Gundagai’s famous Niagara clock makes shock return after 50 years

The Canberra Times

A neon clock once thought destroyed in the 1975 Niagara Café fire has resurfaced decades later in rural NSW, stunning locals and the family who first installed it.

Transcript

00:00Today, if we want to know the time, we simply glance at our smartphones.

00:05But in 1938, the public clock was an important landmark.

00:09Every town had one.

00:11Gundagai had several, including one mounted on the awning outside the town's iconic Niagara Café.

00:18After a fire badly damaged the café in 1975,

00:23Peter Kastryshen, whose family established and ran the café for many decades,

00:28remembers seeing the clock thrown into the back of a truck destined for the local tip.

00:36Half a century on and the iconic clock has risen from the dead

00:40and Peter can't contain his excitement.

00:43It was gone. 50 years. Gone.

00:46And it's back, so what can I say?

00:50You thought it had gone when you saw it go on the back of a truck

00:53towards the tip at the back of the Niagara way back in 1975

00:56and just recently, it's been rediscovered.

01:01Exactly right.

01:02And it just happens that my friend, Ron Moses, who was with me the day we saw it go,

01:08came across a photo of it in one of the pubs in Gundagai in June last year

01:14and sent it to me and I nearly fell off my chair saying,

01:19God, who's got it?

01:20And we found out it was not far from Gundagai at all.

01:24So all those years that had only been like 20 kilometres or so from Gundagai

01:28and you thought it was rotting in the bottom of the local tip.

01:31Exactly. Exactly.

01:33And does it keep good time?

01:35Perfect time.

01:36Three o'clock, yeah?

01:37Three o'clock.

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02:00Three o'clock.

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02:05Three o'clock.

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