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.