Easter Sunday In York

Inside the courthouse jail

Shackled!

More about Cowaramup Life

Sleeper Cutters

When clearing the land sleeper cutters used to come through and would select fairly straight jarrah trees to fell and cut into sleepers. They used to get one shilling for each sleeper, provided that it was top quality. The sleepers were collected by the Government and stored at each railway siding ready for shipping to Europe or South Africa. A number of timber jetties had been built for sailing ships on this trade, i.e. at Flinders Bay, Hamelin Bay and Busselton. The farmers got a fee per sleeper apart from assisting in clearing their land. These sleeper cutters lived in tents and kept their axes, saws and adzes razor sharp for easier work. They could shave with a broad axe. This lead to competitions for log choppers at the local shows. They had to cut through a log either horizontally or vertically in the quickest time. It just makes one tired to even think about it these days!

Busselton Jetty

At Busselton was the mile long timber jetty with a railway to take sleepers out to the ships. This jetty was and still is very popular for people to walk out and fish from it. Every so often a fire burns a section away and it has to be replaced. The wooden piles get attacked by marine borers such as toredo and limnoria. Copper sheeting and charing is sometimes used to reduce the rate of deterioration. Steel piles will last longer but this option was not available originally.

Today a little tourist train runs along the jetty.  John is seen here chatting to the driver.

Homestead Buildings

Around the house were various buildings – cowshed, chicken shelter, pigsties, dairy, machinery shed and hayshed. Foxes would steal chicken at night so they had to be protected by a high fence. The attached sketch shows roughly where these buildings were but not a trace of them is left. This was perhaps one of the better laid out farms in the area. The buildings were mostly built of timber and corrugated galvanised iron while the pigsties and cowsheds had split jarrah walls covered with  whitewashed hessian bags to keep the weather out.

Garden

My mother used to keep a very good garden for fruit, vegetables and flowers such as rambling roses, holyhocs, larkspurs, gladioli, lupins, stocks, etc. There is a photo of the front of this garden. There were wattle trees but the indigenous black wattles grew too big.

Ann’s Accidents

While on the farm my sister managed to break a leg when a strainer post fell off a cart.

She was run over by one of the rare cars in Cowaramup coming up a steep slope without much visibility. Miraculously she was not injured. The car was driven by a Main Roads Engineer who was eternally grateful that she was not injured.

Group Settlement Scheme Generally

This was run by the State Agricultural Bank, later the Rural and Industries Bank and now Bankwest. The bank would lend farmers money to clear the land, build all the necessary sheds and fencing, acquire plant and stock etc. to get going. They also paid a wage of 50 shillings a week while this was going on.

The intent was that the farmers would finally repay all the money lent to them and they would receive freehold title. This happened very rarely because the holdings of 160 acres proved to be too small and the fertility of the soil was poor before the discovery of trace elements some 30 years later. The Bank was always trying to get its money back and sent inspectors out to see what was going on because many farmers were getting an income that could not be readily policed. The basic income from sales of cream was quite apparent but that from pigs, chicken, potatoes, onions etc.. was harder to establish.

The Bank even tried to cut off the farmers’ income at the butter factories but they would not cooperate. When the inspector (John Vickery) came the children would be sent away, Dad would have gone missing, and Mother got him a cup of tea.

Even though it was the heart of the depression, we were never hungry or cold and really enjoyed the life as kids. In the end however it was not really viable and we were never going to get that freehold title, so the family packed up, sold its stock and walked off as most of the other farmers nearby had done before. There was also the question of us going to a proper school fairly soon.

Food and Meals

We naturally have fond memories of the various foods my mother used to provide.

Breakfast in the winter usually was rolled oats and in the summer cereal such as “weeties”. We sometimes had a cooked breakfast such as scrambled eggs, bacon or potatoes from the night before now called “hash browns”. Toast was available cooked on top of the cast iron stove or on coals with the oven doors open.

For lunch we were often out in the fields so we had sandwiches, cheese and fruit.

Also we would have salad with lettuce and lots of olive oil and salt. This was instead of cod liver oil which my mother was very keen on to keep away chest infections? To this day I enjoy lettuce, olive oil and salt.

For our evening meal we would have a roast once a week at least and sometimes chicken, rabbit, lamb or pork. We often had Irish stew and occasionally dumplings. Fish was good when we could get it. We did not have any fridge so we kept things cool in a Coolgardie Safe which was a container with water in the top and flannels over the side so water could evaporate and keep the inside cool. Butter we kept in a semiporous container for the same reason. Incidentally we kids made our butter using mature cream which we beat for several minutes with a paddle until it thickened and turned into butter. We could make cottage cheese from the same type of cream using a muslin bag.

I don’t remember having pasta, pizza, Indian or Chinese food. We always had plenty of vegetables and fruit from our garden including potatoes, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, beans, peas, carrots, apples, plums, oranges and apricots in season. Rice was popular but had to be purchased, also sago, tapioca and vermicelli.

I always liked sweets better than the main courses. My favourites were apple pie, blackberry and apple pie, bread and butter pudding, rhubarb and rice pudding and rolly polly pudding. We used to make jam and marmalade. Honey was sometimes got from a wild hive with some difficulty but mostly from a large drum in the local shop using a treacle valve.

 

Sometimes we could catch jilgies in the creek in winter time, which we would boil up in a tin. We could catch parrots using an upturned box propped up on a stick at one end. When the parrots were inside busily eating wheat, you could pull the prop out. However the parrots were far too tough to eat so parrot pie was a myth for us. We never ate kangaroos but some people did.

We never had sheep because they used to suffer with footrot in the wet climate at that time. Occasionally we would have a few goats, ducks, geese and turkeys but some of our neighbours were keener on them than we were. We used to make ginger beer and hop beer every so often. You needed a living yeast plant in those days and now and again a bottle would explode. We had plenty of eggs for boiling, scrambling or poaching. Dad used to draw pictures on the eggshells on a Sunday.

Pets

I have mentioned the kangaroo and the magpie earlier. The magpie used to steal bright things like coins and jewellery and take them up into the nearest tree. However when he started to sing about his success, he would drop his loot and we could often find it. Some people could teach a magpie to talk but we never did that.

We also had a pet owl  (mopoke) for a bit. He liked worms and mice but he was asleep during the day. We also had a pet possum but there was the same problem. You could catch a possum with a stick about 4 feet long laid against a tree with a wire snare.

Aboriginals

Regarding indigenous Aboriginal people, we never saw any on any of the farms near us.

We never saw them in Cowaramup or Margaret River. Maybe they retreated to virgin bushlands as the clearing took place. Originally they must have been about in numbers because the early surveyors used a lot of Aboriginal names. Cowaramup was not one of them. This relates to a type of parrot.

Blacksmith

There was always a blacksmith in the town. He would make horseshoes and rims for cartwheels among other things. As kids we used to like watching his forge and him hammering out bits of metal on his anvil and quenching things that had to be hardened.

Many farmers had a small forge and bellows for jobs around the farm.

Christmas Time

We had to leave a hole in the canvas awnings to the front veranda so Santa Claus could get in and try not to wake up too early. We were also allowed a drink of port and lemon on Christmas Day. We always had a Christmas Tree. Sometimes we would invite someone who had nowhere to go for Christmas dinner.

Other Activities

We would enter produce such as clover, oats and maize in the local Agricultural Show and sometimes we won. As kids we used to put in examples of hand writing and drawing often beating the other kids from the local school. There were competitions for our father such as “stepping the chain” i.e. pacing out  and marking what you believed to be one chain (100 links, or 66 feet or 22 yards). The nearest to the right distance would win.

Then there was ploughing the straightest single furrow with a horse and single share plough. There was also “tossing the sheaf” of hay with a pitchfork over a bar which would be raised progressively. There were log chops for those good with an axe.

We used to make cricket balls from the very hard root of the blackboy trees – now grass trees. There were lots of zamia palms which were poisonous to cattle so we used to kill them by spiking with a crowbar and putting half a jam tin full of kerosene in the hole.

Our two draught horses were Judy and Bess. We used to ride them bareback because we had no saddles. We would take them as far from the haystack as we could and let them race back for a feed. Sometimes they were not easy to catch in the morning but they enjoyed working.

What Happened to the Farm?

It was many years before I visited the Cowaramup area again but our old farm was amalgamated with the block immediately to the west and run by a family called Dempster (Bill).  Our house was removed and combined with the house next door.

With the discovery about adding trace elements to the soil, many of these farms became more viable.  Originally the more gravely soils on the hilltops were not worth cropping but with trace elements and deep ploughing you could crop almost 100% of our old farm and the ones around it. Nevertheless the return from dairy farming (even with mechanised milking) was not that good as the twentieth century progressed. There was a move to beef cattle which was not as labour intensive. Then there was a big move to planting and harvesting bluegums to make woodchips for export and papermaking. Everyone wanted to get on that bandwagon and our old farm was planted wall to wall with bluegums. They seemed to grow fairly well, but the only ones making any money from the scheme were the accountants and stockbrokers.

Next thing all the bluegums were ripped out before they had reached the first harvest and the whole area planted in vines for winemaking. This seems to be going O.K. but that industry has also been having its problems. So that is what you now see on Miamup Road - vines as far as the eye can see.  Originally we used to grow a few table grapes on the old property and were possibly the first ones to do so in the area, long before the Cullens, Cullities and John Gladstone. 

Current map of the area.
 The green shaded part shows a modern subdivision.  Our property is number 1688. coloured yellow.  It adjoins Miamup Road to the north.  It is now planted with vines, which we think supply grapes to Madfish Winery.

More Group Settlement Memories

Cowaramup Bay

The chicken needed shellgrit for their eggs, so every so often we would take the horse and sulky down to Cowaramup Bay (now Gracetown). We could gather shellgrit on the beach there, as well as having a picnic and a swim. No one ever had a boat then. The rocks at Cowaramup Bay were favourite spots for fishermen but every odd winter someone would get swept off by a “king” wave. More successful ones would often bring a large groper in the back of his cart past our place and cut off a piece to sell to us or trade something else. This bay was strikingly beautiful as everyone knows.

School

My sister and I never went to school in Cowaramup. We could have done so as one of the teachers, Gypsy Bradshaw, used to drive her sulky past our place. Our mother preferred to teach us herself using the Correspondence Scheme now known as Distance Education. In those days of no radio it worked using a written assignment system. It worked very well provided the mother herself was fairly competent.

As a result of this we had very little contact with other children except at weekends. We had very little play equipment. Some I remember were swings, scooter, pram wheel to bowl along, old car tyre the same, football, cricket gear, marbles, draughts, cards, ludo and chequers. The only music we had was a windup gramophone (HMV) with a bell shaped amplifier system.

Radio

There was no radio and no telephone at first. Around 1934 a few people made their own crystal sets using a small crystal, a coil wound around a cardboard salt container, a condenser and an earphone. There was no amplifier but you could hear it. Soon after came a radio with valves and home made batteries made out of half beer bottles filled with acid and electrodes. This technology came from a neighbour called Cock, a skilled musician but no farmer and a book called The Outline of Wireless.

For this to work you needed the biggest possible aerial. My father used twin karri saplings snigged out of the bush,  spliced and bolted together, and pulled up against the house at one end and hung in to a large gum tree at the far end. (10m high by 25 m long). This worked well and let us hear the  Test Cricket Series of 1934 in England when Bradman was in his prime. A horse was used to raise the aerial against the house and nearly pulled it right over the top of the house.

Firefighting

We had plenty of hands on experience fighting bushfires with wet bags and branches. We got to know about backburning, firebreaks and keeping out of the way when the wind changed. You would see forest fires coming for days so you could get prepared and hope it didn’t come your way. My sister and I used to guard the haystack and put out any sparks before they took hold.

In the bush around the farm there were plenty of snakes especially with fires about so we grew up without much fear of them. We also had a dog which helped to keep the snakes away from the house and surrounds.

Pigs

In a storm a dead tree fell on our pigsties and happened to fall on a pet sow almost killing her outright. My mother had to kill the sow by cutting its throat with a kitchen knife. This was very sad for all of us. We cut up the carcass and gave away a lot to neighbours. We salted the part we kept.

On the subject of pigs, we used to enter them in the local show and often won prizes. On one occasion after the show we had no transport available and my sister and I had to drive two very large pigs about 2 kms from the showground to our home. They did not like this very much and needed a lot of careful prodding to get them out of any waterholes along the way.

Sunday School

My mother was careful to see that we had a good Christian upbringing so we went to the Sunday School in town every week. This Anglican church in Cowaramup is still standing and in good repair. We had an attendance book in which we got a blue stamp every week and a red stamp every seventh week. We used to get dressed in shoes and socks. The horse and sulky would be hitched to a rail by my parents until the school was over.

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Bush Nurse

My mother, being a trained nursing sister, had a set of basic medical gear including scalpels and stitching equipment so she acted as bush nurse. The nearest doctor was at Margaret River some 15 kms away. There was of course no telephone to the farms. She had no anaesthetic apart from brandy so lancing boils etc. were tough operations. She also acted as midwife on some occasions.

Wildflowers

The area around us was endowed with beauteous wildflowers including kangaroo paws, boronia and orchids of all kinds. We developed a good eye for spotting them. We used to  put small flowers in potatoes and send them to our relatives in England. They used to send us knitted jumpers and other clothes.

Rabbits

Around 1930 rabbits came to the South West from the Eastern States despite the Nullarbor Plain and several rabbit proof fences from coast to coast north/south. We used to trap them with special rabbit traps laid carefully at the entry to their burrows. The rabbits were very good to eat when my mother cooked them.

Development around Burswood

This photo was taken from the Windan Bridge and shows our apartment block (2nd from the left in the row of 5).

A closer view of the stadium construction site, with piles being driven:

John is 90!

Not looking too bad for a young bloke

On 23 February 2015 John celebrated his 90th birthday. On Sunday night, a big family dinner was held at Matilda Bay Restaurant, hosted by Sue and Geoffrey. This is John's speech that night:

    

Seems not long ago we were mostly here for my 80^th.

Sadly Don can’t make it this time nor Julie from 2003.

I want to say just a few words about my fortunate life from being a two year old migrant on to an uncleared dairy farm at Cowaramup in 1927.

After a varied childhood education, I got a job with the Public Works Department first as a messenger, then cadet draftsman, cadet engineer, engineer and then design engineer.

My first big design job was the raising of C.Y O’Connor’s Mundaring Weir in 1948- 51.

This was followed by a number of dams in the South West of W.A., a fellowship from the University of W.A. and much international travel and study.

In 1956 – 59 there was the design of the Ord River Dams and irrigation area.

In mid 2013 there was a 50 year anniversary in Kununurra of the opening of the Ord River Diversion  Dam.  My sister Ann, Geoffrey, Susan, Lindsay and their boys were able to attend which was a rewarding experience. I was the designer and together with

Peter Knight of Clough Contractors, we now have our names on a separate plaque.

It was a long wait indeed.

Later I was particularly pleased with conceiving and designing the Onslow Salt Jetty

and dredged channel some 10 kms long both of which have proved cyclone resistant.

My last ambition in engineering is to see a jetty and offshore island built just south of Exmouth. This was a job Don had worked on as a Loadout Facility for limestone but it has now had a Supply Base of 5 berths added for the oil and gas industry. While it has been long delayed there is now strong support for it in the town of Exmouth. It will be 800 m long and people will be able to use it for recreation when vessels are not being serviced. A harbour masters office should have some spare accommodation!

I am able to watch a coliseum ***  being built near us at Burswood.  It is a near replica so far as can be seen but so far no place for wild animals, prisoners and Christians.

My final good fortune is to have survived  open heart surgery in 1997 and bowel cancer surgery 3 years ago. The cancer has not come back and recent angiograms show the bypasses are still going well.  I owe a lot to medical science and heritage.

Thanks to Susan and Geoffrey for arranging this function.

Thanks to all the rellies for coming.    

Thanks to Margaret for looking after me.

                                                                                                           John

L to R: Margaret, John, Ann, Ellie and Claire

Sue, John and Shelley

Georgia, Jackson, Sue and Shelley

Geoffrey, John and Paul

Geoffrey and John

Ben and Jackson

Disey and Joel

On Friday night John, Margaret, Claire and Ellie went to South Perth to have dinner at InContro and enjoyed a meal of various tapas selected by the chef.

Claire at Incontro Restaurant

Beforehand we strolled by the Swan River for a few photo opportunities.

Ellie sent John a nice card.  Here is what was inside:

L to R:  John, Claire, Ellie, Margaret

*** From our balcony at Burswood, we continue to watch construction going on.  To our right is the new stadium (visible as piles of sand at the moment).  To our left is Packer's 6-star hotel and casino  (where the two cranes are working).