The Australian Women's Register

Vera Leckie was the daughter of Thomas Halfpenny, who migrated to Australia in the 1850s at the age of 15 and worked for his uncle at Turkey Creek Station near White Cliffs in New South Wales. He regularly drove the punt over the Darling River to Wilcannia. Camped on the riverbank was George Chapman, who worked for the brewery in Wilcannia. In May 1881 Thomas married Chapman’s daughter.

The Halfpennys ran several pubs in succession in the remote west and lived on outback stations while they raised a family of seven boys and two girls. In later years Vera recorded her childhood memories and described the strings of camels led by Afghans bringing supplies to the stations, and returning to Broken Hill with bales of wool. Vera was educated at Tibooburra before going to boarding school in Adelaide. When her brothers went to war, she and her sister worked on the family station and lived on goats’ meat, milk and butter. She met her future husband, Jack, in 1922 and married him on 16 March 1926. She and Jack raised their own family of three children in the Moree district before moving to Nowra on the south coast.

Vera’s brief memoir is held by the Outback Archives in Broken Hill, New South Wales.