5. Big Trees and Blowflies.

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.