Cr Mark Honey, a fifth generation dairy farmer, will be giving a talk at Kiama. 

The next Kiama and District Historical Society event will take place on Saturday, April 29 at 2.30pm in the Kiama Family History Centre. 

Cr Honey’s family's involvement in this district dates continuously from 1835.

Cr Honey said his talk would be “a walk down the street… a visual walk of the town’s history”. 

“It probably won’t be (as much) about the family history, it’ll be about me turning up into Kiama as a five-year-old schoolboy, coming off the farm, and then walking down the main street,” he said.

“Starting where the Leisure Centre was, the abandoned quarry there with all the old galvanised sheds and steel pipe works in there… and walking down where Blue Haven was and so on from there.”

Cr Honey’s talk will incorporate many reminiscences of his own as he reflects upon the changes that have occurred throughout the Kiama municipality during his lifetime. 

“I’ll also be talking about the farm, where we used to milk in a walk-through dairy where you had to get down on your knees and put the milking machines on,” he said. 

“Then you used to put the cans of milk on the truck and drive out to the factory.

“I can give the date of when Jamberoo started declining and it was in 1966, because that was when the first bulk pick-up of milk, when the tankers came around and picked up the milk, started.

“Which meant that the 62 dairy farmers at the time weren’t coming coming into Jamberoo twice a day, so there was never that traffic going through (again).

“(Prior to that) they used to stop and pick up their paper, groceries and fill up their trucks with petrol, and there used to be three petrol stations in Jamberoo.”

There is no charge for this event, which includes afternoon tea, and all are welcome.