LOCAL HISTORY
A Nurseryman’s Notes Beginning in 1922, the Hurstville Propeller newspaper published a weekly column of ‘Gardening Notes’ by a local nurseryman, who went under the pseudonym ‘Acacia’. The column invariably appeared next to an advert for Mr A E Offord’s Rutherglen Nursery at Oatley, and after a couple of years, the pretence at anonymity was dropped and Offord’s name accompanied the articles. His column ran for the next quarter of a century, and totalled well over a thousand weekly articles.
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WWI photo of Cpl Offord.
Albert Edward Offord was born in Hammersmith, England in 1884, son of Alfred and Mary Offord. The family came to Australia in 1886. Albert began work as a nurseryman in the 1900s. In 1905 he married Grace James, and they came to live at Oatley. Despite being married, and with a heart murmur possibly brought on by an earlier bout of rheumatic fever, Albert enlisted in 1915, aged 31, and proceeded to France with
