Richard Barry OAM is principally known as a writer and historian for his epic work, The Centenary of Anzac, Narrabri and District 1914-18, published in 2018.
The comprehensively researched history provides details about hundreds of service people who enlisted at Narrabri to serve in World War I.
However, Mr Barry’s passion for history and writing has seen the creation of several books – he is, in fact, a prolific author.
Most of the titles are published for free circulation among family and a limited audience.
But interest in the biographies and social histories is high and they are available to a wider readership, thanks to Narrabri Shire libraries.
Mr Barry’s books are on the shelves for borrowers at the libraries following his donation of each publication some time ago and latterly, two new donations.
One is an updated and expanded edition of the World War I histories and the other an examination of ‘the good old days’ which weren’t always so good, ‘Bold, Brazen Brat’.
“I have canvassed views on a range of issues of life in the 1950s,” said Mr Barry.
One of those issues was the use of corporal punishment in schools, routinely administered in that era as many will attest, but unknown to today’s generation of school students except perhaps as some vague, scarcely believable folklore.
But corporal punishment was real – all too real, as Mr Barry’s book ‘Bold, Brazen Brat’, reveals.
The cane was freely administered to boys – and girls.
‘Bold, Brazen Brat’ was the description the Mother Superior gave young Richard Barry when he was a boarder at St John the Baptist Preparatory Boarding School for Boys in the 1950s.
It may have been some 60 plus years ago, but Mr Barry’s memories are undimmed, supplemented by recollections from others, teachers, students and contemporaries of the era.
Mr Barry presented his two most recent books to Narrabri library.
They join ‘The Tenth’ – the story of the tenth intake of National Servicemen, Mr Barry’s Vietnam War comrades of 1967-69, ‘Thanks, Dad’, a tribute to his late father Ted Barry, prominent figure in the Narrabri community, and ‘Behind the Counter’, Mr Barry’s tenure as a ‘bank johnny’ at Narrabri and later regional executive with the Rural Bank (later the Colonial State Bank and then the Commonwealth Bank) for 33 years.
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