The year is 1894

As to the family’s latter years, Theatre historian Michael Raynor writes:

His travelling days were over as he was now in his sixties. He and Ida became pillars of West Wyalong society and the Bland Shire Council built a fountain to honour Fred and Idea. While he retired from performing he was known to mentor many young performers as well as charity work in West Wyalong.

Ida Parkinson-Davys died on October 6, 1939 aged 66. Her husband passed away some five years later on October 3, 1944 aged 91

West Wyalong was a boom town, gold having been discovered here in 1893. Fred Davys arrived with his travelling group of high quality vaudeville performers. He erected his canvas marquee in Main Street and the shows proved a resounding success. Davys continued to tour his show and developed his most popular act called On the Back of My Daddy ‘O’. Walking on in his unique outfit, he appeared to be carried around the stage by his pip smoking old Daddy. From this amusing position, as the son, he could tell yarns, crack jokes and sing.

Returning to the same Main Street plot, some 6 years later, Fred Davys with performer Ida Lewis, laid plans to have a permanent theatre and to make West Wyalong their home. Soon they were able to perform in an run the newly build Ruddick Hall, known by locals as the Reo Hall. Over the next 10 years, Ida Lewis and Fred Davys (together with his son Fred), presented a combination of films and live performances at the Rio.

In 1910, Davys and Lewis finally married, he was then 57 years of age, while she was 37. That same year the couple decided to build their own theatre, the Tivoli, in West Wyalong. It was situated on the same site that he’d first pitched his tent show back in 1899 (now a landscaped area alongside The Roundabout Bakery). The Tivoli appears to have prospered for many years, due in part to the increasing popularity of motion pictures and the concession bar they operated.

The Rio continued in various in guises, Rio Talkies, Reo Gardens, Rio Pictures and Rio Open Air. The Hall was finally demolished in 1962. The Tivoli also continued until it’s demolition in the 1970s, though the taste for cinema was far from dead. The Westway Drive-in offered the latest American styled off Central Road, closing in 1987/8. The baton passed to the Services and Citizens Club and then to the Lions Club who took up the challenge in 2009, projecting Christmas movies in the park on an inflatable screen. After an absence of nearly 60 years, the pleasures of the Tivoli are about to return.