WAR IS OVER 3446
The First World Was is over but it still takes time to bring back all the troops and then demob them. This is why it's May 1919 in this photograph and William Houston McNeice in his Australian Army uniform is still waiting in England to be shipped home to Australia. So William with time on his hands decided to come over to Ballymena to visit his Aunt Agnes Porter nee McNeice and thus the reason for the photograph. Why William is wearing an Australian uniform is that Agnes's brother and Wiliam's father Richard Houston McNeice emigrated to Australia in 1883. Richard and Agnes were two of the twenty children of Henry McNeice and his wife Jane McNeice nee Houston, a number of the children moved to Australia while others went to America.

PENTAGON 4081
Well here we are looking at the Pentagon from Mill Street in the centre of the road is a gas lamp post with signs on it. It still amazes me who the photographer got all these
people to stand still for a few minutes. On the left are two young ladies arm in arm in front of the horse droppings. Behind them is a horse and trap with two men in it, halfway
up the street behind them is a little girl pedaling her bike down the slope. To the right is a driver with his horse cart and in front of them is a young lad in a white shirt
and dark trousers, he is carrying a large paper bag filled to the top and in the other hand he is holding his hoop and guiding stick, the hoop was usually a bicycle wheel
with the spokes taken out. If you were lucky the blacksmith might make you one.