General News
20 November, 2025
Who’s a naughty boy?
DAVID Meadows remembers the day his father and legendary newspaper owner Gary caught the four-year-old trying to roll a cigarette in the backyard at home.
Gary had his camera in hand and took photographs of young David.
More than 50 years after that day, David was with his brother Rod and sister Maree cleaning out the final cupboard following Gary’s passing last year.
There was a collage of David sitting in the backyard and dozens of other black and white photographs capturing people and events in Boort in the 1970s when Gary published the town’s newspaper.
“It was the last cupboard in the garage to be cleaned out and then we found all these photographs and spent a good half hour looking at them,” David said.
Over the past month, the Meadows have been able to put names to many of the people snapped by Gary.
Photographs were displayed during the Loddon Valley Arts Trail weekend and again at the Boort Show.
David said some photographs had been donated to the Boort Historical Society which had also assisted with identifying people.
“There’s a photo of Charlie Robinson who used Fergie tractor to train horses,” he said.
“Some of the other photographs will be given to families of people in them.”
David said many of the photographs had been part of his father’s contribitions to exhibitions by the former Boort Camera Club. “Photography was a real passion for him,” David said.
“He would never go anywhere without his camera.
“In every house we lived in, there had to be a darkroom to develop the film. I could have had my own bedroom but no, that was for the darkroom.”
“When dad was taking photographs, there was one shot and you didn’t know whether it had worked until you developed the film. Very different to today with a digital camera.”
Garrick Rodney Meadows, known as The Country Editor after a 1979 short documentary on his newspaper, died aged 85, at Kialla where he retired after selling the Boort and Quambatook Standard.
During the family’s clean-up of Gary’s collection, they also found old printing equipment that has been shared by David and Rod who worked in the business.