, at Christmas.
And in the very beginning, what would your wages have been?
I think when I off the wages were getting good, according to the older generation of course. I was getting the £1.50 or 30 shillings in those days, that was considered very good, ‘cause there was people working for five shillings that time.
So, you were quite privileged! And you were there for 41 years. So you much have liked it.
Well I’ll tell you I was always a kind of a home-bird, I loved Killaloe, you know and my mother used to always be telling me about Killaloe, and about when I was young and I was always very frustrated over this; about the great times in Killaloe, the great regattas and the great atmosphere, the trains coming in and everybody had this kind of an attitude when I was say a teenager about nothing can ever be done in Killaloe, there’s no one to do it and I used to be very annoyed over that and I remember sitting down writing a few lines of a poem one evening you know and it went something like this:
Killaloe, an old historic town, in County Clare,
Was once so prosperous, bright and gay,
With the lovely Shannon, flowing by her feet,
She was once a town to greet,
All kinds of folk would ever take the road to Killaloe,
But now she’s dark in silence, like a wreck upon the shore,
And her natives they have banished by the score,
Though her beauty still remains,
The times and folk have changed,
Except the few old stagers that remain,
And they speak of days gone by,
Sure, they’d nearly make you cry,
As they speak of her with pride,
That’s the Killaloe they say has lived and died.
This is the way I felt about it you know at the time.
But I got involved then in the Local Development Association, I suppose. I was always keen to do something like that or to get something done. McCutcheon was the solicitor here at the time and people didn’t like him, but I firmly believed that if I could get four or five people like him, because you have to have somebody with substance, like, I always felt. I started off in a very small way I suppose, and we put down the seats on the Aillebhaun, which are gone out of it now of course after the slip and the seats down there by the water. I went around collecting off the shops collecting and got ten pence and things like that to make those seats, you know, and I ran a 45 in Ballina, in the Hall in Ballina, just to get money to make the seats.
So then, from where Irish Molly’s is down as far as the old Railway House is, that was a derelict site, you know, full of briars and it was a dump actually and we went over and we started cleaning that area and then the Tipperary County Council saw that somebody was interested in it and they developed it, that’s one thing I’m kind of proud of, we’ll say, that if you get local involvement into a thing, it goes on from there, you know.
We cleaned the Aillebhaun, the first year we got a prize from Bord Fáilte of £50 for our effort, and t’was amazing the amount of young fellows that you’d get out, if you had enough to organize it, they came out with their shovels and I’ll always remember Mrs Switzer and her husband, she was an old, bent woman even at that time coming with her shovel over her shoulder, you know it made you feel good to see somebody with that kind of spirit coming along to clean the Aillbhaun and places like that. But ‘tis very hard to keep it going then at the same time, people were saying we were……McCutcheon was the……we were ‘yes men’ for a dictator and things like that and you have to listen to all, he said to me of course if only a half dozen of us can stick together now he said, you’re going to get more kicks than haypence out of this thing, he says and you have to be prepared to take it, you know, but we went on for a few years and did little bits here and there around the town.
So, you’d approve of the development that’s going on now?
Yeah, no doubt about. And, because the place was literally asleep, for a long, long time and very hard to get anything going, they always blamed……the old people saying…..they had this attitude that you couldn’t do it you know, people tried I suppose and some people did it over the years, there was always somebody doing bits here and there. There is so much going for them I thought, it’s a very picturesque place and with a small little bit of effort it could be a very nice place.
Something I meant to ask you when we were talking about pollution – what’s you view on that?
Well of course, obviously it’s getting worse and I asked Noel Roycroft you know and it’s not up to the danger level, you know they keep monitoring it every now and then but obviously it’s getting worse. Sure there is no ….. we’ll say, Bord na Móna …. the peat moss that’s coming down there and the factories and the sewerage we’ll say, sure Athlone and places like that, they have no sewerage system, of course all those things, there is no one thing, it’s a combination of factors that causes it. Like Mountshannon now have put in a new sewerage system and every little thing like that will help. You had a problem with the Chipboard Factory up there, for instance, that they conveniently let off very highly toxic stuff every year, and blamed some new person for it and this was an annual thing and got away with it, they shouldn’t have got away with that.
They’ve been stopped now?
Yes. The farmers as well, they’re putting out fertilizer and unless they do something to prevent that, I know the farmer has to make his living but they are putting it out there and it is literally being washed down into the streams and while you have that happening……. Of course, even the firms are doing something about the washing up liquid and all those things, they are taking out some of the chemicals out of them and of course all that will help.
Do you think it is a problem?
Oh there is no doubt about it yeah, yeah sure you just go up the Lake, when I was young going up the Lake and we used to spend hours and hours going along and they were just letting the boat glide along looking at the rocks and the different shaped rocks down below, different types of stones and rocks below, you can’t do that now with Algae. And if go up there to Brian Boru’s Fort, at times the stench that’s there is unbelievable and out at the swimming area at the Two-Mile-Gate, sure that’s as bad.
Yes we know about that, people getting rashes………….But last year, I don’t think it was as bad as it was a couple of years ago!
But that was always there, there was a little germ in the water, and anywhere you have a point coming out on the lake, it holds the water. I remember going out there swimming, oh tis 30 years ago, I suppose and Cotter now, the head man above in Newport and his brother in law Pat Stakelum, do you know Pat Stakelum the hurler and the three of us were there swimming one day and Cotter had this young fellow that came from France on holidays and he got a fierce dose out of it, he all broke out in these blotches. Well it used to happen to me so I was able to tell him what it was you know, we used to get TCP and put it on it and it would go, it affects some people’s skin, it’s a little germ that is in the water but it wasn’t really polluted at that stage, it was more a natural thing.
So, when you were young, because your brother Jack used to go swimming out there, so in those days, when you would have all gone as youngsters…………….
Well now, Jack would be 10 years older than Lisa, 12 years I suppose and I was the youngest, there were seven in the family and he was the eldest so that’s why there is such a gap in our ages, but at that place wasn’t even developed that time. But Byrnes Shore was the place for swimming, all the people, during the War years, used to come out from Limerick on the side-cars and go down there.
Jack told me that Two-Mile-Gate was too far, they didn’t bother to go!
In those days, but you see you wouldn’t be allowed in there, Vaughan’s owned that place. Paddy Byrnes, Lord of Mercy on Paddy Byrnes, he’d be a cousin of Jack Byrnes down the street now, well I remember as a child, I spent a lot of time with him and his two sisters out there in that old house there and I used to go for the cows for them in the evenings, on a Sunday evening and I’d be bringing the cows back along the shore and most of that shore is gone now, it’s washed away out of it now and people would be lying along the shore and they’d be giving out hell to me for disturbing them……..with the cows……and he owning the land, yes, and they’d come up to him for milk then and come up to him for sugar and they were very good, decent people, the Brynes’s were.
Tony, where was Byrnes’s out there?
Do you where the old house is, just before you go down to Gleeson’s on the shore there? That little cottage, that was the farmhouse and they owned the land from there over as far as where Mc Cutcheon lived, all that shore.
Jack used to swim along where Ryan’s is, that’s where Jack told me …
Oh yeah, that was Gillies Quay you see, that’s directly underneath Jim Varley’s house now is Gillie’s Quay, there was a man by the name of Gillie living straight across from Varley’s house now, Gillie was his name and that’s how it got the name, years ago, there’s just a few stones left there now where the house was. When I was young that’s where the scouts used to frequent, down there, there’s a stream going down there by Jim Varley house, the scouts used to go out there, just for a day’s outing and I always remember the older scouts jumping across the stream there and playing, there was a nice little green patch there, they used to have games there and jumping, they used to put up jumps there with sticks and things like that, you know.
Killaloe-Ballina 