Interviewer: Sue Rosen

Length: 6980 words

Date: May 1992

John Crace had lived in the Cobbity area for 43 years when he was interviewed. He purchased land at the junction of Cobbity Creek and the Nepean in 1959. Overlooking the river, he was able to observe changes over 4 decades. He recalled

"… when we first came here, actually, older residents tried to persuade us not to buy the farm; because the river was so unreliable, and ... one of them said, that you could ride a horse up the bottom of the river in a drought; and the water was just not there. There was a lot of sand in the bottom of the river. I presume there were a few small waterholes, but we used to irrigate out of it, when we had to. At times, we were, in those early years, we were scratching for water."