The decade began with the deaths of two important members of the family.

Walter Frank Hoschke, son of August Frank Hoschke and Henrietta Selina Richards, died in Brisbane in 1970, aged 66. Walter represented one of the branches of the family that had moved away from the original Orara Valley settlement and established itself in Queensland.

Later that year, on 11 March, Annie Jane Hoschke died in Coffs Harbour, aged 92. Annie was the fifth child of Amandus and Mary Ann and had travelled with the family from Bathurst to the Upper Orara Valley as a child in 1886.

Annie had played an important role in the Upper Orara community. For many years she operated the Upper Orara Post Office from the Hoschke family home, Ferndale. She never married and remained in the old family home for the rest of her life. She was remembered for her service to the local community, her beautiful garden and the hospitality she extended to neighbours and family.

Her death was particularly significant because she belonged directly to the generation of children who had made the journey to Orara with Amandus and Mary. With Annie’s passing, another living connection to those earliest years of the Hoschke settlement was lost.

1971 — Remembering Ted Hoschke

Edward Thomas “Ted” Hoschke, another of Amandus and Mary Ann’s thirteen children, died in 1971.

Born in 1881, Ted had lived much of his life in the Orara district, where he owned land and grew bananas. Like several members of his generation, his life had been shaped by both farming and the events of the wider world. During the First World War he served with the Australian forces in France.

Ted’s death came just a year after Annie’s and marked another significant loss for the descendants of Amandus and Mary Ann. Their children had been the generation that established the family in the Orara Valley, and by the early 1970s most of them had passed away.

1972–1973 — A quieter period

The existing Hoschke family timeline contains no major events for 1972 or 1973.

This does not necessarily mean that there were no births, marriages, deaths or other important family events during these years. The family timeline is an ongoing project and contains gaps, particularly as the family enters the period of living descendants.

These quieter years nevertheless reflect an important change in the nature of the family story. Earlier generations are documented through newspapers, certificates and other historical records, while later generations are increasingly represented through family memories, photographs and personal recollections.

1974 — Another connection to the pioneering years is lost

In 1974, Clunie Bain Gould, formerly Clunie Bain Manson, died in Coffs Harbour aged 90.

Clunie had married Frederick Amandus Hoschke, the third child of Amandus and Mary Ann, in 1903. Together they had raised their family in the Orara district, Frederick had selected 200 acres of land in 1905.

Clunie therefore represented a remarkable link between the early settlement of the Orara Valley and the family of the 1970s. She had lived through two World Wars, the development of Coffs Harbour, the growth of the local farming industry and the transformation of the Orara Valley from a pioneering district into the community known to later generations.

Also in 1974, Herbert Bruce Davis, son of Jessie Caroline Hoschke and George Davis, died in Grafton aged 73. Through Jessie, the Davis family formed another important branch of the descendants of Amandus and Mary Ann. Herbert’s death was therefore another loss within the wider Hoschke family network.

1975 — The family branches continue

The main family timeline currently contains no major event for 1975, although other records on the Hoschke website identify deaths and family events during this period.

The descendants of Amandus and Mary Ann were by now spread across a wide area. Some remained around Coffs Harbour and the Orara Valley, while other branches had moved to Sydney, Brisbane, regional New South Wales and other parts of Australia.

The family was no longer a single farming community centred around Upper Orara. Instead, it had become a large network of interconnected families, with shared ancestry providing the link between increasingly distant branches.

1976 — A family reunion

One of the most significant events of the decade was the Hoschke family reunion held in 1976.

The reunion is recorded on the family’s timeline and is particularly meaningful when viewed against the changes taking place during the decade. By 1976, many of the people who had personally known Amandus and Mary Ann, or their children, were gone.

A reunion provided an opportunity for descendants from different branches to meet, share stories and photographs, and maintain connections that might otherwise have been lost as the family became more geographically dispersed.

It also demonstrated that, although the family had changed considerably since Amandus and Mary Ann first settled at Upper Orara, the desire to maintain family connections remained strong.

The 1976 reunion would become part of a continuing tradition of Hoschke family gatherings, eventually followed by later reunions including the 2013 reunion.

1977–1979 — The next generation

The existing family timeline does not currently record major events for 1977, 1978 or 1979.

However, the decade was continuing to see the passing of members of the older generations. The website records Margaret Hoschke (née Porter), wife of Edward Thomas “Ted” Hoschke, as dying on 31 March 1978 in Taree.

Margaret had shared much of Ted’s life and had survived him by several years. Her death brought another chapter of the family’s early twentieth-century history to a close.

By the end of the 1970s, the family landscape was very different from that of the early settlement years. The children of Amandus and Mary Ann were almost entirely gone, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren had become the custodians of the family story.

The Hoschkes at the end of the 1970s

The 1970s can be seen as a bridge between the pioneering Hoschke family and the modern family.

The decade began with Annie Jane Hoschke and Walter Frank Hoschke passing away, followed by the deaths of Clunie Gould and Herbert Bruce Davis in 1974. Margaret Hoschke died in 1978. Each death represented the loss of another person whose life was directly connected to the earlier generations of the family.

Yet the decade was not simply one of loss. The 1976 family reunion showed that the Hoschke family was actively maintaining its connections. The descendants of Amandus and Mary Ann had become a much larger and more widely distributed family, but the shared history of the Orara Valley remained an important part of their identity.

By 1979, almost a century had passed since Amandus and Mary Ann had established their family in the Orara Valley. Their descendants were now several generations removed from the original pioneers, living lives shaped by a very different Australia.

The old farms, roads and buildings of the pioneering years had changed, but the family connections survived — carried forward through photographs, stories, reunions and the memories passed from one generation to the next.