The Osborn Girls

THE OSBORN GIRLS

 

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    Other than the brief opening family history below, all of what follows is taken from the individual memoirs of the four youngest Osborn girls – Ella, Una, Mavis, and Elsie – as separately written by them as old ladies in the 1990s, of their childhood and early teens, and with an amazing recall of detail.

    It's not a new story - memories of times past on a pioneering farm block have been done before, and it's one more insight into the culture of 'salt of the earth' farm people between the wars - but this one is of 'our' people, and told by four farm girls each with only two years between them, of how they saw their lives as children and teenagers, and through some good times and some pretty bad times. Times that are gone and - you can only hope! - will never return.

    They’ve been edited as little as possible as this is a history of life and times now long gone – or about two life and times really - the one before, and the one after, their move to Eyre Peninsula, both being quite different. And while I’ve cut out some of the repeated anecdotes, I’ve kept anything that gives any added slant to an incident.

    Also mentioned here is their elder sisters Marge, Cora, and Vera, and their two brothers Cliff and Harold.

 

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    The girls’ father was Herbert Bertram (‘Bert’) Osborn (born 1876 Kersbrook), and their mother was Margaret Atkinson nee Gray (born 1876 at The Glynde).

    Bert’s parents were John Ash Osborn (born 1842 in Devon Eng, emigrated with his parents to SA in 1855 to live in the Kersbrook area) and Elizabeth Paynter (born c1842 Cornwall Eng, emigrated with her parents to SA c1852 to live in the Kersbrook area). They married in Kersbrook in 1866. Elizabeth died in 1882 and John re-married in 1886.

    Margaret’s parents were Isaac Robert Gray (born 1856 in the Glynde area) and Elizabeth nee Pearce (born 1856 at Langhorne Creek). They married in Adelaide in 1875, moved to Victoria c1885, then back to Adelaide in 1920.

    Others mentioned are...

...Bert’s brothers Richard ‘Dick’ Osborn (married Elizabeth Crispin), and James ‘Jim’ Osborn (married Nellie Breeze), and their families, who lived by them at Kersbrook,

...also his sisters Rachael (married Robert Chamberlain), and Ethel (married Edward Warner),

...two of Elizabeth Pearce’s sisters – Lucy and Tamson – and one of her brothers, Tom Pearce (‘Mine Host’ of “We Of The Never Never” fame),

...Isaac Robert Gray’s father William ‘Dobbin’ Gray,

...the Parkers, who lived next door to the Osborns at Yaninee, as one of Bert’s sisters (Edith) married Walter Parker, and among their kids were the girls’ cousins Cyril, Wally, and Les.

 

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MUM & DAD

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ELLA...

    Dad was born in his father’s and mother’s place on the eastern side of the Kersbrook-to-Chain-Of-Ponds Rd. The house is now completely gone with a later brick home in its place. There are a line of non weeping willows and poplars down along a “creek” on the southern side of the property, which used to be mulberry trees, one old one only remaining close to where the creek crosses the road. The property passed to his older brother Jim.

    The family attended the Church Of Christ chapel in Kersbrook - which is still standing - and many of the Osborns and their friends and neighbours and cousins etc are buried in the Kersbrook cemetery, my infant brother Reginald included.

    Dad once said he never liked his stepmother, his Mum died when he was just five.

    Dad went to Milbrook school, and used to fish for perch in the Millbrook Reservoir - probably illegally - with a Bill Murphy.

    Dad and his siblings were quite close, and all stayed together at Kersbrook, and Dad worked on orchards as a young man, but him and his brother Dick went to the Southeast for a while - cutting posts and/or as fencing contractors. He told us once that he woke up one morning with a snake creeping over his chest while sleeping rough.

    My Mum said, as a girl, she sold flowers in Melbourne for sixpence a bunch in Collins St, and other main streets. She came in from Seville on the train with her Mum or Dad and when her basket was empty her parents picked her up. Her parents grew flowers, but they came in to town to sell other produce.

    Later my Mum worked for a wealthy family locally in Seville, where she was a house maid, but they also had several other servants. After she came back to Adelaide – she was about 18 - she worked for Revd. Eric Ingamall at the Methodist Church at Payenham.

    It could have been that Dad was doing contract work in the Payneham area when he met Mum, and I think they went together for about two years - she had an engagement ring - before getting married, and when courting they’d go for a walk around Payneham, which was then all market gardens, but also some scrub still.

    When Dad got his ‘block’ - as they were called, about 50 acres? - at Kersbrook, he and Mum built the house, sheds, pigsties, a toilet half way up towards the shed, and planted apples, pears, plums, a large strawberry patch, a couple of quince trees, and two lovely Christmas peaches... (and made it) a self sufficient farm in milk, eggs, butter, cream, pork, bacon, mutton, vegetables, and fruit, for a growing family. Mum always had all the vegetables we needed in the patch that was ‘her garden’, down by a small creek on the bottom block.

    My Mum told me once that Dad used to go to Adelaide in the horse and buggy sometimes, and Mum with him a couple of times, and he’d always stop at the “Maid & Magpie” Hotel at Payneham to ‘feed the horse’.

    She also said that they also stopped off at “The Morning Star” pub at Chain of Ponds for a beer on the way home from market. But Mum would never go in as “Pubs weren’t the place for respectable women”, but when his brother Jim arrived, his sister-in-law Mary Langley was with him, and she called out to Mum to come in for a drink, but on a polite but firm “No thanks” from Mum, Mary Langley called back “Ah you miserable shit!” and went in on her own. 

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UNCLES, AUNTS, GRANDPARENTS AND GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

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ELLA...

    My older sister Vera said our great-grandfather ‘Dobbin’ Gray had a big voice that frightened the heck out of her as a kid, especially when he said his loud “Good Mornings”.

    He apparently had a large mulberry tree and a fig tree at his house, and Mum stayed there once or twice, but she only remembered the old boy’s whiskers, and him sitting up in bed drinking beer out of a stein. But she spoke fondly of him as he used to help her, and let her stay there when any of us kids were in hospital in the city.

    My Mum’s Dad Isaac Gray (I heard that he and great-grandma had to get married!) built the old Kersbrook school house, as he was a builder by trade, and also their home in Seville when they moved there. It was all poor people around the Grays at Seville, and they had to clear big timber in the beginning.

    My Mum said she “didn’t like her Dad”, said he took everything she earned - which might have been why she came back to Adelaide seperately, as an 18 year old.

    My Dad told the story - it was to other blokes, but overheard by me and some other kids - that Isaac Gray was in the Salvos. One night he was done up in his uniform, marching up and back, up and back, and reprimanded someone on the street for smoking - “If the good Lord had wanted you to smoke he’d have given you a chimney!”, and the man said - “Yeah, well if the good Lord meant you to march up and back at night he’d have put a light in your arse!” My Mum was horrified that Dad’d repeated the story, but us kids couldn’t wait to tell all the kids at school!

    Mum told me that her parents came back to SA from Victoria in the early 1900s and settled at Seaton Park, and once a year for several years Mum would take us four girls to stay with them for a week. They had quite a large strawberry patch and other vegetables that they sold.

    I spent some time with both of my grandparents Isaac and Elizabeth Gray. Isaac was a horrible old man, authoritarian, picky with kids. He sold vegetables at Seaton Park after coming back from Victoria, and always said to us he knew exactly how many strawberries were stored in his shed!

    Elizabeth used to to go to the poultry sheds not far away to pack eggs, and she would be given any that were cracked etc, and for some reason us girls thought they were the best eggs ever. We all loved Grandma Gray, she was a quiet “calming” sort of a Gran, but we were none of us fond of Grandpa, he was a queer man we thought, used to sit at the table and rattle his spoon against his tea cup when he wanted something, or thought Grandma wasn’t looking after him.

    I ran foul of him one Sunday morning before church when he found me cleaning my shoes, and told me I’d sure be on my way to hell doing such a thing on the Lord’s Day. Somehow I never felt fondly towards him after that.

    Elizabeth on the other hand was a dear lady, told us kids stories, sitting on her lap. I remember Aunt Lucy – grandma’s sister - always wore a ruff collar and high hair, and another sister, Aunt Tamson, lived at Aldgate and had to harness up a horse and cart twice a day to drop off and pick up her husband at the Adelaide Railway Station.

    My dad also thought Elizabeth Gray was “a lady”, but he couldn’t stand Isaac either, so he didn’t go with us to visit.

    My mum liked my dad’s dad John Ash Osborn, she thought he was a nice old man. She also said that my dad’s mother Elizabeth Paynter “had a lot of sadness in her life”. He spoke very kindly of her, but he never knew her as he was only five when she died. He never really warmed to his stepmother. His sister Rachael didn’t like her stepmum either but no-one ever said why.

    Our great-uncle Tom Pearce visited Kersbrook once, when I was about seven or eight, a nice old man. He brought us a big bag of sweets. He had a moustache and whiskers and a wiry head of hair, a bushman, sitting and talking with Dad by the fire.

 

UNA...

    Great Uncle Tom Pearce used to come once a year in his car, and would take us all on an outing. He told us “When the overland telegraph was being built I swam the Katherine River at night with the poles to get them across, as the crocodiles were less likely to attack than in the day time.”

 

MAVIS...

    We kids loved Grandma Gray and all that went with a visit - a ride in a train, a visit to Aunt Rachel and her family, cousins who were as ready for mischief as we were. We'd go to Mum’s Aunt Lucy's grand house and garden. She was a very aristocratic lady, kind, but in our eyes very old. Una always maintained that she provided “more doyley than food” - not surprising really. Grandma didn't have young appetites to satisfy generally.

    Grandma took us to the Baptist Sunday School. She was the Superintendent. They had a sand tray with all sorts of interesting animals, palm leaves, eastern style houses and people with which we “lived” the story. Grandpa was always quoting Jeremiah to us and prayed on his knees a great deal while we were there. Now I understand why, imagine how much fun it was with four little lively girls disturbing his peace. Grandma was always gentle and quietly helpful. I think our Mum was more like her father, though she always denied it.

    Grandma Gray gave birth to thirteen children - Grandpa was a builder by trade during the day, and an Empire builder by night, obviously! Now that I am old I think about Grandma's life. I've discovered that Grandma was pregnant with Mum – their first - when she married Grandpa, and her only sixteen years of age. I wonder how they found the opportunity, they were so chaperoned in those times. She was caring, gentle and capable, but he walked rough shod over her with his constant demands.

    Mum told us the story of Grandma’s faith in time of adversity. When they were younger and had quite a big family still, she gathered them around her one night and explained that there was no food for tomorrow, so they were to ask God to provide when they were saying their prayers that night, as she had no money. The next morning, early as usual, she got up and boiled the kettle, then heard a whispered “Mrs Gray, Mrs Gray", and there over the back fence was her neighbour with lots of food, as they had had a party the night before and all this food was left over. But she had to bring it in quietly because her husband didn't believe in helping the less fortunate, but she thought the children may enjoy it. God provided through a caring person.

    The last few years we lived at Kersbrook we often spent a week with Grandma and Grandpa Gray at Seaton Park. On the day we were going to our beach picnic I remember my dismay and embarrassment when Mum ordered me to run ahead and tell them that she was coming, a bit late, carrying a dress basket containing enough clothes to last us the week, instead of the one lunch box we were allowed on a very crowded lorry. My face was so red.

 

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KERSBROOK – HOME & FAMILY

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ELLA...

    I was born on the 3rd December 1912 at Kersbrook in the house my parents built, their seventh child, after Marge, Reginald, Cora, Harold, Vera, and Cliff. It was a small place on the right hand side of Morgans Rd travelling towards its dead end.

    Our house was fronted by orchards originally but now it’s all cleared to pasture for cattle, and the creek is just a series of dams along a depression, but it was much more defined back then, and there were no dams on it, just an occasional well for summer water.

    The house was simply two front rooms under a cross gable and front bullnose verandah with grape vines plus a set of rooms with a long skillion roof at the back, with large sheds up on the top of the hill behind.

    I was named after Mrs Ella Pitman, and Mum always thought Dad fancied her! Mum wanted my middle name to be ‘Caroline’ but it was actually registered as ‘Coraline’, and Mum was always really annoyed with him over it.

    My first recollections are being in the Adelaide Children’s Hospital when I was about four, with chicken pox, measles, mumps, and whooping cough, all at the same time. And Dad was in the Royal Adelaide Hospital at the time, having contracted enteric fever. Several older children also had the same problem, and Mum was pregnant with Mavis, so it must have been a very bad time for her. Dad was never really well after that although he was always a busy man.

    Mum stayed at Payneham with her grandfather ‘Dobbin’ Gray at this time as there was no transport from Kersbrook to visit the different hospitals, but as we were discharged we also had time at Payneham recuperating. I remember Mum taking me to see Dad in hospital, and Mum putting long socks on me and told me not to show Dad my legs as she had been rubbing them daily with olive oil, and the result was I had all black hair on my legs.

    Mum had all of us kids at home, except Elsie who was born at the Queen Vic, as Aunt Ethel had died previously at home giving birth, and the baby also died.

    I remember my brother Cliff and I went with Dad, and a friend who had recently purchased land, to bring Mum and our new baby Elsie home - our first ever ride in a motor car! We were given 3d to have ice cream, but we ended up giving it to the nurse so we could, as she told us, take this baby home with us. Elsie as a baby had lovely blonde curly hair, and her and Una always had lovely skin, Mavis and I were the plain ones.

    Both Mum and Dad worked long hard hours to support the family, but besides doing the garden he used to go and contract stone cutting, which meant swinging a very heavy sledge hammer all day cracking stones to make the roads. He also went pruning in bigger fruit gardens during the season, which meant he was away all week, and Mum used to take the horse and buggy to bring him home for weekends, and take him back Sunday night along with food etc for him as he used to “batch” when away.

    When Dad did our own pruning we had to go along the rows and pick up the cuttings and break them up small enough for the fireplace, and a bundle was kept on the end of back verandah to keep us kids in obedience - they really stung on bare legs! And there were birds to be kept off the strawberry patch, rewarded by a few strawberries with cream, and we all took our turn at cleaning the school, which paid 2/6 a week.

    We had a cow, fowls, and ducks, and a pig always ready for winter bacon, which meant ham, sausage, and lard. What a time “pig day” was, the copper was boiled, Dad and Mum and our Uncle or a neighbour helping out with various chores. We kids kept well away from it all, but the hams and bacon etc was always the best ever.

    Mum also had jobs cleaning the local Methodist Church every Saturday afternoon, with one or two of us four girls going with her to do little jobs to help, travelling always in a buggy or dray and our old horse called Polly.

    Dad’s brother Dick lived next to us, and he had about the same acreage, also fruit trees etc, and to supplement his income he used to go wood cutting as pruning wasn’t his line. He was married to Elizabeth, and we all loved her, she was such a placid lady, always made biscuits with sugar on them, which we kids loved. Ours never had any topping. Their family was Arnold, Rita, Hilda, Hurtle, and Victor. We regularly all played and walked to Kersbrook school together.

    My Dad’s brothers and his married sisters all had properties around Kersbrook as well. His sister Aunt Rachel and her family lived close, also Uncle Jim, and we’d all get together at our different homes for tea sometimes, and as all of Dad’s family seemed musical there was always lots of singing. When we visited Uncle Jim’s he had a piano that he played, and Dad played violin and organ, but never had any lessons as far as I know, none of that family did. Uncle Dick had an organ too, and always the last song sung for the night was “God be with you till we meet again”.

    We had a large lucerne tree not far from the house, where us kids had a play house, and when friends came to visit the kids would all play together under “our” tree. I remember one obnoxious boy of about 10 climbed to the top branch and peed down onto our “holy” ground, but I don’t remember being offended by him exposing himself.

    Our parents were strict with us, and I don’t remember birthdays being any celebration, and we kids had both happy times and hard times. Xmas was always new socks (white cotton), a bag of boiled sweets, a large box of eats for Xmas dinner, including chicken.

    Every New Year there was a family picnic held at Uncle Jim’s, under a massive fig and mulberry tree in their yard. A very long table was put up for lunch, all the aunties cooked and there was always a lovely spread of their various talents in cooking, so much appreciated by all of us. There was all sorts of games for us kids, cricket for the adults, races etc, and we always looked forward to these get-togethers.

 

UNA...

    I was born Una Florence on Dec 24th 1914 on a fruit block at Kersbrook in the Adelaide Hills.

    In the early years of my childhood I loved to run in furrows my Dad made when he was ploughing our orchard with our horse called ‘Poll’, and to feel love1y Mother Earth between my bare toes.

    Mum and Dad built two stone houses at Kersbrook on our 73 acre block, consisting of fruit trees, strawberries, vegetables, etc. There was also a Flux Quarry out on a back block. We had a horse ‘Poll’, a dog ‘Bob’, and a cow we bought from Mr Morphett who lived by the Methodist Church. My brother and I had to walk her the two miles home to our p1ace, and she gave us a real chase.

    The only time we had cream on our bread and jam was when we kept the cow away from the fruit trees as a treat. I did that job very well.

    Mum made jam, pickles, and chutneys and sold them to the Chain of Ponds Hotel called "The Morning Star" which was demolished when the village went under the reservoir bed.

    My Father helped to dig the Milbrook Reservoir, he also went to the School at Milbrook. Today in dry seasons you can see the school and village in the bottom.

    My Mother milked and seperated our cow’s milk, made 12 lbs of butter some weeks, and sold it to buy our groceries. We also grew strawberries which were sold on a roadside stall for 1/- a lb, and also sold them at cricket and football matches, putting them in a basket and carrying them about 2kms to the sports ground.

    Our days out sometimes was a trip to Lyndoch in a dray to buy a bag of flour from the mill, and we’d have sixpence worth of sweets, which had to last us the month!

    I never knew my parents to buy a loaf of bread, as it was always home made. I made my first batch of bread at about 10 years old and I washed the dishes at 6 years old, standing on a box to reach the tab1e. We children had to wash breakfast dishes, sweep the kitchen and make our bed, with the four of us younger girls sharing a big double bed.

MAVIS...

    I was born on 4th October 1916 at Kersbrook, my parents’ 9th child. During the time of Mum's pregnancy, Dad and the others of the family were hospitalised suffering from enteric fever, diphtheria, and other ailments, and the Health Authority burned most of the family bedding while they were in hospital as it was thought at the time that they were infected with germs.

    Mum told me that the Churches of Christ at Kersbrook helped her to get enough back together to make the necessary beds up by the time all came home from hospital, and I was born just six weeks after. Because it was thought that Mum would succumb to the fever as soon as I was born, no-one wanted to help out, but Dad's sister Rachel came for the birth, but then had to leave as Uncle Rob was worried about her becoming infected as well.

    Mum was forty years old and must have been weary beyond thinking, with seven living children, mostly still very weak, Reggie had died at 14 months, she had a sick husband, and I arrived a sickly baby! Why she didn't give up - I wonder. My older sisters must have copped a lot of baby caring.

    Dad and Mum had built a four roomed house with front and back verandahs during the time of Mum's fifth pregnancy, the year 1908 was carved in the stonework so Vera tells me. The back verandah was closed in at one end with a fireplace, and my first memory of sleeping was in a double bed with three sisters, Ella, Una and Elsie, Vera sleeping in a single bed in the same room, but Marge and Cora were out to work by this time.

    Cliff slept in the front room when he was home and if Harold was away he would have his bed which was out in that back verandah. Mum and Dad had their room off the ‘Front Room’. The ‘Front Room’ was a special place, it had a little harmonium organ in it, a dresser which held all the special china, vases, glassware, all the things we seldom used, a sofa and a few chairs.

    The kitchen was a large room with an open fireplace in which a big black fountain hung on a chain. That was the hot water supply for the whole family. The camp oven was used for baking etc, but when I remember the bread baking I think we had a stove. Breakfast was porridge with salt - sugar was out of the question – but we had lots of fruit and vegetables, home made bread with dripping or jam.

    We didn't have detergents for easy cleaning, we used home made soap, it also having been made in the same copper. When the soap cooled it was turned out onto a bag, was cut into bars and allowed to dry before using. We made tomato sauce in that copper also, which had to be sieved through a colander. That was another job I hated, it was really hard work to get it through so that it was smooth and fine. We used a flat piece of wood which had been smoothed. It was brown from dark plum jam and red tomatoes.

    I remember the joy when the apple peeler arrived. I don’t know from where, but it was heaven to push the apple on, turn the handle and there was the apple, peeled and cored in one go. So much easier than the constant reminders that we were peeling too thick and wasting too much apple! Then we sliced the apples into round thin rings to dry in the sun.

    The cow had to be minded in the orchard when there was a surplus of grass and those who took on the tiresome task was allowed one slice of bread and jam, WITH CREAM. The cream was skimmed from the milk with a skimmer, a fine round of tin (I think it was) which was perforated all over, because when the milk had stood in a shallow pan for hours the cream rose to the top. So skim milk was all we had to drink. Cream was a very special treat. The cream was carefully skimmed and made into butter to be sold.

    We had dripping for our bread and we were very healthy, and we have all grown old so it didn’t hurt us at all. At Christmas, for breakfast, we were allowed a whole egg, the rest of the year we had to share one, half each. When Dad gave us the top of his egg, we felt very favoured.

    Elsie says she remembers Mum teaching her to darn her socks whilst she was having her turn at minding the cow, and she was only six when we left Kersbrook. I remember Mum telling me that I was a good darner, so I got extra socks to do. Flattery evidently worked in those times too.

    At the bottom of the garden we grew strawberries, beautiful, juicy red strawberries. We had to keep the birds off them as they ripened. They were for sale of course, but there mostly were imperfect ones, which we gladly ate. There was a well down at the bottom of the garden, covered with slabs, and when the pears were nearly ripe we’d wrap one in grass and hide it under the slab. The trick was to see who could get the first ripe pear for the season.

    There was a lovely ‘Cloth Of Gold’ rose in the front garden and a very fragrant Daphne which grew under the kitchen window. Over where their first house had been there grew a large old lucerne tree. Ella tells the story of a boy who climbed this tree and peed down hoping to dampen someone. I guess I must have been too young or I would have remembered that. We were prim little tarts I expect. I just remember loving the chance to climb that tree.

    Mum drove a horse in a "trap" – a four wheeled buggy - with old ‘Poll’ in the shafts. We “four little girls" - as Mum spoke of us - were supposed to do as we were told, no questions asked or answers given.

    Early in the summer we’d be taken for a beach picnic at Henley. We’d pile onto the back of Mr Frank Fulston's lorry, and we sat on boxes. It's a wonder he arrived with us all intact. What excitement there was as the day drew near. That Gorge Road has so many bends, it's a wonder he didn't lose a few of us.

    At the beach we were allowed an ice-cream, and Elsie says we were given threepence each. We others would have a penny one, one at a time, but Una would have one big one. I just remember how really wonderful that ice-cream was. We went in the water to “bathe” as we'd say, and what a sight our bathers were. Neck to knee, made of cotton which revealed all. Men on one side of the jetty, ladies on the other. I remember the scandalised whispers if anyone dared to swim together.

    My first memory is of Elsie, who was at crawling stage getting into the potatoes and onions, which were kept in the bottom of a ‘safe’ in the kitchen. I hauled her out of it as I recall. I am a year and ten months older than she is so I must have been about two and a half. Of course there was no refrigeration then so we had these ‘safes’, which simply had perforated front and sides to allow air circulation.

    Every so often we’d have a family singsong. No-one had been taught music but one or more in each family would play by ear, very capably too. And if we looked like nodding off, Mum would wash our face in cold water to wake us up again. A stranger looking in on us would have probably thought "what a motley lot", we sure had our weaknesses but there was a real bond there.

    Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Dick and family lived on an adjoining block, and we had a stile on the fence so we could visit by the shortest route. I remember that Uncle Dick used to say "Yairs, yairs," frequently for no reason that we could figure, and our cousin Cyril Parker could mimic him perfectly.

    Aunt Lizzie did her baking under a half closed-in verandah at the back of their house, we could smell the lovely biscuit aroma on biscuit making day and loved an excuse to visit. Her biscuits were large and sweet. That sprinkle of sugar on the top was a real joy. She was a very kind lady and we loved her all her long life.

    We walked to school with her kids, one and a half miles through the scrub. The Reeds and Biddles children went too. In winter it rained and rained, and there was no plastic raincoats then, we just struggled through the puddles and slush under thick, heavy coats trying to keep dry. No question of staying home on a wet day, or we'd have been home all winter.

    Dad used to take me with him on his visits to his brothers and sisters at Kersbrook. I went cracking stones to make roads at times with him, when he was making extra money from doing such jobs before we left the Hills.

    Every year we stripped wattles for bark to sell, we kids used to make our little bundles with great anticipation of money, but I don't remember ever getting any. I expect it was used for things needful. I always had to step it out to keep up when we were walking somewhere but he was very patient when letting we small ones have a turn at reading aloud. He put Elsie and I outside one night for too much giggling, so he didn't take any nonsense from us.

    At Christmas time we were always excited, always hopeful. We hung up our sock on the fireplace in the front room. We’d get a new pair of socks each year and there was no question of losing one because we had to wear socks to Sunday School and their were no good replacements, only very darned ones. For presents we’d get a few sweets, sometimes a cardboard “Ben” doll, so called by us because it had a very receding chin and looked like a neighbours lad of whom we were not fond.

    Two Christmases I remember we had cherries from Cora's boyfriend's garden, and we were over the moon with such luxury. We always had two Christmas puddings, made at the same time and hung for weeks to gain flavour. One was for Christmas Day and one for New Year's day when we had a family picnic, which like our singsongs we had in turn at each family’s place.

    What a great day that always was. The men would swing ropes over a tree limb and make a swing for us, with a bit of board for a seat. We played rounders, had races for everyone, even Mums and Dads. We had a picnic lunch on the grass and boiled our puddings in a kerosene tin, which had been cleaned, over an open fire. We always kept a sharp eye out for Uncle Rob Chamberlain who use to pretend to pinch our pudding when we were not looking. It was a day of fun, homestyle for everyone.

    One nice memory I have is of some relatives of Mum's - through Great-Aunt Lucy’s family - who came to visit us. Their little girl had a kewpie doll, which evidently was a new toy, one of many for her. Her Father persuaded the little pet to give it to Elsie, who obviously had never seen anything like it, even in her wildest dreams. I have always remembered that for years. It was a very kind thing to do, as the child really loved it, but nothing like Elsie did.

    The butcher called once a week, bringing the meat in his little cart with scales on the back, and drawn by a brown horse. To his great embarrassment, Mum asked him if someone had got meat hungry when playing football on the Saturday at Gumeracha. She found out later that he was actually the offending player who had bitten someone else's ear, not vice versa as she had heard.

 

ELSIE...

    I was born on August 11th l9l8, at the (then called) Queens Home Rose Park Adelaide - privileged being the only member to be born in a hospital - and christened Elsie Edith Lucy Osborn. Being the tenth child in the family one would have thought that names would be scarce!

    They tell me I took my first steps aboard a boat which brought Uncle Ebenezer Gray home from war, but my first recollections of life entailed food closely followed by discipline. I had to sit at the table for two and a half hours one day because I wouldn't say grace - needless to say I’m still saying it!

    Our breakfast often consisted of separated milk thickened with plain flour and flavoured with lemon peel. I now have a distinct aversion to lemon peel. However we had good homemade bread and dripping, the usual for school lunches.

    At the tender age of four I developed whooping cough and was put to bed in the lounge under the front window, with a huge fire burning in the grate. I was forbidden to leave that bed, and early in life I'd learned that if Mum said “no" she wasn't kidding, so there I stayed for weeks. During those weeks I learned how a cat mesmerises a bird and catches it, and how a spider seizes its prey. In the early morning I’d watch the sunrise and see it shine through the dew on the spider web showing beautiful colours. On rainy days I’d listen to the constant dripping of the rain falling on the vines entwined around our verandah posts. Sometimes we toasted small potatoes and apples in the coals of ‘my’ fire after the family came home from school. I didn't like being sick but I loved the attention I received during those weeks.

    When I recovered Mum sometimes took me to see her cousin, and I would play with her daughter and her beautiful wax dolls, and the pram, and all the lovely toys a very rich daughter collected. She also had a rocking horse - maybe that's where I learned to ride. Some time after these visits I received a parcel, she had knitted me a lovely blue dress on her knitting machine. I couldn't believe my eyes and I never wanted to take it off.

    Mum taught me to darn socks one day sitting under the apple tree - I must have been five years old as the others were at school - and I really thought I was privileged. Then she said “Now, if you keep the cow off the strawberries till tea time, you can have half a slice of jam and cream”. What a treat!

    Not so my next incident though. Auntie Elsie Woods (after whom I was named) was a lady in a wheel chair. She was crippled with arthritis but she often paid us a visit and would always bring a treat. This time it was fresh herrings in a tin out of which Mum had made sandwiches for lunch. As I was sitting on the stool I fed mine to the dog who came in. I was severely reprimanded but I’m still allergic to fish!

    Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Dick lived in a whitewashed cottage nestled in the scrub near us. It was a homely little place with a big pepper tree beside the back door, and a seat with a bowl to wash one’s hands. A whitewashed dairy stood opposite the house at one end and a lovely shade house at the other end with a purple creeper. The house was adorned with bright patchwork quilts and cushions and the floor with crocheted rugs. It was here I saw my first Christmas tree with candles.

    One Christmas Cora came home and decorated a tree with cherries. That year I received an egg cup for Christmas - from Father Christmas of course. I seem to remember Vera saying she had a red-haired boyfriend. As I'd never seen red hair I was naturally curious. Mavis and I had been put to bed in Mum's bed as Dad was away and Mum had gone to deliver someone’s baby and I got up and peeped through the keyhole and encouraged Mavis to do likewise.

    We became firm friends with our neighbours the Reids, and we'd go out with them and gather mushrooms when they were in season. Each would have a tin billy and a small knife and we were careful not to get them dirty. All of us are still friends. Mum cooked them in butter and milk and we thought they were delicious.

    Mum used to make dozens of bottles of jam and sauce, some of which were sold to the “Morning Star” Hotel at Chain of Ponds, now demolished. These were busy times for us as we had to gather the bottles from the sides of the roads. Dad had made a wire gadget to tightly fit over the widest part of the bottle, which he’d put in the fire till it was red hot, then clamp it over the bottle, hold it tightly for a short while then quickly immerse the bottle in a bucket of cold water placed close by. Hopefully the top would come off smoothly. One of us then filed the rough edges while others gave them their final wash, rinse and dry. The covers were made from brown paper cut around a saucer and sealed with a paste made from flour and water. All this helped our meagre budget.

    I loved to go to Uncle Jim's place and sing around the organ, hear Dad’s sisters and brothers harmonise, and Dad playing an old violin that he had. I loved Uncle Jim but didn't learn he was such a drunkard till much later in life. Many family picnics were held at their place. He was good to we kids as he loved children. Such a shame he treated his first wife badly.

    He had to toe the line when re re-married after Auntie Nell died. When I visited him many years later after he'd had many strokes, he said "I’ve now had a lot of time to think and realise all the rotten things I did to Auntie Nell".

    One day When Mum was out, Una made me sit on a chair while she cut off a full layer of my curls. Though I protested madly, she was not daunted and completed the task. Mum was livid when she arrived home. It took some time for it to grow back to normal.

    Mum's pet name for me was "Duck”! Never did find out if I had webbed feet, loved water, or whether I quacked too much. Could be she may have thought her words to me fell like water on a duck’s back.

    On windy nights when the pears fell from the trees we were allowed to pick them up, and to get them ripe we'd pack them in a box with straw and keep them in the dark in the shed till they turned yellow. Many days were spent collecting Barossa currants which grew on small bushes in the scrub. Cranberries also crept along the ground - little green berries we'd eat by the handful. Beautiful wild flowers grew in the scrub also - pink bells, blue baits, orchids and blue mountains. Of course we loved to find the rare ones.

    One day Cliff was coming home from school and decided to try smoking, so he found a soft root and lit up. At that same moment old lady Crispin, a neighbour, came along and stayed talking. Suddenly a piercing scream broke the silence of the bush. Cliff had put the root behind his back and it had burnt a hole in his trousers. "Yes, yes my boy," she spluttered, "I’ll tell your mother”, and tell her she did. She was always potting on the kids.

    Vera and Mum often took Mavis to concerts to recite. I remember one night in particular when they dressed her in a brown velvet dress with a fawn lace collar, with a beret to match. I did so want to go, if only to watch her, but I had to stay home. She recited "Ranger”. I remember that poem still.

    An old nurse sometimes visited us. We four girls were made to sing to her - it's a wonder she ever came! I heard Mum tell her one day that Mavis was the one who liked nice clothes. In my childish thoughts I vowed that I'd learn to dressmake when I grew up and show her how much I, too, loved nice clothes. Although I never learnt to dressmake, I did succeed in making my teenage clothes and much later made dresses for Mum before she died.

    While still at Kersbrook Mum left we kids with Cliff in charge and went to see Grandma at Seaton Park, and Dad was away at that time. Mum had a half case of lemons hidden somewhere, and Cliff found them and set up a shop in the kitchen. We others thought it great fun to think he was game enough to do this. He made lemonade, then put every half of cut lemon on the table and filled them with sugar. They were the icecreams. Mum came home and caught us, and Cliff got the worst hiding because he was supposed to be looking after us.

    When Cliff left school he got a job at Ray Chamberlains picking fruit. I always thought that he had a dog's life. He rode a bike from Kersbrook to Netley each day.

 

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KERSBROOK – SCHOOL & CHURCH

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ELLA...

    I went to school in the one-room, one-teacher schoolhouse, that had 10-20 children (sometimes down to just 8 kids), which is still standing in Kersbrook and still the centre of the local primary school. We’d meet up with neighbours and Uncle Dick’s kids and all walk to school together, about 1½ miles, cutting across country over the rise (on up our road) and down through a small valley, following a track through the light scrub, across what is now a house property at the end of Osborns Rd (which deadends at the school) over a creek with a small rough footbridge and on to the school.

    Children started school at 7 then, and I loved it, there was some very happy times over the years.

    Our lunches never varied much, dripping and sauce, on lovely home made bread, or some of Mum’s jam, great treat when lettuce and tomatoes were in, and much fruit - apples mainly - as Dad always put 40 fruit cases in the barn to last the year. I can still remember the lovely smell of our barn, up in the roof on wire racks were lots of onions, fruit stacked in boxes.

    We all went to Sunday School and church on Sundays. I didn’t particularly like Sunday School as we had a lady who would insist on singing(?) in her nasal “whingey” voice - “Dropping dropping, hear the pennies fall, everyone for Jesus, we shall have them all”, while one of us went round the room collecting pennies from kids. I disliked it because we girls rarely had a penny to drop, or my sisters and I took turns to have a sole penny. And also in my childish imagination I couldn’t see how Jesus was going to get those pennies that did drop in the box anyway!

    I remember when a local girl got pregnant the church elders gave her a bad time, but Mum stood up and supported her, saying – “It takes TWO people to make a baby! What about the father?!”

    In summer each year the church organised a trip to the beach as a treat for all of us, we were always waiting for that time. Mum would make up a huge extra pudding at Xmas and this would be part of our food for the day.

    Mum would give Una Elsie Mavis and me 3d for ice creams, and Una used to buy one big 3d one and eat it and we other 3 would make it last by buying 3 penny ones during the day. Una used to have a lick off ours, clever thinking.

    I remember all us kids sat on the back of these old Reo trucks and adults sat round us on fruit cases, but how we didn’t fall off is a mystery. But it was wonderful day to to go all the way to Henley Beach and splash in the sea.

MAVIS...

    Mum wouldn't let us start school until we were seven or so. I did grades 1 and 2 in my first year there, and I loved school, once I had sorted Bulty Curtis out. On my first day he fixed it for a lot of kids to surround me and then he stepped in to torment me. Silly boy, I flattened him in quick time so that tidied him up for good. No-one else bothered me after that. Edna Cox was my teacher and I loved her. On Fridays we had sewing lessons starting with a gate to be sewn on cardboard with wool. I still have it.

    We walked one and a half miles to the Church of Christ Sunday School every Sunday. The older ones must have given us a ride very often as Mum told me we started when we were two years old and she taught us songs and poetry at a very early age. When I was only four years old I could recite "Ranger" which is a longish poem. We sang "Nearer My God to Thee" at the Church with all the right actions.

    One night I was walking between Mum and Vera on our way to the Church where I was to recite. Harold was riding his bike home from work and decided to be smart and rode between them. Guess who copped a scratched face and other minor defects!!

    I remember being half way through my recitation - which was going to get Mum lots of praise for teaching her little girl such a piece – and I burst into tears. She was most upset, wanted to know what on earth was I up to!

    Mum used to take us to visit elderly folk and was sure it cheered them to hear us sing. We were all very doubtful about it and did everything we could to get out of it but Mum wasn't anything if she wasn't firm, so sing we did. Old people are mostly kind so I hope we hear nothing of it when all things are made known.

    My Sunday School teachers were Hazel and Stella Fulston. We sang - "Hear the Pennies Dropping, listen while they fall, every one for Jesus, He shall have them all". But sometimes we didn't have a penny, which I hated. But when we had a birthday we sat in a decorated chair, that was so special.

    We loved Anniversary time, songs to sing on the high platform, put up for that time only. We had a visiting speaker who was more exciting than the usual run of the mill. When anyone fell asleep, as sometimes happened at night, they’d be pulled through the back to a waiting rug to finish the program. I still remember the story of Joseph's coat of many colours which a man told us one night. It was a beautiful coat which he drew on the board.

    We had ‘new’ dresses for the Anniversary. Blue ones for Elsie and Una, because they had blue eyes, Ella and I had pink, we were the darker eyed ones, plain old brown eyes. I have just realised that I said we had coloured dresses, that is wrong, we had white dresses with blue and pink ribbons and sashes, white socks of course, and whatever shoes we happened to have at the time.

    On the Monday night we’d have a tea meeting. What a glorious feast that was. We even had icing on cakes. That was held in the Kersbrook Hall, then we sang some more and walked home asleep being led by a kindly hand of someone older.

 

ELSIE...

    After I turned six years I went to school at Kersbrook till the December holidays. I was kept in the first day because I kept turning around to see if my sisters were still there. I was scared I might have to go through the woods alone in the dark. On the way home we often cupped our hands together and drank water from the many springs that spurted water from the rocks. It was as clear as crystal.

    We all went to Sunday School and one little girl, Valerie Fullston from Kersbrook, did so want to be friends with me. She had wealthy parents and had lovely dresses so I felt reluctant to join her in play. My clothes were usually someone else's leftovers.

    I was on the stage one night at a Sunday school anniversary when an unknown man tapped me on the shoulder. He opened his fob watch and showed me a photo of his little girl - a perfect replica of myself. "l couldn't help speaking to you", he said. "You see, she died last week”. I didn't sing much that night.

 

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YANINEE – INTO THE UNKNOWN

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ELLA...

    When I was 12 - in Grade 4, going to Grade 5 - Dad decided to sell our Kersbrook home for a bigger property for sheep and wheat on the West Coast at Yaninee. So Dad, Vera, Harold, and Cliff went first, and built a shed and supposedly temporary iron house, leaving Mum and us 4 girls to follow some months later.

    We all hated the thought of leaving Kersbrook, Mum especially. The eldest ones were all over 16, and Cliff had already worked at market gardens, riding his bike from Kersbrook down to Plympton each weekend, spend the week working and then back home Saturday and Sunday.

    It was Eddie Parker who went to the Coast first, and the Osborn land and the Parker land were next to each other out from Yaninee, and I think it was Jan 1925 that Mum and us 4 girls packed up and went to the Coast.

    We were taken to Pt Adelaide to go across to Pt Lincoln on the ship “Wandana”. Our neighbour took us, along with much baggage, in his old Ford truck. Us girls thought it was such an adventure. Mavis and Elsie and I got into bed, Mum went up on deck for supper, so Una decided she wanted to see what a port-hole was for, and as she was in top bunk fell off and landed on the floor, bellowed her top voice, and poor Mum spent the night soothing her bruises.

    We got into Pt Lincoln, early morning breakfast on board, then had to catch the train to Yaninee, an all day trip, and the only thing to drink a big waterbag just outside our carriage door. It was such a hot day. We arrived at Yaninee late evening, still very hot and tired.

    What a shock we all had when we saw what was home, a "house" of native pine and corrugated iron, with floors made of packed clay mixed with horse manure, and really only one big room partitioned by super bags, walls that said “CRESCO GROWS BETTER CROPS”.

    We were glad to see the rest of the family, but no way was Una going to live in that house, which of course she had to, and until she left when she turned 16 but she never really liked it there.

    Una and I didn’t go to school again. We tried Correspondence School which meant we got parcel of lessons once a fortnight but we just didn’t seem to have time.

 

UNA...

    Prior to moving, Mum made tomato sauce by the bucketful to bring with us, and us kids also peeled cored sliced and dried a 100 sacks of apples. (We lived on apples for sweets for three years at Yaninee).

    Everything had to be packed but the trip on the “Wandana” was rough and the furniture – cedar tables and all – was smashed and had to be mended. During the night I got up to get my little sister a drink, climbed to the top bunk and while on the ladder the boat gave a lurch and I hit my back on the door opposite just as the stewardess opened it. You could see every imprint of the knobs on my back, took 2 weeks to heal.

    The day of arrival in Pt Lincoln – 28th Feb 1925 – it was hot, fires all along the line, and there was a little baby with another family and we took it in turns to fan and sponge her to keep her cool.

    The train arrived at 9.30pm, and Cliff Venning took the family out to our new block on his ½ ton truck, but the house was a shock. Dad had built a small unlined wood and iron shack for a house, but it was home to us. In mornings the condensation on the underside of the tin roof dripped off onto us kids in bed. The building was divided by a partition made from opened-out bags sewn together and white washed, and the dirt floor was hard tamped red clay damped down each morning with bags for mats. We swept the floors and took mats outside and shook them.

    The house windows pivoted from the half way point on each side so that when opened half the window swung inside and half out, so no screens, which meant all the flies and insects shared the interior with the family. One evening when we were all sitting down for tea a strange horse put its head through the window. It was starving, as the people who owned it didn’t have any feed for it so the just turned it out.

 

MAVIS...

    When Dad decided to go to Yaninee on to a scrub block, the trouble started. Dad had visited his sister Aunt Edie at Yaninee, and things were prospering for them. Dad must have realised he would never make enough money at Kersbrook to cope with all our needs as we grew up, and he had pleurisy and pneumonia that winter and was very ill indeed.

    He’d had to go to the East End Market with his load of fruit, twenty miles, in all sorts of weather, often in pouring rain all the way, with Poll in his spring cart and the same going home after selling the load. With two grown sons it must have seemed like the sensible thing to do.

    Mum was dead against it right from the start, and she never let up, even after we arrived. But he set his face to go, in spite of all the tears and protests. She had a comfortable home, had finished with the babies and was looking forward to seeing more of her Mother now that she was in South Australia. She probably realised that Dad was not strong enough for farm work anyway. But the drier climate must have seemed like a good idea for his health.

    Once it was finally settled, Dad, Harold, Cliff and Vera went to Yaninee to build a house while Mum packed and made ready to move. Work really started for we four girls those Christmas holidays, when I was just eight years old.

    We lackeyed for Mum as she made jam and sauce. Then we dried apples, pears, plums and peaches, bags full of them. We were seeing dried applies in our nightmares, not dreams. And we pulped some fruit in 4 gallon tins and sealed them while hot.

    We had to collect any bottles that were around and Mum would heat a circle of wire which had a long handle. This was firmly pressed around the top of the bottle and then the bottle was plunged into cold water and the top came off in a neat round, but it was the kids job to file off any sharp bits that were left. Then we had to clean each bottle very carefully, ready to receive the jam. Circles of brown paper had to be carefully cut and a paste of flour and water made to spread on each circle to seal the jam whilst it was boiling hot. This ensured the jam would keep a long time. How I hated those bottles!

    Finally we were ready to move, with Mum still protesting. Aunt Edie and Uncle Walt brought Dad back to finish business, I guess, and escort us to Yaninee, and the Church folk gave us a farewell party.

    The night before we left we slept at Crispin's home. They were our neighbours and Dad had arranged for Mr Crispin, or old Frank, as Una called him, to take us and our personal things to Port Adelaide on his lorry. We four girls shared a most beautiful bed with a lace canopy. We were a tight fit by then but this bed delighted me.

    With our goods and chattels we went to the Port the next day and boarded the “Wandana” at about 4 o’clock and sailed for Port Lincoln overnight. After a very rough trip, we arrived almost all intact. Una was our only casualty, I think. She decided, after we had been put to bed and told not to get out, that she wanted to see what was on the other side of the port hole so she climbed upon the bunk to get a look, the ship rolled and Una came crashing down. So she had a sore head but she said she only got up to get Elsie a drink.

    When we landed at Lincoln we children were left to guard the luggage and a smart alec nearly pinched it off us. Dad came back in time to save the day as the fellow had told us he had to put it on the train for us. The train was supposed to leave at ten but was invariably late. It took all the supplies for a week for all the towns and sidings all the way up the line so there was a great deal of stuff to be loaded.

    It was 24th February and the heat was on (it soared to 120 degrees Fahrenheit that day in Largs Bay), and there was a waterbag hanging between each carriage for our drinks and were we thirsty! Mum was very reluctant to let us go to it, afraid that we’d fall as we bumped and swung along that line. We were so hot and so tired. When we neared Edillie there were fires along the line, smoke and bits of flying grass and ash didn't make things any better. Una remembers that we minded a small baby for a mother who was not well.

    We reached Yaninee at sundown. It's strange what particular things ones mind recalls. While Dad went to find Cliff Venning to take us home we girls were sat by the only shop the town could boast, to mind the baggage. I remember the beautiful sunset, behind the wheat stacks. It was warning of another very hot day of course, but I did not know the signs then. I soon learnt. I try now to imagine what Mum was feeling. I have no idea where she was.

    There were huge sheds to cover the bagged wheat, waiting until it was railed to Port Lincoln, or to Thevenard for shipping, a station master’s little building and his house in the railyard, the general store, Cliff Venning’s blacksmith cum garage shop, the Yaninee Institute, then Aunt Lizzie Parker’s boarding house. Yaninee on that very hot day in February was not a pretty sight after lovely, green Kersbrook with its white washed cottages, good roads, towering gum trees and flowers.

    We loaded onto the little truck, by which time it was dark, the lights on the mallee trees made the leaves shiny as I peeped around the cabin to see all I could as we travelled the five miles to home.

    Yaninee was settled by a few people, Uncle Walt, Aunt Edie and family and Wally Mitchell and the Christian Brothers in 1913-14 and George Parker, Walt’s brother and family. They had it really tough 10 years before when all that was there was a railway siding. The story went that Aunt Lizzie carried her bag of flour on her back about a mile up a hill to home after getting it off the train. She was a real character, an "adopted" Aunt as she was to many. A real pioneer.

    When we arrived at Block 4, Hundred of Pinbong, further surprises were in store. The house was one big room of corrugated iron held up by stout pine posts, very newly cut, not looking very different than the growing ones. Horse collars were hung over another pine rail which was fashioned to hold them.

    There was a shiny black stove at one end of the room, a back door with a latch to close it. (The front door had a lock but as it was swung on a pine post it never actually locked onto anything all the time we lived there until 1937). There were a few kerosene boxes piled on top of each other to make a cupboard, several others about to sit on and a very large packing case which we used for a table.

    Vera and Cliff were there waiting for us. They had spent the fortnight there on their own while Dad had come for us. Unwisely, Dad had given Harold money to buy what they needed during his absence. Harold went off with the money and when they were hungry, they had eaten meat that was ‘off’ because of the heat and became very ill. Luckily for them, Dorothy came and got Aunt Edie to get them over it. I don't remember what we ate that night but I clearly remember Elsie saying "Can't we go home now, I want to go to bed".

    For about 2 weeks, until our furniture came, we managed. Mum soon had us unpicking bags and re-sewing them out flat, with bag needle and twine. Then we hung them to make partitions so that we had four rooms. Cliff slept on a cyclone bed with a cocky chaff mattress under the shed, which Dad and the boys had built. Most blocks had a Government ‘shed’ on them before they were allotted, for water catchment. I can't remember why ours didn't have one.

ELSIE...

    At the age of six our little world was shattered when Dad, with much persuasion from his sister Edith, announced that we were selling up and going to buy land on Eyre Peninsula with a dream of making a fortune.

    Mum was devastated as she knew Dad's heart wasn't strong. He was fifty one and had already been ill with the fever. My first regret about leaving was not being able to see Grandma Gray any more. I guess it was Mum's too. Of course what Dad said was law so we all suffered thirteen years of hard work and drought - for nothing. Before leaving Kersbrook Mum dried buckets full of apples, made jam and sauce and every food she could think of to take with us. We most likely would have starved without it.

    So we departed and were taken to Port Adelaide by our neighbour on an old truck. The boat called "Wandana" left Port Adelaide at 7.00 p.m. and arrived at Port Lincoln at 7.00 a.m. next morning. It was very rough going through the Althorpes. Una was determined to open the porthole and, of course, the water came in. She hurt her back falling down.

    At Port Lincoln we were told the train would be late leaving as there had been bushfires up the line and it was uncertain whether the rails would be safe. On the way we got off the train and picked blackboys and caught it up further on - that's how slow it chuffed along.

    Finally we arrived at our destination quite late at night. A neighbour took us home - and what a home! No wonder Mum cried. An iron house with scrub all around in the middle of nowhere - in view of some hills called “The Sturts”. So our new address was “Sturt View, Yaninee”.

    We ate our first meal off our enamel plates surrounded by horse collars. Una asked when we were going home. Dad replied to our wide eyed faces, "This IS home". And so we laid on our so-called beds amongst coats and bags listening and watching the drips fall off the iron ceiling which was branded "Lysaght" all over. The divisions of the rooms were wheat bags split open and nailed on to pine posts.

    We soon learned it was all hands on deck to clear the land and plant a crop. But school was out of the question, and as we lived five and a half miles away so it wasn't compulsory.

 

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TAMING THE WILDERNESS

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ELLA...

    Mum saved all of the washing water for her garden, just let it settle, put it on the potatoes and onions.

    To get our first few acres cleared ready for seeding we all had to pitch in, trees were cut down and we went round stacking them in heaps for burning, and eventually got a crop in.

    In all that time I never heard my Dad swear, but Mum would say SHIT! when she was really angry!

 

UNA...

    We lived 8kms out of Yaninee and the only transport was on foot, although a horse and spring dray was used sometimes. We never knew what a riding horse was before we came there. We brought horses with us and had to learn to ride them, bareback because there was no money for saddles, and lots of times we’d have sores the size of 2/- on our bottoms.

    The big dining room after a few months had a rubberoid floor which was washed with separated milk to make it go black, as we couldn’t afford floor polish. Dad also built a large open fireplace about 16 months after arriving, about a month before he died.

    Us kids helped Dad clear the scrub, and there was plenty of fencing to be done, and a lot of what me and Dad put up is still standing.

    Three heifers were brought over on the “Wandana” but as there were no fences originally they had to be tethered to stakes at night, and during the day us kids led them about to find food. “Prim” turned out to be a good milker, giving almost 8kgs of butter a week, and “Pamsy” was a quiet cow. “Darky” was milked until she was 15 years old, and then she was eaten. I suppose that sounds terrible but food was more important than sentimentality!

 

MAVIS...

    Dad and Cliff set to work to build a long room on one side of the house. The west wall was iron with a big fireplace in the middle of it and I mean big. Dad was a good chimney builder, it never smoked like so many home made ones did. The ends of the room were made of double bags, a window in one end and a bag door just swinging from the top with a heavy piece of tree on the bottom to, hopefully, hold it when windy. What a blessing that fireplace was over the years. (It was still standing when Vera went back years afterwards, she has a photo of it).

    Water was the most precious item. When it rained, every pot and basin was put out to catch every precious drop. Bath night was Saturday night, in a tub in the bedroom. The first one in was the lucky one. It got a bit murky by the time we were all through.

    We had plenty of mallee stumps to make fires, wonderful fires around which we sat at night and Dad played his fiddle and we sang. We took turns to read out of a book or we played euchre, other card games, draughts, snakes and ladders or fox and geese. Dad made a board with holes in rows of threes and we played with nine geese and one fox. Cliff carved them out of a bit of wood. I'm wrong, we had 26 geese and 2 foxes. The trick was to get nine geese “home” on the opposite side of the board. The geese could move forward or sideways but the foxes could go anywhere, jumping over and removing any geese in their path. It was tricky business to get nine geese home. We spent nights and wet days trying. Elsie was good at it at an early age. She was also good at euchre.

    With only a thickness of bag between our bedrooms we soon learned to feign sleep when spoken to at night. So our education grew fast. There was always this problem of giggling, we had to be very firm with ourselves at times!

    When the heifers came we younger girls had to mind them as we had no fences. It was not an easy task. We took them, on leads, to wherever there was grass. Even to find a spot where there was a bit of shade, and no ants, was often hard. We had to learn to tell the time by the sun because we were really in trouble if we brought those heifers home early for dinner and believe me, four hours can seem like a week when you’re tired of ants, flies, heat and dirt. Not to mention thirsty with warm water to drink. So we used to get two sticks of even length, stand one up and as the shadow shortened we gauged the time. When there was no shadow the sun was overhead, so it was near noon.

    Before we had fences we dared not let them loose. A few times they got away and they’d wander for miles. Then we had to track them, which was often difficult. Ella and Una had a very long walk one day and were very thirsty. When they came to Hick's underground tank, Una insisted on having a drink so Ella was told to hang on to her legs and she reached down until she could cup water in her hands. Una finished up with a tummy ache, as the water was contaminated, but Una always had to do things, no matter what.

    Mum decided to do something about our floors, which were grey fine dirt. We kids had to gather cow pats with a makeshift wheelbarrow, and bring clay from a flat which was quite a distance from the house. She made a mixture of this and laid it with a trowel. We had to keep off it until it had dried, which it finally did, into quite a hard surface, and then we laid bags on the traffic areas. Then we mixed white wash and the bag walls were drenched with it and things were more liveable.

    There was no end to flies though. Only after dark was there any respite from them. And it was so hot those first summer months. Often the thermometer would reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and we couldn't cope in the house in the heat of the day, so we cut and carted brush and built a brush shed in front of the kitchen. We’d dash across that stretch of hot sand from kitchen to shed at great speed, our feet burning up.

    We made a cool safe, as every one did, with a dish of water on top with strips of rag into a dish below. The water kept things a bit cooler and more appetising, but having no refrigeration, if we killed a chook we’d cook and eat it the same day.

    Our vegetables were potatoes and onions, but until “Darkey” our oldest heifer calved, we had no milk. We brought flour in a 250 lbs bag and Vera made the bread. If it was good bread-making flour, we had good bread. If it was inferior flour we ate terrible bread, no other options.

    We made yeast by pouring boiling water on a handful of hops, when it cooled we added a little sugar and flour. When making your batch of bread you always left a little of the “brew” in the bottle to help fermentation for the next batch. The hops were strained and added to the bottle which was then tightly corked until it was ready to make bread or buns. The flour was sifted into a big bowl, a little salt added, also a bit of mashed potato, if you could manage to save a little at meal time. If the yeast was left too long it would blow the cork and yeast would be everywhere, so we kept a weather eye on it. Believe me, we were very unpopular if we lost the yeast and we had to wait for another lot to ferment before we could make the bread which was getting in short supply.

    In winter the bread was placed in the cooled down stove to rise overnight. In the morning it was kneaded back, allowed to rise again and then shaped into loaves into tins cut out of kerosene tins. A tin cut on its side held four nice size loaves of bread that was crusty, and just beautiful hot out of the oven, if we managed to sneak a bit. Nothing like it now.

    We had kerosene lamps, which had to be filled constantly, so we bought two 4 gallon tins of kerosene firmly fitted into a wooden box for safe carting. When a tin was punctured the kero went a long way because of its strong smell and its ability to permeate everything around it. We used them for all kinds of buckets, hand bowls and feed buckets. They were our usual milk bucket too, so we had to place the handle perfectly centre or it was a constant balancing act, especially when they were full.

    Les and Cyril Parker came over with their scrub roller and team and rolled our first two paddocks, then after a few weeks a day was chosen to burn. Burning was horrific, as there was always the chance of the fire getting out of control when such a large area was alight, so we were all armed with green boughs and ready to rush to any given point if things looked like getting unmanageable. Uncle Walt and the boys did our first burn to educate us. After the fire was burnt out it was left to cool down, and then the work began for all, except Vera, as she was cook and bottle washer.

    At that time the land had to be picked clean by hand, and we kids would trudge home at noon and collect the billies of stew or whatever there was cooked for dinner, also big billies of scalding, hot tea and lots of bread, then carry it out to where we were picking that day. We ate our share, amid ants and flies, had a short rest and back to the job.

    At about 4 o'clock it was we kids’ job to light up. One pile would have been lit earlier and we’d get out shovels and drop a few coals into each pile of sticks which we had thrown together according to which way the wind was that day. Too bad when the wind changed direction. Sometimes we’d leave the burning until a more favourable wind direction. As the piles burnt down we had to go around and throw the unburnt bits in so all was burnt.

    Where there were porcupine bushes (spinifex) we’d take a burning stick and race like mad things from bush to bush, pausing only to make sure it was alight. These bushes flared like crazy. How we didn't catch alight I wonder now, but we were too busy to worry about it then. We’d be black when we got home, but it was too dark to see anymore, and we were too tired to put one foot after the other.

    Ella was careless one day, and she trod in a stump hole which she thought was just ashes, but it was still alight down under, and she had trouble getting her boot off and her foot was very badly burned. Her guardian angel surely watched over her in the coming days. Mum treated her, no such thing as a Doctor to help. Thinking back I wonder how we survived some situations. Our angels certainly watched over us, but Ella suffered with that burnt foot.

    Sometimes we had lots of fun trying to catch “Bicycle Billies”, a very fast moving little lizard, but we never did catch one. We all kept a sharp eye out for snakes though, as there were plenty about. We had a special piece of wire kept at the house, but out in the paddock you grabbed for the nearest stout stick.

    We planted 120 acres that first season. Les Parker drilled it in for Dad as we didn't have enough horses, but Dad was going to sales buying. By our first harvest we had 5 horses and a stripper, so we reaped our own first crop of wheat.

    Dad played cricket for Yaninee that first year. He was a good player for Kersbrook for a long time so I guess he was happy to start again in the new home town.

    The first Saturday they put the horse Dad had bought, which was to be everything she was said to be, in the spring cart and thought they were on their way. “Blanche” had other ideas altogether. She went backwards and no amount of persuasion made her do otherwise. Finally, Cliff led her and then she was off - at full gallop! Mum screamed and Dad swore, and those of us who had planned to go as well, stayed home. “Blanche” was only used to being ridden, not driven. Her former owner liked ‘the hops’ and used to climb aboard her and she would take him home in her own time, but she had to learn our ways, and eventually took us many miles.

    Uncle Walt had a Dodge car and he and Dad often went fishing at Venus Bay. Whenever the fancy took him, he would tell Aunty that it was a good day to go to Venus, so the rush was on. In a few hours all would be arranged. Wally, Ethel or Cyril would come and say how many could go. How the women managed the bread I do not know, we only baked a few times a week generally, but they managed. There would be a terrific sorting out over whose turn it was to go and who stayed to cope with whatever was going on at the time.

    We loved those trips to the beach, we had to travel light of course. That car carried some mighty loads - the clothes we were wearing, a warm jumper, a rug each, a frying pan, fat for frying, tea and sugar for the adults, bread and jam and a lantern. We ate fish from a piece of bread and if still hungry we ate bread and jam. The men had their fishing gear of course, and we always had fish, lovely whiting fresh from the sea, just beautiful food. Elsie couldn’t eat fish so she had bread and jam I suppose, I don't remember. At night we dug a hole in the sand, rolled ourselves in our rug and looked at the stars until we went to sleep. Wonderful memories of childhood.

 

ELSIE...

    I was always amazed at Mum's courage and thought she was a born Doctor as she delivered babies, massaged someone back to life who had rheumatic fever, treated another with sunstroke, someone with polio - he's still walking - and looked after nine of us and all our ills and spills as well as working to keep food in our mouths. She believ6d in homoeopathic medicines and had a cure for everything. She never had a needle in her life and nothing much stronger than an Aspro. She had heart attacks for which she took Sal volatile and still lived till she was 75 years old.

    She certainly got no sympathy from Dad. Every time she wanted to visit her mother, he'd put on a turn and she had to sneak away or not see her at all. According to him, he and his sisters and brothers were the only perfect ones. I couldn't write what I thought of them even as a child.

 

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THE RUG OVER THE COFFIN

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ELLA...

    Dad died 24 July 1926, having had his 50th birthday in the June, and never got to see his first crop. I was about 15, and it was not long after setting up the familty at Yaninee. Mum and and my elder sisters wanted to bring himd back to Kersbrook to be buried but couldn’t afford it.

    I still recall the night Dad died. We were isolated not having any means of transport, and Cliff had to walk/run down to Uncle Walt’s for help to get the doctor who was 18 miles away. As it happened Dad’s brother Jim and sister Rachel were holidaying at Uncle Walt’s and they all came to the house.

    Poor Mum had a bad bout of diarrhoea. The Parkers, who had persuaded Dad to take up farming on the Coast, lived about 2 miles away and Mum developed a bad bout and I remember feeling in my childish mind Mum was going to die too. This was early hours Saturday morning and we didn’t get the doctor till late Saturday as Uncle Walt had to go to Wudinna 8 miles away.

    The funeral was arranged for Saturday afternoon, and when the time came for us to take the coffin to the cemetery, we contacted a man who was wheelwright, mechanic, and undertaker. A 1914 Ford had been converted to a buckboard and it was used to convey the coffin to the cemetery. I can still see that striped rug that covered it.

 

UNA...

    After about 18 months at Yaninee Dad died, and Cliff walked 4 kms in dark to Parkers, to ring for the doctor, but he couldn’t find his way in the dark. It was 2am when Dad died and it was 5.30am when the doctor finally arrived, but in the meantime Vera and I walked 2½ kms along the pipetrack to another neighbours. It was dark, and we walked up and down over the sandhills, and I fell over and scratched my legs on barb wire, it was terrible.

    Dad’s body was taken to the funeral on the same truck that brought us to Yaninee the year before. There was a check rug over coffin.

MAVIS...

    On the night of 25 July 1926, Dad suffered a heart attack and died in his sleep. Before we went to bed that night we had a big mallee-stump fire going in the dining room, and Dad played his fiddle and we sang a great deal. He said he was tired and went to bed so we all turned in, only to be awakened by Mum at one o'clock. Dad had made a little sound and was gone.

    One of the older ones, I think Vera, went to Harold Parker's 1½ miles away, but when Mum had thought a bit she sent C1iff to Uncle Walt's as he had a car and was able to go the 13 miles to Wudinna to get the Doctor. Doctor McCarthey finally came, but it was nearly daylight by them. He, of course, couldn’t help but asked why Dad hadn’t had a doctor.

    We had been told to go back to bed but I couldn’t settle and when all was quiet, I slipped out to the fire, but Mum was sitting there in her grey overcoat looking totally devastated. I didn't know how to comfort her, I was totally desolate, so I crept back to bed silently.

    I always looked up to my Dad, mentally took his part when they were in conflict, which had been too frequent since the question of farming had arisen. He was a very respected person, was known to be honest. I loved him very much and he was so cold when Mum insisted that I kiss his dear face.

    We kids picked tiny little star flowers which grew wild and Mum made little wreaths for each one of us to carry. Mrs Davies, who was our nearest neighbour, brought white lilies from her garden for Mum. Uncle Jim and Ruby were visiting the coast at that time, so they came from where they were staying at Thevenard. I remember that Ruby had hysterics when she went in to see Dad in his coffin. We were not allowed any such nonsense but I felt totally lost.

    The little lorry which brought us to our new home just a year and a bit before, took Dad away, covered over with a travelling rug. The coffin was a box covered with a black cloth on the outside, a white cloth with a pansy pattern on the inside. We followed, I think, in uncle Walt’s Dodge 4 to the Yaninee cemetery where we left him.

    After nearly 70 years I can still see that black box being carried out of their bedroom and that rug over him as we followed. They sang “Lead Kindly Light” at the funeral.

 

ELSIE...

    At about two o'clock one morning about l8 months after we'd arrived at Yaninee we were awakened by Mum's cries. Dad had been cutting posts and carting them for fencing and the strain had been too much. He died that night. The older ones went to get help, but of course, nothing could be done. The neighbours sat with us for the rest of the night.

    After that most people wanted Mum to give up the farm but she was reluctant to do so. I was about seven and a half at that stage. I remember we younger ones picked little star flowers from the roadside to make a wreath. In the days following Vera made us mourning dresses from grey flannel trimmed with black.

 

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GOING IT ALONE

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ELLA...

    Mum was very determined she was going to keep the farm, but we found Dad had left no will, and although there was money in the bank from sale of the Kersbrook property etc Mum couldn’t get to any of it so I guess it was Uncle Walt who helped us for a time, until the Govt fixed the problem by each of us kids getting equal shares when we reached 21. At the time Elsie was 8, Mavis 10, Una 12, and I was 14, so we just had to do our best to keep the farm going.

    Mum tried to stay on the farm, so we all had to work very hard. Water wasn’t laid on - we had 2 x 1000 gal tanks on the house and shed for our use – but it meant we had to cart water for the stock several times a week depending on temperatures. Water carting was done with wagon and horses, we had to go five miles to the Govt Storage underground tank at Yaninee, where our two forty gallon tanks had to be filled by hand pumping. Sometimes we’d get home and by the time the sheep, horses, and cows had their fill it was time to go back again and do it over.

    We had lots of fowls, turkeys, ducks, so had to gather eggs and feed for them and keep away the foxes. When we had turkey chicks we had to boil eggs and chop greens for their food. Winter was cold, but summers very hot, and it was a constant problem milking cows and keeping the milk cream butter eggs in saleable condition. We kept cream etc down in the cellar during day but it had to be brought up at night. Price for our butter we sold was 9d a lb, gathered eggs 3d doz.

    There was no shops to buy fruit and vegetables, just one general store/PO in Yaninee, and mail that came once a week (Wednesdays), and we often had to wait for trains running late, then mail was sorted, then 5 miles home by horse power. When the creamery opened in Pt Lincoln we sent cream down by rail twice a week only making butter for our own needs, one job good to lose.

    I remember us kids were all happy to see the turnips and carrots from the seeds that were sown with our wheat on the sandhills, and by September we were eating turnips like apples.

 

UNA...

    Cliff at 15 carried on the farm and had to do all the work. We ran some sheep – once I was attacked by a ram when mustering – and the heifers had to be watered, but only once every 3 days, having to cart water from Yaninee every day in the summer, six horses pulled a wagon with two 908 L tanks that had to be hand filled by pump. People lined up at the Government tanks and we had to wait out turn.

    Toilets were always located some distance from the house as they were just a hole in the ground, ashes from the stove were kept in a bucket and sprinkled down the hole to act as disinfectant. We had a toilet made of pine logs and one day the ashes must have contained a coal and there was a sudden cry of alarm that the toilet was alight, using buckets of water to put it out. Les and Una Kempster, who was visiting, ended up together in the smoke filled toilet in the dark. It was saved but they all called it ‘the smokehouse’ after that.

    From age 12 I often went to work for other people for 5/- or 6/- a week, taking the money home to Mum. All us girls learnt to cook, make good cakes with dripping instead of butter, and had to fight the flies off when mixing anything or end up with too many currants in it!

    In spring friends and neighbours got together when the wild peaches were ripe, many times 10 to 12 of us on horseback, packing dinner and going all day out to The Sturts. Some were dried, some stewed, some made into jam, and some chutney.

    Times were tough and we had to make do, and once Mum bought 12 yards of bright royal blue trobalco and made bloomers for everyone.

    Church services were held in our house once a month by Mr Fred Hollams, something of a missionary, but the dog would sit up and sing, which was very off-putting, but out in the paddock I would sing Ramona, which was the dog’s favourite.

 

MAVIS...

    It was hard to pick up our every day living without Dad.

    We had a few fences up, some clearing done, 5 horses, a stripper and a small drill, one heifer had calved and we had chooks. Cliff was 15 years old, but Harold was not an asset, and Uncle Jim wanted Mum to give it away, go back to the city or somewhere that we girls would find work eventually. She really didn't have a choice, as we four younger girls were still dependent and they had put all they had into “Sturt view” as we had called our mansion. But we did have a very good view of The Sturts.

    So we proceeded to farm in the best way we knew. We carted logs and straw and made a pig sty. The roof was very weather proof as we laid thick layers of straw, and when our first sow produced a family we loved those little white piglets. Elsie would get into the sty with them and carefully pat them to sleep, then ever so quietly get out, only to see those little piglets jump up and run all round the sty, then she would begin all over again. Those piglets had a great play with her.

    When the heifers began producing we made butter for sale in the town, as Mum was adept at getting customers for anything she had for sale. Having hung the cream out overnight in a container placed inside a bucket with water in it, we rose at dawn and churned before the heat in summer. Having churned the cream to butter, it had to have salt thoroughly washed through it, then the butter pats had to be scalded and rinsed with cold water before weighing a pound, plus a dab, on the scales. The extra dab was to make sure a little bit of butter didn't keep Mum out of heaven, or so she said.

    It is quite an art to get that butter just the right shape with an extra fancy pat on the top, then place it squarely on the special butter paper we bought for the job, then neatly wrap it and put it in the coolest spot until we took it to our customers. We mostly were paid ninepence or a shilling a pound for all that effort. It was easier to handle in winter but sitting in the rain with water everywhere whilst you milked the cows was never a delight.

    The heifers soon multiplied so we needed to keep the cream cool so Cliff and a workman dug a cellar at the end of the shed. This enabled us to keep eggs, meat, cream and butter fairly cool during the day but everything had to be brought up at night. When we killed a pig or a calf, some was shared with the neighbours and some salted down. Those big sides of bacon had to have salt rubbed into them every day, for days, also those lovely legs of ham, of which we only dream now. Or if it was beef, that was put in brine, also legs of lamb were pickled to keep them longer. We must not forget the pig 'runners', how we hated washing them to use for the sausages. Mum frequently said if we dared to complain “I don't keep dogs and bark myself”. We begged to differ about the barking bit, but not out loud. Except Una. She was braver.

    Uncle Walt supplied us with mutton in those early days but Cliff soon took over and killed our own meat. We always took a bottle of milk and butter to Aunt Edie, as Uncle Walt would not have a cow on the place - "Too much of a nuisance", he always said, and he was exactly right. However they kept us fed and healthy and too busy for mischief, or nearly so anyway.

    In the winter we made roaring mallee stump fires and played cards, but in the summer we sat outside under the stars - on the Coast you can really see the stars. Cyril was an excellent mimic and would stir up Mum quite often. We’d be sitting there talking and he would make the sound of a fox in the distance. Mum would say "I think I heard a fox", and after a while he would make the sound as though it was getting nearer and nearer, until Mum would be ordering us to get the dog. He could fool her every time. He thought she was too hard on us girls and it was his way of getting one back on her.

    Mum was a very strict teetotaller but she taught us how to make hop beer that would blow the corks and really packed a punch. But she was happy there was no alcohol at our place. It was very refreshing those very hot days and nights. If you have never lived without refrigeration, and with heat, flies and dirt, you will find it hard to imagine what it was like sometimes.

    One of the not so good memories was carting water, a constant job in those first years at Yaninee. We had bought a wagon, a 400 and a 200 gallon tank. It was a horror job and we took turns to do it with Cliff. With five horses and the wagon we went to Yaninee where there was a Government tank and pumped it, but horses walk at about 4 miles an hour, if they walk well. We had a big chestnut gelding who was in the shafts, his name was “Logic” and even if the others were co-operative about stepping it out, “Logic” had no plans to hurry - ever.

    After the tanks were filled, those leaden lids had to be lifted, a bag placed over the top, then the lids were put back to prevent spillage over the rough roads. Then home again, the same five miles. And the stock would all be thirsty, and if they were milling around, you had to have your wits about you unloading or "look sharp there", as Mum often said.

    It was often very hot and always there were our friends the flies. On arrival that dreadful iron siphon had to be operated. The biggest one of us would be on the wagon and would fill this right-angled pipe very full, while the one on the ground had to madly close the end off from leaking, then the pipe had to be swung over and at the precise moment as it was lowered into the tank you had to let it go into the trough. Very naughty things were said if your timing was out and we had to start all over again. We had great celebration the day we purchased a rubber one, but even that had its problems. When you suck on a large rubber hose to start the water flowing you need to stop sucking at precisely the right time or you get the full blast of water down your throat. There was a lot to learn.

    Ella and cliff logged a lot of lighter mallee with a log and two horses on either end. The trick was to keep those horses moving or you were stuck in no time at all. I had to have a go one day when Ella was not able, but I was too small, I simply couldn’t keep the pace or jump over obstacles quickly enough.

    Even when fully grown I didn't make 8 stone but size didn't count for much then. We girls helped Cliff with all the farm work. Feeding horses before dawn, carrying a lantern against night to give them a late feed, helping to yoke up, those collars and hames were no light weight for a small one. We picked stumps, raked straw, winnowed wheat with a hand winnower, stooked hay and pickled wheat in a barrel. In those early days we foolishly burnt the stubble, the machinery we had would have blocked up if we had not cleared most of it. Mum used to yell "look lively there" if she thought we were letting a spark get away into a prohibited area. And we did too.

    One day Una and I were going home from doing something out in the paddock with “Dick” in the dray. We were going full gallop, as we often shouldn’t have been, and we hit a large stump, turned the cart over and got more than we bargained for - the ground just there was SO HARD. We managed to sort the horses out but couldn’t right the cart. We knew we were in for trouble, so it was a long mile to walk home. Mum, of course was angry with us, not at all thankful that we were almost whole. In spite of our protests our arms were given a good going over, she believed in exercise to fix things. Aunt Edie finally persuaded Mum to let them take us to the Doctor at Wudinna. Una had a torn ligament, I had a fracture in my wrist. We watched out for big stumps after that.

    I have no idea why Mum employed old Mr Russack, he was old, crippled with arthritis and had an awful cough. I expect he told Mum how clever she was to be running a farm. She thought so too. We wondered who was really running the joint. When he would be coughing more than usual, we kids had to take him breakfast in his bed in the men's room we built on the end of the shed. He would rise up from under his rugs, pulling the most appalling faces, and say, "If you girls don't go to heaven, no-one will”. We’d be killing ourselves with laughter, but of course we’d wait to get out of earshot before we tried to see who could do the best imitation of that day’s performance.

    When a hen would go broody we’d write people's names on eggs, 12 or 13 of them, and place them under the hen, in a safe place where other hens couldn’t lay there, and safe from foxes. After 3 weeks the chicks would hatch, the names on the eggs which didn't hatch were the bad eggs, so we always hoped our name would be a chicken.

    We raised lots of chickens. When a hen would go broody we’d try to get her to sit in a place where the other chooks wouldn't lay. Sometimes they’d refuse to be shifted and repeatedly go back to their laying nest. When we had them settled, we put 13 or 14 eggs under them to be hatched. I have said how quite often some broody hens were quite fierce. You’d have to be very brave to cope with their pecks.

    We fed and watered them for 3 weeks, and on the 2lst day we’d look for chicks. Some hens were quite amiable and we’d clear away the empty shells to keep the nest clean, as ants could be a pest. Newly hatched chicks are lovely, they pick away at the shell until they have a hole big enough to struggle out, and in no time at all they totter around, their down quickly dries and there is a beautiful little cheeping, bright eyed creature. Sometimes it was necessary to take the first ones away or the hen would leave the nest with those that had hatched, leaving the others to die in the shell.

    When they had all hatched, we’d give them back to her, gladly, because even though so small, they’d cheep, cheep constantly, get out from the warmth of their bed and of course they had to be kept warm. We loved getting different coloured ones.

    The mother turkeys had to be left where they went broody, or they’d leave, while Father gobbler is a very proud one, struts around letting the whole world know how clever he is. If the babies get wet when young, they usually die, so if rain was around it was a rush to get them sheltered. They were harder to rear than chicks.

    Mother duck is always a good mother, she tries to nest somewhere quietly, where no-one can see them. Father Drake gets quite hostile for a while, he’ll rush at you and grab your skirt with his wide beak and look very fierce indeed, to keep you away from his family. They have to have clean water very often, as they’re messy little things. We fed them on bran and pollard, mixed with warm water. They’d hop into it to eat, get it all over their feet and then get in the water to wash it off. But they are darling balls of fluff, very friendly, not so father Drake.

    When Goosey Gander has a family you really do have to watch out, he’s so big and strong. Sometimes a hen, goose or duck would surprise us by turning up in the yard with a family trotting beside them. If a chicken hawk appears, or any danger, mother has a special alarm call and when the little ones hear it they quickly run under her wings for shelter. She covers them all until the danger is passed, but the bold ones peep out to see what is happening.

    At night, Mother takes her brood back to the nest before sundown and nestles them under her wings until daylight comes. She then takes them to where she can find food for them. They have a special call when they find food and the babies come running back to her. It is very interesting to watch them grow. They are just like children, some are naughty, they don’t come when called, some are bossy and pick on the little ones, some grow quicker than others. The dear little chicks who are hatched in incubators don't get all the care a mother gives them. They are just fed so that they will grow quickly for market.

    When Cora had twin boys (they were born on Vera's twenty first birthday) she needed help, so Vera went over to her, which meant we all had to learn to cook and punch bread. But always there were still cows to milk, rain or shine, heat or cold. When we had hired help for Cliff, it greatly lightened our workload, but Mum never let up. At 5.00am it was always - Girls, Girls, it’s time you were up". If it was cold and wet, believe me it was cold in that draughty house, we’d be very deaf and the "Girls Girls!" would become very loud and agitated. She wanted her cup of tea. There was no easy way to boil a kettle either, but in winter we mostly set the fire in the stove overnight, so we had a flying start.

    The stumps had to be picked after the plough had dug them out, brought home to the wood heap, then chopped with an axe, and that axe was heavy. Then the stumps were carried inside, with the leaves and small sticks we had gathered for kindling. If you neglected to have dry kindling, you had real trouble getting a fire going. We had a few singed eyebrows and arms when we pinched a bit of kerosene to get it going. Mum always smelt the kero and you were told off so that wasn't a good option. The ashes from fires were placed in a bucket (kero tin again) and taken to the "dunny". A small tin of ashes was always tipped in after business was completed to keep the flies away. We should all give thanks every day for our modern sewerage systems.

    Our hygiene was very primitive, so for the sake of our uneducated readers, I’ll describe "THE DUNNY".

    The first one was a pine post upright structure about one metre square, with bags nailed to the posts for privacy. It was situated about 200 yards from the house. The seat was a box affair which was movable in order to empty the kerosene tin which held the doings. Very regularly a hole had to be dug, even further away, the bucket emptied and the hole carefully covered over. Until we small ones were strong enough to cope with it on our own, we had to thread a stick through the handle and carry it together. What a good idea, you say, but a 4 gallon bucket is tall and we were not, so if it was a bit too full for comfort it was very necessary to avoid anything en route, you see what I mean I'm sure.

    One night there were strange noises coming from outside at odd intervals. On investigating we found a heifer, who had got nosey and probably thirsty, who had put her head into the bucket, her horns had stuck on the seat and when she had backed out and being blinded by the seat, she was walking into anything in her path. What fun and games we had getting that seat off her head! That heifer kept well clear of the dunny after that.

    The second dunny, some years later, was a posh affair. Same old pine posts for uprights but any odd bit of board that was about was nailed on for walls, and, it was actually big enough to turn around in too. The workmen dug a large hole and covered it with logs and bags, then lots of dirt to keep it safe from unwary walkers. No more hole digging or whose turn it was to empty the bucket. We even had a firm board seat and a nail in a post to hold the squares of newspaper we cut to size.

    The idea of newsprint being a problem never entered our heads. It was real up market stuff, until one night when disaster nearly struck. Someone - Una blamed me - had used ashes that were apparently still hot. On hearing a strange noise we discovered our dunny going up in flames. It was all hands on deck with buckets of water from the nearby sheep trough and we saved most of the seat.

    When we bought a chaff cutter we had to learn fast. I always thought Cliff had the best job. He did, of course, have to manage the stationary engine, which had to line up exactly with the chaff cutter or the belt would fly off and that was a bit hairy if you happened to be around. He fed the hay, about a third of a sheaf at a time, into the cutter, while one of us would have to pull the sheaf from the stack, throw it onto the sloping table, with the heads pointing forward, to go into the knives.

    The string which held the sheaf together had to be cut near the knot which the binder had made, as the string was always used again to sew the tops of the chaff bags. It was not always easy to find that knot in a hurry, the sheaf was nearly as big as we were, the knife had to be sharp and in one hand you held all those knots. No, it was not an easy job to keep that cutter fed. When we finally built the chaff shed, it was one job less, because as it was cut it went right into the shed and didn't have to be bagged and sewn.

    The first 2, or maybe 3, years we used a stripper to reap our crops. That meant it had to be winnowed, separating the grain from the chaff. The winnower handle had to be briskly turned to keep the sieves moving fast enough to do the job. It was terrible, trying to keep it going and we had to do it in very short shifts. One year the oats were reaped a little too soon and the heap became “hot”, so for a week we girls had to daily turn the heap with pitch forks. A very slimming exercise.

    How we rejoiced when an agent talked Mum into buying a "Big E". No more winnowing! It was a great day. Mind you we missed those big heaps of cocky chaff. As the bags came off the harvester we were able to dump them and filling the bags at sewing time was much easier too. (Ella was our champion bag sewer. She told me yesterday that after she was married she went bag sewing when she was pregnant, for Mr McMahon, and he told her she was the best he had on the job). To get the right weight for selling you really had to stretch those new bags, and well fill them. I can remember their peculiar smell of jute as I write.

    The grain kept for seed was stacked in the shed until seeding time. Then those bags had to be halved, or less, according to the age and size of who had to do the ‘pickling’ that day. The pickling barrel was swung between two strong forked limbs of trees, stout ones, which had been firmly dug into the ground. The barrel had a small door cut in one side, through which, we fervently hoped, we managed to pour the grain. One of us would be madly holding the handle firmly still, then the ‘bluestone’ was put in on the grain, the door ever so carefully closed and then you began to swing that barrel around until it had thoroughly covered the seed wheat. If by some careless moment you let the handle go before the door was closed, you really heard about it. It was not good to have to pick up the resulting spill.

    All this was done with a large cloth firmly tied over the mouth and nose so you didn't breath in the poison we were working with. The process was repeated until you had pickled enough for the day's seeding. It was often a before breakfast job, if Cliff hadn't enough from the day before to keep the team working. When Hannafords started a mobile pickling service to the farms, we urged Mum to use it.

    When Kevin Denton was born I went to stay with Dorothy while Harold was working away. I now wonder how much help I was but I stayed with little Dawn and baby Kevin while Dorothy tended the outside jobs each day. But I remember the day we put “Ruby” in the sulky to go to Aunt Edie’s for the day. “Ruby” was a very frisky horse and needed all of Dorothy’s attention to manager her, and I was holding on very carefully to Kevin, with Dawn a toddler sitting between us.

    Harold Parker and his wife, Doll, lived a mile and a half up a grubbed road from our place, and when Harold went away shearing, either Una or I would stay with Doll for company, as she had one baby who had died at birth and was pregnant again. I don't remember seeing a pregnant lady when I was a child, I must have seen them but didn't know what it was all about. Mind you they didn't flaunt it for all the world to know those days.

    It was Doll who taught me to play “Eggs in the bush”, to knit socks and turn the heels, to crochet and do hexagon patchwork. She woke me in the middle of the night once and walked me the mile and a half home because she had become afraid, poor girl. They laughed about it, but I didn't enjoy stumbling along in the dark over that rough track, even though I was so sorry that she was frightened.

    Doll so looked forward to Saturday when Harold would be home. He drove a couple of ponies, a mad pair, “Lady” and “Bell”, and no-one else could do anything with them. On the few nights that I stayed when he was home I used the ploy we had learned and pretended sleep, so I caught up on a bit more sex education.

 

ELSIE...

    And so life went on. Harold left home, so Cliff and the rest of us carried on. We girls always arose about four o'clock to feed the horses so they'd be ready for work at daylight, and Cliff had a tremendous responsibility for one so young.

    Ours was a two thousand acre block of mallee scrub, tea trees, pines and broom bush and also a good measure of saltbush. There were seven lakes on the property. We grew wheat and a small amount of barley, but as the stumps and stones rose to the surface we gathered them and put them in heaps, a job that always made my hands crack and bleed.

    The floors in our house were mostly dried cow manure and clay from the paddock. Some places they became uneven. I was sitting on a rickety chair by the stove one night. I fell forward and grabbed the first thing in sight - the red hot bars of the stove with both hands. They were tied up for weeks - so was I. We had no ice in those days.

    We borrowed implements and bought horses from sales. Cliff and Ella did the logging then the rest went on clearing a small piece each day. The heat was unbearable at times. We only had one waterbag between us to drink for the day. We also had billy tea we had to drink to quench our thirst. The heaps I’ve burnt at night when all we hoped was there'd be a breeze.

    In those first days of farming, before the fences were made, we tethered the cows, so we searched for and found all the straightest trees and cut them up a certain length for fence posts. One day I untied one cow and she decided to take off. I hung on like grim death to the rope but lost my footing and was hauled over porcupines on my stomach for about half a mile until I was able to yank the rope around a tree. I sat up all night pulling out splinters.

    Thirteen cows was the most I ever milked at one time by hand, but then there was always the old separator to turn to separate the cream from the milk.

    As time went on we built an underground dairy and bought a drip safe at a sale. A safe with an open tray on top out of which came flannel strips sucking out water from the tray. The butter often melted, and a jelly - if you had one - seldom set.

    Gradually we got together a team of horses but wanted one more. Sitting at the table one night we heard a rattle at the window. We couldn't believe our eyes when a horse's head appeared. On investigating we were alarmed to discover that it was so weak it could hardly stand. After a few weeks of loving care it became our final horse for the team. We christened him "Scottie”. We did advertise but got no answers.

    We had a small rainwater tank on the house and a two thousand gallon tank on the shed for our own use, as the Tod water from Lincoln hadn't yet been laid by then - except to the towns along the railway line – and we had to cart water for the animals from the standpipe in Yaninee 5 miles away. We had two square tanks on a wagon, and one day the horses bolted and Cliff and I lost half the water before we could stop them. Sometimes we waited for hours if someone arrived before us.

    Our neighbours paid us a visit one night and on leaving backed the corner of their truck into our water tank. We had every bucket, tub and container filled with water, and we tried unsuccessfully to stop up the hole with bags, but helplessly stood by while it emptied to the height of the hole. The ducks were in clover paddling around next day. But, the tank was finally mended and lasted for many years.

    As the pigs and sheep multiplied we'd sometimes kill a pig and share it with our neighbours. We'd pour boiling water over the pig then with sharpened saucepan lids we'd scrape off the hair. I can still smell it! We also made sausages and had to rub salt on the meat to keep it.

    We also had a stupid Jersey cow who refused to be caught, so I learnt the art of lassoing her on horseback. I never did like cows, but I think the feeling was mutual. Our cow “Darky” used to glare as soon as she saw me coming - I was always in a hurry when milking. I forgot to take “Darky” out of the bale one night and she was still there when I got home from the dance. Mum never forgave me - don't suppose “Darky” did either.

    Our cowyard was built with stumps we had picked up, as this saved on fencing wire. But the place was infested with snakes and sleepy lizards, also goannas and many other species of lizards. When hay was cut for feed we had to stack it in heaps, these creatures were always under the hay.

    Wheat had to be pickled before sowing. A barrel with a door at the top was suspended on two posts. A quarter of a bag of wheat was inserted with a measure of bluestone to kill the wogs. We'd turn the handle a few turns, tip this back in the bag then repeat the chore till we had the required amount for a days seeding. Together with small amounts of super, we'd load the dray and take it to Cliff in the paddock. I took Cliff’s dinner out to him one day just in time to see a Brumby rear up and fall over backwards - dead. Poor Cliff, I think he wished it was him. I rushed home and got the camera. I really could have taken the picture from a better angle.

    Sometimes the pigs got out. Catching one wasn't the easiest of tasks as their legs are so short. I was throwing hay into the horses when someone yelled - "The pigs are out!" – and one came my way, so I put out the three pronged fork to stop it and felt it slide into the pig's rump. It made me feel sick for days.

    Although droughts were prevalent we still had many electrical storms. In one of these I was sent to bring in the cows. Every time I touched the fence wire the current went up my arm. I finally undid the gate with a piece of wood. Another time I was chasing cows (barefoot!) and I felt something slimy underfoot. I turned to see a large brown snake crawling away. I didn't stop to find where he went.

    Harold was chasing horses in a T-model Ford once. He sat me in it and said, "Drive it home while I chase the horses on foot.” He didn't know the risk he took. I’d scarcely even seen a car at that time, let alone drive one. But I landed safely with my teeth chattering.

    Stratus clouds were drifting across the sky one morning and I remarked that we’d have a windy day. We were surrounded by fallow paddocks. We sure got an insight to our first dust storm. I’d already seen hail and sleet fall from the sky but never grey and red dirt. Immediately we learnt why people said that you couldn't see a hand in front of your face. And in the middle of it all Mum had a heart attack. We put her on a seagrass lounge outside to try and give her fresh air and rubbed her aching arms and chest vigorously, but we were also gasping and breathing in little else but dirt.

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SCHOOLING

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MAVIS...

    Vera was supposed to teach all four of us with the Correspondence School lessons we had sent to us from Adelaide, but we were expected to work for l2 days then do a fortnight of lessons in two. They were very patient with us but we never had those lessons done on time, and we didn't learn much.

    The year I was thirteen Eddie Vickery, the teacher at Yaninee, persuaded Mum to let Elsie and I go to school there. Purnell Davies was ready for school and they didn't want to have two trips a day to take and fetch him, so they loaned us their sulky and we used our horse, and so we went, but Ella and Una never did go on.

    It was a humbling experience for me - 13 years old and starting Grade Five in the middle of the year. Because of my age Mr Vickery said he would help me to do two years in one, so I gave it a go and made it. Bern Holland was the only one with better marks. I got 603, and 600 was a bursary but of course I was a year too old. I would have loved to go on and Eddie thought I should, but of course it was back to work for me. He even had a job to get Mum to let me back on concert practise days. How I loved the concert bit, I was sure I was going to be an actress.

    A little story that was told to me. The Helberg girls used to drive a horse in a buggy to school, and after school it was said they used to terrorise other kids by chasing them and swinging the whip at them. But our cousins Ethel and Cyril were not going to stand for that so they did something - I forget what - to the girls. So Mrs Helberg went to see Aunt Edie, in a very angry frame of mind, but Aunty wouldn’t listen, she said – “Welcome Mrs Helberg, come on in and have a cup of tea. While we are arguing they will be out there enjoying a visit.” – and that was the way to fix quarrels.

    I loved school and started playing basketball for them the first winter and after that the school team played in the town team as the older team had folded. Mr Vickery helped a great deal, those months at school were very good for me. He taught us singing and in many ways encouraged us to think, which Mum had always sat on. I had a constant battle with her over reading. We were not allowed to read “The Chronicle”, which was the only weekly paper we bought.

    We made friends at school and life was more normal for us. Of course we worked before and after school, but I loved it. I am not sure that poor Elsie did, but that's her story. Purnell was a real brat, he was used to doing exactly as he wanted. After school he would get out before us, he would go off with whatever friend who had invited him home to play and we’d be guessing where to go to look for him. We drove old Poddy some days, sometimes Nell, there was nothing to choose between them, both were slow and cranky and had very embarrassing habits at times.

    We went to Port Lincoln on a school trip, I don't know who got around Mum to allow us such extravagance, but we had a ball. A big concert night and we excelled in our item - Japanese ladies in kimonos, sunshades, the whole dress up, and we sang and danced, then took the prize for that sort of item. When I visited Mr Eddie Vickery two years ago he was a very frail old man, but he reminded me about that item.

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HORSES – WILD & STRONG

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MAVIS...

    We had been given an old mare named “Cora” to ride, so we were soon riding everywhere on the farm. Elsie learned one day, by Cliff sitting her on “Dick”, who was a bit headstrong, then gave the horse a slap on the rump and Elsie was riding, or the only other choice was to fall off. Not Elsie, she clung like a leech. Helmets and riding lessons were never one of our worries.

    I was riding Dick one day, searching for calves that had gone missing, miles from home and crossing over the edge of a salt lake, and his feet slipped from under him. I landed hard but held onto those reins like grim death to a mop stick. It was a long walk to home and I'd be lucky if they had found me. I was not sure what was hurting most, and or if I could walk. Poor horse was so scared, he wanted to bolt but I hung on. I arrived home but no calves so I was not popular.

    When we had to go to Yaninee for mail or goods, Una and I would put Don, another lively horse, on the out-rigger and we’d go full gallop, just to see how fast a time we could do. We were always in trouble over something.

    When I was 13 Reg came to work for us. His brother Clarrie was share farming nearer the town and Elsie and I were very good friends with their sister Joyce at school. We still are, after all these years. We knew the whole family through our contact with some.

    Reg had a beautiful chestnut gelding named “Jim”. My great desire was to ride him but Mum was very firm that I should not, so it was some time before I managed it. But one day I had ridden “Dick” to Yaninee and Reg was at Clarrie's riding “Jim” back home to our place. Guess who was soon riding “Jim”. All went well for a while but “Dick” hated to let any horse get ahead of him, so we were soon going full gallop. Reg was an excellent rider and had no trouble with “Dick” but I hadn't a prayer of holding “Jim”. He was a beautiful horse, but wild and strong. Poor Reg, all he could do was hold “Dick” in, and hope for the best. I finally reined “Jim” in and waited for Reg to catch up. I was then convinced that he was too strong for me, we changed mounts and no-one was any wiser, except me.

ELSIE...

    I was always pestering Cliff to teach me to ride a horse. One day he put a bridle on “Dick”, threw me on his back, and I went down through the mallee at breakneck speed after Cliff had given him a good size belt on the rump. The horse was sweating when I got home - to say nothing of me – and I ate my tea standing up that night!

    Mr Crowder often bought Brumbies down from Central Australia and sell them at reasonable prices. One day one of our neighbours died suddenly, and Mum wanted me to get flowers from another neighbour but wouldn’t let me ride a Brumby. So I rode “Scotty”. But he tripped over a root across the road and rolled on me. I managed to mount him again and road home sidesaddle, and I did get the flowers but hobbled around for weeks after. The Brumby did in fact drag me some distance a few days later when the saddle came off. I somehow managed to stop him, tightened the saddle and rode again.

 

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RE-VISITING THEIR OLD WORLD

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MAVIS...

    When I was about 12 Uncle Walt sold his farm to John Roe and went to live at Mannum. It was around that time that Cora bought baby Cora to see us and when she went back to the Prairie she took Elsie and I with her, and Harold drove us in his old car – and knowing about his cars, I feel the folks were very uncertain in letting us start.

    It took us two days of being stuck in sand - you name it, we tried it - but it was at 2 o'clock in the third morning before we arrived at Cora's home at Cudlee Creek, very tired. It was my l2th birthday. I never did meet anyone who swore like Harold could and did, but he made that contraption he called his car, get us there, at last.

    We stayed until Christmas time and we had a great time. Plenty of oranges to eat, off the ground mind You, but they were great. Thelma and Ruby Redden became good friends and their parents really gave us a good time. We went to tennis, to the beach and to their place to stay. They had a baby sister and we adored her too. It was heaven after the hardship at Yaninee.

    Uncle Walt came from Mannum and took us for a week. Ethel took us to the recreation ground where there were swings and lots to do. Ethel would take us in their boat across the Mighty Murray, a new experience for us. Wally had the underground room for his tricks, and he had plenty. He had painted a full skeleton with phosphorous paint, it glowed in the dark and when you opened the door it swung towards you. Not a pretty sight, you will agree.

    Aunt Edie washed our hair and very unexpectedly rinsed it in cold water, oh what a surprise! That was to keep us from catching cold, she said. We’d rather have risked it.

    When we went back to Cora's it was cherry ripening time and we had to keep the birds away. We certainly earned our keep for a while. Those hills were steep around the cherry trees. We loved Granny Redden, she was always on our side. We had been told not to eat the cherries but she said "If you can find ripe ones, you nick a few, it won't break them".

    Over this period of time Cyril Parker worked for Uncle Jim at Kersbrook. He was a dear man but had become an alcoholic, and Cyril was the one who would hunt him up in the pubs and take him home before he had spent the market money. But Cyril was with Doug Warner a great deal of his leisure time, and sadly he changed from a quiet farm boy who worked hard, to a lad who learned to like alcohol and a good time.

    Uncle Walt bought a new Dodge car, so we had the old one, and Mum and Cliff came over in it and brought us home. Ella has told me that it was New Years Eve as they came because they went to a street party in Port Pirie on the way. It was a new experience for her. They were staying with Mum's cousin, Alec Swenson for the night. When we went home it was back to work as usual.

 

ELSIE...

    Mavis and I went over to stay with Cora and Les at The Prairie sometime just before Xmas 1927, but it took three days to get there. We went over with Harold in the Ford, and we got stuck in the sand, and had two blowouts as it was hot. Harold finally belted it with the cranking handle, and we were quite amused but didn't dare let him see us laughing.

    At Cora’s we could eat as many windfall oranges as we liked, but of course we got tummy ache. And we minded the birds off their cherries too but weren't allowed to eat any.

    We stayed at Cudlee Creek for three months and met some friends, Ruby and Thelma Redden. We went lots of places with them. Sometimes we played tennis with them. Some of the people were deaf and dumb so we talked on our hands to them. We were much too slow but they understood.

    From there we went to Mannum to Auntie Edith Parker. I wasn't too elated but Mavis was. Wally had an underground room and scared the living daylights out of us as when he opened the door a skeleton flew across the ceiling. Of course we screamed like mad. He was satisfied then. He used to swim in the river and would go under and not come up for ages, until we were scared.

    While we were there we went out in a boat and I caught my first fish - a Murray Cod. We enjoyed ourselves at the playground not far away. Wally Parker and Ted, his cousin, would get us on the long swing - they'd get one each end and try to throw us off. Boys will be boys so they say.

    Mum and Cliff took us home in the old Dodge. Another 3 day trip because the roads were all potholes and we too got stuck in the sand. However, we finally made it back to slavery again.

 

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WHEN THE WATER ARRIVED

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ELLA...

    When the pipeline was being laid in 1927-28, bringing water from the Tod Reservoir - all work was carried out with horses doing the scooping - the men camped in tents and moved location as the line progressed, and along our stretch of line we supplied them with meat and bread etc.

    When the water arrived Mum soon had a much better vegetable garden going, as there was never a shortage of animal manure. It was so great as we’d been so long without much in the way of fresh vegetables, and had mainly used the dried apples and jam etc that Mum had prepared before we left Kersbrook.

 

UNA...

    The Tod pipeline came through in about 1927 when I was 13, and Mum and we girls cooked and sold cake, butter, and eggs to the work men. We made 60 lbs of butter a week by hand and sold it for 5d a pound, and our eggs were 2d a doz.

MAVIS...

    When the Tod Water was finally laid out on the farm, it was heaven, we had a standpipe and the water flowed just by turning on a big tap! Plenty of water, no more carting, no more wrestling with that siphon. The Tod water was very hard though and we tried to keep enough rain water for clothes washing, but when we really had to use it we softened it with ‘Waterglass’, the same substance we bought for pickling eggs.

    When the Tod water was first laid on, they put the pipes underground, but in time they corroded, so later on they were raised and then it worked well. There were men of all description on that pipe track but we had no trouble with them. They were camped very close to our house and we sold them butter, eggs and poultry. Mrs Sweetman was the camp cook, she called the men woolly noses, to we kids’ amusement.

    After the water came we carted posts and made a strong post fence around quite a large piece of ground. Then the manure had to be carted and Mum was in business. She could grow anything, and did. We did much of the work. We only had one hose so, if we had it at the house where we grew flowers, Mum would yell - 'Girls, bring me down the 'ose" - and we had to look lively, as she often said. We erected a frame in the front garden and grew Seven Year Beans over it, and two of us slept out there most of the year.

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BUT IT WASN’T ALWAYS HARD WORK

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MAVIS...

    Our main outing for a time was Sunday School, every fortnight in the Yaninee Hall.

    It was part of a large circuit operated by the Methodist branch of the Church on the West Coast. It was great to meet with other children living in similar circumstances. They all had fathers, so here was a difference we had to cope with.

    Dear Mrs Helberg taught me. Mum was Superintendent for a few years. She loved it, but wretched child that I was, thought she didn’t practice what she preached. She always insisted that we sit in the front seat at Church, whether we were late or not - we seldom were - and I would be furious every time.

    We wore a lot of clothes that were given to us and that got under my skin too. Mrs Fraser gave us some really nice ones her girls had grown out of, bless her heart, and I loved a little blue one in particular, but Mum wouldn’t let me wear it when I wanted to. She was always demanding of me - "Who do you think you are?” My unspoken replies I'll not print. I tried to like her, we were told often enough that we should, but she always rubbed me up the wrong way.

    The highlight of the early years was the Christmas Eve party in Yaninee at the local general store. Laurie Rivett was there at the time. We were given sweets and they had a bowl of water with an electric charge in it, with a threepenny piece at the bottom. Elsie braved the shock and got the money, with great rejoicing.

    I loved to read, but Mum censored everything so the battle was on. I would hide anything that came my way. I would hide the lantern until her snoring started and then I would read for hours if I had been lucky enough to get something. Ethel used to give Vera her books so I was always on the look-out for something interesting. I was really into "Forbidden Love".

    When old Mr Russack came to work for us he gave Elsie a Mama doll, such a baby like doll and she was over the moon. And when Vera started going with Allan Lewis we were very lucky, they gave us a china head doll, with eyes that went to sleep, and such pretty little dolls they were. Julie-ann has mine. We loved them, and we dressed and undressed those dolls so many times. In some ways we were so young, but in others so old for our ages.

    Cyril bought himself a Harley Davidson motor bike and he and a cousin who had come from Kersbrook to work in the district, Doug Warner by name, would roar up to our place and bring we kids chocolate roughs and puff balls. They were marvellous treats for us. We’d play euchre with the grown ups by a lovely mallee fire for hours. Elsie could hold her own very well at seven years old. Cyril was always telling tall stories and playing pranks on someone. I thought he was wonderful.

    It was that winter that Mum took on the contract to do the “football teas” in the hall. Everyone went to football in the afternoon, then the home team always supplied tea after the match for visitors, their supporters and the general public. They paid for their tea, then most changed into long evening frocks or short when in fashion, and went to the dance and danced until 5 minutes to twelve, when the hall would be closed, and often those who were holding Church service the next day would prepare the seating for the Church.

    We used the little hall at the back for teas and suppers, and we boiled the copper, in the rain sometimes, but we had urns inside to make tea. The older girls baked a lot of the cakes and tarts etc, but they had the pasties and sausage rolls from the baker. I think they came from Port Lincoln. Then we made sandwiches.

    I was playing basketball so I would have to help afterwards with making tea, sandwiches, waiting on tables and anything else to be done but only until the music started. Then I went missing, the dance was the only thing of importance to me. Mum greatly frowned on me dancing, but by the time I was 13 she had lost the battle. I soon had plenty of partners and how I loved to dance, it was sheer delight, but Mum had never danced and did not pretend to understand, so from then on we were in constant conflict.

 

    Every Christmas we celebrated with Aunt Edie's families. Irene, Harold, Dorothy and Les were all married so we gathered at different homes each year. We all took along the best we had in food and simple presents, and had a great day of fun and games. Though it was almost always hot, we had a beautiful roasted turkey and all the vegetables we could eat, with boiled puddings and sauces to follow.

    I remember one Christmas when Vera was not expected to be there but for some reason she was. When Dorothy realised that Vera hadn’t a present from the tree, she went to a lot of trouble to wrap one of her own nice hankies and “found it under the tree”, claiming it had been missed. She, like us all, had her faults but was very kind too. I was told this story long after it had happened.

    When Allan Lewis went to farm at Warramboo he used to bring his neighbours Jim and George Noyce with him when he came to see Vera at the weekends. George was a wireless expert and it wasn't long before he had put a set together for we girls. How we loved that radio, as they came to be called. We’d get up early so that we could hear the start of transmission at 6.30am. We really caught up with the world from then on. We even listened to the races.

    When I was 14 years old I had my first birthday party, and all my school friends were there and we had a photo taken. Vera had tried to get me to do something different with my hair, but no way. I cringe when I see that photo now, but it has made me more patient with the young over the years.

 

ELSIE...

    We made our own fun as there wasn't much other entertainment. Cliff was a wizard on the mouth organ. He had a barrel one and he also played an old accordion. He loved music, but of course he only played by ear. When I was quite young, our neighbour wanted to teach me to play the piano but I was not allowed to learn, thought to be a waste of time, I guess.

    Harold bought home a gramophone for us to play. It had ‘jam tin’ records and said “Edison Bell Record” every time it played. He used his inventive ability to try and record a song, and I seem to remember him screeching out a song into the funnel, but when he played it back, it came out in a whisper. So much for trying.

 

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GROWING UP, MOVING ON

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MAVIS...

    When Vera and Allen decided to marry in March 1932, things changed a bit. I was 15, was going to be 16 in October of that year. We four girls were going to be bridesmaids. I cannot remember who were the others partners, but Cyril was to be mine. He had never learned to dance, so as we had to join in the Bridal Waltz, he had to learn. Guess who was ready, willing and able to teach him. We had the most hilarious fun, as always, when he was around.

    Ella and I had green satin dresses, three quarter length, as was fashionable then. Vera had to have everything exactly right. Una and Elsie had blue satin. We all wore pearls in our hair. Vera wore a lovely pink shade, she was too pale to wear white. Her dress was full length, really lovely. They were married in the Yaninee hall and the reception was in the original little hall at the back. The early settlers’ children were educated there before the school was built.

    Arch Davill came to our place often - Ella being the reason - but he could never get enough courage together to do anything about it. He was a strange man suffered with some sort of muscle twitches which made him appear ridiculous, but he was always welcomed with all the others that came, and there were many.

    My cousin Ray Chamberlain, started a fruit and veg round on the coast. (His mother, Aunt Rachel, was the one who dragged me screaming into this world). He went from farm to farm selling his wares, and we were very glad to get fresh fruit, as the local shops were not always fresh.

    By this time we had a post office and another general store next door to Aunt Lizzie's house. Hugh Brown had been farming but had let his farm on a share basis and started his shop. Ray and his son, Max, often stayed with us. Our “mansion” was somewhat improved by them. We had black rubberoid floors which was a help but Mum insisted we wash them in separated milk to make them shine, and they did, until we came in from outside, then every foot mark showed.

    We had a latch on our back door and we became expert at gently lifting it so that it didn’t click as we came in - believe me, Mum heard the slightest sound. Una gave me the works because she was always later than she was supposed to be, and she would quietly get in, but getting into bed she would disturb me and I would start talking quite loud in my sleep.

    We had a striking clock which we stopped when Mum went to bed, then if she awoke she didn't hear it strike. With any luck, we’d have it started on the right time before she got up in the morning, as she never rose early. We were in league against her, but we worked hard for her without pay for years.

    A salesman came and persuaded Mum to buy a bigger separator, an Alpha Laval, with a bell which rang as soon as the speed of turning slowed up. Mum kept a sharp ear on us, there would be an instant yell if that bell rang. Una would get carried away with what she was singing, the bell would dong, Mum would yell and Una would sing loudly on, quite oblivious to anything but the song. For a short time, that is.

    We sent our cream to the Dairy Produce Co. at Lincoln, and they deducted an amount from each cheque until the separator was paid for. It certainly beat making butter for sale. We sent cream twice a week, they returned the cans, and we’d pick up the empties when we took the full ones in.

    Sunday night tea was always in the big room. White starched table-cloth and the best we had Mum demanded that we cook well, no waste. We always had visitors on Sunday and there had to be plenty of food. They’d just arrive, dear folk all, and they were welcomed, whatever was happening. Country folk are so genuine and we had many friends, and our house did not bother them at all.

    When Cora had a baby girl, Eileen, soon after her twins, she had a breakdown, and she was asking to see me so I was sent over. It was my first time in Adelaide alone, and I knew nothing of public transport. Cora gave me a pound, and I had my photo taken in an apricot coloured evening dress, which I had made. I have always hated that photo because it makes me look fat, which I wasn't. I also bought flame coloured velvet and white fluffy stuff to make another dance dress, as I was mad on dancing.

    When Reg Bilske's sister Ada came to visit, trouble came, as Cliff fell for her in a big way. Mum was angry to say the least, as Ada played on Cliff’s adoration and the result was he left, went to a scrub block at Kopi and took much of the plant and horses with him. It was a very unhappy time. As a family we always helped each other if trouble loomed for anyone, and of course Cliff deserved much more than there was to give, but he was no orphan there. We girls were unhappy with the situation, but never let it come between us but Mum was not reconciled for some time.

    When Dad's estate was wound up, we four youngest girls’ share was given to Mum as we were so young and she needed the money to raise us, so Cliff wasn't the only one without all that was due.

    We carried on farming with various workmen, anyone who would work for low wages was OK with Mum, but we girls had to do a lot more again, and that wasn't really work for girls. Una and I picked stumps one year for weeks, and they were very big and heavy, and I pulled the joint between my hip and spine adrift. Vera took me to Tumby Bay with her when the first of her nine boys were born, and Doctor Wibberly did his best to fix it. I was strapped tightly for 6 weeks from shoulders to bottom, then that was ripped off and my back was cleaned with alcohol. I can still feel it. Then another lot of plaster was put on, oh the itching!

    When I was about 16 we went to Lothar Scholz’s tin kettling. These were crazy affairs!

    The friends of the bride and groom would gather at an arranged time and place, and at a given signal we’d ring cowbells, bang tins, run a long stick on an iron roof or wall. It was one hell of a racket. Then the couple would come out and invite us in and we’d have a great social time. The ladies supplied the food and we all tried to outdo each other with cream puffs, sponges, tarts, you name it, if it was good to eat we had it. The men supplied the drink, a great variety, according to taste and what they could afford. My one virtue, I can truly claim, I never drank alcohol, but Cyril had enough for us both at times.

    In the early thirties we had very hard times on our farms. Everyone had the same troubles. We had to convert our cars into “Jinkers” and the horses had to go back in the shafts. But at least having the car tyres made for a better ride, and it was easier on the horses too.

    Wally was a very good "bush" musician, he could play a tune on a bread knife and a length of string. He was good on the mouth organ, accordion, organ or whatever was handy. He and Cyril came to our place a great deal and helped out whenever they could. After Cliff went it was good to have them around, and we listened to the Test Matches from England, and made milk coffee for suppers, with saveloys and hot bread, sitting by a raging stump fire. They are good memories. We sang all the latest songs, went to the Yaninee 'pictures', saw Bing and Gene dance with Ginger and we wished we were that good. Wally was a good teller of 'yarns'. We laughed a lot in those days of poverty, as far as money was concerned, but we had a fortune in love.

    When we were short of feed and Vera was needing help, someone took 5 cows to Warramboo and Elsie and I took turns in going down there. I had a busy summer but I went to Venus Bay with Noyces, Reg and Joyce.

    When it was time to take the cows home I saddled Star early after milking and I was on my way. Allan came for a while to see how they settled, but it was a long hot ride, about 39 miles. Cyril came to Wudinna to meet me, riding his push bike. According to my diary we had snow spa and fritz for tea, watered the cows and pressed on. They were tired and scouring by the time we reached home. I was sunburnt for once in my life. Star was very tired too, he had done a lot of rounding up when they were still frisky. I can't remember who took them down there.

    I went to work for Mrs Dolphin at Warramboo soon after. There was Mr and Mrs Dolphin, Arthur their nephew, who worked the farm, three other nephews who lived in during the school days of the week, and me. Quite a family. I also milked 3 cows, made bread, all the washing and ironing, the cleaning and Mrs Dolphin helped with the cooking. All that for ten bob a week and my board. No Unions then to set hours of work, you simply kept at it until it was done. But she was a dear lady and taught me a lot about cooking.

    I don't remember much about Ella and Jack's wedding. Elsie, Gwen Edmonds, Jack's sister and I were her bridesmaids. We dressed at Mr Tyler's home in Wudinna, he was District Clerk. They were married in the Church of Christ. Afterwards we went to the dance at Yaninee. Una told me that she was cranky because she wasn't being a bridesmaid so she took herself off to Manoora to a job. She did not go to the wedding.

    Jack had Harold Norris, the minister, worried. He had found him under his gas producer at almost wedding time, that charcoal made you black. But no worries, Jack was a quick change artist. He looks great in the photo, he scrubbed up great. We evidently were having a lean time because we didn't have a wedding breakfast.

    I was really into basketball in 1936-37. I was captain and president of Yaninee, secretary for the Association. This involved me quite a bit in town things. We arranged a Ball for the basketball club. We girls wore the boys clothes, they wore whatever we could get big enough for them. It was a great night. Lots of lads and girls joined in the fun. I had been riding hot after basketball and had an attack of tonsillitis, which was a worry when I, and others, had to decorate the hall the night before. It was great to be young and do it anyway.

    I was the first girl to wear shorts in Yaninee. The girls would really laugh if they saw them now. They were made of green and white check gingham, a divided skirt really, but they showed my knees! My evening dress was black, having not much bust, it was no problem to make the back bare to the waist, such daring.

 

ELSIE...

    By the time I was about 13 Vera had met Allan Lewis - he had a block at Warramboo - and they were in the throes of preparing for their wedding. Mavis, Ella and I were bridesmaids and they were married in the Yaninee Hall. It had to be decorated with bows of white ribbon, plenty of fern and mostly white flowers. Then, of course, we cooked for the reception. All went well as far as I can remember, the only hitch came when we heard our superphosphate delivery was at the station. Allan helped Cliff cart it home next day, and then they all went to Warramboo because Allan's super had also arrived.

    In those days all the neighbours and friends gathered all the cowbells, tins and buckets they could find and when everyone had got together the "Tin Kettling" began and they kept up the noise until the couple came out.

    It was at Warramboo I first met Jim Noyce. He often took me to dances. Noyces were the neighbours of Vera and Allan. I was l4 and he was 28. I often wondered now how he tolerated me. He and his brother George and sister Gladys had a farm opposite. He won many prizes with his photography. Films were mainly only black and white in 1932.

    Jim’s parents lived in Mundoora. I stayed over there twice. Gladys, he and I went over in their car. It didn't have a name as they'd made it themselves out of bits and pieces. I called it the "Bitsa". It had a gas producer on it too. They were Irish and, of course, loved Irish songs and would do anything to persuade me to sing them. That friendship was everlasting. I’ve always been grateful to him for the fun we had in those years. He was so understanding. We went to the Crystal Brook show while we were there. That was an interesting day out. From Vera’s we went to a dance one night and arrived home at daylight. There were three couples. One couple had a fight and we had to wait for them.

    Around about this time Ella had met Jack Edmonds and they'd planned to marry. Jim Noyce and myself, with these two came to Adelaide in Jack’s old bus with a gas producer attached. It spluttered all the way. We slept at Sandy Creek one night and reached my sister Margaret's place in Mitcham next day. Gloria, my niece, took a fancy to Jim but the feeling wasn't mutual.

    While there we bought Ella's bridal frock, and Mavis and my bridesmaids frocks. I wore mine because Jim took me to a Ball at the Glenelg Town Hall. We also went to the 5KA Rainbow Room to a dance.

    Because Bronsons Drycleaners claimed they could clean anything, Jim put his greasy old workaday hat in. It came out spotless. He took me to a restaurant and I ordered apple pie. He ordered some fancy dish and it turned out to be rice with one apricot half on top. I had the last laugh. I wanted to go to a nightclub (curiosity, of course). He firmly refused to take me and told me he may take me - when I grew up - he never did!

    Ella and Jack were duly married in the Wudinna Church of Christ, and I nearly dropped the bouquet. Jim attended the wedding and afterwards we all went to Yaninee to a dance. They - the bride and groom - got in free! The next morning we all went to Venus Bay and stayed for a week.

    Wally and Cyril Parker were always up to tricks. They made a contraption which had two plough seats, one wheel 2 feet bigger than the other. It had shafts so a horse could pull it. They kidded Mum to get in it then galloped away down through the mallee with her screaming her head off. Cyril would also make a noise some nights like a fox howling and poor Mum would race out with the lantern thinking that foxes were after the fowls. But she woke up to it after a while.

    Before we left the farm the going was tough as we had l0 years straight of drought and had to get drought relief to keep going. Sometimes a stubble fire would get away from somewhere near and we'd all have to put it out belting it with bags. It was too close for comfort.

    One day Mavis and I were bringing in sheep and we had a thunderstorm. Scotty, the horse was close by. “Let's both get on his back and go home," I suggested. This we did but Scotty just turned his tail to the rain and promptly refused to budge. We soon learnt that horses sure had a mind of their own.

    Una never rode much but wanted a ride on Star so one day got on his back and dug her heels into his side. He took off like a rocket with her hanging on like grim death. The dust of them could be seen riding into the sunset. Finally she took her heels off him and he slowed down. She wasn't anxious to ride him again.

    When Una did the separating she usually sang like a nightingale and her dog ‘Wuff’ used to join in, but one day when I was separating and I left the door open while I got hot water from the house to put through after I'd finished. In a hurry as usual I ran back only to find a calf had rushed in and was drinking the milk. The handle of the milk bucket hung on its head as it ran backwards and fell down the cellar on to Mum's home brew. Hop beer and milk was all over me and the calf as the corks popped off! I saw the humorous side but I'm afraid Mum didn't. The cows licked the calf all day and finished up flat out in the hay.

    Una finally left home. She and Wally Parker had gone to Berri, fruit picking and doing other jobs which came to hand. After Cliff had left home, Mum applied for a man to help on the farm, one of whom came from Adelaide - Bill Fuller. He was a conscientious worker, a real livewire and comedian. Mum thought he was great - after a while. So did I. We went to lots of dances and learnt many songs off the radio and still worked from daylight to dark.

    During this time we had to crutch sheep - some were flyblown, some had grass seeds in their wool and we were in the middle of a drought with very little food for the animals. The sheep were dying and we'd skin them and sell it to buy food. We carried milk from a neighbour's l½ miles to feed the lambs left without a mother. One week we lived on some over-ripe bananas and pears which our cousin the fruiterer had left.

    However, with the help from friends we had our bright spots. Like the night we went to Minnipa to a ball and danced till about 3 o'clock in the morning. I was so tired I suggested we tie the reins on the side of the tip dray and bed down in the bottom under Mum's best eiderdown and go to sleep. This we did. I awoke some hours later to find the horse had also got weary and was eating grass in full view of Auntie's house – half way home and it was daylight. I seem to remember tripping alongside and leading the horse on all the soft patches till we reached the road. After waking Mavis (she talked in her sleep) we galloped the rest of the way home, milked the cows and went to bed.

    I seem to recall that Mavis and I thought we'd make Auntie Edie some plum pies (we had a surplus from the fruiterer). We saddled up "Star”, a part race horse, in the jinker, the only trouble being we didn't have a britchen. We arrived 5 minutes later minus the plums. I don't know who was shaking the most, us or the horse when we finally pulled him to a standstill. The poor thing was terrified. Going down hill the jinker ran into his back legs - so much for our good deed! I guess the birds enjoyed the plums. Cyril and Bill came tearing down (they were at Auntie Edie's) to stop the horse but saw we were okay so we got a full blown lecture.

    We'd go into hysterics when Bill would tell the story about the day Davies’ bull chased him. He was riding Star and I believe he galloped to the nearest tree and jumped onto it with the bull tearing up the ground and blowing hot breath beneath him. He wondered if the limb might break or if he'd be roosting there for the night. Disillusioned the bull walked off and Star came back for Bill. The dust of that adventure can be seen still - Phew!

    Sometimes we'd have a Ball. The men dressed as ladies and ladies as men. That was humorous in those days. As Bill had fair skin and hair he made a perfect girl when we put a fair wig on him, make-up and high heeled shoes. One night Trudinger, the Doctor, walked in half blotto and chatted him up. He couldn't get his wig off quick enough.

    Some Saturdays Bill & Cyril used to go to football or cricket. I’d stay home and milk the cows so I could be early for the tea and dance after. All went well till one night Bill arrived at the dance inebriated. Other people thought it funny. I didn't. We had been engaged for some time.

    Una had by this time had met and married Colin Stringer. Gladys Noyce, Mavis and I were bridesmaids, and Phil Stringer, Tiny Stringer and Bill Fuller were our partners, but I was partnered with Phil. After the wedding at Wudinna we all went to Venus Bay, but by the time we'd put up tents etc we were sure ready for bed, but that was the last time I saw Phil, as he was killed in the war.

    Not long after that I broke off my engagement to Bill. I was now l9 years old and we'd left the farm after me developing boils on both cheeks, and Ella had come to help us (Mum and I) sell the remaining cows and fowls etc. We bought Mum a house in Wudinna where Ella and Jack were living opposite, and I took a job at the Wudinna Hospital.

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EPILOGUE

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ELLA...

    Ella married local lad Jack Edmonds in 1934, honeymooned for two days on the beach at Venus Bay, then tried to set up home in a bag and tar barrel shack in the mallee and sandhill country out at Pordia, where together they attacked yet another unyielding heart-breaker of a West Coast scrub block, for a few years.

    Their wheat crop did well enough in the first season, to give them some hope, but not so good for the second, and the grasshoppers got the third. So they moved into Wudinna and Jack took up Council contracting work until the outbreak of war, then moved to Adelaide.

 

UNA...

    During the Depression Una worked at Crystal Brook, Narridy, Redhill, Manoora, and at 21 went up on the Murray. Then in 1936 she married Colin Stringer in the Wudinna Church of Christ, and they started out together on a scrub block, until Colin joined up.

 

MAVIS...

    Mavis married local farmer Lance Rowley and went to live on the Rowley farm by Mt Wudinna and raised a family there, moving to the Barossa and then into Adelaide later in life.

 

ELSIE...

    Elsie married local lad George Edwards just after the outbreak of war, and went to live in Adelaide when he enlisted. George was killed at Tobruk, and in time Elsie remarried to Vern Maddox and raised their family in Adelaide.

 

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