Albert Reeves

Albert “Dusty” Reeves was born in 1868 in Colesbourne, Gloucestershire, the son of Richard and Mary Reeves. He worked as a baker in England before coming to New South Wales in the 1890s. He was employed on a property near Byrock, but later returned to England where, in 1903, he married Catherine Mary Blake at Stroud. The couple had five children.

The family emigrated permanently to New South Wales in 1910. Reeves and his wife worked for several years on rural properties, including Morandah, northwest of Walgett, and Nullawah at Angledool, where Catherine was housekeeper and Albert was cook and groom. In July 1916 they moved to Lightning Ridge. Reeves took over Sarah Durrington’s bakery business in Morilla Street, east of the Imperial Hotel, on a site previously occupied by baker Dick Howe until his death in 1915.

The Reeves family ran the bakery for much of the 1920s. In January 1927 they sold to Bert Beckett and moved to Gunnedah, but within a year had returned and resumed their old business. Their daughter Phyllis remained in Gunnedah, while their son Stan stayed at the Ridge to mine opal. Reeves continued to identify himself as “baker,” while Catherine was a “storekeeper,” as shown on the 1929 Western Lands petition for a public park.

In January 1931 Reeves was admitted to Gunnedah Hospital for appendicitis, but died suddenly during surgery. He was 63 years old. Catherine and the younger children, Alan and Edgar, remained in Gunnedah after his death, while Stan helped to run the bakery until 1934, when he took on butchering.

• Albert Reeves @ Find a Grave.

Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, p. 158; Walgett Spectator, 3 July 1919, 4 February 1931; New South Wales Index to Deceased Estate and Probate Files, doc. no. 56460.