Looking back on the life of former Bathurst postman Barry Baillie

Born in Bathurst in 1937, Mr Baillie was the middle of five children; Gladys, Robert, Ted and Maurice.

The family lived along Hereford Street on the Kelso Flats - an area that, back in the day, housed many families - with the children on the block all growing up and playing together.

Mr Baillie's son Jason said his father grew up in hard times but also fun times, surrounded by many families.

"I imagine it would have been a good time to live in Kelso because all the kids used to roam free, in and out of everyone's houses, they all knew each other," he said.

Mr Baillie's family didn't have a lot of money, so he used to go rabbiting and on occasion would trade a clean one for some other meat at the local butcher.

Like most young boys do, Mr Baillie spent a lot of time running around with his brothers, shooting each other with slingshots on the pipe across the bridge and riding everywhere on their pushbikes.

His bike became even more of a necessity when Mr Baillie got a job at the local post office as a postie - delivering the mail on his pushbike.

Not long after becoming a 'working man', a young Mr Baillie began courting a nice girl who lived in Church Lane, Kelso - Shirley Green.

The young couple were married in 1960 and had two children; Jason and Sharyn.

The family moved to a little farm on a creek out at Peel, where Mr Baillie built a house and turned it into a home.

His son said there was nothing his dad couldn't fix - or build - and he has great memories of growing up on the small family farm.

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"Dad could always build anything and there was nothing he couldn't fix," he said.

"We had a great childhood, it was really fun growing up at Peel.

"He could grow anything too. We had our own meat and I remember hanging a beast in a tree up the back."

It is also in a tree up the back of the Peel property that one will find a humble little tree house, that Mr Baillie built around 50 years ago for his children, which still stands today.

Mr Baillie continued to work for the post office throughout his life, moving to Taree in the early 1980s after getting a promotion.

He became very involved in the community, playing hockey and soccer - both he also played in Bathurst - and getting into tennis.

Later in life, Mr Baillie moved to Old Bar, where he spent his time as the president of the local tennis club, playing bowls and helping raise his four beautiful grandchildren.

And he never lost his knack for building.

When the Old Bar tennis club burnt down, he spent three months helping with the rebuild.

And he also helped his son set up a farm - building fences and the "Taj Mahal" of chicken coops.

Mr Baillie was a generous, helpful man right up until the day he died, on May 19, 2023.

He was at home, surrounded by his family, six days short of his 86th birthday.

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