The clock didn’t stop

The article below written in the 1970s by Bill King, a member of the King’s watchmakers and jewellery business refers to an incident in the 1930s. Bill’s father Harry King was a watchmaker who designed and made the Town Hall clock.

Narrabri was always proud of its town clock, right up to the day it was torn down amid the ruins of the once stately Town Hall.

But they were never as proud as in the first few years after it was built, and then officially opened with pomp and ceremony by assorted dignitaries from town and district.

And no one in town was as proud as Harry King, the local watchmaker who guided the council in the selection of the appropriate mechanism, who got the bell he wanted (and not the one officially approved in the limited budget) and who carried out the actual installation of the works in the tower.

Much of this had to be done while the tower itself was in the process of construction, otherwise there would have been no way of getting the heavier pieces up the narrow stairway and final iron rung ladder.

The setting of the bell itself was a momentous day, as the great mass of metal was winched up the outside and set into place by hand.

Many hands indeed were needed to hold the bell in place under the dome while the exact setting was made and the nuts screwed home.

All these hands were attached to a circle of bodies balanced precariously round the tower top with precious little between them and a long drop to the ground.

The bell was worth it, however, sweet-toned, but with a remarkable carrying power, it chimed the hours with clockwork regularity, and could be heard from anywhere in town.

Young lovers, resting under a patch of leafy shade on Little Mountain, were known to have caught the sound of its chimes; patient fishermen, sometimes a few miles downstream, were reminded of dinner as the sound of the hours passing came to their ears from ‘our clock’.

As a boy of perhaps 10 or 11, the construction of the clock is still a vivid memory.

I personally mixed all the putty that held the glass panes of the clock face in place, and I held numerous bits and pieces while the master mechanic made the many adjustments needed to set the pendulum swinging accurately and the hands to turning.

But no memory is more vivid than the night I was vigorously shaken out of a noisy dream in my verandah bed to a shout “Where’s your Dad? The clock’s gone mad”.

Walking slowly, as 10 year olds are want to do, I became aware of the steady ‘donng’, ‘donng’, of the town clock striking the hour, over and over again.

I didn’t have to wake him, however.

Although no light sleeper, Harry King came stumbling out, wakened by the noise.

“Don’t worry,” he told the nervous messenger.

“I’ll fix it. Wait till I get my pants on.”

“No time for that,” came the urgent reply.

“People are getting upset. Somebody’s already rung asking is the King dead?”

So Harry King, still in his pyjamas, rushed off to climb the tower.

By this time a sizeable crowd had gathered, and rumours were spreading fast.

“The Japs are coming,” somebody had announced, a rare piece of clairvoyance, it seems, for in those days we were still supposed to hate Germans, and Japs were only people who made toys that quickly went bung.

“The Prime Minister’s dead. Jack Lang’s dead. The King’s dead.”

Most everybody was convinced that the steady ‘donng, ‘donng’, ‘donng’, had been deliberately set off to warn the town of some disaster, and I must agree to my youthful ears, it did sound like the knell of impending doom as the

steady tolling went on, and on.

“What’s she up to now?” someone asked.

“174”, came the first reply.

“No 183,” a correction from the crowd.

“Who’d know?” said a purist.

“You’se were all asleep for at least the first 50.”

Meanwhile, Harry King had run back to get the tower key, which he forgot in the first foray, and then came running back and muscled a way quickly through the crowd and disappeared into the depths of the Town Hall.

Somebody caught a glimpse of a pair of pyjama pants half way up the tower.

“There’s a man up there” (I’m sure it was a feminine scream, but who knows now?).

“He’ll be killed. Turn the power off. Turn the power off.”

That first call grew into a shout.

“The engineer on duty in the nearby power station heard, and promptly pulled the switch to cut the electricity from the lines to the hall.

The tower, a moment earlier briefly floodlit, now became as dark as the tomb.

“Turn the bloody lights on!”

We all looked up, and there was Harry King, on top of the bell tower, looking down on us all and his voice carried clearly over the bell, some say all the way to Wee Waa.

“How can I fix it in the … dark?”

“Turn the bloody lights on.”

A hundred voices shouted loud and clear to the power station.

“Well make up your so and so minds,” came back the reply, and shortly after, the tower was once again bathed in light, to be followed by a great blue flash.

“Harry King’s been electrocuted!” the cry went up. A messenger dashed off to inform my mother, who had steadfastly refused to venture out.

The crowd was now beginning to count, though where it began nobody knew.

“329, 330, 331, 332, as the bell tolled steadily on and we were becoming convinced it might go on forever.

Suddenly, 341 was the cry, and the bell stopped.

“Hell, that silence is loud,” was the first thing I heard after all went quiet, and soon after, Harry King came down the stairs.

“Will she be OK?” they asked.

“Will our clock still be the same?”

“Just mice,” was the laconic reply.

“What’s all the fuss? Some mice got in and tripped the circuit to the bell mechanism. Made a mess of the mouse, but that’s all.”

“But what was the blue flash?

“That was a big flash.

“We all thought you must have been killed, or electrocuted, or something.

“Flash? What flash? Oh, that, nothing.”

And he never did tell, though I noticed he was holding those pyjama trousers pretty tightly around what looked like a big black spot.

Come to think of it, I never saw those pyjama trousers again, anytime.

I guess he must have destroyed them, soon after he got home.