Australians at War Film Archive

Well I was born in England a little village near Durham, north of England.

And when I was, don’t remember much there, remember going to school there but then we came to Australia. My father wanted to come out here, there were five of us, and my two elder brothers were just about old enough to go into the mines and in England if you lived in a council house your eldest sons must go into the mines at that stage.

So he and my mother, I had an uncle out here and a grandmother, my father’s mother and sisters and brothers of his, but he said to Mum, “How about we go to Australia?” So that’s when we came to Australia. We came by ship of course and when we got to Fremantle they had a strike, so we had 6 weeks there at Fremantle and we used to go over

to Perth, I can remember little bits, you know going to cafés. But then we came to Cumnock, that’s the other side of Molong. And we stayed with my grandmother and my father’s brother in a little 3-bedroom house and there was two aunties

and an uncle at that stage there. And then my Uncle Jack, that’s Dad’s younger [brother]; he was a year younger than my father, a couple of years younger. He had come out to Australia in 1912 and when he earned enough money to put a deposit on a piece of ground for himself he did that at Cumnock. And

then he rented this little place and while he was there he grew wheat and had sheep and then he saved enough money to put a deposit down for his own ground and he bought 750 acres out the other side of Cumnock. And Mum and Dad came into the little one where he’d been leasing, of 200 acres

and the first year that Dad was there, he borrowed implements from his brother and he put in a wheat crop. And they had a very good crop that year and he and Mum started saving up then to buy some land of their own. But then the depression hit, and that put them back a lot. But the two elder brothers,

they should have been going to school but my eldest brother was about 12 or 14, I think and then the other one would be about 12 and they went out fencing. When the crop got in, they’d go out to the different places around, there was a big station there at Cumnock called Burrawong, and they got work out there. They were fencing and making smaller paddocks in the place. And

that’s what they did there and then my brothers both went to work then later on at different places and when Dad got on his feet a bit. And we were all going to school at Cumnock, the three of us, my sister and a younger brother and myself. We had to walk a mile and a half to school everyday.

Dad stayed on that little farm until he got enough money then, we had to lease it, he paid I think it was a hundred pounds a year for leasing 200 acres, but we had a house there on it also. And he kept buying, he’d go to sales and he’d buy a horse and then he’d go to another sale and buy a horse, and cow he got a cow, we had our own milk and cream and everything. And we had a pretty

good life there and we just about from here to the bay away from the township. And then of course when he left there and he rented another property which was a bit bigger, out the other side of Cumnock, it was 7 miles out of town and he rented that for a couple of years and then they got enough money together

that he went out west looking for a place to buy himself. And he went to the other side of Parkes; do you know where Parkes is? And Trundle is about from here to Newcastle away from Parkes and he put a deposit on a property there. We shifted there at the end of 1939 and in between

that I’d been, when I was 17, I was a nanny to two doctor’s children. When we were at Cumnock I did that. But when the doctor moved away he moved to Wellington in New South Wales, Mum said I could go with them, they had 2 months at Manly and

Doctor Curl had bought a practice at Wellington. Mum said, “Rene can go with you until you settle into your new place at Wellington but then I want her home, she’s too young to be away”, 17 I was but I was too young to be away. So I went over to Wellington and stayed until they got someone else to take over the children

and I left. But when we went with them to two months down at Manly and while we were there Doctor and Mrs Curl used to go out and take the kids out and of course Rene stopped there to cook the dinner and everything, and they rather liked what I cooked I think. Anyhow oh about two years after that, I was working at different places and I got,

I was going to go nursing and the day I got the letter to write away about the nursing, I got a letter from this doctor and his wife at Wellington. And she said that the girl that was doing the housekeeping for them she was going on holidays and could I come over there and stay with them for the 6 weeks. So I said “Okay”, by this time of course I was 19

and I went over there to them and then the girl that they had had doing the housekeeping she left and then of course I stayed on and that’s where I met my husband. And when I met him we went together, we got engaged when I was, oh about 20 I suppose, 19 must have been. Dad said, “You’re not getting married till your 21”.

So when I was 21, of course the war came and the boys, I went home. My father had an accident, he was training a young stallion by walking behind it and getting it used to the reins, I don’t know if you know much about horses. And he used to break them in like that to put them in a sulky at the end.

And he must have had a fit, a seizure of some sort, they never knew what, and he went down and this horse, was a young stallion and he trampled my father and he broke his leg in a couple of places and he had his face all fixed up. At that time when I was away from home of course, I was working then on a farm and

this man, they rang him and he said, “You’d better go home” he said, “Your Dad’s had an accident”. So I went home and when my father was okay again, he always had a bit of a limp, and of course I was there when the war broke out, no I was at Wellington when war broke out. Anyhow he,

we had, where was I, 19?

Yes his leg, he always had a bad limp with his leg afterwards but then of course he finished up, where he’d rented this little place, finished up going out to the other, the other one that he rented.

And when he left there he went to, he bought the place at Trundle. And I happened to be at home between jobs then and I went with them and while we were there of course as I said the war broke out. My two brothers were home with us but the eldest brother went and joined up thinking the younger brother

would stay with my father. And the younger brother thought the same, he thought my eldest brother, and he went and joined up unbeknownst to anybody, and then their papers came together in the June of 1939, no it would be 1940. And of course when they were going, poor Dad had these 1500 acres with horses and a tractor and me and that was it.

And of course in ‘41 when I was doing the combining, I sowed all the wheat that year for Dad in the, we had about oh yeah 200, 300 or 400 acres of wheat. And then when it came shearing time of course Dad had two stands, do you know anything about shearing?

Well he had a motor and two men could shear, have you ever seen them shearing sheep? So when it came to about June or July, Dad went into the agents in town and he said, “Could you get me some shearers?” Dad said, “Oh I couldn’t get one” and they couldn’t get any shearers, they didn’t have any on call or anything,

cause it was wartime. I think they were pretty busy and they weren’t allowed to shear on weekends in those days, that was a no-no. So Dad said, “Well, we’ll have to start and do it ourselves”. So we went over and got the sheep in and put them in, you bring them up into little pens with a little gate and you go in and pull one out. Dad would take the top part off and round the neck and then I’d do all the long blows

because he couldn’t bend, he had blood pressure. So one of our neighbours came over, we’d done about 50 I suppose and he said, “What the hell are you doing, Bill?” and he said, “I’m trying to shear these sheep, the wool’s just going to drop off and that’s no good.” He said, “I’ve got shearers near my place, there’s two brothers,” he said, “I’ll ask them if they’ll come over on weekends but don’t tell anyone

they’re doing it”. So that’s how we got our sheep shorn. And then of course there was the wheat to sow and whatever and I did most of that. And cause Dad had to do other things around the farm and then in about, oh the war had been going for quite some time, and the doctors ordered my father away for a while, so

he went down to Wollongong to see some people that were living there that we’d known when we were living in England, they’d lived along the street from us. And he had a couple of weeks there with them and we’d had no rain, it was like now, it was drought, and then we got 10 inches of rain. And by this time I was married, I got married in 1940 and this was ‘41 then and I was, I think when he

went away that time, I think I was about 7 months pregnant with my first baby. So anyhow I could manage otherwise, I used to go round on a horse and look at the sheep while Dad was away. But as soon as it rained he hightailed home and then where am I?

Yes he came home. Oh and when he came home, we had 10 inches of rain over night, just when he came home, washed the fences away. So I couldn’t do anything about the fencing but I said to him, “Look Dad” we had a tractor but you had to wind it yourself, it wasn’t, didn’t have a button to press you had to get and crank it.

And I said, “Look, you do the fences” cause he had to get these other paddocks ready for doing something else. I said, “I’ll drive the combine with the tractor.” He said, “Your mother will kill me” and I said, “Well if it’s doing me any harm, I won’t do it”. So of course he used to be round the paddock fixing the fences

and he’d come and start the tractor if I had to have it done. So I started then and I ploughed, or I combined when I was 7 months pregnant with the baby. And of course then my mother was upset, she said, “You shouldn’t be doing that.” I said, “Perhaps I shouldn’t but if it’s got to be done it’s got to be done and it’s not worrying me. So if it worries me I’ll knock off.” “Alright”. So David was born,

that’s the eldest boy, he was born in ‘41 and of course my husband was, they sailed for the Middle East, my husband and two brothers, well one brother my eldest brother was at Darwin first, they sent him up there. But my husband sailed for the Middle East in ‘41, in June and when he went down the next morning,

they used to have PT [physical training] on the boat and there was my younger brother on the same ship as him. And that was nice because they met then in the Middle East. And then in about the October when David was born, my eldest brother was home at the time on leave, he was going to be shipped out, over to Egypt. And I was to go,

before the baby was born, I was to go into town and stay with a friend, cause she lived not far from the hospital. So she came out on the Sunday, our first wedding anniversary and she said, “Rene I think you should come in and stay with me next week.” I said, “Oh I’ve got a couple of weeks to go yet. I’ll go next week.” She said, “Okay”. So on the Monday morning I got up and boy I had to go,

I went in to Mum and Dad about 6 o’clock and I said, “Mum, I think I’ve got to go to the hospital.” “What for?” I said, “I’ve got to go to the hospital, Mum.” She said, “Oh, oh” and she’s out of bed and she said to Dad, “You get up and put the horse in the sulky”. So he went over to put the horse in the sulky and I’m trying to have a bit of a wash, you didn’t have a shower in those days out in the country, you only had tank water; I was having a bath, trying to.

And every now and again, I got these terrible pains and Mum said, she went into my brother, my eldest brother was home on leave, and she said, “Quick Arthur, get up and get on your pushbike and go in and get the taxi to come out”. So he out of bed and went to go into town on the pushbike and by this time Dad had the horse in the sulky. So I got in the sulky

and we had to go about, oh from here way down to the end of this street there, to the first gate, and we got through that and Mum was with me in the sulky. And as we got out the gate, the taxi was coming out from town. So Mum just wheel strapped the horse, you know how to do that? Well when you’ve got them in a…

Okay. Well then he, well after I had David he was 18 months old before his father had come home from the Middle East, he had never seen him. But when my brother was home with me, when he was born, when he went to the Middle East the first one he met

was my husband and he told him all about it. So well they came home and of course they went off again, came home in ‘43 from there and then Ted went off again, he went up to Borneo and he was there when the war finished of course. But when I had my second baby, in 1945

they were, well the war was nearly finished really, and we got in touch with the military to see if my brother could come home, out of the army, the eldest brother because I couldn’t do the work on the farm. And they sent word back, oh they sent a man out

from, Mr Curtin sent this fellow out to ask why wasn’t I still doing the job, this was after I had the baby. I said, “Well I’ve got a son in there two weeks old, do you want to have a look at him?” then they wanted to know why my mother wasn’t doing the job, well Mum couldn’t, she couldn’t even ride a horse, couldn’t put it in the sulky either, I had to do it or Dad when we used it. But then

we went what…oh forgotten, lost my train of thought.

That’s right that’s when Curtin sent this man out and I was really hostile with them. I thought, “Well they had three brothers and a husband all those years in the war and they

wouldn’t release one”, gee I was cranky. And Curtin, I said to the fellow there, I said “If Mr Curtin get a big toe ache he goes to bed and has it seen to,” but I said, “If we get sick or anything we’ve got to just carry on,” and I said, “My mother’s never done that job in her life, she wouldn’t know where to start”. So anyhow they didn’t release anyone but they had to have a certificate from the doctor to say that I was pregnant,

it was when I was pregnant first with the baby, that’s right, the second baby. I went to the doctor and I said, “Could you give me a certificate to say that I can’t work on the farm,” because I wasn’t very well when I had the second baby. He said “What for?” I said, “The military want it”. So I had to send a certificate away to say that I wasn’t able to do the work now at the moment. Anyhow then after that

when he was, when the second baby was born he was 2 months old and my husband wrote back and he said to me from up in New Guinea, and he said “When I come home I’d like to go to the Bay [Shoal Bay, Port Stevens, NSW]”. His sister had a little weekender up on the hill and he said, “The last time I was home on leave we’d talked it over that when I came back from war” he was going to buy that from his sister, and he said, “How

about you go up there now and stay”. Cause Mum wasn’t very happy with me having two children at home and “not a home of your own,” she said. I thought, “Oh well I’ll get a home of my own.” So I shifted up onto the hill, there was nothing here then, there wasn’t a delivery of anything, I had to walk into the Bay to get milk and food. And I used to put the baby in the pram,

one of the wicker, old fashioned pram and then I had a seat about that wide used to sit across the front, just fitted over, like over there and I put David on that and I’d walk into the Bay with the pram, with the two kids in the pram. Well Ted came home in ‘45 and

he came up, we, were buying that place from his sister and then Mum, my father got very sick and he sold the property, or my brother was to take over the property, the eldest brother. But he just, he was

to take it over in the January but it would be about September, he had a bad turn my brother, and my father. So both finished up in hospital together and then my brother they finished up sending him to Concord and he was suffering they said from war neurosis. Well he was going to take the property over from my Dad and they had all the papers ready, all they had to do was finalise everything.

And they said, “You can’t do that, you’ve got to be somewhere with people because of your war neurosis”. So he had to give that away and then my husband came home here and he bought a big launch about 28 foot and he used to take fishermen out to sea and deep-sea fishing. And Athol Donbrain [?], I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of

him, he was into all the things of nature, used to come out here and go around all the islands, about all the birds and he used to do all that and of course Ted used to take him out there, outside. He used to have fishing parties of a weekend from the works in Newcastle. He never ever got enough on a weekend so we bought another boat and he used to have, his

brother-in-law used to run one and he used to run the other, and we used to take fishing parties out every weekend. And we had a really good life up there then. Fishing fell through and my husband decided he’d go to Corthaulds in Raymond Terrace and work so he got a job in there. But he had to travel all the time down to Corthaulds and all we were doing was buying cars for travelling. So we bought a block of land at Raymond Terrace

and he went to work at Corthaulds and we bought about a 2 acre block down there. And then we sold the one up here, which I’m sorry we did, but before that when my father retired, cause he had to give up the farm. They came here in 1950 he and my mother, my father came first for a holiday

and he fell in love with the place and he said, “Oh I’d love to be here” and of course he loved fishing. And when my husband had boats to take him outside, he used to love going outside fishing, so he said, “I think we’ll buy.” He bought two blocks of land down the back. And they shifted, he sold the property and my brother went to Wollongong and he worked in a factory there, they said he could do that but he wasn’t to be on his own.

And Dad and Mum built a place down the back and he got sick and they found out, he came in 1950, or 1949 he came and he died in 1950 and he just loved it here but he only had about 6 months I suppose. And he had leukaemia, they found

out what was wrong with him, and he’d had it for years but they didn’t pick it up then, especially in the country. But he didn’t last very long when they put him in hospital in Newcastle. So then my mother bought a block of ground down in Bullecourt Street then. And my Dad bought me a block there and built a house, in Bullecourt Street

cause the one we lived up on was only a weekend thing. And he built the house and he said, “That’s for working for me during the war”. Because in my day, they didn’t pay females at home especially farmers, you didn’t get paid you just did it because you were in the family. I never got a penny when I used to do all the work around the farm. And Dad said, “Well you kept me going” he said, so he bought me the block of ground and he paid

me a thousand dollars towards the house to get built and we lived there for quite a long time then, Ted went fishing, and then when the fishing got bad, he went to Corthaulds. And of course travelling to there, it was too much for him and he was back and forward all the time so I said, “Let’s buy a ground at Raymond Terrace and we can let this”, so we used to let it. And Mum bought a block next to us in Bullecourt Street and she built a place

there instead of down the back so Mum was next door, which was quite nice. And then Ted’s mother was next door to that and his sister was across on the waterfront. But oh they were nice happy days then and the kids were all going to school. We travelled David the eldest one to Newcastle everyday to the high school at first, then we went to Raymond Terrace of course it wasn’t so bad there

that; the other two, the second boy and my daughter went to Raymond Terrace High School. And Paul he went, he got a fitter and turner, that’s what he wanted to do, and my eldest son got into the PMG [Postmaster General’s department], he was only 15 when he got into that and he was there for 41 years, he did in the PMG. And then

Sue was a teacher, she was deputy headmistress at Patterson School and she retired, she married a farmer out there at Patterson. But oh it’s been a good life, bit boring.

Not a lot.

I can remember the place where we lived; fortunately I went back there about three or four years ago, my niece and I went to England

and saw the house where I was born. You always had your children at home in England and we were all born at the house, we weren’t all born at the same house but I saw where I was born. And an old friend, a girl that used to go to school with my sister in England, was still there and she knew the people that were living in our house. It’s still there; it was built in William the Conqueror’s era I think. And she asked

them if they’d mind if I came over and explained to her why and she said, “No, not at all”. So we went there and I took photos and a video of where I was born and inside, it was very nice. But…

Very poor, very poor area. My Dad was pretty lucky he was good with his hands, like a mechanical engineer

you’d call it and he got good money in the mines because he was always very good at it. But then when my two elder brothers came to the age that they had to go down in the mines Dad said that he didn’t want that, so that’s when we migrated to Australia.

Yes, oh he was working when he was I think 12 in England in those days.

I just read a book and I thought, “Gee that’s just how Mum and Dad used to tell me what happened”. Cause Mum used to work in England when she was a girl for 6 shillings a week and that went to her mother to keep the rest of the family; there were five in Mum’s family. And her father left her mother when they were quite young and of course it meant that the children had to,

it was a very, very poor place Durham.

Mum?

Well round North Shields.

Yes South Shields and North Shields. And when you go over there again now as I said to my niece, “I know now why my mother and father migrated to Australia” couldn’t live there, I couldn’t live there.

My mother even said she couldn’t live there when she went back. She went over, she and Dad were going to go over in 1950 and of course he took ill and he died before. The day, she sent over for their birth certificates and the day they arrived, my father went to hospital and he never came out he was so ill with that leukaemia. And

Mum, I said to Mum, well my Dad’s brother and his wife were going back to England in the January, Dad died in the June or April and they were going to England in the January, and I said to Mum, “Why don’t you book and go with Uncle Jack and Aunty Clare” so she did, she still kept the

booking going and she went back with them. But she said when she came back to Australia she said, “I’m glad I came to Australia, were glad we came”. When she went back to England she had all her sisters and brothers still alive then and of course over in England if you’re from Australia, oh you’re wonderful if you’re from Australia. So different friends that Mum visited

when she went back and they put it around and then different ones, one of her sisters they had what they call an Over 60s Club and Aunty Lily took Mum to this Over 60s Club. And they came and they said, “Look we’re having a meeting” or something to do about Australia and whatnot up at some hall and she said, “Would you come and give us a talk” and Mum said, “Oh yes,”

you know thinking just a little pow-wow. And when she got there, they had her up on this stage and she said, “There was hundreds of people in this great big place” and she said, “I nearly fell over backwards”, but she said, “Once I got going and I could tell them the difference between England and Australia” she said. Beryl and I noticed, that’s my niece, that when we went back if they’ve got sheep, they don’t tail the sheep whereas in Australia it wouldn’t do

if you kept the tails on the sheep because they get fly-blown in the summer. And I don’t think they’ve ever heard of anything like that. And Mum said all the differences she could see after being in Australia, she said, to what it was like in England. She said, “It was, she wouldn’t go back there to live”. But she liked going back to see her sisters and brothers, but they’re all gone now.

But it was, Mum said it was so, the sunshine, you might get a day like this in England once in a while, you wouldn’t. When we were there, we were there in June and that’s their summer and I think we had one sunny day. Then Beryl and I did a big wash at this place where we were staying, put them out on the line and blown me down

they were only out half an hour or so and down came the rain, Beryl said “Oh gosh”, but they mostly dried their things inside, which is not as healthy as out here with all the sun going.

Of course that was Durham.

Oh yes.

It must have been, Mum and Dad must have seen such a big difference out here and he wouldn’t

have come only for his brother being here first, Uncle Jack. But and then there was still some of Dad’s, most Dad’s two brothers Uncle Albert, Uncle Ted, Uncle George that was Dad’s brother next to my father, he went to Canada, he stayed in Canada. But I don’t think it would be much different to England, the climate, the way England. And England,

I don’t know, people in Australia they go round laughing and, you know, in England they’re all a bit down, I noticed it and so did my niece. But oh no thanks, I wouldn’t live there I said to Beryl “Oh god I couldn’t live here; no wonder Mum and Dad come out to Australia”.

Only a couple, we pulled in at

Fremantle when we were coming out, we’ve got a photo up there of the ship we came on, we were all on the deck in that little one on that end. And I mean it was, we stopped at Fremantle that’s right and they had a 6 week strike when we stopped there. So we used to go into Perth somewhere on a train or something,

because Fremantle’s a fair way I think from Perth and I can just remember going to cafés when we went over there. And they had black people, no it might have been South Africa, somewhere there where these black girls were serving and they were always smiling and laughing you know in South Africa. And I can always remember then, they had like a little window that they looked out into where you were having your meal or cup of tea, whatever it was.

And they’d be out there and they’d be smiling away and they were black, black as black, I can remember those sort of things. And on the ship, they used to have fancy dress balls, and I don’t know where Mum got the stuff from but she made me into a wedding cake. I had one thing around here, then around there, cause I was only this high, in the fancy dress ball on the ship. But

I think they came out under the scheme [assisted migration]; you paid so much, I think it was pounds, so many pounds for the whole family to come out. And of course when we got to Cumnock where my uncle was, it was just nice time for the fruit and all that, and they had peach trees and all

and fig trees in the…

Well we stayed with my grandmother in that little place. She had quite a few of her own there then, aunties. I think some of us slept on the floor on a mattress

and pick it up every morning. In those days at the farm at Cumnock they used to build the cooking section away from the main part of the house. We had what we called the cookhouse at the back and then about as far as my track out to the road there from the front you went, on that was cemented and you walked up to the dining room.

You had to carry everything from the kitchen up to this dining room on the farm. But Mum and Dad when they got the place, they put wire netting around one end and they grew this lovely creeper and it used to come right over the top and we used to eat out there when it was fine, couldn’t do it when it was wet. But all my brothers and sister had their 21st Birthdays there and we used

to put those magic lanterns, as they called them, hang them outside and you know we had a lovely time out there. People used to come up from town, especially in the winter time, and they’d go for a walk, we were about from here to the Bay, and course in those days there wasn’t much to do in any country town, well any town for that matter. And they’d all say, “Come on lets go for a walk”, perhaps on Sunday

night or something after church or even through the week sometimes. And we had an open fire in the dining room section and it had like a big long piece of iron made like a, you know like a, what would you call it...anyhow it fitted across the fire and she had a big pot, one of those big old-fashioned pots they used to make

the soup in, she had one of those, it was enamel with the blue lining inside, it was all enamel inside, they were lovely saucepans in those days, not like you get now there only like tin. But that was put on this, at the side with milk; we always had plenty of milk because we milked the cows and whatever. And when they came out from town, on went the milk and the cocoa was brought out and whatever

you had to eat. Mum was a pretty good cook really; she used to make lovely pies and everything. But, and we’d all have supper and then they’d all trod back to town again.

Well that’s what we had milk and perhaps biscuits or something like that, sometimes toast if it was wintertime. We used to toast it in front of the open fire on big long forks.

Oh we used to enjoy, we’d have a singsong in the house and then Dad bought my second brother a piano accordion and he used to play that, well god father you wouldn’t be able to sit in it nowadays, he played this damn accordion and we’d all sing to that.

Oh whatever songs were going, just songs, my mother could sing alto to anything.

And I could sing, I learnt a little bit at school, few songs, I could sing the alto and my daughter likes alto, I like part singing, I don’t know if you like that but I love part singing because I was brought up with it I think. Cause in England, when Mum and Dad lived in England, they had a nice organ and a lot of them used to meet at Mum’s place and they’d have three or four men and three or four ladies and they all used to have part

singing, and I grew up with that and I think it stuck with me. And of course when this Harry Ferguson came, the teacher at Cumnock, he liked it too apparently, and he taught us, he couldn’t play any music at all, but he taught us to sing with the sulpark, you know when you strike the fork, the tuning fork. And we learn first of all doing do, re, me, fa, so,

whatever and then we had to sing it and that’s the way I learnt. And I learnt the alto too, “While above the stars are gleaming, all through the night”, have you ever heard that, All through the night?

Oh I’m a bit rusty.

It’s just, “While above the stars are gleaming, all through then night”, and I’d sing “While above the

stars are gleaming, all through the night” you know and I used to love that part singing. Then we learnt it to Robin O’Dare and he used to have just a group of us, three or four of us, cause only a small school that learnt the alto and then we’d have to sing that alto and then the others would have to sing. But when they had, we used to all have a singsong when we went into school in those days. If

I wasn’t there, he’d say, “Well, we’re not having it today, Irene’s not here”, cause I used to sort of lead them in the alto, I got it from Mum I suppose. And Sue, Sue likes it, she likes part singing my daughter. She’s a teacher and she used to love to want to sing these, part sing things but the things the things that she had, I couldn’t sort of get my tongue around to

do. Mum it didn’t matter what you sang with my mother the alto was there, she could sing it to anything.

Yes. I went to school in England.

Just a little bit. I remember we were taught with raffia [palm leaves], have you ever seen the raffia things? We used to make little handbags and things out of raffia, different colours,

they had really bright red, gold, green and I made a little purse once and of course when I came out here, my aunty liked it and she said, “Can I have that?” I said, “Yes you can have that” should have kept it because it would have been a souvenir now. But they taught you that in kindergarten in England, I only went to kindergarten in England because I was six when we came out here. But the day you turned five in England you had to go to school. I can

remember Mum walking me to school. But the school wasn’t there of course when I went back to have a look, because it had been burnt down. But I would have liked to have seen it; oh it would have brought back a little bit of memory. But Mum and Dad had this house, I was telling you, big two-storey place where they lived, and then they used to, and they still do, the council has ground where

you can have an allotment to grow whatever you, like about as big as this room, to grow things. And Dad used to grow a lot of stuff in that, he was very good at gardening, he was very good at farming my father, I don’t know where he learnt it. When we came out here and he leased property, he used to dig it

or plough it different depths on different, and he’d put it in a book. He’d do perhaps a row around the outside with perhaps not very deep and then he’d do one in the next row perhaps a bit deeper and go round. And he put that in a book and when he put his stuff in to grow, his wheat and oats or whatever, he’d check to see which did the best, and that’s how he learnt his farming.

Yes, yes. He used to do a bit after the war in England, after the First World War. He used to work in the mines of course in those days and when he came out of the mines, because they were short of power in England, of manpower, he used to go out on the farms and help them; after he’d done his shift at the mines, he’d go out on the farms. And that might be where he learned

it, but wherever he learned it I don’t know but he was a damn good farmer.

Well Mum went out and did a bit of housekeeping while my grandmother was there with us and some of Dad’s sisters in that little house. And then they saved up, when my uncle left, he was only there for about a year I think after we arrived from England, and

then he built a little house for his mother and his sisters out on his property that he’d bought. And it was lovely, it was always full, you know always somebody was there and they were very, they liked visitors and they liked friends to come and that sort of thing. It was a good life really. There’s only one

aunty that’s alive today, she was 90 a couple of years ago, Aunty Clare. She married my father’s brother, he was 44 and she was 22 when they got married. But I think Dad was the better farmer of any of them, Uncle Jack he grew, he wasn’t too bad. But when my father leased the little property out from

Cumnock, the 750 acres, my uncle said to someone in town, “He’ll never grow anything on that”. Anyhow about the next 18 months when Dad had a beautiful crop of wheat, it was that high and it was big ears on it, and somebody said to my uncle, “Have you been out to see Bill’s place there,” he said, “He’s got a marvellous crop of wheat”. And he drove his horse, his trotter - he used to have a trotter - out there to

have a look to see if it was. I don’t know whether he was jealous or not but he was a very good uncle, a good son to his mother. I mean he was only young himself when he came to Australia and of course, I think he came out under a scheme of some sort, and he worked and saved and bought his own

little lot and then he sent home and he got his grandmother and whoever was left to come to Australia. And then when they got settled down and there’d be another one wanting to come out and you had to be sponsored. My Uncle Jack was first and then was the grandmother and whoever was left in his family. Then there was

Uncle George he went to Canada, he used to come over to England now and again, but most of them went on the land. Well then some of them went down to Lithgow and went in the mines at Lithgow. But there was, they had a big family, it’s up there in the,

up the top there, that’s Dad’s family.

Uncle Jack.

Yeah. And they sponsored Uncle Albert, cause Uncle Ted was out here because he was younger, he was out here with the other sisters, but still one lived in England, Aunty Ada, she still, and Uncle George more or less went from Canada, he used to have England sometimes and then Canada and

he sort of trotted between the two, he must have had family in England I think. But Mum went back to England in 1950 but she said oh she couldn’t settle there.

Well they were going back, all her brothers and sisters were still alive, my mother’s, on my mother’s side. And I think

there was one of Dad’s sisters, and Uncle Albert, no Uncle Albert he came to Australia…must of only been Mum’s sisters I think. There was Aunty Lily and Aunty Lizzy. When the war was on my brothers, when they went to England, Arthur and Jack and Bill, they went to see some of our cousins

over there in London, their name was Ball, Emily Ball. She came out and her husband, I think they migrated to New Zealand and they came over here a few years ago and my niece took us, she came and we picked them up in Sydney. I went down to my nieces at Parramatta and she

picked these Emily, that’s Mum’s niece and her husband up at Central I think in Sydney and we took them down to Wollongong to see my brother and his wife and back for the day. Took them around and showed them a bit of Australia.

Well Mum left us with my grandmother, she was only like from here to the Bay away and she used to go housekeeping for different people. One man had lost his wife and he had 3 or 4 children and Mum went and used to housekeep for them.

And every penny they got was put away, Mum and Dad. And my two brothers and my father, they went out to a station at Cumnock, which was called Burrawong, and they did a lot of fencing, cause they were doing it up into smaller lots because it was too vast for one company. That was owned by some company in Sydney this Burrawong but Reynolds was the name of the people living on it, or a good part

of it. But they went out there and then they used to do a lot of work, they got known for fencing and all this and they were never out of work, because people used to come, “Can you come and do this?” or “Can you come and do that?” And Dad was very clever with things, when the war was on and you had, you couldn’t get manpower in Trundle,

when you’ve got a tractor and a header, they call the header the one that takes the wheat off, you know. You’ve got to have one of the tractor and one on the header so, when I got married in ‘41, no ‘40 and while I was away, we had a week away in Sydney, Dad was getting my tractor ready for me for when I came home,

cause it was nearly time to strip the wheat, so that I could sit on the header seat way back here and drive the tractor which was away down there. Well he made the thing for the header seat, but when you’re stripping wheat sometimes the wheat’s that high, sometimes it’s that high. And when your going along there’s a comb going through the wheat like that and it takes all the heads off

and then it takes them up into what they called a drum and that took all the wheat off and then every so often you had to pull in at a place in the paddock, used to keep a heap of wheat traps oh about the size of this house to start with, depending on how much was in the crop, if you had a good crop. Well then you had to,

it stripped anyway, it stripped, so Dad rigged up so that I could sit on the tractor and he had pipes like this, iron pipes and he had cogs and pullies, all sorts of things. And then he had a pipe going to the tractor to stop it, like you know to put the brake on and to

let it out, let the clutch out. And I could sit on the header seat and drive the tractor and strip with just the one. See we couldn’t get a man, then Dad had the team of horses. When I first got home from my honeymoon in October, the wheat was nearly ready but the tractor wasn’t quite ready for Dad’s liking. So he said, “Well you drive the horses now until I get this tractor done”. So I drove the team of eight

horses, which I didn’t like. We had one bloke there, he was a stallion and when he got in among, there was four at the front and four at the back, and one of the females if you touched her bottom with the reins she’d oh, she used to frighten me. Another one when you, don’t know if you’ve ever seen a collar on a horse have you? Well when you put the collar on like this you get in front of the horse

and put it up round it’s neck and then fasten the buckles at the top and then you put the things that you have to hook your chains onto on top of the collar they called. And this horse she hated the collar and if you went to put it on she’d rear up in the air like that. So Dad said, well we had things to feed the horses, big old

trunks of trees really that had been scooped out, like on the topside and you put your chaff and everything in there to feed your horses. So Dad said, “Well when you do Flower,” this mare that I was always trying to cuddle you with her legs, he said, “Get up into the trough,” what we fed the horses in, “get her in front and then she can’t” when she reared up

she’d used to hit her legs on this trough and she didn’t do it, it knocked her off doing this, you know going up in the air. Dad said, “She won’t do it too long”.

He was good with animals, didn’t matter what animals, he was good with them; he was wonderful with them.

Well we only had our cattle, we had house cows and don’t know not much else you could have on it really, oh and your horses of course. Because he started off with 8 horses in a team, like you’d have 4 at the front and 4 at the back like tandem. But oh I don’t know,

in the off-times of course he used to go out fencing with the boys and then he used to grow all our vegetables. But he didn’t just grow a plot of vegetables, he had a little, you seen the old-fashioned plough they used to use over in China and those places? You ever seen a horse pulling one of those? Well Dad had one, he bought one of those, he used to go to all the sales around and buy machinery.

He bought two of these headers that you had to strip the wheat with, he might buy an old one at this place and an old one at that place and he’d make a good one out of two. He used to buy a few parts. And then after a while different ones got to know that he was pretty good, he had his own blacksmith shop on the farm. I used to have to go and turn the forge, you seen a forge? Oh God, it’s rotten,

you’ve got to turn it like that and then he used to always shoe his own horses with the one, we only shoed the horse that we drove on the road in the sulky, but he used to shoe his own. He was a blacksmith, it didn’t matter what it was, Dad could do it on the farm. And when we cut chaff, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen, when you cutting

wheat like that to make sheaves, you know what a sheaf is, a sheaf of hay. Well you have a machine that cuts it off that far from the ground and puts some binder twine they called it, that thick twine and it tied it. The machine did all that as you went along and as you went along with this

binder they called it, you cut the wheat off threw the sheaves out then you had to go around and get the sheaves and stack them like that in the paddocks to dry cause if you put them into a haystack it would perhaps catch on fire with the heat from the, you know if it was green or wet.

And well we used to have to go out and do, I hated that job, go out and stack the wheat up about, you’d have about 6 or 7 sheaves you’d stand together. And you had to let that dry then for quite a while. Then later on you went, this is when you weren’t stripping and putting wheat in that you were doing stack building, and Dad used to build his own stacks of hay. And not everybody can do that, you had to build them

a certain way, so when you got up the top and put that top on, you had to thatch it, what the call thatch. Every now and again you had a little bit of about that much thickness of the hay and you sort of bound it round somehow, I’ve seen Dad doing it but I can’t do it. But we used to have to go and gather all that hay out of the paddocks and bring back and Dad used to build the stack.

And then when you were cutting that stuff you had to get up on the cart or whatever you had. You’d got and get your sheaves of hay and then Dad, you’d throw them down to Dad, he was down there and he made, he had a machine that when you pushed it through it made the chaff, it cut all the hay up in, you’ve seen chaff have ya?

Yeh well that’s how they did it in those days, I don’t know how they do it now. And I used to hate that job.

Oh the stuff you had to cut, that binder twine it’s real rough on the hands, and when you went up there you had to get where the knot was, there’s always a knot where the other machine had bound it up and you had to cut the thing, my father he was one

of these men, he never wasted a thing. You had to cut it where the knot was so that when you’re stripping wheat for the silos, you know what the silo’s are? Well when you send wheat into the silos you only have to run a thing through the top of the bag and pull it through and then tie it. And Dad used to save all these bits of the binder

twine so that when you pushed, he made a needle about this long out of, he had some thick wire, about that thick and he made a point at the end of it and put an eye in it. And you put your binder twine in that little hole and then you pulled it through your bag of wheat, you wound, you put the

thing like that, you got your bag together. So that’s your bag together and you put this thing through that and then you put the twine in the other end when it came through and you pulled the lot through and then you tied it up, that was for the, tied one end of the ear up, oh it’s hard to explain. But anyway

that’s what we used to have to do, he use to save all those bits of binder twine, so the binder twine did two jobs.

Yeh.

Well he didn’t have that much before I went to school, when I went to school it was when he went and got the farm out at Trundle that I did a lot of that.

We used to do it, when he was cutting chaff he’d bring the load in, when we were kids and we had to cut the twine off the sheaf and thrown it down to him so that he made the chaff. And then when we were at Trundle we did the same, he made his own thingo. But where he had the machine to cut the chaff off, he rigged up an

elevator and it used to come around under there and it took all the chaff back, all the time into a shed and it was just all loose. He used to tin it up and fix it up inside, and then when we wanted it for the horses we just had to go in and fill the bag up and take it out to the troughs. So he made everything and when we grew vegetables he had a little path

in the paddock, down the paddock, and as I was saying he had one of those little ploughs. And he’d make a great big long row and he might have beans in that, and then he’d plough another great row and he’d have lettuce in that, another big row, he never grew things in plots, in the garden, in the vegetable garden. But we always had plenty of tomatoes, Mum used to take stacks of tomatoes to give away in town to get rid of them. And lettuce, lettuce and that, oh

grew lettuce like this. Because he used to save all the manure and everything and put it in there of course and that helped I suppose, we always had to keep going and cleaning up the yards with the manure and he always put it into one place, so when he wanted it for the garden we just had to take it down.

Oh good, he was wonderful yeh. Yes he, but during the war I worked

what 5 years in doing all this sort of stuff, never got paid, you didn’t get paid when you were a girl in our day. The boys did but I didn’t. But I mean I don’t think he realised what I was doing until I wasn’t there. So because my husband wasn’t very happy about me doing what I was doing, he was worried about me.

Oh yes, the boys were the boys and the girls were the girls in our day. But my sister she was always a little bit delicate and she sort of, Mum and Dad more or less sort of took to her more, I was just the last one and

didn’t matter. But we used to have to, when I was at school I was milking cows you know before, in the morning and that. And then on weekends we’d always have something to do that Dad wanted doing. Or sometimes we’d go down, and we had a dam and off the dam was a spring, it was never dry, the dams would go dry but this

spring wouldn’t, never went dry. And we used to sit on, Dad made logs around cause he was frightened the horses or the cattle might get into this hole, where the spring was. It was a fair size, I suppose from here to that cupboard wide and the clay under it was real grey and slimy, it was horrible. But it used to have crayfish

and we’d have a little enamel dish like that and we’d pinch some of Mum’s cotton and a bit of meat and away we’d go down to this spring and we’d sit there for hours and catch these crochies, you know those crayfish and I hated the damn things. And we’d go like that and when got one on we’d pull it and pull it up and drop it into the dish, it used to drop off into the dish. We’d have a whole

dish full of these crochies and when we finished, we’d just tip them all back and go home.

No, but when my sister came she was, she liked that sort of thing. Some people came from Sydney once and staying with some friends of ours in town and they all came out one afternoon, cause they used to like to come to our place cause it was just a mile and a half out, just from here to the bay and they’d all walk out and they

knew there was all these different things they could catch, crayfish and all this sort…

No Cumnock.

Yeh, little wonder farm they called it.

Anyhow they’d come out there and when my sister got to like these damn crochies things she bought these people out, they were from Sydney. And they caught a whole bucket full of these crochies down on the creek, wasn’t where we were. And they put a fire

on the side, a nice green patch on the side of the creek and they built a fire and got a kerosene tin and they cooked them and ate them, I thought, “Oh yuck”, I thought they were horrible things.

Well you know Orange do you? Molong, well were just out from Molong.

It was so close that my sister-in-law’s parents had land at Dora Creek, Huntervale they called it. And my friend and I rode up there on our bikes once, it wasn’t very far then, they lived about 5 miles from Molong their property. Don’t know if you know much about there? The road to Cudal

went along my brother’s property, the Rogers’ property you know there’s all little warrens isn’t there out west, from coming out from Molong, between Molong and Cumnock. Then you could turn down and go to Cudal and across to Parkes that way. When Dad bought the place at Trundle and we were renting the one at Cumnock,

he used to travel 80, it was 80 miles, I don’t know what that is in kilometres, from our place to Trundle and he used to go over with the horse and sulky and he’d go over and my eldest brother, when they finally got it, my eldest brother went over and he used to batch out there. And then he was there for about 12 months

and I don’t know whether they put a crop in out there, no they didn’t he wouldn’t have the implements. Then Mum and Dad shifted over there altogether and then of course the war came and that mucked everything up.

Well

we were there in 1924, we arrived in Cumnock and it would be 1939 before they bought the one, or paid a deposit on it, they didn’t buy it, they paid a deposit on it at Trundle.

Yes.

I had three brothers. Arthur was the eldest,

that’s the one up there, and Jack was the one in the air force and Bill was in the army and Arthur were in the army. But Arthur and Bill were both at Trundle when the war broke out and of course Arthur went in and joined up and thought Bill would stay with Dad, then Bill went and joined up and thought Arthur would stay with Dad. And their papers came together in the June of ‘41 that would be

wouldn’t it? No it would be ‘40, June 40 and the bank manager said to Dad, “You can have one stop, Mr Simpson.” He said, “No” he said, “Which one would I stop?” he said, “They’d never forgive me”.

Yes.

Jack was married.

He was in the air force. They had a crash in the air force during the war in the Islands and

he was never real good after the war it sort of, I don’t know. They had two boys and two girls, he was married but they lived in Orange out along the road, what’s that road? Wasn’t far from

Orange, nearly in Orange where they lived on a farm.

Yes, one sister.

Yes.

Yes. Arthur was about 14, Jack would be 12, Mary would have been 10,

Bill would have been 2 years younger than that and I was 3 years younger than Bill.

Jack and Arthur didn’t go to school at all after we came to Australia, they went out with Dad fencing and clearing. They had a good life though; they said they liked doing that. But

we all went to school there of course at Cumnock.

Well when I first went there we had a teacher called Miss Honeysett and the headmaster was Mr Templeton and I loved it, I loved school. We walked a mile and a half but I did it for about a year and then

I wasn’t very well, I used to follow Mum around and take a pillow wherever she was and lie there. But in those days they didn’t take you to the doctors, in those days. And then they saw this lady that they were renting the little farm from, she was a spinster and she said, “Let her stay with me”, they thought it was walking to school was too much for me, “Let her stay with me and she’s can go, she only had to go up the road

to the school” which I did for 12 months. When I first went there, she used to pack my lunch and she said, “What kind of jam do you like, dear?” and I said, “I like…” She said, “Do you like plum jam?” I said, “Yes thank you”. Anyhow she packed me plum jam sandwiches for the next 12 months, I had plum jam, she never varied but she did her best, she was a spinster and it was very good of her. Mum thought if I had a rest from walking, they thought that’s

what it was. But as it turned out, it must have been rheumatic fever that I had when I used to lie around all the time going to Mum.

Well when I went into, I got something wrong with me, like a few years ago now, when I lived in Raymond Terrace. And I had to go and have a lot of tests and that and they said, “You’ve had rheumatic fever?” I said “No

I’ve never had rheumatic fever.”

What one was that?

The doctors?

Well I had to have a heart operation.

Yeh.

I was 62 I think.

Well I went and stayed with her and of course in those days you just got on with

life didn’t you, Mum and them never worried anymore.

Well yes I must of, I was always top of my class so I must have been, well that way.

Oh yes, I didn’t want to leave, I was 14, I would have liked to have gone on to be a teacher and Mum said, “No I need you at home”. Well she had two of the boys at home and the sister

and she didn’t, she said “I could do with the help at home”.

Yes.

I liked maths, geography, history and English, I was very good at English in those days. I remember the Inspector came one day and he asked a question

“Which one of these belongs, or belong to you?” and I was the only one that got it right in the class. And of course I was, you know, and my teachers, that Mr Ferguson, I was then up in the 6th class I suppose at school and he came and sat beside me the next day and said, “I was proud of you yesterday” he said, “None of these others” he said,

“here listen to what,” he’d only given us a lesson on the same thing about a week before and I remember I was the only one. And I was tickled pink about that but I liked English. We used to go in, they used to give you on the blackboard what you were going to write about after you came in, you had to write some sort of a story. And I’d go all the time in the porches, you know the little porches at the school

and the kids would come, what’d they call me, they called me Pom cause I was a pommy [English], “Would you write that for me?” All I did was scribble all the time, but I enjoyed school, loved it.

Apparently.

Yeh I was always top of the class, but Mum and Dad never took any interest in that at all. My eldest brother he was very smart

at school, the next one Jack he wasn’t. Yet he did very well in life he was, he won the Queens shoot [rifle competition] at the Queens, he went to England with his wife, he had a good life.

Oh yes, yes we played rounders, like baseball sort of thing.

With a tennis bat, you know a tennis racket. You know when they play, oh that American game?

Baseball with a big stick.

We had a tennis racket and of course we used to play that, we’d pick teams, like you’d have one side against the other, one in batting and the other lot fielding.

Oh pretty hard, pretty hard tennis ball, wasn’t, I don’t think, it couldn’t be very hard because you had your tennis racket. The minister’s wife that lived just down the road from the school, and she used to come up at 11 o’clock when we came out for morning tea and she’d throw the ball for us. She used to what do they call it?

Oh anyway, we used to bat and she used to throw the ball.

Yes loved it, tennis.

Liked tennis.

Not a lot, not when I was young, when I got older I did, but years ago, cause I was the youngest of five, Mum and Dad couldn’t afford a lot of things.

But I always liked singing they always had singing bug and I used to play the piano by ear.

Yeh just picked it up.

Hopscotch, you probably wouldn’t know what that was.

We used to play hopscotch and we used to play something that, like in the intervals like lunchtime, we used to play ‘one drop the hankie’, you ever had that?

I can’t remember just how it starts, I know you used to run around, you’d have

two or three in, but you made a circle and there’d be three, three or two, three, you know like that right round. And when you got the handkerchief, I don’t know why, how you got it I can’t remember that, but you went around with it and you dropped it behind someone, they didn’t know you did it until, I forget now. But if you didn’t know well you were out if you didn’t

pick it up before they got back there. You dropped the hankie and kept going round you know, but I can’t remember what happened after that. And we used to play cricket, women’s cricket. And if there wasn’t enough boys or girls to play it themselves we used to play together, the boys and girls together we’d play. Cause I remember once Cumnock and Molong used to vie against each other with their cricket teams,

and this Harry Ferguson said, “Well” he said, “If we’re short” he said, there was another girl there she and I were always top in the sport line, Hazel, and he said, “We can put Irene and Hazel in” he used to say, in the cricket team.

She was a sporty girl too, Hazel.

Goes with it I think.

Yes, yes.

Oh yes, yes.

Yeh.

Well I had three brothers, I was so used to it it didn’t make any difference. And my girlfriend

that I was, her father was the postmaster at Cumnock, Hazel’s father and she had a brother, and my brother and him got on well together and Hazel and I got on well together and we’d have them up staying at the farm whenever they could. And we always had somebody, we’d go to Sunday school on Sunday, we walked a mile and a half to Sunday school and Mum never knew who we were going to bring home for

dinner but she always had a big baked dinner of course on a Sunday, traditionally England. And Hazel came to see me when we were living at Raymond Terrace and she said, “Rene I’ve never forgot those lovely baked dinners your mother used to make”.

Yes, yes.

Yes, yes.

When I say my mother,

Mum was very very religious.

Well whatever, when we were in England she was Wesley, whatever that, Wesley I think that’s, they’ve got Wesley churches out here, it’s….

Not Church of England, no, not Presbyterian, Methodist.

Methodist. Yes.

Mum was, we used to go to the Church of England in Trundle and we always had a choir there, I was always in the choir. We used to go to practice on a Thursday night into the town to practice for the choir, me and my youngest brother Bill.

Church of England.

They didn’t have a choir in there. But we always went to Sunday school in the morning, we walked in from you know from here to the bay in the morning and then Mum would go at night to the Evensong and we’d go with her there too.

Oh yes, the doctor that I went to work for in later years, they used to

come to the same church and if we were there on a Sunday night and he and his wife were there, he’d drive us home, he’d say, “Oh come on I’ll take you home, Mrs Simpson” and we’d get a lift home. But we always walked in and if they weren’t there we walked back, thought nothing of it in those days, I think it was healthier.

No, no, when we were in England, when they were younger, Dad used to play the violin in the

church over there, Wesley church. But after we came out here, cause it was, he had too much to do, too much work. And oh once I remember we didn’t get the harvest in one year and, until after Christmas, it was very late, and on Christmas Day, Dad said, “Well it’s likely to rain anytime”

he said, “So I’ll have to go and strip the wheat” on Christmas Day and oh Mum was in tears. And he shouldn’t of done it on a Sunday but he used to do it on a Sunday then to. He said, “Well if the rain comes it will be spoilt” he said, “So we may as well get it while I can” but Mum wasn’t very happy about that. But when she came up here, she went to the Methodist Church up here

because people that went there could come and pick her up, she never drove a car of course. They’d pick her up and bring her home because then, they could take her in and out, that’s she went there then.

Very friendly and I mean as she got older she was more demanding with her family, well with me anyway, I was the youngest I suppose. Cause Mum and Dad came down here and of course he didn’t last very long, cause then we had Mum more or

less, we never went on holidays without we took Mum with us. But I never thought she was very appreciative of what my husband used to do for her, but otherwise I mean she was well liked in the bay.

Well it was a

different atmosphere, I don’t know cause we had the three boys then my sister and me. And oh when the boys used to go, in-between jobs or anything they used to go rabbiting and she always made them big hampers to take, she cooked all sorts of pies and

made a big hamper to take. And then midweek we used to have to drive out there with the horse and sulky and replenish the larder for them and that sort of thing, she always looked after you food-wise yes she looked after, but doctors they never bothered, they never bothered with doctors very much. I had never been to a doctor in my life until I had my first son,

and I was so nervous he had to go away and come back to take my blood pressure, he couldn’t take my blood pressure because I was like this. But he was only a young doctor but he was very nice, tolerated me, he must have been nice.

Oh just average I suppose. I used to like to be in things and do things. The day the Harbour Bridge was opened we went for a 10-mile hike. We packed some, I said to Mum, “I want to go” one of the, we had two teachers at Cumnock a man and a woman and the lady was usually a young lady, Joyce Morton,

and we were in the older class of course, at 6th class you were grown up by then you reckon. So she said to us, “Would anyone like to go for a hike” on the day the bridge was opened “Oh yes I’d like to go” and there were 3 or 4 of us girls went with her for a walk, 10 miles it was out to this station at Burrawong. And then the people that owned the station took pity of us, they came with their car and drove us

home. But I had blisters on my feet, cause I’d say to Mum, “Can I go?” “Oh yes okay” she was alright that way. And I used to recite a bit; didn’t matter what was on, I had to recite it.

Well we all seemed to be in one but more so when we were at Trundle.

They seemed to have a bigger club there for it and I think we had 40 members in the dramatic club, which was a lot for a small town. And we used to have a lot of fun practicing and we had, what helped us there was a lady that lived at Cumnock and she had been on the stage in Melbourne.

And I remember I was away somewhere when my father had a bad turn and the man sent me home and my brother said, “Gee sis I’m glad you’re home, we want a grandma for the end of this play” I think it was ‘Seven Keys to Baldwald’ or something, some play. I said ,“Oh yeah what is it?” he said, “We want a grandma”

so I borrowed some real long surge skirt and a long coat sort of thing like they used to wear. And I think I had, went in once to the practice, there wasn’t much I had to say just a few words at the finish and this lady from Melbourne she did me up as an old lady, I was grandma. And she put all these lines across here

and all. Anyhow I came out onto the stage and I said my piece and I had a walking stick and whatever and a lady said to me, a little while after that, she said, “You know I didn’t know it was you” she said, “Gee you were good”. But we were always brought up to do those sort of things, Mum and Dad were always into anything like that in the family. And they used to tell us

go for it, go for it and we used to love it. My sister was the same and they said we had good voices, projected, I didn’t have to have a mike when I was in here a few years ago, they had a bit of a do and they asked me would I recite and I said, “Oh yes”. And I didn’t need a microphone really because my voice carries they said.

Oh just poems by different writers. There was one that I learnt there were 28 two-line verses or something, and they said, “How the heck do you remember it all?” I couldn’t tell you what it was now even. And then there were humorous ones like Kitty O’Toole and, I used to say one My Country

at, when I was at school when they had, they used to have Empire Day, they used to call it, 24th May at the schools when I was young, and they always had a picnic. First off, they had a do on the morning when all some of the town’s leading men and women would come and give a talk about, I can’t think what it was about, the war I suppose, I can’t remember now. But they used to come

and give us this chat and then in the middle of it I had to go and say this My Country, it’s an old one.

Oh “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ordered hills and gardens running in my veins” [Dorothea MacKellar], that one I used to say that and there was an Irish one Kitty O’Toole I used to say that.

“What a charming young lass was Kitty

O’Toole, the lily of sweet Tipperary, with a voice like a wish and with cheeks like a rose and figure as dear as a fairy”, that was Kitty O’Toole. But…

Well I liked it, loved anything like that.

Oh no, no.

Singing I liked, I liked my singing, cause I had a strong voice then, like a pip-squeak now, terrible.

Well we were always taught that especially on Empire Day, the 24th of May that was the Queen’s, supposed to be the King’s

birthday, the Queen’s birthday. We always celebrated that and we always had a big picnic that day, we had all the big wigs out of town come up and give speeches on the morning then we’d go out to the picnic ground and they’d have picnic lunch out at the showground. Then have races and that in the afternoon, it was really nice.

Oh yes, yeah.

Well the only insights that I had were what my mother and father used to tell us and my eldest brother, he remembered a bit of that. He used to say that when they were in England of course at that time, Mum and Dad, I was born just

at the end of the First World War a fortnight after the armistice was signed. And Arthur said, “Oh I’ll never forget it” he said he used to have to go to the shop and they’d get word around somehow that there was butter in or there was this in or that in and he said, “You’d stand on a line from here to Bullamakanka [a long way]” and he said, “You’d nearly get there” and he said, “there’d be perhaps 5 or 6 left”

before him, “and they’d say sorry it’s all gone” and he said, “You just have to go home without it then, you didn’t have any”. But Mum said it was terrible during the war, they used to stand out at what they called some opening, just at the end of our street and they’d watch for all the, must have been the plains or something, I don’t know what it was, they used to watch for the lights, few things they used to,

I think they used to fire them from across the thingo or something. But they had a dugout outside in Durham, cause Durham was one of the places, it was near the some plains, I forget the plains now, in England anyway and that’s what they were after, they knew there was something there, like industry

that they wanted to get rid of, but they never did, they never got it. And they used to come and drop bombs over there for something and Mum said they’d stand at the end of the street, there’d be a crowd there and they’d be watching to see where they were going to drop. One man come there once from one of the places and when he got home,

his house and his wife and kids they were all gone a bomb hit completely, blasted them. But Mum, Dad was in the mines of course and he couldn’t go, my Uncle George went, I don’t know if Uncle Albert was old enough. But at the finish, that’s when Dad used to go down the mines and do his job, then come up

and do a lot of the farm work, so they’d have stuff, get stuff in. And then it came that they were taking older men at the finish and he went and had his check-up and the war finished, he didn’t get there. He wanted to go but, that’s the same with my brothers with the Second World War, they wanted to go because it was England

and my, the one that was married in the air force he said, “I’m going” he said, “I might get back to England” he said, “and see England again”. But he didn’t, he went up this way into the Islands. They crashed on one of those islands there and he got hurt a little bit but.

Oh yes, oh yes.

Well we always said that we were Australian really. I mean you were brought here from 6 year old and we loved Australia, I wouldn’t go back to England to live, not if you paid me. I couldn’t live like they do, no one looks happy, they look melancholy, I don’t know they look,

I was glad to come home from when we went over there for the time, I was quite happy to come back home. I could understand what Mum meant when she said she wouldn’t live there, although her mother was still alive and her brothers and sisters were still alive over there. Different ones kept asking her, nephews, would there be any work for us out there. They used to call Mum Polly, Aunty Polly and she said,

“Oh I wouldn’t like to guarantee that” she said, but they were plasterers some of the nephews.

Oh yes, oh yes Dad loved it out here and so did Mum. Yes when she gave a speech in England she said, “After living in Australia you can tell the differences that were different” you know

she could see more, she said, “It’s wonderful, it’s a wonderful country”. She was a real ambassador for Australia when she went back to England. She said, “We wouldn’t see sheep running along with long tails in Australia” she said, “They’ve got to cut them off, your not allowed” well you are allowed to have them but not practical.

Well yes and no; that was in the 1929’s wasn’t it and 30’s. No I don’t think so, I think Mum and Dad always seemed to get along, they didn’t have a lot of worries, only health-wise for Dad when he got sick. Mum was very resilient she was pretty

tough, well she had to be I suppose in those days. I remember once my brother went swimming in our dam and he cut right up between his big toe and the next one, right up there like that. And I happened to be with the friends, the postmaster’s daughter and we came up for the drive in the afternoon with her father and mother and came in and Bill was there and Mum said she had

a primus going and she kept boiling. This boiling water and she had these towels and she’d put them in the real boiling water and ring them out like that and then put them in another towel and she was putting on Bill’s foot. And I said, “Didn’t you get the doctor?” the doctor only lived from here to the bay away, she said, “I told Arthur I wanted to ask the doctor to come out” but she said, “They forgot”.

I thought, “Oh my God”, I nearly passed out because I was so worried about my brother. But she got it better, I don’t know how but boy anything that was wrong with ya Mum wanted hot forms, always had hot forms she said, and pretty often she was right. I think of it rubbed off on me when I had the kids here. Well we couldn’t afford to go to the doctors in those days; there was no scheme like there

is now you had to pay up front, you still do have to pay up front some of them, they tell you how much it will be. I know I went down the other week down here into Newcastle and the girl said, “Bring $100 with you when you come”, that was the fee for the visit.

14.

Yes.

No couldn’t afford it, there wasn’t enough high schools within cooee. The high school would have been from here to Newcastle away. There was only one girl at Cumnock that went to the high school and she used to catch the train at Cumnock on a morning, forget what, real early and go to Dubbo and then catch the train back at night.

From Dubbo to Cumnock and that’s a fair distance, she did that, but she got a good job out of it afterwards. Mum and Dad never thought about afterwards. When I was 14 and we used to have Empire Day as we called it and I remember Harry Ferguson was there and his wife and Mum, all the ladies used to go up there, cause the country people are very very good cooks, and there’s be cakes for a mile long.

And she was sitting talking to this headmaster, that was my headmaster at that time, at nighttime when we had the little dance and kids and that there. And he said, “You going to let Irene go on?” and she said, “Oh no, I need her at home.” He said, “Let her go on.” She said, “No I can’t,” she said, “I need her at home, I need some help at home” so that was that. And then when I was 17,

a fellow where my second brother worked they had a little school, like a little tiny country school with only one teacher and he said to Jack, “How about your sister coming and taking that on,” the school on. So Jack came home and he said, “Jim Murray wants you to go down there” and,

when you had these little schools all of the farmers boarded you, you might board with one for a month and then with another one for a month and that’s how they got the school teacher. I don’t know who paid, I think the government, it was government run, but they had to find their own board sort of thing. And so Jim Murray asked Jack he said, “What about your sister, would she come down?” cause you didn’t have to have a, anything wonderful education

just to teach the first basics. So I said, “Well you’d better ask Harry Ferguson. He knows whether I’m capable of doing it or not, he’ll tell you”. So Jack went to see Harry Ferguson, the old schoolteacher that was still there and he said, “She’s capable enough” but he said, “She hasn’t got her intermediate”. Mum wouldn’t let me go, he begged Mum to let me go, she was sorry then.

Yes that was very frustrating.

So I didn’t get the job.

Oh I had to milk the cows for starters, I used to do all the floors, cause they were all washed and polished, and they’d have to be washed and polished and whatever. And then I used to do things out with Dad, go up the paddock

and cut wheat, cut burrs out in the paddock with a hoe, you know Bathurst burrs, you know what Bathurst burrs are? Well there, you might know if you lived up the country do you? You didn’t ,oh well Bathurst burrs they grow about that high and they, when they flower they make all these little hard things on them, and when the sheep get

there it gets in the wool and then of course the farmers always try to keep them out, they’d always try and cut them out all the time. I suppose they eventually got rid of them, I don’t know, but I think I’ve heard my brother say they’ve got to go and do something up the paddock because of the whatever, get rid of the burrs. And that’s

what I used to do for Dad, used to go and cut burrs, there was always something to do on a farm.

Well Bill and Arthur went to Trundle at first with Mum and Dad, but they went in ‘39 you see and that’s when the war broke out and of course the following June they both enlisted, and Dad wouldn’t stop one of them. So

I had to do everything there with Dad. We used to cut chaff and whatever, cut wheat and cut hay.

Well yes, I always had to do something, we did all the washing up and cleaning up and that sort of thing, Mum did the cooking. But they used to like to go out and play cards,

Mum and Dad they used to have friends in to play cards and then they’d go and play cards, and then we’d always have to get the tea and do everything, the chores like at home. My sister was working at the doctor’s at the time and when she got married, when I was 17, and I took over the doctor’s children. They had two lovely kids that I looked after. And I used to walk into their place every day

and then walk home at night, back to the farm at night. And your day off, well Thursday was my day off and I was there, I had to go down there and do their washing, the children’s washing, separate washing from the other. I had to do the children’s washing, put that out and do a few chores with the kids and get home about 11 o’clock, that was my day off.

And afternoon, we used to have Sunday afternoon, every second Sunday afternoon, was after everything was done and probably after dinner at lunch time and fix the kids up, what had to be done and away you could go, every second Sunday afternoon.

Oh tell me about it, didn’t have time for anything. And then at home sometimes when I wasn’t working

I’d be milking cows or cutting chaff or hoe, taking the husks off the corn. Dad used to grow that corn, you know the ones you eat, the sweet corn stuff and he’d have, oh a shed like this with them all around and you had to take all those off, peel all those off.

I don’t know what, I can’t remember what, I used to put it through a machine I think to get the corn out, oh horrible job I hated those.

Well George would have been about three I suppose and Marion was only a baby, little girl. And course when Doctor Curl sold his property, his

practice at Cumnock and went to Wellington, Mum wouldn’t let me stay because she said I was too young, 17 to be away from home. So I came home and then when I was about 18 or 19 I was going to go nursing and my sister-in-law’s brother came with the papers I had to fill in to go nursing and the same day

I got a letter from Mrs Curl, the doctor’s wife, and she said that the lass was going on holidays and she said could I come over. Cause when we went to Sydney, when I was looking after the children, they used to take a flat at Manly and her and Doctor would go out and take the kids and I was home doing all the chores and cooking and whatever. So she wrote to me and said, could I come over while the other girl

was on holidays to do the cooking. So I went over and while I was there it came Easter, it was a holiday Monday I remember and I wanted to go out to the Wellington Caves and there was a lass, she was working there too, and I said to her, “Oh gee, how do you get out to the Wellington Caves?” She said, “Oh you could ride a bike out” she said, “I’ve got a bike you can have a loan of my bike.” I said, “Oh thanks very

much”. And at that time my husband, that came to be my husband, was working a couple of mornings sometimes at the doctors with planting stuff in the garden and all this sort of thing. So I went out to the caves on this bike and when I got there, who should be out there but my husband and all his friends. One of the men, Salvation Army

they were, he’d had a truck and he’d put seats all along each side of the truck and drove them to the Wellington Caves the same day as I rode my bike out, the bike that this girl had lent me. And of course Ted saw me there and he said, “Oh how are you?” you know I said, “Oh good thanks”. Anyway they took me in with them these people, lovely people they were and before I went

home or when I went to get…

Probably did but they were never out of work and Mum could get all the work

she wanted, she used to go housekeeping sometimes and she used to go washing and ironing. But everything into the kitty and they finally, they did well really and we didn’t do without anything cause we had plenty on the farm like food. We always had good meals and of course when Dad got his own sheep we used to kill a sheep now and again. I think my brother, the eldest brother, could kill a sheep,

skin it and get it ready for cutting up in about 3 minutes.

Mum used to make some of my dresses. And then when I got up to the school at high school, not high school bigger school, we had a sewing teacher, the headmaster’s wife was always the sewing teacher out then in the

country. And when she came along she taught us a lot, the first one was an elderly lady and first thing we made was a slip, you know petticoat with a pleat down the side and you had to do all little stitches. And this one came in the later part of my school time and she taught us to make a dress and to finish it off,

and from then on I used to do, I did all, I used to make the kids’ clothes, I even made little pants for the boys when they were little. There was a retired doctor’s wife around here, he was retired from up north a bit here, Dr Elliot, and he was a lovely old man, and he used to wear those doctor flannel suits. And when it wore out,

‘course they had plenty of money, they didn’t worry, she used to say to me, “Do you think you could make something for the children out of this?” and I said, “Yes I could”. So I made little pants for Paul and little pants for David and went down and she said, “Oh”; she couldn’t believe it because I washed it and ironed it and pressed it and they really looked nice. And I always made, until they went to school, I made their own pants.

Not really, she used to make perhaps a little dress for me, just a little cotton dress or something. But I made all of Susan’s frocks when she was going to school with all the, organdie was in then with the threaded ribbon through, around the skirt. I don’t know, they didn’t worry me then,

I mean sewing. I could just do it. I used to buy a pattern. I mean when I was, after I had the three children and they were growing up really a friend and I around the way here, she and I went to Newcastle and we had lessons on how to lay out a pattern on things. And she taught us quite a little bit of nick knacky things that you don’t always learn from school,

and from then on, we seemed to be good. She was the same and she couldn’t even sew anything and she used to get my sewing machine, I had a portable one, and she’d take it around to her place and she’d make her little girl frocks them, it was nice.

Only because they worked, I mean Mum worked hard and so did Dad and my brothers. But we weren’t dressed up, really dressed up like they do now but we always had clean clothes, presentable, nothing flash. And Dad, when we got a bit older he wouldn’t let us wear high-heel shoes he said,

“They’re bad for your posture” not that I ever had any posture anyway; I was always a bit dumpy. But oh they were good parents in some ways but education didn’t worry them a bit about any of us. My sister was fairly bright at school and my eldest brother was exceptionally bright. And when they were leaving England the headmaster told Mum and Dad that he should be trained

in something to do with writing, cause he was good at it, but they didn’t bother. They went out fencing and whatever.

Well we had a table in our dining room

that was scrubbed and sand-soaped and you know it was spotless on the table. Then we had a dresser over there with all the plates and everything on it; that had to be cleaned about once a week. And this table had to be scrubbed everyday, it had to be just so. But when we were at Cumnock in that little house, they had the kitchen I was telling you, and in the kitchen at one end was just,

one end was just taken up with the fireplace, all done in tin of course. At that side of the fireplace was the open fire part, in the middle we had a stove, you know the old Dover stoves?

Haven’t you seen a stove?

Well it was just a black thing standing on legs about that high

and you had this side here was the firebox, you put your wood in and that side was the oven. And Mum used to make all the bread; we always made homemade bread. And when you wanted the oven hot for certain things you put certain wood in, certain amount of wood. And then Mum would put her hand in the oven and say, “Oh yeh that’s good that’s hot enough,” that was it.

There were no thermostats to tell you what it was or kiss my foot. And she used to make Yorkshire pudding; you ever had Yorkshire pudding? And they used to come up like that, they were beautiful, she taught us to do that. I used to make it once, I don’t make it anymore, our kids, my kids loved it.

Pies mostly. We had blackberry bushes growing on the properties

there at Cumnock and we used to go over and pick the blackberries and then Mum used to make jam, she’d preserve them.

With a Fowlers outfit, you know the Fowlers outfit?

It’s just like a big round thing like that, it’s about that high and you put your,

we used to, Mum used to do all fruits in the fruit season. We had, there was a place opposite us that no one lived in, just swagmen used to come, they used to doss in there, and they had a full orchard of apricots, plums, you name it, they had it in this orchard. And the people that were owning it then, they also had an orchard at their place and they said to Mum, “Whatever

you want, go and get” from this other one. We used to get apricots and pears, oh it was beautiful and then we’d go and pick blackberries just across the road, we had blackberry bushes. And big ones, lovely big ones, and blackberry jam she used to make and blackberry jelly and blackberry pies. Always had blackberry pies, all the summer when the blackberries were on. But I don’t know

Mum seemed to be able to make up a meal with nothing.

Oh they ate rabbit but I didn’t, never.

Oh I hated it. I didn’t like WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s. We always had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, Mum used to sell eggs in town, she’d get orders for them. We always had free range, she’d

be in the kitchen part cooking and she’d hear a hen cackle and out she’d run and get out of the house grounds, the grounds of the house would be about from here to that other, across the road and that other place there. And our house was built in there where you had your peach tree and fig trees and all that sort of thing. And she’d run out and down the horse yards and cow

yards, the milk bails and all that were down there, she’d hear this hen cackle and she’d go and she’d see where it came from. And we used to have thistles like that, star thistles they called them, oh they were horrible things. And in the summer time the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s like to go in there and make a nest and lay in there. And Mum would see where it came from and of course out it would come the hoe or something and she’s making her way in to find the nest.

And then she used to go and collect the eggs. And then she had turkeys, Dad made her a great big run for turkeys and she used to do alright with them too.

She did eat them every now and again. Funny thing we lived with poultry but we never used a lot, she used to have a chicken quite often. But the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s went away and laid their eggs and hatched and brought the chickens

home, we didn’t have to worry very much, only for foxes. If we saw a bush, well I think now their made to take all these bushes out, the wild rose bushes, we had a lot of that wild rose bushes in the paddocks, and they used to love to get in there and lay legs. And sometimes there’d be a lot of feathers, black feathers

or whatever around and Mum would know they’d taken the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK . But the way they, they had a gum tree not far from the yards and Dad made a, like a thing like that, like a ladder thing sloped, for the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s to get onto and get up into this tree, and that’s where they used to camp at night so that the fox wouldn’t get them.

Hmm.

But the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s would go away in the bush and lay their eggs and bring back a batch, sometimes. But Mum sometimes, we went walking down there to have a look at the creeks and that she’d see the feathers around and she’d know that one of her WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s had gone.

Roast beef, lamb, whatever.

Used to buy meat, used to buy meat at the butchers a lot but she didn’t always, cause she used to buy the beef and that sort of thing. And she used to make a dish called fenakati and it was, you did your bacon first and then took it out and then you sliced onion like that and you sliced potato and whatever. Then you put the bacon across the potato and bake it in the oven.

And it’s quite a nice, it’s very full of flavour with the onions, you can put what you like in it really. Mum used to make a lot of that, she’d always have a big thing like this. And the friends that I used to take home they used to love it.

Yes and we didn’t have a separator for a long time and they had a big enamel dish about this round and we used to bring the milk home

and she’d stand the dish on the stove to scold the milk so that it would keep. And you’d get thick cream, you know that lovely cream, you don’t get it anymore, it was really lovely. Many a time when I had girls come up with me just for lunch and they’d go home after lunch, and we’d sit not so well, I can’t find anything but we’ve got plenty of, we’d always have home made jams of any sort, honey,

everything like that and this cream, oh that will do me.

Only on a dish.

She had a big dish like this and she used to sit it on the stove and boil it, I don’t suppose it boiled but, and then cause your cows had to have the cream, the cows

are the ones that produce the cream not the milk, the cows. If you didn’t have a good cow for cream you wouldn’t get much.

Dad usually had the jerseys. Red, one was a reddy, you know the dark brown cow, we used to call her bluey, don’t know why they called her bluey but she was a lovely old thing. Then they’d

have calves, we used to feed the poddy calves and the poddy lambs, you ever seen them feeding a lamb with a bottle? Oh I used to hate that.

No.

The ones that have been orphaned, the mothers have gone or the foxes have done something, or the mother, perhaps they died in childbirth sometimes, the sheep. And if there was a lamb on it’s own of course it was brought home

and put in a warm place and put nice warm things around it, then Mum would make the bottle of milk for them and feed them with the teat on the end. And Dad used to say, before you give it to them, he used to get a red-hot poker and put in the fire until it got red-hot and then put it in the milk and that sterilised it. Never had, a lot of people that fed lambs, you’ve got to be

careful, they get dysentery very quickly. And Dad said, “You do that with that poker, sterilise the milk or whatever it was”, so we used to do that and then feed the, you had to feed them on, well you had to have your milk a certain temperature with the lamb, for the lambs. And we’d always have teats on the end and just hold it there while they had a feed.

Just the warmth, like the warmth, when you milk a cow

the milk’s warmish, so that’s how you had to try and make it.

You sort of got to know, you got to know it was just like second nature when you live on the farm.

A copper, Mum used to boil everything. First the sheets and pillowcases were washed and then put into the copper and boiled. The towels

were washed and put into the copper and boiled, then they were rinsed and then they were blued, you know the blue bag, you use the blue bag?

Well there weren’t the bleaches like you’ve got today in powders and the blue bag, when you rinsed your clothes and put them in the blue water. They used to make blue bags, sell them in the shops, like a little round hard bit of

blue stuff, I don’t know what it was, and that used to make the water go blue and you did your sheets in that and it kept them nice and white.

I suppose, I don’t know.

Flat irons on the stove, put the stove, and you always had a thing there to rub them on to clean them and then…oh dear it’s so easy now, you just switch it on and away you go.

I remember my, somebody, I think it was my cousin she came up there and she had a few, oh half a year nearly with Dad and I on the farm, she’s only about, she should have been at school the little devil, she had 6 weeks and she loved to get on the tractor and drive the tractor around. So Aunty Chrissie said

she had to come home so she, she went home and what was I going to tell you, what’d you ask me?

No she helped; she liked to drive the tractor. But

can’t think, I’m lost.

She was up there staying with us I know; now what the heck was it she did? No, it’s gone.

Oh yes, oh yes they were lovely. We always ate out with the other people; I didn’t eat with them, not when we were at residence, when we went away we did. But usually I fed the children, then I had mine with the other people that were working there in the, we had a

special place like a sitting, for us to go to, quite nice. Had my own bedroom there, it was nice.

Oh no, no she was, Mrs Curl was a lovely woman, she was one of the Gillespies of Sydney. Ever heard of the Gillespies in Sydney?

It’s a big name, it was, don’t know about now. And

she married this Norm Curl, he came from Manly. His father was the Mayor of Manly years ago, Curl and they lived at Narrabeen, they had a house there, we used to go and stay there sometimes with the people. And, but I remember once I went to Wellington

and this old Mrs Curl had a girl working for her in the kitchen, like for them cooking and that, and the girl and I used to have our meals out in the staff room. And she said to me, cause I didn’t know much about Sydney, what I was 17 and I just didn’t know what went on in Sydney, I just thought, the first time that I’d ever been to

Sydney that I remember, except when we came from England, and I thought, “Oh going to Sydney”, it was wonderful you know. And this girl said, “I’ll take you down to”…oh something they used to have in Sydney in those days. Anyhow I happened to mention to Mrs Curl that evening, I said, “Oh Marie’s going to take me down to ‘the big cat’” or something, I don’t know where it was now, and she said, “Rene

I don’t think your mother and father would like you to go there,” she said, “I don’t think you should go.” So I said, “Oh why?” She said, “No I don’t think it’s what your used to” she said, “I’d rather you didn’t go.” So I said to the girl then, I made some excuse, I was a bit upset about it really, she said, “Oh they told you didn’t they not to go with me?” cause oh

that was terrible I felt dreadful, but I didn’t go. But Mrs Curl was good in that way, and I found out later on where we were going was a bit of a hot place.

Yes something like a club, some sort of a club, somewhere in Manly, so I don’t know.

But I used to go out on my days off, I’d go over to the zoo, I used to love going over there and see the monkeys. I remember one day this monkey got to this woman’s bag and took a little mirror out and a powder puff and it was holding it up, and it knew what to do with it, and I’ve never forgotten that, this lovely little monkey.

Well you could sort of, I don’t know how they were, they were at the zoo. But they got, they had this woman’s powder puff and mirror, little hand mirror that you have in your handbag and it was powdering it’s nose.

Years and years ago. The poor little monkey’s probably dead now.

Yes, yes I had a

friend we were confirmed together at church, we went to church together and she….

Yes but she didn’t go to my school, but her people were some of the, you know the upper crust in the town and she took me under her wing, we seemed to get on so well, Joyce and I, and I used to meet her. She had an uncle lived in Sydney, he was a Detective-Sergeant

somebody, well-known in Sydney. Him and his wife and her cousins lived there and she used to come down from the country and stay with them in Greenwich. And I’d met Joyce and we’d go somewhere together and have a nice, perhaps go to the pictures or something on my days off. And we used to like that to go and meet her. We used to go for a ride

to Manly from where, or from Manly to Sydney on the punt and think nothing of it, wandering around Sydney. These days you wouldn’t be game these days young people I don’t think some of them.

One tried to pick me up once. I was walking home when Curl’s had the flat at Manly

and I’d been to the pictures or somewhere, and I’m walking home on my own, and you know they had a big row of pine trees somewhere, growing, and I used to walk under them so I could see out. Anyhow this young fellow saw me one night and he came over and said, “Oh.” I never said anything, he talked to me and I just answered back because I was wary. And when we got

to the flat I said, “Oh this is where I’m staying” and I went and he said, “Oh could we go to the pictures or somewhere together one night?” and I said, “Oh yes.” “I’ll meet you such and such a night.” I said, “Alright”. And when I told Mrs Curl she said, “Rene, you’re not going with him” she said, “You don’t do that.” I said, “Okay”, so I just didn’t go. But he was quite a nice young man as far as I could see but then

again I was very naive coming from the country, not used to city.

I liked Sydney because I liked to go to the zoo and go and see different things when I was in Sydney. And when I was a girl, there was some people lived near us and a father used to go in for WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s,

he used to show them, like show WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s. And once it laid an egg, one of his WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s laid an egg and on one side of it it was reasonably flat and it had the numbers of a watch, like in the 2s and 1s and 3 and all numerals on the egg carton, egg thing.

And he sent it away, that one was very prominent but then it laid more but you couldn’t see them as much and the girl, Paget their name was Jim Paget, and he sent it away to the museum. And when I was in Sydney with Doctor and Mrs Curl, I wanted to go to this museum to see if that egg was there, but they never had it, I don’t know what happened.

He blew it, like you put a hole in the egg and blow everything out before he sent it away. It was, she brought one to school and showed the headmaster when we were there. Whatever it was they never found out, it seemed queer, but definitely you could see the markings of a watch.

About that big I suppose.

Yes.

Well when he saw me there and he waved and I sort of went with them a little bit, because he knew them all, they were all his friends. And when we were coming home

I went up to get my bike and he came away from the group and he said, “Are you doing anything tonight?” and I said “Why?” he said, “Would you like to come for a walk down the park?” I said, “Oh yes” and that’s where I started going with him.

Oh she didn’t have anything to do with me then, I was 17, 18 or 19 then, I was my own boss. But they didn’t keep a close

watch on you then because I was a bit older and it wasn’t like a big city like Sydney. I suppose I could of got into a lot of trouble in Sydney only for them being more or less my guardian, because they knew what my mother was like. I remember one night when I was working there later on when I was going with Ted, and they were having a concert down at the Salvation Army Hall on the Monday night. And the Curls, I never had to stay,

you had to stay in when you worked there, you had your bedroom but you had to stay in and mind the door and the phone from 7 o’clock or something till 9 at night or whatever, if any call came for the doctor you had to go and get him. And anyhow this night Mrs Curl said, “We’re going to a meeting,

doctors,” something to do with the doctors and that in Wellington, “on Monday night,” she said “Will you be home?” cause someone had to stay there for the phone and then the kids were asleep there too and I said, “Well I’m going out on Monday night” and this other girl was working there, she was doing the children like I used to do, she was the nanny.

And she said, “Oh” she said, “I don’t like to ask Miss Owens” this was the kids’ nurse, I said “Well I’m going out,” she said “Oh”. Anyhow they came, on the Monday she said, “Doctor’s going to this meeting, we should be home by 8 o’clock.” I said, “Oh, that’s okay”. Cause I had to walk a fair way down to the hall

where they were having the concert. Anyway 8 o’clock came, half past 8 came and I was boiling and a fellow rang me up and he said, “Is the doctor there?” I said, “No he’s out” but I said, “He ought to be here.” I was so cranky “Oh” he said, “I suppose they’ve got to have a bit of time off.” I said, “Oh yes I suppose so.” He said, “Well I think my son might have appendicitis,

he’s got a lot of pain”. So I said, “Alright I’ll leave a note on the doctor’s thingo”; I used to leave a note for anything that had happened. Anyhow they came home, it was about 9 o’clock or after and she didn’t bother to come out and apologise for being late or anything and that really got me. And I went in and I said, “Don’t ever ask me to stay in and mind this door

and phone any night of the week” I said, the other girl that did the kids she was in another bedroom, there was two of us, I said, “You should of asked her when you knew I was going out.” “Oh” she said, “I thought we’d be home.” I said, “Well it spoiled my evening,” I said, “I can go now that the concert’s finished, just about”. So she came around the next morning and I said to her “I’m not

going to do it, I’m not going to stay”, she said, “I can’t afford to pay you 25 shillings a week” she said, “if you’re not going to have your turn on the phone and the door” and I just looked at her and I never said anything then and I chewed it over and over. And she came out a while after, I said, “Mrs Curl, I’m leaving next Saturday” I said, “I’ll stay here. I came on the Saturday, I’ll stay until Saturday” and I said, “I’ll be

leaving then” “Oh” she said “Oh”. Anyhow a friend of mine, she lived around the corner and she said, “Rene he should pay your fare home,” cause it was terrible to get home cause I had to go train and bus and all that, “He should pay your fare home and so much in lieu,” you know like above your pay if you were going to leave. Anyway she knew all the ropes

anyway. So when she came, I said to the doctor, “I want my fare home and I want this and I want that” and they gave it to me. And then they couldn’t get anybody to come in to cook their dinner on the Saturday or the Sunday, Sunday dinner, so they got the girl that was looking after the kids to cook the dinner. This lady that I knew around the corner, she used to work there for them

at times and she knew what was going on and she told me then what was happening. I saw them afterwards, after I married Ted, David would be about 18 months old and there was something going around Sydney, I don’t know whether it was whooping cough or something you should have a needle for. So I said to Ted, “I’ll go and ask Doctor Curl”

he was still there. And oh they were that pleased to see me, and Mrs Curl came out and you know and you’d think it was like old home week. They couldn’t get anybody they said like me, this other Eileen used to tell me, she said, “This girl that came there” cause I used to make cakes and everything when I was working there doing the cooking. And this girl she burnt everything and she said,

and Doctor Glasson’s wife, that was another Doctor in there, I went to work for her afterwards, or she came around to this friend of mine she said, “I believe that Rene’s here that was at Doctor Curl?” She said, “Yes.” She said, “I want her to come and work for me”. Cause she used to come and have afternoon teas at this, the two Doctors. And of course Eileen said to me, “She’s burning everything this other girl” and

Mrs Glasson told me too, she said, “Oh” she said, “the cake was terrible” and she said, “Oh the girl’s not used to the oven yet”. Cause it was a wood stove, wood oven, wasn’t electric; everything was hard in those days. But they used to have linen sheets like tablecloths and this Eileen used to come around every week and do all their sheets, they had all these linen,

they had twin beds, him and her and these beautiful linen sheets and she used to have to iron them like a tablecloth. Oh talk about slavery.

No, oh no.

Well I went to work with Doctor Glasson and then

he used to come around, I stayed with my friend, she let me have a bedroom there at her place.

In Wellington.

And Ted’s mother and father lived, oh a couple of blocks away round. And he used to come there and we used to have a nice night there and we’d have supper and then we started going together and then of course when I went home, that didn’t go down very well.

Well course he was Salvation Army, he played the cornet in the Salvation Army, he was the first cornet player. And I sort of went to the Salvation Army and I liked it and they were nice crowd and nice people. Then course when I went home he used to travel over, he had the mail contract. And the days that he went mail contracting he didn’t do the gardens,

but then he used to go and help in gardens or water gardens or dig plants or plant plants and in between he’s doing his mail run. He had a mail run at Wellington, they used to go out to all the big farmers and go right away round and out. I used to go with him sometimes in it and there was a little old lady there and oh dear she was a funny old thing. And when Ted would go there, and he’d always

take us, she’d ring up. His stepfather and mother lived in Wellington and they had the phone on and they used to ring and ask him could he bring this out or that out, like might get a loaf of brown bread or a pound of butter. If they were short, they’d ring up and Ted would take it on his mail run. And he used to take this little old lady’s bread and butter, whatever she wanted in and

she’d come out and she’d come out always with a bag of those lovely biscuits that they used to make with little rosettes on the top, real fancy stuff. And she’d have this little bag of biscuits and she’d come to the back of the car and she’d poke them round the corner like this, dear she was funny, but she was a lovely old thing. And Ted thought she was great, and she was a nice little old lady.

Oh yes, yes.

No not that time, no first time when he, I don’t know when was that? No I didn’t with Ted.

Oh no Mum was very keen on the Salvation Army herself. There was a chap used to come around when we lived in England, Tyson I think his name was, and he was Salvation Army and Mum used to do quite a lot for them in England in those days. Although we went, we were christened in the Methodist church, talk about a round the clock, and

cause Dad played the violin in the Methodist church and Mum went to the Methodist church. But when we came out here of course she, I don’t know when they came to Australia first, I don’t know we went to the Church of England at Cumnock that’s right, and then she came to live here and the

only way she could get into the bay was…

Hmm.

Hmm, about then yeah.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm, used to write to him, he used to come over to, when we were at Cumnock he used to come over every fortnight, it was only about 40 mile. When I was at Trundle, he only came once a month.

Oh I suppose it was

but you just took what was coming cause there was a war on, that was it.

Well we did really, we’d been to the Salvation Army meeting that night, like a church service,

I don’t know whether you know much about the Salvation Army? And we were very friendly with major there, Major Johnston, and the quarters were right next door and they said, “Oh come up and have a cup of tea with us”. So Ted and I went up and I think that was the night that Menzies said, “We’re now at war with Germany” and Major Johnston had two boys but they were about 14

and 15 I think. And they said, “Oh gee, oh gee” and Major Johnston said, “They don’t realise what they’re in for”, I don’t think any of us did, well we didn’t we were younger. But it was a frightening thing I found, but because that was in September I suppose, I forget. I know when,

I think we, yeh we were still at Cumnock then, we were only 40 miles away. Then when we shifted to Trundle of course that was 1939 and when I learnt that he’d gone and joined up, he said, “Well I’ve got to go” he said, “I’m young” he said. And his stepfather when he went to join up at Wellington they said, “You can’t join

up because you’ve got a government job”, he said “Right I’ll fix that”. So his stepfather was still youngish, I mean 60 he wasn’t that old and he went to Sydney and he told them that his stepfather would do his mail contract if he went to the war, so they accepted him then in Sydney.

Oh yes he said, “I have to go.” I said, “You don’t have to go” and then my two brothers at the same time, there was three of them, they all got their papers practically at the same time.

Hmm.

Yes he thought he should, he said “I’m

young” he said, “It’s the young ones that should go and leave the old ones at home” and he said, “You can’t expect them to go” and I said, “Well I don’t think you should have to go yet” but I was just putting it off, didn’t make any difference.

Oh yes, oh especially with my brothers too. Well Jack was already in the air force,

but Bill and Arthur were at home with Dad of course and they both joined up.

Oh it must have been…I just can’t think. Must have been about 38, he hadn’t been in it that long.

No he used to go away, you know, they used to have camps or something for men that worked and he used to go on that, the bosses, he worked for a fellow called…they lived at Loombah, that’s a station just out of Cumnock. And Jack was working for them.

He was in that, yes he used to go.

Yeah the militia and anyhow he was in the militia and he was going up the ladder quite fast because he was a very bombastic sort of a bloke. I remember one day he was telling us they had the men lined up at camp to come in to get their meal and they discovered in the kitchen that the lettuce

hadn’t been washed for the meal, for the salad and that. So Jack’s called, a lot of them are standing up close to get in first, you know how they are, Jack said some of them at the back volunteered and went in, the others ones stayed there that reckon they were going to get in there first. So when it came that they could go, he made them turn around

and put the first ones last into the mess for their meal. He did that when he was in the militia. And then of course when the war broke out he said to his wife, “Well I’ll have to go” she said, “You’re not going, you’re not going in the army” she said, “You can join the air force and go in the air force”. Cause she thought if he joined the air force, they were sending them to England then to train, and she thought that the

war would be finished, because nobody realised it would last for 5 years. And he said alright he’d join the air force, which he did. And he loved a uniform; he was like that type of fellow. He used to train them at Orange after he came home from the war; he had squads there that they used to march down on the days, like Anzac Day and all that sort of thing. And

he used to get up and give talks and then he got Alzheimer’s when he was reasonably young. But he had an orchard, he had cherry and pear and apple orchards at Orange and then in his leisure time, as he called it, he used to train cadets and all that in the air force. And he, I know my mother went to stay

with them up at Orange and she said, “He wasn’t home one night in the week, he was out lecturing somewhere about something” he loved that sort of thing I think. But then he joined the air force but he finished up he didn’t go to England as he thought he would, he hoped he would, he wanted to go over there and do his job over there. But then he was sent to the islands, like Philippines and all around there

somewhere. And that’s where they had their crash on one of those islands later on.

No.

My father always said, he reckoned it was coming, he could always. He and Mum lived through the First World War you see and I suppose they knew Hitler was such a

so and so.

When you were working at Trundle on the farm, Dad used to come in at lunch time, always just the hat off, wash out, we had a place just out between the houses where the men came in and washed their hands and that,

to come in for lunch. And then the hat would go off beside him on the thingo and then he’d have the wireless listening to all those men that used to speak on the wireless, I can’t remember the name of them now, but after lunch sort of thing. And Dad used to love to hear what they had to say. But cause none of us thought it would come as quick as it did I don’t think and as bad as it was, cause it was shocking. I know the night we were at,

when we were at Wellington, Ted and I, that time when they declared the war, that was pretty lousy. But I never thought I’d be doing what I did.

They knew we didn’t want them to go, they didn’t ask,

well Arthur thought Bill would stay and Bill thought Arthur would stay and they both joined up. Why they didn’t say, when they went to join them they must of known it was the same name, but they didn’t say anything. But then Dad went in and saw the bank manager, he said, “Oh the boys are going to the war.” He said “Well apply for boys on farms,” he said “You’ll get them from Sydney, the government will send one up”. We had to pay them of course.

But we got one boy up, he couldn’t even ride a horse and he said to Dad one day, we had a pony we always kept in the yards, we fed him in there and we always took him down to the house dam for a drink, and he said, “Do you mind if I take the horse for a drink, boss?” Dad said, “Yeah sure you can take him”. We had him there with the saddle on, he got on the horse, went to the dam, didn’t

even stop to have a drink just wheeled straight back and come back, he had no control over him whatsoever. And when he got back he said, “How’d I go boss, how’d I go” he stuck on, he hang onto the saddle and Dad said, “Well you went alright, but you didn’t give the horse a drink”. But oh he was hopeless the poor boy, he was only about 17 I think. And his father had told him he wasn’t to stay longer than 6 weeks and he didn’t tell my father that.

And then one day he went, he got the mail and he was reading the letter and he said, “I’ve got to go home, my mother’s sick”, but she wasn’t sick at all, it’s just that his father said he had to come home, so Dad said, “Okay mate you can pack up and go”. So he went and then my cousin came from Lithgow, he was only about 16 or 17 but he was no different, he couldn’t ride a horse or do anything.

Yeh. Well it was just useless and you’d get them there and you’d have to pay them and send their fare back with them, it was money down the drain.

I don’t know. Ted had to go to Sydney because they wouldn’t let him go at Wellington because of his job. But I don’t know they…

Yes, yes well neither of them knew who was what until they were stationed. Arthur, the eldest brother was sent first to Darwin, where the other two boys

went on the Queen Mary in 1941, my husband and my younger brother, they sailed for the Middle East and they landed in Tobruk.

Yes he enlisted…

He enlisted in 19, must have been 1940 and then he was up at Tamworth where they were training

them, he was up there and he used to get a few days leave every month, they got 4 days. And of course that was, the farm was forgot about when the boys came home. And we used, then they went, Ted and Bill were in different units, Ted was with the Sigs, Signals, cause he’d worked in the Post Office job and

then Bill was, don’t know what, he was in the 90 LOD [ordnance depot] whatever that was. That was guns and whatever. And they both went to the showground in Sydney; they used to go out sometimes when they got leave, like for a night to go into town, together. And then neither of them knew, Ted came home on final leave

I don’t know, I can’t remember if my brother came home on final leave, I can’t remember, probably did. And then they got on the ship, on the Queen Mary in June 41 and they didn’t, neither of then knew who was on, they were on the Queen Mary and then went down to do PE [physical education] one morning and there was one waiting to do it and the other

one there doing PT or PE whatever.

Yeh.

Well I had to go to Wellington for that because his mother was there. Oh of course, they had a night for them and all the friends came up to Ted’s mother’s place and we had an evening together. And then he wouldn’t let me see him off at the

station, at Wellington, but our best man lived at Dubbo and he said to me, “You can come with me to Dubbo and I want you to stay with Wally and Norma for a few days” Wally said, “That’s okay Ted”, so I went and stayed with them for a few days then I caught the train back to Parkes and Trundle.

Very yes. But his mother was one of those weepy people, I mean I keep it in I suppose but she let it all out and it wasn’t very, that’s why Ted didn’t want me to stay there, to have his final leave altogether there. So we went up to where his best man was at Dubbo.

He wasn’t real happy because I was pregnant anyway and I was about 3 months pregnant, or 4 months and I hadn’t told my parents because if I did Mum would be saying, “You can’t do that, you can’t…”, you know so I just carried on as if nothing was amiss.

Oh yes we were married in 1940.

And he used to come home on final leave, or he used to come home, sometimes I had to go over to his mother’s sometimes it was awkward to get there, we had no car. I had to catch the train from Trundle on Thursday, go into Parkes, stay the night, get the train back into Molong and then catch the Sydney

train from Sydney to Wellington. And that took too long to get there, well I used to do it because of his mother being over there where they were. They had a car but it was his stepfather…

Yes and I was over there once, about a month or so before the war, before he went and he said to me, “How about getting

married next time when I come home next month?” and I said, “Oh I don’t know, I don’t want to be here by myself having kids and all this sort of thing” and he said, “Well I’d like to” he said, “All the other blokes down at the camp, they’re getting married” and we’d been engaged then for about 18 months or 2 years I think and I said, “Oh alright”. So when I went home, I said to Dad, “We’re getting married next month.” He said ,“Oh alright kid” and then Mum went into the

lady in Trundle and said, she had that wedding dress and Ted’s mother had someone at Wellington offered me a veil for the wedding, cause I didn’t have time to race around and buy things. I mean I had to be on the farm, it didn’t make any difference and I was ploughing and all that before I went. And his mother, all she was worried about, “Oh gee, don’t get too burnt up on the farm

for your wedding” and all this. I thought, “Oh God”; I wasn’t worried about what I looked like.

Oh yes, yes.

Well Jack was married he was away anyway and Arthur, he didn’t come home, I don’t think he came home on final leave then, can’t remember. Anyway,

I had to go over to Wellington to Ted, for his mother. Then of course they all had an evening with all our friends and that at Ted’s mother’s house and it was all very nice but…

Oh we just played mad games and had a few puzzles and…

Girl and boy, our best man and his wife were there and they were, Ted had been their best

man so he was our best man, he’s still alive, those two, best man and his wife. We still correspond at Christmas; we always get a letter and card for Christmas from each other, which is nice. We used to go and see them but when you get older you just can’t. They’re living in Sydney somewhere.

My sister was matron of honour.

Yes, I sent it in to the dry cleaners, when the lady, they brought it home and it fitted me I didn’t have to do a thing, only it didn’t have a belt so I went and bought a silver belt to go round. And I sent it in to Parkes to the dry cleaners and it was all

quick done, everything was so quick to be done and then I said to them, “Would I be able to pick it up, my mother will pick it up next Thursday”, they’d send it back to Trundle after they did the dry cleaning. So when I met Mum, Mum met me at Molong or somewhere, no she came to Parkes on the Thursday I think and then, or Friday, and I said, “Mum did you pick up my wedding dress

from the dry cleaners?” She said “They wouldn’t touch it, it’s satin, they wouldn’t do anything.” I thought, “Oh my God, here’s Thursday and I’m getting married Saturday.” So I said, “What are we going to do?” and Ted’s stepfather came over to Molong on the Thursday night to pick us up to take us back to Wellington, and he had a nice car. And when we got over there, I said to my mother-in-law,

I told her I borrowed a wedding dress, the lady offered it to me and I said, “I couldn’t get it dry cleaned. They wouldn’t touch it.” “Well,” she said, “we’ll do it with some Lux [brand detergent]”. So we got some Lux and I did the dress at her place and then Ted came home on the Friday and I said to him, “You can’t come into the kitchen” while I was doing the dress, I washed it in the Lux and then we ironed it on the inside sort of thing. And

I said, “Don’t you come in here. It’s bad luck to see the wedding dress.” Anyhow then he went to stay with his best man and his wife, well her people and we got married on the Saturday.

Yes, yes. The only one that knew it was borrowed was my sister and she twigged to it because she said she saw under the hem

or something, there was something under the hem, she said, “I knew it wasn’t a new one.” I said, “Well I didn’t have time to go and get a new one”. But oh it was a nice wedding, then we just had a cup of tea and cakes and sandwiches back at Ted’s mother’s place.

At the Wellington Salvation Army Hall and they had it all decorated up for

me and it was very nice.

Yes. I suppose there might have been 40 there or more at the thingo, just mainly all the friends. The other people at Trundle well we’d only known them for a short time, but the ones over at Wellington were all Ted’s people too, they were all his friends. They were friends of

mine by then cause we always stuck together over there, when we went out to the Wellington Caves they were out there the day I met Ted out there and we sort of clicked together as a group, had lovely times together, used to do different things. Mad things sometimes I suppose but still it was nice. When you’re young you do silly things.

Oh

nothing much, we just used to go out along the streets, a group of us, and then we’d go into one of the shops there, one of the restaurant places and we’d have something to eat and then we’d come out again and we’d go round again into the park and just wandered around and talked. Then we’d go back and have something like a tutti-fruity [ice cream] or something later, just silly

little things wouldn’t do for kids today, they’d want about 20 pounds to go out. But we were all satisfied with small things I suppose that’s how you’re brought up then in those days, no one had much money so you just had to settle on what you had.

Yes.

My brother was,

my father couldn’t come over because he couldn’t leave the farm on it’s own and he wasn’t very well anyway to travel that far. And my brother gave me away, my eldest brother.

He wore uniform; he was in uniform then too. Our best man wasn’t, he was in a tuxedo and everything. It was very nice; it was very simple but very nice.

And Ted’s stepfather had a beautiful big Ford coupe, black, it was lovely, it was the wedding car. And then our friends got the bridesmaids and brought them around, my sister, it was nice. And then we travelled to Sydney on the train that night.

No.

Oh no we went to Sydney and we had a little fish and chip shop in one of the main streets there somewhere, and I just loved fish in those days, when it was cooked. And I had fish nearly every

meal, Ted liked fish too so we were, we went over to the zoo, oh we went to the Salvation Army one night in Sydney.

Well when we were going to get engaged and then get married, I said to Major Johnstone, he was the Salvation Army captain there at Wellington, I said,

“Look I’m confirmed in the Church of England, I take communion in the Church of England.” He said, “That doesn’t make any difference,” he said, “You can still go to your Church of England and take your communion, doesn’t matter” I said, “Oh okay” so I didn’t mind then.

The People’s Palace.

Very common, we had

a bedroom somewhere, we only stayed there a few nights cause Ted had to go back to camp and then I went out for a couple of days, in Sydney, just out of Sydney, is it Paddington? There’s a little place just out of Sydney, it’s in Sydney but a suburb of Sydney.

You only got on a bus or

a tram or something to come into town, oh where was it?

Hmm.

I know you didn’t have far to go to get to the main street in Sydney.

And I stayed with her for the rest of the week.

Eileen Thompson her name was.

And she was the lady that I’d known at Wellington that worked for Doctor Curl and she was now in Sydney. I don’t know why she went to Sydney, something to do with the war but I can’t remember. But she was living in that little village, little cottage and she said to me, she said, “Rene come and stay

with me when Ted goes back to camp”. He used to go back to camp and then come out, they used to get a pass to come out and we’d go somewhere at night and go to the movies or go somewhere, or sometimes we’d have a night there with Eileen and Tom. Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue where they were, doesn’t matter, gone. But it was a very

trying time to leave him and go back to the farm.

I left on the Thursday and I had to go back the following Saturday I think, one of those days I went back, or the Monday week I think, Monday week probably.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

It was clean and tidy, you know I didn’t mind it, didn’t worry us very much, but it was quite nice there. But when we came downstairs the first morning after we’d got, must have been, we were married on the Saturday, probably was on the Monday,

and the matron at the Salvation Army was one of the supervisors there, or something to do with the People’s Palace, and we walked down and she knew Ted from when he was like this. Of course, she got a bit of a shock and Ted said, “Oh and this is my” and he was going to say fiancée and he said, “my wife”, and of course he was very shy about that. But

she was a nice lady, well known in the Salvation Army, I couldn’t remember her name now.

Oh yes.

Terrible, terrible, I was lost. But then they had a few months after that that they used to come home while they were training, and sometimes

we’d have three brothers home, like the two brothers and Ted. We had two horses and two sulkies so when we knew they were coming, we’d go into the railway with the two horses and two sulkies and two in one and two in the other and away we go. And when my younger brother, he was married just 12 months before us and he was home

first, the youngest brother. He came home, you know when they started bringing them back when they started bombing Darwin and all that, well they brought the one that Bill was in, the 90 LOD, they brought them back, that was in ‘42 I think, ‘41, yeah ‘41 or ‘42, ‘42 I think. They were both on the ship to go over but then Bill

got back 12 months before Ted, and he came home of course on leave when he got back, he had a few days and he said, “Rene, Ted will be back soon, don’t worry” he said, “He’ll be back soon” and I said, “I hope so”, but it was another 12 months then. And in the meantime, Bill had met up with a girl that he used to go with when he was going to school, when he was changing the trains at Molong, and Pearl’s mother and father had property at Molong. And

he went up the street in between trains, cause you always had to wait for the train out to Parkes, and he met Mrs Rogers and Pearl, her mother and daughter and they said, “Oh gee Bill where are you?” He said, “I’m just coming home” he said, “on leave, I’ve got 4 days or 5 days” or something. They said, “Next time you come, come out and stay with us”, he said, “Oh righto”. Then Pearl got all the particulars from him and they started

writing to each other and within 12 months they got married. But he used to go with her when he was going to school, he used to say, “Oh I lent Pearl my rubber today and she lent me something” blotter or whatever and he was always sweet on her, and then for them to meet like that it was funny, but meant to be and they were the happiest couple you could ever see, they were lovely.

She’s still alive, my brother’s wife, she’s coming here the end of the month I think.

He went first of all to, where did I say he went when he went over there?

No that was after.

Tobruk first, they went there first and it was a bit dicey

getting off the boats then in those days because they were bombing and strafing and all that sort of thing. And he never talked much about the war, he wouldn’t talk about it, but he always wrote to me, I used to get a letter a week or sometimes two when he was over there. It wasn’t much, just a page.

Oh two or three a week, he always wanted to know what I was doing, what was happening, it was, it kept them going I think. I used to

write to my brothers, not as much as I did to Ted of course.

Oh my father picked one up one day and just for a joke he went and he said, “Rene there’s a letter for you” and he just opened it up, “My darling adorable wife…” or something, I said, “Give me that letter”, Dad was torment. But there was nothing, they couldn’t tell you anything from over there.

Yes I think they did, they were in the trenches there for, oh I don’t know how long now. And he said they couldn’t sleep for fleas and he said they used to scrounge a bit of petrol or something, whatever they had and they’d throw it in the trench and then put a match to it and that’s the only way they could get to sleep. The fleas were terrible, sleep in their clothes of course.

But he never talked much about the war; none of my brothers did either. They liked to leave it behind them they didn’t want to know about it, sort of thing. The eldest brother he went to Darwin first and then he came home on leave later. And a friend of Ted’s, that was married,

no he was going with a girl, he was engaged to a girl in Sydney and he and Ted were in camp together at the showground, before they went overseas, when they first joined up, and that’s where Ted met him. And Ted and Ron picked up a good friendship together and then when they came to pick out, they used to come round to the camps and pick out so many men to go here or there or whatever.

Well when Ted was home on leave one time, 3 or 4 days, when he went back, Ron had been called up in the next lot to go but they went to the islands, was it New Guinea, no it wouldn’t have been New Guinea?

You know where the Japs came and took the island?

Singapore. And I said to Mum, “Oh the lucky thing,”

I said, “He’s going to Singapore” and I said, “Ted’s going to go to the bloody Middle East”. Anyhow when Ted went to the Middle East but Ron didn’t come back for a long time, he was a prisoner of war there in Changi and that for a good while. He came back and he was in a mess, you know really. I think it didn’t affect them at the time but it

affected my eldest brother afterwards. When he was to take over my Dad’s property at Trundle, had it already to sign up and fix it all up, and he got sick and they said he had war neurosis. And it was from the war and that was years after, it’s hard to, they said he couldn’t take the property of course, he had to stay in a factory or somewhere where there was plenty of people.

Yes, we weren’t going to have any but there was no pill in those days and we thought we were doing the right thing but we didn’t

apparently.

I was too fertile I think that was the trouble. Yes we did plan that but it didn’t work out.

Because I didn’t want to have children. I said to Ted, “I don’t want to wait here with kids on my own.” And that’s what I did; I finished up with two, oh dear, anyway.

Yes, yes, I wouldn’t tell my mother and father because I thought they’ll only worry and he said, “If you don’t tell them I will” he said, “You should let them know.” I said, “I’ll tell them when I go home”. Anyhow apparently I was about 5 or 6 months pregnant and my father came one day and he said, he brought something out from outside, he said, “You might need that later on,” he knew. And Mum knew but they never said

anything and I wouldn’t tell them. Ted kept saying, “Have you told your Mum yet?” I said “No.” He said, “Well if you don’t I will”. But anyhow he got shifted out and he didn’t get the chance, so anyway. And then when I had David, my eldest brother was home on final leave.

Okay.

Well it’s in Pitt Street, you come down from the railway and you walk across and you just go up, I don’t suppose I could find it now. Well it’s just like any other, it was upstairs, I don’t know whether we had a lift or not I can’t remember, no we came downstairs I think.

But it was only like oh a double room and a little side table and whatever and you went out to get meals, you didn’t have meals there, it was only just a room to stay.

Well not too well with the money cause it wasn’t, it was cheaper and we didn’t have a lot of money so I mean that’s where we stayed.

Not that I know of, I don’t know. But it was the thing to do when you went to Sydney; you stayed at the People’s Palace. I had a girlfriend her father was the postmaster at Cumnock and they used to go to Sydney every year, when they had holidays and they stayed at the People’s Palace. And it was, people on wages and that didn’t have a lot of money to throw around I suppose. But

I went down and stayed in Sydney once and I went to a posh place and it was very nice, can’t remember where it was, somewhere in Pitt Street or one of the big streets in Sydney somewhere. I don’t know who, I was only by myself I think.

Salvation Army.

Yeah there’s one in Newcastle too, or there was, I don’t know if it’s still there I suppose it is.

Well he wasn’t born into the Salvation Army; his father was a fisherman. And when Ted was 10 years old he was fishing at Woolgoolga, you know where that is? Up north. And his father, Ted didn’t go to school until he was

10 years old because he used to be too good a help with his father on the boat, and they used to go out fishing together and one day they got a few boxes of fish and they used take it from Woolgoolga down to, what’s the place below there?

Coffs Harbour with this, he had an 18-foot boat, no canopy I don’t think or anything, just an 18

open boat. And when they were going home one day after, cause he used to drink and that’s what turned my husband off drink, and nothing to come home and his wife and the three kids would be up the paddock but when they heard him coming they’d get out of the house, that’s what it was like, Ted said it was terrible when he was young. But when they were coming home this day from Coffs Harbour they were trawling along and his father liked to trawl

and look down and see what fish were about because they used to net and all that sort of thing. And when they got a fair way up on the way home he said to Ted “Turn up the motor, son” cause Ted was only 10, and he got up and he couldn’t do it. So his father got up to do it and it must have been cold weather and he had this military overcoat on and military dress, cause he’d been in the First World War

apparently, he was something to do with the military. And he had big boots and he went overboard and he didn’t come back up, Ted stayed out there all night when he was 10, out in the open sea in this ruddy boat. And he didn’t come back up and then Ted got back into, he found

a towel or something in the boat and he rigged up a sail and he sailed back to Coffs Harbour and they never ever found his father, he never washed up or anything. He never said that his father had been drinking when they took the fish home, to the market at Coffs Harbour but I often thought that’s probably what happened, he’d been drinking and he’d over,

you know swayed over and went out into the water, and he was 10. Well when he and his mother then came to Newcastle cause she had a sister there, Newcastle and they sent him to school at Toronto when he was 10 and he said, “I didn’t know A from B”. But he didn’t do too

badly though just the same, he could write a nice letter. But it always got to him and he said, “If ever I have a family they’re going to be educated,” he said, “Not like me”. And he was a good man, he was very honest and do anything for anyone, he was that type.

Well his mother was living in Newcastle near her sister and Frank Rowe, he’s the one from Wellington, he came down for a holiday and his father, Frank Rowe’s father built the Salvation Army quarters and hall in Wellington so of course Nanna Rowe met him,

I suppose at the Salvation Army, I don’t know, they were married in the Salvation Army at Newcastle when they got married. And of course Ted went back up there to live, she had two daughters but they were both out working, working in like housemaid and housekeeping and that. And he went back up there to Wellington and he went to night school for a while up there. And then

he got a mail contract, cause his stepfather, he was retired off the land, he gave his property to his two sons, divided it up near Wellington and Ted was, his stepfather was, he met Nanna Rowe in Newcastle and he married her and then he got Ted to come back up there later on to him and Nanna,

and that’s where he went into the Salvation Army. And then they got him a trumpet and he was the first cornet then in the band, he was very intelligent but he always felt inadequate because of the education that he didn’t have.

Cause he was so nice.

He was so considerate and really nice. Mum and Dad, because he didn’t have much money or, not money so much I suppose but he was a very retiring sort of a boy, and Mum and Dad didn’t like that, and he wasn’t robust, he wasn’t a big burly chap he was, oh he was about 5 feet 8 I suppose, 5 feet 9. But he was always thin,

but he liked the gardens, he liked working in the gardens and then he got the mail contract. And his stepfather bought him a utility to do the mail contract; he was very good to him his stepfather. But, and of course he got him to go to the Salvation Army and when he learned the cornet, through the Salvation Army, he was always, he

always played it then. But when he went into the Army, after a while, I don’t know if it was the second year or after he was home, his teeth, he had bad teeth or something happened, he had lovely looking teeth but he had pyorrhoea so they put him in and took all of his teeth out and he had to have a false plate. And he couldn’t blow the cornet with the false plate. Of course, I got him a cornet

and he couldn’t even get a thing out of it, not even a murmur out of it, he was disgusted.

Pyorrhoea?

It’s, oh it rots your teeth and all through your gums and what have you. But he still had his own teeth when we were married, oh it was years after that he had them all out, but he had good teeth

but he had pyorrhoea.

I don’t know, he just liked me I think. I always made friends wherever I went it didn’t matter. And then when I started, when he asked me to come out that night of course all the others were digging him [teasing him]. You know what it’s like, I’m riding my bike home and they’re going home with this

friend of their’s, on the back of this truck, he put seats all along the back and they all sat on the seats to get out to the caves and back. And of course they passed me on my bike and they said, “Who is she Ted, where’d you meet her?” course they gave him a chiacking. But then he asked me to go down there one night, to the army and I met all his friends and

oh it was good.

Oh yes. Ted’s stepfather used to give an awful lot to the Salvation Army. He used to grow a lot of vegetables in the backyard and they used to have a certain Sunday in the later part of the year, I forget what they called it, Festive Sunday [Harvest Festival] or something, and they used to bring all their stuff, they still have it in places, I don’t know whether they still

do in the churches, they used to have it in the churches too. And he’d grow all these cabbages and lettuce and everything out in the garden and bring stacks of it, cause he had plenty of money, he had a big property at Wellington which he gave to both of his sons. But he’d made his money during his lifetime and he was very generous to the Salvation Army. His father built the

quarters there and I think something to do with the hall too, that’s pop’s father, but he was a nice old man.

Yes

I cried for two nights at the hotel, when I was stoping at the hotel waiting for the trains, I just used to cry at night. Bu anyway you’ve got to look on the bright side don’t you.

No, no. No not at all. When I was having Paul, she was a bit annoyed about that,

that’s why I moved out of home. Cause it was the end of the war and of course Dad was trying to get my brother out, and they were only marking time up in Queensland or somewhere after the war, 1945. And the war was just about on it’s last legs and Dad thought he’d apply but no. They sent a man out to see why wasn’t I doing the work and why wasn’t Mum doing

it, and all this sort of thing.

Hmm.

Didn’t worry me, I just breezed through it; it didn’t worry me. I did, well Ted they went in the

April I think or was it the June, the middle of June and at that time of the year well there’s not a lot of outdoor work except Dad had a paddock. If he grew a crop in that paddock this year he’d rest that and then work it, work it with the ploughs and whatever, well that all had to be done, that’s what I was doing. And then when it came

to the time to strip the wheat well then I had to get out and help with that. And when Ted was still overseas, be 1943 I think, Dad was driving the team of horses in the paddock, we were stripping the wheat, and I was driving the other machine with the tractor.

And we’d almost finished we only had a bit of a wide strip perhaps a couple of times around it would have been finished and Dad, I stopped for something, I forget what I was and then Dad said, “We’ll keep going we’ll be finished soon” or something. And he went back to the horses and when he did we had little pony, was sort of a little heavy-built pony in the team that he had,

the eight horses of. And he was a real workaholic this little horse and he tried to go on his own and pull all the machinery on his own and of course he collapsed. The horse went down and of course I raced over from the tractor, because you’ve got to undo all these chains and whatever on the other horses and him, and helped Dad get him back up again. And then when I went back to the tractor,

you had to start it with, you had a big wheel about that big and a little one like that and they had cogs on, you know what a cog’s like? Well when you wanted to let the clutch in on the tractor, you had to start that big wheel going so that it made the drum, there’s a drum, what they called a drum in the machine. If you started with a jerk straight off like that it would burst the drum and it would break it,

so you had to let the tractor out very gently and start this wheel going so that it would be going when the tractor took off. And I went to do that and I thought, “Oh, it’s not going fast enough yet for the tractor”, you know, so I just went like that and grabbed the wheel, cause you get hold of the spoke of the wheel, and I went like that to

make it go quicker and I put my thumb through the two little cog and the big cog and it was just hanging by a bit of a thread there. I went over to Dad and I said, “Look what I’ve done to my thumb” and he said, “Oh you’d better get”, we had a man there he’d been hurt at Milne Bay and he was sewing a lot of the bags as we stripped, he was sewing, “go and get Ernie to take you up to the house, take

you into the doctors in the horse and sulky”. So we always kept the horse and sulky in the paddock with us and so Ernie got up home and I said to Mum, “I can’t go like filthy”, cause you get all dust over you and everything, I said, “I’ll have to have a bit of a wash”…

No. I said “I’ve got to have a bit of a wash before I go into the doctors”. So anyhow I had a bit of a wash and I nearly passed out

and he said to my mother, “Let her pass out I’ll have a good look at her hand.” I said, “I’m not going to pass out” and I stuck my head down between my legs and I just came too a bit again. Then he took me into our doctor, the local doctor, which was about from here to the bay, and he was away in Sydney. So he took me over to the hospital and the sister there said, “I wouldn’t touch it” she said, “I can’t do anything with it, you’d better take her to Tullamore”.

So that was about from here to the Bay away from Trundle. So Ernie took me to a friend that had, used to do up cars and had taxis and he said, “Okay Rene in the car” and he took me down and my friend went with me, not the man, his sister went with me. And I went to Tullamore and when I got down there,

I went to the doctors and she said, “Oh my husband’s gone out for a while” she said, she had a bit of a look at it and she said, “I wouldn’t touch it”. So I thought, “Oh”, I’m sitting there with my flaming hand up like this, then the doctor came and he said, “Up to the hospital”. So he took me up there and he said, “You know,” he said, “I’ve got to take that off,” he said,

“If I do, you won’t be able to grip things and whatever” I said, “Oh well”. So anyhow he had to wait till I’d had, cause I’d had breakfast, it wasn’t long enough between to give me an anaesthetic. So they put me in a bed and he said, “Well, we’ll wait for a while,” he said, “and then I’ll fix it up.” I said, “Okay”. So he got me on the table later on and he had a look at my teeth and he said,

“Gee’s you’ve got good teeth, I think I’ll try and stick that back on,” which he did and I’ve still got it. And I think that doctor is in Newcastle that did it, he was only a young man and he sewed it back on and it was, when it was getting better it was nearly twice the size of that but it was right round there, all it had was a little bit of skin holding it together and flesh there. But it’s still

there.

Well what can you do? Probably kids today they’d be yelling their head off I suppose but didn’t do you any good if you did, did it? And I didn’t like to upset Mum too much because she used to get upset about me doing this work all the time, I said “Well it’s got to be done”.

She didn’t like it,

didn’t like me doing it.

Oh no she married a farmer, she was hopeless.

She was, they were about from here oh not quite to Sydney away. Her husband had a property out between Cumnock and Parkes and she was there with him of course, but she couldn’t even drive a

tractor. Before I met Ted, I was only what 18 I suppose, and I used to go out to my sister’s at harvest time and Russell he had a man on the seat of the header and then he used to have to drive the tractor when he was doing his wheat and that. And he used to get me to go and drive the tractor around while he worked the header while the man he was employing came and had lunch. My sister

couldn’t even do that, she couldn’t even go and just, she couldn’t drive a car, he tried to teach her to drive a car, she’d go into a gate post or something. She never had any sense of direction or something. When she had a pushbike, she went over the culvert one day on a pushbike. She was hopeless.

I don’t know.

Well we had to do,

I had to help Dad when I was younger. My sister didn’t so much, she went out to work while Rene did the chores at home, milked the cow, she never milked the cow, she wouldn’t know how, well she’d know how but she wouldn’t be game.

Well later on it was, because she married this, well he had money,

wealthy farmer, he was the catch of the district they said when they got married. And then I used to go out there, when she was having her babies I was going out there and helping her and looking after her and whatever. She always had to have help, if she got the flu once, we lived about 6 miles away once and she got the flu, Mum had to, she said, “I’ll have to go out to Mary’s, she’s not very well”.

Well she went out to my sister’s for a week, cause Mary had the flu and while she was away Dad and I got it together, but we had to keep on milking the cows and doing everything. That used to get me, really get me, the way they mollycoddled my sister all the time, I shouldn’t have done that I suppose but I used to feel it.

Oh

in a way yes but when I was doing it, at the time he didn’t think anything of it, it was nothing. But afterwards when he came down here and when he had to pay someone to do what I’d been doing, which he didn’t pay me, he knew then what I’d been doing and Mum did too.

Well I had to plough, I had to sow the wheat, I had to strip the wheat, we used to build paddocks, oh haystacks, Dad always built his own haystacks, help with the, I think my sister might of helped about once to cut the strings on that what I was telling you when they put the thing down to make the chaff. But she never

milked the cow, I used to milk the cows on a morning, probably milk two cows at a time, but she never did any of that, I don’t know why.

Oh no we always had to milk the cows.

Well I did the ploughing; I mean there was nobody else but Dad and my Dad wasn’t real well anyway. I did the wheat sowing and I stripped the wheat so. But the day, when Dad got a bit better and he made the tractor, he made two headers, he used to go to sales and get some more material and he made the two headers so that he could work two headers, but I suppose

he always thought that he could get someone to come and do it but he got me, he said, “Do you want to have a go?” I said, “Oh yes I’ll do it if you like,” so I used to do it. And of course I always milked the cows, and all that sort of thing.

Dad did, I didn’t.

No I didn’t. Dad used to often pick up things and he was so well known there at Trundle, when there was going to be a

sale on a farm somewhere they’d come to Dad and say, “Bill, will you come with me, we want you to have a look at such and such a thing?”. And Dad would look at it and tell them if it’s worth buying or whatever, he was pretty cluey my father. He didn’t have much education but he was very cluey about things, just self-taught I suppose and he taught my brothers to do the same.

I used to do it before I went out. When I had David little, the baby, nothing for me to come home, I used to watch the nappies and put them, we used to have kerosene buckets in those days, cleaned out and whatever and a handle on them. And I used to put them into soak of a morning before I went out in the paddock, and then when I came in

at night, I used to rinse them off and put them in a bucket to put on the stove to boil, always boiled the nappies. And I’d come home after being in the paddock all day and hang them out sometimes cause you had to do it.

Well I did quite a bit of it. Mum was never a house person, she loved to cook but I never liked the washing up left

and I used to like that done and tidy but not Mum. I remember there one day and she’d gone out somewhere and she’d just left all the dishes in the sink, or in a dish we didn’t have a sink, never washed them up and I was cranky, “How can you go out and do things without doing this before you go?” she said “Still there, it will get done”

No. When the boys were coming home on leave I used to throw everything out of the rooms, we had the bedrooms out there and the bathroom and then we had a big veranda, the one I showed you, David was on that. Big wide veranda and then we had the kitchen/dining room on the back and then a veranda

on the back of that. And I used to shot everything out, especially when the boys were all coming home for the weekend when they were in the army camp and I’d wash and polish all the bedrooms, all done with lino and then when I wasn’t there Mum used to have an oily mop, you remember those big oily mops they had, you probably haven’t seen one? And that’s all she used to do run the mop over them.

She said “I’m still here” cause I used to say, “You haven’t polished the bedrooms”.

I don’t know, perhaps when I was working out with Doctor Curl and that. Mum was clean but she was so untidy, she didn’t like housework much I don’t think, she liked to be out with the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s.

No.

No especially the wheat when he was cutting the sheaves, cause the stubble, you ever been, you haven’t been in a paddock where they cut the wheat, you know the wheat off? It sticks, the straw comes up in spikes and it hurts sometimes and I hated that. And then you had to get hold of the string sometimes on the sheaves

of hay to stand them up and didn’t like that much but I did it, it had to be done and that was it.

Not with the first baby, no. David was born in the October and we had the shearing done at our place, Dad had a shearing stand that he made himself and he had two

stands they call it and you could have two shearers there. But as they shore the sheep you had to go and pick the fleece up like that and throw it on a table, you might have seen them doing it on the telly, but they did do it, the girl was around there doing something, I said, “What the hell is she picking at” you know. But when you throw it out you take all the, like where they come down the legs of sheep and the back part

of sheep and the head part and all that, they all go into different bins. Cause you put his part here and around the neck part, that goes into there and then the long blow as they call it, when you go round the stomach and their back and all that, that’s the one you pick up, the fleece and throw it like that. And that’s when you go round the table, you have a big table oh about from here to that cupboard,

a big wide table just made out of slates of wood, thin wood. And you go around and you pull all the, make it more a square for the main section of the wool and then you put that in that bin, you have to know where your putting it, it’s wool classing they call it.

Yeah.

No I used to do all housework

that’s all at home before the war.

I didn’t like it, I hated it, Dad did too, he didn’t like it.

Well at first yes it was. See Dad hadn’t been there very long, ‘39 and the war was going there at 1940 and the estate agents in town didn’t know him and he didn’t know anybody around,

at Cumnock he would have been alright but not out at Trundle. But he went into the estate agents in town and he said, “Could you get me a couple of shearers?” and they said, “Well we haven’t got anybody”. So he came back home and he was so disappointed because it was a worry for him to and I said, “Well Dad you start them and I’ll finish them.” He said, “Okay”. So we got the sheep in, you get them in the yards then you’ve got a little tiny

place inside with a little gate on it where you bring about a dozen sheep, that you’re going to shear. And you go and open the little gate and go in and pick one up, pull it, you just drag it with the front legs and then you get the machine thing, like a big comb thing, it’s fairly heavy. And you hold that, Dad used to do the head bit off here and do a bit around the neck and then I used to do the long blow

like up the side and over the back. Then you turn the sheep over or lean it over, you’ve got to lean the sheep up against you while you’re doing it.

Yes, I didn’t like it either; I hated it. But we had 50 done I think out in the yard one day and Percy Banford he was a Canadian fellow, him and his brother. He came over to see Dad for something or rather, they were always wanting him to have a look at their

motors or whatever implements they had, came over and he said, “What the hell are you doing Bill?” He said, “We’re trying to get the wool off these sheep.” He said, “Good God can’t you get…?” He said, “I can’t get shearers. I’ve been into town and they haven’t got any for me.” He said, “I’ve got two brothers that live near me,” and he said, “but they’re not allowed to work on weekends, so when they come home weekends,” he said, “I’ll ask them if they’ll come over here and do” we only had 800 sheep,

we didn’t have a lot, I mean people have got thousands really, usually. And so they came over every weekend when they were home, sneaked over to our place and didn’t, you couldn’t tell anybody what they were doing, you had to just keep it on the q.t. [quiet] and that’s how we got the sheep shorn. Otherwise they would have been, if the wool drops off that’s no good.

Yeah.

Well I was doing the, it was 1941 and I was driving the combine with eight horses and this fellow came out from one of the estate agents in town and he said to Dad, “I’d like to take Rene Moss’s photo?” and Dad said, “Okay”. So Dad came over and he said, “Mr So-and-So here, he’s brought The Land newspaper out to take your photo.” I said, “If they want to take my photo,

they can take it while I’m going, I’m not stopping.” He said “Oh,” he said, “You’ll have a photo to show your grandchildren.” I said. “I don’t care I’m not stopping.” I had these old shorts on, I think they belonged to my brother, then an old top on and an old hat pulled down and a thing across here to keep the sun off my face, didn’t do it well enough apparently, paying for it now. And I said, “I’m not going to stop”. Anyway they took it, but they

didn’t see my face, only caught the back of me driving these eight horses in this combine. And they sent me a photo, The Land sent me a photo of it afterwards and I had it here for years, when we moved down here I had it and then it all just disappeared, I don’t know what’s happened.

Oh no I didn’t want them to see me in these old clothes

I had on. It was terrible. In The Land newspaper, they used to have these girls sitting on tractors like this with a collar and tie on and these peaked caps they had on and their hair all done up. And I said to Dad, “I wonder how much work they ruddy well do dressed up like that?” They couldn’t wear that. Just doesn’t matter whether you’re ploughing, or sowing wheat wasn’t too bad, but when you were stripping wheat you got all this dust,

it was horrible stuff, it was real itchy, terrible. And they were just sitting on this tractor with their collar and tie on, here’s me with this daggy old shirt on and shorts, cause on the farm you didn’t worry much really especially when you’re out in the paddocks working.

There was a few, I can’t remember their names now

because they used to come to church, one girl that I knew especially and she used to do a lot for her father, the same as I did.

Oh yes, well that was your war effort and then we’d back up at night and go and do things for the troops. We used to put on concerts and all sorts of things at Trundle for the troops, we used to send them parcels every so and so.

Just a vaudeville show, somebody would recite, somebody would sing then they’d have a bit of a story thing, and we had done a bit at Cumnock, I was telling you that lady she was from Melbourne. And she used to give us a bit of instruction there and Bill, my brother, he was very keen and he and I both joined up with the club, in

the what’s it name. And we were starting on a play when he joined up and it all fell through, but they still had me in there doing a bit on the stage. But oh it wasn’t anything like you’d see today, it was just a country concert, but there was no television, in fact there was hardly any wirelesses, you had to have something. And people used to flock in to see these stupid plays

we put on.

Yeah

Yes.

Not through Trundle, through, they used to come through Parkes more I think on the trains. But there were people going from everywhere, it’s hard to explain really. See my brothers they both went and

joined up, which they shouldn’t have done, but they thought it was their prerogative and they thought it was their duty to go and fight for Australia and England. Seeing being English too, that had a lot to do with it, with the boys they were very British, especially the one in the air force. But I know when we were having my wedding, at my wedding we had

the sandwiches and cakes and that back at Ted’s mother and cause the Salvation Army fellow he knew nothing about war and all that, I think and he got up and started to talk and to wish Ted and I a long life, you know what they do at weddings. And my brother got up first and he said, “First of all ladies and gentleman a toast to the Queen” he was very Queenie and he cut the other fellow

out. End of tape.

Well the tractor’s attached to the header and wherever the tractor goes the header goes. And as you’re going along, when you’re stripping wheat you’ve got what they call a comb on the header, yeah the header thing, and the header’s going

along like that with, these are all prongs and it goes along in and cuts the head off.

Yeh and it throws it into another bin somehow and then it went up into the header. Like on the header behind where I’m sitting say there’s a big iron sort of a

box and the wheat all goes into there. And then when it’s full, you pull over and you make a few heaps in the paddock where you, cause as you get, when you go round first you don’t get very far before it’s full, but then when it gets a small area to go around, well you go around a lot more. And you just pull over to where the heaps are and unload it.

And you hooked it on, have you seen a header, ever seen a header? Well when you want to get the wheat in the bag you put your bag, you get hold of your bag like that and you hook it around this thing and hook it on the front. Then you pull a lever up and

the wheat runs out into the bag. And when it gets reasonably full, not, when you’re sending wheat into the silos you don’t have to make the bag tight, if you know what I mean, it’s more loose. There’s about that much space at the top and you put your arms there like that and you get your knees at the back of it and pull it over to the

heap. And that’s how you did, you might get about, if you’ve got a heavy crop I suppose you get 4 or 5 bags, oh wouldn’t be that much probably, 2 or 3 bags at a time, when your head box is full, you stand it out in the paddock.

Oh wouldn’t be sure.

I’ve no idea.

I didn’t worry, your wheat, I don’t know if you know much about it, it had to be FAQ otherwise it was no good to put in the silos.

Fair Average Quality or something, something like that, something to do with the, they’d take a little sample when you took it into the silos and they’d

tell you whether you could tip it all into the, it used to go down a sort of oh what would you call it, down into a big thing at the silos, near the silos. And then when these big bins, like near the silos went, they used to elevate it back up high so that the silos filled up.

You had to put it into this underground thing, and I don’t know how they, my uncle used to work them. But they must of had elevators I think to take it back into each bin, like you know the big round silos, the big cement ones? Well you filled them up and when they got to full well you went on another one. But the bags were pretty heavy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No you had wheat carriers, all the wheat season there’d be trucks coming to the country where they knew there was stripping to be done and you paid them so much to take them into the silos and then they tipped it into the silos.

The carriers came and took it over yes. And then they’d send a bill in to Dad for how many trips they had or whatever. And then it went into the silos of course you got I suppose, I can’t remember now, but you’d get your weight that you had and if it was FAQ or this or that, you’d whatever.

Well one paddock we had at Trundle was 40 acres and another one was 175 acres. This is how we used to go, if you had to go to anything on the farm they’d say the 75 acres or the 40 acres or whatever. Dad had 1200 acres there at Trundle.

Oh yes, yes.

Yes, yes.

Just had to take the tractor over and you had a pumper,

you know, you had kerosene drums in the paddock and you’d drive the tractor over, take the thing off the top and pump it until you got it full. On a morning when I went out first of a morning, underneath the motor, the engine of your tractor there was a little glass about that round and it used to sort of fit in.

And to start the tractor you had to take that off and throw the kerosene, it was full of kerosene by then, you had to take that off and then fill the little glass thing with petrol and put it back and that’s how you started the tractor. You couldn’t start it with kerosene but you could drive it with kerosene, if you know what I mean. To get the motor going you had to have petrol, or Dad did, I don’t

know that’s what I used to do.

Oh it’s a great big International thing, it was a great big, they didn’t have rubber wheels they had iron wheels, you know the things they put onto grip, that’s what it was like, big one.

What of?

First of all you had to plough and then Dad used to like to do it with the combine to make it, to work it more. Then you’d sow it and then you had to wait until it grew, you’d sow about March.

Yeah I did the sowing.

Well if you want to get it in at a certain time you don’t want to be, when it rains that’s when your likely to go out, you have your ground ready of course but you give it a bit of a tickle around, used to. And then you sow, you sow your wheat, you’ve only got one, either the horses or the tractor we used

to use. If it was something like stripping wheat in a hurry to get it off before it rained then you used the team and the tractor, but mostly you used the team when it wasn’t necessary to have it quickly done.

No a combine.

That’s the machine, it’s a great big long machine and in one

side there’s the super and in one side’s the grain. Then at the end of it, at the end of this machine thing, it’s about oh that wide I suppose, there’s big cogs. And with those you can turn on how much you want to put on the ground, in the ground and how much fertiliser you need, and Dad used to do that. He used to come and fix the fertiliser thing and fix the grain thing and I just drove it.

After I had David?

The first baby. Well not much different I suppose.

Oh sunrise most mornings depending what you had to do or what you wanted to do.

Well first of all you went and got the cows and milked the cows over at the yards and come home with that. And then you separated it,

you know, when we got a separator, Mum didn’t have one once. But once we had the separator either I would or Mum might separate it and then you have to scour all your utensils that you use for a separator, cause you’ve got a big bowl on the top like that of milk and then you’ve got all these other little funny things that separates the milk from the cream, you’ve seen that done? Yeah well

I mean by the time Mum used to do that and then she had to wash the separator and all the other little things, oh horrible thing they used to have. When you held it up like that it came apart, then you had to wash everyone of those and scrub in every one of those to get any milk or anything out of it, and then Mum used to scald it. She’d get a big kettle of boiling water and pour over it all

in this big bowl thing to sterilise it.

Well then we’d get…

Well if we were ploughing or doing something with the horses you went over, and you had to feed them early too, the horses. And then you’d put all their collars on, eight horses; you ever put a collar on a horse?

It’s not easy I can tell you. You’d collar eight horses and then you take them to the machinery and hook them up with chains.

No, no you’d go and milk the cows before you had your breakfast and you’d bring the milk home to Mum and she would have the breakfast ready after we’d finished milking.

We only ever had a couple of cows; we didn’t have a lot. And if there were any little calves that had to be podded you used to have to poddy them, which I hated. Cause you had to put the warm milk in a bucket and get it, get the calf’s head down in the bucket put your fingers in it’s mouth and let it sort of drink the milk that way. You had to do that for quite a while before it would do it, when it got used to

it just used to give it the milk but you know it did it itself. And then we had sheep, if some of the mothers wouldn’t have their lambs or wouldn’t let them suckle or whatever, you had to bring them home and you had to give them a bottle of milk, however old they were. It was always something going, you never had time to say, “Well I’m not going to do anything

today.” Perhaps sometimes on a Sunday we might when it was slacker, when it wasn’t so busy. But one of us would go into town to get the paper on a Sunday, we didn’t get them everyday unless somebody went in. But if Mum, Mum used to do all the messages with the horse and sulky but she couldn’t put the horse in, one of us would have to go and put it in and then wheel strap it until Mum was ready to

use it and then when Mum came home, we had to take it out and put the horse up, we used to feed him of a night and give him his drink down the dam. It’s all go, go, go, sort of thing.

Never entered our heads, morning tea.

We were lucky to get home for lunch.

Oh perhaps, depends on what we were doing. If it was very busy,

when Dad had shearers there we used to feed the shearers and I was backwards and forwards from the yard. I was back helping Mum with the cooking getting dinner ready, cause shearers you’ve got to feed them up and they have three cooked meals a day most shearers. And Mum used to have to do that but Dad always said they did a better job if you fed them; they weren’t in such a big hurry. Because some of them, oh when they shear the

sheep some of them used to cut the sheep terribly, cause they were careless, trying to get too, cause they get paid for so much a sheep and the quicker they go the better. So Dad always used to say to Mum, “Give them a good meal” didn’t charge them or anything, they got the food for nothing and they were really happy and they did, Dad reckoned they did a better job.

Same as the men, they’d all come in and have, we’d all have a lunch and then we’d have dinner at night.

Well was always late, fairly late. When the shearers were there of course it was nearly, not long after winter and the days weren’t very long, but you had to have the meals

spot on at the time. Like they had morning tea at 9 o’clock I think it was, they didn’t have breakfast with us they had their own breakfast somewhere. Then they had morning tea which we sat down for perhaps quarter of an hour, then there’d be lunch after they did some more sheep and then you’d have, I’d give Mum a bit of a hand in the kitchen.

And then they’d go back and shear then and in the afternoon they’d knock off then for afternoon tea and then go again for another hour or so at night, in the evening, cause the days weren’t very long then in August.

We always had it with the men; Mum always gave them their meals.

Oh probably 6

o’clock I suppose or something like that, it’s that long ago I can’t remember really.

When I had the children I did yes, because I’d always have to do washing for the babies. It wasn’t easy but still I didn’t mind.

To bed, when I’d go to bed I’d take the writing pad and pen with me and write a letter to one of the boys

or Ted or someone.

Not long, wasn’t very long. We didn’t have any, we used to listen to the wireless, I think they used to have a serial going on the wireless that I used to like to listen to, at night. This was in the busy times,

but any other times we’d just go along the same as you would, just ordinary. But shearing was always busy cause the sheds would be from here away to, oh not quite to the country club but a fair way from the house. And I was more or less a dog’s body in the shed, and then helping

Mum if I could, I used to race backwards and forwards to the house and help Mum and then go back and do the picking up they call it, picking up in the shearing shed that’s what I used to then. And I was 7-months pregnant with David when I did all the picking up in the shearing shed.

You’re ready for sleep, believe you me.

Oh pretty well, you slept pretty well.

I never timed it I suppose, you’d go to sleep what 8 o’clock 9 o’clock then you’d be up again with the break of dawn sort of thing to get the animals fixed up and whatnot. One day one of the neighbours came over in the slack period

and Mum made a cup of tea and were sitting in the dining room, and we had the dining room and kitchen there then we had this big wide veranda and the bedrooms and bathroom there. And we were sitting in the dining room having a cup of tea and our neighbour was there, a man, and I heard one of our kittens, we had a cat there, she had kittens. And I said to Mum, “Oh that’s one of the kittens he must of got his foot caught in the”

some of the boards were a bit loose. Dad was doing it, he was sawing his own timber, he used to get the pine out of the, we had a big pine 100 acres down the side of the property and he used to get the pine and we used to saw it and make floor boards and that. And Dad was, he had half the veranda done the other half was still, things were a bit rotten and rocky, and when this kitten screamed

I said to Mum, “What’s wrong with the kitten?” I raced out to see what’s wrong, lifted this loose board up off the veranda floor and here’s this damn snake round and round the kitten, it killed it, was a big carpet snake. I think David was only a baby then and I had him in a cosy-bye, you know in my bedroom. And my bedroom opened straight out, we had a gauze door and when you opened that you went straight

out onto the ground. I was up all night striking matches or the torch to see if David was alright, I thought the damn snake might come back. But the neighbour ran out and he grabbed a stick or something, he looked around as he came and he grabbed the stick and as the snake came up out of the hole in the veranda and was going down that way, cause on the edge of the veranda and he walloped it. And all this milky stuff came out

but he kept going, he went under the house. And that night I thought he can get a kitten, those carpet snakes they can eat a blooming rabbit, straight down, horrible things they are. And I was up scared stiff that the snake would come in there and take my baby.

Yeh. It was our first wedding anniversary as I said and my friend came out, she said, “Rene you’d better come in with me” I said, “No, I’ll be right. I’ve got another couple of weeks to go yet.” She said, “I think you should come in.” I said, “No I’ll come in perhaps next week or the week after.” “Alright” she said. She used to ride her bike out to our place and she went home and the next morning at 6 o’clock I woke Mum up, I said, “Mum I think I’ve got to go.” She said, “Go where?” I said, “Go to the hospital” “Oh my God”.

She was out of bed woke Dad up, “Go and get the horse and sulky”. And Dad went out to get the horse in the sulky and then I was getting strong labour pains a lot and going round the table and trying to have a bath and trying to, and Mum said, “Oh this is no good,” she said, “It’s coming too fast for me”. So she raced into my brother, he was home on final leave and she said, “Arthur quick go in for a taxi”. So he

rode his bike into town and he got the taxi to come out and just as we, I was in the sulky when it came and we’d driven oh from about here to the country club, and our first gate opened off the property onto this little track we had. Our place was near a railway line and the track was alongside of the railway line and you had about a mile or so to go along that track

with the railway line coming that way. So Mum just wheel strapped the horse, I don’t know if you’ve, you seen anything like, you done that? Well you had a big thick strap, a wide strap and you put the strap around the wheel of the horse and clicked it with something else to make it stop there, then you took the reins from the horse and you tied the reins of the horse to one of the spokes on the wheel. So Mum wheel strapped him, got in the

taxi with me and went back into town to the hospital. And poor old Dad, he said, “If a train had of come along the horse would have bolted, it would have frightened the daylights out of it”. So Dad happened to go along then and find the horse wheel strapped there next to the railway line. Cause he was driving the horses once and I don’t know whether it was when I did my thumb,

he was driving the team of horses and a train came along on the railway line, it was a fair way from where they were with the horse, and it started, it had black smoke coming up out of the train and usually our horses didn’t worry that much. Oh Dad was stripping the wheat and he just got off and he was emptying the wheat out into the bags when this train came,

and of course this big black horse we had in the team he took fright and he reared up and then tried to pull the thing. And Dad thought, “I’d better get on the seat of the thingo and get the reins and pull it to stop him” and he couldn’t manage, cause he had a bad leg, he couldn’t manage it real well to get on those iron step and he thought, “If I slip off that, he’ll be under the machine”. So he thought, “Best to let the horses

go”. And they went, and when you go fast with a header when you’re stripping wheat it blows all the works, gone, and poor Dad he’s trying to finish this paddock with these damn horses. And then Dad took two days off then he was in bed, he just, was such a shock and the worry, what was he going to do,

finish with the header and oh. Anyway they got through that but they were pretty torrid days on the farm during the war.

Oh just a car, this man ran the taxi. He used to work a

lot on cars and he had a garage in the town, nice man. He was, he just used to drive out.

I don’t think so. I can’t remember we never used a taxi but Mum got a bit of panic when she thought I was going to have the baby there and then.

Yes, yes. We made up, I wrote to him I said, “If it’s a boy I’ll send best wishes on a telegram”, cause you couldn’t just send a telegram willy-nilly, but they had words that you could use in telegrams, you couldn’t put your own words in. I said to Ted, “Well if it’s a boy, I’ll send best wishes, if it’s a girl I’ll send good luck” cause the g for the girl,

he said, “Okay” so I sent, got Mum to send the cable overseas then. But my brother got there about 6 weeks after in the Middle East and met up with Ted and told him all about it, it was funny really.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Well this poor man he was trying to keep his place going and he was a nice man, he wasn’t real, not a bad German, we had a few there that were Germans. Anyhow Dad said to him one day he said, “Look come up there” he said, “and I’ll help you get some wood with my cart” he said. “No” he said, he’s on a pushbike, he used to go and get bits of wood

along, wherever on the pushbike, poor fellow. And he said, “Oh no” he said, “People see you helping me” he said, “I’m a German” he said, “and they wouldn’t like that.” Dad said, “Well look, you’re quite welcome to come and get it”. Cause part of our property was only quarter of a mile from the town. But this poor man, I don’t think he had a German

nature at all, he was well liked in the district really, but a lot of people did shun him when the Germans went to war, which is not fair really but then again I suppose you had to be careful didn’t you? You never knew who was who really?

Oh yes, we used to have bazaars and they’d have cooking competitions on a Saturday and everybody made cakes and then had someone come and judge them. And people used to come in from town and buy them.

Well my father gave me a calf once.

I was running for the, what do they call it, the girl of the district you know what I mean?

Hmm.

No you just helped and did things. Dad gave me a calf to raffle and you went in, Mum used to go into town on a Saturday afternoon

when it was all shopping day then in the country. And she would ask people to give her, like it was a shilling a ticket or something for the raffle, and whoever won it got the whatever. That’s what Dad used to do and then Mum would get, she had turkeys, she’d kill a turkey and raffle it. And then we had, they had a beautiful War Service Hall

at Trundle and there was the hall and then off the hall itself where the dances were held, they had the kitchens and where you could prepare. And Mum used to go in there sometimes, cause Saturday afternoon when all the farmers came to town they used to like to go and have dinner at the cafes and that then. But they used to, Dad used to give Mum some meat and Mum would cook it, or have a turkey and they’d bake it and then make

a baked dinner and a lot of the town people would come there and have their dinner, and that all went into the kitty for the boys to send parcels away.

Oh yes, yes. The only thing that we found was sugar; sugar was rationed, and chocolate you couldn’t buy, troops had all the chocolate.

And Ted used to buy it at the canteen sometimes when he was in Australia and he’d post it to me, he’d send me the chocolate. But we had friends in Sydney that found it very hard with meat; meat was rationed. But see we had the sheep. Dad could kill a sheep. And then once when my brother came, one of my brothers or somebody came to see us

and they were going to Sydney and they took half a sheep down for our friends in Sydney, to help them out, that was their bad, but ours was just the sugar, that’s the only thing we found it a bit hard with the sugar.

Hmm?

Well clothing didn’t worry you very much in those days, not like it is today they’re forever buying things at shops and whatever. But

clothing wasn’t too bad, I didn’t think anyway, didn’t worry me much. You had coupons, so that’s why I was glad I could borrow the wedding dress because I would have only used a lot of my clothing coupons to buy my wedding dress. Anything in material you had to part up with your coupons which wasn’t very good, but that was the only thing.

It was terrible.

Oh my husband wanted to come back from the Middle East. They started shipping the boys back from the Middle East and my younger brother came home. And he said, “Ted will be home soon Rene.” He said, “They’re bringing them all back”. But he wasn’t, it was 12

months after that, he didn’t come back till ‘43. They went to Tobruk and then drove all the way over to that other one, I told you before, oh what is it?

El Alamein. He was a driver on the lorries when they shifted the troops; he used to drive. And they had

oh, if they come with a bomb and dropped it they would have killed, because they’d have rows of trucks just going round these hills, oh terrible. You used to worry about it but then again life had to go on and you just kept going. And people were so good in the towns out west and, well all of the country towns I think, they were very good to, helped out a lot,

helped each other. I know when the implements on the farm used to go, you had a very hard job getting replacements. So when the stripping season was on, I remember one day a fellow came over and he said, “Bill can you fix this?” something had gone in his header that he was stripping wheat with, Dad said, “Okay mate”. So he went over to the blacksmith’s shop, they used to stay there with him and use the forge and whatever it was,

he’d fix it. It wasn’t perfect but it got them through their season, it helped them a lot.

Yes wonderful.

Yes.

Yes.

Every Sunday either morning or evening, we’d go to one, wouldn’t go to both. I was in the church choir then at Trundle.

Yes, they were all good ministers I think in those days.

Yes and before they went they were all given a watch.

They used to have a send off they called it and I think my younger brother, it was only him, and some of the ladies they’d prepare, they’d have supper then they’d have this dance in the thing and the boys would be up on the stage and

they’d present them with a watch, each one. And when my younger brother was going, he was 23 I think, and these ladies said to Mum, “Your son looks too young, he only looks about 18” Mum said, “He’s 23”, they said “What?” Cause he looked young, he didn’t look young when he came back I’m afraid, wasn’t very nice, but anyway they got through it without any,

well perhaps not in themselves, their attitudes might have been different I think. It does something to you I think when you’re over in those countries. But my husband said when they were over in Egypt there he said the locals were wonderful, they used to help them and they used to have the boys there. They didn’t have much themselves but they used to share it

with some of the soldiers, they’d have them there and doing what they could, which I suppose was natural, but they didn’t have to. You know at times when the boys had a bit of leave or somewhere, they’d go and a lot of the people around would look after them. Not that they got much but still it was, Ted said, “We didn’t like taking things sometimes, we knew they were rationing

themselves”, he reckoned they shouldn’t have been doing it really. Cause the boys were, well they were fed when they went over there. I think the sleeping and that was the worst because they slept in their clothes for weeks and weeks there when they were at Tobruk. And it must have been hard then I think.

Wonderful. There was one boy that lived, his parents lived opposite the railway and just before they came home he’d been killed and that was hard, but

I’ll get upset about it.

No, it’s just, I mean these people that lived opposite their son was killed and they had to see all the trains with the boys coming back, it wasn’t easy.

But I was very lucky, I had three brothers in it and a husband, they all came back, probably the worst for wear but they came back.

Well

he was so happy to be back.

He was in the 2/12th Field Regiment [artillery], AIF [Australian Imperial Force] of course and he was only an ordinary soldier, he didn’t get any commission or anything like that.

Bill was in the 90 LOD and

I don’t know exactly what… they never talked about it much, none of them. My brothers none of them talked about the war, Ted never talked about it. Only now and again; he said when they were sleeping in Tobruk that the fleas. When I used to hear most of it was if my brothers came or one of the family came and they were talking between each other about the war.

And he said one day he said, “The worst part was in Tobruk when the fleas wouldn’t let us alone, we had to burn the trench to get some sleep”. They’d have their clothes on for a week or more, sometimes their singlets were stuck to the hairs on their chest they were so dirty.

No, this was only with

some of the…we might be in the kitchen and they might start talking about something and I’d hear what they were saying. My brothers probably and Ted would say, “Were you in Egypt?” or, “Were you in Tobruk when this happened or that happened”, that’s the only time I knew anything about it.

No, no, it was only just snatches that I’d hear

when they were talking together. Cause they used to reminisce about things, what he did and what he did sort of thing, swap stories when they were at Tobruk or when they were at Tel Aviv or, they went into Tel Aviv, they went in here and did some shopping before they came back to Australia, that’s where he bought that little suit for me for David.

He did. It was a horrible looking thing. I didn’t like it.

Like a chinos thing. I can’t remember what it was like now but I didn’t like it much.

But there wasn’t much they could get over there to buy.

Some of the boys sent things home sometimes and oh gee you wouldn’t put them on the clothesline.

I think they were horrible.

Silk sort of things and horrible materials, well I didn’t like them, somebody else might of but I didn’t.

No, like that suit he bought for David and it had this big white collar around it. And he bought me something I can’t remember. I know I didn’t

like it whatever it was, I never wore it I don’t think.

No he didn’t like it much either I don’t think, but there was nothing else for it over there.

Didn’t talk war at all.

Didn’t like war. When he came home

there was him and two other soldiers from, my girlfriend’s brother and her boyfriend, they had to change, on the Sunday before he was coming home on the Monday, one of the businessmen came out from town, cause we didn’t have a phone or anything, he came out and he said, “I

believe they…” cause everybody in Trundle knew when the boys were coming home. Well, one of my friends used to send her brother out on his pushbike to tell me that her brother was in Sydney so Ted must be coming, that sort of thing. So this girl sent us out to say that the boys were going to get on the train, they thought in Sydney, they were coming to Trundle to the what’s-it name. So on

the morning that they were to come back, because there was my eldest brother, my younger brother came home before, then there was Phil’s friend, boyfriend and brother and we took, we took two sulkies in I think that day, Mum and Dad had one and I had the other, so we could bring them home whoever came to us. My eldest brother was coming and

when we, at the railway at Parkes, there was a businessman at Parkes rang his niece to say that if Ted was on the, because at Parkes they had to wait for a long time for a train out to Trundle, it was like a little rail motor, we used to call it ‘the tin hare’. He sent word out and he said,

“I’ll go to the railway, to the station in Parkes when the troops come in and I’ll find Ted Moss” he said, “and I’ll bring him back by car”. And they sent word out to me like to tell me that he was going to bring him back by car and of course he would have been back in Trundle before the train, a long time before, cause they had to wait a couple of

hours or so in Parkes. And he went down to the railway at Parkes on the morning that they were to arrive and he put a plaque, cause he didn’t know Ted, he put a plaque back and front ‘Ted Moss anywhere.’ He walked up and down the platform. And my friend’s brother he was there and he saw the thing but he didn’t know where Ted went. Ted and one of his mates that he knew, they’d gone up the street

at Parkes to wait for the time for the train to go to Trundle. So this fellow was walking up and down the platform with this ‘Ted Moss anywhere’ and the boy saw it, some of the boys on the train. So when they all got on the train, this, my girlfriends brother and her boyfriend and Ted, and there were a couple of other men from Trundle, and

they kept chiacking Ted, they said, “Your wife sent a message in that you needn’t bother coming home, she’s cleared out with Roger”. Ted just laughed at them; he knew it wasn’t right. They chiacked him nearly all the way back from Parkes. And of course when Mr Thingo didn’t come out to get me to take me into Parkes to meet Ted in the car, I said to Mum, cause they had a job to get on the trains in Sydney they were so packed

out. They used to sleep on the racks and in the passageways. And when he didn’t turn up at Trundle I said to Mum, “Well I’m going to Sydney tomorrow, I’ll go down to my friend in Sydney and I’ll meet Ted in Sydney” so Mum said, “Okay you’re mad” she said cause I had David he was 18 months about then I think. And then

I’m on the platform trying to say hello to my friend’s brother and her boyfriend and somebody came up alongside of me and said, “Hello Mrs Moss” and I turned around and it was Ted. I said, “I thought you weren’t on the train?” He said, “Yes I know the boys have told me. They’ve been chiacking me all the way that you’d cleared out with Roger and all this”. But oh that was lovely, it was wonderful and my eldest brother

he didn’t come, my youngest brother he got married when he came home from the Middle East, 12 months earlier and he went to his wife of course.

Yes, yes.

Yes he’d never seen him.

Hmm?

Not much, not much. But it’s a very trying

experience, it was for me I don’t know if it was for everybody else to think, cause I was so disappointed thinking he wasn’t there but it was a great thrill and I turned around and here he was beside me. But oh you know we stayed with Mum and Dad for a few days, I think it was in the March, well all your sowing is nearly done with your wheat, all the hard things

done, you just catch up on other things in that. So Dad said, “Well you’d better go over to Wellington to see Ted’s mother” cause she wanted to see him of course. And then we went to Wellington and then we went to Sydney and we had a few days in Sydney while there. And then we were staying at the People’s Palace and then when Ted had to go back to camp I went out

to this friend of mine, down there in Sydney and I stayed with her for a couple of days. And then Ted used to get out through the, get out at night but he had to go back to camp every morning to report in. And they gave them a good liberal allowance a bit you know and then we went, we went up to Wellington then

to see his mother of course on the train and had David with us. It was really lovely and his mother was so happy to see him and all the friends and they all came around and of course we had another do with cakes and drinks and sandwiches and whatever, cause none of us were drinkers.

I think later in life it did.

He sort of kept within himself more, which he shouldn’t have done really, but then again that’s how they are, I suppose. Never talked about it.

No, no not to me, we were just so happy to be together again, it was lovely.

No I don’t think so.

Don’t think so. Towards the end of the war when we knew that it was no good, all the boys would be coming home, I came up here. Cause I said to him I was going to get a house in town with, I had two children by then and he said, “No I’d like to come to Shoal Bay, I want

to have a go at fishing”, with his father see.

This is before, yes he said, “When I come home, I want to go to Shoal Bay”.

No this is when the war finished.

January ‘45 I came here, no it wasn’t January, it was just after. Paul was, my baby boy was

only about 4 weeks old I think when I came up here in 1945. And of course there was nothing out here then, there was no power, there wasn’t much of anything really. No deliveries or anything you had to walk into the Bay. And I mean you had to make your own, I was quite happy, I was quite happy being there and had my own place and

we were paying for it, while we were there. And then of course when he came home, I don’t know where I was, he wrote and he said he’d be home for our wedding anniversary on the 19th October, that’s after the war finished. And of course as soon as they got to Sydney, they said he could come straight home or he could

stay and be demobbed [demobilised, discharged from the army] properly in Sydney, or he could come straight home and then come back and be demobbed.

He didn’t come home from.

Yes, yes he did.

Oh not very long. I can’t remember I can’t think how long it was, but it wasn’t very nice I didn’t like it.

Yeah.

No.

And Mum was horrified when I was having Paul because it was a worry for her. And we had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, Mum used to look after the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, fed them and get the eggs and things like that and then do all the messages into town. But, and having 2 children, when you saw that photo of her there when she had David in her

arms, cause they idolised David, and he was absolutely spoilt. And if they went into town on a Saturday afternoon to shop, and Dad was available then to go, they’d take David, sit him in between them in the sulky. And oh Dad and Mum used to love that, they used to love to take him into town to do the shopping. And of course all the townspeople, there weren’t many babies, Trundle babies, war babies and there

was only about another one woman that I knew that had the children while her husband was away. Even when he was born, when David was born at the hospital, I had people come to see me, that some of them I hardly knew, just because Ted was away at the war, which was, that’s country people they’re like that.

Yeah, yeah.

He thought it was too much for me but what could I do and what could he do. Dad couldn’t do anything and I couldn’t leave him. But when the war was coming to a close and we tried to get my brother home and Paul was only about a month old I think when the fellow came out from…

Well he came out, and

because I’d put in to say that I couldn’t do the work now, I didn’t feel real well after I had Paul and he came out to say, “Why aren’t you doing the work now?” the fellow that came out, and I said, “I’ve got a son in there who’s about 3 weeks old do you want to see him?”. I was hostile, really hostile and Mum was frowning at me. And I said…

Government of something, Curtin came, Mr Curtin, I said, “Mr Curtin if he gets a big toe ache they put him to bed and look after him,” and I said, “It’s too much here for my mother” and he said “Well why isn’t your mother out there doing the work on the farm?” I said, “My mother’s never, she wouldn’t know a horse”. She knew the horses head but that’s about all, she knew to drive one in a sulky, but I said,

she couldn’t put the harness on the horse to put it in the sulky, she didn’t know how, she never ever put a bridle on it and I said, “She can’t do that, she’s never done it and at her age” what would she be, oh about 60 I suppose, 62 or something. And I said, no she’d be 55, 56, I think cause

after they, after I came down here in ‘45 and then Dad, a couple of years after I left and my eldest brother had gone home to help Dad then, he got out of the army, and they both got sick together. And they put them both in the district, in the hospital and there was no one there to put the horse in the sulky for Mum and she used to walk into town to do her shopping and lived out on the farm by herself.

And that worried me but I had Sue then, the baby, and I wrote to Mum and I said, “If I come up there, is it alright if I come with the baby?” and there was a friend of mine at Charlestown, she was going to look after Paul and the sister-in-law was going to look after David, if I went up to help Mum on the farm. Cause I knew that she’d be in strife cause she couldn’t do anything

on the farm. And anyhow, I said to Mum, “I’d have to do all the washing for the kids” and I said, “How’s the water?” Well they didn’t have much water in the tanks, we had three or four big tanks at the house but it had been a drought again.

Oh yes, yeah.

That was when Paul was only a few weeks old.

I can’t remember now what he did, but I know he didn’t get any change out of me.

Yeah.

Well then my eldest brother, they were only marking time in Australia

you know when the war finished. Well, I call it marking time; I suppose they had to keep an eye on the Japs and that sort of thing. And Arthur would have easily, in fact he was in camp at Tamworth I think and he came out of there and tried to get a train back to Mum and Dad cause he knew what Dad was going through. And they used to get him at the stations and take him back, the military police.

Yeah, yes that ‘s when we wanted him out, like when the war was, well it was 1945…

He was still away; he hadn’t come home. But he didn’t come home then until the October and Paul was born in the January and this

fellow came out, must have been, Paul was the 5th of January it would be about in the February or March when this fellow came out and wanted to know why, well Paul was only three weeks old, three or four weeks. And he was born on the 5th of January so I had him, I was breast-feeding and I said to him, “Do you want to have a look at the baby in there?” Oh I gave him a tongue bashing I can tell you. He said, “Why isn’t your mother out doing it,

why can’t she get out there and drive the tractor?” I said, “Mum never drove a tractor in her life and at her age I don’t think she’ll ever learn”. She could drive a horse and sulky but she couldn’t even put the horse in the sulky we had to do that, she wasn’t used to doing these things.

Yes, I left then. I said to Mum and Dad too, I said, “Look Dad, I think I’ll go down to Shoal Bay. Ted wants me to be there when he

comes back”. Didn’t know how long he’d be coming back and Dad said, “Okay kiddo you go back there”. So when I got back here, I got the little place up on the hill and I was quite happy with the kids and you know.

Well see there was no power, you had to have your own water, your own wood, we had a miner’s

oven, you ever seen a miner’s oven? Well there’s stands on the side of, like a hob, and you can put the fire under it not to get it real hot, or you just leave it there, you had your open fire and this miner’s oven was there, that’s what was in the place when we bought it. And I had to go out and get wood so that I could cook and I had a primus, you know the old fashioned primus

and I used to light, I’d go out in the bush, I’d feed Paul on a morning and put him in his cosy-bye, we had a cosy-bye up on the hill and then David and I would go out, he’d walk along beside me and I’d take the wheelbarrow down the bush and get timber and get wood for the stove to cook with, and to keep warm cause it was starting to get cold then.

Then I’d walk into the Bay with the two of them in the pram and do my shopping.

Rent?

Up here?

I didn’t rent. We were buying it.

We were buying it from my husband’s sister yeah.

Yes.

Yes, I saved money out of his, my, what I got,

cause see I didn’t have to buy food or anything, I lived at home, I didn’t get paid for the work I was doing but I had my keep as they called it. And I’d saved, cause I said to Dad, “I’m saving Dad.” He said, “Yeah, you want to put as much beside as you can.” They never took anything from me at all, just what I wanted for the kids or myself.

Same thing yeah, used to write.

The military used to get them through.

I don’t think so no, it was never anything to do with what he was doing, I just used to write and tell him what I was doing then he’d write back, oh well real love letters, I kept a lot of them.

And my daughter got there one day, she was having a look at them, “Oh gee, love letters from Dad” you know, but I finished up tossing them out. Oh it was, they were hard days yet there were happy days in between, so you made the most of what you had and you were very lucky. I was scared stiff when the Japs came down to Darwin that time and I think David was only a couple of months old I think and I thought,

“My God, what will I do?” At least I was breast-feeding which would have been alright for him, but I thought you couldn’t starve your child. I was horrified, that churned me up more than anything.

When the Japs got into Darwin that time, when they started to come over.

Oh yes, oh yes Dad, at nighttime they’d have a lot of men talking from Sydney

and different places about the war and Dad used to sit there and listen to see what they had to say. Lunchtime when we came in for lunch, he’d put the wireless on and see if there was any news of the war. Cause it was hard for him too with three boys in it and my husband that’s four of them. But you just seemed, you just had to live and that was it, there’s nothing you could do about it really except

help wherever you could.

Yes it wasn’t easy for her. It wasn't easy at all. When the second boy was married and he had a wife but the eldest boy of course was at home and Bill the youngest of course he was always at home. Cause he got married half way through the war when they first came back; he came back from the Middle East before my husband,

and they were all coming back at that stage but something happened over there and kept them back there, they couldn’t let them go. But Bill came home and he said, “Ted will be home soon Rene, I’m here” he said, “He’ll be home soon”. But he wasn’t, he was 12 months after that, it was….

1942 it must have been when Bill came home and then he and Pearl, his wife, got married, they’d gone to school together

and Mum and Dad and I got on the train, on ‘the tin hare’ as they called it and went to Molong, when they got married. Then we got on the train, I put David, I only had David, I put him in the pram and just wheeled it onto the train, like onto a thing at the back, what they called a, oh you know the fellow that stands in the back and waves when the trains have

got to go, sort of thing. And I just wheeled the pram into there with the baby in it, Mum and Dad and I stayed in there.

No but I was happy. I was wishing I was up at Trundle because Mum said there was dancing in the streets and oh it was absolutely wonderful and I thought there would be and I thought, “Gee I’d love to be up at Trundle

now”. But it was really wonderful and the next, cause we didn’t hear much, I had a wireless up there it was a battery wireless.

Yes and some friends at Charlestown they got me this battery wireless and brought it out here, and I paid for it of course. And then we had a battery but you had to keep getting it charged and they used to come up every fortnight, they had a weekender here in Shoal Bay, and they’d

always come up to me of course. And they had a daughter, she was about 10 and I used to make all her frocks and that for her, they’d bring the material up and I’d sew at night when I got the kids to bed and I’d sit and sew.

Oh look it was absolutely wonderful, I heard something on the wireless, it wasn’t, I didn’t catch it all or something and I said to David, he was four

I think, just after, he was born in ‘41 yeah 45, he was nearly four, it was his birthday and I was, I used to, the people next door used to listen for the kids when I went somewhere. I went down to the little shop at the front here and I was doing some cooking and that ready for the next day when Ted was supposed to be coming home or something. But anyway before that,

I said to him, “Quick run down” the country club here was manned by one soldier at that time. The military took Shoal Bay over, they took the country club and that was a soldier’s place there at the country club, that was the military and then up here, just going out, back to Nelsons Bay was the HMAS

you know the ships and you know the boats and that, that was up there. And then out at Gan Gan, that’s out the other side of the Bay that was the other part of the military. And I said to David, “Quick darling run down to Mrs McNicholl” there was an old lady used to have a shop out the front, she used to look after it on her own, “and ask her if the war’s over, Daddy might be coming home” and

of course away he took down the hill, it was up on the hill there, just had a little track about this wide down to the bottom, and he raced down and he saw someone at the country club and he said, “The war’s going to be over. I’ll have a Daddy like the other kids”. But it was really wonderful when he came home. When they got to Sydney they gave them the choice, they could go home for a week and then come back

to be demobbed properly and Ted said, “I’m going” whether they let him or not he was coming, so he came home.

No, no.

He’d seen David but he hadn’t seen Paul.

Paul was, that would have been March I think when Ted came home, April, no it wasn’t it was October because I was cooking for David’s birthday, he

was going to be four I think or something. And Ted said, when he wrote to me, he said, “I’ll be home on the 19th of October for our wedding anniversary”. And of course when he didn’t turn up I thought, “Oh, looks like he couldn’t get away”, that’s why he wanted to get home quickly cause of the wedding anniversary. And I don’t know who, I saw somebody, who was it, that’s right some girls

that I knew, they were going to school and they stayed just near the country club, their father lived there with them and mother. And when I went down to the shop cause I’d been cooking for David’s birthday tomorrow to leave some things down there or whatever, we were going to have a party down on the lawn in front of the country club the next day for David’s birthday. And some girl said, “Oh did Mr Moss

come home?” and I said, “No he didn’t. I thought he’d have been here by now, he said he’d be here” and she said, “Well, there was a soldier on the bus” and I thought they were just joking and I said, “Oh yes”. Anyhow I started back up the hill and this figure was coming down the hill and I had all these pans and cake tins and whatever, taking them back up to the house.

And I saw him, it was moonlight and I could see this figure coming down the hill, I said, “That wouldn’t be you would it?” He said, “That’s me”. I dropped the cake tins and everything and just ran, but we had this party the next day for David on the lawn at the country club, he was four then. But oh it was heaven, he said, “I can stay for a week and I’ve got to go back to be demobbed”. And I hated him going

back, I hated him going away again, being on your own so much.

He came and had a look at him in the cosy-bye when he got there, cause we only had lamps we didn’t have any power or anything, I only had an Aladdin lamp, you seen those? The Aladdin lamp with those little thingo’s on, and he

went in and had a look at him in there. And David was in bed of course, but David used to sleep with me in the double bed in the one bedroom, then we had twin beds out on the veranda part at the front, it was all glassed in. And he used to sleep with me of course when Ted was away and of course he didn’t want to go onto that veranda, he said “I want to” he was used to being in with me and Ted

said to him, he talked him round, he said, “Come on, go to bed with Dad”. Anyhow he put him in his cot, Paul was alright cause he was only a baby but then after a while there’d be a little head come round the corner and Ted would get up again and he’d say, “There’s a cow out here, there’s a Jap out here” cause people were talking about the war and the Japanese and that must have gone through into him somehow.

“There’s a Jap out here, Dad I can’t sleep”, Ted would go out he’d walk him round and say, “Come on we’ll go and have a look,” walk him around have a look under the beds on the veranda and look everywhere, he said “See there’s nothing there, and Dad and Mum are just in through there.” He said, “Oh the Jap’s come”. The war must of sunk into him somehow with the Japs and people talking about it I suppose with Japs and things.

He didn’t like it very much I don’t think up there, he didn’t say much.

Oh it only brought us closer together, I’d say. Cause we were always on good terms with each other, it was just lovely to have him home.

Probably, probably, yeah. Although you write letters and that, it’s not the same as seeing them. And of course we had to go up to his mother then, we caught the train up there, they had so long off. But then he had to come back here and get a boat and get keyed up with everything.

He had a brother-in-law that worked in Rylands, the big BHP [Broken Hill Proprietary limited, steelworks] in Newcastle and when he came up once he said, “Ted, how about we take some of the blokes from work. They want to go out fishing, outside”, so Ted said, “Okay”. They used to pay, I think it was a pound, if they could fish for themselves and pay a pound, or they could go out for nothing and give

Ted the fish they caught. But they all paid their pound and took their fish home because it was always nice and fresh, they’d go outside and catch snapper. And then Athol Johnbrain [?] came down from Maitland and he wanted Ted to take them out big game fishing.

He wasn’t a man that complained about anything, and he didn’t

talk much about the war, only when my brothers came and they’d be talking. But the war was finished, he didn’t like it but I mean you had to go on with things, he was quite happy to be home.

No.

No, no. We always were very compatible I suppose. But he used to take fishing parties out on a weekend

and then he’d fish himself through the week, go outside and come home with a couple of boxes of fish.

Yes. Yeah, it was quite good really.

Oh I don’t think so, the way the

townspeople were and everybody out there, they’re always so kind to everybody in the country and you don’t feel alone so much, because there was a few in Trundle that had husbands at the war, but we didn’t bemoan it, we didn’t whinge about it all the time or anything, you just got on with it.

No I just did what I had to do. And then when the years went on up here and Ted was fishing and then people were coming up in their holiday places, that’s when I took out the estate agency, cause different ones said to me, “Why don’t you take the agency out, you get them accommodation and everything and go to a lot of trouble and you don’t get anything”. So I applied then

and I had to have two JPs [Justices of the Peace] to sign the thing to get the estate agents thing and they were quite happy to do that, that they knew me and they knew Ted then, so I took out the estate agency. And I used to get cottages for people, there’s a man over here on the waterfront built two flats and asked me if I would tenant them, for the holiday.

Well when my husband passed away, there’s one man here he was in the islands, he was in the Japanese prison camp, Changi I think. He came to see me cause the war veterans stick to their members and their wives sort of

thing, he came to see me and he said, “You know did Ted have a card, a medical card?” I said, “Yes a white card or something.” “Oh,” he said, “You won’t have any problem getting the War Widow’s Pension”. I hadn’t thought about that, well I didn’t think of anything much when I lost my husband. And when he came to see me he said, well he got particulars and he said, “We’ll apply for the War Widow’s Pension”. And apparently he sent that

away, I don’t know where he sent it, I didn’t ask, I didn’t worry about it, I couldn’t be bothered with anything. And anyhow a woman rang me from Sydney and she said, “You’re applying for the War Widow’s Pension?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “Did your husband smoke?” I said, “No he never smoked and he didn’t drink” cause he had a bad family when he was young through drink, not smoking so much

but he didn’t want to smoke. Well apparently when he was growing up, he couldn’t afford to smoke, not like they do now. Anyhow she said, “It would be much easier to get the War Widow’s Pension if he’d smoked”, I thought, “Well that’s stupid”. But Bart Richardson here, he came to see me, he said, “Oh you won’t have any trouble, Ted had this card”

Yeah I think it was a white card or something.

Well it’s similar for a returned man. And he said, when this woman said that, “Did he smoke?” I said, “No he didn’t” she said, “Oh well it would have been easier to get the War Widow’s Pension.” I thought, “That’s stupid, what’s that got to do with it”. But they reckon that that had something to do with perhaps his heart, he had a heart condition later in life, through the war

I think. But and that’s what she said, anyway they put in for it and they knocked me back, they said “No”. No but I know now a lot of them said their husbands smoked and they gave them the War Widow’s Pension. One of the fellows in here, Allen Tonkin, he was a colonel in the army during the war and he said, “Rene you know,” cause I said to him, “You know

they’re not going to give me the War Widow’s Pension, Allen”, he said “You know a lot of them have got it Rene cause they’ve told a lot of lies to get it,” and he said, “They’ve clamped down on it.” I said, “Oh that’d be right”. I could never take a trick with the government or anything. And he said, but anyway that’s why they said if he’d smoked he would of. And then only here about oh two years ago,

this John King he’s up with all the knowing how to do things to get the War Widow’s Pension, he got it for quite a few women around here. And my friend talked me into going to see him, so I went to see him and told him, and he sent to Sydney and he got all of Ted’s war records. And when he got them he said to me, “My God, he should have been given the War Widow’s Pension anyway,”

he said, “What he’s been through in the war in Tobruk and all the other places,” he said “I’ll try.” He tried but they said, “No he didn’t smoke” so he couldn’t have been stressed. Their argument is that when you come out of the army, or when you’re in the army, you started to smoke for the stress that you suffered, but see they said Ted wasn’t stressed. But oh he used to have some funny turns after he came home

from the war, he’d have a few days in bed of course. He had what they get up in New Guinea?

Malaria, he used to get bouts of that and oh used to be pretty sick.

No he had to lie down, he used to stay in bed a couple of days,

there was nothing you could see probably was in him, I don’t know. But the doctors they put him on tablets and things, he was on a lot of tablets when he died of course. But that was the reason they gave, that if he’d smoked you would have got it.

Well nothing you could see. But my eldest brother of course during the war, after the war, when I left home and my eldest brother went to Dads, he was going to stay with Dad on the farm. And Mum said some nights, he’d say to Mum, “I’m going in to the doctors are you going to

come with me, Mum?” and he’d take her in, they’d go in to the doctors. And the doctors put him in hospital one stage, then my father got sick because my brother was sick, he got sick too, they were both in hospital for about, well Dad was there from September until about Christmas in the little country hospital. And they finally let him, every time my brother, every time they said he could go home from the hospital

he’d have a bad turn and he’d conk out nearly. So they sent him to Sydney to Concord, and when he got to Concord, they had him there for about 6 weeks and they said, he was going to take Dad’s property over because Dad wasn’t well and he was leaving the farm, he was going to buy the farm from Dad. And they had it all fixed up to sign and everything when my brother got this turn and they said, “You can’t go on the farm, you can’t be on your own.

You’ve got to go and work in a factory where’s there’s plenty of people, you can’t be by yourself”. So he couldn’t take the farm over, so Dad sold it to somebody else and he and Mum came down here. They came in about the September, or a bit after that and they had a little, I had a cottage built for them on their block of ground down the back. And they were down there and Mum came to me and

she said, “I’ve been up with Dad all night Rene,” she said “Would you ring the doctor?”. And of course we didn’t have a doctor in here, I had to ring the doctor in Newcastle. And Doctor Muller came up and they’d been treating him when he was in hospital at Trundle for his heart, my Dad. And when the doctor came she said, he came up from Stockton

and they were still in the little cottage down the back and Mum said, “He’s out of his heart tablets, Doctor” she said, “I think he’ll need some heart.” He said, “It’s not his heart Mrs Simpson,” he said, “I don’t know what it is but it’s not his heart”. So he said, “Look I’d like him to come down to the little hospital at Stockton so as I can see him in one of these turns”. So my husband drove him down and we put him in hospital there

and the doctor said, “Ring up about 10 o’clock tonight and we’ll let you know what’s going on”. So I rang up and he said, “I didn’t like the look of him. I put him over in the Newcastle Hospital”. Well they put him over there and he had leukaemia, and he didn’t come out of hospital after that. But that was very hard for my mother but Dad,

when they got him over into the big hospital in town, the main hospital, they took tests and that and they couldn’t make out what it was, nobody sort of knew. And then they, the doctors in there, he had about 11 specialists in there looking at him to see what they could, what was wrong, then they decided, they found out the blood. Cause they didn’t know much about leukaemia then, and

Mum and I went in on the afternoon, I used to drive then, the car, and we went to see the doctor there and he said, “Look I’ve got not good news,” he said. I said, “Well do you think we’ll get Dad home again?” He said, “No”. He lasted 3 weeks that was all and of course he died, that was in 1950.

The only thing, my Dad brought me a block of ground along here in Bullecourt Street, and he said he’d lend me a thousand pounds to build a house on it and I said, “Well Dad, we’ve got a fair bit saved up” I said “I can give you.” He said, “Well,” he said, “When I need it,” he said, “I know you’ll give me a

couple of bob if I need it,” that’s all he said. And of course my father died when the house was just about finished and Dad had given me, he’d written a cheque out for the builder, and as soon as Dad died Mum said to me, “I want the money”. So we had to go and borrow the money then to pay for the house, pay the builder and Mum took the money,

she had a trip to England, she went to England to see all her sisters and brothers in 1950. But they only had a few months down; he loved being down there. He never lived where you could water things willy-nilly, like out in the bush you had to just put the bath water. Everybody had a bath the cleanest one first, then the rest in the bath, then the bath water went out onto the garden, if you had any plants or anything to water that’s the only water except the rain that they

got.

Oh it was terrible, terrible. Because he died, they told me you know he couldn’t live but it’s still a shock. We went in, he was in hospital for a while before he died and he just kept getting worse and worse.

I don’t think he had leukaemia, it was his heart I think. But my daughter and my brothers and myself, we went in one morning and Sue went and had a talk to one of the officials there at the hospital, the Mater, and apparently they said he was on his way out, we should stay there. So we stayed there, sat with him until he died

then in the hospital. But that was the hardest day of my life I think, cause we always thought alike and we got on well and had a nice family and it’s terribly hard. Of course, Mum used to say that when Dad went, she said, “You see these men hanging round hotels and drinking themselves to death and they go home and nothing happens to them,” she said, “Dad was a good man

and he went. She thought that wasn’t very fair, and I thought the same when I lost my husband too. But anyway my Dad was very good, he’d always do a good turn for anyone, he always said, “Do a good turn, that’s my philosophy in life. Do them a good turn, but don’t do anybody a bad turn” that was his philosophy and it’s a good one really.

Well they know that now. I mean when my son was called up in the 18

year olds, Paul, he was called up in that and of course that was a terrible time for me again.

Yeah, he went to Vietnam. And oh, when he first went, he was still an apprentice and they said, “Well you’ve got to finish your apprenticeship first”. And he was very much like my brother Jack that liked being in uniform

and liked that sort of thing. So when they said to him, “You haven’t finished your apprenticeship, when you finish that, give us a call”. And I thought, “Well I hope he doesn’t”, I was glad they knocked him back and then as soon as he finished his apprenticeship he rang them up, he said, “Well I’m through with my apprenticeship” and they said, “Okay” and he went into the army.

Ah Paul yes, he went to Vietnam yeah.

I don’t know what he was, I don’t know, he’s like his father he never talks much about it. But that was a horrible time that war.

Didn’t affect us a lot in one way but when your children go off, it’s a bit hard to take.

That’s right.

Why can’t everybody live in peace, that’s my message. Dad used to prophesise a bit, he used to, he reckon he could see ahead and he said there was going to be

the Great War and of course when this one was coming he said to Mum, “There’s going to be a war”. But he sort of, you had to live with it, I wouldn’t like to see one now, not with the things they’ve got to destruct with. I don’t know whether we’ll get out of it with these stupid people,

some people just like war don’t they? I’m afraid I don’t, I’ve seen enough of it.

We were lucky they all came back from the Second World War. We were very lucky. The eldest brother I was telling you he suffered war neurosis but he

married late in life and he lived at Wollongong, married a lady down there. And he was in hospital for a long time, and then they put him into the nursing home cause he’s got to have medication and that all the time. But he’s, I ring him up and he knows and I’ll say, “You don’t know who this is?” he says, “Yes I do, it’s my baby sister”, cause I was the youngest and he was the eldest. But

I don’t ring him very often because it’s a bit of a nuisance for them down there at the hospital, got to go and get them and bring them to the phone or whatever and fiddle around. And he never liked the phone, like my husband, if anybody phoned up and Ted answered the phone, he’d say, “Oh I’ll get Rene” and he’d say, “Mum the phone”. He never liked the phone.

That’s good.

Thank you.