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PUBLIC HALL, Johnson St, Meckering

The Meckering Public Hall was built on the south-east corner of the intersection of Johnson and Dempster Streets. In August 1928 it was reported that Carter and Collins of Meckering had to abandon the pictures when the hall burned down, and it was to be rebuilt ready for re-opening in December.

By the forties, Lucas Touring Pictures visited Meckering, Toodyay and Gingin, weekly. Around 1950, the Fitzgerald circuit visited the town, and in the fifties Graham Ford of Beverley (assisted by eight-year-old Peter Thomson on the slide projector) screened weekly on a Monday night.

It is not clear when the screenings ceased, possibly as early as 1961: they had probably stopped before an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale destroyed the town on 14 October 1968.

The Public Hall was one of the buildings badly damaged by the earthquake and demolished after it. No photos exist of the hall before the earthquake, though it appears in some of the photos taken of the earthquake damage.

The town was rebuilt west of the original site, and a new Town Hall was constructed there in 1970, but it is unlikely that pictures have been screened there.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -