EUCHRE: it’s a card game that has helped build many a school playshed, school of arts hall and funded improvements to schools, helped fix church roofs and met all manner of community needs.
It’s the game that brought teenage, Nev Bork, into the schoolroom at Tallegalla for the first time.
Nev grew up on a property at the base of the Tallegalla Hills.
The distance from his home to Minden State School was about the same as the distance to Tallegalla State School.
His parents chose Minden for their sons, Nev and his older brother, Kevin.
“The walk to Minden was on flat ground and the walk to Tallegalla was all uphill,” says Nev as his recounts those days from the Dinmore home he has shared with his wife Betty since they married.
“That’ll be 60 years, next year.”
But back to the teenage, Nev and the game he and Betty still play on occasion although cribbage is their game of choice.
Nev recalls how euchre tournaments were a “big thing back then”.
“The first time I went to a game at Tallegalla would have been in the mid to late 1950s,” he says as he explains that the tournaments were played on two long tables set up in the classroom with a king table at the front.
“The king table is for the winners,” he says in response to my question.
Back then euchre wasn’t a new game – it has reportedly been played in Australia since the early 1840s.
It may have been an old game when Nev walked into that schoolroom for the first time, but it hadn’t lost its lustre.
And the competition was serious.
No goodies were provided, no cuppas or supper, the 30 or more people who turned up to play paid their two shillings to enter and then it was down to business.
“There might have been a bit of talk while the cards were being shuffled, but once the cards were dealt, you didn’t talk, you had to concentrate on the game.”
The winners would take home a cash prize and the remaining shillings would go into the fund kept for school improvements or events for the students.
“I remember Mr Alec Munro was the head teacher. He ran the tournaments and I think he was still teaching there when the school closed,” Nev says.
And there’s a chance the Bork name would still be a familiar one in the district today if it weren’t for two natural disasters, only five days apart.
“It all happened during a week in November 1959,” says Nev.
“On the Monday, there was the biggest hail storm anyone from around the district could recall.
“On our farm, trees were stripped, the cobs were knocked off the corn and the dairy cattle all had bleeding noses.”
Before the storm, the corn stalks stood over two metres high. Jagged hail and storm winds reduced the crop to stubble.
“Then on the Friday that same week, we had the biggest flood my father could recall.”
Plain Creek ran through their 25 hectare (61 acre) block at the corner of Tallegalla Road and Humphreys Road.
“Back then Humphreys Road was a track without a name and the Tallegalla Road was called the Rosewood Minden Road,” Nev says.
On that Friday in November 1959, the normal trickle in Plain Creek turned into a raging torrent and tore away at the remains of the crops and scoured a significant amount of topsoil.
The second disaster was enough to convince Nev’s dad that his son Kevin was right to question the future of the farm.
Early the next year, the farm was sold and the family moved to Eastern Heights.
“My father and Kevin were working in the mines – United Number 7 at Tallegalla – they kept on working there after we moved.
“Father had been employed there for 14 years when the pit shut in 1965.”
Meanwhile, Nev secured a job in the pipe room at Dinmore Pottery and Betty started work in the hand-glazing room the following year.
“A lot of country people got jobs at Dinmore Pottery,” Betty explains, “country people were employed because they were hard workers.”
The couple saved their money to buy their home and were married in 1966.
And they would often go for drives up into the Minden, Tallegalla, Rosewood areas.
“It’s so lovely there,” explains Betty, “the air is so clear and the view is so beautiful, especially from Tallegalla school.”
Their faces are particularly familiar to anyone who has attended the Black Snake Creek Festival at Marburg.
For about 17 years, a group made up of the Ron and Errol Kerle, Clyde (Spud) Marschke and Nev Bork going by the name of the Lockyer Accordion Band were hired to perform at the Festival.
Ron and Spud passed away more recently and Errol no longer plays, but Nev was there again last year and walked the grounds playing the accordion like a wandering minstrel.
“I was invited to go over to the Marburg pub afterwards and I played out on the verandah that evening.”
Nev and Betty smile as they remember that evening.
