As bone-chilling as Braidwood's frost was, it never loosened Lenny Walker's grip on the best opportunity of his life.

Even for an orphan they were grim days, helping his two older brothers, Joe and Bobbie, milk 70 cows by hand at 5am and 3pm every day including Christmas.

His gumboots filled with mud until they put some concrete down in the yards.

Worst of all was the bone-chilling cold. ''You'd see the magpies falling out of trees it was that cold,'' Mr Walker said.

The boys were from St John's Orphanage in Goulburn. Their three sisters Sheila, Kitty and Flo, left another orphanage at Kenmore, Goulburn, to work for the dairy's owners, Tom and Mary Coffey, who also ran the Blue Moon Guest Home.

They went to the orphanage after Lenny's mother died at Dalgety when he was seven months old. His father was unable to cope with the children.

Lenny's life as a scrawny 13-year-old among 500 boys at St John's changed when the Coffey's son Lionel left the dairy for St Patrick's boarding college in Goulburn.

''I'd never seen meat in my life. We'd have bread and fat for breakfast [at St John's],'' he said.

Lenny sat down to sausages and eggs with the Coffeys, building his strength for life's hard slog, rewarded by a close friendship with Lionel, who later married Flo. He sadly died in March this year.

Lionel Coffey's son Michael recounted their tight partnership at his father's funeral.

''They worked the dairy together from the 1950s until Dad sold the quota in 1978.

''Dad and Lenny invested blood, sweat and tears over many years turning the dairy into a viable enterprise. No business plan, just guts and sniffing out a bargain.

''They built the farm to what it is today, a farm that has been part of the community for over 100 years.

''One of my greatest memories is riding my bike home from school and being able to hear them arguing while drenching the lambs.''

Years later in hospital, a nurse asked Mr Murphy about Lenny.

''Dad said, 'He is my brother-in-law', and paused and said, 'No, he is my brother, my best friend'.''

The first Coffeys came to Australia to escape Ireland's Great Famine in 1845. They followed the gold rush to Ballarat, not as goldminers but as bakers, and later to Captains Flat and Braidwood.

A noted singer, Mr Coffey could take off Al Jolson, and was grabbed by the police after falling in a creek on the way home from a pub, impersonating Louis Armstrong with Hello Dolly.

He had two race horses. ''Strathallan'', named after the dairy won at 40-1 on the day he didn't back it. That didn't matter given his outlook in life, which he shared near the end with his son while gazing from a Canberra Hospital window into the bush.

''Life is mostly froth and bubbles. Only two things stand like stone: kindness in another's trouble, courage in our own.''

Now 73 and still working, Mr Walker has been at ''Little Strathallan'' for more than 60 years.

He'll see a big clearing sale on Saturday, including the old hammerdrill that pounded and ground chaff for the cows.

An old jail wall still stands from the bushranger era, where the first milking shed was built later to cover the Coffeys' generous jersey cows.