The Drawing Board – notes for ‘Down South’ and ‘The Hinterland’

Randolph Stow

Tourmaline, Text Classics (Melbourne, Victoria: Text Publishing Company, 2015).

 

 

 

 

 

The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea, Popular Penguins (Camberwell, Vic: Penguin Books, 2009).

Geraldton passim

66 Broome

71 Innisfail

73 Mount Magnet

70 Guildford, Sandalwood

80 The 6-year-old sees the ghost of a dead man and the notion of a sixth sense is introduced. The boy’s mother and father believe they are water diviners; so Stow references Tourmaline.

116 Catholic-Protestant divide

136-137 Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Lawson, Leichhardt, Boake

141 Scots Presbyterian v Irish Catholic.

154 Zane Grey in Geraldton.

163 Jurien Bay

271 Mount Magnet

273-4 Irish-Catholic versus Orange-Protestant (Scots-Irish Presbyterian)

286 Wizard Peak (22 km from Geraldton)

290 Winthrop Hall, Perth University

291 Nedlands

293 Northam

299 Mount Fairfax Bluff Point Bootenal Mount Erin Drummonds Cove Greenough Flats

303 Claremont – associated story about an Aborigine murdering a man for no apparent reason – jealousy being the most plausible explanation. See Ashwin’s account of the murder of his droving contractor boss by an Aboriginal warrior which seemed to me to be jealousy concerning a woman.

304

Rob’s maternal forebears as Scottish Highlanders who loved to regale one another with tales of violence in years gone by.

336

Chapman River

338

Murchison River “running through the oldest stretch of land on the globe.” (340)

340

Northampton – Cornish miners and Cornish farmers. 344

341

Shot Tower of Geraldine [possibly the Warribano Chimney -27.8372427,114.6920631]

343

Lynton (convict prison), Port Gregory

345

Port Gregory

346

“Java the Great became New Holland, and then Western Australia. Costa Branca became Edels Land, then the Northward, and at last Victoria District. Wittacarra became Champion Bay, and finally Geraldton. But the coast of Costa Branca was the same White Coast; and the Tower of Geraldine, like an edifice from the history of another tribe, thrust up still from the unvisited scrub.”

351

Mention of C Y O’Connor as hero – the highly criticised ‘romantic’ who successfully engineered the piping of water to Kalgoorlie but committed suicide prior to its completion.

359

Guildford (Aunt Kay’s funeral service – p 358 – perhaps but more a case of Rick attending chapel at his old school where, despite having no religious belief or affiliation, he knew the ritual well from years of having had it drummed into him while at school.)

360

Threads start to intertwine more intensely here: D H Lawrence had earlier been mentioned in relation to Rick and now, his engagement not having yet led to marriage because of his reaction to having been a prisoner of war, Stow addresses the role of Perth born writer Kenneth Mackenzie’s The Young Desire It – a novel with homoerotic overtones said to be influenced by D H Lawrence. Stow’s Rick likes to go down to the river and would have gone again, here, riding pillion behind Tom but Tom says it’ll mean them being among the school students immediately after chapel so they agree it’s not a good time to go to the river . Earlier, he had taken Rob and his friend to the dividing line between North and South in WA, the Murchison (338-43).

375

Reference to Kenneth Mackenzie’s being drunk and drowning in the river. Adler’s self-preservation instinct (as distinct from Freud’s for preservation of the species).

379

Mount Street, West Perth

386

Bridge over the Murchison [near the chimney, probably]

 

Katharine Susannah Prichard

Working Bullocks (London: Jonathan Cape, 1944).

Chapter IX
Friendly rivalry between bullock team log haulers of the hilly Karri forests surrounding the Six Mile Landing on the one hand and horse drawn log haulers of the flat land surrounding the Ten Mile Landing on the other are echoed in the latter day Holden versus Ford folk of recent times.

WB/87
“The missus and he were being devoured by mosquitoes as they slept.
“ ‘The wild beasts will be picking our bones before long,’ Shinner [Pat Riley, Duck Hayes’ mate] declared gaily. ‘We’re always a couple of pounds lighter in the morning. But that’s nothing they tell me. Out be my place, the mosquitoes ate a team of bullocks one night and sat on the fence next morning picking their teeth with the horns.’ ”

Chapter X
WB/88
whim: windlass for lifting logs from the forest floor once the bullock team(s) had manoeuvred the fallen tree into position.
WB/89
Description of manoeuvring a massive tree fallen on a hillside with Red Burke’s team to “haul out, and Billy’s pull back and prevent a crash of logs and beasts down the sheer hill-side if the log got under way too quickly.” Billy is Billy Williams.

WB/90
“Negotiating, slowly, steadily, no more than a foot at a time, the great log was drawn across the hill-side and got into position so that the whim could be steered over it.
“Tree, beyond the gap of brilliant sunshine where the king karri had fallen in the forest, threw heavy shade. Red spelled the teams working on the log in the shade, and took two pairs of bullocks he had held in reserve to move the whim over the log.
“In position, great wheels straddling the fallen tree, a chain, heavy as a ship’s anchor chain, was looped from the whim under the log. A back chain with huge iron hooks biting into its flesh prevented the log running backwards when it swung off the ground as the bullocks moved.
“Red brought over the full teams and crowded the bullocks, in four strings of ten, against the log, under the whim. Horns rattling, chains clashing, heads thrust forward, eyes startled,

WB/91
“protruding and bloodshot, the bullocks waited for the crack of whips, the lash and crashing of men’s voices, and struggled to move forward under the whips and voices. They pulled, swaying, necks strained, great bodies taut. Whim and logs moved. The bulocks staggered and floundered. Red, yelling, furious and exultant, danced beside them, his whip volleying. Billy, shouting and whirling, kept his bullocks to the pull they had got under.
“Whe whim moved off down the hill at such a pace that it looked as if whim and log would crash over the teams and bullock drivers. Billy Hicks, sitting on the whim behind the log, screwed down the brake, which he could just hold. His was the position of danger, and he hung on to the brake down the stiff slopes, knowing any unexpected jerk or jolting of the brake from his hands would send him to his long sleep, as it had one many a good swamper before him.”

Red caught sight of “an old man and a girl on a spring cart working amongst the trees.” [Probably Deb, Red’s dead friend Chris’s young sister; it was:]

WB/92
” ‘Seen old Tom Colburn and that girl of his loading sleepers …’ Red heard Billy Hicks say. …
“Eighteen or thereabout, she is … works with him like a man.” Red realised it was the child who’d “gone with him throught the forest” the day that his freind Chris had been killed.

WB/101
Just awakened to a romantic connection with Deb, Red Burke recalibrates:
“Red had never had a woman to himself. He had never wanted one. Marriage he had always regarded as the price of a woman to himself. He did not want to think of marriage now. He was a brumby, Red told himself. He would take his mares when he wanted them, when and how.”

WB/104
The big whim’s axle having broken, it was left “to stand in the forest until a blacksmith could be got from the mills to fix it. …
“… then one morning after the big whim had been repaired and brought to the landing, when Red took the bullocks down to it, he found the wheels decorated with wild flowers, scarlet runner, sky-

WB/105
“blue lescheaultia …”, etc.
Red “stuck a wild flower

WB/106
“from the whim in his hatband and worked for the rest of the day with thise wreaths and bundles of wild flowers clinging to the great wheels. … He knew what the flowers meant.
“he remembered how fond of wild flowers Deb was; how she had sat in the spring-cart that day, long ago, a stolid, swarthy little girl with a fistful of wild flowers, blue, yellow, pink, purple and red.
“… he had looked at her very much as he would have at a young horse or a steer.” KSP continues to describe Deb as akin to a pagan forest nymph or goddess.

WB/107
And despite his having no truck with marriage and one of those little boxes that were the kit homes provided by the company to married timber workers, “he was sure she would live with him in one of those wooden houses: that they would marry and have children as did most of the timber-workers in Karri Creek.”

WB/115
Deb Colburn’s mother, Mary Ann, as stalwart rock of the family – the Almighty – who had worked like a bullock and demanded the same of her children.

WB/116
But despite creating the impression in the older daughters that Deb had been protected from having to obtain employment from the age of twelve as “servants in boarding houses near the timber mills, or in the houses of the mill managers” she was in fact being groomed as carer for her mother in old age according to her older sister Lily.

WB/117
So Mrs Colburn wasn’t too keen on Deb marrying Red Burke but bowed to the fact of the matter and manipulated the nature of the courtship in the remaining pages of Chapter XVI.

WB/118-9
Mrs Colburn poisons the well against the Burke family ingeneral and then Red in particular.

WB/125
” ‘Deb’s fair mad about wild flowers,’ Mrs. Colburn exclaimed.”

WB/126
” ‘They say you can wish when you find the first of a wild flower … so I wished I’d see you.’ “

WB/127
Description of the Colburn clearing milking shed set up.

WB/135
” ‘Nita … Ju-er-an-ita …’ “

WB/136
” … Mary Ann Colburn had got first prize in Karri Creek show for her loquat jam.”
Prevented from being alone together by Mrs Colburn, Red Burke and Deb have a brief moment where their intentions toward one another are made clear. She gives herself and he claims her as his own.

WB/138
“Nobody quite knew whether Leslie de Gaze was a fool or tricky. When first he came to the south-west, he had announced that he was an Imperial Army officer and ‘going on the land.’ “

WB/139
“Had Mr. de Gaze given any dignity to his assumed superiorities, he might have earned the respect of at least those wealthy, established families of the district who secretly worshipped old idea and prejudices.”

WB/140
“But if a man was drinking, could not get people to work for him, and knew nothing about fruit-growing, pig-raising, farming or grazing, there was only one end for him. That end could be seen, it was agreed, when Gaze mortgaged his farm, went for a jaunt to Perth and returned with Lady Lucy.” [His aging racehorse].

WB/141-2
Arriving at Marritown for Blue Flowers race day.

WB/148
Trickster figure, Terrible Tommy, conducting an on-course pea and walnut shell Monte routine had been a circus clown. He plied his trade “up and down the country, at shows and race-meetings …”

WB/159
“Races had been queered in the Karri before the Boss lost the Blue Flowers Plate. Fallers, teamsters, mill-workers, farmers, countrymen of all sorts had always been game for the racing touts, confidence men and bookmakers who came among them, and the country folk believed it was a fair thing to get back on the city crooks sometimes when they got a chance.”
Red Burke degenerated into a foul-smelling drunk in the oncoming wet forest winter.

WB/222
Communist calls the mill workers ‘Working Bullocks’ when they need be men and stand up to the mill owners who wreck their workers’ lives with no concern for their welfare.

WB/243
Deb takes on the characteristics of the trees in the forest. She’s never liked them being felled but this is more substantial. Prichard pushes the thing too far, though, I reckon.

WB/273-5
Return to the theme of Deb identifying with the trees.

WB/279
Believeing that the trees had given her licence, Deb acts upon the belief that Red’s declaration, long since lost in confusion, that she was his and goes to his hut in the woods, certain in the knowledge that Tessa’s claim Red and her were to be married could not be true and awits his certain return. He eventually does, and they are once again as one.

Golden Miles (Crows Nest, NSW: A&U House of Books, 2012).

GM/22
C Y O’Connor’s engineering achievement of water from the Helena River (which river features in Timms’books and ‘Merry-go-round in the Sea’).

GM/31
Morris “was satisfied to have got something out of life which many men never attained: a sense of not wanting more than a humdrum existence provided.”

GM/32
Brumbies as symbol of wild women who’re tamed and put to work with the heavy load of life in the bush; i.e., Working Bullocks reminiscence.

GM/33
Barabool Hills, Vic [near Geelong].

GM/41
Lake Darlot

GM/53
Hannan Lake

GM/55
Mullingar

GM/56
Kurrawang

GM/101
Den as a brumby; his horse is a half-wild brumby. Den’s mother, Sally, had grown up in the timber country of the southwest [‘Working Bullocks’]. Her father had worked as a stockman on a station at Warrinup “with the homestead and stockyards … “

GM/130
Lake Darlot

GM/153
Fremantle gaol
Warrinup [not the similarly named location on Google maps but from ‘Working Bullocks’
GM/157
Lake Darlot
Kamballie

GM/158
“The Ninety Mile” compare with Coonalpyn SA, in Haxby’s Circus.

GM/159
WWI breaks out. 4th Infantry Goldfields Regiment
GM/160
German and Austrian shops stoned and people of that nationality interned.

GM/160
German and Austrian shops stoned and people of that nationality interned.

GM/190
Adelaide Terrace, Perth

GM/191
Government House
Como Beach
Applecross Beach

GM/195
Cottesloe
North Beach

GM/196
Cape Naturaliste

GM/197
Fremantle
Rottnest Island

GM/200
Rockingham, WA

GM/203
Sally married Morris in Fremantle after eloping via Bunbury.

GM/204
Southen Cross
Coolgardie
Black Range

GM/205
Fremantle prison visit of Sally to her son and husband.

GM/207
Kanowna, WA

GM/208
Perth express train to Kalgoorlie

GM/209
Koorarawalyee
Warri,
Boorabbin
Woolgangie

GM/210
Cleanskins – as per Tom Cole’s account of unbranded Kimberley cattle. Same in southwest WA.

GM/215
Wooroloo

GM/224
Tom sent a white feather wears it proudly in his hat.

GM/226
WWI compare with ‘Kangaroo’ and the demobbed rightwing officers’ POV.

GM/231
Cottesloe

GM/234
Echoes of George Johnston’s MBJ.

GM/236
Dings (as opposed to Dagos) explained earlier.
Broome (pearl luggers)
Railway built across Nullabor.

GM/239
WWI background: the Japanese in Brisbane and Cairns.

GM/240
Following on from Lal (Laurence)’s being involved in the debacle at Gallipoli, and after being wounded joining the regiment in Palestine, dying in battle Dick’s in the mud of trench warfare at Flanders.

GM/243
Cottesloe
Mullingar

GM/244
North Beach

GM/247
IWW poster refers to historical figure, Tom Barker.

GM/248
Furnley Maurice quote from the frontispiece.

GM/260

Dick Gough’s predicament much like those from Johnston’s MBJ again.

GM/264

The odious Paddy Cavan had made a stack of moey from war investments and his home in Toorak was complemented by one in Macedon.

GM/268
Widgiemooltha, WA – said to be 400 mile from Kalgoorlie, is 98 km south of there. Go figure.

GM/269
Wiluna, WA
Hampton Plain

GM/270
Significance of government owned ore crushing batteries.

GM/280-1
Alf Brierley’s wife and Amy’s mother, Laura, had been the daughter of a prominent Melbourne family – as was the matriarch Jessica Olive in Astley’s Mango.

GM/288
The only thing they knew about Chris was that his name hadn’t been the one he went by. Christopher Montgomery as Henry Porter.

GM/289
Lake Way
Wiluna

GM/291
Canning Stock Route from Hall’s Creek

GM/292
Importance of sleeping away from the camp fire on the Canning Stock Route. [Nat Buchanan pioneered that technique for avoiding being attacked by the tribesmen.]

GM/291-3
It’s as if ‘Tourmaline’ by Randolph Stow was inspired by the description of the situation at Wiluna, including Charley di Goose and Micky the priest.

GM/296
Sally and Dinny in southwest timber country from Kalgoorlie by train via Perth for Den’s wedding to Charley the dairy-farming girl.

GM/304
RSL figure Harry Axford was an actual active RSL anti-Unionist.

GM/312
Pingin
Menankilly Aboriginal massacre. (No record of Menankilly so perhaps it’s like Warrinup, fictitious for some actual location.

GM/314
Westonia
Wiluna

GM/315
Dick Haynes [Richard Septimus Haynes, born Picton, NSW, in 1857.]

GM/324
Frisco down with the black ‘flu. [presumably, it’s what’s now referred to as the Spanish ‘flu?]

GM/333
Great Fingal mine at Day Dawn

GM/337
Leonora
Laverton

GM/338
Wiluna
Day Dawn
Cue
Sandstone,
Payne’s Find,
Golden Valley
Southern Cross
Coolgardie
Lawler’s (Sunset mine)

GM/339
Broad Arrow
Bardoc
Comet Vale
GM/340
Yunndaga
Menzies
Niagara
Kookynie
Mount Leonora
GM/341
Sons of Gwalia (Little Italy)
Leonora – to which drovers brought cattle from Qld, had a merry-go-round in the street. [Stow]
story of Jack Hawke, the bully boy cleanskin drover who used shoot at a jam tin placed on an aboriginal boy’s head.

GM/342
Laverton
Malcolm
Murrin
Morgan

GM /349
Mulgabbie
Kanowna
Kurnalpi

GM/351
Goongarrie
Celebration
Mount Robinson
Binduli

GM/253
Belle of Kalgoorlie
Miller’s Find

GM/354
Little Wongie

GM/381
Cape Naturaliste
Warrinup

Kenneth Cook

Wake in Fright (London: M. Joseph, 1961).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tim Winton

Breath (Camberwell, Victoria: Penguin Random House Australia, 2018).

Angelus is probably Albany and Sawyer Denmark
B/49-52
Covid-19 is a respiratory illness so TW’s ‘Breath’ with its zeroing in on respiratory illness in timber workers around Denmark, WA, – pp49-52 in his 2008 novel ‘Breath’ … [the point  about this but was interrupted by a phone call while writing it in the van – the thought vanished.]
pp 145-6 good description of looking out over the harbour from where the WWI troops prepared to leave for Europe. I though of my paternal grandfather having been there. TW describes the decommissioned Victorian barracks.
and looking back at Albany docks well.
B/227
Pikelet’s description of wandering through the misty forests around Denmark and my weird experience of driving through the forest alone, in danger of getting bogged or lost.
B/257
Wiluna

Henry Handel Richardson

The Getting of Wisdom, Popular Penguins (Camberwell, Vic: Penguin, 2009).

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (London: Heinemann, 1917).

 

 

 

 

 

 

George Johnston

My Brother Jack (London ; Sydney: Collins, 1964).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arthur C. Ashwin and Peter J. Bridge, Gold to Grass: The Reminiscences of Arthur C. Ashwin, 1850-1930, Prospector and Pastoralist (Carlisle, W.A: Hesperian Press, 2002).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

M. L. Stedman, The Light between Oceans, Limited edition (North Sydney, NSW: Knopf, 2013).

LBO/15

Commonwealth Lighthouse Service office, Sydney
16
Byron BayMaatsuyker, Tasmania.

17
Albany ships leaving to go to WWI

18
Fremantle Great Australian Bight (implicit).

22
Point Partaguese (Cape Leeuwin, most likely) British dash to colonise southwestern Australia began in 1826 (the baby was found at Janus Rock in 1926)

23
Kalgoorlie Partageuse men were the type required for WWI soldiers; echoes of KSP’s Golden Mile

54
Sarah Porter enters the fray.

75
Tom Sherbourne, aged 21, tracks his mother to a Darlinghurst boarding house.

107
Sarah Porter’s “little boy”

154
Kojonup – 5 year-old Septimus Potts’ taken in by Walt and Sarah Flindell.

157
KalgoorlieRottnest Island

166
“History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent.”

 

Barbara Hanrahan

The Scent of Eucalyptus (London: Chatto & Windus, 1973).

SE/8
Adelaide

SE/9
Cornwall
Houghton, Adelaide Hills
Alice Springs

SE/10
Houghton – ‘a house with a balcony and the scent of eucalyptus all about.’

SE/14
Her mother a hairdresser in Adelaide Arcade during the Depression
‘one of the big Rundle Street stores’

SE/15
Sunday Mail’s children’s page
King’s ballroom
Holy Trinity church on North Terrace
Dew Street
Maurice Hanrahan, her father, worked at Holdens but wanted off the leash.
BH born at St Ives

SE/16
Thebarton Police Station
Hotel Gambier in Light Square
riding to work in the rain for the night shift, her father caught his death (succumbing to pneumonia in the RAH.
on 7/9/40, aged 26 when BH was a year old.
Her mother had a nervous breakdown but returned to work 9-5 on the tram.

Chapter Four
SE/26
sand at Largs Bay
Iris, BH’s grandmother, was the baker’s daughter.
SE/27
Iris met Charles Ebenezar, a policeman from Terowrie, at Largs Bay beach and married him when he was 26 in the Methodist manse in June and when he died of a blood clot after apendicitus 4 years later the Ploice band played at the funeral. A year after that she placed a poem to him in ‘The Advertiser’.

SE/27
Grandfather Charles had read Byron, Longfellow and
SE/28
Adam Lindsay Gordon (also a policeman).
The widowed Iris returned to her father’ bakery and looked after her Downs syndrome sister in the wake of her husband’s death.
Then she re-married – the Outer Harbour stationmaster

SE/28
Outer Harbor misspelled using the correct English spelling for ‘harbour’.

SE/28
Iris’ second husband, Hugh, was a perverted cruel and sadistic man.

SE/29
How perverted? asked BH. Not answered.
Hugh treated BH’s mother with the same disregard he had for every other living thing before fleeing to Murray Bridge with a younger woman – pursued by Iris and the family of bakers.
The Bluff, Victor Harbor.
The sands of Dee [Charles Kingsley, Mr Lempke].
Charles Ebenezar’s portrait hung in the Rose Street [Torrensville, most likely]
dining room ever after. He had been a painter.

SE/30
Iris treated herself to a marcasite eternity-ring [my mother eventually got the marcasite watch she’d always craved]
Copper stick, blue bag, add orris-root to the copper to leave lingeris smelling fragrant.
Wash-board, Velvet soap.

SE/31
Palmolive

SE/33
BH’s measles, mumps, whooping-cough, chicken-pox attended to by visits from the doctor [Dr Webb].
ugly gas-box, cyclone fence.

SE/34
Vicks vapour-rub, friar’s balsam, Irish MossGum Jubes.

SE/35
Faces in the burning Mallee roots
gold scrolls of the Singer sewing- machine
BH shared her mother’s bed in the sleepout
SE/36
bed of enamel bars and brassy knobs
‘bloody geraniums’
fowl-house
Chapter Six
SE/38
BH walks with her grandmother to the kindegarten named after the Governor’s wife [Lady Gowrie] ‘hidden in the back streets of Thebarton, coming dangerously close to the terraced houses of Hindmarsh and Brompton; dangerously near the maze that was Bowden – tucked behind the zig-zag railway that separated it from the upper class homes of North Adelaide, with their sandstone walls topped by plumbago and grape-vines and broken glass.’
the ‘gas-works loomed over everything, its scent ‘drifted through Bowden from First to Seventeenth Street; merged with the reek of the tannery by the river; mingled with the fumes that crept from the Southwark Brewery. [This must be the Chief Street gasworks, not those associated with the gasometer that was located on the Kintore Street-James Congdon Drive site much nearer Rose Street, Thebarton.
Salvation Army citadel’.
Yards of sand and gravel and scrap metal.
SE/39
The Kindergarten ‘drive lined with Norfolk Island pines.’ [This ‘drive’ was constructed by the local Council as its contribution to the effort initiated by Lady Bonython and her circle.]

SE/40
Botanic Gardens

SE/41
George Street, past the gas-works
Frizzy-hair Miss Trembath came to get her.
December 1945: Kindergarten over, Rose Street Infant school to begin in 1946.

SE/42
For others it was to be ‘the convent beside the Queen of Angels’ Church.’

SE/43
BH’s paternal grandmother, Margaret Collins, married William Hanrahan (a blacksmith’s striker) in 1912 [PW born], had Kathleen and Maurice (known as Bob) and gradually ‘retreated from his scepticism and lusts, his alcoholic hazes and race-course cronies, to the safer world of the Mass.’ Once the two children had grown up Margaret left William. Kathleen married and moved to Linden Park; Bob stayed at Dew Strett [at right-angles to Rose Street] with his father.
SE/46
Maurice, BH’s father, won a scholarship to Marist Brothers’ CBC in the city.

SE/46
PELLEGRIN & CO.
SCOUT CAMPS AT TANUNDA

SE/47
Maurice failed the Railways eye test so had to take a job at Holdens. He had been a pious Catholic Schoolstudent but grew up to squander his wife’s 30 pounds on a drunken night out after the birth of BH on Sep 6th 1939. [Hitler invaded Poland on Sep 1st 1939].

Chapter Eight
SE/49
Dew Street: BH’s paternal grandfather, with whom Maurice stayed when his mother fled, lived next door to her maternal great-grandfather.
SE/50
Grandfather Hanrahan lived at #23 Dew Street.
Linden Park visits on the tram past Victoria Park racecourse where grandfather Hanrahan worked in the Tote and met Catholic cousins who went to Starof the Sea, Loretto, the Convent of Mercy.
SE/51
Those cousins holidayed at Victor Harbour, Port Noarlunga, Christies Beach.
Hanrahan did not visit his next door neighbour and father-in-law, BH’s great-grandfather Collins.

SE/52
Wheatsheaf Hotel
Hanrahan, drunk, was knocked down by a car on Port Road and died.

SE/54
After great-grandfather Collins, a pious Catholic, molested the child, BH, she stopped going to see him.

SE/56
Magic Cave, Nipper and Nimble, Pageant, Carols by Candlelight,

 

 

Sea-Green (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974).

SG/8
Earth, Air,Fire, Water – copyright 1974 – hermetic motif reminiscent of Joan Lindsay and PW.
SG/11-12
BH uses the term ‘tit-bit’ where it’s normally ‘tid-bit’ isn’t it?
Appeal for R in SG is surely the evocation of life aboard a cruise liner – in BH’s case it being an Italian ship with Italian captain and officers.

SG/7-14
Description of leaving Adelaide aboard the Italian ocean liner, her parents at the wharf, she, Virginia, sharing a cabin with Kate as they head for Melbourne and on to Sydney where pale English migrants disembark in bright sunshine before heading to Auckland.
R recognised the headmistress from Tusmore as Ms Trembath with whom R dealt as the head of the Kindergarten Union.

SG/34 The Art School Dome overlooking North Terrace is the Exhibition Building built for the 1887 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s reign and demolished in 1962 to make way for the Law School, its carpark and the Napier – a travesty.

SG/79
Fat Rose from Mannum’s Co-op hand sews outfits for those who’ll attend the
SG/80
Cudlee Creek ball, and for bridesmaids at a wedding she attended but felt out of place at.
Coral wrote of winning the Belle of the Ball and of her fiance, Nigel’s new Valiant (and its unreliable mechanics). Coral’s filling her Glory box; the dark brown rinse she put through her hair came out almost black, the recollection of Virginia’s having given up half way through knitting a Sloppy Joe, listening to Elvis and 5CL classical music. Cox Foys.

SG/81
Coral suffers from morning sickness and is sick of knitting but does so for the baby girl to be born.
Broken Hill, Naracoorte and Kalangadoo woolclasser with a hare lip who kissed Virginia by the Victoria Square pie floater stall and only received a Dear John leter in reply to his ten-page entreaty.

SG/82
Amscol twin choc
Waters of Lethe (Hades river waters that caused forgetfulness – [dementia])

SG/83
Coral, the girl next door,’s mother finds baby clothes under the mattress so there’s a wedding in the Spring to a bloke from Burra.
Virginia, in bed with a stranger [her Italian merchant navy officer], reminisces about walking to church with her mother (nominal Catholics? – no, SG/109 Methodist, Church of Christ) during Holy Week.
SG/84
Rundle Street’s east end with the brass hunting horn in the flashy shop taking Virginia’s mother’s fancy.

Chapter 12 – sloughing off of the old skin begins in earnest, now
SG/85
Fat Rose, Coral, her parents, even her travelling companion (a mere acquaintance and increasingly disliked) Kate are all becoming inconsequential memories of the past.

SG/86
Faye, the Christian, slept with the cruise liner’s Swiss hairdresser for a free perm and regrets it at once.

SG/87
Dorothy Dix columns, pillion speeding past the almond trees at Marion on a motor-bike, Wonderland ballroom and the ladies’ cloakroom, Old Spice, Palmolive and Kolynos.

SG/87
Art teacher in the school Staff Room.

SG/90
Kate driving to Brisbane with Jem [Kym Bonython?]

SG/91
Her Italian lover’s previous conquests: secretaries from Melbourne, shop-girls from Perth, models, actresses.

SG/92
Virginia’s Italian lover disembarks at Naples, forgettng her entirely as he sought his parents waiting for him on the wharf.

SG/93
She meets the parents.

SG/94
The last night in her lover’s arms aboard the ship.

SG/95
Virginia distraught at having to sail on to Southampton leaving her lover Vincenzo behind with a girl from Brisbane who is also disembarking in Naples.

Part II
SG/103
In London.

SG/109
Virginia’s mother reminiscing about growing up among Christian Biblical verses recorded on silver paper at Tea Tree Gullyand now, the wife of the deputy-head of a school in the house she’d long sought, when she shold have been happy and safe she wasn’t. Virginia’s mother had only ever been to KI (honeymoon) and once to Melbourne with Dollie

SG/111
Virginia likes Shepherd’s Bush despite the privations of energy and good meals in the London cold. She enjoyed the “gentle natural landscape of powder-blue and chalky-green built all over with grubby man-made grey. The grubbiness, the flaws of age were what she liked best. There was no brash newness in Virginia’s part of Shepherd’s Bush; no corrugatd iron, no harsh white light, no bleached-bone hills.” [Read on to the end of the paragraph.]

SG/111
Nell Gwynn with her oranges in Drury Lane

SG/112
William Blake’s last 7 years in poverty at Fountain Court, London.

SG-114-8
Arriving home to the cold yet strangely comforting Shepherd’s Bush basement bedsit facing the street with the passing traffic including the red buses and speeding motor-bikes.

 

The Slap (Crows Nest, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin, 2008).

 

 

 

Never Mind about the Bourgeoisie: The Correspondence between Iris Murdoch and Brian Medlin, 1976-1995 (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014).

 

Edward Vivian Timms

Forever to Remain, Great South Land Saga (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1948).

238
Augusta – “forest giants of the Blackwood River” were felled.

Canning District – “junction of the Swan and the Helena …”

Guildford
Preston Point
Commissariat Store,Perth.
248-9
Perth: Government House, school, church, grain mill,
254
York District
Blackwood forests
Vasse as substitute for Blackwood.
The Murray River (WA)
The Swan, upper Swan, Helena and Canning districts.
255
Augusta
Bussell(ton)
Murray River Aborigines as a threat.
York Road Aboriginal spear attack

260
Coastline from Bight to the northwest tip and around to Melville Island.
“The densest portion of the settlement is in the neighbourhood of the swan, the Helena, and the Canning rivers. We have a militry post at albany on the sound named by Commander Vancouver, and a few weeks ago [Autumn 1831] this was placed under the aegis of the colony; a small settlement at Augusta, round the Leeuwin; and one up a bit on the Murray River. The journey overland from Perth to Albany has been made.”

261
“… go inland to the ranges and work south [where there’s] open, undulating park-like lands sloping west from the foothills, well enough watered by streams …much arable and grazing land of excellent quality is there. As you go further south you will encounter heavy forest country … the aborigines enjoy the same protection and justice as do the settlers.”

The Pathway of the Sun (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1949).

5
Fremantle
Geographe Bay
Albany
Blackwood River (seals and whales)

14
General Darling Ranges
Murray swamps
Collie River steep banks
soft lands of the Vasse
15
the figure of Challinor as hero is of an Englishman who does not sit at home on his estate but who goes into the wilderness and conquers it, civilises it with a good woman by his side.
20-1
Simon lays out the plan for establishing a whaling settlement on the edge of Geographe Bay.
23
Cape Naturaliste

30
Fremantle harbour master’ Office
High Street
31
“running east from Arthur’s head to the Cantonment Street that in turn became the Canning Road …”
Swan River
Melville Water
Perth Water
33
Leeuwin
Bussell brothers
Augusta
“the Vasse River country for suitable agricultural and pastoral lands.”
Helena River
Canning River
“the peninsula near Perth”
Guildford
34
Woodbridge
Henley Park
Millenden
Belvoir
York district
Darling Range

46
Geographe Bay
47
Black Swan first described by a European, de Vlamingh in 1696. He named the Swan River.
63
Collie River
Vasse River
Capel river
Preston River
Murray River
Swan River
Clarence Town
Fremantle

76
Canning Road, “half a mile or so beyond the tavern” in Fremantle’s Main Street
80
Cantonment Street, Fremantle
121
Support for Gammage thesis.
123-4
Wittenoom
124
Canning River; anti-Aboriginal sentiment.

173
Book title used
182
Rottnest island
Rous Head
mouth of the Swan
Cockburn Sound
Gage Roads

Man-Shy: A Story of Men and Cattle., New illus. ed. (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1931).

 

 

 

 

 

Crow on a Barbed Wire Fence, 1973, http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/15850158.

 

 

 

 

 

Albert Facey

 

 

 

 

 

A. B. Facey and Robert Juniper, A Fortunate Life (Ringwood, Vic: Penguin, 1985)

 

 

 

 

FL/6
Facey born 1894 Maidstone, Victoria

FL/7
Barker’s Creek – 1896 to live with maternal grandparents (Carr) after death of father of TB on WA goldfields and departure of mother.
Barker’s Creek is 3 miles from Castlemaine.
1898 Grandpa Carr died: family of 5 children and their 62-year-old grandmother in poverty.

FL/8
Campbell’s Creek
August 1899, Barker’s Creek sold and the family moved to Footscray.

FL/9
Sep 1899 embarked from Port Melbourne on the ‘Coolgardie’ steamer for WA.
To Port Adelaide on calm seas but to Albany on rough – seasick.

FL/10
Disembarked at Fremantle and took the train to (tiny) Perth railway station before boarding that for Kalgoorlie – but only enough funds to get to Northam (100 km northeast of Perth).

FL/12
In desperate straits, they set up camp and survived with provisions from the locals who took pity and helped with meat, eggs, etc.
Aunt Alice (Facey’s mother’s sister) had responded to Grandma Carr’s letter requesting funds and they boarded the train for Kalgoorlie and moved in with her (because his mother, pregnant and living with a new family, didn’t want the children from her former family other than one girl, Myra).

FL/13
Alice’s place – typical of numerous dwellings on the goldfileds now that the surface gold had been mined – was a primitive bush hut with clay stiffened hessian walls and a galvanised iron roof.
Boulder

FL/14
With Alice until 1902

FL/15
when Alice’s husband, Archie McCall, took up a Government land Grant of 1000 acres 26 miles east of Narrogin. The family moved to York, 100 mile from Narrogin,

FL/16
and rented a mud house four miles from York on the Avon River.

FL/17
“The McCalls were one of the first families to settle in the wheat-belt of Western Australia under the Government land settlement schemes.”

FL/18
Sep 1902 they set off by horse and cart the 140 miles to the land in question.
Bendigo
Archie McCall had come from a farming family (his father a veterinarian) in SA so knew about the land and animal husbandry.

FL/19
Pingelly
Gillimanning

FL/22-4
Wary and possessed of a sense of foreboding, 8-year-old Facey taken away by 35-year-old Bob to be a companion to the man’s blind and aging mother (in her 70s) at Cave Rock. [Caves Rock, WA is -31.8090634,118.9296139 but that’s 455 km from Narrogin]
Her sons were brumby breakers [as in KSP’s ‘Working Bullocks’]

FL/25
The promised light duties turned out to be relentless work from dawn to dusk, milking cows, shepherding the sheep and protecting them from the ever-present dingoes, feeding the pigs and fowls, collect firewood.

FL/27
He was more or less enslaved to the hard-bitten family who threatened him with dire consequences did he try to escape.
Description of horse-breaking.
FL/28
The 9-year-old was present for the family’s very drunken Dec 1903 Christmas brawl.

FL/29
The boy moved away from the drunken party brawl to eat his meal and was befriended by a 20 year-old Aborigine skilled at catching and breaking brumbies being exploited by the family.

FL/30
Old Albert sought to protect Facey as far as his meagre means allowed, buying him clothes to replace the rags in which he slaved.
Description of the old woman making damper in the coals of a fire.

FL/31
Police arrive; the family’s suspected of being cattle duffers and horse thieves.

FL/38
Connigin Creek (Archie McCall’s place near Narrogin)
Gillimanning

FL/41
Gillimanning

FL/42
Snows Well – Scottish settler family in WA only 3 months.

FL/45
Chapter 9
August 31st, 1905 – Facey’s 11th birthday.

FL/47
Narrogin
Perth

FL/49
Yet another lesson in the dishonesty of the man on the land.

FL/50
Cave Rock

FL/51
Cave Rock
Wheat sowed in May and June.
Narrogin
FL/52
Properly cared for, at last, by the well-off Phillips family (he French; she Irish).
FL/53
Chapter 12 – The Boar

FL/61
Mrs Phillips (Mum) bitten by a snake in the outhouse; set out in a horse-drawn cart for the Doctor in Narrogin but it turned out to be a hen, not a snake.

FL/62
Chapter 15
Proper way to burn off was to set fire to the property’s perimeter grass so that it burned inwards on that same property.

FL/63
This burning off was what they called ‘clearing’ and while doing so they discovered a soak (an unwelling of fresh water that permeated the clay surface) – which was a blessing for those whose land happened to have one.

FL/64
Mum catches fire and Bert pushes her in the soak.
‘Mum’ proposes to adopt Bert as he is about to turn 13. [Reminiscent of PW’s ‘The Vivisector’ – except that FL was published in 1981 just a few months before Bert’s death whereas the fictional Duffield was adopted in PW’s novel published in 1970. The model for Duffield was the Heide Circle’s Joy Hester son, Sweeney, adopted by Sunday and John Reed].

FL/65
Narrogin “had two hotels, two boarding-houses, two shops, a doctor, a chemist and a small hospital on a hill away from the railway station. It was on the Great Southern railway line and a train went through once a day each way from Perth to Albany.”
And a Police Station – where they went to arrange the adoption.

FL/66
Cave Rock
Gpv’t mail delivery from
“Narrogin along a bush track through the lower part of the wheat-belt to a place called
Gillimanning.” [46.5 km]

FL/67
Adoption off because Albert’s actual mother (who had abandoned him when he was two) refused to consent (she’d probably sought money, says Albert FL/70).

The Phillips’ afterwards treated him as no longer part of their household and family.

FL/71
From Phillips to the Bibby property. The Bibbys had taken up a government land package deal and moved to the wheat belt 2 years prior to Albert beginning as their live-in labourer the week he turned 13 [i.e., late August 1907].

FL/73
“When I got out of bed in the morning at six o’clock, I would light the kitchen fire and put the kettle on, then call Mrs Bibby. Then I would feed the fowls and the pigs and let the sheep out. All the fowls had to be locked up and the sheep yarded at night, on account of the dingoes and native cats [possibly the Western Quoll]. We had to put the sheep where they could be seen during the day. Mrs Bibby spent a lot of time with the sheep when Charlie and I were working where we couldn’t see them. The dingoes were very bad and the Bibbys had lost quite a few fowls and sheep during the daylight, so if we went away for the day, they had to be locked away.”

Albert purchased a 44 Winchester rifle from a travelling man and made money selling kangaroo skins.

FL/74
Charlie Bibby was “a terrific skite” [boastful person] concerning Bert’s having shot two dingoes dead with the Winchester.

FL/75
At the start of summer in 1907, they “started hay-cutting. A neighbour purchased a reaping binder and he and Charlie came to an understanding that Charlie could use the binder if he later lent the neighbour the harvester he had on order. The reaping binder was a machine that would cut the hay, pack it into sheaves, tie it with twine and drop the sheaves in rows. This made the hay much easier to stook, ready for carting. The harvester was a new invention that took the place of the stripper and the winnower. It stripped the wheat, then threshed it and cleaned it in one operation as it travelled through the crop. The clean wheat was elevated up into a large container where it could be fed into bags ready for market. We finished the hay-cutting Christmas Eve.”

Chapter 18
FL/76
Subiaco, Perth
Bibby’s drunken Christmas costs a small fortune when their sheep weren’t being watched and were attacked by dingoes.

Chapter 19
FL/79
Sunshne harvester machine to be at the Cuballing railway siding. “This siding, on the Great Southern railway running from Perth to Albany, was twenty-four miles away.”

FL/80
1908
“Just after the [February to the first week in April 1908] clearing was finished we had a storm with heavy rains. This softened the ground and Charlie started ploughing the new land. He had bought a disc plough which was better for working new land and was much quicker than a stump-jump plough. A disc plough could also be used for working up land that had long grass or straw on it. It was driven with six horses and covered a strip four feet eight inches wide, which was more than twice as much as a three-furrow stump-jump plough.”

FL/84
Incident with the unknown herd of cattle

FL/85
Cave Rock
Perth – Bibbys fortnight holiday news.

FL/86
Narrogin cop arrives and enquires about the mob of cattle. Albert provides details.
Wickepin

FL/87
Wickepin – 11 miles from the Bibby homestead and from there with the mailman to Narrogin.

FL/88
Albert at Bushallas Hotel, Narrogin, as cattle rusting witness.

FL/89
Albert and the other witness picking the cattle rustling culprit from a 7 man line

FL/90
and the fellow ‘committed to the next sitting of the Criminal Court at
Perth.’
‘It was roughly thirty-three miles to Bibby’s place by road from
Narrogin’ and Jack, the other witness took him and set the ball rolling for Bert to learn to read and write.

FL/91
Jack turned out to be a 24-year-old Scottish settler whose father was a Perth businessman.

FL/92
September 1908

FL/98
14-year-old Bert catching the Albany to Perth train at Narrogin at midnight en route to see his mother in Perth.

FL/99
Beverley for 20 minute ‘refreshments’ stop.

FL/100
In Perth at 10:30 am Tuesday October 1st 1908 and by cab to Subiaco.

FL/101
Bert’s stepfather, Bill, had been a goldfields footballer and then played for Subiaco in the league.
‘I was told that my sister Myra, who was left with Mother when we first arrived in
Kalgoorlie from Barkers Creek in Victoria, had taken ill just before Mother came to
Perth, and was in a sanatorium at Coolgardie. She had been suspected of having
consumption. Mother told me that she hoped to get transferred to a hospital for
infectious diseases at West Subiaco.’

FL/102
Bill was a master plumber with his own business.
Stroll around Perth.

FL/103
Bert and his brothers walked ‘to the railway station at Subiaco, boarded a train and went
to the Port of Fremantle to have a look around’ then to Cottlesloe Beach.
Rokeby Road, the main street of Subiaco.

FL/105
1908 ‘cattle stations up North were looking for lads who could ride a
horse, for mustering around Christmas time. They told him that the lads could get up
to thirty shillings a week and keep all year round. This appealed to me and I got Bill
to make enquiries about how to get up there and where to go for a start. The station
owners told Bill that I should go to Geraldton or Carnarvon … the best
way to get to these places was by boat from the Port of Fremantle.’

‘passage to Geraldton on the Kanelpy, sailing at four
o’clock on the first Monday in December.’

FL/110
‘I walked around Geraldton for about an hour. It wasn’t a very big town. Some of the streets had lights. As night came
they were lit by a man on horseback. They burned on some kind of gas.’

FL/111
‘I came across a camping ground. It was about one and a half miles out of Geraldton in an easterly direction near a
Government well.’ Bert met a kangaroo shooter there.

FL/112
Carnarvon
Fremantle.
Mullewa sixty miles east of Geraldton.
The kangaroo shooter was Bill Oliver and ‘He was going to work the station commencing some hundred miles north-east of Mullewa. Sometimes he stayed from one month to three months on each station. The station owners and managers all gave\him his supplies free while he was shooting ‘roos to encourage him to continue. Theskins, he kept and sold. The station owners also paid him a bounty of one pound on any dingo scalps. They branded the scalps and then got one pound from the Government as well, so a dingo scalp was worth two pounds to him. He also got a two shillings bounty for each goat he shot and he sold the goat skins for three to four shillings each. The stations paid a two shilling bounty for every emu’s head he brought in. (He could sell all his skins at Mullewa but the dingo scalps had to be brought to a Police Station and there wasn’t one at Mullewa. He came into Geraldton once a year.) ‘So,’ he said, ‘taking all these bounties into account with the kangaroo skins and the free stores, I make good money.”

FL/114
‘Bill had two horses and … used one in the shafts of the cart and the other attached to the cart, outside the shafts.
A horse used in this way was called the outrigger.’
FL/116
Mullewa
a large stock firm in Perth was advertising for station managers or stockmen with a good knowledge of the North and an understanding of cattle.
Geraldton
Perth
The mail comes up through Narngulu to Mullewa.
‘We arrived at the watering place that evening. Bill said, pointing to an area of green grass, ‘That is what we call a spring formation of the ground. Water is forced up out of the earth and runs all year round. It is beautiful fresh water. The early settlers and travellers dug a large hole at this spot and stoned it up.’ The hole was about eight feet wide, six feet deep, and raised about two feet above the surface of the earth. The water had filled the round hole and was
running over the top and down into a creek. Bill said, ‘This is a wild animals’ watering place. You will hear some frightening noises tonight. Wild horses, kangaroos, dingoes will all be here after the water.’ We made camp about two hundred yards from the water-hole.’ The spring was eighteen miles from Mullewa.

FL/117
‘the country was changing. The timber was smaller and more open, and the scrub was thicker. We had passed through some very rough granite hill country and deep valleys, but now the country was flatter and more even. ‘
Bill had pointed out many new settlers’ places and he remarked, ‘The poor devils are having a battle, I think they’re only wasting their time and money. They don’t know enough about farming in this country to be able to make a living.’

FL/118
‘ ‘That’s Mullewa.’ he said. This made me feel sad -I had expected to see some sort of town. As we got near I could see there were three buildings – a fairly large one, and two small cottages. There was also a railway station.
This was Mullewa. The large building was the hotel, store and Post Office all in one.’

FL/120
Christmas 1908: ‘May had the table set and decorated with all kinds of bush flowers which were beautiful at that time of year.’

FL/122
Offer of assistant cook on a cattle drive ‘Bill said, ‘Did he tell you the name of the drive?’ I said he had mentioned the Ashburton route, then Bill said, ‘Oh, yes, you will take about four to five weeks getting from here to where the drive starts. It’s somewhere up near the Ophthalmia Ranges, over six hundred miles from here, through Meekatharra,
right up to above the head of the Ashburton River near Mundiwindi.”
‘I put my belongings into the cart and drove up to the pub, where I bought two pairs of riding trousers, two shirts, an extra pair of riding boots, two large handkerchiefs (Bill told me to get them to put around my neck at night) and a broad-brimmed hat. I also bought a mosquito net, ground-sheet and a rain cape’

FL/125
‘Bob had an eight-stall stable and a large stockyard built around it. The stockyard
covered about half an acre, and there were several large shade trees in it and feed
mangers around it. The mangers were very strongly made out of some hollowed logs
with the ends boarded up and a portion of the top cut out for the horses or cows to put
their head in to get feed. Bob also kept some cows for milk.
The next day Bob gave me the job of oiling the saddles, bridles, saddle-straps,
cruppers and reins. All the leather straps had to be scrubbed in warm soapy water, and
then put out into the sun to dry. When they were properly dry I had to rub raw linseed
oil into them until the leather became soft and pliable. Bob said this would preserve
the leather because it would have to be out in all sorts of weather, and the softening
also made it easier to ride in the saddle.
Bob came and talked to me the second day, while I was oiling the saddles. He told me
he was a widower and that he had lost his wife a few years ago. They had only been
there a year when she died. They had no children. He said that it took him a couple of
years to get over her death. ‘The old man that you met yesterday,’ he said, ‘is my wife’s
father.’ (The man Bob was referring to, I knew as Jock. He was a Scot and did the
cooking and looked after the place while Bob was away droving.) Bob said that the
old man used to go droving with them, but his age now was against him for roughing
it.
So, 1908 went out and 1909 came in. The weather was hot and sultry. I had finished
the oiling and Bob and I cleaned out a soak. It was the only water supply on Bob’s
property, and it hadn’t been cleaned out for three years.’

‘I asked him was there any truth in the stories I had heard about the blacks up North. He told me that there
were some blacks still very hostile to whites, but he hadn’t had any trouble with them. He said, ‘Some of the stations had trouble on account of them killing cattle. Of course the poor beggars have to live the same as we do and they do knock off prime bullocks now and again. I don’t think that’s so bad, when you remember how station people shoot hundreds of kangaroos and leave them to rot because they are living on the station grass. The kangaroo is the black man’s main meat supply. No, Bert, you won’t have any trouble with the blacks. Just be friendly to them, they have feelings just like we have, and I’m sure they won’t worry you.’

FL/126
‘Two days later Bob’s place became a hive of activity. The four white drovers turned up: Arthur Rose – the cook, Stan Smith, George Pogson and George Morgan (they called him Darkey because of the other George). Then later that evening the coloured men arrived – six part-blooded Aboriginals and two full-bloods. The next day was a day of getting ready. Bob went up to the store for supplies for the trip and he told Stan and Darkey to bring the horses into the stable. I asked Darkey
why Bob wanted the horses in, and he said, ‘This is what he always does a day or so before starting the drive. We’ll feed the horses on chaff and oats. It hardens them up a little. When we go, some extra feed will be strapped onto the spare horses and pack mules, so that we can give all the animals one feed a day of hard dry food. This stops them from getting gripe and stomach pains. After a few days of travelling they will be
all right, but at first we have to go steady.”
‘ Arthur said, ‘Bert, tomorrow and the next few weeks will be bad for
you. It takes about two weeks to get over saddle soreness if you’re not used to riding.
Us others take only two days after we have been away for a few weeks. It’s six weeks
since I rode a horse so I expect a little trouble. Ask Bob for some of his ointment
tomorrow. Rub it on your bottom and the back of your legs from the knees up in the
early forenoon and again just before midday. Then keep the treatment going every
day, it will help a lot.’ Next morning I didn’t have to ask Bob. He came to me with a
four-ounce bottle of ointment and gave me the same instructions. He said, ‘This is
going to be your biggest worry for awhile, Bert. Saddle soreness is very trying, so you
will have to overcome it. ‘

FL/127
January 10th 1909 at 5pm they set off for on a 600 mile trek to the north.
‘ As well as our own saddle horses, we had five mules loaded with food, pots and pans, and a
camp oven. Five spare saddle horses were carrying feed, nose-bags, ropes, hobbles
and other gear. The five pack mules were hitched together by a lead, and led by
Arthur, all travelling in Indian file. Stan led the spare horses the same way. He,
George and Darkey agreed to handle the spares until I got over the expected saddle
soreness. We were all in Indian file, our boss taking the lead, and the black men at the
rear. We made quite a long line, twenty-four horses in all.’

FL/128
“Our food was mostly tinned food – tins of meat, jam, tinned milk -and Arthur used to
make a baking-powder loaf in the camp oven. When he took the loaf out of the oven it
looked like a grindstone and this was what Arthur called it. When we stopped for a
few hours, or for the night, Arthur would leave his horses and mules for us to look
after and say, ‘I’ll have to make another grindstone.’ These loaves Arthur made were
lovely. We never had any butter because of the heat, but we had plenty of golden
syrup, tinned jam and cheese. Our boss used to take two of the horses and go into the
station houses we passed to fetch back some home-made bread and fresh meat.
The camp oven was made of cast iron, round, and was twenty inches across and five
inches deep. Arthur used to hang it on one of the pack mules where it was always
handy to use. He had various billy cans of all sizes hanging on the same mule and
used to make about two gallons of tea at a time.”

Camped in a large shed at Lake Austin as rain fell then took the Central Stock Route heading northeast through “a valley; both sides towered hundreds of feet into the sky with large granite boulders showing like big monuments on top. We camped at this spot. A creek ran through the valley and there was plenty of grass for the horses to eat. We had a quick cold meal of tinned meat and damper owing to not being able to get enough dry wood or sticks to light a fire. There were many large overhanging boulders and we camped under these.”

FL/129
“During the middle of the third week out from Mullewa we had to have all the horses
and mules shod. Stan, Darkey, George and the Boss did the shoeing. We stopped at a
boundary rider’s hut that had a small forge.

“… Arthur told me that we were east of the Robinson Range, or Peak Hill as some called it. He said that we were
nearly halfway from where we had started and that we had done well, but from here on the going would be harder and we would have to rest the horses every two or three days. The shoeing was completed in almost four hours, and we all had a good rest before starting out again.”

Lake Austin, Day Dawn, Meekatharra.
” one of the waterways we crossed was the commencement of the Murchison River. He said,
‘Down near the coast it is very wide and hard to cross at this time of the year with
cattle, but by the time we get down there on the way back, we will be well into the dry
season’.”

FL/130
“Wonging Valley. (I was told that Wonging means ‘noises’ in the blacks’
language.) Arthur said the whites called it Echo Valley. It did return the sound to
anyone calling out.”

FL/131
Once into the tropical north, Facey wondered why the trees had been felled and were mere butts: cyclones flattened all the trees, Arthur told him.

Four days out from Echo Valley they came upon a very large tribe of Aborigines, hundreds of them, camped at Three Rivers near the Collier Range.

FL/132
Mundiwindi cattle station.
Ashburton River headwaters.
“One of our big troubles on the trip was wild horses, or brumbies. There were hundreds of them. That was one of the reasons why we always had to hobble the horses and mules when we turned them out to graze, and why we always kept a horse handy on tether. The wild stallions would try to entice our mares away, and would bite and kick the geldings, so one of us had to take turns in watching the horses all the time.”

FL/133
Ophthalmia Range

FL/134
March 1st 1909, the cattle drive from where Kalgan Creek intersects what is now the Marble Bar Road began.
“Arthur [cook, Bert’s boss] … explained how and what we had to do while on the drive. … ‘We will go ahead of the cattle early in the mornings each day and prepare a meal. There are fourteen … altogether so our job won’t be easy. The stockmen will have their meals in relays. [Those] … that were out night herding [will] have their meal first, then the others. Then they all go out and start the herding and we clean up and cut sandwiches for each man for the day. One of the drovers gets them and delivers them. Then we pack everything up and set off and find a place to camp that night. As the herd gets bigger our job gets harder.’
… [As] our stocks of food got low, the Boss would go to the nearest station and get more. The stations kept plenty of supplies on hand, so we could always get fresh meat as well as flour, potatoes, baking-powder, and home-made bread and butter. (The Boss was well-known to the station owners and their wives, and they always knew within a day or so of the herd passing and made bread.)
Arthur also told me how the drive was carried out. ‘We always have scouts out in front of the herd and on both sides. This is done so they can look out for station cattle and drive them well away from the herd. The scouts out in front are always about a mile ahead so the station cattle can’t hear the herd or smell them. The scouts have to change

FL/135
“their horses often as they do a lot more travelling than the drovers. They can’t rest their horses like the drovers or allow them to feed along at the same pace as the cattle.’
Arthur reckoned that we had the best part of two and a half thousand miles to travel from where we started until we reached Geraldton. This was because of the winding route we would have to take. ‘As the crow flies, the distance would be somewhere around one and a half thousand miles. We should make good time for the first few weeks,’ Arthur said, ‘but after that it will be slower, as there would be a big mob from Mundiwindi Station which we should reach in eighteen days or so.'”

FL/136
After a fortnight they were south-east of the Ophthalmia Range and picked up the next lot of cattle.

Arthur and Bert “arrived at the Ashburton River on” April 2nd 1909 and cattle from Ashburton Downs station joined the ever-increasing herd being driven to Geraldton.

FL/137
“Arthur, besides doing the cooking, had to attend to shoeing the horses and mules … [Bert] learned a lot about shoeing horses and many other things about them, such as what to watch when they were feeding on natural grasses, and the type of scrub that was not good for them to eat. Some of the scrub would make the horses scour badly and they would go off their feed, become lifeless and get very thin.”
“After crossing the Ashburton River we headed south-west towards the coast and Hamelin Pool, some three hundred miles away. Ten days on from the Ashburton we would reach the Lyons River, … Arthur estimated that we had travelled three hundred and eighty to four hundred miles since we had taken the first cattle. To the north, in the distance, we could see the Capricorn Range, and to the south was the Augustus Ranges.”
“Arthur cooked a nice stew. The cattle settled down early as they were very tired. The Boss had made them travel faster because of the weather, and they had covered a good twelve to thirteen miles that day. This was the usual pattern adopted by experienced drovers

FL/138
“when the weather was threatening: make the cattle as tired as possible to calm them down.”

FL/139-146
The cattle stampeded during a storm and Arthur woke Bert to ride out in the dark to assist but Bert got lost and was alone and hungry for a week or so before being rescued by three tribesmen who then sent smole signals to their encampment where Stan Smith (who could speak the local Aboriginal language waited). He’d followed a watercourse downstream and Stan told him it

FL/147
“a branch of the Gascoyne River – the Lyons – only you came across it up near Mount Augustus where it starts.”

FL/148
May 3rd 1909: reunited with the droving party, Arthur “pointed to a rough looking mountain range ahead and said, ‘That’s the Kennedy Range. We go east of that and then it is good going except for the crossing of the Gascoyne and the Murchison Rivers’.”

FL/149
May 9th 1909: at the Kennedy Ranges.

May 16th or thereabouts: at the “junction of the Gascoyne and Lyons Rivers.” [Gascoyne Junction, WA: https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Gascoyne+Junction+WA+6705/@-25.0303784,115.1021268,11.5z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x2be673cd67f57149:0x400f6382479cff0!8m2!3d-25.054158!4d115.20785]
“on the seventeenth day of May, we crossed the Gascoyne with just over two thousand head of cattle. …
“about ninety miles to go to the Great Northern Coast stock route. From there on there would be two or three small water-courses to cross, then the Murchison River which was our only real worry. …
“When the herd was spread out grazing it was at least one mile wide and a mile long. This will give some idea of the big job the drovers had. …
“Towards the end of May we arrived at a point inland from the sea near Hamelin Pool. We were now on the Great Northern Coast stock route.”

FL/150
From early June, each day’s travel was limited to eight miles because the cattle were “near prime condition” and must stay “that way. [The boss] expected us to be in Geraldton near the end of the month.”
Camped at the Murchison River [possibly close to present day Galena Bridge
-27.8278185,114.6873253]
“We had a job getting the cattle across. … The trouble was that for the first few yards the water was deep – up to the cattle’s backs – and they didn’t like it. … the Boss … ordered [the drovers] to cut off a hundred or so head at a time, and drive them across as a group. Some men were left watching the main herd, then as each mob got across, two men were left to mind them until the next lot came across. That’s how we crossed the Murchison River. As usual we used a lead cow. The cow on the lead had to go back and come over in front of each lot to show them the way – she must have crossed eight or ten times. At first a hundred came over with her but later on three to four hundred at a time would follow.
“we were about eighty miles from our goal, Geraldton. …
“Five days out of Geraldton we had to take the cattle about four miles inland from the stock route on account of the railway that ran along the coast from Geraldton to a tin mine. The trains made such a noise it might have made the cattle stampede.”

FL/151
“The day before we were due to arrive in Geraldton, the Boss rode ahead to make arrangements for the delivery of the cattle. He stayed in town that night and rode out to meet us early the next morning. Arthur and I were about two miles ahead of the herd when the Boss came back. He told Arthur where to go and make camp – in an old barn-like hut in a paddock. Arthur said this hut was about two miles out of Geraldton and that the cattle would be put into holding paddocks. The firms that handle the sale of the cattle have these paddocks and the cattle stay there until they are sold and shipped away or disposed of.”

FL/153
Mullewa
FL/155
Bonuses paid to whites but not the Aborigines.
The boss offers Bert a job at Mullewa (but Bert decides to go to Perth).
Geraldton
“We have to give the Police Sergeant at Geraldton a full report about you being lost. Stan has to be with us too. Don’t worry, it is only a formality. They were arranging a search-party, but you were found before they could get started. As you know it rained for nearly three days after the stampede and we were not able to get a message through. It was five days before the police were notified, and then they had to get a black-tracker. On the seventh day, just before the search was due to start, a policeman at Carnarvon sent a message through to say that a black man said he had seen a smoke signal to say you had been found. So now the police want a firsthand statement to show their superiors’.”
Perth

FL/156
July 24th 1909 Bert aboard the ‘Kenalpi’ from Geraldton to Fremantle, “the same boat that I had arrived on nearly eight months before.”

FL/158
Fremantle
Subiaco
West Perth

FL/159
Mother and brothers now in West Perth engaged in a successful business.
Myra, Bert’s sister, had died in the Infectious Diseases
Hospital at West Subiaco after being moved from Coolgardie Hospital.

FL/160
Bert trains to be a boxer.

FL/161
February 1910, 15 year-old Bert finishes up 6 months’ work with his mother’s husband.
Boxingf instructor Mr Burns secures bert a job at a West perth foundry. He’d learned arithmetic more successfully than literacy during the 6 months since arriving back from the droving experience.

“The parts were made of cast iron and moulded in damp sand. My job was damping the
sand, and packing it firmly around a sample part before it was lifted, leaving an
impression for melted iron to be poured in. A man about fifty years old was working
with me, pouring the iron. His name was George McDonald and he was a very nice,
understanding, well-mannered man and wouldn’t let me lift anything very heavy. He
would say, ‘Don’t do anything that will cause strain. It could be the undoing of you
physically.'”
Offered a trade apprenticeship but knocked back because of his lack of schooling.

FL/162
1910
“One morning in May, Mother drew my attention to an advertisement in the newspaper
for a lad to work on a farm at a place called Lake Yealering, only a few miles from
where I had worked for Charlie and Mrs Bibby. The advertisement was for a firm
called Coad and Tindle. I went straight away that morning to the address given – an
office in Perth. Mr Tindle asked me some questions about stock and farming, and he
also asked if I had any references. I didn’t have references but I told him where I had
been working at the foundry and that I had worked for a Mr Bibby. As soon as I
mentioned Mr Bibby he said, ‘What? Charlie Bibby?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Righto lad,’ he
said, ‘you have a job. I know the Bibbys well. I’ve stayed there many times. We want
you to go to Wickepin – there is a train out to there now – and our manager, Mr Kent
will meet you. He is managing our property at Lake Yealering.'”

FL/163
Wickepin
Narrogin
Albany train

FL/164
work as a farm labourer in the vicinity of Wickepin:
“The property was fenced all round with a dog-proof fence, and I had to ride around
the boundary every five days to see that the fence was intact. I carried an axe and a
shovel with me, and I also carried my rifle. If the fence was broken or the limb of a
tree had fallen on it, I had to put things right. The rest of my time was taken up
looking to see that the sheep were all right. I learnt a lot about looking after young
ewes, especially when the lambing was on. Mr Kent showed me how to help them if
they had trouble when giving birth.
I liked this job. I felt that I was doing something important. There were fifteen
hundred sheep on the property and I felt that I was responsible for them, especially
when my boss told me that he was depending on me to look after them.
Wickepin was our nearest town and Mr Kent went there for stores every two weeks
and sometimes he let me go with him.
In September the shearers came to shear the sheep. In those days shearing was done
by hand with wide bladed shears like big scissors. This time there were three shearers
and they sheared about three hundred a day between them. Mr Kent showed me how
to class wool and throw it so it would fall spread out over a special wool-table.
In November that year, Mr Kent got leave to go to South Australia for a trip and said
he would be away for six weeks, including Christmas.”

Kent, his laconic boss lewft him to manage the property alone.

FL/165
Bert “had three windmills to look after as well as the boundary fence and the sheep.
About every eight days I had to change the sheep into a fresh paddock. They were divided into two flocks – the ewes and lambs in one paddock and the dry sheep (nonbreeders) and rams in another. The property was fenced into seven paddocks and the sheep were rotated, so that the grass and scrub could make new shoots and be much nicer and fresher when the sheep were put back.
”

FL/166
January 1911 Mr Kent, the boss, returns with a wife aged 25 years-old and soon afgterwards the owners who employ Kent as manager – (the Tindle brothers and Mr Coad) Bert is pushed into the background and doesn’t like being treated as a second-class citizen.

FL/168-171
Wickepin’s sociable barber puts him onto a fellow from the goldfields who’s trying to grow wheat and farm sheep. So he leaves Kent for that property in the Jitarning District and organises the naive would-be wheat farmer – Dick Rigolls, his wife and three children – into establishng the property’s water supply, homestead and fencing.

FL/172
Dick was being financed by his brother, Len, who remained on the goldfields earning good money in a safe job and would only quit once Dick’s property was on its feet.

FL/173
Once the rough house was built and the urgent stuff completed Bert “wrote to Grandma and told her I had decided to go
for a trip to Victoria to see my sister Laura, who was still living with our uncle at Campbell’s Creek. I wanted to take Grandma with me and I told her that I would pay for her passage and expenses. Grandma wrote to me saying that she would love to go.”

FL/174
Detailed description of the destructive land-clearing operation engaged in by white WA wheatbelt farmers. Bert didn’t think of it as destructive but productive.

FL/175
Grandma changes her mind so Bert travels alone from Fremantle to Port Adelaide aboard the ‘Dimboola’ and then ” travelled through South Australia to Ballarat, then took a train to Castlemaine in Victoria. The train that went through Campbells Creek left Adelaide about five o’clock that evening (I sent Laura a telegram from Adelaide to say that I was coming
by the train), arriving at Campbells Creek near midday the next day. To my surprise Laura was there to meet me. I was very excited. I hadn’t seen her since I was four
years old, and I had no idea what she looked like, but she knew me. She was about
twenty and had grown into a beautiful woman.
I stayed with Laura until after Christmas and into the New Year of 1912, and we
travelled around Castlemaine and Barkers Creek where Grandma used to live. I
remembered the old place but I didn’t know I had so many relations. We also went to
Bendigo because we had relations there.
During this time that I was at Laura’s I decided to travel up to Sydney to see the much
talked-about Johnson-Burns fight that was being held up there at the Sydney Stadium”

FL/176
“I caught the train, … to Melbourne, … then … to Sydney. … on the train to Sydney … met [a stranger] … Peter Malone, who … lived at Rushcutters Bay, not far from the stadium, … His mother was a wonderful woman, and … they showed me around Sydney. The fight [was] … an absolute waste of my whole trip.
“… I returned to Campbells Creek and took Laura … to our Aunt Lizzie’s place in Footscray and we stayed with her until I sailed from Port Melbourne for the West again.
… the best holiday I had ever had. … we saw all of Melbourne’s suburbs and beauty spots, and all of the shows, pictures and everything we could think of. … I sailed from Port Melbourne on the S.S. Orsova …
” … a twelve thousand ton vessel, [but] the sea tossed her like a cork. … terribly seasick and … glad to arrive at Fremantle.”

Chap 41
FL/178
Bert lands a Western Australian Water Supply job at Harrismith; “the Water Supply Depot was two miles east of Wickepin.”

FL/180
Spark’s Reserve Dam; Bert in charge of a pair of apparently cantankerous horses – horses that had definitely been maltreated and savagely beaten by ignorant men.
“I remembered my uncle Archie saying that you couldn’t make an animal obey you with cruelty. He said to be firm, show them that you’re boss and be kind to them. I decided that that would be my approach to the problem.”

42
FL/182
Bert had the horses working well in next to no time.
“I stayed with this gang and our job took us to many places in the wheat-belt, until all the dams were fenced-in and rabbit-proof.”
Then to “Kunjin, a new settlers’ district a few miles from the well-known Corrigin. There was a well at Kunjin – it was ninety feet deep and had a solid granite stone bottom.”

FL/183
From there to “clean up a well … at Jubuck”

FL/184-6
Bert has a serious brush with death in a dangerous deep well that collapsed.

FL/187
Lake Yealering, “a lovely spot with a fresh-water lake covering about two to three hundred acres – there was about five feet of beautiful fresh water.”

FL/188
Narrogin
Kunjin
Jubuck

FL/189
43
Bert’s gang to proceed “sixty miles east of Wickepin, to fence and put pumps and water troughs onto two dams. We would also put in drains and clear catchments. …
“… we loaded up [with] … tents, bedding, stores, materials and four men. … the biggest load … ever … on the spring-cart … so heavy … that we cut the centre out of a blackboy to make two bumpers, then wire them onto the top of the springs at a centre position to stop the springs breaking … over any rough roads. (The blackboy … has a tough spongy centre that is light in weight … has a fair amount of give and is ideal as a bumper.) …
“… travelled roughly forty miles the first day and camped at … Kulin. …
“The first dam we were to service was south-east of Kulin near Pingaring road and the second dam was some fifteen miles north of that. …

FL/190
“… the first night we camped at this spot [we were] … pestered by dingoes – there must have been hundreds of them. Jock and I always kept our meat and bread inside our tent in a bag safe which we hung on the ridge pole. Believe it or not we were kept awake all night chasing the dingoes away from trying to get at the safe. They howled all night long and all around. Bentley was scared out of his wits. He hadn’t had any experience with dingoes like that before. He came to our tent and said that they had taken his meat. It had been in a camp oven with the lid on and they had knocked the lid off and taken it. He was shaking with fright, and brought his rugs into our tent and slept on the floor – or at least, he tried to sleep. …
“For several days I shot the dingoes – I killed four and some got away wounded.”

FL/191
“… dreadful fear for me. That dingo knew he was cornered, so he sprang straight at me. … I had the mattock handle above my head in a striking position. … his head – with teeth bared – … going straight for my throat. Aiming between his ears, I brought the mattock handle down with all my might… . He collapsed into a heap on the bank of the dam and I gave him two or three more blows to make sure he was finished.
“… before the dingo sprang … I was the scaredest that I had ever been in my life. The Boss, Jock and Bentley all agreed that they had the scare of their lives too. They were as relieved as I was when the dingo fell. I scalped the dingo as I had done with the others – the scalps were worth one pound each. …
“… went onto the next dam at a place called Karlgarin.”

FL/192
Australian Rules football “Wickepin was playing a team from Narrogin”.

FL/194
Spends 18th birthday with his grandmother. So it’s August 31st 1912.
November 1912: bumper wheat harvest in the Wickepin district.

FL/195
Fremantle
Feb 1913 Gov’t extending the railway line from Wickepin to Merriden.

FL/196
“taking the train out of Wickepin the next morning. We had to go to Narrogin, then catch the train to Perth and travel to Spencer’s Brook, a railway siding about five miles south-west of Northam. From there we were to catch the train going to the Goldfields and get off at Merredin.
“started laying and fixing the rails to the sleepers on the first Thursday in March” 1913.

FL/197-8
Bert beats the nasty ganger and earns the respect of his fellow workers.

FL/199
The railway line they were constructing from Merredin to Wickepin “passed through some of Western Australia’s best wheat growing country. We had reached … Bruce Rock by the end of May, and Corrigin in early August. Our gang was then taken to Wickepin.”

FL/200
Telegram with news of Bert’s mother’s sudden death. “A friend at Wickepin drove me to Narrogin where I caught the midnight train to Perth, arriving at eleven thirty the next morning. I caught a taxi and went straight home but was too late. The funeral had been at eleven o’clock.
“[The] Wickepin to Corrigin [section of the Wickepin to Merredin] line [was completed] … by the third week in October, 1913. [Bert] … had driven nearly every spike on one rail from Merredin to Wickepin, a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles.”

FL/201-3
Wins a heavyweight boxing match against a powerfully strong African-American (Darkey) at the Narrogin Agricultural Show” one of the biggest agricultural shows outside Perth.”

FL/204
Joins Mickey Flynn’s travelling boxing troupe which “showed at Katanning, Albany, Bunbury and finished in Northam in the third week of November. Darkey left us at Albany.”
47
Bert then worked as a “linesman [doing “axe-work”] with a surveying firm, Goyder and Davis, surveying land throughout the outer wheat-belt of West Australia. [Bert] stayed on with the job until April 1914. We were all put off then as Mr Goyder became ill and had to stop work for several weeks. I returned to Perth.”

FL/206
48
Back with Mickey Flynn’s boxing troupe when it resumed, he gave up playing league football with Subiaco and the troupe “showed at Adelaide and several towns in South Australia; then travelled into Victoria and showed at Ballarat, Maryborough, Castlemaine, Bendigo and Melbourne; then at Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales.”

FL/207
Melbourne
Newcastle
Britain at war with Germany
Germany’s invasion of Belgium.
Bert almost 20 years-old.

FL/208
“Flynn [said] ‘Some of you could be ruined for life by going to a war. It is not a picnic. I went through the South African war so I know. Don’t any of you go taking any notice of the Government’s promises. They will tell you anything to get you in but when you ‘do your bit’ as they call it, you will soon be forgotten and so will the promises – don’t you forget that’. …
“[T]he Commonwealth Government was calling for [20,000] volunteers. …
Choosing to enlist and to do so in their own State, “in the second week of September [Bert and five others from the boxing troupe] … boarded the P and O line’s passenger-ship Moultan at Sydney and set off for Western Australia. The ship called at Melbourne, then sailed straight for Fremantle, arriving near the end of September [1914].”

FL/210
To training at the “military camp … at Blackboy Hill … fifteen miles east of the city of Perth.”
[cf similar WWI theme from KSP’s ‘Golden Miles’]

FL/211
“Non-commissioned English instructors wishing to assert their authority in a bullying way were no good to the man who had been used to going his way and go-as-you-please freedom. (Probably this worked under conscription conditions in England but not in Australia.) So it was a common sight at Blackboy Hill the first few days, to see a sergeant or a corporal get a punch on the nose or his nose pulled. Of course, this meant the offender being paraded to the Senior Officer who usually gave him a lecture and another chance. …
“the platoon system … was all in fours. Each platoon consisted of sixty privates with seven non-commissioned officers and three officers. There were four platoons to a

FL/212
“company, four companies to a full battalion and four battalions to a full brigade. Our battalion was the Eleventh, and we were attached to the Third Brigade that was made up of the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Battalions.
“At the end of October [1914] our company was shifted to a camp near the Swanbourne Rifle Range to do our musketry training.”
Then to the Fremantle Army Barracks for infectious disease treatment because he had measles. It turned out to be scarlet fever so “it was January 1915 before [he] got back to Blackboy Hill.”

FL/224
Bunbury, WA

FL/239
Chapter 56
Gold miners
“We were all set to work digging tunnels from our position towards the Turks’ trenches.
The idea was to go under or near the Turkish trenches and explode charges, blowing them up. This kind of trench warfare was practiced by both sides – a lot of men were buried or blown up in trenches and tunnels. Ex-goldminers were used a lot for this kind of work throughout the whole time Australia was at Gallipoli.”

FL/240
Bunbury
Bayonetting the enemy [cf Don Watson in ‘The Bush’]
“I arrived at the Turks’ trench with two others – one was a Bunbury man I knew well. As we went over the parapet into the trench two Turks fired at us, killing the man I didn’t know. The Bunbury man had his rifle in the on guard position. A bullet struck the rifle and flew away not harming him. I dealt with one Turk and he the other. We seemed to be alone for a few seconds, then suddenly we realised that there were many Turks in the trench. Some came at us but seemed confused. We had only the bayonet for a weapon and believe me, we used it to perfection. Our Turkish counterparts didn’t like this and soon made themselves scarce.”

FL/246
“I received word while at the convalescent home [in Egypt] that my brother Joseph had been killed at Gallipoli. I was told that he had been bayoneted while on guard duty at an outpost. He was with another Australian soldier when the Turks crept up in the dark of night and jumped them. The soldier with Joseph ran away and left him and he had tried to defend the outpost on his own. He was found later with seven bayonet wounds in him. I was very upset by the news. I wasn’t as close to him as I had been to Roy but he was my brother. That was two of my brothers dead on Gallipoli. Joseph’s Commanding Officer wrote a nice letter to our sister, Laura, telling her all about his end.”

FL/248
Chapter 58 – severely wounded, back in Australia to #8 Australian Military Hospital in Fremantle.
Bert arrive