Barney Cashmore Honoured in Gunbower

His name is Barney, and you can find him hanging around in the Gunbower Pub. He is tall, dark and handsome, a bit on the grey side, and he doesn’t talk much. We are, of course, talking about Archibald “Barney” Cashmore (1895-1965).

Barney served in the 4th Light Horse Regiment during World War One. During his service he discovered he had a natural running ability, winning the Egyptian sprint championship in 1917. Upon returning to Australia, he became the first returned serviceman to win the Stawell Easter Gift. Barney and his wife owned the Gunbower Butcher Shop for 23 years.

Rest assured, we are not talking ghosts here. Cohuna-based artist, Abby Smith, was commissioned to draw the local legend by Gunbower Hotel proprietor, Richard “Bones” McGillivray, who had seen Barney’s story and photo on the wall of the current butcher shop.

“After he saw this photo, Bones went and sourced the original image from Barney’s great grandson. He came and presented me with this dark and blurry image,” said Abby. The image was slightly smaller than A4 size and although she recognised it was going to be quite a challenge, she was keen to take it on. 

“I blew it up to a scale of 120cm x 90cm and tried to fill in the lost details. It took about 70 hours of drawing and a fair bit of time outside that just researching. He’s wearing all these badges that are very blurry. I couldn’t actually tell what they were, to represent what rank he was in. It’s such a dark figure, shadowed, and I’ve had to add in lots of details - try and make areas lighter, try and add some muscle definition, put in the hairs and everything.”

While 20-year-old Abby is predominantly a drawer, she is also a painter, photographer and designer and has several smaller commissions underway for locals. 

This year will see her complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at La Trobe University in Bendigo. “Remote learning has been difficult for the art subjects because they couldn’t adapt a lot of the subjects to online, especially the practical ones like painting, mono printing, that sort of stuff. They’ve had to just cancel it. So, I ended up being two subjects behind and had to pick up some summer subjects to compensate.”

The drawing of Barney Cashmore is her biggest project to date, and she is keen to explore other avenues like metal sculptures and silo art. “I plan on continuing doing commissions mainly as a hobby but after finishing the course I’m hoping to eventually get into a more technical design-based career, like product design, interior design or something along those lines. Ideally my biggest hope would be to get into jewellery design. It’s quite ambitious but that’s got me this far. My hopes at this point in time is just some form of design and hoping to do hobby drawings on the side.”

Abby was invited to paint images depicting Anzac Day on hay bales placed in the main street of Gunbower last year. The war theme has continued, and her drawing of Archibald “Barney” Cashmore will be displayed in the hotel, honouring the local legend. An excited Abby said, “I’m looking forward to seeing it displayed in the pub.”