The History of Lynch’s: A Morning Tea with Aina Lynch
Childhood Memories
When I was a boy, my grandfather (who I genuinely believed to be some kind of Hercules in bifocals) brought me to this funny little, blue, yurt-like building to buy yellowtail and green prawns for bait.
It was a special experience to me but not especially unique. I was hardly the first boy to be taken by his father or grandfather to Lynch’s to buy bait, have a yarn or grab a pound of prawns for Sunday dinner.
Lynch’s was an institution in Newcastle and a focal point for the community. Before Honeysuckle and the foreshore promenade, Lynch's was the only reason that anybody ever went over to the harbour-side of the train line.
Fast forward a few decades later and in November 2016, we held a launch for our crowdfunding campaign that aimed to save the historic building. At the crowd-fund launch I was approached by a couple who told me that they lived next door to Aina Lynch, one of the founders of the Newcastle institution.
I asked them if she might meet with me. A week later I got a phone call from Aina inviting me over for a cup of tea and a chat.
Meeting the Matriarch
When I arrived at Aina’s home — no more than 2km from the famous store — I found myself wondering if the couple Pat and Aina had always lived here when they were operating the shop.
This was answered fairly quickly when Aina told me that this had been Pat’s parent’s house. Aina pointed to a seat and told me that she could remember Pat’s father sitting in that spot listening to a radio broadcast. She said she remembered him like it was yesterday saying, “We’ll be at war by the end of the month”. He was right.
Aina said the house was very different back then. Certainly, it was always far more comfortable than the hovels behind Nobby’s beach where Pat’s parents, like so many other Novocastrians, had been forced to find shelter during the Great Depression.
How the Shop Came About
The first thing that Aina showed me was a print of an old newspaper article from 1949. The article regarded Hartley Spurr as one of the best-known characters in the entire coalfields district. At the time of writing, the article said that Hartley’s strange little hut at the Perkins street boat harbour had been a landmark on the harbour for many years. In 1949 Hartley himself was 83 years old.
Pat’s father was a fisherman, he hawked fish in the suburbs and sold at the fish market near the market street gates. He would regularly supply Hartley Spurr with fish and apparently it was Hartley who first suggested to Pat’s mother that they set up at boat harbour.
Aina told me that one day Pat’s mother was in Hartley Spurr’s when Hartley said,
“How would you like a shop on boat harbour?”
Pat’s mother responded, “They’d never give us a place down here.”
“That’s not what I asked you,” Hartley replied. He then helped Pat’s parents to set up the shop.
That was during the depression and quite a while after the following picture was taken but you can see the shed which Hartley Spurr helped them to lease in this picture. It’s to the right of the shot, just behind the brick wall. Aina said the brick wall was referred to as “the convict wall”, and everybody said that it was built as a perimeter to the main convict compound on Newcastle harbour.
Pat told stories about this little shed. As a boy he would have to count prawns and beach worms into children’s shoe boxes. They would then fill them with sawdust and tie them with string for delivery to fisherman’s homes during the day. Aina remembered him speaking about how cold the wind could be coming through that first shed and recalled his mother cooking meals for the family from the floor on a little primus stove.
Aina's parents certainly weren't quite as local but we’ll leave the story there for this first instalment. Head to our other blogs to read the next exciting chapter of Lynch’s.