Author: Christine Eyres

Away to the westward, I’m longing to be
Where the beauties of heaven’ unfold by the sea

As Dad promised, our new house in Albany did go up fast. He had several mates who lent a hand. For Mum, the small primus stove continued to be the only means of cooking. Washing was done in the open in a copper perched on a rough brick fireplace. One large galvanised basin served for rinsing and another one for starch. The washing line was strung from the backyard dunny to a post set in the ground. A wooden prop held it up in the middle because it would sag dangerously close to the ground when it was hung with the heavy dripping washing. Wringing was done by hand. On several occasions, I remember Mary’s frustrated rage as she picked washing off the ground covered in dirt. Electricity was several years away and even water was not yet connected to the block. My father fashioned a yoke from wood, which he could lift onto his shoulders. There was a hook on each end for two galvanised buckets. Each morning before he rode his bicycle to work, he would make several trips to the main road and bring enough water back for washing, cooking and baths that day.

After my father had cycled off to work in Albany,  I can only imagine how alone my mother must have felt, at this stage left with two small children, never seeing another soul unless she walked to the main road and caught the bus into town to do her shopping. She remembers people always being kind. There were very few migrants down that way and she said they stuck out like sore thumbs. One kindness was never forgotten. The owner of the town’s department store, Drew Robinson, stopped her in the store one day. He asked how they were getting along. She tried to crack hardy but admitted that cooking on one small primus burner was no fun. With that, he ordered her to go upstairs and pick herself out a stove. When she protested that she couldn’t possibly afford it, he told her he wasn’t asking her to pay for it. A Meters wood stove was duly delivered and made all the difference to our lives. Dad was able to repay Drew by doing repairs to his boat.

Every evening it would be my job to walk up to the main road and leave the billycan for the milkman. The next morning I would walk back and collect the billy full with milk. The repetition of this chore made it tedious. When it rained the puddles on the rough track that led to our house almost joined to become a river. One morning, after heavy rain, a large red clay coloured puddle had formed right across the track. This did not present a problem for me in my Wellington boots, but the intensity of the colour fascinated me and I had a sudden urge to see what the white milk would look like against this vivid orange canvas. I gave into my urge, and after feasting my eyes on the patterns as they swirled around and gradually faded, I was filled with the enormity of what I’d done. I ran home sobbing to tell mum I had spilt the milk. I do remember feeling guilty as she tried to comfort me.

One morning I was jolted out of my tedium by a vision in pink sitting on a pile of planks on a block on the main road. There sat a small girl about my age all alone. I found out later she sat waiting patiently for her father to return with more building supplies. I was so excited I grabbed the milk and ran home to tell Mum, but when I returned a few moments later she had disappeared. I was heartbroken. I hadn’t yet started school and hadn’t met another child in over a year. However, before long the Docking’s house was being built and Maxine and I became best friends.

The house that Dad built – Lurline Street

Once the main house was built, we had an inside toilet and my mother begged my father to get rid of the old dunny from the backyard.  I think to she wanted to show the street that we had gone up in the world, but much to her frustration Dad was in no hurry until suddenly one day he took a rush of blood to the head and demolished the dunny with a few swings of the axe. However, he neglected to notice it was still attached to a line full of washing. It is an understatement to say that Mary was not happy.

The rest of the land around us was gradually settled, mainly by migrants. There were Poles, Yugoslavs, Ukrainians, Macedonians, Italians and Dutch, but for some reason, we called them all Dutchies. I think I deliberately never got to know any of the other migrant children very well. I wanted desperately to be like the other Australian kids. Our Polish neighbours turned up with such things as liver sandwiches for school lunch, or after school were found sharing a bowl of cold meat jelly, reeking of garlic and exclaiming in delight over the occasional bit of meat. We either ignored the two bigger boys and their little sister or had wars with them, each side thinking up mean and sometimes dangerous tricks to play on each other.

At the end of our street, there was a short cut through a cow paddock to school. In the middle of the cow-paddock grew an enormous fig tree. During fig season we climbed up and have a feast on our way to school. One morning after we had been particularly mean to the Polish boys, Eilean, and Maxine and I were up in the fig tree. Suddenly we became aware of Sluffco and Johnny quietly working down below. To our horror, we saw that they had completely covered the tree trunk, all around, with big soft cowpats. I don’t know whether I was more horrified by our predicament or the fact that they had done this with their bare hands.

I don’t remember the fathers of the migrant children, but my mother was always kind and ready to help the women. Unlike us children, she would have understood the reason for their haunted faces. Perhaps they were grateful to be able to come to the land of opportunity, but I don’t remember seeing any joy in their faces. They would have missed their homeland as desperately as my mother, and they had the added obstacle of not being able to speak English very well. As children, we grew hearing stories, but never really understanding the lives out parents had led. Scotland was always referred to as “home.” There was a constant reference to the war. Such and such happened before the war, or during the war, or after the war. There were also references to the First World War, the flu epidemic and the Great Depression. All this was beyond our comprehension, as we grew taller, browner and stronger than our parents had ever been. We didn’t have a lot in the way of material possessions, but neither did anyone else. We took having enough food and clothes and a warm bed for granted. We grew up as little Australians and my father would often shake his head in wonder as he listened to our broad Australian accents.

My mother has always been a wonderful cook and still was until the day she died aged over ninety. She seemed to have an inbuilt knowledge of nutrition. We had a three-course meal most nights: soup, main course and sweets and she battled to give us variety. I was always ravenous and ate anything, but she got little appreciation from my more finicky sisters. Mum scorned the use of such things as polony, meat pies and other processed food as rubbish. Her own mother had made delicious meals out of offal, but when she tried to feed us tripe or liver there were long faces and untouched plates. It must have been disheartening to be creative with a tight budget only to have turned up noses. One night, as we sat down to eat, Eilean exclaimed, “Not that again,” and the next moment the plate was upturned onto her head. One Sunday, lunch roast lamb was on the menu. I was told to watch the joint while the gravy was being made. As I tucked into my plateful I spied a maggot squirming on my meat. To draw attention to it would have caused a storm and perhaps the end of the lunch. It was my fault for taking my eyes off the joint. I shut my eyes and swallowed it.

At least once a week we would go fishing. This wasn’t a sport, but an enjoyable necessity to top up the larder. On the weekends we might all go, Eilean in her pram, but most weekends were spent working on the house. My mother and father sometimes went down to the wharf, or the deep water jetty, usually on a Thursday night, so that we would have the traditional feed of fish on a Friday. Eilean and I were left asleep in our beds. Later in life, my mother shook her head in disbelief that she left us like that. There was no doubt they took a risk, but she couldn’t go fishing by herself, and after being alone with two small children all day she was desperate to get out. Perhaps parenting comes easier to some people, but I can fully understand Mum’s need. As a young Mum, I often felt the same.

The terraced hillside overlooking Middleton Beach: Our favourite picnic spot.

I remember my parents were delighted when they caught a feed of small fish that they called mackerel (I think they were mullies) and yellowtail, but the locals scorned these as baitfish, and only fished for ship-jacks or King George whiting. During the salmon season, my father would ride his bike around the south coast to the Salmon Holes. A wild beautiful beach near the mouth of the outer harbour, where salmon chased the herring into the bay and were sometimes trapped in the reef. He would often fish all night, and return in the morning with two huge salmon and perhaps some herring. I once hounded him to take me. The eleven-mile ride in the dark on the crossbar of a bicycle is not for the faint-hearted. I spent the night untangling my line or huddled in a blanket cold and bored. I never asked to go again.

It was time to move from the farm and strike out on our own with our meagre possessions. John’s treasure was his accordion and Mary’s was her sewing machine. My father got a job in the Nyamup mill, so he no longer had the twenty-mile pushbike ride from West Manjimup to Pemberton everyday. Here they were given a small home of their own. This was a luxury, albeit a very basic one. Mary enjoyed making the tiny weatherboard house into a home. Using cochineal she died some of the sheets she had brought from Scotland and made curtains. She put her grandmother’s big black teapot on the mantelpiece.

 

Dad and me, Nyamup 1950

They bought a few second hand bits of furniture, but when Walter, a Yugoslavian mill worker wandered through the front door, drawn by the music of John’s accordion the only seat he could be offered was a packing case. Walter (pronounced Volter) was typical of many of the mill workers – a post-war refugee thrown into an alien world. A young lonely man without family or friends, he made toys, including a beautifully crafted rocking horse, for the children of the tiny town.

A week after arriving in Nyamup, Mary and John were invited to a social gathering one evening. I believe I was left asleep while they enjoyed their first real night out since they arrived in Australia. At the end of the evening they walked out of the hall and realised they had no idea how to find their way back to their house. Each tiny weatherboard dwelling was identical to the next.

We’ll not be able to find our house. They’re all the same, said Mary to another woman.

Don’t you worry about that, said the woman. Yours is the house with the red lights.

Mary went straight home and tore down the curtains.

The summer heat was oppressive for the new comers. The only relief came from sitting in the Wilgarup River, or the wee burn,as they called it. To their horror they came out with their soft, white Scottish bodies dangling with leaches.

Most shopping was done once a fortnight in Manjimup, and it was hard keeping any fresh food. Blow flies were the bane of everyone’s life. There was no refrigeration, just meat safes and the occasional ice chest, which was a luxury my parents didn’t have. If throwing tantrums could scare away blow flies, our little home would have been free of them, but the buzzing creature blithely ignored Mary’s ranting, and proceeded to deposit their squirming offspring on any morsel as soon as her back was turned. She would look on in disbelief as the locals washed the maggots off a joint of meat and calmly continue to carve it.

When we were children my mother never bought a rabbit from a butcher shop after seeing what happened at the farm. Rabbits were pests. A cow could break a leg by stumbling into a rabbit warren, and they ate valuable pasture. My uncle would trap the rabbits and sell the skins for felt. The carcasses were left on a nail for the truck from Diamond Meats to pick up. Sometimes they would hang on that nail for days, and Mum said they would be crawling with maggots before the Diamond truck would arrive.

Bread was delivered to Nyamup a couple of times a week. Our usual order was an upright loaf. However one day the baker had run out of uprights and left a poppy seed loaf. My mother took one look at the loaf and took off up the road after him. The poor baker then had a hard time explaining that he wasn’t taking advantage of a new chum. He had run out of bread and he thought she’d like a nice poppy seed loaf, and: No! Those little black things are not baked maggots. They really are seeds.

The Timber Train in Nyamup

Mum, tell us the one about the marron.

There was so much to get used to in this new Australian life – and so much to be frighted of. One night, Mary and John sat in the farmhouse alone, the sky darkening with a brewing storm. On other nights, the birdcalls rose to a crescendo before a sudden and deep hush descended. This night there were no birds. The rain thundered on the tin roof of the farmhouse so hard that Mary, eyes wide with fear, had to yell at John to be heard. Why would anyone be knocking on a night like this? They were miles from nowhere. John pulled back the bolt on the top half of the stable door that led from the kitchen to the veranda and he said his heart leapt. The dripping apparition before him lifted its hood slightly. It was a man wearing a hessian sack slit up the side to form a crude cape. His face was in darkness but a muscular arm shot forward and thrust another hessian sack at John, saying: Something for your dinner.

John grasped the bag, trying to find words but the man touched his hand to the sack on his head. He turned and left without the couple having a clue who he was. My father then realised whatever was in the bag was alive and kicking. He dropped it in fright. The couple watched in horror as a beast, such as they had never seen, slowly crawled from the sack, throwing macabre shadows on the hessian walls. In the dim light of the kerosene lamp, Mary screamed and stood on a wooden chair. They’re playing tricks on us, John. Bloody Australians! They think it’s funny to torment the new chums.,

John kept his eye on the slow-moving beast, while he reached for the packing case that served as a spare chair for visitors, and brought it down, the open side over the big black crawly thing, trapping it.

I’m away to check the bairn. Mary sidled around the crate keeping a frightened eye on it. Get rid of that thing, John, she said.

And what do you suggest I do with it, woman?

It then dawned on my Mother that my father was out of his depth. She remembered Doug’s sister, Jean and grabbed the phone on the wall, winding the handle six times. She had seldom ever used a telephone and nervously asked to be connected to the Littles’ house.

That’d be Bryn Morgan. That was nice of him, said Jean. You can cook that for your supper. Just boil the stock pot with a good cupful of salt, pick him up and pop him in for ten minutes.”

That was good enough for Mary. Good food could never be wasted, but John shook his head in disbelief as they boiled a great pot of water on the stove. He then hurriedly threw a towel over the monstrous marron and bundled it in alive. He remembered shuddering about the barbarity of what he had just done. He also remembered the pleasure of this new taste.

In 1949 Mary and John were New Australians and as such, considered oddities. For a start, the way they talked was different, with their broad Scottish accent. Much of their speech contained a Glaswegian dialect that they soon learned not to use if they wanted to be understood. They had to learn the many Australian ways of speech including the confusing slang. Mary would go into the drapery store and ask for Kibry grips, and be right scunnered to find the shopkeeper look at her as if she were talking Japanese. Eventually, she would find what the locals called hairpins and point to them. Almost every task no matter how simple was different and often difficult. Wood was burnt for cooking and heating instead of coal. When Mum complained to someone that she couldn’t get the fire to start, it was suggested that her wood may be green. She replied indignantly: No, it’s brown – the same as yours.

One escape from reality for Mary was through the love of reading, but even this simple pleasure was difficult. The oil lamps were too dim to read or write by until she eventually braved the long walk to Manjimup and bought a Tilly lamp. Mary was looking forward to reading the work of Australia’s famous writer, Patrick White. His reputation had spread to Scotland. However, when inquiring at the small local library, about the author, who was to go on and win the Nobel Prize for literature, she was told indignantly by the librarian that she didn’t stock books by the likes of him and had no intention of ever doing so. At this stage so much of the Australian culture seemed to challenge.

John found work in a timber mill in Pemberton twenty miles away. He set out early each morning on his bike. Mary left alone for much of the day, tried to help around the farm. Uncle Doug would go off to the paddocks to clear the great trees and prepare the land for growing potatoes. Aunty

 

 Clearing Land to Grow Potatoes

Helen suffered much in the nine months of her pregnancy sick and needed help. Mary learned to milk a cow, tend the vegetable garden and collect the eggs. She overcame her fear of the hens, to do as she was told and feel under the broody birds. She complained one day that one of the hens hadn’t laid an egg all week. My father went out to the shed and lifting up the stiff bundle of feathers declared it had been dead for days. I don’t think we’ll ever make a farmer out of you, Doug had said. But Mary had no intentions of staying on the farm.                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

                                                              

I have been a stranger in a strange land.

Exodus 2.22

I’m not sure how we found our way to the farm in Manjimup. Partly by train from Fremantle to Bunbury, a journey held up by a fallen tree on the line. I can only imagine what that trip must have been like for the couple, with a young child, straight off the ship from the UK.  Thrown into the deep end of Australian country life, our only support for would come from Doug’s sister and family. My parents could contact Jean by winding the handle of the big black phone on the wall and asking the operator to connect them. This was a high-tech contrast to the rest of the farm, which at that time, remained in the nineteenth century.                                           

The train to Bunbury stopped by a fallen tree

The farm was part of the war-settlement scheme. Originally from South Australia, my uncle came from a sheep farming family. Now he needed to learn the dairy business. Sheep couldn’t survive in the soggy country of the south-west. We used to say it rained for nine months of the year and the rain dripped off the trees for the other three. Hence the importance of the dairy-farming course in Harvey which coincided with our arrival in Australia.                                                                                               

It was four miles to Manjimup along the dusty Graphite Road. Mary walked there and back to buy supplies such as flour and sugar. She was always terrified and never got used to seeing dingos cross the road, or worse still large dugites and tiger snakes. She was always grateful for a lift from Mrs Randall, an elderly neighbour with an old Buick, even though the passenger door was wired up and she had to climb in through the window.

 

I loved the farm in Manjimup, especially the house. I believe it was built over a hundred years ago by Mrs Randall’s parents. In one of the paddocks was a pretty little graveyard surrounded by a white picket fence. The graves of Mr and Mrs Ralston were shaded by several flowering fruit trees. To me it was was a beautiful and sacred place, but my uncle had no time to tend it, and it fell into disrepair. I believe the family have now moved the graves to the town cemetery. I can’t remember whether it was Mrs Randall (Daisy) or her sister Mrs Simpson who was a wonderful artist. The family came from a genteel background in England. Mrs Simpson’s husband “Tiny” (he was a very large man) was a remittance man. A remittance man was typically a younger son, often with a problem, (in other words he didn’t quite fit into the rigid society of upper-class Victorian England) who was paid an allowance by his wealthy family to go and make his fortune in the colonies. Stories of Tiny included his love of gambling and his lack of interest in farming. The feats of both him and his wife are legendary in the district. They both made trips on horseback to Bunbury, more than one hundred miles and once Tiny was said to have walked the distance taking a broken plough on his back to be mended. 

 

              Dad  and me at Warwick Hill Farm   

Mum’s memories were of being invited to have afternoon tea. It was Limoges china, silverware and serviettes while trying to ignore the evidence that the mice had been at the cake, she once said. It was also said that Mrs Simpson never had to wash any of Tiny’s socks. When they were dirty they were thrown out because his family back in England kept him in such copious supply. I remember my father coming back to the farm exhausted and blackened after fighting a fire at the Simpson’s place and shaking his head with disbelief because Tiny had been sitting back in his chair on the veranda watching the proceedings, and at one stage asking for an opinion about a local horse race. Was this my memory or a story that has been told so many times I can’t tell the difference? I do have memories, from a later date of the Simpson’s house on a hill not far from Doug and Helen’ farm, and how Mrs Simpson used to tip the ashes from her stove onto the paddocks, setting fire to them and threatening the whole area at least once a year.

Growing Potatoes at Warwick Hill

The farm was called Warwick Hill and the house was a rambling weatherboard structure with verandas on one side and a pergola on the other. Gnarled trunks of wisterias strangled the veranda posts, and in summer the whole structure was a glorious purple shower. At the back was an old stable door in two parts. In the centre of the house was an enormous lounge room with a massive fireplace, which in winter was kept blazing, fed by great lumps of Jarrah. The floor was polished jarrah and French doors on both sides led to the verandas. On one end was a row of bedrooms. In contrast to the magnificent lounge room, the bedrooms were basic. The only other furniture besides the wrought iron beds were packing cases, sometimes one atop another to form a rough dresser. The walls were Hessian, and my mother remembered the time  they caught alight from the oil lamp in the room where I slept.

On the other end of the house was the large kitchen that also served as the dining area, and tacked on the end of the kitchen, like an afterthought were the laundry and bathroom. When we first came to Australia the house had a bathroom with a bath that had to be filled with a bucket of water warmed by the kettle. With a few minor changes, it remained that way throughout my childhood. It was all very different from what you see in houses today. The cast iron bath sat on the concrete floor. Later a stand that held a forty-four-gallon drum full of water was added. This was heated to scalding by the slow combustion stove in the kitchen, which was alight night and day, fed by the plentiful supply of wood from the clearings. The towels were hung on nails beside the pedestal which held the basin. A couple of packing cases were used to put such things as hairbrushes on. I don’t ever remember brushing my teeth in those days.

The laundry was a simple affair half open to the elements and contained a copper set into a brick fireplace and a grey cement trough on a stand. I don’t think we even had a wringer. That was done by hand. Years later next to the laundry was the inside toilet which replaced the original dunny that was down the back path – such luxury. It was flushed by pulling a chain that released the water from the small cement tank above. The best thing was that we could use tissue paper instead of newspaper. The tissue paper was normally used for wrapping apples for market. It came in green squares and wads of it were skewered on a hook made of a bent piece of wire.

At the back of the farmhouse, the path led past the old fruit packing shed and pig-sty. These weathered wooden buildings were grey with age and green with moss. My parents yearned for the clean and new after the grime of Glasgow. But these structures hewn with axes from the local Jarrah trees whispered past tales and I listened with rapt attention. The vegetable patch was on one side, and the prolific passionfruit vine on the other, then continuing on down the path was a large space shaded huge old oak trees which grew in the middle. The house was reputed to be one hundred years old when I was a child so I’m guessing the several large oaks were just as old – probably planted by the Ralstons to remind them of home.

Mum milking a cow

Down one side of the clearing stretched the bull paddock. Uncle Doug always kept his one bull close to the house so that he could keep an eye on the creature. On the other side was a long line of joined sheds which once were stables, but now had an assortment of uses. My favourite was the feed shed with forty-four-gallon drums of bran and pollen and other grain for the chooks, pigs and cows. The smell of pollen, especially when it is mixed into a mash with warm water for the chooks was irresistible to me. Several times I had to taste it, but like coffee, the smell was always better and I spat it out. Another shed was for gardening and paddock tools: spades, hoes, mattocks and great crosscut saws. Spare parts and mechanical tools were kept in another, and in another, we gutted and skinned rabbits and hung the salted skins up to dry. One of the sheds served as a tack room for all the bridles and saddles and other gear for Jack and Diamond the two great Clydesdales that pulled the plough and harrows on the farm long after tractors were the norm. Occasionally they would also be hitched to the great dray that stood in the clearing and used to bring in the bales of hay. The hay shed delighted all of us kids. We jumped and rolled around in it, scaring the chooks that were trying to find a secret place to nest until we were chased out by Aunty Helen who warned we would be covered in flea bites. Beyond the hay shed was the new pig-sty, and a little further on, the cowshed and dairy.                                                                                                          The plough-horses: Jack and Diamond

In the front of the house, like a constant reminder of more genteel days was a neglected tennis court. Doug and Helen, keen tennis players, always had plans to restore it to its former glory but there was never enough money, and there was an active tennis club within walking distance down the Graphite Road.

The Tennis Courts

As much as I loved the farm, my mother hated it. Part of that was perhaps the fact that they felt like intruders in someone else’s home but she found every part of the life too strange to bear. Once a week the minister visited the outlying farms but Mum and Dad found his views and sermons old-fashioned and stifling. When New Year came my parent’s brought in a bottle of wine. Hogmanay was the biggest and most celebrated event on the Scottish calendar. but my uncle looked upon any form of alcohol with horror and was even aghast that my parents may have been seen buying it. New Year’s Eve that year would have been very different to the festive occasion that Mary and John were used to in Scotland.