"Heard it through the grapevine"

By Deidre Carroll
Updated February 22 2018 - 12:04pm, first published February 20 2018 - 1:07pm
 Peter Abbott and Katie Blair celebrating Peter's 24th birthday.
Peter Abbott and Katie Blair celebrating Peter's 24th birthday.

UK VISITORS: Last week I met John and Tom Crosby. Tom promised me a story on their visit and this is it. “For the last year or so there's been a calendar hanging in the small toilet under the stairs of my parent’s house, in Hull, UK. It sticks out from all the rugby league memorabilia by virtue of the fact that it's of the Australian bush. There's always been subtle signs of Grenfell dotted about the house as I grew up. My grandmother has some Henry Lawson tea towels, there are photographs of dead cracked trees and dry-looking farmland on the walls, and also there's all my dad's old photographs. Dad first came here in 1973 when he was a 'Ten Pound Pom', at the frighteningly young age of 17. A lot of his pictures of that time are of young lads with long 70s hair, sitting or motorbikes by barbed wire fences - looking sunburned. He got to Grenfell after meeting David Lee at a boarding house in Lewisham, Sydney, and arrived on Christmas Day in 1973 courtesy of Dave's mate Wayne Heathcote; who we note is now in the Grenfell Bowling club Sporting hall of Fame.

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