Harvey Stanley Young is a Glen Innes ‘lifer’ having spent 93 years here since the moment he was born in West Avenue in 1932 to parents Stanley and Grace Young. His father was also born in Glen Innes; his mother was from Melbourne. Harvey attended Glen Innes Public School and Glen Innes High School, where he was School Captain in 1950. He then headed to Armidale to commence a Science Degree, but says he played a lot of football, had a very good time and quickly realised that academia was not for him.
Harvey returned home to the family business, the legendary Kwong Sing and Company store and continued to work there – as he had done since he was a child – along with his brother and three sisters. Harvey grew up in a house behind the shop.
In 1968 Harvey met his wife Eugenia at a wedding in Sydney and they have been married for 57 years. Harvey said that it is a “long and happy marriage”, a sentiment echoed by Eugenia. They have three sons and five grandchildren.
Kwong Sing War, as the store was known, was established in 1886 by a recent immigrant, Wong Chee. Harvey’s grandfather, Percy Puck Sing Young, who had migrated to NSW from China in the 1880s, joined Wong Chee and later purchased the business in about 1911.
At one stage Percy went back to China for several years while Harvey’s father ran the business and doubled its size. Percy returned with five nephews who went on to establish their own businesses across Northern NSW. One of Harvey’s relatives is Jeff Fatt from Casino, better known as the purple Wiggle.
Kwong Sing grew from what was essentially a store for miners to an impressive emporium meeting the needs of a growing and changing population. In its heyday it was a case of “you name it, they sold it”: fresh food and groceries, hardware, clothing, hats, manchester, produce, wheat, kerosene, explosives and firearms.
Always innovative, Kwong Sing was the first store to go electric and even offered credit to customers for up to 12 months which, as Harvey says, was “a mainstay for a business like ours in rural areas”.
At one stage there were stables out the back for customers to leave their horses and a petrol bowser out the front for vehicles. Harvey remembers the days when “everyone had a horse, not like today where owning a horse is a status symbol”.
In an era when families came into town in their sulkies for the fortnightly shop – a big day out – the horses would be tethered out the back and the men would attend to their business in town then go to the pub. Meanwhile the women and children were provided with a room at the back of Kwong Sing to socialise, with free boiling water available for their tea.
Harvey’s father succeeded his grandfather in the business, then Harvey took over the management from 1973 to 2007 when he retired.
Today Kwong Sing remains a family business although the store is leased out and operates as The Premier Store and Wayne’s World. Harvey still has an office there, where he continues to attend to family business matters.
Like his grandfather, who was a respected businessman and philanthropist who assisted those in need at a time when there were no government benefits to help, Harvey continues to be an active member of the community. As a young man, until he reached the club’s age limit of 40, Harvey was a member and president of the Apex Club and was honoured with Life Membership.
In fact he was one of the Apexians who quite literally built the Glen Innes Library – they even cleaned the bricks and cut the timber for the building. The plan was that Council would take over the operation of the library once the building was completed. However, Council was unable to do so at that time, so for the next six years until Council stepped up, the Apexians plus their wives and girlfriends ran the library.
For over 40 years Harvey has been a member of the Glen Innes Rotary Club and was recognised as a Paul Harris Fellow for his contribution to Rotary. With Rotary he has cooked an untold number of barbecues but his personal favourite Rotary achievement is the health bus that offers free medical tests around the district.
Over the years Harvey has supported many organisations and causes including the Red Shield Appeal, Glen Industries and the Chamber of Commerce. His personal favourite charity fundraiser was a trail ride in which riders would go down to places like Starlight, London Bridge and Yarraford and camp overnight.
Harvey loves being part of this rural community. He likes “agriculture activities and had a bit to do with horses and cattle”. He also loved fishing, especially for Murray cod. “I used to get trout but those days have gone because of climate change.” He also enjoyed polocrosse, hunting and clay pigeon shooting: “Normal activities for the people I knocked around with”.
When visitors come to town, Harvey likes to take them to the Standing Stones and History House, where memorabilia from Kwong Sing is on display including signage, furniture that was actually made in the store, and the flying fox. The flying fox was a payment system of yesteryear which involved the sales assistants working on the ground floor putting a customer’s payment into a pod and sending it via an aerial wire up to the young women cashiers in the office upstairs who would accept the cash and return any change required. Harvey recalled that “when the boss was not looking, a male sale assistant might put a mouse in the pod to send up and startle the girls, to the amusement of the shop assistants”, and added with a cheeky grin “that might have been me”.
Reflecting on the life that his grandfather created for his descendants in Glen Innes, Harvey said ’’I wonder what my life would have been like if my grandfather had not come out with his nephews and helped the family. He was adventurous and courageous and I hope that we have inherited some of his qualities”.
While most of Percy Young’s descendants have moved away from Glen Innes, Harvey is very upbeat about the town and believes that more people are moving here “because Glen Innes is a central location, it’s on the highway, and as the weather is warming in other places the climate is going to our advantage”.
