Back in the day people used to insulate their homes with newspapers in the walls and under carpet, so when Debra Arnold moved to Lithgow four weeks ago and started renovations on her new home, she wasn't surprised to find them lining the floor.
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Ms Arnold moved to Lithgow, having spent a year on the Central Coast and 10 years in Wollongong.
"I just bought the house to renovate and I found them in this room [the main lounge room with a fireplace]," she said.
"I had stripped all the other rooms and there were just layers of carpet and lino and stuff but then when I did this room, from the first one I pulled up there was just newspapers everywhere so I thought 'Oh I'm going to keep them."
Ms Arnold then dusted off the newspapers the best she could and kept all the ones that were okay.
"The whole floor was covered with them...I didn't count them but there would be 100 here at least," she said.
The earliest dated one are March 1939 through to January 1940.
"I had read about this happening all the time, you know people finding old newspapers so I wasn't surprised actually, but it was nice because it dated the house for me,"
"I also found these couple [of newspapers] that had a gentleman's name on them so I looked him up as well."
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Ms Arnold said that it was really nice to find the newspapers since they were in such a good condition.
"They aren't in bad condition considering they have been under the floors for 82 years," she said.
Now that her renovations are underway and Ms Arnold has pulled all the asbestos out, she has a plan to sit down and read through the papers.
"Since I'm new to Lithgow it will be nice to see the history of the town I have come to," she said.
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