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👑 David Packer: Hampton Court Tour Guide · The Sheppertonian (for Shepperton village)

• 1:21
  So I'm wandering around Fountain Court, the William and Mary Baroque part, the Christopher Wren Park, a space I've been in scores of times alone at night.
• 1:30
  And I've wandered just right the way around and I was at the far corner.
• 1:34
  I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything.
• 1:38
  I suddenly just felt an absolute dread.
• 1:50
  Ooh, hello and sorry about that.
• 1:53
  Welcome to the Sheppartonian.
• 1:55
  I'm Gareth and this is the local.
• 1:57
  Podcast bringing you stories and voices from in and around Shepparton.
• 2:00
  Think of it as a living digital archive, if you will, Free for anyone to listen to.
• 2:06
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• 2:11
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• 2:16
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• 2:25
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• 2:28
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• 2:32
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• 2:37
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• 2:37
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• 2:48
  Hampton Court palace is 20 minutes down the road and I bet most of us have done exactly the same thing there.
• 2:55
  Park, queue in through the gate, look at the great hall.
• 2:58
  Home by 4.
• 3:00
  My guest has been at that palace for more than 20 years.
• 3:04
  He started as a warder, ended up its youngest ever supervisor and spent 15 of those years walking people around it in the dark.
• 3:12
  He runs his own tours now.
• 3:14
  The newest one doesn't go inside.
• 3:16
  So I went and found David Packer in a pub by the palace gates.
• 3:20
  That turns out to be part of the story.
• 3:23
  So, David, welcome to the Sheppartonian.
• 3:25
  We are sitting, if you can hear lots of plates clanking, floorboards creaking.
• 3:29
  During this episode, we are sitting in the mitre and David, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about this place.
• 3:39
  Well, the Mitre is very, very much part of the history of the area.
• 3:43
  It dates from 1665.
• 3:45
  It's a child of the Restoration, when Charles II actually holds his honeymoon at Hampton Court palace.
• 3:53
  And he's maybe not one of the kings more associated with the palace, but he is very much part of his history.
• 3:59
  And he gives one of his supporters, General George Monck, who is the Duke of Albemarle, he gives permission to one of his servants to build the building that we're in now.
• 4:12
  And it grows out of the need to service courtiers and visitors to the palace.
• 4:17
  And it's still doing that today.
• 4:19
  Fantastic.
• 4:20
  With police cars going past.
• 4:21
  Absolutely brilliant.
• 4:24
  Yeah.
• 4:24
  You very kindly invited a few of us on your new tour, which was very kind of you.
• 4:30
  Absolutely fascinating.
• 4:31
  Where did the idea come from and at what point did you realize there was a tour outside of the palace walls?
• 4:38
  Well, the idea's been percolating, I think, for quite a while.
• 4:41
  Certainly back before COVID I'd been doing some research for a local pub which, back when it was still alive, the King's Arms published proper Old Early 18th century coaching in pretty much the works pub for the palace.
• 4:56
  For many years.
• 4:58
  I was doing research on stories from there from the 19th century, which they were a number and obviously I already knew, particularly from the works of Gerald and Joan Heath.
• 5:10
  We all stand on the shoulders of giants and they were epic local historians.
• 5:16
  And so I knew a lot about how the palace had driven the evolution of the area immediately around it.
• 5:24
  In fact, very much so.
• 5:25
  More than most places, many places have a particular thing that they grow around.
• 5:31
  And the non existent village of Hampton Court is, unsurprisingly, Hampton Court Palace.
• 5:36
  But these stories gave much more of a human angle to the, oh, this was built in 1665 element, which is fine, and people expect that, but they also want to hear about people.
• 5:49
  And so marrying those two together seemed natural.
• 5:52
  And being the Olympic standard procrastinator that I am, it took some years to actually get myself in gear to put it together and then start to offer it out to good folk like yourself.
• 6:06
  I guess procrastination is one thing, but also gathering those stories as well.
• 6:11
  You must have been discovering these things as you went along as well.
• 6:14
  Absolutely you do.
• 6:15
  And as with any good tour, it's editing.
• 6:20
  There is far more than you can ever really put together in one comfortable tour.
• 6:25
  And you do want to have some degree of narrative thread through as well, because if it's too scattergun, people will get lost.
• 6:34
  But on the other hand, it doesn't need to be one coherent story because the area itself is the story.
• 6:40
  So without giving too much away, people visiting the palace, because that's the main attraction around here, what are some of.
• 6:47
  The things that they're missing on the.
• 6:48
  Way to the gate?
• 6:49
  I think the big thing that people miss is quite often what they've either come over by car or by foot, if they're parked up at the station is the bridge.
• 7:01
  It's 1930s, but it was deliberately designed to be part of the intro to the palace.
• 7:08
  Sir Edwin Lutyens was involved in the design of the exterior at least, and he has not just taken inspiration from the palace, but made the bridge part of that walk in.
• 7:20
  And a lot of people aren't noticing that as they're coming into the palace.
• 7:25
  Could you give us a.
• 7:26
  Not a little walking tour of the walking tour, roughly the area that you cover and obviously it's fairly immediate around the palace.
• 7:35
  But what are the kind of sights that you take in?
• 7:38
  Well, it is a fairly tight little tour.
• 7:41
  It starts over on the Surrey side at the.
• 7:44
  The foot of the bridge, looking at the history of where the palace is.
• 7:49
  It's all location, location, location, close enough to London to be handy, far enough away to be pleasant.
• 7:56
  We can then go over the bridge looking at the area immediately outside Trophy Gate and the palace with the building that we're in now, the mitre from 1665 and the mute swan and the buildings that grew out again
• 8:12
  grew out of servicing the palace and people out the palace and then around past a couple of blue plaques and to the Royal Muse, which again was an extension of the palace where the animals were housed.
• 8:26
  And then over onto the grain, around the grain and then not finally because we come back more or less to where we started, but then to the north side of the palace, which used to be a really bustling
• 8:36
  area and now is somewhat sadly neglected.
• 8:39
  But many great stories there, where the King's Arms is and the bushy park just over the road and then just back round the palace so that people can, by this point, after an hour and a half or so
• 8:53
  in my company, get some well earned refreshment.
• 8:57
  So what can you say outside those palace walls that you, you can't necessarily say inside the palace walls?
• 9:04
  Well, to a degree you need to be outside in that landscape to properly describe it.
• 9:11
  You can talk about it inside the palace, but it doesn't mean very much unless people know the area very well, which of course most of the visitors don't.
• 9:19
  But also, and this leads in possibly to a question yet to come inside the palace, you have to be very careful during the day when you are amongst all sorts and conditions of people and particularly lots of kids
• 9:33
  around.
• 9:34
  And if you are veering into the stories that are a little bit more post 9 o' clock watershed, so long as you aren't within earshot of a school group on its way to or from the palace, you can
• 9:45
  be a little bit more unguarded there than you might be inside the palace.
• 9:50
  The Spooky stories that come attached to a building like Hampton Court Palace.
• 9:55
  We've probably heard a few in our time.
• 9:57
  But how do they get passed along?
• 9:59
  And what kind of stories have you heard?
• 10:02
  Well, I've heard a great many of them, and often the same stories, but coming from very different angles, which is one of the fascinating things about them.
• 10:10
  I mean, we did 15 years of ghost tours and we all told the same stories and then spoken to a number of people that have come on the ghost tours more than once and said they had entirely different
• 10:21
  experiences with different guides.
• 10:23
  Because we come at the stories from different angles and tell them in different ways.
• 10:27
  And that is very much the secret of the ghost stories is they're part of verbal history.
• 10:32
  They do get written down.
• 10:33
  And we do look particularly at 19th century newspapers are often a source for the ghost stories.
• 10:40
  And a lot of the ghost stories really do seem to be 19th century creations, as it were.
• 10:45
  But also you get events at the palace, things.
• 10:48
  Things that happen to people there that people talk about.
• 10:52
  And of course, you then get the inevitable evolution of those stories.
• 10:56
  And there's a fascinating event right at the beginning of the palace's history as a formal tourist attraction, at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign when it's first opened and there is a murder in the courtyards, very dramatic, very
• 11:10
  well documented, both in the Old Bailey records and in the newspapers at the time.
• 11:14
  You'd think that'd be a shoo in to create one of the better ghost stories.
• 11:19
  And yet I've only found one little reference 60 years later in a newspaper, a syndicated newspaper report by an American journalist who is told by a member of staff what is clearly that story, but garbled and with certain
• 11:36
  details changed.
• 11:39
  And in fact, we did use that story one season.
• 11:42
  We told that story on the spot where the murder happened, but we never did it again.
• 11:47
  We dropped it because too many of the guides felt they had experiences telling that story and felt more than just a cold douche down the spine when they were telling it.
• 12:00
  Also, it wasn't a great ghost story.
• 12:03
  The actual historic.
• 12:04
  In that case, the history is far more exciting than the actual ghost story that it gave rise to.
• 12:10
  Yeah.
• 12:11
  So are there stories that you're asked about most of the time or were asked about?
• 12:16
  Definitely the Haunted Gallery, which is Katherine Hard allegedly trying to get Henry VIII to plead for her life.
• 12:25
  We're asked about that one a lot.
• 12:26
  I used to say sometimes that's kind of the Disney story.
• 12:30
  When you bear in mind the ghost tours we did were A two hour show effectively and we could have done another one and not repeated a story.
• 12:38
  But what's very interesting is a lot of people know that there is a story but their idea of what it is, they get the wrong queen.
• 12:45
  It's all very garbled.
• 12:47
  I mean that story about the, the first murder, you were saying tour guides were affected by that.
• 12:52
  Have you experienced things yourself and how did you feel about those things at the time?
• 12:58
  I've had a few experiences.
• 13:00
  None of them are classic, seeing a ghost or anything like that.
• 13:05
  But I think probably the best one to relate is one that happened to me about 2 or 3 in the morning.
• 13:12
  I bet it's spooky in there at 2 or 3 in the morning.
• 13:15
  Oh if you, if you, if you aren't affected by being in that building on your own at night, then you don't have an imagination.
• 13:23
  And sometimes perhaps if you have to patrol it alone at night, it's better not to.
• 13:26
  But by and large and I've, I've been there supervised functions, we used to sleepovers and I've worked as a security water there as well.
• 13:37
  So I've done patrols there at night.
• 13:39
  I've been there overnight many a time and off and generally speaking I've never had a problem.
• 13:44
  You feel an atmosphere and a thrill perhaps at times in particular feeling of you're working there.
• 13:51
  You're as much a legitimate part of its history as the people that were there 500 years ago.
• 13:57
  But one time I was there with a colleague and we were basically looking after Kate Botley and she was spending the night and she genuinely did spend the night in what was Anne Boleyn's receiving chamber in the Berlin
• 14:10
  Tower.
• 14:11
  And we were spending the night awake obviously in case she needed anything in the old retail workers mess room which was just a floor down.
• 14:21
  And about 2, 3 in the morning I just needed to go and stretch my legs.
• 14:25
  It was October, it was a wild and woolly night and I went for a wander around the courtyards.
• 14:30
  A great way to start a story.
• 14:31
  Oh absolutely.
• 14:34
  Oh, and the palace does.
• 14:36
  It's a five and a half acre building that's the oldest bits of 500 years old.
• 14:40
  It reacts to the atmosphere very much.
• 14:44
  And so I'm wandering around Fountain Court, the William and Mary Burrough part, the Christopher Wren part, a space I've been in scores of times alone at night and I've wandered just right the way around and I was at
• 14:56
  the far corner.
• 14:58
  I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything.
• 15:02
  I suddenly Just felt an absolute dread for.
• 15:10
  No, I wasn't reacting to anything that I was aware of.
• 15:14
  As I said, didn't see anything, didn't hear anything.
• 15:16
  I just thought, I don't want to be here.
• 15:19
  Or possibly something doesn't want me to be here.
• 15:22
  And I scuttled back to the mess room very quickly.
• 15:28
  That's the only time I've been at the palace in one way or another since 2003.
• 15:34
  And that's the only time in over 20 years that I think I've actually changed what I was doing because of something like that.
• 16:29
  So you've experienced it yourself?
• 16:31
  Other guides have experienced things.
• 16:33
  You take a lot from reports.
• 16:36
  And you mentioned the Old Bailey.
• 16:39
  Where does the line sit between the history and the legend?
• 16:43
  Good question.
• 16:45
  If you ever find out.
• 16:47
  I suppose some of it is just passing on stories, isn't it?
• 16:50
  It is.
• 16:50
  I mean, one of.
• 16:51
  One of the lines.
• 16:52
  I've used both for the ghost tours and also we did do some seasons of evening tours almost as a counterpart.
• 17:00
  Some were counterparts of the ghost tours where we were telling the more adult stories that we can't tell when the kiddies are around, involving sex and sexuality, rumors about William III and stuff.
• 17:14
  And people would often say, are these stories true?
• 17:16
  To which the answer is it's true that they're stories.
• 17:20
  We are relating what people have said.
• 17:23
  We're not saying that what they said was true.
• 17:26
  My personal line on William III is maybe he was gay, maybe he was bi, maybe he wasn't anything in particular.
• 17:32
  But it's absolutely true that, that people in his day said that he was gay.
• 17:37
  But then he was a man with a lot of enemies.
• 17:40
  And at the time it was a very serious thing to accuse somebody of.
• 17:44
  But then also, I think with somewhere the size and complexity of Hampton Court, there will always be different schools of thought.
• 17:52
  And I do think it's permissible to give a story the benefit of the doubt unless and until you find for definite that something is wrong.
• 18:03
  Again, just once a colleague of my boss at the time and myself were doing a two handed special one off ghost tour at midnight and we included a rather dark but rather wonderful story.
• 18:16
  But then I did some research on it and I couldn't find what really there would have been evidence of the events that it retells in local newspapers.
• 18:26
  Went to Richmond Library and also we then found that the provenance for the story was one ghostwriter in a single book.
• 18:34
  And it turns out he'd taken it from a work of fiction, which is why it was such A good story.
• 18:42
  As soon as we found that out, we dropped it.
• 18:44
  How did you end up doing this at all?
• 18:47
  Well, essentially, I was born and brought up in Southall and Left School at 16 and became a printing apprentice in a factory, Crown Cork in Scotts Road in Southall, and spent a little bit over 20 years in that
• 19:03
  apprentice and journeyman.
• 19:05
  And then the factory was shut down, it was made redundant.
• 19:08
  I spent almost exactly a year unemployed and I was living at Hounslow at the time.
• 19:13
  And there's a single bus 111 down to Hampton Court and I had a Boughtman's End, a season ticket, and I was visiting quite frequently and got to know a number of the people, the warders on the routes and
• 19:27
  long story short, applied for a job, got a job and became, at the time, and it says a lot, I was in my 30s and I was one of the youngest warders.
• 19:38
  Three years later, became the youngest ever supervisor.
• 19:41
  And the job, particularly as a supervisor later team leader, involves delivering tours, sometimes a very short notice, for vehicles, VIPs.
• 19:49
  Most memorably, the late, great Joan Rivers.
• 19:53
  Yeah.
• 19:53
  You know when you get those situations where you say yes to something and then you go, oh, what have I done?
• 19:59
  She was marvelous.
• 19:59
  She was.
• 20:00
  She was exactly the woman you saw on the television.
• 20:02
  That wasn't an act in any way, shape or form.
• 20:04
  That was her.
• 20:05
  There can't be many people in the world who can say that they've given an historical tour to Joan Rivers.
• 20:13
  She was magnificent as well.
• 20:15
  Performers and politicians usually more used to talking than listening.
• 20:19
  But no, she asked really good questions.
• 20:21
  She was genuinely interested, she was hilarious.
• 20:24
  And gloriously, there was at the time, in live interpretation, we had a King, Henry VIII every day.
• 20:32
  One of them is a good friend of mine, Richard Evans, who still does that on occasion.
• 20:37
  And then there was a guy called Tony Harris, who is a wonderful light entertainer in his own right.
• 20:42
  And he saw us and when he finished, he didn't change.
• 20:46
  He's still in beautiful golden white Henry VIII costume.
• 20:50
  And he tracked us down.
• 20:51
  He's going around to all the waters going, where's Packer?
• 20:53
  Where's Packer?
• 20:54
  And he found us in the closets in King William's private apartments.
• 20:59
  And he strides in and he's about half as tall again as Joan and he's, madam, can we talk?
• 21:05
  She was absolutely delighted.
• 21:07
  So it was as well a precious memory.
• 21:10
  Definitely.
• 21:11
  I've also had the huge pleasure and privilege of being with a chap called Mark Wallace, being the historical advisor to the Royal Shakespeare Company when they put Wolf hall and bring up the bodies on the stage back in
• 21:24
  2013.
• 21:25
  That would have been, I think, and teaching and training boarders to guide and develop, helping develop those tours and other tours.
• 21:32
  So it was a natural progression to do it in its own right, as it were, just to concentrate on being a guide.
• 21:38
  The best question you've ever been asked and the worst.
• 21:44
  Now, the best question, definitely, if you could have a night in a pub with a king or Queen of England, who would it be?
• 21:51
  Oh, wow, in a heartbeat.
• 21:53
  Charles ii.
• 21:54
  Why Charles ii?
• 21:55
  Oh, you'd have a great time.
• 21:56
  You wouldn't remember it.
• 21:58
  You'd probably end up chained to a lampposting crew or something.
• 22:01
  I wouldn't trust him any further than I could throw him, but he's one of the most human, one of the most attractive people that sit on the throne.
• 22:08
  And, yeah, I think you would have fun having a night out with Charles.
• 22:14
  The worst, it's difficult to say a specific one, but obviously Handicot palace is still Crown property.
• 22:22
  The Chapel Royal is still one of His Majesty's churches.
• 22:26
  And people would sometimes try and draw you on the current royal family and that could be a little bit difficult.
• 22:36
  Also questions where the question itself tells you that the person is, shall we say, laboring under a misapprehension or has a very particular, very strong view.
• 22:47
  And if you're going to answer the question honestly and accurately, you're going to be going counter to that which people, interestingly, how upset people can be when you tell them that, no, Henry VIII didn't die of syphilis.
• 23:02
  Why people should be so wedded to the idea.
• 23:06
  I know it used to be sort of common currency, but as certain as we can be that no, he dies of pulmonary embolism.
• 23:15
  But I guess a lot of the job is making sure that people have a good time as well.
• 23:19
  So you don't want to be upsetting the great.
• 23:22
  This is the thing.
• 23:24
  And in fact, coming back to the thing about where, where do you draw the line with stories?
• 23:29
  Now, there is a tradition that Jane Seymour's heart and in fact all her other visera are buried in a leadline silver casket under the altar.
• 23:40
  And now there are two school, two schools of thought on that.
• 23:44
  One that it was done, one that it wasn't, as far as I'm aware, it was done and there's no record of it being removed.
• 23:51
  So if I'm talking to somebody who wants to feel that connection to Jane Seymour, I'm not going to start getting too button policey.
• 24:00
  About it, as we used to say about, you know, Too anally accurate.
• 24:04
  Yeah, about these things.
• 24:05
  As long as you're not actually changing the history.
• 24:08
  Because with a building that covers over 500 years of history and 5, 5 and a half acres of ground and 1200 plus rooms or whatever, there's.
• 24:17
  There's going to be disagreements.
• 24:18
  Yeah.
• 24:19
  So, visitors to Hampton Court Palace.
• 24:22
  What would you want a visitor to look at just once next time they go.
• 24:27
  Something that is very much overlooked is, I think, my favorite exterior view of the palace.
• 24:35
  Everyone's familiar with the west front.
• 24:37
  A lot of people are familiar with the very different baroque east front.
• 24:41
  But if you go to the far corner of the rose garden from the palace and look back at the palace, you get this beautiful panorama of the great hall, the Tudor chimneys, the west gate.
• 24:54
  You're seeing the palace more from its practical angle, as it were.
• 24:59
  But it's like a Tudor town standing in front of you with the rose garden in between, which obviously in the summertime is glorious.
• 25:08
  So I think that's.
• 25:09
  That's something that I'd like more people to see.
• 25:11
  Yeah.
• 25:11
  Is that view from the rose garden.
• 25:13
  It's that old adage of stop and look up, isn't it?
• 25:16
  Absolutely.
• 25:17
  You know, just take a moment.
• 25:18
  Just stop what you're doing.
• 25:20
  Because it.
• 25:21
  It's all too tempting to.
• 25:22
  To rush around.
• 25:23
  I want to see everything.
• 25:24
  Absolutely.
• 25:25
  But just to take a moment to take it all in.
• 25:27
  Yeah, it's.
• 25:28
  It's.
• 25:29
  Yeah.
• 25:29
  Very good thing to do.
• 25:30
  It.
• 25:30
  It does.
• 25:30
  It takes time.
• 25:31
  That's the other thing with.
• 25:32
  Yeah, it can be quite depressing when people are going in.
• 25:36
  They're just ticking a box.
• 25:37
  Yeah.
• 25:38
  Coming full circle to your amazing tour, your new tour, that applies to outside as well, because the bridge is a means to get from A to B.
• 25:47
  But to stop on the bridge and to consider the history and consider the views and what it might have been like then and all the people in that history that have gone through it.
• 25:58
  It applies as much outside the palace as it does inside.
• 26:01
  Yes, yes, very much.
• 26:03
  The palace sits in a landscape.
• 26:04
  Yeah.
• 26:06
  And the two interact.
• 26:07
  Without the palace, very little of what's around there would be there.
• 26:11
  So how can people find this tour that you're about to start?
• 26:16
  When will it start?
• 26:18
  How can people book.
• 26:19
  Tell us the logistics of the tour?
• 26:22
  By the nature of the beast.
• 26:23
  It works much better in the evening because it's a busy area.
• 26:28
  When you're outside, you've got.
• 26:30
  As we've had here today, you've got traffic noise in the background and ambulances and police going past and all the rest of it.
• 26:37
  So it's a little bit quieter in the evening.
• 26:39
  So a summer's evening and next season I will be hopefully throwing it open properly.
• 26:45
  But I think we're not quite into the depths of winter yet.
• 26:48
  So back into September.
• 26:51
  October.
• 26:51
  October, hopefully.
• 26:53
  I think I could still carry on doing them but obviously it's rather weather dependent and I'm fairly waterproof and so long as the people are willing to carry on, I'm generally happy to put up a brolly or just
• 27:07
  carry on.
• 27:08
  So I think if people to get in touch with me directly, I'm quite happy to put the tour on for them.
• 27:14
  I haven't actually offered it on record regular times because it works better with a self selecting smaller group.
• 27:21
  I don't think you could do it with more than 10.
• 27:23
  Okay.
• 27:24
  But I've done it for couples so anything from one or two people to 10 people.
• 27:28
  Fantastic.
• 27:29
  And how can people get in touch with you directly?
• 27:32
  The email address is davidhamptoncourttours.com and they can email me.
• 27:39
  The best thing is if they have a time in mind, email me.
• 27:42
  And if they want to do a daytime one, if I'm available then I'll be happy to make it work.
• 27:48
  Fantastic.
• 27:49
  So the next time visitors to the palace or the Hampton Court area are there, what would you advise them to do?
• 27:55
  I would say one of the things because of the nature of the beast obviously a lot of people come see the palace and go certainly I would advise them to, particularly if they're here towards the end of the
• 28:09
  day, get out into the pubs and restaurants around Hampton Court is very much in a community.
• 28:16
  I've done some tours of the palace recently with small parties of American guests and twice I've ended up in the pub with them afterwards.
• 28:23
  And they don't need to be with me going to the pub, talk to the locals and experience the place as a living thing, as part of, as a landscape and a community.
• 28:34
  In the palace itself, I would say not just obviously they're going to see the Great hall, but when they're in the Great hall, give themselves some time to stop and look at the Abraham Tapestries.
• 28:45
  They're one of the very few sets of tapestries still in the room they were designed to hang in.
• 28:50
  And when they're looking at them, think that if you wanted to use your money to make that sort of powerful statement today through a piece of art, you'd pretty much have to go to Mr.
• 29:02
  Spielberg and say make me a movie.
• 29:06
  They are almost beyond our comprehension today in terms of their importance.
• 29:11
  That's amazing, David.
• 29:12
  Thank you so much for joining me.
• 29:14
  Thank you very much.
• 29:15
  Really interesting.
• 29:16
  Cheers.
• 29:17
  That was David Packer.
• 29:18
  The tour is about an hour and a half.
• 29:20
  You'll take anywhere from one person to 10.
• 29:23
  And it's better in the evening once the traffic has died down.
• 29:25
  There's no list of the dates to pick from.
• 29:27
  You just email him and you sort out a time.
• 29:30
  And that's deliberate.
• 29:31
  It's what keeps it small.
• 29:32
  So email davidhamptoncourttours.com that's in the show notes, so don't worry about writing it down.
• 29:39
  And look, if you've lived around here for years and never once stopped on that bridge, this is your excuse.
• 29:46
  Everybody goes to the Palace.
• 29:47
  The town that grew up around it is free and it's there all the time.
• 29:51
  Thanks again to the businesses in the business club.
• 29:54
  They keep this free for everyone and they keep it local.
• 29:57
  I'm Gareth.
• 29:58
  This has been the Sheppartonian.
• 29:59
  Until next time.
• 30:00
  I'll see you around.