in libraries around the country. The journals of James
Cook and Joseph Banks were of particular interest. The
museum opened in the sum mer of 1952 with 150 people
signing the visitors book in the first month.
Meanwhile, Tom Jeffery’s family continued to grow,
and so did the buildings on the waterfront property. By
the 1960s, there was a fully functioning camping ground
and general store with petrol bowser operating next to
the cattle run and crops. Sue Stirrat, the youngest of Tom
and Beth’s eight children, remembers: “Our house was
where the amenities block for the caravan park is now,
and the four shacks that our family rented were up the
beach a bit, but even further along were the shacks that
people would put up for themselves and pay a small lease
on the land each year. In the early days, it was pretty
much all family and close friends in the shacks, and
we’d look forward to holidays when everyone would
come. Mum had quite a few peacocks, which weren’t
very popular, and our cattle and horses would give the
campers and the surfers a bit of grief if they didn’t put
their food away. Gradually, as more people came, we
had to get rid of a lot of the animals.”T
HE ISOLATION OF AGNES and 1770 made it a
tough life for a kid. “We were at the end of a
ver y long d ir t road. We were most ly schooled bycorrespondence for that reason,” Sue recalls. “We had
no town electricity, no phones and no two-way radio.
For a lot of years, the closest phone was at the Elliotts’
homestead at Captain Creek, 12 miles out of town. If
there was an emergency, that’s where you had to go.
But there weren’t many emergencies. If flooding cut
the road off, we’d always get by – maybe Dad would
have to kill a beast, but we’d always be okay.”
The isolation didn’t worry the holidaymakers, many of
whom lived on remote properties. By the end of the 1960s
people had lost count of the shacks that had cropped up
on the Jeffery property, but some recall at least 80. Ken
‘Kojak’ Chalmers, then a permanent Agnes resident with
a successful earthmoving business, built one in 1968. “In
those days Agnes was just three tracks running parallel
to the beach with fibro shacks dotted about,” he says.
“You’d come down for the weekend and leave the keys
in your car. The biggest dangers were Togo and Lionel,
old Tom Jeffery’s horses who’d walk right into your
house and eat everything off your table. We were all just
squatters. You’d go and see old Tom and show him where
you wanted to build, and he’d say okay if he knew you.
Tom had a little Mini Moke and he’d drive around the
shacks with his cattle dog and have a rum with his old
mates. When the surfies played up, he’d go down with
his stockwhip and sool the blue bitch onto them.”100 Australian Geographic
By the 1960s, there was a
fully functioning camping
ground and general store. Sue Stirrat, youngest child of the late Tom and Beth
Jeffery, reminisces with one of many family photo albums
over coffee at the Holiday Cafe on the beachfront at Agnes.Brothers Tom (at left) and Arthur Jeffery cleared a track
from Agnes Water Station to Round Hill Creek and set up
one of the first shacks in the area.