Number 7 Lake Albert Road, which had been in Mrs Bungay's family for 80 years, was recently flattened to make way for a car park for The Farmers Home Hotel.

The home was built as a marital home by Mrs Bungay's grandfather Charles Willis and her uncle Arthur for her parents Roland and Jenny Willis, who married in 1939.

All she has left is fond memories of the home she had lived in with her brothers Jeff, Ian and Barry since her birth in 1940, until leaving when she married her husband Peter in 1962.

The speed of the leveling of the building came as a shock to Mrs Bungay.

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"We went shopping at 9am and in the space of two hours it was just a pile of rubble," Mrs Bungay said.

"It made me feel so sad, but I did know something was going on with all the hoarding around it.

"I asked Riverina Cranes if I could get one of the bricks and they said yes, so I'm happy about that.

"What makes me sad is the quality of work that went into that house and that it was built with love."

The memories flooded back as Mrs Bungay stood near the site of her family home.

"My grandfather and uncle came from Crookwell to build the home, living in a tent on the property for the duration," she said.

"My father came to Wagga in 1933 during the depression as there was no work for a bricklayer in Crookwell.

"An uncle, Herbert Vidler, was the manager of the Murrumbidgee Co-operative Dairy Company at the time and offered him employment if he came to Wagga."

Mrs Bungay said her father, a refrigeration engineer at the Murrumbidgee Dairy Company for 39 years, also built the house next door (number five) for the dairy company during his long service leave in 1950.

"Before that, in 1941, he built the milk factory complex and in 1936 he built the manager's residence on Hammond Avenue," she said.

One of the main recollections Mrs Bungay had was the crowd which descended on their home each Empire Day (May 24).

"We used to build a huge bonfire in the factory paddock and hundreds of people used to turn up," she said.

"It used to be all houses all around us and all the kids from the neighbourhood helped build the bonfire.

"The men from the dairy used to help, bringing us sticks to put on the bonfire.

"We were just a happy family and played cricket, tennis and football in our back paddock.

"My father had a large vegetable garden and my mother tended the flower gardens.

"We had several fruit trees and I had a cubby house and there was a sand pit."

The block of land was bought in 1938 for the princely sum of 120 pounds.

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