RELICS FROM THE PAST.

A recent email from Mac McClymont who was in attendance at the reunion, contained some interesting pictures for us to share. He is a descendant of 'Old Mac' as he calls Alexander who was the nineth born of the fourteen. One of the items was a table that had been hand carved. Perhaps it was another of Isabella's (Isa) works. There is also a picture of the writing box that had belonged to 'Old Mac'.

However , one of the most fascinating items was a seal stamp to emboss paper with "Manuka Inverell". As Mac says, "I have included a sheet of paper with the embossing on it. I had darkened the embossing with pencil so it would show up in the photo."

HOW IT WORKS. This form of embossing has been used for years in the Queensland Courts for putting seals on Grants of Probate. There are two plates in the machine. The one on the bottom has the print raised and the one on the top has the print recessed so that when sheets of paper are inserted between the plates and the pressure is applied then an image of the words are embossed on all of the pages. The top page usually has a red seal on it onto which the embossing is aligned, which made it a readable seal. It was used as a security device to prevent new pages being inserted into the document.