Cooker collect: Joy Salter (left) picks up her $500 gas cooker as first prize in the 1978 Christmas Bonus competition. She is with Knights Department Store hardware section manager Norm Briggs.
1978
Gary Slade from Tongala and Kyabram’s Paul Castles both scored four As in their Higher School Certificate examination as 34 of the 46 students at Kyabram High School qualified for university entry.
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The high school’s pass rate of 73.91 per cent was eight per cent higher than the state average. The names among those that passed the HSC were John Bacon, Michael McAuliffe, Leanne Stone, Phillip Tucker, Garry Beamish, Lynette Hall and Jayne Shellie.
– Playing at the River-Vu Drive In at Echuca was High Plains Drifter, a western starring Clint Eastwood. A week later, on a much lighter note, the drive-in featured Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo.
– With all the recent talk of increase rates and the rising cost of living, it was a shock to see the price of a television in an 1978 advert.
A 53cm Pye colour television cost $699. If you shop around you can find a much larger HD television for about half that price. A 42-inch Kogan smart television will set you back about $330.
Just to balance out the benefits of living in Kyabram 45 years ago, a kilogram of Don Strasburg cost $2.49 back then. If you bought the same product last week it would have cost $9.95.
A 500g box of Kellogs corn flakes cost 59¢, the 2023 price being $5. If an Australia Day barbecue was your thing then the cost of barbecue lamb chops was $1.74 a kilogram.
If you want to put a kilo of lamb chops on the barbecue this week it will cost you anything from $15 to $30 a kilogram. Now that is inflation.
1986
Henry Jones Foods employed another 25 seasonal workers on an additional apricot processing line.
It meant the total workforce of the cannery was nearly 150, with more than half of the newcomers to the cannery aged 21 years or under.
– More than 86 per cent of Kyabram High School’s HSC students passed their exams, with Lloyd Churches the dux of the school with a score of 359 points.
The points score is determined by adding the four highest subject marks and 10 per cent of the fifth subject. Lloyd intends to study property evaluation at RMIT.
– Six weeks after suffering spinal injuries which left him in a wheelchair, decorated Kyabram sportsman Paul Normington was on the road to recovery.
He spent Christmas Day in hospital and the 19-year-old featured in a Herald article telling his story.
Koala kid: A 15-year-old Tracey West was about to embark on a 12-month Rotary exchange trip to Japan when she appeared in this 1986 edition of the Free Press.
– Kyabram teenager Tracey West was preparing to depart for a 12-month Rotary exchange trip to Japan.
The 15-year-old had just completed Year 10 at Kyabram High School and was preparing to be enrolled in an all girls Buddhist school. She was spending her time in Yuno City, half an hour from Tokyo.
Kyabram Rotary Club’s Japanese exchange student, Yukako Kinoshita, had been giving her language trips and on her return to Japan was living just three minutes away from Tracey.
1999
Testing times: A quiz for readers of the Kyabram Free Press was a major component of the Kyabram Back-To celebrations due to be staged between February 27 to March 8.
Kyabram’s Back-To celebration was launched with a Free Press competition involving a series of Kyabram-based quiz questions.
Kyabram Hisotrical Society was playing a lead role in developing the quiz questions, secretary Mavis Knight explaining that a knowledge of Kyabram history would be a distinct advantage.
– Kyabram had a sweltering start to 1999 when the first seven days of the year included three days of 40℃ temperature.
Even in 1999 there were significant global warming warnings coming from government meteorology officials, with a recommendation for people to use solar power.
– Wally Laidlaw chalked up 40 years of service at the Kyabram Cannery, the longest serving employee of the company.
The then 55-year-old recalled the panic in Kyabram when it was shut down in 1980, only to be saved by jam-making firm Smuckers.
He was recruited in the 1961-62 season by can shop manager John Campbell, where he worked until the cannery closed its doors.
