Joy was brought up in the Mt Lawley – Inglewood area and spent her single working life as a telephonist, receptionist and, typist. A love of old houses and a desire to try country life brought the family to the Boddington district in 1982. Joy, husband Graham and children, Michelle, Jodie and Wayne, moved to ‘Lilybank’ on the property of Roy Wilkie on the Albany Highway and commenced to restore and furnish the old homestead in the manner of the day. Joy has since become a secretary of the Tourist Promotion Committee, which she feels compliments her interest in the history of the district. Joy’s main BAC interests lie in her painting activities in both oils and water colours.
Lilybank
Old Lilybank has been a familiar sight to Albany Highway travellers for many years. The property was part of an original grant of 33,500 acres taken up by the Wilkie brothers, Adam and John in 1903. In 1904, Daniel, son of Adam built the Lilybank homestead from bricks made and fired in a kiln on the property. The remains of the kiln are still visible at the back of. the house, as is the little shack with the brick chimney where Daniel and his wife lived while the house was being built. The style of the bricklaying was Flemish Bond, an old method which adds strength to the wall structure. TheHomestead has six rooms all with 13 foot patterned tin ceilings, each with a lovely centre of plaster rosettes. Two of these rosettes feature cherubs’faces. Lilybank has a trapdoor in the kitchen to cellar underneath but over the years this has been covered up and is no longer in use. In the main bedroom there is a small trap door that opens into a small cavity where the family valuables were kept.
For many years there was a public telephone on the verandah, the only phon for miles.
Daniel Wilkie lived at Lilybank until his death and afterwards the house was occupied at different times by his sons and their families. And then for some time it remained unoccupied, used only to accommodate shearers.
In 1983 Graham and Joy Day with their three children, Michelle, Jodie and Wayne, moved in and commenced to restore the old house. It was to become a labour of love and old Lilybank came to life once more.