William Street

Believed to be named after William Quigley, accidentally killed in 1879. After his wife died in 1886 his brother Daniel took over the management of the estate. In about 1888 John Desreaux opened a blacksmiths and wheelwright shop in William Street. Mr Desreaux was elected to the first Lake Macquarie Council serving for many years with 3 terms as president. The first Post Office was opened in William Street in 1887 on railway property. The bakehouse building is now a residence, built after WW2 by Les Sawyers and operated by Len Van Huisstede, and later by Bill Lewis, a resident of William Street. He achieved notoriety for defying the government's regulation preventing Sunday bread baking. A prize winning baker, after he retired he was sent to tour China instructing bread making. Spinks butcher shop has gone. The railway tennis courts were used by the school in the 1930's. The present fire station is in this street, in early times this was one of the sites used by the circuses when they came to town.

This work by Lake Macquarie City Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License