I read that Arthur James Gentle worked for a newspaper and I got excited thinking I might have found a writer in the family. I did some more digging, and discovered that he maintained the printing machines. Oh, well, I got a nice little biography of someone I might not otherwise have researched.
When he was born in Pekina in 1883, A J Gentle was the first child of his mother’s second marriage.
He soon had a younger sister and brother, before the family left South Australia, and arrived in Broken Hill on the very first passenger train to the new town, in February 1888.
Broken Hill was a mining town, and new town, but it was growing fast. When Arthur was ten he was able to get a job, selling the town’s newspapers before and after school. He left school at 14 or 15 and went full-time with the Barrier Miner.
As a young man, Arthur participated in bicycle racing. One of the men he competed against was G Bollen, who perhaps had a sister or a cousin, who was the young Maud May Bollen who Arthur married in 1907, when he was 24.
The newlyweds moved into a house called “Robina,” and began a family of their own.
Despite no longer living at home, from what I can guess from the sources, Arthur was someone who thought of others – his community and his family. He was involved in the Friendly Society, taking a role in chairing meetings in 1911-12. Within his family (he was now third oldest of 10), his siblings seemed to have turned to him: his sister Bessie was married in his house in 1910, and twelve months later the daughter of his step brother either died in his house or was ‘laid out’ there.
For a hobby, or perhaps for a bit of extra money, Arthur bred prize-winning chickens and sold the eggs so that others in town could start their own flock.
In 1920, after the return of his brothers from war, and the death of his father – at a point perhaps where there were no more underage siblings in town, Arthur, Maud and their children moved to Mildura. A letter to the editor from this time shows that he had some interest in irrigation schemes, and may have been going there to change his career.
However, after 15 months the family made their way to Sydney where Arthur went back into the newspaper business.
He returned to Broken Hill in 1933 for the town’s Jubilee celebrations, and then again in 1946 to visit his sister in law (the mother of baby who’d died in his house all those years before).
He lived until he was 76 and died in Sydney in 1960.
The First Ball I Took Your Mother To 