WALKER Sarah  NEW

She was born in Marrickville, N.S.W. and in early childhood returned to England with her parents to live in Lancashire. On leaving school at an early age she, as most children from large families, went to work in the mill at the handsome wage of about 75 cents, working from dawn to dusk.
In her teens, she immigrated to New Zealand where an uncle was in the building trade. She did not remain there long before returning to New South Wales. From thence, she came to Western Australia just after the gold boom had receded and land was being taken up along the Great Southern.
It was in Narrogin that she met Augustine Walker, who was then working for the late Edgar Sydney Hall on the "Narrogin Observer." When the couple had been married about a year, Mr. Walker decided that there was an opening for a newspaper in Gnowangerup, a small township that had quickly sprung up with the completion of the Tambellup to Ongerup railway. Selling their house in Narrogin, they invested the money in a secondhand printing plant acquired from the "York Chronicle," then run by the Inkpen family.
It was in 1915 that the "Star" first came off the press, and the Walkers from that date commenced to make themselves both respected and valuable members of the community. A woman of boundless energy, Mrs. Walker was always found on projects to make the town and district a better place to live in, both socially and financially.
With a growing family of two sons and three daughters, the couple decided to go into land and acquired 640 acres about three miles out of town. With only 100 acres cleared, they both used to travel out on weekends and holidays to ringbark and burn up the bush.

ONE OF THE ORIGINAL MACHINES USED AT THE "GNOWANGERUP STAR"

By hard work and leasing the cleared land, they made enough capital to have the lot cleared, and then came the depression. Hard times were no novelty to Mrs. Walker, and rather than knuckle under, she convinced her husband and family to realize on some of their assets and build to live on the farm. If she worked hard before, that labor must have appeared a holiday compared to what she now undertook. There are still people alive today to prove she could work as hard as a man and still have a wholesome meal prepared for everyone when they came home at meal time.
Despite all this, she still made time to keep up her social commitments. She would think nothing of walking three or four miles to visit a neighbor who might be sick or lonely, and on a Saturday, she would often relax by driving into town in the sulky to clean the church or do some mending at the hospital. When her own family had grown up and left home, she took on another family of small children and, as a foster mother, raised them until they were old enough to earn their own living.
About 1946, Mr. and Mrs. Walker sold their farm at Gnowangerup and took on a larger property at Piesseville. Here, with their second son, they lived for a few years before going to live in Nedlands. The city did not hold them, however, and they returned again to the farm at Piesseville. It was here that her husband predeceased her, and she again returned to Nedlands to live.
A few years ago, she returned to England where she still had some living relatives and childhood friends. She must have been well over 70 years old, but finding life too easy there, she applied for and obtained a job cleaning banks. She told us it must have been the climate, as she had to give the job away because it made her knees ache.
Having been so full of life, she could not take kindly to the sickness that age placed upon her, and sadly she passed away at the home of her daughter, Mrs. W. O'Connor, of Marybrook,, on 26th June 1966. Two sons, three daughters, four foster children, and twelve grandchildren mourn their loss. She was 82 years old.  The late Mrs. Walker was the widow of Augustine Walker, original editor and owner of "The Gnowangerup Star," and with her passing, another link with the early township of Gnowangerup is broken.

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