Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in Two Generations

About the Book

The first of these two books covers J. J. Leahy’s generation. You need to read the story of the First Generation before you go no to read this book. It is the story of his youngest son’s generation. Gerard is the only surviving member of J. J. Leahy’s nine children. His is a very different story as he was fortunate to spent most of his life on one property, working and bringing up his family in a small and isolated rural community. In the early days, few community members travelled far, but wars, improved transport, and communications gradually changed this sense of isolation and opened up the community. With the changes toward the centralising of the management of health services, bush fire management, and the many other services local communities managed in the past, it would now be difficult to be as involved in the community as the author was in this story. This Second Generation did not build up great wealth but possibility ended up better off in other ways. Gerard Leahy was born in 1930 and was educated at St. Ignatius College, Riverview in Sydney. He worked for a year in the International Harvester tractor factory at Geelong in Victoria. After a year’s jackerooing on his father’s property Oban in north western Queensland out from Mt. Isa, he spent all his working life on Burra Station near Tumbarumba in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales. He was involved in many sporting and community activities in the Tumbarumba District. After selling his property, he moved to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

About the Author

Gerard Leahy was born in 1930 and grew up in Sydney and Bathurst in a family of nine children descended from an Irish convict. After being educated at St. Ignatius College, Riverview, in Sydney, he worked on several of his father’s grazing properties in central and western New South Wales and near Mt. Isa in the far north of Queensland. He and his wife, Kathleen, moved to Tumbarumba in the NSW Snowy Mountains in 1952, where they ran a sheep and cattle grazing property until the early 1980s. Gerard and Kath moved to the Blue Mountains near Sydney in 1996.